The afternoon was golden, sunlit and perfect, filled with new grass and wild flowers. No one had heard from Ursula, and Butch called from the fairgrounds to say that, other than the normal festivities, things looked quiet over there. From what he could gather, rumors of an Anderson-Shay hometown wedding had spread like wildfire, and the media presence was now focused on the Daily Baptist Church in town. A local florist showed up with silk bouquets and a wedding arch, the owner of the Daily Café wheeled in a catering wagon full of fried chicken, and the minister was waiting in a black suit with a boutonniere on his lapel, helping to fuel speculation that nuptials were imminent.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the interviews on the porch were proceeding swimmingly. The conversations with Brother Harve, O.C., and Amber’s family were funny, charming, touching. They painted a picture of Amber, not as the recent press fiasco had made her appear, but as she was—a young woman raised amid loss and deprivation, yet filled with hope.
As the afternoon sun caressed the tall, golden spires of last year’s grass, Rodney moved the equipment to a field of wild flowers behind the barn. In her jeans and T-shirt, her bare feet cuddled among tender green shoots, Amber sat surrounded by a sea of blue flowers as bright as her eyes. She talked about her dreams—a singing career, a family, a big place in the country where foster children whose lives were hard and dangerous, and filled with fear, could come to breathe clean air, to pick blackberries, plant a garden, and experience peace.
“We didn’t have a lot of things, growin’ up,” she said, her fingers absently combing the bright red petals of an Indian paintbrush. “But we didn’t ever have to be afraid to walk out our front door, either. Sometimes, I’d pack a backpack, and we kids would hike off down the creek for miles and miles, just to see what we’d find.” Pausing, she looked up, not at the camera but past it, toward Justin Shay, who was hanging around under an oak tree, getting in the way. “Every child ought to have the chance to do that. If they could, the world would be a better place.”
Justin smiled—not the practiced smile, but one that was almost tender.
Rodney called it a wrap, and Justin trotted through the posies, helped Amber up, gave her a hug, telling her how well she did. I wanted to be sick.
“I wish he’d fall off a cliff,” I muttered, and Carter grinned sideways at me as Amber and Justin strolled off, shoulder to shoulder.
“I think you’d better get used to having him around,” Carter said. “Any minute now, they’ll pack a knapsack and hike down the creek.”
“Over my dead body.”
Carter leaned close to my ear. “
We
could pack a knapsack and hike down the creek.”
A warm tingle ran from my head to my toes and lit up all the nerve endings in between. Everything in me wanted to chuck the day’s work, tiptoe through the tulips, and find out what it would be like to spend more than just a stolen moment with Carter.
Rodney turned my way, and I came out of the floaty, feathery blue, then sank back to earth. Rodney gave me a look that said he’d caught the exchange between Carter and me. “How long do we have to get packed up for the fairgrounds?”
I checked my watch. “Twenty minutes.”
The crew chief wheeled his hand in the air. “All right, people, get everything loaded in the horse trailer. We’re on the road in twenty.”
“Guess I’d better make sure the lug nuts are on tight,” Carter said, and started toward the truck and trailer.
Rodney fell into step with me on the way back to the house. “What’s with the cowboy?”
“I’m not exactly sure.” It was a surprisingly honest admission.
“That’s not the darling new fiancé I met at the Christmas party—the one with the, uhhh . . . let’s see . . . sailboat, wasn’t it?” Rodney rubbed the flap of pallid skin under his neck, eyeing Carter contemplatively.
“Not.” I couldn’t hide the touch of humiliation. I’d been babbling about wedding plans for weeks.
Rodney shrugged. “The cowboy looked familiar. I thought maybe he was the fiancé.”
“There is no fiancé anymore.” How Rodney could even remotely confuse David with Carter was beyond me. They were polar opposites in looks and everything else. David was abrupt, intense, quick, and a careful dresser with perfect hair and all the latest accessories smacking of money and success. He’d tried to sell Rodney an investment plan at the studio Christmas party.
Carter was slow, easygoing, casual and comfortable, with an apparent affinity for collecting free T-shirts from fund-raising events. His hair had a mind of its own—slightly wild and out of control, unpredictable, like he was. He didn’t need to command the room or attract attention to himself. He hadn’t bothered to introduce himself to the crew after he finished working on the trailer. He just stood on the fringes, watching the show.
