Blue Notes (4 page)

 Four 

D
uring my trip to Never-Never Land, where a handsome stranger alternately bickers and flirts with me, the jazz band finishes its set. The loud, dissonant whir of the crowd is interrupted by the tinkle of a lone piano—the work of a girl with bright blonde curls. She’s sitting on a bench onstage. Her back is enviably straight, completely at odds with her hippie meets Goth clothes. I could never pull off that look, ever, not with a hundred years of practice and a Mississippi bargeful of confidence.

She adjusts her mic.

That sound rouses me from my stupor and helps banish the confusion of the past few minutes . . . no, hours. Time to forget some unexpected playboy with a devastating smile and unnerving personality. I make myself use that word, “personality,” because calling it “charisma” would make him irresistible.

I
will not
look around for him. Nope.

I rivet my attention to the young woman who’ll look to me—a transfer on scholarship—to guide her through her first year in the music department.
Four semesters
at a satellite campus means I’m as clueless as she is, despite the fact that I’m a junior. Maybe more clueless, if I’m right in thinking her accent means she’s native to New Orleans. One of my professors had mentioned her in passing, that she was the recipient of a music fellowship like mine. She has to be good. No university is in the habit of throwing money at students who aren’t supergifted.

No way am I missing this. That means front row. I spot a lone chair between two couples—you know, that awkward place where a single person would have to sit and appear kinda desperate and alone because, hey, no date.

I scoot down the aisle and try to appear inconspicuous. Of course, I step on someone’s foot, but I make it to my seat. The couple to my left will absolutely head to the nearest bed when they quit Yamatam’s. The woman, wearing a camisole with a shelf bra that does little to conceal big boobs and perky nipples, is practically sitting in her date’s lap. He’s a total jock type, solid and tan. Why they’re sitting in the front row baffles me. They don’t fit with my idea of music aficionados. She slings her legs over the guy’s lap and wraps her forearms around his neck.

I’m equal parts annoyed and envious.

With tons of willpower, I conquer the whitewater rush to scan the crowd for the provocative stranger. The last thing I want is to give him the satisfaction of making good on his assumption. I feel like he’d wait all evening to see the moment I give in and seek him out.

He’s clearly used to being right, used to winning. That self-assurance had heated the air between us, and I’d wanted to be wrapped in his confidence as tightly as the couple next to me pressed limb to limb. Could my mysterious stranger, so sarcastic and intimidating, ever loosen up enough to let a girl drape across his body? Could
I
, in public no less?

And when did I decide on calling him
my
stranger?

He was a guy I’d never see again, because I’m not looking around. I’m not looking for him. Definitely not.

Turns out I don’t need to.

“I’d like my seat, if you don’t mind,” comes that low, smooth New Orleans drawl.

I look up and catch my breath. His sharp, aristocratic features are easygoing, but a muscle at his jaw bunches with perfectly masculine power. His Caribbean clear eyes are pinned on the man currently covered by five and a half feet of double-D female.

“You’re joking, right?” the jock asks.

“Not at all.” He glances at me. “I plan to sit with my companion here.”

His smile is slight, as if I know what the hell he’s doing and I have his personal invitation to laugh along. I grip the metal folding chair and watch the drama with what must be a stupidly confused expression.

“Yeah, sure.” The jock skims his hands down his date’s sides, with his thumbs rubbing her nipples. “I’ll get right on that.”

That irresistible smile widens. I can’t help but join him, although I hide my grin behind my fingers. I turn away, but it’s just for show. There’s no way I can take my eyes off him. I keep slipping him glances, and he keeps catching them.

“You’re moving,” he says quietly but firmly to the jock. “You just don’t know it yet.”

“Look, freak show, if you think I’m leaving my girl here with you, you’re a whole ton of crazy.”

“Forget him,” the woman says, glaring up from under eyelashes thick with blue mascara.

My stranger shrugs. It’s a show of restrained tension—a hint of what he can do, what he’s holding back—no matter his seemingly carefree demeanor.

