Real Dirty (Real Dirty #1)

A half hour later, the smile on my face is in danger of becoming a perma-grin.

Damn, it feels good to tear around town in the sweetest piece of American muscle I’ve ever owned. We only had to duck into one alley to lose a cop, which shows you just how much I’ve held back. Last thing I need is a reckless-driving charge for the press to chew on and blow out of proportion.

Frisco laughs his ass off as we head back toward downtown Nashville and his apartment. He’s got one of those lofts in a rehabbed warehouse somewhere around here.

“Where am I going? Am I dropping you off?”

His laughter cuts off. “f*ck no. That was just the warm-up, right? We need some booze.”

I slow as traffic gets heavier near Broadway. All the people crowding the streets reminds me of playing for tips in some hole-in-the-wall on Sixteenth Avenue before I finally landed a record deal. Everything happened fast after that.

One day I was sleeping in my car, and the next they were putting me up at a hotel I couldn’t afford on my own, all because some record exec saw dollar signs when I played.

Worked for me.

“Where we headed?”

“Take a left up here.” He points toward a dark side street.

Even though I’m questioning whether he’s got his directions backward, I turn.

“Two blocks down.”

A few minutes later, the glow of blue-and-green neon lights appears up ahead.

The Fishbowl.

The logo looks exactly like you’d think. A blue bubble of a fishbowl with green writing in the middle and a matching green fish inside.

I slow, intending to pull up to the curb, but he points toward the next side street. “Take a right and park in the back. Might help keep someone from spotting the car and trying to track you down.”

“Good looking out.”

I guide the 442 around the back of the crumbling three-story brick building and park next to a rusty Javelin. Frisco is already climbing out of the car and shutting the door when I stop and look at it.

“I wonder whose ride this is.”

Frisco shoots me a grin. “Only the hottest woman I’ve met in this town who keeps turnin’ me down.”

“You f*cking serious? We’re here so you can try to get laid by some chick who shot you down?”

He pauses, his fingers wrapped around the crooked handle of the back door of the building. “Guess we’ll find out.”

Frisco yanks it open, and for a second, I consider leaving his ass here and going home. It would serve him right.

The light from inside streams through the closing door, and Johnny Cash’s gravelly voice slips out.

What the hell? It ain’t like I’ve got anything better to do tonight anyway.

The inside of the bar is like plenty of others I’ve been in. Stale aroma from years of smoke hangs in the air of the high-ceilinged space, longer than it is wide. A scarred wooden bar stretches down the middle section of the left wall, probably about thirty feet in length.

The walls are plastered with photos of country legends from a bygone era, and the one nearest to me has an illegible message written to Rhonda above the scrawled signature of Merle Haggard.

Frisco makes a beeline toward the bar where a woman with an incredible rack and a wild mane of dark hair works the taps for two people seated on stools.

She’s gotta be the one Frisco’s after. I can’t argue. The man has impeccable taste.

I tear my eyes off her and survey the only other patrons in the bar. The couple looks like they’ve been taking up space since Merle signed the picture on the wall.

Frisco may be right. No worries about a security problem here tonight. I doubt Fred and Ethel have ever heard of TMZ or would know who to contact to report a celebrity sighting.

But just to be on the safe side, I tug the bill of my worn baseball cap lower before crossing the scraped concrete floor.





3





Ripley





With a practiced snap of my wrist, I flip the tap and drop a hand to my hip as Zane Frisco approaches the bar with his trademark cocky grin. If he asks me out this time, what will that make? Five times? Obviously, it’s flattering, but that doesn’t mean my answer is going to be any different than it was the last four. I have to give the guy props for being persistent, I suppose.

“Shouldn’t you be fighting off groupies backstage right about now?” With a raised eyebrow, I set a pint glass of Miller Lite on the bar napkin in front of Earl before grabbing a second one for his wife, Pearl.

The older couple has been coming to the Fishbowl for as long as I can remember, even back before everything changed. They’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly in this bar, and if I were ever to take Miller Lite off tap, I’m pretty sure one or both of them would die of a heart attack and haunt this bar for the rest of its days. However few days that may be.

Snatching up the towel in front of me, I wipe away any stray drops of beer and attempt to shove down the negative thought. The Fishbowl may be a dying tradition, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be spotless.

Frisco leans forward, his elbows on the bar, and his grin shifts into what I’m sure would count as a panty-dropping smile—if I were the kind of girl to wear panties, that is.

“What would I want with a groupie when I can come here and see your beautiful face?”

He’s not short on the charm, but I’m immune.

I drop the rag in front of me and cross my arms under my breasts, not worrying about whether it pushes them up higher under my George Jones Rockin’ with the Possum V-neck. “Put it in a song, Frisco. It’ll get you a lot more play than you’re gonna get in this bar tonight.”

He shakes his head, keeping that smile intact. “Someday you’re gonna say yes to going out with me, and I’ll let you apologize for all those times you shot me down.”

I don’t hold back, dropping my arms and letting my laughter go free. “Points for eternal optimism, but it ain’t happenin’. You know my rule. Better men than you have tried and failed to get me to break it.”

His cocky grin tilts. “Such bullshit, Rip. You and your rule are about the only things that make me wish I was still playing in bars and crashing on couches, broke as hell. If I’d only known . . .”

Frisco winks at me, and I know he’s not taking my rejection any harder than normal. He’s not stupid and he doesn’t lack for options. He’ll probably leave here, stop at a bar with customers who are under the age of seventy-five, and pick up a girl to take home.

And I’ll be going upstairs alone again to take care of business myself. That’s if I don’t fall asleep as soon as I climb into bed because I’m running on five hours of sleep total in the past two days. I shut down the momentary flash of fatigue and pin my smile into place.

“What are you drinking tonight, Frisco?”

“The usual. Plus, whatever he wants.” Frisco jerks his chin toward the direction of a man stepping out of the shadows near the back entrance.

Crap, I need to change that light bulb. When did it go out? As soon as the thought enters my head, it’s replaced by a flash of female appreciation.