AMelodyInParadise (2 page)

Melody and Carmen had only a few seconds to look at each other with wide eyes before Johannes widened his arms and raised them higher to indicate they lift their instruments into position. After that, Melody had little room for thought past the music for a long, long while.

Chapter Two

“Do you see her?” Mitch fought the urge to stand up and look out over the crowd in front of them. He wanted to see his niece. They had paid good money to send her to Juilliard and he wanted to see her on the stage.

All that hooey they told her about her winning a scholarship was just that. They had worked hard to get the money to send her to such a prestigious school. It wasn’t until her third year there that they had finally done something right and made their first million. The money seemed to just roll in after that.

 “I told you we should have gotten better seats.” Hell, it wasn’t as though they couldn’t afford better seats. Mitch scowled down at his companion. “I want to see her. It’s been almost a year.”

So far all he could see was the woman in front and between himself and Wyatt who wore the largest, most hideous hat he’d ever seen in his life. He rested his elbow on the padded armrest and rubbed the spot between his eyes.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you had more tender feelings for Carmen than an uncle should have.” Wyatt grinned at him.

“Shh…” a woman complained behind them. “I paid for tickets to hear the orchestra, not to hear you two flapping your lips.”

Mitch fought the urge to look back and growl at the woman. He wanted to express his anger, not scare the woman into wetting her pants. Like all shifter males, he could make his eyes glow in low light and his growl would be that of a male tiger. Somehow, he didn’t think that would go over well in the auditorium.

Instead, he listened to the music and tried to pick out the sound of the violins. He liked classical music, he really did, he just liked being able to see a particular player and pick out the sound of their instrument. Tonight, he wanted that player to be his niece.

He and Wyatt loved Carmen as though she were their daughter. Her parents, killed during the time of the uprising in Paradise, left her in their care. To keep US officials from trying to put her into the system when she attended her first live-in music school at the tender age of twelve, they decided to adopt her in Mason where they knew the long-time sheriff and the county judge.

The two human men knew that Mitchell and Wyatt only had her best interests at heart and finalized the adoption, for Carmen’s safety and wellbeing while out in the world. Many schools of music, like Juilliard, were after all very competitive schools and she would need her
uncles
close by to lean on.

With that in mind, they even went so far as to move to New York so they would be close by in case she needed them. It was a waste of their time. She’d loved the university and all of the friends she made there.

It wasn’t long after she turned sixteen that she’d come home from Juilliard talking of a girl named Melody. They’d become fast friends and Mitchell couldn’t have been happier for her. Except…she came home carrying the strangest scent. It wasn’t her. He knew that, but he couldn’t place what it was about the scent that made him take notice, other than it made him want to have that scent near him always.

As though obsessed with the smell, he had even gone through her things to find what kind of perfume she wore that could produce such a reaction in him. It wasn’t her perfume. After a week or so, the scent faded from their home and he was able to think of more important things again. Still, the memory remained and every time he saw her, he could smell it on her, this sweet elusive scent that did something strange to his insides.

At first he thought it was only him, but Wyatt finally admitted to smelling it as well after her last visit. What was it that grabbed their attention so fully every time she came home? She wasn’t their mate. They knew that beyond a doubt. Had she been their mate, they would have experienced
el calor
by now. No, this was something different.

He listened to the orchestra play, still trying to pick out the sound of Carmen’s instrument in vain. He knew she was first violin, second chair, but he also knew the sound he’d zeroed in on wasn’t the first violin part. This was a violin soloist playing a melody, something different from the rest. It was haunting, beautiful. Just as beautiful as the woman he saw playing it. She appeared the same age as Carmen which would make her approximately twenty-two or twenty-three.

Her long hair fell down the long curve of her back in an auburn cascade. The gold highlights shone in the lights that beat down on the stage. Her black dress did nothing to hide the fact that she had a body any shifter male would be proud to sink his cock into.

Curvy in all the right places, she was no frail wraith like most of the women these days. She had meat on her bones and that drew the tiger in him like nothing else could have done.

Her music was that which he’d honed in on when the song started. He looked at her as she played, an expression of complete concentration mixed with something he could only describe as love on her beautiful face.

This woman was first violin first chair and the woman he and Wyatt had been hearing about for the last several years. In fact, Carmen had tried to set them up with her a few times. She was certain her
uncles
needed a wife and she wanted her best friend to be it. Nothing would make her happier than making Melody Madison a part of their strange little family.

Mitch shifted in his seat, trying to get comfortable. Just looking at the woman made his cock hard. Hell, he hadn’t gotten hard just looking at a woman in fifty or more years. What was it about this human woman that made him want her more than he had wanted any woman for years?

Do you see the woman on the edge of the stage, Wyatt? The violinist in front, closest to the conductor?

What about her?
Wyatt asked through the mind link they had had for as long as they could remember. Neither of them could remember if they’d had it before their first blood exchange or not. All they knew was that they had exchanged blood regularly to help each other out of binds when they were younger.

Calling for help while outside of Paradise wasn’t an option when they were younger. The old council would have no one leaving the town without permission. Doing just that was something the two of them had done as often as possible when they were children. They knew they were shifters like those in Paradise, but unlike those in the town, they were tiger shifters, not cougars and jaguars like most of the rest.

From what they had learned from their adopted parents, they had been found weeks apart in different parts of the country. Blood tests confirmed they weren’t related, though they were both found near the body of a dead female tiger. Presumed dead, no one knew where their fathers were.

Sometimes he wondered if the council kept such a tight rein on them as children because they feared what they would become. After all, they were tigers. If they desired, they could take out any male shifter in Paradise with their size alone.

