They both stopped in the hallway and he stepped forward, trapping her against the wall. A thrill raced down her spine as goosebumps broke out on her arms. She loved the brief moments when he invaded her personal space since most of the time he kept a professional distance. He was so tall and muscular and whenever he was this close to her she grew overwhelmed with arousal at his sheer mass.
“Do you know how hard it is for me not to kiss you right now?” He glanced down at his pants. “Literally.”
Her head fell back against the wall and she laughed as her phone buzzed. Wanting to ignore it but knowing she couldn’t, she checked it and saw that it was Chase asking her ETA. She’d sent him a text letting him know that she was running a few minutes late, but a few minutes had turned into thirty as they tried to get everyone out the door.
“I’ve got to go in.” Feeling bold and loving the fact that she could, she once again rose up on her tiptoes but this time she pressed a kiss to his cheek. When she lowered down she motioned to his groin area and repeated what he’d told her in the kitchen yesterday morning. “Hold that thought.”
A large grin spread on his face and she was happy that she was the one that put it there. She giggled and turned to head into the studio. As she made her way down the corridor she felt like she was floating. She felt inspired. She felt alive. She hadn’t slept at all but she felt invigorated.
After her first time, they’d lain together and talked for hours. Just like they had the first night they’d spent together, except this time they were both naked. Around five a.m. the conversation turned a little dirty when he asked her if she ever fantasized about him. She’d told him one fantasy about him in the shower and that got things rolling on take two.
Dax started kissing her again and this time he kissed her everywhere, starting with her neck but moving all the way down to her pinky toes. He even flipped her over and kissed her calves, the back of her thighs, her butt cheeks and up her spine. Between kisses he whispered all the things he’d fantasized about doing to her and she’d almost climaxed before he’d even touched her between her legs. But when his hand finally did make it there, the second his fingers grazed her sex she’d exploded. Then he’d taken his time making love to her again.
Just like the first time, when they’d finished he apologized for their surroundings and the fact that they had to be quiet. But she told him she wouldn’t change a thing, and that was the truth. It had been special and perfect and it was because of him.
Just before she reached the door she got a text and she looked down expecting it to be from Chase again, but instead it was from Dax.
It read: I miss you already.
Emotion that she didn’t want to think too much about, since this wasn’t a permanent, thing swelled in her chest. She was still walking on cloud nine as she pushed open the door, still looking at four words that had just made the day she couldn’t have imagined get better, better. “Sorry I’m late.”
When she heard Krista’s voice she lifted her head and saw that Chase was playing their interview on the computer. Her first thought was that it was sweet that he was watching his wife while he waited for her, then out of the corner of her eye she saw that there were other people in the room and she thought he must be showing them.
She turned her head and what she saw caused her to stumble, yes, stumble backwards.
“Hi, I’m sorry if we scared you. I’m Karina and this is Ryan.” Karina Black stood and introduced herself and her husband.
Ginny had only been starstruck one other time in her life. She was in the dressing room minutes away from her first Opry performance when her manager had rushed in and said that someone wanted to meet her. She’d actually been a little annoyed at first because she was nervous about the show and she wanted to use the time she had before going on stage to focus and calm down. But all that irritation flew out the window when the one and only Miss Dolly Parton walked in. That time she didn’t stumble backwards, though. Nope. She’d already been sitting, but when she stood and tried to walk over to the superstar she’d tripped and fallen forward.
Karina and Ryan both exchanged concerned looks when she opened her mouth once more to speak and again nothing came out.
Chase, who knew that she could actually speak, stood and stepped towards her. “Are you okay?”
Hearing his voice snapped her out of her shock. She shook her head no, but thankfully said, “Yes. I’m fine. I was just…Hi, I’m Ginny.” She held up her hand in a small wave. “Sorry, about that. I’m just…I’m a huge fan.”
“Really?” Karina’s eyes widened.
Ginny had no clue why that would be surprising. “Yes. Huge, huge fan.”
“Well, it’s mutual.” Karina smiled brightly. “I hope you don’t mind that I crashed your session, it’s just when Chase sent me your song, I fell in love with it and I wanted to tell you in person how amazing it is and that it’s yours.”
“Really?” Now it was Ginny’s turn to be surprised.
“Yep. Sometimes things can get lost in translation and I wanted you to hear it straight from me.”
“Thank you so much!” Ginny couldn’t believe that this was actually happening. Karina Black had flown to Illinois just to tell her in person that she could have her song, and that she loved it…now she was sure her day really couldn’t get any better.
“And I also wanted to ask, in person, if you might want to collab with me sometime.”
No. She’d been wrong. Her day apparently could get better.
“Not on this song,” Karina rushed to clarify. “That one is all you, girl. But maybe we could work on something together for your album or if you don’t want to do it now, I’m not planning on releasing till next year, we could do it then.”
“You want to work with me?” Ginny couldn’t help the tremor in her voice, but she honestly couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“Yeah.” Karina’s brow furrowed. “I’ve wanted to work with you for years, ever since I heard ‘Crossing Hearts.’”
“That was on my second album!” Ginny blurted out. She hadn’t meant to say that out loud, but her inner thoughts tended to become outer ones when she was overwhelmed.
