Blue Notes (20 page)

Adelaide grins unexpectedly. “That’s our starting point,” she says. “What is—shit, that intro science class I’m in. What’s that called?”

“The control group?”

Snapping her fingers, Adelaide says, “That’s the one. That was your control. That was you playing twenty-four boring bars as boringly as possible. Nice job.” She leans back in her chair. “But that’s not your problem, remember?”

“I have a problem?” It’s a token reply.

“Yeah, Miss Stage Fright. You don’t know how to work a crowd. You know how to
move
people, but you don’t know how to harness that skill—like an untrained superhero or something.”

“That sounds just like me.”

“You’re a goosey,” Adelaide says. “Now play it again, but do it trying to make me laugh.”

“No way.” I shake my head. It’s all defensive. I know it even as I do it, but I don’t want to try any sort of playacting with Adelaide, when we’re just getting to know each other—and in the neutral ground of a rehearsal room. “That’s . . .”

She leans forward on her chair and props her chin in her hands. “That’s what? Childish? Silly? Or . . . No, I got it. You think it’s a waste of time.”

I look down at the keys. With my hair pinned up, she can probably see my blush. The bright rehearsal room isn’t as brightly lit as a stage, but I feel that exposed. Only, I’m not a performer; I’m being interrogated.

“That’s all you want? Just to make you laugh?”

Before Adelaide even answers, I think of Jude’s smile. Nothing about him was simple, and I sure as hell didn’t know how to make him laugh. Otherwise I would’ve done it every minute we were together, just to see his full-on smile and hear that rich, full timbre. He’d look at me with affection and surprise. . . .

And I’m playing. Those—yes, childish; yes, silly—notes tinkle out from my fingers. Without Adelaide needing to say so, I try again. I try again. I know it’s not right yet. I’m still too stiff. I wrestle with those scant few bars. I want to beat them. Win against them.

That idea makes me laugh.
Me.
Sitting on the bench. The idea of me wanting to win against a few scratches of ink on paper, and the absurdity of this situation, and the three of us locked like mental patients in a padded cell, and just . . . God, all of it.

Adelaide giggles, but that’s like saying a twister is a light breeze. She’s her own whirlwind of pure energy. Her drawl is the only part of her that’s syrupy slow by comparison.

I gust out an exhale that feels like expelling fire. Then I suck in something very near to . . . success. Her reaction is great, but I want more. I want the hard-core junkie stuff. She seems to know it, just like she knew I needed this ridiculous exercise.

“Try again,” Adelaide urges, smiling brightly. “Do it intentionally.”

She’s right. The first time was me being caught by the surprise of my own thoughts. As if practicing scales rather than performance technique, I do as she says and play the piece one more time. I do it with gusto, a bit of cheekiness, some saucy bubbles in my blood. This time Adelaide laughs and gives a little clap. His eyes have tipped into half moons that remind me so much of Jude that it nearly kills my sense of triumph.

“Okay.” Adelaide’s all business again. “Make me cry. Same notes. Be
sure
this time. Don’t guess. You know this piece inside out now. Know it well enough to find the cracks. The places that’ll twist my heart.”

I do. Intentionally. I own these twenty-four bars. They’re mine to mold. I think about the bad kind of crying—my mother’s face the night before she died, her haggard features, her sunken eyes. But I don’t let those memories overwhelm the pressure of each finger against each key. Then there’s the good kind of crying, and how happy I was the night of the Joshua Bell concert. Clair and John looked so fine and lovely in their dress clothes. My own personal angels.

I’m in charge now. I play it three times, each slower, each more like a funeral procession walking toward a gravesite in the rain, with shoes soaking wet to match tearful faces.

When I finish, Adelaide wipes her eyes, looking at the back corner of the room, completely distant—but not unaffected. This is . . . guarding herself.

“Wow,” she says at last. She stands and shakes her fingers out, like getting blood back to frozen limbs. “You’re forbidden from doing that again. But are you feeling it now? Control? How to work us both?”

I nod, speechless at what’s happening.

“Believe me,” she continues, “it’s easier with an audience. Then emotions feed off each other. Make one person laugh, and others follow. One sniffle turns another person’s sniffle into tears. You just gotta pry inside and the whole thing ripples out.”

