Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Two weeks later, early Monday morning, Brinton stretched her calves and wiggled her toes inside her Doc Martens. She felt like she’d cheated the system. Let the extra five inches of legroom tell it, she had.
Jamie’s team had sprung for a first-class flight to his hometown of Iris, Tennessee, which she probably should have turned down.
Brinton figured they wanted to buy her loyalty.
She wouldn’t compromise her journalistic integrity.
But dammit, she wasn’t passing up toasty hand towels and imported rosemary cashews served on a gold-plated dish.
Still, she was uneasy being so far outside her comfort zone—nearly nine hundred miles, to be exact. She’d never done an extended sit-down like this with a celebrity. Usually, she got her quotes from a phone interview. Efficient but impersonal. This article, conversely, was extremely personal.
She had a lot to prove; her article needed to be masterful or she was out of a job. Who would she be then?
Fishing out her phone from the seat-back pocket, Brinton connected to Wi-Fi and texted Shay.
Brinton: What if Jamie is worse than I already know he is? What if I hate Tennessee?
She’d never been to Tennessee, but according to Forbes, Iris was America’s Best City to Move To.
Over the years, the Nashville suburb had become a bastion for country music royalty and Hollywood types hankering for farmland and small-town hospitality.
Still, Brinton couldn’t shake the creeping fear that Iris still employed the Brown Paper Bag Test. Southern hospitality didn’t extend to people who looked like her.
And she’d be trapped there for fourteen grueling days.
Thankfully, Shay responded immediately.
Shay: Girl, you’ll live. If you get bored, play Tic-Tac-Toe on his abs.
Brinton unleashed an unwieldy snort. Her seatmate, who looked like a cross between a russet potato and cranky seal, glared at her over The New York Times business section. She ignored him.
Brinton: You have to stop sending me screenshots. It’s getting creepy, even for you.
Shay: Be for real. I’m helping you prepare. tbh, you should be paying me
Over the past two weeks, all Brinton had done was prepare. She was desperate to become fluent in all things Jamie Crawford Jr. Abs excluded.
His social media feed was a collage of mostly thirst traps, where the sun lapped bare shoulders as he wistfully strummed his acoustic guitar.
In a few, he slung his arm around a shimmering blonde or dazzling brunette at a bar or football game.
The pictures elicited a twinge of something Brinton refused to call jealousy but was equally uncomfortable.
Was he happy with those women? Why did she care?
Brinton had also read endless articles comparing Jamie to his father.
She was insecure about her lack of accomplishments, but she’d excommunicate herself if her mother also sold a hundred million albums, like Jamie’s father.
How did Jamie handle that? She scoffed. It probably didn’t bother him at all.
Like his tan, his life was 24-karat golden.
As thin clouds tangled in the atmosphere outside her window, Brinton thought of journalist Joan Didion’s iconic 1968 essay about interviewing a drugged-out Jim Morrison and his bandmates in Hollywood.
Didion told the truth, revealing that even cultural icons could be vapid assholes.
Would Jamie treat her that way? Possibly.
He embarrassed her on that Grammys stage, which she was still pissed about.
Would his antics amount to almost setting his own crotch on fire, like Morrison had?
The jury was still out. Therefore, she refused to be caught with her pants down again.
Figuratively, obviously.
A flight attendant squawked over the intercom, and Brinton swallowed hard. They were making their descent into the Nashville area.
At the end of the long Arrivals hallway, Brinton saw him: an older white man, she guessed in his 60s, with broad shoulders and a smile that begged to know your life story. He held an iPad with her name typed on the screen.
When they met eyes, he rushed over, excitedly extending his bear claw of a palm. “The name’s Michael Dooley. Glad to know you, Miss Brinton. I’ll be your driver during your time at Crawford Ranch.”
Her mother had given her a comfortable life in New York City, but they were miles from the kind of wealthy where she didn’t take the subway every day.
Now that she thought about it, her frame of reference for that kind of wealthy was Joe, Princess Mia’s lovably gruff chauffeur-turned-confidant from The Princess Diaries.
However, in his black cowboy boots and matching hat, grinning amid the airport melee, Michael more closely resembled a rancher who had made a wrong turn on his way to hand-deliver a calf.
He took her suitcase, smiling wider than Brinton thought humanly possible. “Welcome to Nashville.”
Forty-five minutes later, the nondescript highway fell away to reveal lush, rolling green hills of the town of Iris. Brinton suctioned herself to the window as the storybook city center blurred by.
