“You can’t really think I’d ever work with you,” Jesse snapped, arms crossed, her blue eyes locked with his. “Not after what you did.”

“I don’t blame you for being pissed,” Ash said, knowing he deserved whatever she threw his way. “I had no idea why they brought me here today. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have come.”

Fire flashed in her hard gaze as she leaned forward in her chair. “Of course, you wouldn’t have come. Heaven forbid you be in the same room with me.”

That wasn’t what he meant, and she knew it. “You’ve got that backwards, don’t you? You’re the one who wanted me out of your life, and I’ve respected that for ten years.”

Jesse bolted from her chair. “How can you say that? You were all I had left!” She slammed the butt of her hands against her eyes and let out a muted growl before crossing her arms as if holding herself together. “Why didn’t you come back? You were the only other person who knew what I was going through. The only person who missed Tommy as much as I did. I needed you, damn it.”

Ash still missed Tommy every day, but it was that loss that had forced him to stay away. “What about your parents?”

The russet ponytail swung as she shook her head. “Oh, they miss Tommy all right. They might as well have lost their only child the way they gnash and wail.” Bitterness did little to mask the hurt and anger. “The whole house is a shrine,” she added. “They couldn’t be bothered to frame my senior picture, but we must bow at the altar of the beloved lost son.”

Anyone else would read resentment in her words, but Ash knew better. Jesse had adored her brother, despite him being her parents’ obvious favorite. A status he’d clearly retained after his death.

“I was honoring your request.”

“Whose request?” she asked, eyes flashing.

“Your parents. Yours. They told me to stay away.”

“When?”

“At the hospital. I came to see you after our last visit, and the staff wouldn’t let me in.” Ash remembered that day well. He’d already been drowning in guilt and his own grief. The confrontation in the hospital lobby had intensified both. “I thought it was a mistake, but your mom insisted that you didn’t want to see me. I’d killed Tommy, and I needed to stay out of your lives.”

Mouth agape, Jesse dropped into her chair. “You didn’t kill Tommy. I’ve told them that a thousand times.”

“I was driving the car,” Ash reminded her, refusing to let himself off on a technicality.

“And if Tommy had been driving when that deer darted out in front of us, the same thing would have happened.”

Ash had come through the accident with little more than a bump on the head, which had planted a thought that haunted him for years. “If Tommy had been driving, he might be alive today.”

Jesse rolled her eyes. “And you might be dead. Do you really believe that would be better?”

He’d wished more than once that the results of that night had been the other way around. Though, rationally, Ash understood that accidents were random and deer dashing across country roads were common and frequent, he’d still been the one behind the wheel and couldn’t shake the guilt.

Ignoring the question, he said, “I couldn’t change what happened, but I could give the one thing you asked for. So that’s what I did.”

The leather chair rolled as Jesse leaned back. “That’s why you weren’t at the funeral.”

Ash tensed. “I was there.”

“I didn’t see you.”

“That was the point.”

Blue eyes softened and her whole body seemed to deflate. “All this time, I thought you’d abandoned me.”

“And I thought you pushed me away.”

They stared in silence, both grappling with a new reality.

“Why didn’t you fight harder?” Jesse asked. “Why didn’t you insist on hearing those words from my lips?”

The pain and regret had been too intense—too raw—for Ash to even consider pushing back. Staying away from Tommy’s family had been the one thing he could do to atone for their loss. Maybe this was his chance to atone for the rest.

“I thought I was doing what you wanted. Jesse, I can’t undo the past, but I’m here now, and I’m ready to do this job. You’re talented. If you give me a chance, I think we could make one hell of an album.”

She needed to say yes. There was only so long Clay Benedict would try to make this deal work before cutting his losses and moving on.

“Do you know why the other producers turned down the job?” she asked.

At the risk of hurting her more, Ash answered truthfully. “According to Clay, they believed working with you would be too much of a challenge.”

Her face fell. “You’re the first person to answer that question honestly.” She stared at the table for several seconds before lifting her gaze. “You don’t have the same reservations?”

“I don’t,” Ash replied.

“What about our past?” she asked, the first to acknowledge the other elephant in the room.

Ash knew better than to expect a second chance for them, and not only because she was with someone else. “That was a long time ago.”

“Yes, it was.” Every thought shone on her face. Jesse didn’t want to work with him, but she understood the damage walking away could do. The moment she accepted her fate, her shoulders fell. “You’re the one who turned me into a musician in the first place. If you’re game on this, then so am I.”

