The Trouble With Holly (Nashville Dreamers Book 1) Read online

  His eyebrow rose and his mouth quirked. Without saying goodbye, he glided from the table and left the restaurant. Holly continued standing with her hand still out, fighting a stinging sensation somewhere in the region of her heart. Finally, she sagged onto her chair and looked at her friends, who blew out gusty sighs.

  “That was pathetic,” Jen offered.

  It was, but Holly was loath to admit it. She put her face in her hands and wondered at her misfortune. What are the odds Della would call at that exact moment? Snapping her head up, she glared at them. “What is wrong with you! Why didn’t you help me?”

  “We did,” Marisa said drolly.

  “You did.” Holly's statement crackled with cynicism.

  “Holly, we’ve been trying to tell you—you do have endive in your teeth.”

  Chapter Two

  Holly yanked the tiny earphones out of her ears then tossed them along with her iPod onto the passenger seat of her Toyota Avalon. “Like I wanted to start my weekend off with an hour drive in a monsoon.” An hour that allowed her to mull over her disastrous almost-date with Dominick. Ugh.

  She jumped as another flash of lightning startled her. Seconds later, thunder rippled across the sky. She flipped the wiper switch to high, watching for the Tucker’s Ridge exit. It should appear any moment, and she wasn’t about to miss it. Stop whining, girl. Get there, take care of the stupid chickens, and leave. It ain’t that big of a deal.

  “Isn’t!” she yelled. “Isn’t that big a deal!” Just because she was re-entering the town where she grew up was no reason to lose ground on the forbidden speech pattern. No ain’ts allowed. Not one!

  Holly bit her lip. Della, how could you? How could you do this to me on the biggest day of my career?

  Della had a right to remind Holly of the many favors she’d lavished on her over the years. Footing the bill for her college education, pulling strings to get her a job with one of the top music agencies in Nashville, pulling even more strings to help her land a contract with Plug Nickel—the hottest up-and-coming group to hit the Music City in years, to name a few. That contract alone was her ticket to a corner office and “Vice President” before her name on the door.

  “Okay! Okay! I get it!” Holly shouted. But on a rainy evening like this, all she wanted was to be back home in her perk-package loft overlooking the Cumberland River downtown, not being reminded how much she owed others for her success. She thought of the new apartment that she could never afford on her own—even on her upgraded salary. After years of living lean and saving pennies on her way up the ladder, it felt almost decadent to have such an exalted downtown address. Well, I plan to enjoy it for as long as it lasts.

  She instead imagined how tonight could have gone. Her apartment aglow with candles everywhere, soft jazz playing in the background as friends stopped by to congratulate her...here and there a spread of elegant appetizers and fussy desserts from the best caterer in town...Dominick’s delicious aftershave wafting around her, his arm draped casually over her shoulders as she entertained them all...

  Her eyes caught her reflection in the rearview mirror. A crooked smirk was plastered on her face. I'm all kinds of ridiculous sometimes.

  Holly shook her head and straightened her shoulders in preparation for what was to come. No more daydreams until this is done.

  Moments later, she pulled off the interstate at the Tucker’s Ridge exit, then followed the back roads to her hometown. She squelched any memory of the life she once lived here, choosing to stay focused on the mission at hand.

  Chickens in. Holly out. Piece of cake.

  As Holly followed the final curve of the country road, she saw it.

  “Oh no. No, no, no. Please tell me I’ve got the wrong address.” She checked her directions. The numbers matched the sloppy hand-painted numbers on the tilting mailbox. Della’s warning resurfaced in her mind. “I haven’t been there in quite some time, but I’m told the place has gone to the dogs, Holly. Don’t be expectin’ the governor’s mansion.”

  “More like the governor’s outhouse!”

  Holly pulled into the driveway—what there was of it. Mostly just an open area of mud-filled tracks. She put the car in park and tried to get a better look at her surroundings despite the constant interruption of the busy wipers.

  The fading outline of the double-wide trailer was almost hidden behind a row of faded, dripping rebel flags, each clipped side by side to a clothes line stretched between two towering oak trees. In the glare of her headlights, she could see a toilet on the porch. Were those plastic flowers in it? A three-legged lawn chair leaned next to it.