The wide streets were an unexpected patchwork of architecture dating back to the early 1800s.
Victorian structures with inviting round towers flanked quaint storefronts—their flat facades holdovers from the Greek and Gothic Revival–favored palates of the Antebellum South—painted in cheery shades of blue, green, and white.
Shops boasted wholesome names like Sweet B’s Bakery and Miller’s Hardware. Lou Lou’s, a ’50s-inspired diner bathed in orange neon light, advertised homemade strawberry pie; $1-a-slice was scrawled in flourished cursive on its large bay windows.
An all-brick Baptist church with a steeple that pierced the cloudless blue sky presided over the town square.
Iris was like a living soundstage for a ’90s coming-of-age TV drama about a painfully aloof teenage boy and a creek, complete with astonishingly attractive locals in T-shirts and cut-offs, milling casually down pin oak–lined sidewalks.
Soon, the SUV idled before an imposing brick-and-iron gate emblazoned with an intricate crest that formed the letters CR. Brinton’s heart faltered, but there was no turning back. The gates opened, and the SUV slowly crunched down the gravel driveway.
“Figured you’d wanna take in the view,” Michael said. “Heck, I’ve been with the Crawfords for thirty years, and it never gets old.”
She nodded at him, aiming to appear nonchalant, then gasped as the rural wonderland unfolded from every angle.
They carved around the first turn, approaching the far edge of a shimmering lake, complete with an expensive-looking dock and a pair of gleaming white pontoon boats; wispy, pea tendril–green fields and shady trees; a horse stable; a pristine Padel ball court; and finally, the white stone–faced, two-story home.
On either side, the main house was flanked by what looked like a smaller guest house and another structure.
Probably a garage packed with rows of foreign cars, or a secret lair typical of the super-wealthy.
The SUV grounded to a stop in front of the main house. Before Brinton could protest, Michael opened her door and outstretched his hand to help her down.
“Oh—I can get my own door,” she squeaked, more nervous than she expected.
He beamed up at her. “I know it, but that’s not how we do things ’round here.”
This would take some getting used to. Brinton half smirked as he deployed a roaring chuckle. “You’re welcome.”
The second her combat boots hit the glittering pavement, the door to the main house swung open.
Sammi, the brunette on Jamie’s team at the Grammys, fluttered over to the SUV, a vision in yellow and sky-high cork platform heels, glossy, expensive-looking waves fanning around her face.
As Jamie’s publicist, she had arranged Brinton’s itinerary, and they spoke almost every day leading up to her arrival.
“Good to see you again,” Brinton said, eyes wide and genuinely transfixed by her beauty. She couldn’t do too much if she tried. That was rare in a world obsessed with filters and fillers. “Thank you for setting this all up.” She outstretched her hand, but Sammi immediately slapped it away.
“Not how we do things ’round here,” she said through snow-white teeth. She wrapped Brinton in a tight hug that left her unsteady.
This was a lot. This was also day one. Brinton tried not to bristle as her voice jumped two octaves. “Erm—I’m not really a hugger.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll fix that,” Sammi said, winking at her with glimmering emerald eyes.
Michael passed her luggage to a younger blond man, likely among the hundreds of staffers who maintained this palace.
“We have a lot to get to—Oh, honey…” Sammi’s luminous smile dimmed as she eyed Brinton politely. “You wanna get changed?”
She used a cherry red–manicured nail to hone in on Brinton’s all-black ensemble: cropped jeans, matching silk button-down, and her favorite heeled boots. Apparently, the look wasn’t as chic as she initially imagined.
“Ah, no. My clothes are fine,” Brinton said through a tight, forced smile.
“And you have more of…this in that suitcase?” Sammi nodded upward to the now red-faced guy dragging it up the flagstone steps.
“Yes.”
“I see.”
Looping her arm into Brinton’s, Sammi guided them toward the main house and through the massive wood-and-etched-glass double doors.
“I don’t mean any harm. You look great—stunning even.
It’s only that, on a good day, it’s gonna be a hundred degrees and steamier than a bayou brothel.
I can carry you to a boutique or have some options sent over. ”
“I think I’ll manage.”
Sammi beamed, a true master of Southern passive-aggression. “No problem. If you change your mind, just holler. We’ll get you set up at the guest house before the welcome party tonight. But for now, how about a tour?”