Finally she stopped talking and looked at him expectantly. Alex let a whole second go by to make sure she was done. “Did you rehearse that all the way here?”
“Pretty much.” Her color was high in her cheeks, so some emotion was stirring her up. Teasing her would be dangerous right now. But last night’s success in taking the wind out of her… not to mention last night’s wildest dreams… made him a little reckless.
“So you came here to throw yourself on my mercy?” he asked, eyebrow raised.
She popped out of the chair, setting it spinning behind her. “Don’t be—” Then she stopped herself, swallowing the rest of the sentence. “If I have to.”
Alex stood and walked toward her. “If you have to what?”
“Beg,” she snapped, not sounding beggarly at all, which made him grin, even as he backed her toward the door. Right before she reached it, he put an arm past her and closed it with a slam that made her jump.
“You don’t have to beg,” he murmured, taking another step forward.
“For what?” she asked, taking another step back and hitting the door.
“For anything,” he answered, placing his palm beside her head and leaning in, just a bit. Just until he could smell her lavender shampoo and the sweetness of her skin. “I already said I’d do the sponsorship.”
“The sponsorship?” she whispered.
A slight flex of his arm, and he was close enough to feel her breath on his lips. “That’s what we were talking about. Right?”
“Sure,” she said, as if she’d agree to anything. And that right there was a wildest fantasy.
He watched her lashes lower, and pressed his luck. “Or maybe we’re talking about you begging me to kiss you.”
Her eyes lifted to his and narrowed. Her soft and inviting mouth firmed. “I’m not going to beg for that.”
“Of course not,” he said, smiling at the challenge. “I told you that you wouldn’t have to.”
“I know.”
That was all the warning he got. That and the flash in her eye. She knocked his supporting arm sideways and when he stumbled, used the off-balance momentum to swing him around and push him up against the door, where she’d been a moment before.
Damn she was fast. And hauling that cello around had made her strong. Then he got around to remembering the three older brothers, and just when he honestly thought she was going to kick his ass in retribution for all his many sins…
She kissed him.
He froze. He didn’t know if he was allowed to kiss her back. Was this a real kiss or was she getting back at him for toying with her emotions? He wanted to kiss her back—God, how he wanted to—but he didn’t want to be permanently exiled to the land of fuck up. What was the protocol for revenge kissing?
Screw protocol. He kissed her back.
It was the right move. She stretched against him, sliding her palms up the flat of the door behind him like some sexy yoga move. He grabbed her hips and pulled her to him, pushing his knee between hers, opening himself to her ferocious kiss. He filled his mouth with the taste of her tongue, his hands with the weight of her breasts, his lungs with the sweetness of her sighs.
How could she feel so familiar but so fresh? Hot off the farm Kiara had been delicious and eager and endearing in her kisses. Grown up Kiara was just hot. Every bit as eager, every bit as delicious, but she kissed like a woman willing to go where kissing led. Hell, she kissed like she was already halfway there.
Hell, he was halfway there. He turned, pressed her against the wall, pressed into her softness. She wrapped her arms around his neck. He hoisted her up and wrapped her legs around his waist. Her whole body trembled against him, and he trembled, too.
He still lost his cool with her. He couldn’t seem to work the clasp of her bra, maybe because she was trying to take off his shirt at the same time. There were too many hands and not enough, and there was something else he knew he should be remembering but all he could think was thank God he knew where they kept the boxes of refills for the condom machines in the restrooms.
“Hang on,” she panted.
“Yeah?” he said, almost not sounding like he was praying she wasn’t going to tell him to stop.
She pulled back enough to look him in the eye. “I want you to know, this isn’t because I’m carrying a torch for you from back in college.”
He blinked. “That was about the furthest thing from my mind. But thanks for letting me know.”
“I mean, that would be really pathetic.”
“Uh huh,” he agreed, ducking his head to nuzzle her neck, to taste the throb of her pulse and seeing if he could remember where the ticklish spot was…
Uh oh. She’d gone exactly the wrong kind of stiff in his arms.
“What do you mean ‘uh huh’?” she asked, pulling back again to look at him.
Crap. “I mean, I know you’re not pathetic. I mean, look at— Ow!”
For a second he thought she’d hit him on purpose. Then he realized that the door had thumped her in the back and knocked their heads together. It happened again—the thumping part—and Alex cursed a vicious streak and swung Kiara safely away from the door.
“What the hell—?” he demanded when the door burst open and Greg stood in the entryway, winded as if he’d run all the way across the restaurant. “Something had better be on fire.”
“Yeah,” wheezed Greg. “Your pants, Romeo. You forgot about the security cameras.”
Shit. He’d already let Kiara down to her feet—which she seemed to appreciate—and now he turned and looked right at the camera—which fed into the network accessible from any computer in the place. “You’re all fired,” he said, very clearly, so anyone watching could read his lips.
Then he turned back to Kiara, taking her head in his hands and brushing the red spot on her forehead with his thumb. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” she said, sounding dazed, but not in a head-injury way. She was avoiding Greg’s gaze, and worse, Alex’s too. “I need to be going anyway. Rehearsal.”
