One
Presley, dressed smartly in a fuchsia skirt and floral-print blouse and a pair of peep-toe kitten heels, wrapped her folded hands around her knee to keep her leg from bobbing up and down like a sewing machine needle. She was overcaffeinated, thanks to a virtually sleepless night, but when inspiration had struck, she hadn’t wanted to waste a single second sleeping.
The smile she’d glued into place was starting to shake at the edges, so she coughed into her hand to give her mouth a rest. When her boss, Delilah, looked up at her again, Presley grinned anew.
Say yes. All I need is a yes.
Presley had longed to escape Florida for as long as she could remember. She’d always wanted to travel the world, visit other countries, meet new and interesting people. But traveling cost money, which had been in short supply. Instead she’d been stuck in Tallahassee as if an invisible force field was keeping her here.
When her boss announced a “friendly” competition for their branch of Viral Pop a month ago, Presley’s ears had perked. All she had to do was write an article that would go viral and grab lots of new eyeballs. The winner earned a pay-and-title bump—hello, Senior Staff Writer!—and a transfer to any of Viral Pop’s offices in the world.
Pres had practically foamed at the mouth from excitement. She’d been trying to come up with a winning idea over the last week and a half but nothing came. Until her drive home from work last night, when her ex-boyfriend’s song had come on the radio.
Cash Sutherland had left Florida a football star, and was now a country music superstar. Upon hearing his most popular song, a fresh idea had hit her like the title, “Lightning.” Out of nowhere and with enough force to split her in two.
Admittedly, she was a tad torn. She didn’t relish the idea of revisiting the painful breakup she’d swept under the rug years ago, but on the other hand she really wanted to win. Like, really, really wanted to win.
So she’d sat up until 2:00 a.m. last night writing the proposal Delilah was reviewing this very second.
“This would require you to be out of the office,” her boss stated, her eyes traveling to Presley. Delilah’s usual brand of curiosity-slash-interrogation never failed to intimidate, but winning this promotion and the opportunity to escape Florida was Presley’s lifelong dream. She could handle a little intimidation.
“I’ve worked remotely before,” Presley replied. At home, but still. “I am very good at time management. Especially when it’s my own time. Or the time here at the office,” she was quick to add. “I value your time, as well. More than mine. More than anyone’s.” She pressed her lips together to keep from sounding desperate, the sticky gloss she’d swiped on this morning helping with that endeavor.
Delilah hummed, set her tablet aside and narrowed her eyelids. Then she dipped her chin. “What makes you so sure Cash Sutherland is going to tell you his biggest songwriting secret when he’s dodged that question from every reporter who’s spoken with him?”
Nervously, Presley licked her lips. She wasn’t at all sure Cash Sutherland was going to confess his biggest songwriting secret. Ever since “Lightning” hit the Billboard Top 100, scads of press had been trying to solve the mystery of whom the song was written about. Rumors were rampant. Article after article had named this starlet or that, this singer or the other, and really, given his copious dating history, it could be any or all of them.
“We’re old friends,” she told her boss. “We went to college together. I also visited with his younger brother Gavin to write that article about Elite Records two years ago.”
She had no qualms about seeing Cash again. Not really. That long-ago breakup was in the past and she’d done her best to bury it, complete with a tombstone. She had no idea how Cash would feel about her showing up out of the blue, but Gavin had suggested not telling his brother she was coming. “Come to the show,” he’d said of the rooftop bar concert Cash was scheduled to play. “Once you’re here, he won’t have a choice but to talk to you.”
Okay, so their plan was a little underhanded, but she couldn’t risk Cash turning her away.
During that first visit to Beaumont Bay, she’d made damn sure he was out of the state before scheduling the interview with Gavin and William Sutherland. She hadn’t been ready to see Cash then, but couldn’t resist chasing the story of how Elite Records had been successfully relaunched by the eldest Sutherland son. She’d been the first to break the news about the resurrected record label in Beaumont Bay. Readers had eaten up the article about four hot brothers in the exciting music town just outside of Nashville.
At the time she’d worried the visit would bring up unpleasant memories, but the lush, rich town hadn’t reminded her of the Cash she used to know. She figured she really didn’t know him at all. Not anymore.
“It was a small assignment back when I was a content curator,” she explained when Delilah didn’t comment.
Back then her job had been to compile stories and news to share on social media. Pulling photos and links for articles like “10 Superchic & Supercheap Clothing Finds” wasn’t exactly groundbreaking journalism. The piece on Elite Records, the family business run by the Sutherland brothers, gave her a chance to showcase her talents. She’d interviewed Cash’s three brothers: producer, Will, lawyer, Gavin, and even bar-owner Luke. She’d mentioned Cash and his accomplishments, if only to appear that she wasn’t ignoring his existence entirely, wording it so that it seemed like they’d spoken when in reality they hadn’t. That article’s success had bumped her status up to staff writer, but she was still chained to her desk in Tallahassee. Lately the most invigorating article she’d written had been titled “10 Times You Wished You Were Taylor Swift.”
She was itching to sink her teeth into something juicier.
“Gavin Sutherland told me about a private concert Cash is performing,” Presley added. “No other member of the press was invited.”
She’d left that nugget out of her proposal, which was mostly a cost analysis showing how inexpensively she could travel—including forgoing the company’s per diem. She’d do anything to leave her dinky desk, including paying her own daily expenses. “Elite Records wants to put a positive spin on Cash’s DUI and since we know each other, the family trusts me.”
Well, Gavin did anyway.
Delilah craned an eyebrow. “Isn’t Cash a bad-boy type? Why does he care about a DUI?”
Cash was the bad-boy type. Back when they’d dated, he’d shared how he’d stirred up a whole heap of trouble in his hometown of Beaumont Bay. He ran wild as a teen, had once “stolen” his dad’s truck to joyride on the back roads. By the time he’d landed a football scholarship to FSU, his parents had breathed a sigh of relief that his days of troublemaking were over.
Now it seemed Cash had returned to his roots—both to his hometown and to his former bad-boy ways. His brothers had even signed him up to tour with good-girl country singer Hannah Banks to help smooth the edges of his otherwise rough reputation.
Cash was a love-’em-and-leave-’em type when it came to women, and Presley knew that from experience. He’d loved and left her when they were in college. Although, “love” was overstating it. Other than a few heavy make-out sessions in her dorm room, they’d never escalated to “love.”
Or at least he hadn’t.