Love, Me Read Online Free Page B

any problem that confronted her. It was an attitude he was familiar with, one he’d been exposed to early on in a family of bankers for whom money was the only thing that mattered.
    He’d loved his car.
    And no amount of money could compensate him for the damage she’d done.
    Sassy as hell, she hadn’t hesitated for a second to declare her opinion of him and his precious car, making it very clear she thought they were both overvalued.
    Hell, maybe she was right.
    All he knew was that he wanted his old junker back, which was an impossibility. By now, it was a cube of compressed iron in some junkyard. The dark-haired vixen had consigned it there with one careless twist of her steering wheel.
    Fell asleep at the wheel—his foot. And while listening to one of his songs, she’d said. At least he could sing. Not like her—she didn’t sing; she made noise.
    He was fairly sure he knew what she’d wanted to talk to him about at the Farm Aid benefit. Fairly sure it had occurred to her that he could write her a hit. Imagine her wanting him to write a song for her. At least she hadn’t insulted him by pulling out her checkbook and offering him a check for fifty dollars again.
    Thanks to her, he couldn’t write her one even if he were crazy enough to want to.
    Oh, he’d tried, but every attempt in the past months had been a dead end. He’d tried making excuses to himself, but deep inside he knew the magic was gone. He couldn’t write.
    Not a note, not a word.
    For the first time since he’d started his career, he had writer’s block. And since he sang only the songs he wrote, that meant no career.
    There was a knock on the door of his dressing room and he called out that it was open.
    His assistant, Melinda Jackson, came in with the cold mineral water he’d requested. Drinking some before every performance had become a ritual.
    â€œHow’s the house tonight?” he asked, taking a long swallow from the green plastic bottle of water.
    â€˜It’s a packed house like it is every time you perform,” Melinda replied, her voice soft and wispy, unlike Chelsea Stone’s.
    He set the bottle aside and picked up his long, expensively tailored jacket. It was elegant in its simplicity. Dakota’s trademark was a quiet, seductive kind of onstage presence.
    Sequins like the custom-made Manuel jackets some country stars preferred would have been overkill.
    His tight jeans almost were.
    â€œHow much longer?” he asked, buttoning his jacket. He wondered how the inexperienced opening act was faring onstage.
    Since they were playing the Opry, he’d advised than to go for broke. You never knew who might be in the crowd at the legendary country-music hall. He could still recall what it was like to be an opening act.
    Hell, it might not be long before he was an opening act again.
    â€œI’d say their act will wrap in about fifteen minutes,” Melinda answered, picking a piece of invisible lint off the shoulder of his jacket.
    He’d hired Melinda Jackson because she was the kind of ladylike woman he was used to. Too late, he’d realized she was as socially ambitious as his mother. Her possessiveness drove him crazy at times, but he kept her on because she was good at her job, even though he was sure the secretarial college she’d attended had been more like a girls’ finishing school.
    It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know Chelsea Stone hadn’t gone to finishing school, he reflected. Or if she had, she hadn’t graduated. Chelsea was the sort to get expelled for being a bad influence on the other girls.
    It was hardly fair of him, he decided, to judge her when he was guilty of breaking rules himself; disregarding his family’s social code was the reason he wouldn’t inherit the Law banking fortune. Yeah, but while he might break rules, he told himself, he didn’t flaunt the fact.
    Melinda looked up at him with