Free Girl With Guitar by Caisey Quinn Page A

both angry and a little afraid as their eyes met. “You’re hurting me.”
    Shocked remorse flashed in his eyes and she almost wanted to comfort the bastard. But he released her so roughly she stumbled in her attempt to get as far away from him as she possibly could. Pauly met her halfway down the aisle and rushed her off the bus while Danny stayed behind to deal with the fallout of her actions. Her traitorous body trembled as they walked to the bar, but she was glad for what had happened. It had served to destroy any hopes she had of getting to know Trace Corbin in any capacity.
    D espite the drama in Mississippi, the show actually went well. Afterward, Kylie had to sit down with Cora Loughlin, Trace’s publicist, who was in town specifically to me with her. Now there was a woman she didn’t envy.
    Cora’s suffocating floral perfume filled the tiny space of the media room on the bus as she helped Kylie set up artist Facebook and Twitter accounts. They also posted some videos on YouTube and linked them to Trace’s Back to My Roots tour website.
    “Not to be dense, but what exactly am I supposed to say on these things?” Kylie asked. She already felt like a slug next to Cora with her sleek suit and perfect hair. Kylie had her writing jeans on with an old t-shirt that was a size too small and featured Hank Williams Jr’s face. It was her favorite. She put on a scarf, arranging it just so to try and hide the stains. Not that the elegant woman seemed to notice or care.
    “Oh, you know. Just how excited you are to be touring with Trace, how great the crowd is at each show. Stuff like that.”
    “Um, okay. Why?” Kylie couldn’t figure for the life of her who in the world would want to “follow” what she had to say online. She’d had a personal Facebook back home but she only had like a dozen friends on there from high school and she never really updated it with anything other than pictures of her and Lulu goofing around.
    “Post some photos of you and Trace being silly on the bus, whatever you’re eating, teasers about songs you’re working on…Just light fun stuff, okay?” Cora waited for Kylie to nod in agreement and then went back to looking at something on her iPhone. She didn’t want to tell the woman that all she and Trace had been doing together on the bus was avoiding one another since their screaming match.
    “Not sure she does light and fun, but I’m sure she could fake it. Right, Kylie?” Trace leaned in the doorway of the media room polishing something against his shirt. Fake it? Did he think she’d just been faking him out the other night? Maybe that was better than him knowing the truth about her little fantasy. Or was he making fun of her because he was still pissed about the alcohol? Whatever. Trying to figure him out was not on her list of things to do at the moment.
    “Look,” Cora began, glancing at Trace and then back to Kylie. “This is the way people connect with you and it’s how we build some chick from Oklahoma that no one’s ever heard of a fan base. If you don’t feel like you can do it, let me know and I can get one of our tech guys to keep up your account. Okay?”
    “I can do it,” Kylie mumbled, feeling like Trace had just called her an uptight reject, and Cora, who’d known her for all of an hour, concurred.
    “Great.” The publicist beamed and smiled, blasting her pearly whites out from behind her bright red lipstick. “You have my info. Call me if you need anything.”
    “Trace,” Cora nodded to him on the way out.
    “Cora,” he said curtly as she passed.
    Kylie wasn’t stupid. She saw the tension that passed between them. Apparently Cora was more than Trace’s PR lady. Geez, did this guy hook up with everybody? Well, not everybody. He hadn’t so much as joked about anything remotely like hooking up with her since the night she had to tear him from the VIP room at The Texas Player’s Club. But after seeing American Idol girl and Cora, it wasn’t like