Page 8 of Christmas Music
She shrugged. “Nothing at all. Just wondering what you’re thinking about the contest. You got a song ready? Bet you could use one of the songs you’ve got in your back pocket. Save yourself some time and effort.”
I considered that, surprised. Technically, she was right. No one had heard a lot of my stuff and it wasn’t like it had been published anywhere. It was also original material. No one had written it for me, which meant I’d be adhering to the rules.
So why did it feel like it would be cheating?
I glanced across the room again, my eyes going to Connor like he was some sort of magnet, and saw him writing quickly on a napkin, a flush creeping up his neck and onto his cheeks at whatever he was scribbling. He looked... intense. Focused.
He looked like he was already writing the lyrics to the song that would win the contest.
“No,” I said sharply. “I’m going to write something new. When I win the contest, I want to know I did it with a brand new song. Written the way everyone else is writing them.”
Parker shrugged, but I saw her eyes flit to Connor and back, considering. “Everyone else?”
I blew out a frustrated breath. “He’s not the only person here, you know.”
“Oh, I know. I know there are a whole lot of people entering the contest. And I also know that he’s the only one you’ve been watching, ever since you two had your little collision.”
I gave her my best glare, keeping my mouth shut and my thoughts to myself, until she finally relented with a laugh, shaking her head.
“All right then, keep your secret crush. I won’t pry. So you’re going to write your own song. Any idea where you’re going to start?”
Parker had been in a house with me for years, which meant she knew what my process was like. I couldn’t just sit down and write a song. I had to have an idea, first. A theme, or a story. I usually sat with a new song for several days before I had that. It would come to me at the most random time—in the market, or in the shower. I’d figure out the story and then everything would start to fall in place.
I didn’t have anything like that, yet, but that was just fine, because once I had the idea and started the writing...
“I’m going to have to start by finding a studio,” I admitted.
I was going to need a place to practice, where I could record the song and listen back to it to find any flaws. I needed to hear the song to make sure it sounded the way it had in my head. Unfortunately, my parents had dismantled my own studio the moment I moved out, knowing that I’d find a bigger, better one in Nashville and wouldn’t need the one in the garage of my childhood home anymore.
And last time I checked, Arberry didn’t have a studio in town, just waiting for Olivia Johns to come home and write a song in it.
I hadn’t thought about entering the contest, and I didn’t have a plan for where—or how—it would happen. And it wouldn’t have mattered, either, except now that I had the idea of winning the contest in my head...
“Dammit,” I breathed.
I wanted that contest, and right now I was staring at a big old conundrum, because I didn’t have a way to do it. I needed a studio, and didn’t have one. Who did I know that might have something like that laying around? Who would have gone through all the trouble of building a soundproof room and filling it with the material needed to record and play back songs to see how they sounded when someone else was listening to them?
Who did I know that might...
My eyes lit on Connor again, and I felt my stomach flip.
Connor. Connor had been in Nashville for at least a year now, doing the circuit of smaller clubs and live shows. I’d never listened to him play, never gone to one of his shows, but I knew he’d been writing his own music and performing it to some very decent crowds. He had a following. He’d been on the verge of making a jump up to bigger venues, if the rumors were right.
He wrote his own music.
He must have, at some point, had a studio built in that rambling ranch house up on the hill. Surely he had. It only made sense.
No, we’d never been close. He’d come to my rescue when we were kids, showing up right before things got ugly with the group of bullies who had taken a disliking to me, and I’d run, leaving him to deal with the group of boys. I’d never looked back.
But I’d looked at him plenty from there on out. He’d been the hero to my girlish mind, the knight in shining armor who’d come to save me when no one else was there. He’d been taller and brawnier than anyone else I knew, courtesy of his time in the saddle, and I’d thought he was a golden god, all blond locks and bright blue eyes. Chiseled cheekbones, even then, and they’d only gotten broader as we grew up.
I’d never stopped looking.
But as far as I’d been able to tell, he’d never looked at me again. It was like he’d saved me from those guys, decided he didn’t like saving people, and held it against me until the day we stopped going to school together.
Still.
I had things to offer. Experience. A recording contract. If he had a studio and he’d let me use it, I had ways I could pay him back. Besides, I’d only need it for a week, if that. We could manage to get along for a week.
