Made in Nashville: HarperImpulse Contemporary Romance by Mandy Baggot Page B

step too far. Going to the studios again was one thing, inviting a man into her home, one who wanted her performing to thousands of people every night…it was madness.
    ‘I’m sick and tired of people thinking they know what’s best for me! You, Larry, Mia and him! Seeing him tonight, seeing the man I used to share a life with, living my dream … ’ She stopped when she realized she was getting more and more worked up. Damn him! She was letting him get to her. She swallowed then took a jagged breath. ‘When we were together, after my attack …  Dan Steele wanted me to spend some time in a mental health facility out of state.’
    She looked across the room and watched the light go out of his eyes.
    He bit his teeth together and tried to remain in control. That asshole. She had had a relationship with that fucking piece of scum. He wanted to yell at the top of his voice. He wanted to pick something up and smash it to pieces. Instead he sat there, keeping it all inside, fighting to temper his anger.
    ‘I’m sorry. I’ve had way too much to drink and you don’t want to hear about this.’
    He put the beer bottle to his mouth and drank down as much as he could in one gulp. He wished he’d laid Dan Steele out and left him unconscious on the floor.
    ‘Tell me,’ he urged.
    ‘We didn’t date for long…a couple of months. Then…well I had my accident and…he suggested what he suggested and we broke up.’ His interest was piqued. His eyes found hers again.
    ‘He thought after something like that you should recover quick or be locked away?’ he asked.
    She touched her hair, bringing it over her cheek. ‘He didn’t deal with it very well.’
    ‘He had the easy role.’ He hadn’t meant to but the tone he’d attached to his voice was pure aggression.
    She shrugged, turning her body to the side in a defensive move. ‘After it happened he…he couldn’t look at me.’
    Before he could check himself he’d shaken his head and slammed the bottle down on the coffee table that separated them. He put a hand to his head, and clenched the other into a fist.
    ‘I should have plastered his face across the walls of that bar.’ He shifted on the seat, uneasy and mad as hell.
    ‘I don’t blame him for that. I mean, at the beginning I was on the cover of
Country Music
and after, well I’d have been lucky to make it onto
Plastic Surgeon’s Monthly
.’ She shrugged and let out an unconvincing laugh.
    There was an ugly-looking ornament on a low table to his right. He curled his fingers into his palm and thought about throwing it against the wall. Instead he reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out his iPhone.
    ‘Kill this crap,’ he said, indicating the music.
    She clapped her hands twice and the room was thrown into silence.
    ‘After we met last week, I couldn’t get that song outta my head. I hope you don’t mind.’ He touched the screen.
    The second the first note played she recognized it as her song,
Goodbye Joe
. But the way he’d changed the phrasing, the way he’d altered the composition was nothing short of masterful. The more she heard, the more she realized what he’d done. He’d made the bones of her song into something that sounded like it could be a hit record.
    But she didn’t want that. Her songs were
her
songs. They weren’t for changing and they weren’t for public consumption. She shook her head. No, she couldn’t think like that anymore, not if she wanted this second chance at a career. She was just about to go back to the studios and start recording new material. She’d be working with a producer, other musicians with ideas. There was also always the possibility that another artist would want to cover her music. She couldn’t get protective and insular like that anymore.
    The real truth was it felt uncomfortable sitting opposite someone in the country spotlight who had taken her rough start to a song and made it into something…special.
    On the iPhone his voice hit a