She’s beautiful. I believe she’s that Melody Carmen has been yammering on about for the last few years.

He felt Wyatt stretch upward in his seat to look over the woman with the big hat sitting in front of him.
They should require these old women to take their huge hats off or sit in the back,
he groused before he nodded.
I see her. You’re right. She is a looker.

Mitch turned to look at his friend who suddenly wore a strange expression.
She brings out something in you, doesn’t she?

Wyatt nodded.
I shouldn’t feel this way for Carmen’s best friend, Mitch. Hell, haven’t we been telling Carmen that we wouldn’t touch her little friend?

What they felt was right and what their bodies demanded could be two totally different things. If what he suspected was true, Carmen’s little friend just may be their mate.

What if the scent he’d been picking up on Carmen all of these years had been their mate growing into adulthood, her body preparing itself to breed? He pressed his hands into his lap, trying to control the raging hard-on he sported.

Mitch sighed as he settled himself in to watch the rest of the concert. Whatever it was that he felt for the woman sitting next to their niece, it wasn’t something he could control and that worried him. The last thing this town needed was a tiger running about town growling at every male who looked at the woman.

Chapter Three

As usual, Melody lost herself in the music she played. The music flowed around her, through her like some ethereal thing. Nothing felt more right than when she sat in front of an audience, her instrument in her hand, her fingers flying over the strings as she played whatever piece she worked on at the moment.

This was as close to heaven as she had ever been. She smiled as she began another solo of the melody. This was better than chocolate. Heck, she’d bet it was even better than sex!

Nothing made Melody feel the way she did when she knew she played a piece just right, that the notes coming from her instrument blended perfectly with those around her. The music flowed through her like energy, lifting her up, giving her purpose.

Now that she was alone, now that everyone she’d ever cared about had gone with the exception of Carmen, this was her only comfort, her only home. Music wasn’t just a
thing
to her, it was a part of her…it was her.

Melody continued to play the last piece, her Stradivarius seeming weightless as she moved the bow in perfect unison with her fingers. Tears rolled down her face as the beauty of the song continued to flow around her.

Sometimes as she played, Melody wondered what the composers thought, what they felt as they wrote their sonatas and concertos, their long symphonies. How did they do it? Were they ill or melancholy or did they just know how to tap into those emotions in others without affecting themselves?

Slowly, the last song drew to a close and she slowed her bow to a stop. The conductor lowered his arms and the musicians lowered their instruments into a resting position. Melody looked at her bow, several of the horse hairs had snapped and hung loose. Her fingers practically itched to pull them off, to have her bow looking as pristine as it had when they started. She hated the thought that she could have abused it enough to break the coarse hairs.

The thin piece of arched wood seemed so frail, too frail to put it through what she had just done to it. Still, it was in one piece, the frog tight and the hairs hanging on even though some of them had given in to the stress of her aggressive playing. If she lost many more hairs off her bow, she would have to have it restrung. With luck, it would last at least until the end of her contract with the Philharmonic. She hated changing bows mid-cycle and that is exactly what she would have to do if she had to have this one restrung.

Her other bow was a fine bow and usually she didn’t mind using it, but this was the bow that she’d used when she made first chair and somehow, some strange superstitious
thing
told her that if she lost this bow, she would lose her position.

Carmen elbowed her and smiled when Melody looked at her. “You’re supposed to stand up and bow now,” she said through her teeth. I think they expect it of you since they’re giving you a standing ovation and all.”

With wide eyes, Melody turned to the audience and suddenly heard the applause that she had somehow missed before. Resting her violin horizontally against her side, she stood and bowed, unable to keep the smile from her face. Somewhere, somehow, she knew her grandfather was proud. She was living his dream, their dream, and it felt wonderful.

Melody straightened and bowed again. When she looked up the second time, everything in the world froze. It was as though the entire world had come to a standstill as she saw the two men who towered over the rest of the audience.

Carmen’s uncles were just as handsome in real life as they were in the photos she’d seen, perhaps more handsome in their black tuxes, their hair slicked back and their faces devoid of hair. Though, now that she thought about it, she did like them a bit scruffy more than clean shaven, though they were gorgeous either way.

She met their gazes and felt her knees go weak. Swallowing thickly, Melody steeled her spine, standing straight and tall at the sound of the audience’s applause. She smiled at the audience and their repeated
Bravas
that rang throughout the concert hall. She wanted to tell these people that it wasn’t just her, that everyone in the orchestra contributed to the beautiful music they’d just heard.

Melody sat down when Johannes turned his attention to Michael and he stood up to take his bow. The soloists and first chairs were just the icing on a very large cake. Every musician here was nothing more than a servant to the composer who continued to tell them what to do a century or more after his death. The music was the reason she was here. The music was the reason everyone was here.

The curtain closed while the audience still applauded the orchestra’s performance and Melody turned to Carmen. “I think I saw your uncles.” She stood, violin in hand, and made her way off the stage to her case.

Picking up her polishing cloth, she wiped the oils from her hands and the rosin left by the bow from the glossy surface before loosening the strings and setting the instrument back in its case. She loosened the frog on the bow to relax the horse hair before trimming the broken strands from the wood and stored that in the case in its place over her spare bow.

“Look at me. My hands are shaking and I carried my violin offstage.”

“Oh, my goodness,” Carmen said with a laugh, “and the world didn’t come to an end.”

“Oh, shut up.” Folding the cloth, she stored it beneath the neck and closed the case, securing the latches. Even her case looked old. The newer ones were plastic or fiberglass. Hers was made of paper-covered wood with a felt interior.