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hadn’t been in the driveway when I arrived, I was calling the state police.”
    “Bull,” Jesse muttered, rolling off the side of the bed. He headed for the bathroom, ignoring his nudity and his manager as he stepped beneath the shower head and turned on the water full force. “…worse than…if I’d…old mother hen.”
    Jesse may just as well have just shut up and saved his breath. Tommy had been near hysterics. He’d expected Jesse to arrive a full day earlier. As far as he was concerned, one phone call in the middle of the night over twenty-four hours ago did not constitute “checking in.” And he was nobody’s mother, least of all this man’s. If he had been, he would have beat the hell out of him years ago.
    Minutes later they headed toward the kitchen, with Jesse in the lead. “I made you some coffee,” Tommy said. “There wasn’t any ready. I suppose Henley’s still gone?”
    Jesse didn’t answer, refusing to acknowledge Tommy’s thoughtfulness as well as his reference to the missing houseman.
    “Goddammit, Jesse, you had me worried,” Tommy went on, relenting just the least bit as he realized that his heavy hand was about to undo the uneasy truce they’d come to a few days earlier.
    Jesse shrugged and poured himself a cup of coffee. Tommy’s anger was justified, and he knew it. He just couldn’t bring himself to admit why he’d been delayed. Even in the daylight, he could hardly believe it himself.
    And then she walked into the room.
    Tommy spun around, his bootheels leaving small black scuff marks on the ivory floor tile.
    “Well, that explains everything,” he said, waving his finger in Jesse’s face. “Just what we need, some dumb blonde groupie hanging around when you’ve got that new album to cut. What happened? Couldn’t you get enough without bringing her with you?”
    Jesse saw red—and Diamond. But he didn’t react quickly enough to stop her. From the corner of his eye he saw her swing, and then Tommy was flat on his back against the cabinet, holding his hand against his mouth as a thin stream of blood seeped between his fingers.
    “Hell! You busted my damned mouth.”
    “I missed,” Diamond said. “I was aiming for your nose.”
    She turned to Jesse, her coffee and her hunger forgotten in the fury that overwhelmed her. The words the little man had said were nothing she hadn’t heard before, but their injustice was the last straw in a week of hell.
    “Which way to Nashville?” she asked Jesse. “I want out.”
    Jesse staggered. Her reaction to Tommy’s words had been unexpected but justified. But this took him unaware. He panicked.
    “Diamond, no,” he pleaded. “He didn’t mean—”
    “Let the bitch go,” Tommy muttered.
    Jesse pulled him up from the floor by his collar. The words he whispered in Tommy’s face were all the more ominous by their lack of emotion.
    “If you call her one more indecent name, so help me God, I’ll bust your nose myself. Now shut the hell up. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    Tommy sat on a bar stool and bled quietly.
    “He meant what he said, and we both know it,” Diamond said. The pain in her eyes didn’t reach her voice. “It doesn’t matter,” she continued, and turned her back. “You don’t owe me anything.”
    She started for the door.
    Jesse grabbed her by the shoulder and then let go the moment she turned. He took two steps backward just for good measure and held up his hands. He’d learned his first lesson about Diamond Houston. She, like her sister Queen, didn’t like to be touched.
    “Just listen to me,” he said. “Tommy was upset. I didn’t call him, and I should have. He thought something had happened to me. It’s my fault for worrying him.”
    She crossed her arms and braced her feet, trying to ignore the quake in her belly and the tremble in her legs. Coffee drifted back across her senses, and her stomach growled again, reminding her once more how long it had been since she’d