I swallow thickly, my legs restless until I stop tapping my toes against the pedals. “That’s what you did at Yamatam’s.”

“Sure. Just a trick.” She smiles, almost self-deprecating. “That’s all it is.”

“What did you say earlier?
Bull puckey
. I’ll play real mentor later and talk you down from that pity-party ledge.” I grin to match hers. “Okay, what next?”

From behind me comes the voice I’ve heard through dark nights of dreaming. “How about Adelaide lets us have a few moments alone?”

Whirling, I find Jude standing in the doorway.

Oh God.

Adelaide smiles at us both, watching, as if she’s expecting romantic music to swell out of nowhere. When Jude and I remain rooted, she shrugs slightly, then skips over to give him a hug.

“Hi!”

I start to gather my papers. Although Adelaide appears genuinely surprised by her brother’s arrival, she shoots me a warning
look. “Don’t even think about the fire-alarm thing again,” she says.

I glare at Jude. “You told?”

“It was too much fun to keep to myself,” he says without apology.

“And I won’t tell,” Adelaide adds. “You were completely justified after he sneak-attacked you like that.”

“Like now?” I’m surprised by the strength in my voice. This was supposed to be my refuge. Now it would always have Jude’s impression here, lingering, like how he’s become such an integral part of my sonata.

“It was my fault,” Jude says casually.

“Honest.” Adelaide’s words are a whisper near my ear as she gathers her papers. “I didn’t invite him. But . . . maybe it’s a good thing?” She glances at Jude over her shoulder, where he’s standing woodenly. She huffs out a breath. “Or not. Keeley, I hope you don’t let him off the hook as easily as I have to.”

“You don’t have to go,” I say.

You’re leaving me? He’s your brother, but I’m swimming in the deep end here.

“It’ll give me more time to get ready for my date tonight.”

Jude stiffens. “Not with that professor again.”

Adelaide shrugs. She collects her bangles by throwing them in her purse, then slings her sweater over her shoulder. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”

She’s gone as quickly as I was the first day Jude and I met, out in that same hallway.

 Twenty-Seven 

N
ot looking at him is impossible now.

He’s wearing a business suit and carrying a briefcase. He holds himself with the bearing of a young prince. Wide stance. Shoulders braced against the strongest wind. His hair is neatly combed and his expression is flat. I imagine that more than a few lawyers and accountants have stared at that impassive expression and given up. Jude is too powerful. He takes up too much air. Too much space in my head. I can barely feel Middle C beneath my fingertip. I get frustrated, as if the piano is what’s abandoned me.

He’s there in the full light of the rehearsal room, but I can’t see his eyes. He has his head lowered, his arms crossed. Lights that should’ve lit every feature are angled in such a way that his face is more hidden than exposed. His top lip is highlighted, with the dip at the peak. The end of his nose is visible. How the end of a nose can signal distance—I don’t know.

He’s a businessman. Almost anonymous.

Yet he’s the one who stood up to his board of directors just to keep Adelaide in a stable home and school. He’s the one who took on the impossible challenge of heading a multibillion-dollar company—fresh out of business school, his parents barely buried—exceeding all expectations.

That’s when I see him as if for the first time, all over again. The night we split, he wore a faded U2 T-shirt and a battered pair of Docs. That was Jude as an average twenty-six-year-old.

This is Jude Deschamps-Villars, CEO.

With Adelaide gone, I have plenty of room to combust privately and not take her down with him. Suddenly, our gazes lock.
Now
I can see his eyes, so dark, so fierce. I can’t read his emotions, only his intensity. He’s there, but why? To berate me? To tease me? To unnerve me?

He walks to stand at my back. I can smell the wool of his suit, a suit warmed by his body—the body I barely learned to touch and kiss . . . and why is it I can’t have more?

Too young.

Too starry-eyed.

Too damaged to hold it together.

Damn. I haven’t had a wrong-brain thought that powerful in a long time. It rings true in every corner of my mind and every place in my body—except in my heart.

I am a good person.

I deserve good things.

He leans near, an unconscious echo of how Adelaide stood over me while I waited rigidly on the bench. I can smell more of him now, that hint of expensive cologne and the fresh, masculine fragrance that is simply Jude. The smell of his skin.

“We were working,” I manage to say.

