Dolly bounded past him into the house and over to Jolene. She sniffed at her bag of food and wagged her tail. Chance followed leisurely, studying Jolene as he approached her. For someone who had said she’d be willing to cut a record with a potbellied pig, she was looking mighty unhappy. Apparently he was the pig. That didn’t sit right with him at all.
He was filled up with feelings for her, sexual and otherwise, and she was looking at him like he was a hair in her dinner. This dynamic wasn’t going to work. He couldn’t write under these conditions. Plus, he refused to believe that she despised him. It wasn’t something he could swallow. Just because they hadn’t made it work didn’t mean he wanted her to hate him. Quite the contrary.
So he lazily reached up and put his hands on her shoulders and starting massaging them. “Come on, Jolene, let’s go for a ride.”
She jumped at his touch. Then her eyes narrowed. “What are you doing?”
“Just trying to make the best of an awkward situation. We’ve got work to do. Let’s have some fun with it.”
One strap of her sundress slipped down from his movements and exposed even more of her breast. Lord. That was a beautiful thing right there. When he looked back up, it was obvious she’d seen him staring at her bare flesh.
“I didn’t agree to your terms.” She raised her eyebrow in challenge. “Any more than you agreed to mine. So let’s get this show on the road, Rivers, without the ‘Don Juan goes country’ routine.”
Right. His terms. Naked songwriting. Sex. He’d thrown it out there, and she had shocked him by suggesting they play a couple to the media again. It bothered the hell out of him to think that the only thing chapping her ass about their breakup was that the gossip columns had made it look like he’d cheated on her. Clearly she wanted to save some public face, but he was not feeding the media monster, no matter how much cleavage she taunted and teased him with.
“Like I said. Let’s go for a ride.” Was he stubborn? Yes. Was he going to find a way to get his end of the bargain? Oh, hell, yeah. They were going to bang out this album, quite literally. He was going to tear her up in bed. He was going to destroy her with more orgasms than she’d ever thought possible. He was going to have a negative impact on her ability to walk.
Jolene leaned in so close that for a second he thought she was going to kiss him. His cock hardened in anticipation.
“I’m driving,” she murmured.
Then she left him standing there in kitchen.
When he followed, it occurred to him that he was the one chasing tail.
Damn woman.
Chapter 3
Jolene turned the air-conditioning on high in her truck. Lord, she was hot, and it wasn’t just the humidity. It was Chance and his smoldering looks and bad-ass swagger. Once glance down at her chest and a few flirtatious words and she was panting like Dolly after a round with her tail—just as he had said. Fortunately the ride wasn’t that long, because they weren’t speaking and she was all too aware of his body close to hers in the confines of the cab.
Mostly he amused himself leaning back and talking to Dolly, who kept popping her head up between them. He had all sorts of petting and affection for the dog, and damn, if she wasn’t a little envious. Which was utterly pathetic.
GPS guided them down a long gravel driveway to a cute little cottage with a raised tin roof and a big old front porch with rockers. “Look at how adorable this is,” she said, completely charmed. The cottage was surrounded by beech trees and behind it was a pond. “I love it.”
“It is really nice.” Chance hopped out of the truck and let the dog out. Dolly immediately started running around in circles, randomly picking up sticks in her mouth and tossing them into the air. “Dolly likes it,” he remarked, amused by her antics.
“Dolly likes rabbit poop, so she doesn’t exactly have discerning taste. But in this case, she’s onto something.” It was hot, and there were already mosquitoes buzzing around her face, but that was the reality of summer in the woods. Jolene didn’t mind. It had been a long time since she’d had any sort of peace and quiet.
The last year had been intense. An extensive tour with Chance, their breakup, a stint coaching on a singing show. This was the first slowdown in her schedule in a long time, and she aimed to enjoy it, even with the weird tension between them. Sure, they were supposed to be working, but writing songs here would be a lot easier than back in Nashville.
Chance pulled his guitar and their bags out of the back of the truck. She lifted some sacks of groceries she’d packed and followed him toward the door. She and Elle and their brother, Shane, had grown up in the backwoods of Kentucky. This property reminded her of home, though this cottage was a hell of a lot nicer than her mother’s falling-down farmhouse.
“I thought you said we were roughing it,” Chance said, standing in the doorway, surveying the interior. “This is not exactly hard living.”