Naomi's POV:

My life hasn't always been a series of hit and runs, but lately, I felt like I was getting smacked by a Peterbilt every time I blinked. First it had been the sudden loss of my father that had wrecked me, breaking my heart in a way that I knew would never completely heal. Another blow to my already fragile heart had been finding out that my husband of the past 3 years had decided that the up-and-coming-twenty-some-year-old artist that he was working with was more his type than the woman who was the mother of his 2-year-old child, Knox. Next was the nasty divorce that ensued where he had tried with all his might to make me out to be a lousy mom, even as going as far as accusing me of neglecting my son in hopes that a judge would give him full custody. But the look on his face when sole custody was denied was something that I would remember for the rest of my life.

Luckily, Knox and I ended up with the home and didn't have to worry about moving. But that didn't mean it hadn't been weighing on my heart for quite some time now. Home was calling me, damn near begging me to bring my butt back to Oklahoma and lick my wounds. Lord knows I wanted to. I couldn't think of anything better than going back to my hometown, population 532, and just reanalyzing my life. But with the divorce only finalized a couple of months ago and Liam and I still trying to work the kinks out with how often he saw Knox, I just couldn't bring myself to move. At least not yet. But when my aunt called and said she was home for a few weeks and wanted to spend some time with Knox and I, I jumped at the chance.

Making the long drive from Nashville to McAlester, Oklahoma with a two-year-old hadn't been an easy trek but it was well worth it. It was almost as if every mile I put between me and Nashville had the tension that had taken permanent residence in my shoulders evaporating. Relief washed over me the longer I drove. And by the time I hit the Oklahoma state line, I was almost completely relaxed, almost none of the drama that has been my life the past few months weighing me down. Rolling the windows down, I let the fresh air of home wash over, enveloping me like fuzzy blanket, taking away the last remaining bits of my worry and sorrow. Then, as if it was sign, my aunts voice came over the radio, singing one of her very well-known songs. There was only one way to listen to this one and that was wide open while singing at the top of your lungs!

I remember being a little girl and wondering if the words in the song were true; had her mama really brought her a red dress with a slit clean up to the hip, basically turning her into a prostitute in hopes that she made a better life for herself? I remember the day I got the nerve to ask her if the lyrics were true and the full bellied laugh that had come from the feisty red head. Even now, almost 20 years later, Aunt Reba won't let me live that one down. She brings it up at every family function and even started calling me Fancy because of it. At first, I had hated the nickname because of the meaning of the song but now, but it has grown on me over the years so much so that I find it strange when she calls me by my legal name.

When I reached the ranch, I drove through the gates and headed up the gravel path that led to the house. Most people would expect Aunt Reba to have this big, extravagant house but she had never been one to flaunt her money. When she'd built this place, she had modeled it after the house her grandparents had spent their entire married life in. Even going as far as painting the house the same shade of soft yellow with light blue shutters. But it was the porch that was the real gem of the place. Wrapping all the way around the first story and the second story, you could sit anywhere on this porch and gaze out over the pastures or watch the farm hands as they went about their day-to-day tasks. As a little girl, I'd spent countless hours watching the guys work the cutting horses and the girls who were training to be barrel racers.

Spent the summer I turned 18 learning how to barrel race from none other than Aunt Reba herself. She told me back then that I was a natural. Even considered trying to make a career out of it like she had in the beginning, but Mama and Daddy put the kibosh on that pretty quickly. Daddy claimed it was because he had watched Aunt Reba take come pretty nasty falls over the years while mama had claimed that barrel racing wasn't something that a lady was supposed to do. Said that she had never heard anything good come out of anybody's mouth when they talked about barrel racers and that no daughter of hers was going to be lumped into that category of 'wild'. Daddy and Aunt Reba had a big falling out about it but just like siblings always do, they figured it out and even laughed about it now.

As I neared the house, I saw the feisty little red head bounding down the porch, running straight for my Jeep, a smile plastered on her face. She might be 66 years old, but the woman didn't look or act a day over 30. I'd just shifted the Jeep into park when the back door was swung open and Aunt Reba as dragging a squealing Knox from his car seat. Pretty sure the title of "The Apple of Aunt Reba's Eye" now belonged to Knox and not me. But I was okay with that because from the day he was born, he had been my favorite person in the whole world.

Climbing out of the Jeep, I was immediately enveloped in a Texas sized hug. The familiar scent of Aunt Reba's perfume wafted around me, reminding me once more that I was home and soothing me in a way that I hadn't even realized I needed to be soothed. Tears pricked at my eyes, burning them from the need to let them fall. And they were about to win when Aunt Reba broke the hug and locked those green eyes of her on me.

"Cowgirls don't cry sweetheart." She said with a sympathetic smile. "We get even" I watched as her smile grew and she winked. Yep, leave it to Aunt Reba to know just what to do make me smile.

"And we do it in a ladylike manner." I said with a smirk as I finished the line that she told me years ago. She said that it was something that her grandma used to tell her when things didn't go her way, or she felt that she had been shafted. She later used part of that quote in a song, and I'd be lying if I said that it hadn't become an instant favorite for that reason alone.

"That we do sweetheart." She said as she shifted Knox on her hip and began walking towards the house. "There is a plate full of chocolate chip cookies in there that your Aunt Susie sent over that's just begging to be dipped in some ice-cold milk."

"Let me just grab the bags..." I said, turning on my heel to get Knox's and I's things.

"Leave 'em. Rex can grab them when he gets back from the barn." She tossed over her shoulders as she climbed the steps of the front porch. Rex was the new lover interest in her life. They had known each other for more than thirty years but only started dating a couple of years back after she and Uncle Narvel had divorced. It had taken some getting used to to not have Uncle Narvel around but seeing the smile on her face anytime she and Rex were together was worth it. He treated her like the Queen that she is and best of all, he didn't try to dictate to her about what she should and shouldn't be doing as far as music was concerned.