  Holly could almost hear the theme from The Beverly Hillbillies.

  I’ve crossed over into another world, haven’t I?

  Holly shook herself. “Stay focused, girl.” She pulled the hood of her turquoise Juicy Couture hoodie up over her head and opened her car door. Stepping out quickly, she hoped to make a run for it with minimal damage, but mud swallowed her ankles and seeped into her shoes. Staring down in horror, she saw both her feet were covered in the liquid sludge. Not only were her Juicy track pants shot, but her new Tommy Hilfiger sneakers as well.

  After a couple of short and angry breaths, she urged herself on. Just get the chickens back in their pen and be done with it.

  Holly made a run for it, sloshing up the wooden steps to the added-on front porch of the trailer. Finally out of the downpour, she stamped her feet, wiping as much mud off them as she could, then knocked on the door several times. “Anyone home? Hello?” She jumped when another bolt of lightning hit somewhere nearby.

  This is beyond belief.

  She turned the doorknob, surprised to find the door unlocked. Pushing her way into the dim room, she felt along the inside wall for a light switch. Finding it, she flipped the lights on—and screamed. She was completely surrounded by deer heads on all four walls, their shining, vacant eyes staring back at her.

  “Hello?” Her voice cracked this time. “Please, if anyone’s here, just say something? Della Burrell sent me. She’s concerned about the, um, chickens?”

  Finally catching her breath, she looked around. The place was filthy. Dirty dishes piled in the kitchen sink. Hunting magazines were strewn across a beat-up coffee table. Dust thick on every surface. With tentative steps, she explored the trailer. Down the hall in the bedroom, the bed looked as though it had never been made, and the bathroom—“I don’t even want to know,” she muttered, shutting the door.

  Nobody home. And from what I'm seeing, that's a good thing.

  Back in the living area, she stood in the middle of the room, trying to clear her mind and think what to do.

  “And what are you looking at?” she shouted at the deer convention.

  With another huff, Holly nosed around for a flashlight to take a look at the barnyard fowl. When she failed to find one, she headed back outside in the failing light. Holly realized her car headlights illuminated part of the yard that ostensibly held the chickens. Squinting as she approached the battered fencing, she saw gleaming eyes peering at her from under some kind of cobbled-together tarp overhang.

  A flash, then another boom of thunder.

  Suddenly she was swarmed by a nervous flock of chickens, cackling at her in a frantic dance. There must have been over a hundred of them, falling all over themselves to get to her.

  “Ewww! Stay off the clothes. Shoo! Shoo!” The louder she shooed, the louder they squawked. “Okay! Okay! Y’all stop makin’ such a fuss!” The twang of her words rang louder in her ears than the stereophonic fowl chorus around her. “Stop it! Get away from me!” she screamed, lifting her arms up in the air to avoid any contact.

  They rushed her from every side. This wasn’t The Beverly Hillbillies, it was a scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds.

  “STOP IT! Stay back! I’m warning you!”

  Then she realized they weren’t trying to hurt her. Are they hungry? Why else would they be flapping around at sunset? Maybe if I feed them, they'll se
ttle down. Holly made her way to the coop and found every battered tin feeder empty. She wiped her face with the back of her arm, fighting a deepening frustration. What can I do at this hour? Why didn’t I think ahead and bring something with me?

  She remembered the dirty kitchen inside. Surely chickens won’t turn their noses, er—beaks?—up at food scraps, right?

  “Okay, everybody just hold tight. I’ll be right back.” She shuffled through the mob then fled to the front of the trailer with the entourage gaining on her. Back inside, she gathered everything she could find. A head of over-the-hill lettuce, a couple sleeves of Ritz Crackers that she broke into pieces, a half-bag of pork rinds, and four soft apples she sliced up. It would have to do until she could go to the feed store tomorrow.

  Tomorrow? So much for my boomerang plan.

