NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) It has all the elements of a twangy tune at the Grand Ole Opry. Steamy days in the South. Nights even hotter.

She's an aspiring country music singer, and her love affair with a married man is the town's gossip. The town is Nashville and the man is the mayor.

Traci Peel, 34, and Mayor Bill Boner, 45, have caught Nashville up in a Dixie drama that sounds more like Tennessee Williams than Tennessee government. They've even made the headlines of supermarket tabloids.

Boner, who left Congress in 1986 under the cloud of an ethics investigation, announced in July that he and Peel are engaged.