“I know.” Karina nodded slowly. “I’ve had Bernie contact Shane several times and we always got the same answer. ‘No.’”
Ginny had known in her heart she was making the right decision firing Shane, but this cemented that fact. She was so angry with herself for ever letting him have any control of her life. Who knew what else he’d done behind her back. Anger and frustration were coming to the surface, but she couldn’t go there right now.
Right now she needed to make sure, that Karina knew Shane’s response was not coming from her. “I never knew that you contacted me. In fact, I asked Shane to reach out to you, I’ve wanted to collaborate with you…since forever…but he said…” Her voice trailed off when she realized that she couldn’t exactly repeat what Shane had said.
“Let me guess.” Karina grinned as she held up her hand and started listing things on her fingers. “He said I was a diva. That I was impossible to work with. That I chewed people up and spit them out. That he’d never worked with someone as impossible and difficult as me?”
Wow. She nailed it. “Yes. That’s…almost verbatim.”
“He’s been saying all that to anyone who would listen since I broke up with him.”
“You broke up with him?” She had no idea that Shane and Karina had ever been an item. Before Karina and Ryan had gotten together, Ginny remembered that she’d dated the actor Kyle Austen Reed, but she’d never heard anything about her and Shane dating.
“Yep. About a hundred years ago. I was young and just starting out. He was my touring manager. When I realized I was really just with him for convenience I broke things off. I’d had every intention of keeping our professional relationship intact, but he made it impossible. He thinks I don’t know how he talks about me because I’ve never made it an issue, but this is a small community
and I hear everything.”
Ginny wondered what he was saying about her.
“But enough about him. Let’s talk about you and your project. Chase was just showing us clips of him and Krista and he said that you are interviewing other couples as well to weave into your visual album. That is brilliant.”
“Thank you so much!” Ginny was so happy that Karina thought it was a good idea.
“It’s reminds me of the end of When Harry Met Sally.”
Ginny shook her head. “I’ve never seen it.”
“You haven’t?” Karina really looked surprised now. “Billy Crystal? Meg Ryan? Ringing any bells?”
“No. I don’t think I have.”
“Wow. That makes me feel old.” Karina laughed and glanced up at Ryan who was looking at her like the sun rose and set on her. When she looked back at Ginny she gestured with her hands up. “But in my defense, my friend Amanda always made us watch cheesy eighties movies whenever we spent the night at her house. Anyway, at the end there are all these clips of people telling how they met and got married. It reminds me of when you ask everyone what love is.”
Ginny had been asking all the couples how they met. When the moment was that they knew their person was the one. And what love meant to them.
“You have to watch it,” Karina insisted.
“I will,” Ginny nodded enthusiastically.
She couldn’t believe that Karina Black just gave her a movie recommendation. Dolly had told her that she had the voice of an angel and that she loved her dress. Then she’d laughed, slapped her knee and said, not that anyone should take fashion advice from her since her style was a mixture of Mother Goose, Cinderella and a streetwalker. At the time, it had been the best moment of her life. But now that she’d met Dax, it was tied for second with this moment with Karina. She felt so incredibly blessed that she’d met both of her idols and they’d both been so down to earth and amazing.
“Annnd, if you’re still looking for couples to talk to, Ryan and I don’t have to leave to catch our flight for an hour. We’d love to.”
“Are you serious?” If anyone had ever died from happiness, Ginny would be scared for her own life. Every time she thought that things couldn’t get any better, they did.
“Yes.” Karina leaned against Ryan and he wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her tightly against him. “I think it’s time the world knows that when we met and fell in love you had no idea who I was.”
“You are never going to let me live that down are you?” Ryan smiled but shook his head.
“No. I think it’s hilarious.” Karina winked at him.
“Wait, you didn’t know who she was?” Ginny was sure that she’d heard her wrong.
“It wasn’t like that,” Ryan explained. “I knew who Karina Black was, I just didn’t know she was Karina Black.”
Karina was smiling from ear to ear, clearly enjoying this.
“Oh, so you fell in love with her before you saw her in person?” Ginny tried to clarify.
“Oh, no. We met face to face and his grandmother introduced us.”
“She introduced you as Karina Blackstone,” Ryan defended.
“Right. I see how that was confusing,” Karina laughed.
Ryan sighed. “I had just moved to a small town in Northern California to help my grandmother run her café. I was not expecting to meet a pop star.”
Karina leaned her head against Ryan’s chest. “It was actually a good thing. Ryan liked me for me. He just saw Karina Blackstone. Not Karina Black.”
Ginny knew exactly what Karina meant. Even though Dax knew who she was, he never treated her like a celebrity. When he looked at her, she could tell he saw her. The real her. The one that other people didn’t ever bother to get to know.
Chapter 16
“I can’t believe I met Ryan Perkins, Karina Black, and Virginia Valentine.” Dax’s mom leaned over and whispered in his ear as they took their seats at a table in the back corner of his restaurant for dinner.
He knew she’d been dying to say that to him since he and Ginny had walked into The Plate. At least she’d waited until Ginny was being seated across from her and most likely out of hearing range before she’d broken down.
