Any Way You Want It (2 page)

“Where are we going?” Maggie asked, doubling her steps to catch them.

“Bourbon,” her friends said in unison, then they dissolved into tipsy laughter.

Maggie smiled too, but then she shook her head. “Why don’t you two go on? I’m kind of tired.”

Which wasn’t untrue. Their flight had left Dulles Airport at six that morning, and they had only dropped off their luggage at the hotel before they went right into tourist mode. They were staying right on Bourbon Street, but she knew her friends were not headed there to go back to the hotel.

And Maggie really did feel the need to rest.

Even now, this newly sensed energy was swirling around her, making the air thick and her head a little woozy. The wine wasn’t helping, but she didn’t really believe it was the alcohol—not solely.

“No way,” Jo said, catching Maggie’s elbow, pulling her along. “You are not sneaking off to read or listen to classical music or whatever boring thing you normally do.”

“Right,” Erika agreed.

Maggie laughed, but she did try to get her arm out of Jo’s grasp. Jo wasn’t letting go—not without a fight, it appeared.

“Those things aren’t boring,” Maggie argued. Besides, Jo read twice as much as Maggie did, and she had a healthy knowledge of classical music. They’d attended many symphonies together.

“Okay, they aren’t,” Jo agreed. “But they aren’t what you do on vacation. Especially a vacation in New Orleans. Hotel rooms are for sleeping only.”

“Well,” Erika said slowly, “and other things.”

Jo thought about that, then nodded. “Right, but that usually ends in sleeping.”

Maggie frowned for a moment, losing track of what they were talking about briefly, then she understood.

She shook her head. “I don’t remember you two being quite so sex obsessed.”

“And you aren’t sex obsessed enough,” Jo informed her. “Now come on, you can’t come to New Orleans and miss Bourbon Street.”

“I’m here for ten days,” Maggie pointed out. “We could wait a night. I am honestly tired.”

“No,” Erika and Jo said, speaking again at the same time—a habit that was actually getting a little irritating, Maggie decided—as Erika caught her other elbow, and her friends pulled her down the sidewalk. She gave in, allowing them to lead the way.

“Erika and I are only here for five nights. And we need them all,” Jo said.

Maggie sighed. That was true. Her friends were leaving her early, something she was not happy about. What would she do in a city like this alone? She’d already noted this was a place filled with couples and groups.

She supposed she’d better take advantage of having both her pals here. Her pace picked up.

Even unfamiliar with the layout of the city and muzzy from the wine, Maggie didn’t need to be told when they reached Bourbon Street. She blinked at everything around her. The flashing lights, the loud, slightly distorted bass of bands singing party favorites, the distinct smell of trash, beer and…

Was that vomit?

Add to that neon signs that said things like LIVE SEX ACTS and FULL NUDITY. Holy cow.

“This is…something,” she managed, peering around, not sure where to look next.

Even Jo and Erika, who were definitely worldlier when it came to bars and partying, gawked in awe.

“This is pretty amazing,” Erika finally said, after they’d all stood mesmerized by a pair of female mannequin legs in black stilettos, kicking in and out of a club’s windows.

“You definitely don’t see that every day, do you?” Jo said.

Maggie almost said that she’d never seen that, period, when her attention was seized by a distinct strain of music, somehow reaching out to her over the warring chords of “Jessie’s Girl,”

“Living On A Prayer,” and “Summer of ’69.”

Without thinking, she took a step toward the sound, and then another, until she’d zigzagged through the crowds of revelers to a bar on the corner of Bourbon and some cross street.

She stopped on the sidewalk, staring at the building. The place was shabby, paint peeling from the wood, the sidewalk around it crumbling and layered in filth. But from her spot on the street, she could see the stage through huge open windows; a band was setting up. And she could clearly hear that distinct melody. Piano notes swirling through the air, a sound as out of place in this world as she felt.

Again, her feet moved until she found herself in the bar, standing in front of the stage, peering up at the person playing the music. Music that no one else should know.

Well, no one but her and possibly a few other authenticators. And the person who wrote it, of course, but that person was long since dead.

