Free Facing the Music by Andrea Laurence Page B

sure half the town would put down ten bucks each to take their aggressions out on her. Blake would easily put down a hundred, or maybe even a thousand. He’d made good money with the NFL, even if for only a short time. The new gym would be paid for in no time.
    Flinging back the blankets, she headed for the bathroom and turned on the shower. A cooler one than usual, she decided. She obviously needed her libido dunked in an ice bath.
    She moved quickly through her morning routine and got dressed. Even though she was going into town today, she still opted for her casual, incognito look. Being Ivy Hudson, Rock Star, required a crew of trained, skilled aestheticians, and she wasn’t about to call Pepper back over to glam her up. Being Ivy Grace was a little less labor intensive, and she’d prefer to keep a low profile in town, anyway. She’d never been a particularly girly girl, so Ivy was good to put her hair in a ponytail and dab on some lip gloss. That, with some sunglasses, should be enough for a town hall meeting.
    Slipping into her sandals, Ivy grabbed her purse and her keys this time, and headed to the car. Her email from Kevin said they were meeting at 10 a.m. at the old Junior Chamber building that lined the south side of the park. When she arrived, there were more than a few cars and trucks in the parking lot. She pulled into an empty space and made her way into the old brick building.
    When she was younger, the Jaycees building, as they called it, was where a lot of the town events took place. Aside from the high school, there weren’t a lot of spaces in town that could host big occasions like the Thanksgiving social indoors. Being adjacent to the park, it was also the site of Easter and Fourth of July community picnics, so the organizers could set up the food inside or move quickly if the weather turned on them.
    “Look who decided to show her face in town again!”
    She turned around and found that Pepper had come in the door behind her. “Hey, Pepper,” Ivy said, slipping off her sunglasses. “Are you still mad at me for bailing on the bar scene?”
    “Absolutely,” Pepper said with a smile. “We’d better hurry, though, or we’ll be late.”
    “You’re on the fund-raiser committee?”
    “I am. I lobbied hard to get you back here, you know. You may not thank me now, but you will,” she said with a smile, swinging her bright red curls over her shoulder. “We’ve got a lot of fun things planned.”
    Ivy had to laugh. She hoped so. “Do you know where we’re meeting?”
    “Yeah, we’re probably in the War Room.”
    “The what?”
    “Back here.” Pepper gestured and Ivy followed her down a hallway to the Jaycees offices, where she had never been allowed to go before. “We’re all set up in the conference room. The committee pretty much commandeered the space with all the event planning. The next two weeks are going to be great.”
    “Great,” Ivy repeated, hoping to gather as much enthusiasm as Pepper had. She was being hit with a little small-town stage fright. The committee was likely made up of town politicians, busybodies, and control freaks—a very different crowd from the folks that hung out at Woody’s. The younger Rosewood generation laughed off the song about Blake, giving him a good ribbing every now and then. She hadn’t seen any of these people in years and had no clue how they were going to react to her. Odds were that this would be the crowd that disapproved of her choices. They were the ones who might see her as abandoning her roots for ill-gained fame.
    Pepper opened the door and Ivy had no choice but to take a deep breath and follow her into the crowd. There were at least fifteen people in the room. A quick scan confirmed that she recognized all of them, and every single one stopped talking the moment they saw her. The long, awkward silence continued as more than a dozen sets of eyes looked over her with varied expressions.
    “Miss Ivy!” a man’s voice shouted,