Today, when Karina and Ryan had left the studio, his mom and sister had happened to pop in before going over to the spa after their yoga class. Needless to say his mom and Heather had lost their shit. Both Karina and Ryan had handled the whole thing like the pros they were. They’d posed for pictures, signed his mom’s hat and even recorded the outgoing message on his mom’s cell phone for her. He’d had a moment of embarrassment at the beginning of the interaction over his mom’s behavior, but then he realized that this moment was making his mom happy and she deserved happy. He loved her so much and seeing how much it meant to her, there was no way he could be anything but happy for her.
“I can’t believe I met Karina Black today.” Ginny said as soon as she sat down.
“I was just saying the same thing to Dax!” His mom exclaimed. “Except I included Virginia Valentine, too, of course.”
A light shade of pink rose up Ginny’s cheeks. “I don’t think I’ll ever think of myself like that. Like them.”
“And that’s why you’ll always be a star. Because you don’t think of yourself like that.” His mom reached across the table and squeezed Ginny’s hand.
“So what about you guys?” Ginny looked between Heather and his mom. “How was your day? Did you have fun at yoga? At the spa?”
His mom might think that Ginny’s modest opinion of herself was the reason that she was a star, but Dax knew that wasn’t the reason. The reason she was so special was because after spending a day in a recording studio with Chase Malone and meeting one of her idols, she still directed the conversation to his mom and sister and asked them about their day. And the kicker was, she really cared about their answer, she wasn’t just making small talk. That was what made her a star in his book. Her selflessness. Her generosity. Her sweet heart.
His mom took her inquiry as an opening to dive into a story about her masseuse and his “magic hands” that Dax would really rather not have heard. He sent his sister a silent SOS, but it didn’t help. His distress signal only caused Heather to egg her on more.
Deciding to tune out the descriptive conversation, he leaned back in his chair and watched the three women talk and laugh and his heart felt full. His entire world was sitting at this table and it felt right. It was in that moment that he knew that Ginny wasn’t just a girl that he’d been obsessing over and couldn’t get out of his mind. And after being with her last night, he knew that she wasn’t something that he could get out of his system. He knew now that all being intimate with her had done was make him want her more. He knew now that he would never get enough of her.
She wasn’t just the not-one-night-stand that got away. She was the one. She was it. He didn’t just care about her, he loved her. He was in love with her.
As the realization hit him, he had to stop himself from announcing it out loud. He wanted to tell Ginny, to tell everyone, even his nosy mom and sister, how he felt. But he couldn’t.
In less than two weeks she was leaving to go back to Nashville. Last night she’d made a point of telling him that she was young. She wasn’t looking for anything serious. She didn’t want to walk down the aisle.
So where the hell did that leave them?
He could ask her if she wanted to date casually. He could propose a long distance, non-exclusive relationship where he’d fly to Tennessee to see her when he had time and maybe vice versa when she could fit it in her schedule.
She might be willing to give that a try, but did he really think he could handle that? Could he handle turning on his computer, or walking into a grocery store and seeing photos of her at an event or on a “date” with the Derek St. Vincents of the world? Sure, she might be “breaking up” with him officially in a few days, but then what? Chances were another Hollywood type would step in and take his place.
He was saved from spiraling further into his world of unknowns when Nina, one of The Plate’s best waitresses, approached the table and took their orders. He wanted to say that he’d just stick with water. He honestly had zero appetite, but that would raise red flags with his mom and Dax wanted to fly below her radar for the remainder of her stay. It wouldn’t be easy since she was watching him like a hawk. He knew even as he ordered his medium-rare hamburger she was watching his every move from her peripheral vision.
When Nina left, his mom commented on how pretty she was and that sparked the conversation to turn to all three of the blonde and blue-eyed women confessing they’d always wished they had olive skin and dark hair like Nina. Then the conversation quickly circled back to Karina, who was Native American and they were off to the races recounting each of their shocks when they’d first laid eyes on her.
He studied Ginny as she animatedly talked about how she’d apparently stumbled backwards and had not been able to speak when she’d seen Karina. She talked with her hands a lot and he loved watching her. Her face was so expressive. She was so open. So sincere. So real.
Last night when they’d made love, he’d felt so connected to her. It was more than just their bodies that had joined together. Their souls had fused into one. After last night he understood what people talked about when they said they didn’t know where they stopped and their partner began.
What had happened between them was more than sex. He knew she must have felt it too, he’d seen it in her eyes. She wore her heart on her sleeve, and he didn’t need his mom to point out how Ginny looked at him—although that hadn’t stopped her from pointing it out at least a dozen times since she’d arrived.
Ginny had to know that what they had wasn’t casual. It was serious. It was special. It was what some people lived their entire lives and never had.
But then again, how would she know that? She hadn’t ever had a real boyfriend. And he was her first. He knew that she was it because he’d dipped his pen in enough ink to write War and Peace. He’d been with more than enough women to know that what he and Ginny had was as rare and precious as the Hope Diamond. But she didn’t. And that was just one more reason that they wouldn’t work.
All He Feels - Dax & Ginny (Crossroads Book 11) Page 15
