He appraised her slowly, making her feel exposed and coveted all at once. She reached for her iced tea and took a hulking gulp. A feeble bid to cool the heat spilling across her chest. “Doesn’t sound too bad.”
“Not bad at all, Honeybee.”
Honeybee. Outside of properly embarrassing pet names her family gave her, she’d only had one nickname. At thirteen, she got her first periodandhad her first panic attack at Carmen Bryant’s sleepover. Carmen only used tampons because she refused to wear “a vag diaper.” Brinton refused to wear a tampon because she was terrified it’d get stuck and sprout like a swallowed watermelon seed, its absorbent, cottony cover crushing her from the inside out. She cried at school for a year over her new nickname: vag diaper.
Honeybee was considerably better.
Eager for a distraction from the effervescent giddiness in her stomach, she looked down at her hands—she still had two bean bags left. “Should we keep playing?”
“Hell yeah,” he said, brushing her shoulder with his and imbuing her whole body with strange tingles. “But it’s my turn.” He tossed one of his bags, which caught on the hole’s lip but didn’t fall in. He winced as his self-proclaimed winning streak ended.
“Tough break,” she said, stifling a laugh.
“Mm. Well, you can’t win ’em all. You’re a worthy opponent.” He eyed her softly, like he meant it. She gulped down a tennis-ball of tension and tossed another bag. It grazed Jamie’s, the weight sending both tumbling into the hole.
Jamie whistled. “Now, I suppose, you earned two more questions.”
Slowly, she crossed her arms in mock protest, daring him to argue. Against her better judgment, she was having a good time. “I kinda feel like you owe me four now.”
He chuckled, nodding his head in surrender. “All right then. I’m just a man at your mercy.”
Now, all the heat in her body rushed to the same place. She clenched her thighs, making it worse. What the fuck was happening to her?
At the same time, she was getting somewhere. She had to keep him talking…
Behind him, the clattering of boots on flagstone breached the charged energy between them. They both turned to find Tex, who Brinton had learned was Jamie’s goateed manager from the Grammys, and Jamie’s father waiting. Tex tipped his black cowboy hat to her, but Jamie Sr. looked straight at his son.
“Need you back in the studio,” Tex chirped, ignoring Jamie’s sullen expression. “Gotta polish up the tracks before the party tonight. A few folks from the label are coming.”
Jamie was still watching her, some kind of yearning in his eyes. Like he wanted to stay. If he was serious about this interview, wouldn’t he want to?
“We’re in the middle of an interview,” he said.
His father grunted. “That wasn’t a request, son.” His voice lowered as he stepped closer to Jamie. “Do I need to remind you how hard everybody else is working foryou?”
Jamie flinched when his father said the word “you,” and so did she. Why did Jamie Sr. have such a hold on his son?
Finally, Jamie turned to his father. “No, sir.” His eyes bounded back to hers. A broken smile on his face. “We’ll talk more at the party tonight, but you keep practicing. He placed his bags in her hands, then let his fingertips linger against his wrist. “Looking forward to our rematch, Bee.”
Was this his game? Bring her to theedge, then yank the cord so she didn’t get tooclose? She closed her eyes, disappointed at the realization that despite all her planning and pep talks, she fuckinglikedhim. Despite what she should have felt: objectivity. Impartiality. A subtle “I-give-nary-a-fuck.”
She was unceremoniously screwed. It was going to be a long night.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Inside Jamie’s father’s studio, the recording booth was cramped, but it had space for a stool, an easel for lyric sheets, and Jamie’s favorite acoustic guitar. In the control room, through a massive window by the door, Tex, producer Tom Hathaway, and songwriter Melvin Scott huddled closely around Jamie’s father, whispering conspiratorially.
Jamie was a puppet, and those four men pulled the strings.
Tom, a scrawny man in his 40s with a thin, brown mustache and sunken cheeks, pressed a button on the soundboard that filtered his voice from the control room and into Jamie’s booth. “Why don’t we retake the bridge?” Tom asked.
Jamie raked his hair from his weary eyes. “I think we got it. We did it at least twenty times already.”
Even if Jamie wanted to retake that wretched bridge—which he didn’t—he was spent. The interview with Brinton earlier that afternoon had thrown him for a loop. To learn how much distress he’d unintentionally caused her with hisGrammys speech snuffed out any goodwill he’d hoped to earn. Had he done enough to reassure her that he wasn’t an asshole? That he was more than the reputation that preceded him?
Shit, what if he hadn’t? He couldn’t get a solid read on her, and she seemed to watch him like he’d grown another head. Was she the right person to reveal himself to? For his half-baked plan to work, at the very least, he needed her tolikehim. To trust him, and towantto help him. If their first interview was an indicator, it would take more than two weeks to earn her trust, and for good reason. She’d been through hell. Largely because of him.
Revealing himself to Brinton wouldn’t work. He pinched the bridge of his nose as the realization sank in. He needed a new plan to come clean. But how?
