Facing the Music (Rosewood 1)

Ivy tried to be a good sport about the whole thing. It was better she made fun of herself before others had the chance. She really needed to come up with a new source of inspiration for her songs. And maybe try to find a relationship that would last longer than an oil change.

“You were funny slapping that actor at the beginning. You haven’t really slept with him, have you?”

“Dotty!” Miss Francine exclaimed again.

“No, Miss Dotty. I think his wife would have something to say about that. And since she’s an action star with a black belt who does her own stunts, I’m keeping my distance.”

Sarah came forward and gave her another big hug. “You go get some rest. I know traveling can be so exhausting. I’ll make sure Daddy doesn’t pester you to go fishing, but you know he wants to take you out on the new bass boat you got him for his birthday.” She pressed a kiss against Ivy’s forehead. “Don’t be a stranger, baby.”

“I won’t, Mama. Thanks for letting me use the cabin while I’m here. See y’all later,” Ivy called out to the room, wincing as she heard that word slip through her lips.

A chorus of good-byes sounded as the ladies waved and returned to their grooming procedures. Ivy turned and headed for the door, looking both ways for anyone she didn’t want to run into. Nowhere in town was safe. There were Chamberlains everywhere, including the bakery next door, where Blake’s sister Maddie worked.

The coast was clear. As she stepped out of the shop and onto the sidewalk, she heard the loud voice of Miss Dotty behind her. “What the hell is Greek yogurt, anyway? Is regular old yogurt not good enough for the Greeks?”

“I don’t know if this is going to work, Kevin,” Ivy grumbled into her cell phone as she drove down the winding road that led to Willow Lake.

Before he worked with Ivy, Kevin had put no fewer than seven singers on the top of the charts. He had an ear for singles, a brain for management, and a level personality that could counteract even the biggest divas in the music business. Rarely, if ever, did one of his artists disagree with him. But she had only been in Rosewood for an hour and she just knew he had to be off the mark this time. Everyone missteps now and then. This could be his bad idea of the decade. She could forgive him this one time.

“You need the good press, Ivy. Your fans love you. They always have. They’ve cheered for you through every relationship, hoping you’ll find the one. But this whole thing with Sterling has been blown way out of proportion. Public opinion has turned on you. You tried to slaughter a sacred calf and the focus has shifted away from your music and your talent. But we can fix it, and Rosewood is your best chance.”

Ivy sighed and turned off the main highway to the lakefront drive, cursing the day she decided to go out with Sterling Marshall. She had toured with his boy band, Perfect Harmony, the previous summer. Every teenage girl in America was begging her parents for tickets to the show. Sterling was a after her from the beginning, and eventually, she gave in to him. He wasn’t exactly her type—too young, too clean-cut Tiger Beat for the bad-boy angst she craved. At least, that’s what she’d thought. Despite his flawless smile and dreamy pictures on every teen magazine cover, Sterling was bad news.

For one thing, he was a skeevy little tweaker with a heroin problem, but no one knew about that. He was also an ass when he was sober, prone to lashing out physically at anyone in his path. His every indiscretion was swept under the rug by his commando management team. Dating him exposed her to the gritty truth they kept hidden. He’d been in rehab twice. He was arrested at least three times for assault and possession. He had to wear long sleeves on tour and have his track marks Photoshopped in pictures. But by the time his public relations squad was done with him, Sterling was shiny and new, ready for his close-up in the next music video.

It was hard to believe she’d actually dated him, but Ivy hadn’t known any of this up front. She liked her boys bad, but she drew the line at toxic. She just wanted the kind that would charm her and break her heart. That’s what she went for in men. She supposed it was her own fault for dating bad boys with no serious relationship potential. It wasn’t the best way to settle down, but she wasn’t interested in all that. She’d had her heart broken once, and that was enough for her. Her one true love was her music. She just needed the men for inspiration. Only firsthand heartache would do for great singles, so the more unsuitable, the better.

When her relationship with Sterling imploded and their tour ended, she had enough material to write a whole album. But she settled for one song. Just one—“The Sweetest High.” It cut to the bone, though, accusing him of loving his drugs more than her and calling him out for singing to little girls while he was high. It was the first piece of bad press to get past Sterling’s handlers.

At this point, she almost wished they’d been able to stop the song from coming out. It had done well at first, but when people realized who it was about, the backlash had been brutal. Instead of seeing her as a truth teller, his legion of tween fans revolted against her. They would never believe such vicious, bitter lies about their dear, sweet future husband.

Sterling’s management jumped on the bandwagon. They put him on every talk show they could to proclaim Ivy lied about him because he broke up with her and she was madly jealous. It snowballed from there. His eleven million Facebook fans were calling for a boycott of her album. Some bookies were taking bets on how long it would be until she had a breakdown and checked into rehab.

It’s said that there’s no such thing as bad press, but she’d lost a good chunk of her fan base when they chose sides. #TeamIvy had a lot fewer supporters than #TeamSterling.

Ivy understood where Kevin was coming from. She needed to lie low for a while and let everyone forget about the thing with Sterling. She needed to go back to dating her usual crop of unsuitable men—rock stars, actors, and athletes. If she wrote a song about one of them using and dumping her, no one would bat an eye.

She wanted to just hole up in her Malibu beach house for a while and work on her new album, but it was impossible with paparazzi camping in her driveway, harassing her every time she went outside. With the state of her career, she couldn’t risk pulling a Britney and having a meltdown as the cameras captured every moment. She needed to get away to someplace no one would expect.

“Is it really so bad, Ivy? You just arrived.”

“It took three minutes for someone to mention Blake. Three. You wanted me to write some new music with a more sophisticated sound and emotional depth. How am I supposed to do that when people are constantly bringing up the thing with Blake?”

Her manager had challenged her to write some new songs for her next album that weren’t the perfect soundtrack for a woman scorned. She was getting older, and so were most of her remaining fans. She may have lost her younger audience, but this was her opportunity for her sound to mature.

“How is that any different than here?” Kevin asked. “You haven’t been able to write the last few weeks anyway. A new environment, a new routine might shake up your creative energy.”

Ivy pulled up outside her parents’ cabin and put her car into park with a heavy sigh. She hated when Kevin was right. He was always so smug about it. She had been struggling to write songs for her new album. She’d stared at blank notepaper, banged her head on the piano keys, crumpled wadded pieces of musical crap and tossed them in the trash. Nothing. Her mind was totally blank. That usually called for a new relationship to refill the well, but she didn’t dare start up something new with all this media scrutiny.

“I’ll do my best, Kevin. I don’t know how much free time I’ll have with this charity circus you signed me up for, though.”

“There’s no circus,” he insisted, literal as ever. “Just a county fair, a concert, and some other things Mrs. Chamberlain didn’t elaborate on.”

“I wonder why.”

At first, Ivy had thought she could get out of this thing. She had been too busy to come to Alabama for the charity concert when they first called. Then Sterling Marshall’s army of adolescents had cleared her calendar. When the grand matriarch of the Chamberlain clan, Adelia Chamberlain, called Kevin and personally requested Ivy, she knew there was no saying no. Ivy explained to Kevin that it would be like turning down a personal invitation to the queen’s garden party.

“Going to your hometown to help out your community looks great. You’ll get a lot of good press for it. It will raise a lot of money. You’ll be a local hero.”