Sweet Talk Me by Kieran Kramer Page A

gonna call you. You call me if you need anything. But I swear, if I hear from you before the month is up—”
    “What? What’ll you do?”
    “I’ll kick your ass.”
    “You couldn’t kick my little pinkie.”
    Dan chuckled. “Just don’t get into trouble, okay? I’ll need you back fresh.”
    “Right.” Harrison threw the phone against the wall. But not before Dan disconnected first. The loser. They refused to say bye to each other on the phone. Just like in the movies. Dan could have at least let Harrison hang up on him . He was paying the guy enough to get that one little thrill.
    He fell back on the bed and stared at the ugliest ceiling he’d ever seen. God, he was pathetic. He had no excuse, either. Except that when you were on the road with the same old people all the time, you developed little ways to entertain yourself because there was nothing else to do away from the spotlight.
    Except write songs.
    Idiot.
    But apart from that … hanging out in a local pub was out. So was going to the movies. So was visiting a museum or eating out at a restaurant—not unless you wanted a lot of hassle from fans seeking autographs and the occasional picture while they were groping your butt, trying to jump in your lap, or kissing you.
    All he could do was spend money. He’d written lots of big checks to charities he had no personal connection to and had a closetful of cowboy boots, leather jackets, and sunglasses. He’d accrued three houses—in Nashville, Vail, and LA—and five collector cars and was looking at a sixth in England. An old Studebaker owned by Elton John. But even buying cars was getting boring. Who’d he have to show them off to? Dan?
    There was no escape from the same old same old. None. Not even in Biscuit Creek, where just this morning a girl caught a glimpse of him at the stoplight between Black Oak and Main and fell onto the street crying and screaming, “Harrison Gamble! Is that you?”
    The same old same old was really bad here in Mom and Dad’s trailer with a brother who couldn’t seem to live in the present. What were they gonna have to do? Carry the old TV with them wherever he forced Gage to move? Rip down those kitchen curtains and hang ’em up in the new place?
    “Shyeah,” Harrison said, in the worst funk of his life since he’d last left Biscuit Creek—maybe this place was bad luck, huh?—then stood up from the edge of his parents’ bed and had a couple of brilliant ideas despite himself.

 
    CHAPTER NINE
    The next day, a few hours after the ladies of St. George’s left Maybank Hall with a pickup truck bed filled with baskets of tomatoes, True was at the Starfish Grill, reading a Dick Francis book behind a menu in the back booth, away from prying eyes. She felt prickly. Upset. Worried. The opposite of what the brides in the magazines looked like.
    But she made sure you’d never know it, looking at her. She was dressed for lunch, in a crisp blue-and-white-striped Brooks Brothers blouse and red pencil skirt with navy pumps, all cobbled together from her college wardrobe and the Junior League shop in Charleston. She’d spent extra time fixing her hair, flat-ironing it so that it curled demurely on the bottom.
    And her makeup—Revlon, all of it—she’d applied sparingly, except for the classic red lipstick she’d used on her lips. Mama’s pearl necklace and earrings almost completed the ensemble. But the final touch was the classic Coach messenger bag in navy blue, a 1970s find in Honey’s trunk that True had restored with oil and a great deal of love.
    She was southern-girl chic, and no one was going to figure out that she was all manner of bridal crazy, least of all Penn, her future mother-in-law.
    Carmela, curvaceous and sexy in a pink leather dress with a heart-shaped neckline, slid into the other side of the booth and grinned. “I’ve got exactly ten minutes before I have to get back to the shop,” she said. “How was the shower?”
    True thought hard.