Wild Man's Curse (Wilds of the Bayou #1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

thought. She spotted the missing manager before she’d cleared the backstage stairs and made it into the hallway to the dressing room, which was a fancy name for a converted closet. The only things crammed in it were a small table, a peeling mirror, and a gunmetal-gray folding chair.
    “Honey, that was genius!” Harvey threw an arm around her shoulders and gave her a hug. He might have reached five-five in his shiny black platform shoes, which gave him a couple of inches’ height advantage over Ceelie. Plus he smelled as if he’d fallen into a vat of cheap aftershave. “If you’d told me you were willing to do comedy, I coulda pulled in a bigger crowd. Who’s your partner?”
    Ceelie wrested herself from his grasp and gawked. What an idiot. “Seriously? You think that was planned? I should sue you for letting that letch onstage.”
    The glee drained from Harvey’s expression, replaced by dead brown eyes and a downturn of thin lips topped by a wisp of hair he probably considered a moustache. “You mean that crap you were singing was supposed to be music?”
    Ceelie thinned her own lips in response.
    “Let’s put it this way, sweetheart. If you and your buddy out there want to make this a regular act, I’ll sign you on for a two-week run. You want to go onstage and sing that depressing shit, you’re fired.”
    Ceelie considered the offer for a few seconds, then chided herself for being so desperate. She’d take an extra shift serving waffles to tourists in shiny snakeskin cowboy boots before stooping that low. After all, she’d practically been raised by the most independent woman in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, who always told her she was strong enough to follow her own mind and deal with the consequences.
    “Pay me for tonight and you’ll never see me again.”
    Harvey pointed toward the dressing-room closet. “Get your stuff and take a hike. You didn’t finish a set. No set, no pay. I ain’t running no charity here.”
    “Fine.” She clutched the Gibson closer and stalked toward the dressing room. “And by the way, screw you and the pig you rode in on.” Pity the pig.
    “You wish, sweetheart.”
    It took Ceelie mere seconds to snatch up her makeup bag, purse, and jacket. When she stomped back out, intending to stop by the bar and let Sonia know what happened, Harvey stood blocking the hallway.
    “I been thinking. You ain’t half–bad looking with that dark skin and funny eyes—like a blue-eyed Injun. You want to get paid for tonight, I know another way you could make up for not finishing your set.”
    Ceelie ground her teeth but held her tongue long enough to give Harvey a slow, sexy-eyed once-over, from the grease in his dyed-black hair to the silver neck bling visible beneath the half-buttoned shirt; from the tight pants that promised way too little all the way to the pointy tips of his shiny platform shoes.
    She looked him in the eye. “Eh, no thanks. I’d die first.”
    Turning on her heel, she headed for the back door at a fast clip, unsure if she’d slapped at a gnat or poked a grizzly and not wanting to find out which one old Harvey would turn out to be. He called her a few choice names but didn’t follow.
    Definitely a gnat.
    The night air in Nashville had fallen into the low seventies with a promise of autumn, so Ceelie decided to forego the cab she’d have taken had it been either hotter or later. The neighborhood between here and her domino-sized studio apartment was well lit, and people tended to be mobile on Friday nights in Nashville. Plus, she needed fresh air and time to think.
    She’d hit rock bottom. That’s all there was to it. She didn’t make enough money off tips at the pancake house to pay the rent and utilities, but that early waitressing shift left her afternoons and evenings free to write songs, knock on doors, and pick up a stray performing gig. Not that she had anything new in the songwriting department except a half-finished tune that was, as Harvey had