Ryan stepped towards his grandmother and brushed a kiss across her forehead. “Thanks, Grandma.”
“And it’s wonderful to know you are in demand from all those big pop stars and whatnot, who all want you to write songs for them.”
“I’m grateful they want me.”
“They’re lucky to have you,” Miriam insisted. She cast another look around the room, her gaze settling on his cluttered composition desk and then the piano, before she spoke again. “But I can’t help wondering if, in the middle of all this busy work, you have time to write for yourself?”
Her question caught him by surprise. “Write for myself? Why would I do that?”
Miriam frowned. “Well, because you used to be the one singing the songs, too.”
Ryan laughed. “My days up on the stage are long gone, Grandma.”
She gave him a long look but said nothing. To cut off the turn in the conversation before it became any more uncomfortable, Ryan smiled and ushered his grandmother towards the hallway.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get to the cinema so you can ogle your film star crush.”
For a moment, he thought she planned to press the issue and quiz him further. He knew his grandmother well enough to read the challenge in her eyes. But in the end, she just gave a quick shrug and headed for the door.
Still, as his grandmother fetched her handbag and made small talk about the film they were off to see, Ryan had a feeling that he hadn’t heard the last about this.
Which was a pity, because he really didn’t want his grandmother to waste her energy, or the time they had together, by encouraging him to do something that Ryan knew would never happen.
He’d had his fifteen minutes of pop fame as a starry-eyed eighteen-year-old, and remembering how it had all ended was enough to stop him from ever wanting more.
He was content now behind the scenes, out of the spotlight, composing the songs he wrote for others while living happily in blissful obscurity.
And that was all there was to it.
