All Note Long by Annabeth Albert Read Free Book Online Page A

interview with someone big a couple days later. Create a tidal wave of press that covers the story and spins it our direction.”
    â€œExplain to me again how Lucky fits into this?” He pushed some eggs around his plate, certain he wasn’t going to like her answer. Sitting here with Gloria felt weird. He wasn’t used to eating with other people. Wasn’t used to other people in his space, period.
    â€œWe’ve got the fact that you’re well known as a total hermit. No one can argue with you if you say you’ve been seeing this dancer a few weeks now. And you guys got frisky on his break, someone photographed your tender moment, and the money part is a huge misunderstanding and smear campaign by people who don’t get that love is love.” She smiled broadly, exactly like a woman who’d spent the last hour sucking down Gay PR 101.
    â€œAnd you think this will . . . do what exactly?”
    â€œGive you a bit more respectability. Like those politicians who marry the mistresses they were caught cheating with. All’s forgiven for a great love story.”
    â€œBut I’m still going to be gay. And out. And the conservative fans are still going to hate that.”
    Michelin hated that that mattered to him. But it did. It was why even as he’d toyed with the idea of coming out, he’d known he never would, or at least not any time soon.
    â€œThey love you.” Gloria’s tone was encouraging, but somehow less than convincing.
    He loved his fans right back, something he tried hard not to show too deeply. But he loved the eighty-seven-year-old grandmas who saved up to come to his Lincoln show and he loved the gun-racked Texans who packed the stadium for his Dallas show and who waited three hours afterward for autographs. When his first country album Hard Water dropped, these blue-collar folks were the ones who embraced him most, who shot the album up the charts. Visions of their fan mail flashed through his head, the fans telling him how they played his music at tailgating parties and graduations and family reunions.
    And those small-town fans, those were the ones he was most likely to lose. His heart contracted. They wouldn’t see him as one of them anymore, even though, truth was, he’d gone country to sing the most authentic music of his career, to finally be the musician he wanted to be and not be packaged by the label like his rock band, Speed Kills, had been. He’d lost the entourage he’d surrounded himself with for his failed pop solo career. He’d been so proud of himself for finally making the changes that broke him out of a decade-long trance. He’d written the music for Hard Water . He’d overseen every step of the production. Hell, even the photograph on the album cover was of the old well on his uncle’s property. He was country, but he wasn’t sure country had a place for him.
    And here was Gloria, trying to spin things when all he wanted was a nap. He clenched his hands to keep them from shaking. Boyfriend. No boyfriend. It didn’t matter. His days at the top of the country charts were over.
    â€œThat’s a nice try. But I don’t think we want to rope the guy into my mess any more than he’s already being smeared by it. I say we just issue a simple, ‘Yup. Gay’ statement on Monday and then just let the chips fall—”
    â€œMichelin. I don’t think you understand me.” Gloria leaned over to tap the area of the table closest to where Michelin was sitting. “You don’t pay my salary. The label pays me. And you don’t come up with the plan here. You follow the plan. And Stu Wockman himself says either we clean this mess up or they’re not releasing the new album.”
    â€œWhat?” He dropped his coffee mug with a clatter against the counter.
    â€œThey’ll cite technical issues or some such for the delay, but they aren’t going to put anything