Summertime on the Ranch, Carolyn Brown [ebook reader with highlighter txt] 📗

gig for a bunch of high school alumni. We ain’t doing a show for Neddie’s Nudie Beauties. Time to go, ladies. Ten minutes until show time.” Allie, the shortest one in the band, and the one with the lightest blond hair, crossed the floor and pushed open the bus door to lead the way.

“Y’all look wonderful.” Angel was proud of her five friends. They wore identical black jeans and black denim vests with the state flag of Texas embroidered on the back.

“We clean up pretty good,” Susan agreed. “You’d never know we were plain old working women the rest of the week.”

The band members laughed and headed for the ballroom.

* * *

“Let’s give the equipment one more check before they open the doors between the banquet room and this ballroom,” Allie said. “Testing.” She blew into the first microphone, which produced an ear-splitting squeal, and she nodded toward Bonnie, who was adjusting the amplifiers. “Testing.”

“Smoke machine is…ready,” Mindy said from the side of the small knockdown stage Angel toted around in the equipment trailer behind the bus. Even its slight elevation of twelve inches gave the band an advantage, which was better than being stuck back in a corner of a room on the same level as all the dancers.

Allie turned a knob or two, double-checked the timer, then sat down at her drums and gave a warm-up roll with the sticks. “Ready to rock and roll,” she growled into the microphone beside her.

“Ready,” Susan breathed into her microphone, and drew her bow across her fiddle, creating a haunting sound that made Angel’s blood curdle, just as it did every time they played.

“Then let’s knock ’em dead.” Mindy stretched her fingers and warmed up on the keyboard with a few bars of Miranda Lambert’s “Hush, Hush.”

The double-wide doors from the banquet room swung open into the ballroom, and people began wandering in, not quite sure this was where they belonged. Clancy Morgan and several companions found a table right in front of the stage.

“Dark in here,” Angel heard a man say. “These itty-bitty candles on the tables don’t give much light.”

“You didn’t complain about that ten years ago at the prom,” his wife giggled. “Matter of fact, you wanted to blow the candles out so the ballroom would be darker.”

“Yeah, but back then you were fun to be with in the dark,” he teased.

The woman pouted.

Angel thought she recognized him—wasn’t he Jim Moore?

The alarm on Angel’s watch went off, and she pushed a hidden button with her foot. The smoke machine emitted trails of white fog across the stage and a rotating strobe picked up every flicker of candlelight from the tables. When the smoke began to clear, there were five Texas state flags facing the darkened room. Then, from somewhere behind a huge amplifier, Angel stepped out, all aglitter in red, white, and blue sequins.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” she said in a deep, throaty voice. “I’m Angel—and this is the Honky Tonk Band. There’s Allie on the drums.” She stood aside and Allie stood up, bowed, and gave the audience fifteen seconds of a percussion riff.

“Bonnie, on steel.” One of the flags turned around to reveal a blond woman, even taller than the drummer and built like an athlete. Bonnie made the guitar slung around her neck whine like a baby.

“And Patty on rhythm guitar.” Another flag turned, and Patty bowed, struck a chord and waved to the people, hoping for an enthusiastic crowd. Lord, but she hated to play to a dead bunch, and these alumni sure didn’t look as lively as the folks they’d played to last night.

“Susan, on the fiddle.” Angel waved to her left as Susan perched a fiddle on her shoulder and let them hear a tantalizing bit of a classic country tune.

“And over here is Mindy on the keyboard.” The final flag turned slowly to face the alumni of Tishomingo High School. “Hi, ya’ll,” Angel said huskily into the mike as Mindy made the keyboard do everything but sing.

“And this is Angel!” Dorothy stepped up to the microphone. “You might remember her as Angela Conrad, and she and these gorgeous band members have agreed to play for us tonight for free. Let’s make them welcome and get ready for a show. These ladies will be at the Arbuckle Ballroom in Davis next Friday night for their final gig, so we’re lucky to get ’em. Angel says she’s tired of working all week and the weekends, too. So, give them a big hand to let them know how much we appreciate them playing for us.” She started the applause and the audience followed suit as she left the stage and grabbed a young guy’s hand, led him to the dance floor and nodded to Angel to start the party.

“Wind ’em up, girls,” Angel whispered and grabbed a mike and started off the evening with a surefire crowd pleaser. Mindy tinkled the keyboard keys and Allie kept a steady beat with the brushes on the drums. Angel strutted across the stage, sequins flashing in the strobe lights, the long diamond drops that dangled from her ears glittering in her dark-brown shoulder-length curls.

Before long, there were at least twenty couples in the middle of the floor, dancing in one way or another. Several were doing something between the twist and the jerk, and an older couple was executing a pretty fine jitterbug. Angel kept looking down at the table where Clancy Morgan sat alone while his friends tried to keep up with the beat on the dance floor. Evidently Melissa—if he had married her—couldn’t accompany him tonight. Or maybe he hadn’t married her. Now wouldn’t that be a hoot?

* * *

Angel put her left hand on her hip and struck a pose, and memories from that summer ten years ago flooded Clancy’s mind—again. What had happened to the Angela Conrad he’d known? She was supposed to marry old Billy Joe Summers and raise a shack full of snotty-nosed kids. She was supposed to work in