“I didn’t ask you to leave her or take her with you when you go. I want that seat, and that seat only.” He leans over at the waist, nearly eye to eye with the couple. He’s wearing the expression of a father who’s nearly lost his patience and speaks to them just that way, parent to child. “Time to run along. You’ll thank me after.”

No way. No way will this bullshit work.

His stare hasn’t wavered since locking eyes with the jock. They square off in silence. The jock has the advantage of probably forty pounds of free-weight muscle. But it doesn’t matter. Amazingly, he’s the one at the disadvantage and I can’t figure out why. He blinks, defeated by steady, glacial blue confidence.

“Come on, Livvy,” he says. “We don’t need this crap.”

He shifts so that Livvy can stand on her own. She’s sputtering quiet profanity and tugging her skirt into place. The guy stands just as my stranger straightens to his full height—at least two inches taller. He looks so sleek compared to his bulkier opponent. I shiver thinking that, if forced, he’d be able to hold his own in any fight. Something about his posture. His fluid, powerful grace. I can’t help but take him in from head to toe. He’s treating me to the sweet privilege of another long, appreciative look, when I’d thought pride would keep me from soaking in him again.

He catches me in the act. He winks. My cheeks burst into flames, embarrassed like nobody’s business. The humor in his smile takes on a sharper edge.

If I want you, I’ll come find you.

Yeah, he found me. He’d won some weird duel between us. Or, he’s in the process of winning.

He extends his hand to the jock. “No hard feelings. Go put two rounds on my tab,” he says, handing the girl Livvy a business card fished out of his wallet. “Jude Villars.”

Her eyes widen. “No way.” Then she tosses her hair and puts on a defiant expression. “We have a lot of friends here, you know,” she says, like a dare. “Could get expensive.”

“Then the bartenders will be busy. Enjoy your night.”

“Thanks.” The jock stops mid-motion. Just as predicted, he’d thanked this man Jude for the trouble of vacating his own seat.

“Don’t worry,” Jude says. “I won’t rub it in.”

There’s no huge change to his bright smile, except it suddenly seems dismissive—some change behind his eyes, where his interest winks out. He doesn’t shove them aside. He doesn’t gloat. He simply sits beside me with quiet nonchalance, as if the jock and his girl had never existed.

“And here we are again.”

“We weren’t here when we started,” I say. I need water or something. The Sahara has nothing on my parched throat.

“But you must admit this is a vast improvement over the stairwell.” Leaning back, he crosses his arms as if what he just did was perfectly normal human behavior. Our legs touch, shoved together by the narrow seating. If he wanted to move his thigh away from where it presses against mine, he would’ve done it by now. But he doesn’t.

I need to take the offensive or I’ll reveal what I know I am: a lamb to the slaughter, ready to walk to my doom for a bit of flirting. “Where do you get the nerve to make a scene like that?”

“Make a scene? Says you.” He adds a quirking eyebrow to his smirk, which spikes my blush to inferno levels. “Besides, I have a reputation to live up to. Would you believe I’ve been told I’m an arrogant asshole?”

“Yes, I believe it.”

“By some woman who has yet to introduce herself.” He shakes his head in mock disappointment. “There’s rude, and then there’s
rude
.”

“My lack of an introduction compares to what you just did?”

“Yes.” He crosses his arms and settles into the metal seat, appearing way too content with the world. “When company calls, you offer sweet tea. When it’s raining, you share your umbrella. And when you’re pursued by an intriguing man, you make pains to introduce yourself.”

“I didn’t get the handbook.”

“I’d send you a copy, but exchanging email addresses looks like third base from here.” He shrugs. “I suppose I could keep calling you ‘Miss Fire Drill,’ but it’s such a mouthful.”

“You can’t keep from drawing the attention back to yourself, can you?”

“Busted. Now . . . your name.”

“Keeley.” It pops out. Honest to God, I can’t help myself when he issues a command that strong. Maybe that’s why he’s sitting next to me and that jock will watch the show from the bar. “Can we be done now? I’m asking you. Please. You’re not the one center stage. Let me watch her in peace.”

“Her? Adelaide?”