“I won’t be getting married and sailing the coast this summer.”
Rodney patted my shoulder in what might have been an actual show of affection. “Most of the time, marriage is overrated. I didn’t like the sailboat man anyway. Too anal.”
I laughed and Rodney strode ahead to scold one of the grips for dragging something expensive through the dirt. “Let’s go, people. Let’s get this baby on the road.”
As usual, the crew jumped into action. Within fifteen minutes, Amber’s grandfather had led our token horse into the front of the trailer, the crew had loaded their equipment in the back, and we were locked and ready. After a short debriefing on the porch, we called Butch one last time to get a final report, Rodney finished his instructions to the crew, and everyone squeezed into the small dressing room in the nose of the trailer.
Amber walked out of the house with Justin Shay trailing her and the wardrobe girl still arranging hair and patting on Amber’s makeup. Her glow was gone, and Amber was clutching Justin’s hand. “Did you talk to Butch?” she asked me, hesitating at the trailer door.
“Butch says everything’s fine at the fairgrounds,” I assured her in the calming, situation-under-control voice I used when contestants succumbed to stage fright. “The plan is in place, the stage is ready in the arena. The rodeo band knows that a guest artist is coming to sing, but they don’t know it’s you, so when your name and your new status as an
American Megastar
finalist is announced, there will be a lot of commotion and excitement. We’ll bring you out of the trailer, under the bleachers, and onto the stage quickly, before the crowd has time to react and move forward into the aisles. You’re doing the national anthem, ‘God Bless the U.S.A.,’ and then the two you wanted to do—‘A Wanderer’s Road’ and ‘The Hand.’ The music will cue up as quickly as possible to try to minimize crowd movement. You don’t have to worry about a thing except your songs.”
Amber’s face went pale. “I . . . I can’t remember the songs. I can’t . . . remember the words.”
Grabbing her shoulders, I gave her a leveling look. “Yes you can, Amber. You know the songs.”
“Come on, babe, you were just singing them for me in the field,” Justin chimed in. For once, I was grateful for his presence. Now was not the time for Amber to have a meltdown.
“I think I’m sick,” she moaned, and wobbled in my hands.
“You’re not sick, Amber. You’re not sick. Just take a few deep breaths. Come on, deep breaths with me. In . . . out. In . . . out. That’s it.”
The color slowly began returning to Amber’s cheeks. In my mind, I was counting down the minutes, my wristwatch ticking like a time bomb. If we didn’t leave now, we wouldn’t make it. The rodeo crowd would be in place, the band would be ready, and Amber wouldn’t be there.
“Come on, Amber. You can do this. It’s just like performing on the show. You go out, hit your mark, and sing.”
She nodded weakly. “I didn’t think it’d be so hard to . . . come back home. I’m sorry, Ms. Florentino.”
“It’s all right, Amber.” I braced up her shoulders. “Most of the contestants have a hard time with the hometown show. It’s a lot of pressure, hitting the Final Five and coming back home for the big reveal. You’ll be great. These are your hometown people. The Dailyians, remember?” Amber laughed at the quote from the purple T-shirt.
Justin slipped an arm around Amber’s waist. “Come on, babe. We’ll go over the songs again on the way. You’re gonna be awesome.” He helped her into the trailer, and I stepped back, surprised by what seemed like a genuine show of support. Maybe even Justin Shay wasn’t beyond the reach of Amber’s magic.
Justin helped Amber to a seat, and Carter closed the door, leaving Amber and Justin reviewing lyrics while the crew pored over details. Carter and I climbed into the cab of the truck. In front of us, Imagene, Brother Harve, O.C., and Amber’s family packed into their cars, and with a chug of the old Pontiac’s engine, a whinny from Magnolia, and the rattle of horse trailer doors, we were on the road for Project Amber Final Five Reveal.
I checked my watch. Not too bad. Only two minutes behind schedule. So far, everything was going well enough. With any luck, we’d keep it that way.
