Sing Your Pleasure

Clicking off the call and tossing the phone on the bed, Charlene made a hasty retreat out of the room hoping she really could handle Akil, the superproducer with his manic mood swings, on her own.

“Do you need a personal wake-up call, Ms. Quinn?” was the first thing Akil said to her.

A hot retort simmered at the back of her throat just itching to be released. However, she was late. And she’d anticipated his reaction all the way down the steps and the long foyer that took her to the west end of the house where the studio was located. He had reason to be angry, she knew, so she’d suck up her own attitude at his tart words and take it. “I apologize. I was on a call and—”

He held up a hand to halt her words. “You will learn in this industry that time is money. And it’s usually somebody else’s money. So make this the last late appearance and we’ll remain on a good note.”

What? Had they ever been on a good note?

Charlene only shook her head, bypassed the live room and headed straight for the isolation booth. She wasn’t sure what song they were working on this morning but it didn’t matter, she’d read over the song sheets so many times she probably knew all of them by heart. Stepping inside the booth, she noted she was alone today. The music tracks had apparently already been laid for whatever they were working on.

“Since you were wasting your voice talking on the phone, let’s go through some warm-ups,” Akil said through the speakers in the room.

Casting a quick glance toward the live room, she tried not to frown or show that he was getting on her nerves. A fact that only aggravated the new conflict roiling through her. Despite all his negative traits she thought Akil Hutton was attractive. There, she’d admitted it to herself finally. Even now she found herself honing in on the dark tint of his skin, the rich brown color of his eyes. Eyes that held her captive each time she dared look at them.

“You do know about vocal exercises, I presume.”

She did. She taught them to her students every day. Taking a deep breath, she vowed to bite her traitorous tongue and squelch what she hoped was a minor attraction—or temporary bout of insanity.

She simply nodded in his direction, attempted a stiff smile, then straightened her posture. Steady and sure of herself, she began to breathe. Slowly she inhaled and exhaled using her diaphragm, making sure she wasn’t forcing any air. This was a common error with novice singers, forcing their voice by breathing incorrectly. An experienced singer did not need to force their voice to produce a good strong sound; that caused too much pressure against the cords and could damage the voice permanently.

She was in full work mood and nothing, not even the fine temperamental producer, was going to stop her.

She is perfect, Akil thought with alarm.

A perfectly trained singer, he amended but still didn’t feel that was quite adequate.

Even now as he watched her he felt there was something else—something more to her that seemed to touch him. That touch was both alarming and unwanted, new and familiar in a way that again scared him. Akil wasn’t afraid of anything. He’d grown up on the drug-infested streets of east Baltimore and didn’t flinch at the sight or thought of death. How could he when it was an everyday possibility where he’d lived? Those streets had made him the man he was today—the one who wasn’t afraid to take risks, to reach for what he wanted then hold on tight when he got it. Nothing tripped him up, nothing made him think twice about his goals, his aspirations. For as long as he could remember it had been that way, for better or for worse.

Until now.

Until Charlene.

He had realized that the moment she began to sing yesterday. She’d rehearsed the song, that was the first thing that surprised him. For a woman who had buried herself in a school, surrounded herself with aspiring singers but hadn’t chased the dream for herself, she was surprisingly professional and on cue.

She’d known the exact pitches to hit, even though this was her first time singing the song with music. Normally he had to rehearse a song with an artist for at least a day before they could begin recording anything, but at midnight last night he and Jason were remixing her voice over the music, blending the two together until they almost had a perfect recording.