Country Gold Read online

  Country Gold

  A Wilder Sisters novel

  Heatherly Bell

  Heatherly Bell Books

  Copyright © 2018 by Maria Buscher

  Published by Heatherly Bell Books

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

  By payment of required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferrable right to access and read the text of this book. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented without the express written permission of the copyright owner.

  Please Note

  The reverse engineering, uploading, and/or distributing of this book via the internet or via any other means without the permission of the copyright owner is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Cover design by Elizabeth Mackey

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Dear Reader

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  Also By Heatherly Bell:

  About the Author

  Dear Reader,

  Reunion romances are my favorites. Lexi and Luke have been apart for a year due mostly to circumstances beyond their control. When he returns to his hometown of Whistle Cove, Luke has a bit of groveling to do. He’s allowed his head to be turned by the lure of fame and temporarily lost sight of what’s important. But now that he’s decided to put his life back together, it may be too late. At the heart of this book is the pressure of public perception and image and how it can affect personal relationships. Imagine living your life when everyone is watching your every move. This is what Luke has to deal with when he quickly shoots up to stardom and loses touch with the small things that matter in life.

  Thank you for coming along with me on this new adventure into the world of Whistle Cove. Although the small town is completely fictional, the central coast setting is very real. Monterey Bay is one of the most beautiful areas in the country. I’m fortunate to be within a short drive’s distance from its shores. Years ago, as a young adult new to California, I fell in love with the area. I have many fond memories of 17-mile drive and trips to the beach, both with friends, and later with my own family.

  You will find the mention of real locations, including the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Cannery Row, the Wharf, and The Crow’s Nest (which is actually in neighboring Santa Cruz.) However, some of the places are plucked from my own vivid imagination, so you will not find the Wilder Sisters B&B, or Lulu’s Day Spa. The lavish beauty of this area is sometimes hard to get across in simple words, and I hope I’ve done it justice. If you’re ever in central California, you must drop by Monterey Bay and tell me what you think. I love to hear from you.

  With deep regard,

  ~ Heatherly

  Chapter 1

  Behind every little sister there’s a big sister standing, holding a bat, asking, “You want to say that again?” ~ Meme

  The stage lights were blinding and for a moment Luke Wyatt thought he was seeing things. He blinked. Twice. No, she wasn’t in the front row.

  She hadn’t been for a year, so why should tonight be any different?

  The concert hall was packed as he ended with a reprisal of his #1 Billboard, chart-topping, cross-over country hit: Falling for Forever. After more than a year of playing it in a 90-city tour across the United States, he was frankly sick of the song. But the fans here in…crap, where the hell was he again? Austin? Yeah, Austin, Texas. Anyway, the fans everywhere loved it, so out it came as an encore.

  Every.

  Single.

  Night.

  A love song.

  Joke was on him.

  Despite the twelve other songs he’d also written, the one he’d penned with Lexi Wilder remained the fan favorite. His cash cow, everyone on his team said. His ticket.

  “Good show.” The road manager clapped Luke’s back as he walked off the stage and handed the Gibson to his trusted roadie.

  Luke guessed the show was about as good as it could be, considering he’d been on auto-pilot for the last leg of the tour. Dialing it in. He wondered how everyone had missed this. Along with the rest of his band, Luke was herded out the back door of the concert hall and straight to the tour bus parked at the curb waiting. Fans were gathered behind a barricade and loud claps and cheers rose as he and his band members emerged. Luke waved and went along the line, shaking hands, and taking selfies with as many fans as feasible. Moving quickly. He wished he could personally thank each and every one of his fans for buying his music instead of pirating it. For coming out to see the show instead of staying home with Netflix.

  He boarded the tour bus, fist bumping with their driver and getting his phone back. Like the rest of the band, he never took his cell with him onstage since at worst it might ring or buzz during a quiet moment. At best it was a complete distraction. He moved towards the back as the rest of the band followed suit and filed in. It was the last night of their brutal tour opening for Lady Antebellum. The rest of his road crew would slowly trickle in and tonight they’d all be on their way back to Nashville. Maybe he’d actually get to spend some time there. Buy a house. He could afford to now, even if he wasn’t too excited about the idea.

  Gary, his manager, practically tackled Luke. It took everything in him not to groan in pain. He’d pushed himself too hard for the past year and his back was killing him from an old injury. Not that he would let anyone know that. Instead, he grimaced and hoped it might look like a grin.

  “Great show!” Gary said.

  “Thought I asked you not to blow smoke up my ass.” Luke took a seat near the back.