I go still. There’s genuine affection in his voice, and pride, and all of that is backed up by his widest smile yet—one he has yet to shine at me. Big. Manic. Unabashed. It’s a laugh without sound. His smile is for Adelaide Deschamps.

I’d actually looked forward to sparring with him. I only realize it when he turns that carefree smile toward the young woman at the piano. I’d been thinking him a sexy, astonishing pest who’d acted like a polite caveman to sit beside me.

But he isn’t here for me at all. I just happen to be in the front row, right where he wants to be. For her.

“She can hold her own,” he says. “How do you know her?”

“I don’t.” I’m proud of the detachment I force into my voice, when all I want is to find the strength to be the first to pull my thigh away. “I’m supposed to mentor her this year. I’d like to know who I’m mentoring. What she can do.”

Out of nowhere, Jude turns that ravishing smile on me. The floor drops out from beneath my chair. I’m in free fall. It’s more devastating than staring into the sun; it’s going blind and catching fire and being reborn. The only place I’m truly, securely grounded is where our thighs still press together—so obvious, so simple . . . and increasingly erotic.

“What she can do is take center stage and shake it like a Doberman with a bone. No one holds a candle. Although . . .” He leans so close that I can smell his rich cologne. “Maybe this year she’ll meet her match.”

 Five 

A
delaide Deschamps is a prodigy. She’s the sort of performer who makes a girl doubt her own abilities—that girl being me, of course. I’m not used to that at all. Everyone is enraptured. And even though my welcome/unwelcome company is staring with obvious marvel and adoration, while his thigh is still confusingly pressed against mine, I’m enraptured too.

She’s definitely classically trained. All those composers who bored me but inspired me to forge on with my own compositions—well, she probably knows each masterpiece forward and backward. But I’m surprised by how raw she is. It’s like she skipped a few hundred steps, from “Chopsticks” to Chopin.

I don’t know where her musical theater stuff is supposed to come in. There’s none of the sorority don’t give a damn nutso I’d heard over the phone. Seriously, she should be wearing a long formal black evening gown, performing at the Met. This eclectic crowd should be decked out in suits and fancy dresses, the kind I saw when Clair and John had taken me to the orchestra in Baton Rouge. Once, we traveled all the way to Dallas when Joshua Bell was on tour. Sure, he isn’t a piano player, only one of the best violinists of this century, but I had a major crush on him and they gave me the tickets for my sixteenth birthday.

My first birthday gift.

I remember hiding in my room, crying my damn eyes out after they told me we’d be seeing him perform. And I loved every minute of his astonishing show. Trying to soak it in. Knowing it wouldn’t last forever.

This is one of those moments.

“She’s so good.”

The strange company I keep looks down at me. I can feel the weight of Jude’s fire blue stare. It’s easier to return that stare now. His nose is straight and a touch long, while his jaw is strong and defined. His lips are thin with an oh so kissable dip on the upper one. His eyes are narrowed, with those arching brows lifting and digging horizontal lines across his forehead. It’s as if all his features decided to be horizontal or vertical. Little middle ground—just his cheekbones, carved into sharp but graceful slopes that angle toward a tiny pair of laugh lines at the corners of his mouth. His posture makes his neck seem longer, striped with strong tendons. The effect is predatory.

That’s the look.
Predatory
.

It’s not like it matters now. That’s his girl onstage and he’s a player and I’m that lamb braying for a quick death, not a slow bleed-out by humiliation.

I tear my gaze off his face, away from his bemused expression, his . . . ugh, just
him
.

Applause follows the apparent conclusion of Adelaide’s recital. Only, she doesn’t stop. She offers the crowd a quick nod before launching into a rip-roaring rendition of “If You Hadn’t But You Did.” Clair and John hired my high school music director to be my piano tutor, and she insisted on Broadway as well as the classics. She was weird and supercool. Horn-rimmed glasses and a slip showing—the goofy teacher everyone loved but didn’t really get. She
adored
Broadway and made a solo pilgrimage every year to catch a show or two. The genre never clicked for me, but if anyone can change my mind, it’s Adelaide Deschamps.

