Dirty Little Secret Read Online Free PDF Page B

guitar guy.”
    “Well, how about that,” Mr. Hardiman said noncommittally. And he was right. In Denver or Honolulu, he might have been astonished if he’d met the musician granddaughter of the man who made his guitar, but not in Nashville.
    So much for my attempt at impressing them. In a last-ditch effort, I said brightly, “I’m already tuned. Do you want to tune to me?”
    Mr. Hardiman’s brows went way up. He didn’t try to disguise the fact that I was out of line. It was his band. I should have tuned to him, or waited for him to say otherwise. He took a breath to tell me so.
    Sam broke in, “She has perfect pitch, Dad.” He turned to me and asked, “Don’t you?”
    I was so surprised Sam had guessed something private about me that I just stood there with my mouth wide open. I pictured myself wearing this expression. At least Ms. Lottie had painted my lips impeccably in classic red like a model on a 1957 cover of Vogue .
    “You were making a face on your way over,” he explained. Turning back to his dad, he said, “We must be a little off. We’re torturing her.”
    “Not as bad as Hank Williams on Thursday,” I assured them. “Yodeling.”
    They both nodded sympathetically. “Oh,” Sam said. His dad echoed, “The yodeling.”
    “Well, why don’t you start us off?” Mr. Hardiman asked me, nodding to my fiddle. He was back in charge.
    Obediently I played a long, low E and let them tune their guitars to it. I felt relieved and strangely giddy that I was getting what I wanted for once. It wouldn’t last, though. Guitars slowly unwound and went flat. In two hours I’d be gathering up the gumption to face off with Mr. Hardiman again.
    But for now, I was good. Mr. Hardiman headed through the glass door that had been fitted into the storefront of the ex-Borders. Following him, Sam held the door wide open for me while backing against it so I could squeeze by him and his guitar. This was no big deal. Men held doors open for women in Nashville. They were rude if they didn’t. His dad would have done it if Sam hadn’t.
    What set my heart racing was the way his chocolate eyes followed me as I passed him in the doorway, my bare forearm brushing against his. He gave me the smallest smile, soft-looking lips contrasting with the older look he was trying to pull off. The term handsome devil came up in country songs a lot. Now I understood why.
    He fell into step beside me as we trailed his dad up the wide corridor. He said quietly, as if he didn’t want his dad to hear, “I would kill for perfect pitch.” In his voice I heard admiration of me, and a mournful longing.
    “No, you wouldn’t,” I assured him. “If you had it, you’d wishyou didn’t. It’s more trouble than it’s worth.” Life in a tribute band would be so much easier if I didn’t mind Hank Williams’s yodeling—or if, like Mr. Crabtree, I couldn’t hear when the song went south.
    “That’s exactly what all of you say,” Sam told me as we parted ways and parked ourselves on either side of Mr. Hardiman, who’d stopped in front of Banana Republic.
    “ ‘Five Feet High and Rising,’ ” Mr. Hardiman said, which made me smile despite myself. That song had special meaning to Nashville musicians. A few years ago we got seventeen inches of rain in two days and the Cumberland River swelled to flood the Grand Ole Opry. I expected Mr. Hardiman to add that the song was in B-flat, the key in which Johnny Cash had recorded it. He didn’t. He just started with a strum of major one on his guitar. Sam matched him on the first beat, and I jumped in with the melody. Mr. Hardiman must have taken me at my word—or, rather, taken Sam at his—that I had perfect pitch. Only a very experienced or very jaded musician would accept that fact without teasing or questioning. He’d been around the block a few more times than his son or even Dolly or Hank or Willie or Elvis.
    The song was made up of ones, fours, and fives like so many others. But the