“Kiara,” he said, following her as she grabbed her purse from the desk chair. “When can I see you? What are you doing tonight?”
“Not you, if that’s what you’re hoping.”
Greg choked back a laugh, which—thank God—Kiara didn’t hear, since she was already headed out the door. Alex caught up with her easily, leaving his friend, and the security camera, behind. “Look, I know I’ve done some idiotic things in our history, recent and otherwise. But this time you did give me reason to hope.”
That made her pause, and she smoothed back the hair that had fallen from her ponytail, but she didn’t meet his eye. “You’re right. I did. It was a bad idea.”
“No, it wasn’t! It was a great idea.”
She covered her eyes with her hand and let out something that might have been half a weary laugh. “Don’t be charming, Alex. I’m not mad at you.”
“Then what?”
“There’s too much history here.” She waved a hand between them. “Too much baggage and unresolved issues. I can’t be sure of my motivations or yours.”
He ran a hand over the back of his neck, trying to sooth his temper. “Mine were pretty clear cut, actually.”
“Are they?” she asked, with a hitch in her voice. “Or am I just the one that got away?”
That was close enough to what he’d been wondering himself to make him pause, and when he paused, she pounced. “You see? You don’t even know. Back then… you were not a man of good character where women are concerned.”
“Have you ever met a twenty-one-year-old man of good character where women are concerned?”
“Don’t misquote Shaw back at me.” She stamped her foot, and it was adorable, but he had no urge to laugh. “My brothers were.”
“Well, that’s admirable,” he said, meaning it, “but I wasn’t raised in Our Town, so it took me a little longer to get civilized.”
She held up her hands in surrender. “Let’s just forget this
happened—”
“Forget that?” He gestured to the office. “Like hell that’s going to happen. There’s video evidence.”
“Oh my God.” She covered her face again. “Can’t you erase it?”
“The video?” he asked coldly. “Yes. The rest of it? No.” He had an uncomfortable suspicion. “This isn’t to get back at me, is it? Some sort of revenge for toying with your emotions the other night?”
“How could you even think— No! Of course not.”
But she’d paused, and he pounced on that. “See. You don’t even know.”
“Which proves my point,” she said, and God, she did always love to win an argument. “Too much baggage. Let’s go back to where we were last night. Even stevens. We’re obviously going to run into each other a lot, so let’s make a clean slate.”
He just stared at her like she’d stepped out of a spacecraft. How could she sound so prissy while she said something so crazy? She even made a two handed, wipe-the-table-clean gesture to go along with it.
Folding his arms, he let that hang in the air for a moment before speaking. “Having fun?” he asked.
“With what?” she asked.
“Your break up speech,” he said coldly. “Next you’re going to say we should just be friends.”
She fumbled a moment, lost her emotional footing, then straightened her spine. “Well, we should. We’re adults. We can be grown up and civil to each other.”
“Civil,” he echoed, with a distain he’d never let a woman hear before. “That’s a fucking stupid word for what’s between you and me, Kansas.”
Then he turned on his heel and left her standing there, since she was so sure she knew the right way out of this mess.
Chapter Five
Playing Bach was the best medicine Kiara could think of. The music she called from her cello vibrated through her bones, resonated in her ribs, and eased the twisting ache in her chest. The long strokes of her bow soothed her nerves and quieted the turmoil in her head. Her tears weren’t very good for Magdalena’s finish, but eight years between a few salty drips wouldn’t ruin her.
The weeks after Alex had told her they should see other people, she’d spent so many hours in the music hall practice room that her roommate had sent the campus police to look for her. She’d played until her arms ached and her fingers bled, and she only rested because if her calluses split, she wouldn’t be able to play anymore.
Tonight she had to be more practical. She had to take care of herself and her instrument. She was playing next Saturday at a wedding and the week after at the fundraiser soiree, and there would be practices for both.
But right now she played for herself and an empty rehearsal hall.
At least, she thought it was empty until she heard a footstep. She lifted the bow and looked toward the door, partly surprised to see Alex there, partly not.
“How’d you get in here?” she asked. Like that was the most important question and not, Why are you here? Or, Why did you wait almost a week?
“Bribed a janitor.” He sauntered forward, hands in his pockets, like he was out for a stroll. He looked around, taking in the tiers of plastic chairs, the covered tympani, and finally the conductor’s stand. “Once I was inside, I just followed my ears. That was beautiful, whatever you were playing.”
“Bach.” She rested her bow hand on her knee. “Third Suite in D. Or—you’ll appreciated this—it’s familiar name, ‘Air on a G String.’”
He gave a rueful chuckle. “Nice. You must have been expecting me.”
“Not exactly. At least… I don’t know.” She loosened her bow and set it on the music stand. “Maybe I don’t know you well enough to know what you’ll do.”
To his credit, he didn’t say I told you so.
“Let’s fix that,” he said, crossing the hall to her. “Come to dinner with me.”
Instead of answering, she collapsed the end pin on her cello and stowed the instrument in the case in front of her. “I have a confession to make.” She picked up her bow and laid it across her knees. “When I said we have too many unresolved issues, I meant I may have some unresolved issues with our relationship.”
