Caressa's Knees (25 page)

After a moment, he drew her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers softly, the very tips, like he was praying. He finally looked up at her with a rueful sigh.
“My little madwoman.
As your tantrums go, that was pretty mild.” She laughed weakly, letting him pull her back into his arms. He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her gently. “I’ll forgive you on one condition.”

“What?”

“Come back to the pond with me. Let me teach you how to swim.”

She followed him back down the rise, only to find twice as many fireflies clustered in the trees. She let him undress her and pull her into the water. The pond was black now, the only light in the darkness coming from the bugs and the half moon. The bottom was smooth, uneven stone, so she didn’t sink into it as she’d feared. She still clutched him as he drew her deeper.

“It’s scary out here,” she said. “I can’t see what’s down there.”

“I know. You’ll be okay.”

He held her as she kicked her feet in the water and attempted a pathetic kind of dog paddle. “I’m not real coordinated.”

“You’re doing fine. The important thing is just getting comfortable in the water and learning what to do with your hands and feet.
And understanding that you’re not going to drown.
Nothing dire is going to happen to you, as long as you don’t panic. You can always float if worse comes to worse.”

He slid a hand under her back and lifted her up in the water. She resisted and he shook his head at her. “Relax. Let me hold you. I’m going to show you how to float.”

He made her put her head back and lie straight and still. “Let the water hold you. Just let go and be a
lilypad
on the surface. The water will hold you from beneath.”

Caressa smiled a little, trying to be a
lilypad
. To her surprise, she found the water did hold her. She took slow, deep breaths, feeling her arms and legs bobbing on the surface, her entire torso buoyed up by the blackness underneath. Her breasts were small silver mounds in the light of the moon. “I’m not even holding you now, Cara. You’re doing it yourself. You feel it?”

She nodded, laughing softly.
“Yeah.”

“Now come back down in the water and try to do it yourself. As long as you know how to float, you’ll do pretty well for yourself. You’ll keep your head above the surface, anyway. You’ll be able to breathe.”

Caressa lifted her feet from the rocky bottom and lay back in the water. She flailed for a moment, but then she pulled her tummy up to the surface and relaxed her shoulders back into the water. Above her a few stray fireflies still blinked their intermittent, tiny blinks, like faraway stars.
You’ll keep your head above the surface anyway. You'll be able to breathe.
It was the most she could ask for. She smiled over at Kyle. “I did it.”

She felt his hands in her hair, separating the curls where they floated on the surface. “I knew you could.”

She looked over at his bare chest, and the moon shining on the water reflected a scar on the right side. “What’s this from?” she asked, grabbing onto his shoulders and running a finger over the reddened ridge.

“My unrequited love.
I got shot.”

“What? Okay, wait. Explain.”

“It’s a long story, Caressa.”

She hopped in the water beside him, practicing some of the moves he’d taught her. “The night is young, and the fireflies are still out. Tell me what happened.”

He hesitated, but then he said, “You remember, I used to work for a movie star.”

“Yeah, Denise told me his name once. I can’t remember. James?
Jethro
?”

Kyle snorted. “Jeremy. He’s a pretty big movie star. Anyway, one of the things I did as Jeremy’s assistant was…well…find him girlfriends.
Women to date.
He was a little too famous to go out and make passes at women in a bar or whatever.”

“That’s kind of creepy.”

Kyle laughed. “Honestly, it was really creepy, but he was a good guy, so I did what I could for him. Anyway, I found him this girl.”

“The girl you were in love with.”

“Not right away. I fell for her over weeks…months. A lot of stuff went on.”

“She was cheating on him with you?”

“No. Well, it’s hard to explain, but I can’t really tell you the specifics because I signed a confidentiality agreement.”

“Ooh la
la
. It must have been pretty depraved stuff.
If you had to sign a confidentiality agreement.”

He looked at her. “I signed one to work with you.”

“Did you? I didn’t ask you to.”

“A lot of people are running around behind the scenes keeping the Caressa Express on the rails. Your lawyer required it. My agency’s lawyers would have required it too, if yours hadn’t.”