Deciding to at least grab Knox's diaper bag, I quickly grabbed it from the back seat and followed the two of them into the house. Just as she said, there was a huge platter of what I knew to be the best chocolate chip cookies in all of Oklahoma -I mean they did win the Best Cookie Award at the Oklahoma State fair every year for the past 20 years- sitting on the counter in the kitchen. My mouth was already watering wanting to bite into one and let the sweetness bloom on my tongue. Unable to help myself, I snagged a cookie from the plate and took a bite. The explosion of sugar and chocolate bloomed on my tongue and had a moan slipping past my lips from its deliciousness.

"Aunt Susie still makes the best cookies." I said around a bite. "I swear, she should market these things. She would make a fortune.

"Secret family recipe." Said Aunt Reba with a wink as she passed Knox a cookie, reminding me that no one outside the immediate family had the recipe.

"The Bush's marketed their secret family recipe." I said with a smirk, knowing what was coming next.

"Yeah, and that secret family recipe once belonged to the McEntire's. We learned our lesson on swapping recipes after that." She said that red headed temper of hers flaring slightly. I wouldn't say that the Bush's and the McEntire's were The Hatfield's & The McCoy's, but it was a rivalry that has lasted for years and years and didn't look like it was going to come to an end anytime soon. You see, way back in the late 1800's, a McEntire had developed that recipe during some of the hardest times in our country's history. Supplies had been scarce because of the way but my great-great-great grandma hadn't wanted to skimp on what she fed her family, insisting on making sure that the food tasted good even if it was with minimal ingredients and scrap pieces of seasoning meat.

On the day the war ended, all the ladies in the area got together and hosted a dinner, each of them bringing something for the table. Of course, the McEntire's had brought their beans and they were a hit. After getting praise for how delicious they were, my great-great-great grandma and passed along her recipe to someone she thought was a friend, only to have to decide to claim it as their own when they decided that it was too good not to share with the world. Now, every grocery store in all of America had cans on their shelfs sporting the Bush's name while making their millions off the McEntire's that had created it. I honestly don't think that anyone would have been mad about the whole thing had they at least credited my family for the recipe to begin with.

Just as I was about to try and change the subject, Aunt Reba's phone rang from its perch on the counter. Most of the time when Aunt Reba was home, she ignored her phone like the plague, so it shocked me when she answered it after only having rang a couple of times. I stood at the counter listening to her side of the conversation and could tell that whoever was on the other end of that phone was someone that Aunt Reba had been waiting to hear from. Based on the smile on her face, this call was good news.

Swiping yet another cookie, I bit into it as I watched Knox devouring his, leaving chocolate smeared over his face and hands. I thought about how Liam would have been flipping out over Knox being covered in chocolate and smiled to myself as the cowgirl in me decided to let him make all the mess he wanted. Liam had been the type to never want anything out of place or for anything to be even remotely messy. And hadn't that been fun when Knox was first learning how to eat? I'd spent most of dinner time making sure that not even a crumb had landed on the floor so that he didn't have any reason to get pissed at Knox. Looking at Knox once more and taking in the amount of chocolate that was on his face and hands, I smiled. This is what it meant to be a child; to get messy and just enjoy having a sweet treat. Deep down I knew that I was letting Knox get messy because it was a type of revenge that Liam would never see but it was one way that I could sock it to him and get a little bit of satisfaction from knowing that I was doing something that would piss him off.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Aunt Reba take her place back at the island. Before I could even begin to think about asking what the call was about, she started in. "That was a friend of mine. He's got a song that he wants to turn into a duet. He and I were supposed to get together a couple of weeks ago, but something came up with his schedule and then something came up with mine and well, we just couldn't make it work. He's got a few weeks off from the road and was wondering If I could possibly cut the track with him since I was home too."

"Go ahead. Take care of business. Knox and I will be here for at least a couple weeks. What's a few hours of missed time when we have so many other days ahead of us?"

"Well, it wouldn't really be missed time since I told him that I could do it, but it meant that he would have to come to me and that we would have to record it here." Said Aunt Reba.

"It's been so long since I've seen you in the studio. I used to love watching you lay down a track when I was a kid." I said. "I was just thinking the other day about the day that you and I recorded that song for daddy and Pawpaw for Father's Day when I was 6."

"Still the best song I think I have ever recoded, even if it never did end up on a platinum selling record." She said with a smile. I watched as that smile transformed, making her green eyes glimmer, telling me that she was up to something. "Want to get in on this one with me? I could use some backup vocals and you doing them would help him in getting the final copy sooner."

"What?" I all but shrieked. "Aunt Reba, I can't. It's one thing to just play around in the studio but this is a real record. This will end up on the radio. I can't do that."

"Sure, you can. No one even has to know its you." She replied as her hands landed on her hips, telling me that she was ready to do whatever she had to do to get me to do this.

There was one thing about Aunt Reba. If she made her mind up that she wanted something, there was no changing it. And she sure was about using bribery and guilt tripping to make sure you gave her the answer that she wanted. As if on cue, she started back in. "I'm getting on up there in age whether I want to admit it or not. Who knows how many more chances I'm going to get to have my favorite niece on a track with me?"

"Fine" I huffed with a heavy sigh that not even I could pretend was about annoyance. Truth was, I was excited for this. And as long as my name wasn't credited on the album, my signing talent could remain with just me and my family. It could remain to be something that I did for fun, not because it could make me money.

"Good." She said, clapping her hands before grabbing a cookie of the platter. "Why don't we start with some warmup vocals. Don't want to stain those muscles and end up hurting yourself."