“I didn’t say the lesson was over.” He strokes my hair back from my temple. I’m wordless, motionless, breathless. “Will you play it for me?”

“Do you need a laugh? Some angst? Do you want me to make you angry?”

“No,” he says quietly, still petting my temples. “I want you to turn me on.”

I’m trying to remember what breathing was like. It must’ve been nice. “And how am I supposed to do that?”

“I’m not the performer,” he says softly.

“Do you want me to perform? Or be truthful?”

He stops touching me and sits on a chair against the wall. His posture remains intimidatingly upright, all powerful grace, but if I knew him better . . . If I knew him better, I’d say he looked exhausted. Under his sunny midday blue eyes are deep circles of fatigue. Because of work?

“Turn me on, sugar,” he says, smoldering and daring. “Just you and that piano.”

I close the key cover. “I came here to vent to someone who’s becoming a friend. And I was here to practice, for real. I’m not playing games. Besides . . .” I shake my head and turn away. I gather my music to keep from trying to read the tea leaves of his expression.

“Besides . . . ?”

“If I’d had any clue what turns you on, I’d have done it already. We’d have gone to a hotel that night, and . . . Never mind. I don’t know what you want from me. I haven’t from the start.” I’m like an opera singer stretching a note too thin, running out of air. “I’m not going to make a worse fool of myself.”

The silence between us is a thin sheet of glass. I don’t want to move for fear of smashing it. Glass would rain down around us both, but I don’t think any would land on Jude Villars.

“Keeley?”

I flinch. He doesn’t use my name often. I always notice when he does. It’s like a code.
I’m being serious now.
I wish the rest of him were that easy to decipher.

“What?”

“I’m sorry,” he says, words low and rumbling. “About our argument. And about how I ended it. It wasn’t fair of me.”

Spinning faster than thought, I face him dead on. “Then why did you say it? Do you know how something like that sticks? Words last a lot longer than bruises and broken bones.”

He frowns, that classic drawing together of masculine brows. His mouth pinches tight.

I’m
so
not finished with him. “You seem to think that just because I’m a virgin and I can’t keep up with your head games that I don’t know
anything
. Do you want someone fragile, Jude? Keep touching me, jerking me around, telling me to turn you on—then, sure, you’ll have a fragile girl at your beck and call. Because I can’t keep up.” I wipe surprising tears away. “But I don’t want to be fragile. If that’s the price for being around you, then you need to leave.”

With the subtle grace of a big cat predator, he stands. Three strides later, he’s beside me on the piano bench, where I’m both numb and raw. He takes my upper arms in his big hands. “I don’t want you fragile.”

“I feel that way when you’re with me. You’re in charge. Your pace. I’ve been so amped up about some of it, and good-terrified about some of it. But there’s no way to catch my breath.”

I find the strength to look up at him. His eyes are stormy and dangerous, but deep inside, I see a shelter. If I can only run fast enough to reach it . . .

“I want to be your first,” he says plainly. My heart jumps, my belly turns to fire, and I know he can feel another flinch. “Before the other night, I never thought about the consequences. About how you’d take it. Or how
I
would. I do have responsibilities in my life, and I wasn’t prepared for how you’d fit in that way. I took my mistake in judgment out on you.”

He soothes his hands up and down my arms, which are covered in goose bumps.

“I can’t trust you,” I reply. “Do you see that? I stumbled after you like a blind puppy because I didn’t have reason not to. Now I do. You have to know what you’re doing. You’re overwhelming!”

He barks out a sharp, bitter laugh.

I fling my arms to get free of him. “Start talking, Jude, because you’ve got a lot of ground to make up. What’s so special about me? Forget the piano and all the other pretty words.
Why me?
”

“Same question back to you,” he says, his words clipped. “Forget my damn money and my tragic headline life. Why me? Why were you willing to follow me like that? Why did I deserve your trust?”

“I don’t know anymore.”

Hands in his pockets, he radiates that sexy, so-unfair combination of confident, powerful man and lonely, lost soul. I want to touch him and say it’s okay, that I’m sure it was just a miscommunication. Then I can turn myself over to his care and command again. All will be fine and thrilling again. But I can’t unlock my jaw to form the words.

I won’t
.

“You want to know why you?” he asks quietly. “Why you stood out to me like one of those spotlights at the club?”

“Yes.”

