Keep your eyes on me
This dance floor is ours tonight
Keep your eyes on me
Just our heartbeats keeping time
Till my final breath
Till there’s only love left
Just keep your eyes on me
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Not long later, after a hot bath that had turned into an even hotter makeout session, Jamie had to stop himself from going a few more rounds with Brinton. He needed to conserve energy for his last surprise.
He led her into his small recording studio downstairs and flipped a switch, triggering a set of dimmed lights in the ceiling. Custom foam soundproofing panels were built into the walls, and from the ceiling, silver moonlight spilled from two huge skylights onto a patchwork of patterned rugs. In the center of the room, there was a sleek black desk with an imposing computer setup that included two curved monitors and an intricately rigged microphone. And along the walls, more than a dozen mounted guitars of all shapes and colors.
“This, as they say, is where the magic happens,” Jamie quipped. He strode toward the desk and sat down in the blue velvet wingback chair.
“Here I thought the bedroom had seductive powers,” Brinton said, gleefully falling onto a matching blue couch across from his desk.
He shamelessly enjoyed the way her breasts jiggled underneath his orange University of Tennessee T-shirt.
It definitely looked better on her.
“I started putting together this space a while ago, mostly to work out ideas on my own. I didn’t have the nerve to actually do it, until…”
He smiled shyly at her.
Knowingly, she grinned back at him. “Well, I’m happy to be of service. Every cowboy needs a muse.”
He smirked, then leaned back in his chair. “You do realize I sing country music, but I’m not, like, a cowboy, right? Couldn’t be more different.”
She pouted her full lips. He wanted to graze them with his teeth, then suck away the sting.
“Yeah, I don’t know about that. Cowboys and country boys both have an affinity for boots, wide-open spaces, and outlaw behavior. Oh, on occasion, honky-tonk badonkadonks. That’s according to my thorough Wikipedia research.”
“Ah, America’s most trusted news source.”
“It’s basically the U.S. Constitution at this point.”
“Can’t argue with that.”
She rolled onto her side, adorably propping her head against her bent arm. “How does it feel knowing that, this time next week, the album will be out? And you’ll be on a new path?”
“It feels like the start of forever,” he said, smiling fondly back at her.
“I like how that sounds.” She beamed.
“Can I—um…”
He shook his head and laughed, then tapped a few strokes on his illuminated keyboard. “Do you wanna hear something?”
Jamie spoke slowly, carefully working through what he’dpracticed all day in his head. However, she’d never know it by how dramatically his brain glitched each time he opened his damn mouth.
“I wrote it…It’s—um—about you,” he stammered. “What you mean to me. It’s very different from anything you’ve heard from me before. But this is who I really am as an artist.”
