Shifter Mountain: A BBW Paranormal Romance Read Free

Don’t just tell me you’re doing fine.”
    “It’s been a little hard,” he admitted. “A little weird, having no family left.   Not that you’re not family, Andrea, but you know what I mean.”
    Jordan didn’t have to elaborate on the after-effects of watching his mother fight a long battle with ovarian cancer.  He had gone through a bout of heavy drinking, but he quickly realized that too many musicians had wrecked their careers that way.  Turning into a drunk was no way to honor his mother’s memory. She had raised him as a single mother, whisking him away from an impoverished life in rural Appalachia.  Everything he had attained, he owed to her working her fingers to the bone to give him a chance at life.
    “I’m actually working on my next album,” Jordan told Andrea.
    “Can’t wait!” Andrea said. “Play in’ anything new for us tonight?”
    “I just might,” he said with a grin. “Actu ally, I’m recording a cover of High on a Mountain .”
    “Oh,” she said, her voice softening. Andrea pulled back and gave her honorary nephew a look of approval.
    “Are you now?  You’re not the Bluegrass type, though.”
    Jordan shrugged.
    “Your momma would be proud.”
    “I hope wherever she is – up there – she’ll be singing along.”
    High on a Mountain was classic Bluegrass, and it had been his mother’s favorite song. Livy Lawless had sung him to bed with it on more than one occasion, and he thought it would be fitting to honor her with it.
    “That’s not all I’m doing, Andrea,” he said. “We’re gonna go up to Scopes Mountain to shoot the music video.”
    At this, Andrea’s facial expression changed.  A look of darkness crossed it, and this confused Jordan.
    “If you don’t mind my asking, why wo uld you want to go back?  Your mother took you away from there as a child for a reason.”
    “I know, I know,” Jordan said.  “But, I’ve always wondered about that place.  About my roots.  I know she ran from something bad.  From my father…But I can’t shake it.  I feel like if I do this – go back to that mountain – I might get some closure on things.”
    “You should really think hard about this,” Andrea warned him.  “Sometimes the past really needs to stay in the past.”
    Jordan always had the sense that Andrea knew more about his mother’s past than he ever would, but anytime he pressed her on it, Andrea clammed up.
    “Well, I gotta do somethin’ – because here I am playin’ for tips again!” Jordan kidded her.
    “You’re worth, like, $20 million, kiddo,” she chided. “So if you dare go diggin’ into those poor songwriter’s tips, I will fry your hide like spicy chicken!”
    Jordan let out a hardy laugh.
    When starting out, like the hundreds of other aspiring musicians in Nashville, he had played not only at the Bluebird – but everywhere – just for tips.
    Jordan had played up and down Broadway, and over at the Five Points bars, and in every dark corner of ‘Music City’ he could find that would have him.  Then his big break came, and in a whirlwind everything changed overnight.  He was out on the road as the opening act for the biggest names in Country and Western music, and then within two years he himself was the Big Name.
    The Bluebird Café sat in a strip mall across from another shopping mall with a Whole Foods Supermarket.  If you blinked while driving down the street, you would miss it.
    A strip mall was an unlikely place for such a famous venue, but the Bluebird was sacred to musicians, songwriters and singers. Only 100 seats were available, with mostly no cover charge and only a $7 minimum.  But top-level music execs showed up regularly to check out the talent, and celebrity superstars always returned out of heartfelt nostalgia.  No one ever felt he or she was too good for the place. The Bluebird sold out every night with a mostly supportive audience.  Patrons had to book seats a week in advance – but you only had a week