“Because there’s
always
a spotlight on you. You may as well have a neon sign above your head flashing ‘Over Here.’ ”

“You have me confused with someone like your sister.”

“Don’t tell me my mind, sugar. You’re just the opposite of Adelaide. You’re so closed off that I want to pry you open and find out what no one else ever has. That’s intoxicating.” He stops pacing and returns to my home turf—stitting on the piano bench. “You told me that you showed the club all you have. All you are. What did I say?”

“That you didn’t believe it.”

“Because I don’t. I’ve kissed your lips, but I don’t think I’ve kissed
you
. I could get you stark naked and we could be lovers for months, and it wouldn’t matter.” He’s within inches of me. He brushes his lips across mine. I tingle and jump. “Do you know the biggest fight I’ve had since my parents died?”

“Adelaide?”

His smile is rueful. “With her? Always. But about her.”

“She told me about keeping the headquarters here in New Orleans.”

“I figured she’d say something about that. You’re turning into the friend I hoped she’d find.” Before I can process the pride that blooms beneath my breastbone, he blows a long exhale through his nose. His shoulders are bunched, with his hands fisted on his thighs. “I took a huge chance as a fresh from school kid, and I won. No one has dared go up against me since, except you—you, like a bolt of lightning out of nowhere. From everyone else, it’s bow and scrape and
Yes, sir
.”

“You won’t ever hear me call you sir.”

His rueful smile takes on a salacious edge. My body prickles and heats in response. “Good. I don’t want you fragile. I want Keeley Chambers.” He clears his throat. “I just didn’t know how to answer questions about anything outside of . . . the seduction. Not to you. Myself. Anyone. If someone on the board asked me what I’m doing with a college student?
Oh, I’m teaching her how to fuck.
Can you imagine?”

“I don’t have to. I’m not anyone on the board.” I stare at him—stare and wait. I feel a surge of power when I realize that I’m in charge now. I’m the one to say yes or no. That power burns in my blood, but it doesn’t point me to the right answer. “I’m just me. I’m the one you need to convince.”

My hands are clasped together at my waist. He takes them in his and tugs them apart. Slowly—God, so slowly—he pulls them up, up, to circle behind his neck. There he lets them rest as he undoes his tie and unfastens two buttons of his dress shirt. “Touch me there. At my nape.”

I’m a melty puddle of
guh
before I take my next breath. He’s all around me, invading every sense, seeping into my pores and turning all my thoughts toward sex. I could be with him in the way I’ve never been with a man. His voice is so inviting, so riveting. It’s deep swamp voodoo, the way he can bind me without even touching me.

I sink my fingers into his hair and tighten them until my nails scrape his scalp. His arms crisscross my back. I’m pulled flush against his chest. So close now, I can reach even more of his hair, and the skin of his back and his shoulders. He cups my head and angles my mouth to meet his. I’m shocked by taste and heat. My thoughts are burned away like fall leaves in a bonfire. There’s nothing but the feel of Jude beneath my palms, and how masterfully he uses my body against me.

His tongue sweeps over mine, pebbled and sweet as if he’s been chewing cinnamon gum. I can’t get enough. I need more, tipping my head, fighting his hand to find the angle
I
need. He lets up just enough, smiling briefly, until we’re kissing again. I swirl. I clutch. He’s got me. I know that somewhere—somewhere deep and in charge of protecting me from danger. He has me in his arms, and despite all good sense, I feel safe there. I go practically limp. Only with my mouth and hands do I keep questing, keep searching for more of what he can give me.

He slides one hand down toward my ass, but pauses at the waistband of my jeans. I moan and nod my approval. But instead of simply grabbing my ass, he forces his fingers between skin and denim, pushing, hooking my lace thong. Even that isn’t enough. He undoes the top button of my jeans and dives again. I’m filled with the hot, pulsing taste of him and trapped by curiosity—his and mine—as he finds the bare skin of my ass. I gasp into his mouth. He returns my gasp with a moan.

“I—”

That was me. One syllable. At least it’s a start, because there’s no more to say.

“You’re still content with just the back of my neck,” he whispers against my mouth.

I blink, then flex my fingers. Sure enough, they haven’t strayed beyond what I can reach behind his head—nape, hairline, the muscles along the base and column of his throat. “Seems a shame,” I manage to squeak.