Page 38 of Captivated By You
“Also, before you walk away and re-think everything that happened here this morning, I want you to know I don’t regret a single second of it. Best damn morning and breakfast of my life, Claudia, and I’m not shitting you. You okay with everything?”
“Yeah.” She nodded, nibbled on her bottom lip and grinned. “I don’t regret it either.”
“Good.” I kissed her again and stepped back. Hands on my hips, I kept my eyes glued to her until she moved around me, left the kitchen and disappeared around a corner at the top of the stairs.
Once she was gone, I cleaned myself up in the downstairs bathroom and headed to the music room.
I was playing at the keyboard when she arrived, chords and melody that made no sense and weren’t necessarily a song, but sitting on the bench, keys beneath my hand was almost as calming as having the strings beneath my fingers. Music had been bled into me, my mom a local bar country singer. On my eighth birthday, she handed me my first guitar and sat with me for hours, teaching me how to play basic chords and spin them into music.
She was talented, and never too hurried to listen to me play or teach me something new. She might have quit her bar gig when Sophie was born, choosing instead to only teach music at the high school and be home with us at nights, shuffling us wherever we needed to go, but she had more talent in her fingers and in her soul than I held in mine.
“Come here.” I gestured to the bench and scooted down so Claudia had room to sit next to me.
“You’re not playing from sheet music.”
“Nah.” I shook my head, ran a hand through my hair. She made me so damn nervous. Excited. It was hard to stay still around her. “I don’t play off sheet music.”
“Never?” Two brows arched as she gaped at me. “You just make it up?”
I pressed a basic E chord and messed around for a second, fingers playing nothing but the keys of chords and a pointless rhythm. Her eyes bounced from mine to my hands, to the keys and my bare foot on the pedal beneath. “Mom taught me on the guitar with chords, but I picked up the piano later the same way. Can I trust you not to spill my deep, dark, secret?”
She gave me a look and grinned. “Yeah? What is it?”
“I can’t read music for the life of me.”
“What? But you write your own songs.” Her brow furrowed and she pressed a high C note. The shrill highness contrasted with the deep notes from my left hand. “Don’t you?”
“Most. Not all.” Like some musicians and entertainers, I wasn’t embarrassed or ashamed I had songwriters. I did what I could but when albums were due and you were touring thirty-five cities in forty-one days, it didn’t leave a lot of time to create something new. My band and I were too concerned about getting sleep and not losing our voices.
I flattened a scrap of paper I’d wrote on earlier that morning. Later, I’d fix it and adjust the lyrics but for now, it was filled with scratches of words with letters above some of them, showing the chords.
“This is how I write.”
She scowled at it, ran her fingers atop the folding and already bent paper. “It looks like a mess.”
“It is. It won’t be when it’s done.”
“Does it have a title?”
I dropped one hand from the keyboard and slid my hand to her back. I’d touched her frequently in the last couple of weeks but after this morning, it meant more. Every curve of her back, every bump along her spine burned the tips of my fingers until I was at her nape, guiding her toward me.
“Captivated by You,” I whispered the title, still a working one, and the label could scrap it but I’d fight tooth and nail for them not to change a damn thing I had so far, and would until it was perfect. Her eyes widened, pupils dilated as I continued pulling her closer until our lips brushed. “For you.”
“Me?”
I nodded. “You, sweetheart.”
“Wow,” fell from her lips like a breath and her eyes flickered to the paper before returning to mine. I was still holding her close, wanting her exactly where she was because damn it, she just fit.
I pressed my lips against hers again, mumbling an affirmative, but needing to taste her more than I needed to speak. Opening my mouth, I flicked my tongue along her lips and jumped as my phone startled me, ringing on top of the keyboard.
“Ignore it,” I groaned, already knowing it was Anne by the ringtone.
Fucking hell. It was like she knew I was finally getting somewhere. With my music and my girl, thinking I had exactly everything I wanted in my life, right there, in my arms and in front of me, of course that was when Anne would call. Cock-blocker extraordinaire.
The phone stopped, only to start the obnoxious ringtone all over again, a series of alarm bells. I’d chosen the most annoying tone for Anne because while she rocked at her job and I respected her a hundred and twenty percent, she still bugged the crap out of me.
If she knew, she’d probably cut off my balls.