“Wow,” Jo said from beside her, dragging Maggie’s attention away from the music. “Good eye.

That guy’s pretty darn hot.”

Maggie blinked back at the stage, for the first time noticing the man actually playing the music. He was tall with long hair in a shade somewhere between chestnut brown and dark mahogany, cascading over his broad shoulders.

He was looking down at the keyboard, his hair falling forward, shrouding most of his features, so that Maggie wondered how Jo could tell whether he was hot or not.

The thought quickly vanished as she watched his long fingers travel over the keys, playing a particularly difficult combination of chords. Exactly the combination she’d read before she’d left. A fusion of notes that seemed to be a signature of sorts, the signature of a composer she was willing to bet this guy from a cover band on Bourbon Street had never even heard of.

Yet here he was, playing it. Playing a piece that no one knew. An undiscovered composition probably by a little known composer.

Then two things happened at once: the beautiful, haunting tune abruptly switched into the intro to the classic eighties rock ballad “Sister Christian,” and Maggie realized that the musician was staring directly at her. And she was staring back.

“Ah, man, he has a lazy eye,” Erika said with a disappointed sigh.

Maggie heard her friend’s words and regret, but they didn’t seem to quite reach her, as if they echoed from a distance or through a somnolent haze. She just kept staring at the man, unable to look away, even though everything in her told her to.

“There is something up with his eye, but I don’t think it’s lazy,” Maggie heard Jo say.

Maggie wanted to speak, to say there wasn’t anything wrong with his eyes, but the words in her head couldn’t fumble their way past her lips.

All she could manage was to focus on him—on the eyes in question. Eyes that seemed to match the music he’d been playing: complicated, intense, haunted. And just as the music held her entranced, so did his gaze.

Until finally, a small smile curved his lips and his gaze left her to concentrate on his keyboards.

Maggie actually jerked, as if some invisible line had been cut between them, and she was freed.

The room tilted for a moment as the whole world seemed to shift on its axis. Then it slammed back into place.

On rubbery knees, she walked toward the bar.

“Where are you going?” Erika asked.

“I need to sit,” Maggie murmured, relieved to find a vacant stool, which she collapsed onto. What had just happened?

“I think that guy was checking you out,” Jo said, wiggling her eyebrows.

Maggie ignored her as she tried to visualize the sheet music she’d just begun to study before she left her office for this trip. She could see the notes, scratched across the page, ink faded on yellowed, brittle paper. Faint notes, but still there. Like the already fading notes of what she’d thought she’d just heard. Those notes gone now amongst the chords and rhythms of the rock ballad.

“What’s going on?” Jo asked, when Maggie continued to stare off, lost in the images in her head.

Maggie shook her head, not quite ready to say aloud what she was thinking. It seemed so ridiculous.

“Maggie, I can’t believe just having a guy notice you has you that shaken,” Jo said, wedging herself between Maggie’s stool and the one next to her. The businessman seated on the neighboring barstool, who Jo had bumped into, turned to glare at her. His annoyance faded as soon as he saw Jo’s profile, her lovely features accented by cropped, glossy brown hair and big dark brown eyes.

Jo didn’t notice the man twisting on his seat to peer at her. Nor did Erika notice his friend, checking her out as well. Erika, with her thick midnight black hair and killer smile. Then again, attention from men was a common occurrence for both her friends. Not for Maggie, however, with her less than lithe form and limited fashion sense.

Then she recalled the link she’d felt when she’d met the eyes of the man on the stage. A connection had coursed between them, strong and…almost alive. A feeling she’d never in her life encountered. Of course, it wasn’t his attention that had shaken her. Okay, maybe it had a little, but she wasn’t sure that what had occurred between them was even attraction.

It was almost as if they were both in on a secret. A secret he acted like only they knew. Of course, she wasn’t actually in on that secret, was she?

Was it the music? Was that what they’d shared? Did he know she knew the piece he’d been playing?

And she did know it. Maggie was certain. Okay, she had only given a few of the pieces a cursory glance as she readied to leave for vacation. Certainly, packing and getting ready to leave could have made her less observant than usual. And there had been dozens of compositions that needed authenticating. Literally dozens. Symphonies, concerti, and sonatas. Even what appeared to be a complete opera.