  She opened the front door to an audience growing louder by the minute. She rushed through them, heading toward the chicken coop. There, she spread the feast before the noisy creatures, then headed back to her car. With a sinking sense of resolve, she turned off the headlights, then grabbed her purse and cell phone. She jabbed at the screen with shaking fingers as she returned to the trailer.

  “Della?”

  “Holly Mae! Did you find the place?”

  Holly closed her eyes, envisioning her aunt in her plush Manhattan apartment. She was no doubt lounging in satin pajamas in her king-size bed, resting against a mountain of pillows beneath her thousand-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets. “Yes. I found it.” She didn’t mean to add a grunt. It just came out that way.

  “Well? How does it look? Did you find the chickens?”

  “Oh, I found them all right. There’s at least a million of them. Maybe two.”

  “Surely you jest, Holly Mae?”

  “Okay, maybe not a million, but they were starving and almost ate me alive.”

  Della’s delicate laughter drifted through the cell phone. “Oh sweetheart, you are such a drama queen! But I adore you. Truly I do, honey. Now, did you make sure they’re all locked up? I wouldn’t want them to get back out and bother that nice young man with the vineyard next door.”

  “They’re in the crummy, jury-rigged coop as we speak.”

  “Holly Mae, you sound genuinely distressed. Is something wrong?”

  In the living room, Holly kicked off her shoes and peeled off her stained socks, holding the cell against her shoulder. “Look, Della, there’s no food for them. I gave them what I could out of the house, but where am I supposed to find chicken feed this late? And did I mention it’s raining cats and dogs here?”

  “Oh, you poor, poor dear. I’m so sorry. You know I would have handled this myself, but I’m stuck here in New York.”

  Probably sipping your second glass of Chardonnay as we speak, you poor, poor dear...

  “Holly, honey, are you there?”

  “Yes, I’m here.” Holly sighed, glaring at the misshapen La-Z-Boy. Was it sit-able? “Just tell me what you want me to do, Della.”

  “Well, that’s rather hard to say since I’m not there. But if I were you, I’d make the best of it for the night, then go to the feed store first thing in the morning.”

  Holly bristled at the sound of her aunt’s refined, but oh-so-practiced Southern drawl, dripping in a tone that implied any imbecile would have known what to do.

  “Uh huh.”

  “Can you sleep there at the house, sweetheart?”

  “Uh...the ‘house’?”

  “Holly Mae?”

  “Um, well...I’ll be fine, Della.”

  “All right. Now, call me in the morning, will you? And thank you, Holly Mae. You’re a peach. You truly are, sweetheart.”

  “Good night, Della.”

  “Good night, Holly Mae.”

  Holly dropped the cell in her purse, then yelled at it: “It’s Holly! Not Holly Mae. Just Holly!”

  She shivered, whether from the chill inside the place or the disgusting condition it was in, she wasn’t sure. The threat of tears burned her eyes. She fought them back.

  Think, Holly. Think. You’re not a baby. You’re a vice president! You can do this. Make a plan.

  There was no way she could sleep in this place the way it was, so it was time to get cleaning.

  At least enough to make her skin stop crawling.

  Two hours later, the place sparkled. Well, as much as was possible in an abandoned man-cave. Relatively pleased with herself, Holly set a kettle on for tea then padded her way to the hall closet. There she found a fresh set of sheets and a spare blanket and pillow. She made a bed for herself on the tired plaid sofa in the living area, and over a late-night snack of hot tea and Twinkies, she finally began to relax.

  “Filet mignon at Morton’s followed by Twinkies in a double-wide. Some hot-shot I am.” Holly smiled at the irony of it. “If only Dominick could see me now.”

  As her eyelids grew heavy, she finished off her tea, and set the mug on the coffee table. Crawling beneath the covers of her makeshift bed, she fell fast asleep to the rhythmic patter of rain against the old tin roof.

  * * *

  BOOM!

  Holly bolted off the sofa, heart thundering in her chest. “What was that?”

  BOOM!

  She shivered, realizing the noise was probably just a bunch of bubbas out hunting. Was it deer season yet? Didn’t matter. There was always something to hunt in the backwoods.

  BOOM!

