“Fucking Ryker.” he rasped. “This is worse than a family with everyone tattling on each other.”
“She just wanted me to know so I could watch your back, make sure your head was two-hundred percent into the stunts. Would you rather she told one of the guys?”
“I'd rather she talked to me about it.”
“She was going to, but you've been so busy, you two have been playing phone tag. She thought with the demands of the film, an outside perspective might be better. We all need that sometimes.”
“That doesn't make it okay.” Nothing about his sit
uation with Giselle was okay with him. Not the way they'd broken up. Not the way she'd ignored his calls the first few months after. Sure as hell not the way she still talked to Ryker but not to him. Never to him. Not one damn word since she'd bailed for the bright lights seven goddamned years ago. And he really hated the way Ryker seemed to think Troy was still so fucked up that he might junk a stunt just because he'd seen her picture. “In fact, it's damned insulting.”
“Did you know she had the title song for this film before you came?” Zahara asked.
“No.” Not that it would have made any difference in his role here, but it would have been nice to know that her face would be splattered over every inch of the strip advertising her Take Me Home tour. “Overheard it on set. Ryker could at least have told me.”
“I saw her in concert once,” Zahara said, “when I was filming in Nashville. She's an incredible performer. Blew the crowd away.”
Pride clashed with residual anger and tangled Troy's chest tight. Where Giselle was concerned, his emotions were as complicated as nuclear physics, as touchy as nitroglycerin, and as potent as TNT.
“Her voice is extraordinary, that's for damn sure,” he admitted, his own voice edged with a bitterness he hated but couldn't seem to overcome.
“She's really changing up her image. Transitioning from country to pop. They're calling her the next Taylor Swift.”
“Fuck that.” Troy laughed at the ludicrous understatement. “They aren't even in the same hemisphere talent-wise. Giselle may sing in the country genre, but her voice would rock rhythm and blues, alternative, soul, jazz, contemporary. She's got the vocal dynamics of Mariah Carey and the technical ability of Celine Dion. She's always had a strong voice, but over the years, she's honed it into a fucking powerhouse. And her control…” He shook his head. “It's just unbelievable. She's got Beyonce's dexterity, flexibility, can lift it to be light and airy or push it to be solid, rich, and dark. She's even got a spunky, come-to-Jesus gospel flare she whips out once in a while. It all blends with the emotion she puts into every song and marks her work as something really, really special. So, no”-he shook his head, his gaze locked on the carpet-“Giselle is not the next Taylor Swift. She is already way beyond any level Swift will ever reach.”
Troy forced himself to stop. To shut his mouth even though he could go on and on about Giselle's voice and the individual singing and performing talents that made her truly one of a kind. He lifted his glass toward a man in a black uniform and maroon half apron, who nodded in acknowledgment of his silent request.
When he glanced at Z, her mouth had edged up into a sly little grin. “If you say so, Kanye.”
“Ha.”
“Where'd a white girl like Giselle get a flare of gospel?”
“One of her foster homes. The mother sang in a Baptist choir and heard Giselle singing while she was folding laundry. Hauled her to church and signed her up. Giselle said she never did another chore because she spent all her time at choir practice. She would have broken out a lot sooner if her biological mother had left her the hell alone.”
“Where'd you grow up?”
“Memphis.” The bartender delivered his drink. Troy took the glass, held his hand up in a silent request for him to wait, and downed the whiskey in one swallow. Grimacing against the burn, he set the glass on the tray with a rough “Another, please.”
Zahara waited until the server was out of earshot before she asked, “All the charity she does is for foster care. Is that how you two met?”
He nodded. “Ryker and I were seventeen when she came to our home.”
Z made a soft sound in her throat. “Man, you two got a rough start.”
“Rougher for her, a beautiful little white girl raised by addict trash in the armpit of Tennessee.” Giselle had been fourteen at the time, with more scars than any one person should carry in a lifetime. “She's lucky the state took her away before her mother got a chance to sell her for a fix. That's where it was headed.”
Z shook her head. “How long were you together?”
Troy took the third drink from the waiter and thanked him, then sipped. “Best friends for two years, lovers for three.”
“Wow, long time. And so young. What happened?”
“Nashville.” And my own stupidity. The memories knifed him in the gut. “Nashville happened.”
Z waited for more, but when silence thickened between them, she asked, “And you haven't talked to her since?”
“Nope.”