Quite a discovery, and she couldn’t resist sneaking a little peek, even though she couldn’t really do any intense analysis until she got back.

Still, even with her brief perusal, she knew the keyboard player up on that stage had been playing one of the pieces she’d seen. A sonata.

She wasn’t wrong—although now, with yet another classic rock standard playing behind her, she was starting to question her own memory.

“That guy—on the keyboards,” she said, still hesitant to say the words aloud, because they were so implausible, “he was just playing one of the pieces I’m researching. A piece that may very well have never been seen by any musician other than the composer.”

Her friends stared at her. They thought she was nuts too.

“Oh, no,” Jo said, shaking her head. “No, no. You are not going to think about work.”

“That’s right,” Erika agreed. “You are too obsessed with it as it is. You are not going to think about it now.”

“But I wasn’t. Not until I heard what he was playing.” Maggie knew what she heard. Even though she knew it wasn’t possible.

“How would some musician on Bourbon Street know the stuff you research? Aren’t they lost pieces of classical music?” Jo frowned, then waved for the bartender.

“Exactly,” Maggie said. “But I know it was one of them. In fact, it was the last piece I looked at before leaving the office.”

Maggie cast a look between her two friends. Erika’s eyes shone with concern. Jo frowned, the downward curve of her lips somewhere between worry and exasperation. And neither one looked as if they believed her.

“You know what I think,” Jo said, after ordering something from the bartender that Maggie couldn’t quite hear over the newest rock anthem pounding behind her. “I think it just reminded you of that piece. And wasn’t that the large collection you and Peter were supposed to be working on together?”

Maggie nodded. This job was one of the few things she’d gotten to keep when Peter left.

“Maybe subconsciously you were thinking about work and Peter. I know it’s hard to let go of what happened, but you’ve got to, for you.” Jo’s eyes now looked more worried than irritated.

Was she that hung up on Peter? Still? Maybe.

The bartender, a bouncy gal with a multitude of dyed braids sticking up from her otherwise shaved head like so many colorful antennae, appeared with three beers. Before Jo could reach into her purse for her wallet, the businessman still pressed beside her took that moment to turn and offer to buy their drinks.

Jo smiled, easily flirting with the man. Maggie watched, momentarily distracted from her own strange train of thought. Flirting was an art form, just like music. And a talent that she’d been born without, just like music.

She glanced over her shoulder, back toward the stage. The man who’d been playing the keyboard now stood at the mic.

For the first time she realized it was his voice that filled the shadowy bar. A good voice, a bit higher than she would have guessed—something about his features suggested he’d have a husky voice. But the tone was strong and melodic, and a little…

She realized her skin tingled and she was holding her breath deep in her chest as she listened.

His voice was…sexy. Very sexy.

She forced herself to turn back to the counter and take a sip of her beer.

“I’m thinking that the fact you thought you heard that music is a sign,” Erika said, startling Maggie from her intent concentration on that voice.

“What?” Maggie blinked. Again it was as if the man had mesmerized her, now with his singing rather than his eyes or his playing. What was it about him that was so entrancing to her? Aside from his knowledge of undiscovered sonatas.

“I think the fact that you thought you heard that man playing the very song you were just researching is a sign. Because he couldn’t know it. As you said, it’s not possible. So maybe you just thought you heard it. Maybe it was some weird cosmic occurrence to lead you to this bar, to see him. Maybe Marie Laveau wanted you to meet him.”

Maggie stared at her friend. She was serious.

Maggie turned slightly on her seat and glanced back up to the stage. She considered the idea for a fraction of a second, then nearly laughed. Erika was definitely more esoteric than either herself or Jo. And apparently more romantic too. But this was definitely one of her more fantastic theories.

But the laugh died on her lips.

He was watching her again. His eyes—she couldn’t quite make out the color from this distance—

locked with hers. For the first time, she noticed what her friends had mentioned; there was something different about his left eye. Although it definitely wasn’t lazy. It was…