He’d taught her some chords, but Jesse had turned herself into a musician. And from what Ash had seen, a damn good one. Grateful for the opportunity to make things right, he rose from his chair and went to invite the others back in.

“Are we all good then?” Clay asked as he lowered into the chair at the head of the table. Few people intimidated Jesse like her new boss. He’d never given her a reason to fear him, yet he carried an air of power that only men of his experience and stature could. Then there was the fact that he held her professional fate in his hands.

Jesse nodded. “Yes, we are.”

She’d agreed for two reasons. Ash was the first person to be totally honest with her, so at least now she knew for certain that the hateful rumors had been the problem. The second reason had been the risk of not agreeing. Clay Benedict had been generous with her so far, but he was also a shrewd businessman who would not continue tossing money at a worthless cause. If Jesse wanted to stay in this business, she had to make compromises when necessary, and this was one of those times.

The more startling revelation of this meeting was that Ash hadn’t truly abandoned her all those years ago. Not willingly, anyway.

Turning Ash away had been a cruel move by her parents. Cruel to their daughter, who’d cried for days when he hadn’t called or come to see her, but also cruel to Ash. Like the rest of them, he’d lost Tommy, too, and then lost his second family at the same time.

Nothing her mother did should surprise Jesse at this point, and yet…

“Then we’re set.” Clay grinned, and Jesse felt Silas relax beside her.

She’d made the older man worry, and for that she was sorry. Silas had been her rock through this mess, and having Jesse as a client did not make his life easy. When she finally made it big, she would do something really special for the old man. Take him on a shopping spree and let him buy anything he wanted, which would probably be a new set of golf clubs. Silas loved that damn game.

“In light of how I’d hoped this meeting would go,” Clay said, “and because Jesse made it clear at the time of her signing that she has a solid collection of songs ready to record, we’ve scheduled Treble Tone Studios starting a week from Monday. We’re locked in for three months and can add more time if necessary.”

Dana and Reggie, her bass player and drummer respectively, had been as anxious as Jesse to get this project underway, and she couldn’t wait to give them the good news. Though there was someone else she would call first.

“Thank you again for this opportunity,” Jesse said, mentally running through her song options to decide which ones should go on the album. This was the most important project of her life and had to be her best work. And then there was the other reality of the business—at her age, this was most likely her last shot as a solo artist. Breaking through after thirty was unheard of.

“No thanks necessary,” Clay replied. “You and Ash are welcome to use the smaller conference room here to go over song selections next week, or if another location works, that’s fine, too.” Clay glanced around the table. “Any questions?”

“Who’s the engineer?” Ash asked.

“The same one we used for Chance, Aiden D’Angelo.”

Aiden was one of the best engineers in town, and she never expected to work with someone of his caliber so soon. Especially not on her debut.

“That’s all I needed to know.” Ash rose to his feet, as did the other attendees.

Everyone filed from the room with an optimistic murmur, and Jesse dragged the cell phone from the back pocket of her jeans. Once in the lobby, she dashed around Silas and pushed through the glass doors to find a private spot halfway down the sidewalk.

Ryan Dimitri, her boyfriend of fourteen months, had been with Jesse during the good days with the Daisies, and then provided regular pep talks to get her through the breakup. There were times she wondered how she’d landed one of the hottest lead singers in country music, especially on the rare occasions when they were photographed on the red carpet together. Their busy schedules rarely landed them in the same state, let alone at the same event, but they’d managed to fit in a few award shows along the way.

At barely five foot three, Jesse looked miniature next to Ryan’s six-foot-four-inch frame, which made the pictures look as if he’d taken a member of the Lollipop Gang as his date. Where he was lanky and fit, she was squat and round. Before coming to Nashville, Jesse hadn’t given her looks much thought. The red hair made her stand out in a crowd. The unexpected blue eyes often garnered her a second look. But in all other ways, she was average at best.

Which had always been fine with her.

Not until she’d paired up with Taylor Roper did Jesse’s appearance become an issue. A former beauty queen, the other half of the Daisies looked gorgeous in anything she put on. For their first photo shoot, a stylist had provided a full rack of designer clothes for them to choose from.

Everything fit Taylor, but Jesse had discarded three outfits before finding a pair of jeans she could drag on over her abundant hips. Due to the length, she’d discarded those, along with the following two options, before finding something that didn’t make her look like a little girl playing dress up in her mother’s closet.

