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Inhaling deeply through his nose he forced himself to push all thoughts of her being anything other than those two things out of his mind. And that’s when he heard it. He heard her singing through the door. He’d heard her perform on stage live twice at his restaurant, he’d downloaded her music to his phone, but hearing her like this, a cappella after she just got out of the shower was more intimate. More real. More raw.
“If I could I would, I would live, live in the moment, the moment I knew, I knew it would always be you,” she sang and then repeated twice.
He didn’t recognize the song but the lyrics were incredible and the melody was soulful and reminiscent of greats like Rosemary Clooney, Roberta Flack, Patsy Cline and Billie Holiday. That was the music that he’d grown up listening to. His mom would play it when she was cooking or cleaning. When he was a pre-teen he’d been embarrassed to bring his friends home and have “I Fall to Pieces” or “Killing Me Softly” blasting from the kitchen. His sister always loved it though. Maybe that’s why his mom and sister were such big Virginia Valentine fans, because they heard that quality in her voice.
He heard the door open and shut to the guest room and he grabbed his underwear, jeans and long-sleeve Henley. As he walked into the bathroom she’d just vacated he inhaled the tropical island breeze scent of her body wash.
Without even laying eyes on her again his plan to keep her at a distance unraveled like a roll of toilet paper in the hands of a cat. The smell of femininity, the sight of her things scattered around his personal space, and the sound of Ginny singing in the morning had demolished any walls he’d managed to erect. He had no idea how he was going to keep things from getting personal. This felt personal. For the first time in his life this felt like home.
***
Ginny rushed out of the bathroom and quickly jotted down the lyrics that she’d written in her head when she was in the shower so she didn’t forget them. She sang them softly as she did. “If I could I would, I would live, live in the moment, the moment I knew, I knew it would always be you.”
Last night she’d been struck with inspiration when she and Dax shared their moment on the couch. She’d never felt anything like that before. She’d only kissed a total of two people. Her first kiss had been with a drunk guy under the mistletoe at her label’s Christmas party when she was nineteen. She hadn’t even known it was coming, she was standing in a doorway and he walked up and planted one on her. When she reared back he pointed up at the leaves and holly above her head and stumbled away. The second had been staged and it was with Derek St. Vincent. They’d been “caught” smooching at a restaurant.
She and Derek had actually kissed several times since then for the media. On a scale from one to ten she would rate them solid fives. They were fine. Not earthshattering and not horrible.
But last night, when Dax was leaning in, coming closer and closer to her, she felt more in that moment than any of the times she’d actually kissed someone. His lips hadn’t touched hers but somehow she’d felt them. She’d felt the tingle of anticipation spread from her lips, down her neck and race through her body.
As much as she’d wanted to know what it would feel like for him to press his mouth to hers, she also wished that she could freeze time. She wanted time to stand still so she could remain in that exact moment. Right then, if Dax had asked her to marry him, she would have said yes. She would have walked down the aisle. She would have followed him anywhere.
It wasn’t logical. The only way she knew how to describe it was when she’d heard people talk about their soul recognizing its mate.
She was beginning to think that love didn’t make sense. Not that she was in love with Dax. Or at least she didn’t think she was. She didn’t really know. But she knew what she wanted to work on when she got in the studio with Chase. She’d been trying to come up with a theme for her next record. She knew she wanted it to tell a story. A story she hadn’t told before.
Love. Relationships. Heartache. Those were common themes in country music but not ones that she’d written about. She’d sung about those themes, but it was always as an outsider looking in. She hadn’t seen firsthand or experienced any of those things. But with this project she wanted to witness or live them so she could feel the words she sang.
She definitely didn’t have enough life experience to fill an album, but she could talk to people. Research. Ask them what their moment was. The moment they knew. She knew several couples in town and it was a small town, she was sure those couples knew other couples.
Just like that the vision of her album, of her first music video crystalized in her mind like a ship coming into port through dense fog. It appeared hazy in the distance but then came closer and got bigger and clearer until it was docked right in front of her.
Excitement raced through her veins because she knew that for the first time she wouldn’t be shut down by execs that thought she had “good ideas” but wanted to go in a “different direction.” Over the years she’d learned to read between the lines of statements like those. They wanted less artsy and more mainstream. Less creative and more commercial. Mainstream and commercial sold. They were proven commodities. Artsy and creative were not.
She’d known that she’d felt stifled in her label contract and under Shane’s management before now, but what she hadn’t realized was how freeing and liberating it would be to get out from under those things. It was like a hundred pound weight was lifted off her, she felt so light and free.
Grabbing her bra she placed her arms in the loops and clasped it behind her back before stepping first her left foot and then her right into her underwear and pulling them up her legs. When she got them on she realized that she’d left her body lotion in the bathroom and hadn’t put it on in her haste to get the lyrics down. She could skip that step in her morning routine, but her skin tended to get so dry in the winter that if she did chances were she’d suffer for it later.
Without giving it a second thought she opened the bathroom door to retrieve her body lotion and gasped when she saw Dax standing in front of her in nothing but his birthday suit. For some reason, instead of apologizing and shutting the door to give him privacy she stood frozen in place, mouth agape, staring at him in all of his naked glory.
Yesterday, when he’d answered the door wearing only a white towel around his waist, she was speechless at his male perfection. Today, she was speechless, thoughtless and motionless. She couldn’t form a thought to save her life. All she could do was stare.
It was sad that at twenty-two this was the first naked male she’d seen up close and personal. In real life. In 3D. And what a 3D image he was. Now she knew how Emma Stone’s character in Crazy, Stupid, Love had felt when she’d seen Ryan Gosling’s character shirtless. Dax looked like every part of his body had been photoshopped. He was so tall. So masculine. So dominating. From his wide shoulders rounded with muscles, his broad chest, rippling abs, powerful thighs, to his large appendage between his legs that she couldn’t stop looking at and was growing right in front of her.
“Did you forget something?” Dax’s voice snapped her out of her momentary mental freeze tag. “Or did you want to join me?”
Her eyes shot to his, expecting to meet his stare. Instead she saw that his gaze was running up and down her body. That’s when she realized that she herself was pretty close to naked. The only problem was, her body did not look like a work of art. That spurred her into action.
“Oh…sorry. Yes. I mean no.” She shook her head and stepped back. Fumbling slightly over her feet as she grabbed the doorknob to close it as she backed out of the bathroom. “I mean yes I forgot something, no I wasn’t going to join you. Sorry.”
She shut the door so loudly it may have been characterized as a slam and stood staring at the white wood. The room was quiet except for the sound of her labored breathing. She was still trying to come to terms with the perfection that she’d just come face to body with when the door opened again and she jumped and gasped in surprise.
With a calm air of authority and zero modesty or embarrassment at his nude state of undress, Dax casually asked, “Did you say you forgot something?”
Ginny opened her mouth to speak, but at first nothing came out. She tried again and was able to force out, “Lotion. I forgot my lotion.”
Turning to the side he reached across the counter and picked it up then cool as a cucumber (and as large as one too!) he handed it to her.
“Thanks,” she croaked as her fingers brushed against his.
“No problem.” He grinned, the grin that made her insides throw a party and go crazy, then he closed the door.
As she stood, catching her breath she knew for a fact that she was very much out of her league. And she was pretty sure she loved it.
