“I can handle anything.” Jolene dropped his hand and stepped up onstage in front of the mike.
He chuckled and took the guitar being held out to him. Strap over his head, he fiddled with the instrument for a minute, getting the feel of it in his hands. He’d been playing since he was three years old, when his guitar had been bigger than he was. Playing was the way he expressed himself the best, and he felt like he had a lot to say tonight.
—
Jolene was torn between enjoying herself and feeling damn anxious over the way Chance was behaving. She had always thought she could predict him only up to a certain point. He was impulsive, he was moody, he was prone to angry outbursts. It had irritated her to no end that he could switch emotions on a dime for no reason whatsoever and she was powerless to stop it. She could usually see it coming, though. And she was sure something was about to go down with him tonight. He was in a weird mood.
But he didn’t seem angry. In fact, he seemed the exact opposite. It wasn’t like him to be willing to step into public without a prearranged reason, and it definitely wasn’t like him to be willing to jump up onstage and play impromptu. The song he’d chosen was sexy as hell, too, and one that always made her think about his strong, naked chest behind his guitar, his eyes boring into her like he wanted to devour every last inch of her. Twice.
He was looking at her that way now. Plus, he’d kissed her. In full view of seventy-five people.
“Hello, everyone,” she said, her voice low. It was a pleasant switch to be in such a small venue. She could make eye contact with the majority of the people in the room. “Thanks for letting us come up onstage tonight. Chance and I are working on a new album, and we needed a break from writing, so this is perfect.”
She glanced over at Chance and gave him a nod. He started strumming his guitar, giving her a wink in return.
As usual, all of her worries, her tentativeness, disappeared when she opened her mouth and sang. She loved to massage the words, to coax the emotion from the melody, to tell the story of the lyrics to her audience. One of the few talents she possessed in spades was the ability to connect with a roomful of people, to make them feel something when they listened. Her voice was high and sweet, the only thing about her that she felt her father had truly admired. He had always told her she had a church voice. Ironic, given that he would sit through a Sunday service after knocking his wife around—but the image of purity, of holiness, had been more important to him than the actual practice of Christian values.
In a way, Jolene did feel spiritual when she sang. She brought joy to her fans, and that meant something to her.
As she sang, shifting her gaze from the audience to Chance and back, she realized for the first time that if everything went away, all the money, all the fame, all the awards, she’d still have this—her voice. Some of the tension and anxiety about failure melted away. It was all good. Everything was good. She’d made peace with Chance and peace with her career, no matter what happened with either of them.
Elle had always told her she was terrible at living in the moment, but up on the small Bluebird stage, the room dim, the tables dark and sticky, she was enjoying the hell out of it.
“Whiskey Kiss” was a song about sex, a song about falling in love.
She looked over at Chance again, standing there, owning that guitar that wasn’t his, commanding the music. He was so goddamn sexy. She wanted him to grab her and take her behind the bar and bang her like a screen door on a porch in Missouri during a tornado.
To judge by the look on his face, he was feeling the same way. She didn’t want to drive back to the cabin. She wanted to check in to a suite two minutes up the road and have him tear her up until she was exhausted and hungry and unable to walk straight.
It had always amazed her that her mind could race around different topics while she sang, without losing track of the lyrics or her pitch. But this song was intrinsically sexual, and given what she was feeling, she knew it was coming across to the room. When she sang the last note and let it hang in the air, the bar was dead silent for a good twenty seconds.
Then the applause erupted, with a few catcalls for good measure.
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank y’all so much. We’re so happy to be here tonight. It’s like coming home, to be singing up here on this stage.”
The emcee, whose name she hadn’t caught, jumped up next to her. “Care to do one more?”