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was opening night and she was a nervous wreck. She'd spilled several cups of coffee and messed up a half-dozen orders, serving rare meat to people who'd ordered well done and putting blue cheese on salads that were supposed to have French dressing.
    “Look at my hands. I'm shaking like a leaf.” She still had to change into her jeans and brush her hair. A lavender blouse laced with silver threads hung in the corner of the kitchen waiting to take shape when she slipped into it
    “I think I've forgotten all the words to the songs we've rehearsed!” she wailed to Allen. Her heart was pumping like an oil well and panic temporarily paralyzed her fingers as she fumbled with the buttons on her blouse behind the unpainted wooden screen he'd set up for her. “What if I fall down?” She was wearing her highest heels. “Maybe I should change into boots or sandals.”
    “If you go scrounging for trouble, it's sure to find you.” Allen was as cool as a summer breeze wafting through a second-story window. “I thought you said you'd performed onstage before. How come you're all stirred up about tonight?”
    “That was different.” She stepped out from behind her makeshift dressing room and smoothed the clinging shirt down over her slim hips. “I knew everybody in the audiences back home. These people are strangers.”
    “Stranger than what?” Allen was no help. He was too busy adding cover charges to the dinner tickets and nursing another drink.
    Cassie ran a boar-bristle brush through her long black hair and breathed deeply to pacify the butterflies that whirled inside her uneasy stomach.
    When she ran up onto the stage, Mike and Scrappy and Jess were almost finished tuning up their instruments. Cassie smiled tremulously, wishing that she could absorb a little of their laid-back attitude.
    “'Bout ready?” A lazy grin curled up the corners of Scrappy's mustache and he winked, wordlessly boosting Cassie's spirits. Scrappy played a mean fiddle, among other instruments, and would join Cassie for several duets. He'd pulled his battered Stetson low over his shaggy blond hair, and Cassie thought he looked more like a gunslinger on the run than an entertainer.
    Mike and Jess were a little tamer in appearance, with neatly trimmed beards and pressed jeans, but Cassie couldn't help worrying if the audience wouldn't hoot them all down as country bumpkins who'd just stumbled in off the farm.
    Scrappy cocked his head in Allen's direction, signaling that it was time to draw open the curtain they'd hung earlier in the week. The Twisters broke into a rousing rendition of “San Antonio Rose,” and the maroon drapes parted. When the boxing-crowd roar died down, Cassie pulled the hand microphone off the chrome stand and introduced the group.
    “We'd like to invite all of you to dance while we're working,” she said, forcing herself to enunciate despite the tremors in her voice. “And if anybody has a special request, write it down and lay it here on the stage. If we know it, we'll play it during the second set.”
    An expectant hush fell over the crowd as she took her place at center stage. While her eyes adjusted to the crude spotlight that Allen had rigged up, Cassie looked into a sea of upturned faces and anticipating eyes and just knew that she was breathing her last. The Twisters sensed her anxiety and, on a silent cue from Scrappy, they took a united step forward.
    Cassie came alive as the vibrations of her opening number radiated through her body. The drums, guitar, and fiddle blended with her voice to create an atmosphere of sound that belonged uniquely to the group.
    The smoky, smooth tones of her voice cascaded over the audience with the boundless energy of a waterfall tumbling into a crystalline pool. As she sang the timeless lyrics, she weaved a magic, musical spell, sharing the hard times and sweet memories that are the common denominators of living and loving.
    “Pay dirt.” Allen slouched in the kitchen doorway and