The plan fell into place with astonishing precision. Within fifteen minutes, we’d arrived at the fairgrounds gate, the cars had parked out front, and Carter was sweet-talking our way past two guards and a livestock inspector, despite the fact that we had no veterinary paperwork for the horse. The livestock inspector was female, which may have aided in our success. Carter gave her an apologetic smile and said, “You know, we didn’t even think about those papers, but we’re just here for the rodeo and then we’ll be heading back out. I promise our passenger back there is healthy as a horse.” He winked and grinned, and the livestock inspector rolled her eyes. Bracing her clipboard on her hip, she stood back and looked at the horse, then squinted at Carter.
“I know you,” she said finally, waving her pen at him. “You look cuter without the beard thing, though.” Circling a finger around her mouth, she drew an invisible goatee, then wrote something on her clipboard and stepped back from the truck.
“You’re not the first one to make the observation.” With a sheepish grin, Carter shifted the truck into gear and glanced in the rearview mirror.
The inspector waved us through.
“What was that all about?” I asked as we bounced past the gateway into a parking lot crowded with trailers and saddled horses.
“Who knows?” He flashed the same smile he’d used on the livestock inspector.
“You used to have a
beard thing
?” I mimicked the livestock inspector’s hand motion.
Focusing on squeezing the rig through a gap between two haphazardly parked trailers, he muttered, “Not recently.”
“You’ve been to Daily before, then?” The mystery of Carter Woods gnawed at the back of my mind. Something wasn’t adding up here. How did the livestock inspector know he used to have a beard?
He glanced sideways, one eyebrow rising. “Manda . . .”
A tiny cowgirl in a pink hat bolted from behind a trailer, and Carter slammed the brakes. My heart jumped into my throat as the girl froze in our path, and our rig squealed and vibrated to a sudden halt as the little girl’s father raced out, scooped her up, and waved at us apologetically. Inside our trailer, people, or equipment, or Magnolia thumped against the walls.
“That didn’t sound good,” Carter muttered as we started forward again.
“Just get us to the arena.” I focused on the task at hand. No more distractions. “There’s our contact with the stock contractor.” I pointed ahead to where a tall man in a black hat was waiting with Butch at his side. When we reached the gate, they waved us through, then walked in front of the truck, clearing crowds of horses and rodeo patrons so we could drive past another gate behind the bleachers.
“It’s showtime,” I said.
Carter gave a quick twist of his head and a ready-for-adventure grin that reminded me of the night we’d broken into the café. “Let’s go.”
Opening the trailer, we found the crew and equipment in remarkably good shape, considering. Rodney took charge of his people, and Amber disembarked bright-eyed and ready to sing. Justin Shay stumbled out afflicted with motion sickness and sank to the ground, too green to get in the way. The cameras rushed into position, our rodeo contact cued the MC, and we hurried Amber up the ramp beneath the bleachers just as her Final Five announcement lit up the arena. A collective gasp went through the crowd, the band started the national anthem, the crowd rose to its feet, and Amber took the stage. Her voice floated into the cool evening air and drifted heavenward.
Everything was perfect. I stood on the exit ramp with Carter, watching Amber’s moment of triumph from behind the stage.
“She’s amazing,” I said.
Carter’s fingers slipped over mine. “Yes, she is.” He was looking at me, his voice low and intimate. An invisible current pulled us together, drew me into his arms, into his kiss. My body flushed hot, crackled with the excitement in the air, with the bliss of a moment when all was as it should be. Somewhere far away, Amber’s voice rose to a crescendo and the crowd burst into thunderous applause.
When Carter’s lips parted from mine, Amber was already halfway through her second song. I turned around, and Butch was coming up the ramp, eyeing Carter and me in a way that made me wonder how much he’d seen. It wasn’t the most professional behavior, making out under the bleachers during a location shoot.
I gave Butch the high sign and quickly brought up a new subject. “Good job on the advance, Butch. It went off like clockwork. She sounds great.”
“She sure does.” Straightening his glasses, Butch gazed adoringly toward the stage. “Man, I love to hear her sing. There’s nobody on the show that can touch her.”
“I think you’re right,” I agreed. “If the rest of this hometown segment goes this well, she’ll have a real shot at the top.”
Butch blinked in surprise, then studied me narrowly, chewing his bottom lip like he wanted to say something but didn’t know if he should. He glanced curiously at Carter.
“Carter drove the horse trailer for us,” I said, and Butch blinked rapidly, as if I’d just bombarded him with something that wouldn’t compute. His gaze darted back and forth between Carter and me.