That had been an eye-opening day, and for every photo shoot after, Jesse provided her own clothes, tailored to her size and shape. She also accumulated a shoe collection and traded in her low-maintenance ponytail—which she still wore while not performing—to the highest, teased-to-the-heavens do possible in an effort to add a few more inches to her height. The transformation took her from stunted to less stunted, and still a head shorter than her duet partner.

Employing the same tactics when out with her man was tougher to pull off. Red carpets required walking in the five-inch heels, a feat Jesse had never actually mastered.

“Hey, baby,” Ryan Dimitri drawled on the other end of the line. “What’s up?”

Ryan’s band, Flesh and Blood, was on a twelve-week tour with a month of shows left.

“I have a producer,” she announced. Despite who that producer was, in her desperate race to beat Taylor to radio, Jesse was finally out of the gate, and that was worth celebrating. “We head into the studio a week from Monday.”

“That’s great. Who is it? Walters? Huff? Tell me!”

Ryan’s mention of two of the top producers in the game dulled Jesse’s enthusiasm. “I’ll be working with Ash Shepherd. He’s written six number one hits in the last two years.” That factoid was as much for her own benefit as for Ryan’s. “That’s a huge score.”

“I didn’t know Shepherd was a producer.” A woman’s voice murmured something in the background, and Ryan said, “They’re calling me for a meet and greet, hon. I’m happy you’re finally heading into the studio.”

Eleven thirty in the morning seemed early for a meet and greet. “Who set up a fan meet more than eight hours before showtime?”

“It’s for the local radio station,” he replied. “I’ll give you a call later.”

“Wait,” Jesse cut in. “I’m coming up there so we can celebrate.” Tonight’s show was in Cincinnati, only a four-hour drive from Nashville. “I can hit the road in a couple of hours and be there well before showtime.”

“I don’t know, babe. I’d hate for you to drive all this way and me not have time to spend with you.”

“It isn’t that far.” Jesse nodded for Silas to hold on when he waved for her to hurry.

The woman in the background called again. “You stay there and celebrate with Dana and Reggie,” Ryan countered. “We’ll go out when I get home.”

“But that’s weeks from now.” Of course, she’d be happy to celebrate with the only two band members who’d stuck with her—the rest having jumped ship along with Taylor—but it had been two months, damn it. Her boyfriend should want to see her.

“Jesse, come on. You know how it is. The band is running ninety to nothing. By the time we’d get twenty minutes together, you’d have to head back home.”

No, she didn’t know how it was. The Daisies had done a six-week stint opening for Davis Daniels in the spring, which was when Jesse had met Clay Benedict for the first time thanks to Dylan Monroe, another Shooting Stars artist, who had also been on the tour. But the Honkytonk Daisies hadn’t lasted long enough to experience headlining arenas, multiple meet and greets, or endless radio interviews.

When she sighed, Ryan added, “I promise we’ll do it up big. Balloons. Champagne. Anything you want. This will still be exciting a month from now.”

“Fine,” she said, conceding, “we’ll wait. I miss you, though. Sleeping alone sucks.”

“Tell you what. I’ll do my best to make a quick trip home. First chance I get, okay?”

The promise lifted her spirits. “I’ll take that. But don’t be surprised if I tackle you at the front door.”

He chuckled, and Jesse grinned at his response. Not having him around the last two months had been more difficult than usual since this time she’d had nothing better to do than stare at the walls and stress. First about not having a deal, and then about not having a producer.

“I’m looking forward to it, baby,” he purred, and she could almost see the sexy grin dance across his full lips. “Now I really have to go. Kick ass in the studio and remember, you’ve got this.”

Ryan had been repeating those words since the day of Taylor’s betrayal. His positivity was one of the only things that had kept her going.

“Have a good show tonight,” she said, walking toward Silas. “And don’t let those fan girls turn your head.”

“Never, babe. Talk to you later.”

With a beep, he was gone, and Jesse returned the cell to her back pocket. Resigned to another night alone, she crossed the lot to Silas’s Lincoln Continental and on the way spotted Ash talking to Chance Colburn inside the building. He looked completely at ease, as if he were talking to an ordinary person and not a former winner of the coveted Entertainer of the Year award.

When he caught sight of her through the glass, his face curved into a tender smile that did funny things to her heart, so Jesse turned away, aware of the danger that lay ahead. Making an album with him would be the easy part. Not falling back in love with him would be the real test.