  Damn it all. He couldn’t help his foul mood. It wasn’t just the back pain, but he’d been on the road so long he hardly felt human. Sleeping during the day like a vampire. Sharing close quarters with a bunch of smelly dudes. Moving from one city to another and having no idea half the time where he was. Still, he recognized bullshit when he heard it. He wished the people around him would stop shoveling it.

  “What’s up? Weren’t you happy with the set tonight?” Gary asked.

  “Sure.”

  “The crowd loved it.”

  “Yeah.” He’d remembered the words and played every lick on his guitar.

  He liked to think it meant he wasn’t that bad off.

  But he missed the days when Gary would give him the unvarnished and painful truth. It wasn’t your best. Try that song in another key. Now that he was a huge success, everyone was afraid to give him the slightest bit of honest criticism. Everyone but Lexi, that is, and he hadn’t seen her in one long year.

  He’d certainly never forget her despite what she believed. A man didn’t forget t
he first slam to his heart. One look at her, and he’d been lost.

  Lexi and her two younger sisters had been a squeaky clean, highly successful, CMA award-winning band for years. His first break came roading for them and later being part of their back-up band. Seeing the country from a tour bus. Getting, for once in his life, the best of everything.

  Falling in love.

  And then the sex scandal had happened.

  Not involving Lexi, but her youngest sister, Sabrina. Private nude photos she’d texted to a guy she’d flirted with at a record label party had been sold to a tabloid magazine. Having spent her teenage years on a tour bus with her sisters, Sabrina was naïve about men, and she’d trusted the wrong person.

  Though their devoted fans stood by them, record sales plummeted, and the girls were dropped. The label sought to salvage something out of the ashes and pushed him front and center. Lexi had written most of the Wilder Sister songs, so she co-wrote a single with him for the debut album. That album went gold within a month. Safe to say Luke Wyatt had come a long way from his humble beginnings as the son of the town murderer. All thanks to one Lexi Wilder, who years before had convinced her daddy (their manager at the time) to let him roadie for her band.

  “Next stop, Nashville!” The driver called out when the last of the road crew had boarded.

  “Home, baby!” James, the drummer, shouted.

  “I wonder if my kids remember what I look like,” said their bass player, Tom.

  “Hell, I’m hoping my wife remembers me!” Gary said.

  He clapped a hand on Luke’s shoulder. “Hey, look, I can see you’re tired but in Nashville you’ll finally be able to kick off your boots, relax, and write us all some more hit songs.”

  Us. That was the problem. Since he’d written a #1 hit song with Lexi, offers were lining up to write with others. But he’d always been more of a lone wolf. That song with Lexi had been a fluke. A little bit of magic he’d love to repeat with her.

  Any time. Any place.

  Problem was she hated him now.

  “I don’t have a place to stay.”

  He’d lived like a nomad, but his last known address was actually a ramshackle cottage in his hometown of Whistle Cove on California’s central coast. That old place had been condemned, but still, it was home. Those stark memories, both painful and tender, rolled through him.

  “That’s cool. You’ll stay with me until you can rent or buy a place.”

  “No, I can’t do that to you and Claire.”

  “Are you kidding? Claire’s your biggest fan. She’s probably going to be bugging you all the time, wanting you to sing to her. Taking selfies and putting them on her Friendbook page.”

  Luke slid him a look, folding his arms across his chest. “That’s exactly what I’m worried about.”

  “Okay, you’re right. You can stay with my brother until you get a place. He hates country music, and if it wasn’t for me he wouldn’t even know who you are.”

  But the problem in Nashville, where he’d been lauded as the next big thing in country music, the next huge crossover success, was that important things were expected of him. Big things. Such as more country gold. His stomach tensed. If he didn’t deliver something soon, he’d be a one-hit wonder.

  No pressure.

  There was only one place on earth where the expectation of him remained less than stellar last he’d checked. Nothing much had ever been anticipated from the son of Reggie Wyatt, unless it involved wearing an orange prison jumpsuit. He’d have some anonymity there. No one much liked to come around the son of a convicted murderer. And the residents of Whistle Cove would prefer that the rest of the world not know they were the birthplace of Reggie Wyatt.

  Therefore, he had a sort of built-in privacy in Whistle Cove.

  He knew exactly where he would stay. The Wilder Sisters B&B. The family business started by Lexi’s paternal grandmother was struggling. He’d offered to help, of course, but been turned down repeatedly by Lexi. Lexi, who stopped taking his calls. If she really didn’t want anything more to do with him, she’d have to say this to his face.

  “This is your life now, Luke. Live it.” Those were the last words she’d said to him.

  The pain of those words slammed through him like he’d just heard them yesterday. A life without her? Hell no, he didn’t want that life. He hadn’t signed up for that. He and Lexi had unfinished business.

  “I’m headed home, Gary.”