The mic isn’t just for show. Her voice is Marilyn Monroe after sucking one little gulp of helium. She has the perfect blend of sexiness and playfulness. She hits the high notes, and she growls low, sultry notes as she accuses a phantom lover of cheating, all the time rollicking on the piano. She’s two different people in one body—half master musician, half rockabilly sexpot.

I’m surprised when Jude’s big hand finds my knee and gives it a squeeze. I’d been tapping my toes furiously, and our legs are still crammed together. I do the unthinkable. I pull his hand off my thigh—instantly noticing the lack of warmth—and go back to tapping my toes. I can’t help it. The music is amazing.

I glance over to see if he shows any sign of being offended. Not a bit. That big, shark-wide grin is back, in profile, filled with teasing. He’s toying with me to pass the time. I hate that.

Take me seriously or don’t.

I shake off my annoyance. Adelaide doesn’t play all hurricane-possessed like me. She’s perfectly aware of every gesture. A slinky bit of side-eye. A beaming smile. A pause—then an exaggerated wink to add a touch of comedy to her sex appeal. Forget the Met. Her stage presence screams,
Doll me up and make me the next YouTube sensation
.

She’s living art—consciously vampy and raunchy and complex and dramatic.

Her performance, plus Jude’s totally surprising crash-bang into my life, makes me want to slip free of my skin.

When Adelaide finishes, she flips her shining curls over her shoulder with a dramatic flourish. She stands to receive a riot of clapping and shouts. Beaming, she dips a few curtsies more suited to a junior high kid making fun of the performance she’s been forced to finish. Clown-like. She blows air kisses and wiggles her fingers at a few people.

Jude crosses his arms, which accentuates the striated muscles of forearms dusted with brown hair. His biceps pull against the material of his shirt. The fabric clings. I can barely keep from drooling. His brows are pulled down low. The set of his mouth says one thing: disappointment.

As the spotlight dims, Adelaide must see it too. She flips him the bird. Then it’s back to smiles and honest to God giggles I can hear over the applause.

“Yes, she’s very good,” he says, almost too quietly to hear. “But she’s a pain in the ass.”

He turns to me and stares outright. I’m caught again. Lost again. His eyes are stormy and bright with emotion. With doubt? Hope?

Yeah, right.

“She’s wild and takes everything for granted. Even what you just saw. Are you up to dealing with her?” He shakes his head in that gesture I don’t like. Pity? Doubt? “Frankly, you’re not the most resilient girl I’ve ever met.”

Oh, how wrong you are.

“Is that why you’re sitting with me? Checking me out?”

“Among other things,” he says with a sharp grin.

“Does she practice?”

His eyes lose that scary intensity. He’s about to tease me. How do I know that so quickly? I thought he was Fort Knox with me carrying only a tourist map. No way in.

“I bet you practice every day,” he replies, dodging my question.

It comes across as an accusation. “Yes.”

“Like you did this morning?”

I look away, embarrassed all over again. He catches my chin, and our gazes smash together like speeding cars. He keeps doing that. Colliding with me. I can’t tell if it’s the best thing ever, or a force that’ll bust me into a thousand pieces. All I know is that I can’t stand how he’s using all this magnetic, irresistible bullshit on me when his girlfriend is center stage.

He tightens his fingers in a silent prompt for an answer. “Yes,” I say. “Like I did this morning.”

“Can you do it again, or was that a onetime deal?”

“Of course I can do it again.”

“Prove it,” he says bluntly. “It’s an open mic, Keeley. The next person up onstage is the next person to perform. Simple.”

I start to tremble. “Do you mean
me
?”

“Why not?”

I can’t answer. I blink past a surprising rush of tears. Suddenly I’m back in that damn courtroom, with a hundred pairs of eyes on me, hanging on every word. Some were sympathetic, like Ursula’s and even the judge’s. The reporters’ were avaricious. The defense attorney may as well have been made of ice.

And Jude wants me to go through that again? Center of attention? It burned a scar onto my soul. How mortifying would it be to get onstage in front of all these people and just . . .
freeze
?