He laughed, just a little, and she couldn’t blame him. “But not of the torch carrying kind.”
She winced as he echoed her own words back at her. “Maybe a little.”
Then it was his turn to wince. “Which I accidentally agreed was pathetic.”
“Well, it is,” she said, grabbing a cloth to clean the extra rosin from her bow and then the strings of the cello, so vigorously that she almost missed his answer.
“Then I’m a little pathetic, too,” he said. “Or didn’t you wonder why I lied by omission to get a date with you.”
She sat back up. Stared at him. Realized that she’d ascribed him nothing but shallow motives, judging him totally by the past.
Finally admitted that wasn’t fair.
“You’re right,” she said.
“I’m sorry?” Alex cupped a hand around his ear, even though he was standing right beside her and she’d said it perfectly loud. “What was that?”
“I said, maybe you’re not the insufferable asshole you were back in the day.” When he laughed, she threw her cleaning rag at him, then stowed her bow and latched the cello case. Before she could hoist it, though, Alex was there, grabbing the handle.
“Come to dinner with me.”
“I had a late lunch.” Which was true, as well as safer.
“Coffee, then.”
“Why?” she asked. “We just admitted we have too much unresolved business between us.”
“No. I admitted to some unresolved business.” He lifted the cello case, grunting a little in surprise. “Good grief. You’re the one with the baggage, it seems to me.”
“Funny,” she said, almost meaning it. “Give me my cello.”
“I’m holding it hostage until you go to coffee with me.”
He was not giving up. She could see that in the set of his jaw. “Fine,” she exhaled. “I hope you don’t have some tiny sports car, because Magdalena has to ride in the back seat, not the trunk.”
“Who is Magdalena?” he asked, since clearly company was not what he had in mind, and the part about the trunk was probably a little weird.
“My cello.”
“You named your cello?”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
Alex picked a cafe near his condo, which wasn’t too far from the pub. It allowed them to park at his place and walk to the cafe, since it was hard to find a spot after five in the Waterfront, even on a weekday.
“I wish you’d let me carry that for you,” he said, eyeing Magdalena’s case.
“You should know better.” She hadn’t let him carry her instrument when they were in college, and that was just her starter cello. “This thing is worth more than your car.”
“Jeez.” He sounded both impressed and appalled. “All the more reason you should let me carry it.”
“No. I trusted you with my heart once, and look what you did with that.”
“Ouch.”
Look how grown up I am. I can even joke about it. Maybe this coffee wasn’t a completely disastrous idea after all.
They reached the cafe and staked out a spot on the patio, with Magdalena in safe reach. Alex went in to order drinks at the counter, and came back out with her latte and his cappuccino. He set the cups down, sat himself down, and Kiara looked at him expectantly. “So, you invited me here. Talk.”
He took his time sipping his drink. “I’ve never had a cello for a chaperone before. I’m afraid Magdalena is judging me.”
“I’m judging you. Talk.”
“What about?”
She blew out a sigh. “Okay… what made you decide to open a restaurant? It’s not something you ever talked about in school.”
“It happened kind of by accident. Greg and I always wanted to go into business together, but we were just a couple of newbies with book learning and no practical applicatio
n. Then he talked me into buying a failing sports bar, mostly because it was dirt cheap.”
“Do you always do what Greg tells you to do?” she asked.
“No. But like I said, it was dirt cheap, and I figured we could flip it, like people flip houses. Build it up, sell it, move on to the next project.”
“And you were an instant success?”
“God no. It was a disaster. We almost lost our shirts. It took two years to turn a profit on the place, and that was mostly because we tended bar and bussed tables ourselves.”
“What then?” she asked, drawn into the story. Into his story.
“We eventually got the place self-sufficient. The next time, we decided to start from the ground up, so we weren’t digging out of a hole. We opened a pub near the college, a martini bar downtown, and then we got onboard with the revitalization of the Waterfront, and I realized this was the chance to do something bigger.”
The numbers were slow to add up in Kiara’s head, but eventually the total made an impression. “Hang on,” she said. “How many places do you guys own?”
“Four bars and just the one restaurant.”
“Just the one?” she echoed. “And you did all this in the, what, eight years since graduation?”
“More like six,” he said. “We backpacked around Europe for a summer, and then worked for other people to get some capital.” He paused. “But it’s not like I’ve gone to Juilliard or played with symphonies all over the US and toured Europe or anything.”
That she didn’t quite blush over. “You Googled me.”
“Of course I did.” He pushed her untouched latte toward her. “What else have you been doing? No husband, obviously. No kids? No more corn cob beauty queen crowns?”
“It was the Podunk County Corn Queen,” she said, flipping her hair in proper pageant girl style. “Get it right.”
“What brought you back to Port Calypso?”
“Sophie takes credit for it.” She sipped her latte, then wiped foam from her upper lip. She was classy that way. “The symphony is trying to build their profile. A city this size really should have a nationally competitive orchestra. It’s good for the community and… Sorry. Rambling from a soapbox is no fun to listen to.”