Jeff sighed. “I swear to God. We’re not only going to be cockblocked by every human in your family, we’re also going to be conversation-blocked by my damn cell phone. I really do have to take this, though.” The display said it was the contractor.
He should probably get up. If he didn’t, there was every chance Carter could overhear, and he’d have questions.
But Carter was comfortable, and Jeff didn’twantto move. He’d just said he trusted Jeff.
Jeff answered. “Jeff Pine.”
It was George. From the tone of his voice, Jeff knew it was bad. “Hey, Jeff. I’ve got the electrician on the line for you. Do you have a minute?”
“Yeah,” he said, but it barely made a sound. He coughed and repeated, “Yeah, of course.”
The electrician didn’t beat around the bush, and he didn’t leave room for interpretation. He barely left space for Jeff to get a word in edgewise, more thanyes,no, andas soon as possible.
It wasn’t until he hung up that he felt the bottom falling out of his stomach, the disappointment squeezing his chest. That was it. Their best chance at getting out from this label had just gone up in smoke.
At least the cottage itself hadn’t burned down yet, which according to the electrician’s assessment of the existent wiring was an ongoing possibility.
Jeff set the phone on the arm of the couch and rubbed his hands over his eyes, trying to tamp down on his rising panic. How was he going to tell the band? There was no way they’d be able to use the cottage for songwriting, not for at least three weeks. That left them very little time to get anything recorded, and that was assuming the wiring job went as scheduled.
Fuck.Fuck.
Carter sat up. “Jeff?”
Jeff made a sound of pure frustration. Fuck it. It didn’t matter if Carter found out now. The whole thing was a crabfuck. “How much of that did you hear?”
A pause. After a second Carter said, “Pretty much all of it? You have your volume turned up pretty high.”
Jeff probably needed to upgrade the hearing protection he used at concerts. “Fuck.”
Carter cleared his throat, and Jeff finally peeled his hands away from his face. Carter looked pensive. “Uh, I guess… I was wondering…. Wouldn’t your condo building handle something like this?”
Finally Jeff laughed. There wasn’t anything else to do. “Yeah, they would if I still owned it.”
Carter’s mouth dropped open. “You sold your condo?” He had a lot of face, and ordinarily Jeff would’ve enjoyed watching confusion and realization wage a battle over the real estate. “So what wiring problem was he talking about?”
Fuck it.“It’s probably easier if I just show you.”
Chapter Twenty
“YOU BOUGHTa house,” Carter said twenty minutes later as he stared out the front window of the truck. The contractors had left for the day; there wasn’t anything more they could do until the electrical work was finished.
“I bought a house,” Jeff confirmed. “I mean, technically I think it might be a cottage, but it’s supposed to be livable year-round.”
Carter was still staring at it. “That’s… a lot of house.”
“Four bedroom, three bath,” Jeff confirmed. “And a dock. And a huge kitchen, and a great room. And a studio. Well. Supposedly.”
“And a huge garage,” Carter pointed out. He sounded shell-shocked.
Jeff nodded along. “You should see the boathouse.”
Now Carter laughed and covered his face with one hand. “The boathouse,” he said. “Of course. So, what’s the deal with the wiring?”
An elated whooping scream filtered up through the truck’s open windows. A tremendous splash followed. “Apparently the house has some kind of shoddy plastic-coated wiring that’s liable to go up in flames at any moment. Which is a problem because we need to record an album in three weeks so Spin Cycle will buy out our contract, and we can’t do it anywhere Big Moose will find out or be able to claim they invested in it.”
For a moment Carter just silently opened and closed his mouth. Then he said, “You sold your apartment to buy a secret cottage to record an album in and it didn’t alreadyhavea studio?”
“I sold my apartment and bought a cottage forus,” Jeff said before his brain could tell his mouth that was a bad idea. “Um. I realize that under ideal circumstances that would be something we’d talked about and discussed what we wanted beforehand, and then we’d have gone looking together, but we all kind of signed an NDA, because if the label finds out we’re trying to screw them over, the other label could get sued. Among other problems.”