  Wait—what if it’s that crazy neighbor next door, shooting at my chickens! Even as the thought crossed her mind, she realized she had never shut the gate to the chicken coop last night. “Oh, snap!”

  She grabbed her sweatshirt, still damp from the rain, and pulled it over her head as fast as she could.

  BOOM!

  “No! No! No!” She danced in circles, trying to remember where she’d left her shoes. “On the porch!” When she opened the front door, a blast of damp September air hit her. She forced her reluctant feet into her brown-tinted tennis shoes.

  BOOM!

  Gotta hurry. Gotta find the chickens. Gotta save the chickens. She mumbled to herself, rounding the side of the trailer only to find the gate wide open and the chicken coop empty. “Stupid, stupid girl! What were you thinking!”

  Holly began to run, heading toward the sound of the gunfire, which she realized sounded less .22 and more 12-gauge. What kind of man shoots at poor, defenseless little chickens with a scatter gun?

  Working her way through trees and brush, Holly crested a hill and looked out over the valley below. She squinted against the morning sun, shielding her eyes with her hand. Her mouth slowly fell open at the sight before her. Whoa.

  A blanket of fog hung low to the ground, hovering over row after perfect row of green and yellow vines dripping with deep purple fruit. The gentle slope of the land fell from another distant hill top, crowned with a magnificent home. Outer buildings sat behind it—an enormous barn and two other smaller structures.

  BOOM BOOM!

  This time Holly saw the puff of smoke. They're getting closer! She spotted the chickens scattered all over the vineyard, pecking at the ground and skittering each time a shot was fired. Who hunts in a dadgum vineyard? She raced down the hill toward them, crouching along the way in her attempt to elude the imbecile who was firing at them. Closer and closer, she snaked her way through the vines. Some of the hens were just a few yards away from her now.

  “Here, chicky chicky...” she croaked, trying to whisper and yell at the same time. “Let’s go home now, chicky chicky. Come to—”

  BOOM!

  Holly hit the ground face-first, covering her head with her hands. “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” The crack of the gun echoed through the hills then fell silent. Silent, except for the angry clucking of startled chickens.

  Pulling her knees up beneath her, she had started to lift herself from the muddy ground when she noticed the toe of a black boot just inches from her nose. Not one boot. Two boots. Definitely military issue.

  Holly swallowed,
lifting her head. Her eyes trailed up long legs covered in camouflage, and stopped—at the sight of a shotgun cocked over a camouflaged arm. She swallowed again. Raising her eyes further, she tried to see a face, but it was silhouetted against the bright morning sun. She squinted, hoping to make out the features of his face. Oh, please let them be kind.

  Suddenly, she was yanked up by her sweatshirt.

  “Do you want to explain what you're doing in my grapes?”

  Chapter Three

  Noah Morgan gazed down at the young woman curled up in a fetal position at his feet. She peeked up at him again, then ducked her head under her arm and began to whimper. Expelling an angry sigh, Noah reached down, grabbed her by the scruff of her sweatshirt, and hauled her to her feet. Wide green eyes stared at him through a tangle of blonde hair.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a swarm of sparrows descend on the vines due east. “Cover your ears!”

  Releasing her, he set the shotgun in the hollow of his shoulder and fired off two rounds in quick succession. The woman let out a scream. One bird fell to the ground while the rest took to flight in a cloud of smoke and sparkle. Noah turned back to her. She stared up at him like he was some kind of murderer. He grimaced. “Do you know you could’ve been injured creeping around like that? Who are you and what are you doing on my property?”

  She made an odd squeaking sound.

  He pointed to his ears, to show he was wearing plugs. “I can’t hear you.”

  “Chicken,” she croaked.

  “Yes, I can see that you’re a chicken. But you haven’t answered my question.”

  She cleared her throat and lifted her chin. “I said chickens, as in plural. They got out and—”

  Noah heard a familiar clucking sound and looked down to find a skinny white hen pecking at his boot. “Oh, for pity’s sake, don’t tell me they’re in the vineyard again. Why don’t you tell that boyfriend of yours to keep his mangy chickens off my property!”

  The blonde sent him an icy glare. “He’s not my boyfriend. I don’t even know who he is!”