John

By Becca Fanning

Meg Baker wanted for nothing growing up. The best schools: she attended them. The best instructors: she learned from them. The best talents as a violinist: she was born with them. A pampered life of chauffeurs and private jets. So why was she now on the run, trying to hide herself in the one place she knew her father would never look for her?
John might have the last name of Saint, but his family swears he made a deal with the Devil. Not one person from Ozarks to the Appalachias could strum a mandolin like him. And while he loved the harmonies he helped his family achieve on stage, he always felt something was missing inside. Until that night she came into The Fiddler's Cave, and for the first time in his life he thought there might be someone who felt like he did.
This 13,000+ word novella has hot Country Music Bear Shifter action, a Happily Ever After, no cheating and no cliffhangers!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gizmo Media
• Release date: May 24, 2021

Book preview

Fanning

Chapter 1

Meg Baker sighed as she watched the setting sun slip below the horizon. So much for all my planning , she thought, feeling the now-familiar twinges of fear and uncertainty that had plagued her from the moment she’d stepped out of the safe confines of Manhattan’s posh Plaza Hotel the night before. She had purposely waited until after Daylight Savings Time to leave, just so she would be able to take a bus that would both depart after ten p.m. and arrive in Nashville before dark.

The best laid plans of mice and men, she whispered, paraphrasing Robert Burns’ famous line.

Meg stared out at the passing landscape, so flat here in northern Tennessee but also so incredibly green. She had never ridden on a bus before, nor—to her knowledge—had she ever driven on an Interstate, beyond what it took to get from various airports to their city centers. Hers had been a life of chauffeured limousines, first-class trains, and first-class planes. Now, after almost twenty-four hours of seeing how the other half traveled, she was exhausted. And frightened, she had to admit, but also determined to see this through.

As a world-class violin soloist, she knew she could get a job playing somewhere, if only she could manage to not be recognized, and she’d thought Nashville would be a good place to start. It was a city of music, but music so unlike what she normally played, that perhaps she could manage to stay under her father’s radar for the time it took her to establish herself in another place, another career.

Good luck with that, her inner voice said, making her stomach clench yet again.

That little voice was right, of course. If her father did not already have a private investigator on her trail, she would be surprised. Actually, it wouldn’t surprise her to see her father waiting for her at the bus terminal in Nashville, but she hoped not.

She had been careful. Her father always, without fail, disappeared into his suite at nine-thirty sharp on any night she wasn’t performing. He was rarely alone and always left orders not to be disturbed. Having lost her mother at a very early age, Meg had no illusions about what her father did with the beautiful women who seemed to always be available to him in whatever city they were visiting, and she had learned early to cherish these rare nights of knowing her father was otherwise occupied.

Meg had her one soft bag and her old violin packed and ready to go, along with her new ID and the cash she had been stashing away over the past six months, thanks to various maids and bellhops who were only too happy to change the one-hundred dollar bills her father insisted she carry to impress people for much smaller denominations in exchange for a generous tip. Dressed in jeans, simple walking shoes, and a warm, serviceable coat she had purchased from one of the hotel maids, she’d slipped out of her suite just after her father had turned in for the night, taking the stairs instead of the elevator to the opulent lobby below. Before stepping out of the stairwell, she’d donned a plain, navy blue baseball-style cap, pulling her white-blond tail out the hole in the back—like she’d seen women on the streets do֫—then wrapping a scarf around her neck to both ward off the chill night air and hide the rest of her hair. She’d thought about getting a Yankee’s cap, but had opted for a plain one, since she was headed for Nashville and didn’t want to stick out as an out-of-towner once she reached her destination. Her eastern-educated, upper-class accent would be enough of a giveaway.

Walking the first three blocks, she’d timed her arrival at Carnegie Hall so the musicians would be heading out after an evening concert, because while most of them still wore their concert clothing, with a winter coat and a