“She’s really amazing,” Rebecca said about halfway through Rosie’s first song. “You were right to get me out here tonight. I want her signed immediately. I don’t want anybody else to have her.” She was already watching Rosie with a possessive look in her eyes.

I hid my smile. I’d known that all it would take was five minutes in a room with a record executive to get Rosie a record deal. She was officially the easiest client I’d ever signed—and not just because I was on both sides of the deal. Speaking of which…

“If we’re really going to sign Rosie to our new label,” I said to Rebecca seriously, “I’m going to have to find her a new agent to represent her. I can’t play both sides of this anymore.”

Rebecca nodded. “Agreed. You can’t have anything to do with her production whatsoever, either. It wouldn’t be in anyone’s best interests.” She smirked. “Sorry, but she’s going to be mine all mine.”

She was right. Rationally, I knew she was right, since obviously a record label makes money of its artists, but it still bothered me. I wanted to help Rosie. I told myself I would find other ways to do that. I still knew plenty of people…

“Do you know any good agents?” I asked, rifling through my mental Rolodex.

Rebecca laughed. She was staring over my shoulder. “Sure.” She pointed across the room and I turned to where Calvin Ross had just entered. “There’s one right there.”

Well shit. I guess I should have answered his calls.

No wonder Rosie was so overwhelmed earlier. I had no idea she invited him to her show tonight. He wasn’t even supposed to be in town for another week.

But he was definitely here. I couldn’t have mistaken him for anyone else.

Calvin Ross didn’t fit in at the Lone Star Lounge. To say he stuck out—a sixty-year-old man in a suit, vest, and tie—was not an understatement. He was squarely out of place, and as the only other man in the room wearing a tie, I felt like I should know. I couldn’t have missed him if I tried. Up on the little stage with the light in her eyes, Rosie wouldn’t have been able to see him, but I did. As Rebecca and I talked terms in low voices, I watched him carefully out of the corner of my eye.

At first, he seemed bemused. There were no seats left in the room, so he ended up standing at the bar, watching his daughter hypnotize a room full of people and sipping a beer like he didn’t much care. Slowly, however, he visibly got wise to what he was seeing.

With every song, Rosie pulled her audience along with her into a private, spectacular new world. It was a place where she controlled everything—every emotion, every sound, and every word. Her audience was more than happy to follow her there.

I’d met a lot of charismatic performers in my time. Some of the best. And Rosie wasn’t nearly as polished or as comfortable up on stage as some of them. But she had something all her own, an easy, approachable innocence and charm that simultaneously drew her audience and kept them riveted to her. It was impossible to look away.

Her father wasn’t immune. Although he attempted to ignore his daughter’s performance at first, glancing repeatedly at his watch, then at his phone, then at the newspaper he fished out from his briefcase, he kept looking back up at her. I could only imagine what was going on his mind, and not very well.

Was he wondering what psychological complex compelled her to get up on stage and bare her soul for the entertainment of strangers? Was he honestly thinking that she would be better off going to law school and following in his footsteps? I couldn’t wrap my brain around him feeling anything but wonder in the face of her talent.

She certainly hadn’t received her talent at music from him. Calvin Ross rather famously thought very little of the entertainment industry. Whether it was a calculated act or a genuine quirk, he resisted any discussion or praise of his clients’ talents. To him, movie stars were commodities that were bought at sold on the open market. He controlled the chess pieces to benefit them and himself, but he didn’t value them as artists. He didn’t go to their movies. He didn’t even watch movies. For someone with half of Hollywood in his pocket, his approach was unique, to say the least.

So, knowing what Calvin Ross thought of his clients, it was not all that much of a surprise to me that his own daughter didn’t manage to win him over with her music. He was talent-blind. Even in his own daughter. Even when the child he’d given life to was so obviously talented, he remained indifferent to her performance. Maybe especially because of that.

What he couldn’t remain indifferent to, however, was the reaction of the crowd around him. Slowly, and seemingly reluctantly, he tuned in to the fact that everyone around him was entranced by what was going on up on the stage. I watched the change in his attitude as he came to realize it.

He blinked around himself, watching in shock and confusion as the men and women in the bar clap and cheer when every song ended. Rosie had planned her set list well. It built up with emotional intensity as it progressed, and her audience followed right along, becoming more excited, more entranced. Calvin Ross stared around himself in apparent disbelief. If I had to guess, he was utterly baffled and somewhat irritated. Which at least was fitting, because that was exactly how I felt about him.