I don’t duck in time to avoid a clue-by-four. The courtroom . . . and the stage . . . and all eyes on me. I can’t go through that again. It’s only taken me, what, six years to figure that out, with this guy Jude watching me so expectantly?

“Keeley?”

“No way,” I say. “And don’t try the crap you pulled on that guy. I won’t be bullied about this. You can’t dare me.”

“How can I resist? Hearing you through sound dampening walls wasn’t enough. I want to
see
you too.” He lets go of my chin, but doesn’t let go of me—not emotionally, anyway. He strokes the backs of his knuckles against my cheek. “And a dare won’t be necessary.”

Jude says it with complete confidence. Oh, to have a tenth of his assurance.
I’d
be the one playing at the Met, wowing crowds with my own compositions. But I haven’t played for anyone other than Clair and John, tutors, and profs. It’s been years since I took the witness stand, but I can’t imagine getting up in front of a crowd again. Little recitals and how I’d performed for a small panel of music administrators to earn my fellowship—those were low-key and necessary. This is huge and completely
un
necessary.

That doesn’t keep me from wanting Jude to keep pushing. He stared at Adelaide with such entertained delight—until that confusing moment at the end when he seemed disappointed. I don’t want to disappoint him. I
won’t
.

Keep going. Don’t stop. I want to play for you, but I don’t know how.

I burn beneath the return of my blush. “If not a dare, then . . . what?”

His thumb lingers, slows, tracing my lower lip. “There it is,” he says on a deep masculine sigh. A shiver of sexual awareness chills my skin, then sets me on fire. “You’re confused and hopeful. Not pissed off anymore. Your mouth is as beautiful as I knew it would be.”

I swallow hard. What am I supposed to do with that other than mentally trip and never get up again?

I’m silently begging now.
Tell me more and I’ll try to believe it.

“I can’t follow Adelaide. She’s . . . amazing.”

“She’s gifted at showmanship and artifice,” Jude says. “I bet you’re different. I want you to show this whole place. I want you to show me.”

I don’t reply. He keeps stealing my voice. I only have one left . . . and it’s onstage.

It’s a test. The whole night is a test.
How to survive a trial by spontaneous masculine overdrive
. Jude Villars—his eyes, his gorgeous face, those built arms, his man in a man’s world way of dressing . . .

Show him what you can do.

Take
him
by surprise.

I take myself by surprise when I dig my fingers into his broadcloth collar. I drag him closer. The gap between our mouths isn’t big. I could kiss him if I wanted. I want some revenge for being emotionally tossed around. I want to break
him
into a thousand pieces.

“You think you’ve got it all figured out,” I say. “You don’t. Not about me.”

The exhales between us are thick and hot. At least he’s breathing as hard as I am. He chuckles softly. The sound, the secondhand feel of it, ricochets down my chest. I’m tinder catching fire. I can do anything.

“I wonder,” he whispers, “have you ever kissed anyone as hard as you want to kiss me right now?”

I shove him away, but not before his words settle like lava behind my breastbone. I’m both molten and airy, and learning fast what it means to get really turned on. That’s even more shocking than the idea of taking to the stage. No man has ever touched me with such knowing confidence. Brushing his thumb along my lower lip? He knows exactly what he’s doing.

And I want more.

He’s already made me angry. Now he’s making me reckless. If that means going head to head with me makes him smile all wispy like he did at Adelaide, then bring it on. He’s played with my brain all night. I can at least be memorable.

He stands when I do. I thought his height was a trick of perspective when he’d towered over the seated jock. No way. He’s a good six feet, but I’m not letting him get away with talking down at the crown of my head. I tilt my chin. “Me and the piano. And you’ll watch.”

“I won’t be able to take my eyes off you.”

A thrill zings from head to toe before settling in my fingertips. Itching. Ready. “You better not.”

People hoot when I approach the stage.

I’m not in court, but neither am I safe in a rehearsal room. I’m in a hot, colorful, loud, feverish club in New Orleans. And everyone in here expects to be entertained.