  “Exactly. Nashville.”

  “No. California. My hometown.”

  “Wouldn’t that be dangerous?”

  Great. Now Gary was worried about him, as if he couldn’t take care of his own damn self like he always had. He’d grown up on the waterfront of Monterey Bay, and it was true that he had enemies in Whistle Cove. Some of Reggie’s friends still worked the docks and they had no respect for Luke. As a man, he shouldn’t have ratted on his father. Never mind that he’d done the right thing.

  “Take me to the closest airport before you guys head home,” Luke directed their driver.

  There was dead silence in the wake of that, followed by a chorus of “what the hell” and “what’s up now.”

  Gary simply stared at him. “You need to get back to Nashville and re-group. Write some songs, and then get back into the studio. We’ve got people chomping at the bit to write with you.”

  “Look, you said it yourself. I need to relax and write some hit songs. And I might as well do it in my hometown.”

  “Is that such a good idea? What about security?”

  “Don’t worry about all that.”

  “I’m your friend and your manager. Worrying is what I do for a living now.”

  “Reggie’s goons don’t scare me.”

  He needed more time so he could get Lexi to at least listen to him. Get her to understand that he’d never meant to choose his career over her. And now, finally, he had given her the time and space she’d clearly wanted from him.

  Time to face the music, baby.

  Looking resigned, Gary caved. “Great. If the only thing you can get out of her is another hit song, it will be well worth the trip.”

  Luke ignored that comment. He’d write his own hits from now on. What he wanted from Lexi had nothing to do with a song.

  “Meet up with y’all next week.”

  Maybe he needed a little perspective. Going back to Whistle Cove might be just the thing to find some inspiration, too. The place he’d first met the now infamous Wilder sisters.

  Lexi would likely be less than ecstatic to see him. Too bad. He had some things to clear up with her, and she would listen.

  Luke was headed home to Whistle Cove.

  Chapter 2

  “When I say I won’t tell anyone, my sister doesn’t count.”~ Meme

  Lexi Wilder took a deep breath of the salty bay air. It was late morning and breakfast and clean up accomplished, she’d changed the linens in one vacant room and folded a stack of clean bath towels. Now break time. The comforting and steady hum of Monterey Bay. The squawking sound of the seagulls as they foraged for scraps of food abandoned in the sand. A mug of coffee in her hands, she settled back on the blue Adirondack chair that sat on a patch of the Wilder B&B’s private access beach and closed her eyes.

  “Seriously?” Sabrina’s voice came from behind, ending all hope of a quiet moment. “You’re such a show-off. You folded the stack of towels, too? That was my job.”

  “Most people would just say ‘thank you.’ So, you’re welcome.”

  Sabrina plopped down in the empty chair next to Lexi, phone in hand, ear buds around her neck as usual. “You’re going to make Gram think I never do anything around here. “

  Sisters. Can’t live with them, can’t kill them without doing twenty-five to life.

  Then again, Sabrina had a lot of making up to do around here after The Scandal as Gram referred to it. More than a year later, she was still working to settle the account on the damage Gran claimed had been done to the Wilder nam
e. Which was funny, considering it was almost as if Sabrina had simply lived up to the family name.

  “There’s never a lack of jobs to do around here.”

  Especially not now that their grandmother had injured her knee while playing golf. At least she claimed it was golfing, though Lexi worried it might have more to do with the Clint Eastwood lookalike with whom she’d recently been spending all her free time. Her mind refused to go there. Not to a place where her grandmother had more game than Lexi did. You just couldn’t slow the seventy-eight-year-old down. Even so, the sisters had taken over the running of the Wilder Sisters B&B with the help of a skeleton crew.

  Next to Lexi, Sabrina settled in on the chair, leaned her head back and plugged in her earbuds. Within two seconds, she was singing along to Body like a Back Road. “Oh man, I love that Sam Hunt.”

  Lexi snorted and kept her eyes closed. Try to find a man Sabrina didn’t love. This was part of her problem.

  “You know the song isn’t really about driving the back roads, right?”

  “Uh-huh.” Lexi took another sip of the magic beans and tried to imagine her sister wasn’t sitting next to her, yakking away and disturbing the peace.

  “It’s about sex,” Sabrina continued. “And I sure as hell would have sex with Sam Hunt. Like in a heartbeat.”

  “Shh.”

  “Oh!” Sabrina cried out and took one of her ear buds out, offering it to Lexi. Falling for Forever by Luke Wyatt played. Lexi pulled the ear bud out with a glare and handed it back to her clueless sister. She did not want to hear that song or anything else by Luke. It was getting to where she couldn’t risk listening to the radio anymore. He was on the top ten of…everything.