“Oh.” She digested that interesting fact, feeling kind of foolish. Well, at least she didn’t have to worry about him blabbing about her finer meltdowns in some tell-all book someday.

“Anyway, one of Jeremy’s deranged fans—”

“He had more than one?”

“Unfortunately, yes. But are you going to let me tell this story?”

Caressa made a lip-zipping motion and wrapped her legs around his hips, letting him hold her in the water.

“Any
way
…this deranged woman showed up at his girlfriend’s hotel room to kill her. I tried to take her gun away and she shot me in the chest. Or maybe I shot myself. It was hard to say in the heat of the moment.”

Caressa was flabbergasted. “God, you really might have died.”

“I might have. It was eight centimeters from my heart, they told me. But I was actually fine. I was only in the hospital a few days.
She
died. The crazy woman,” he added soberly. “I had to shoot her.”

She gazed into his eyes, saddened to see the shadow crossing over his face. “I’m sorry. But that wasn’t your fault. You were a hero.”

“I guess.”

She ran her fingers across a small blemish above the bullet scar. “What’s this from?”

He cringed. “I had her name tattooed there afterward.” Caressa giggled softly, mostly from the beleaguered look on his face. “I know, embarrassing. Having it taken off was one of the best things I did in rehab.” He shook his head. “I don’t know why I got so crazy over her.”

“Maybe because you saved her.
That has to create a special bond between people.”

He stared at her a long time. “I don’t know if it really works that way. But you know what, Caressa? I hardly think of her anymore.”

Caressa couldn’t quite hold his gaze, it was so intense. “Because of me?” she asked quietly.

He didn’t reply, only drew her through the black water to the shore. He laid her on the edge of the pond with her head resting on the damp grass and covered her with his body. She shivered, looking up at the moon, letting him love her and warm her.

The fireflies had gone, lights shuttered for the night, but she knew she’d always remember that light shining out from her fingers, and the blinking above her as she floated under a Texas moon.
Oh, Kyle, Kyle.
His cock was pure bliss, and she arched her hips up to feel him spread and fill her. His hair tickled against her cheek and she licked his neck, tracing the straining tendons. She clutched at his back as he slid deep inside her, lapping against her like the dark, dark water.

“Thank you for teaching me how to float,” she whispered, but she knew he didn’t hear.

Chapter Twelve:

Fighting

She got on the plane to London without a blip. He’d worried about the flight change issue but she seemed to have forgotten it completely. Or perhaps she was only distracted. Their sojourn to
Spur
had left both of them with a lot to think about. She slept now as they flew across the ocean, one hand clasped in his, the other resting against her cello case. He searched his conscience again. No, he really did
not
want to make her stop playing. He just didn’t want her to miss out on other things.

Like making a life with you
, his conscience chided. Damn conscience. It never shut up. And she was still riddled with anxiety. When she didn’t practice, she fretted. When she had a less than perfect show, she suffered. When reviews weren’t one hundred percent raves, she shut down for hours after reading them. He didn’t want to make her quit
playing,
he just wanted her to realize that if she
did
want to quit, or just pull back a little, it would be okay.

He was determined to make it okay. He would be there for her,
because he couldn’t
not
be there for her
. He would fend off Denise and all the music mavens who’d come after her, begging her to reconsider. He’d make her smile, make her laugh all day. He’d see to it that she never paced back and forth the length of a dressing room again, but instead played in ways that made her joyful. If that meant playing three hundred concerts a year, so be it. But maybe it meant playing smaller concerts or only a few concerts a year…whatever it took to make the stress and anxiety go away.

“I like London,” she said drowsily beside him.

He leaned to kiss her on the forehead as she stirred against his side. “I didn’t know you were up. There’s still an hour or so to go. Sleep some more if you want to.”

“I might wear my red gown tomorrow.”

“There’s another meet-and-greet afterward.”

“You told me that yesterday.”

“Well, I’m never sure you’re listening,” he chuckled. “London should be cooler than Texas anyway. Then we’re on to Paris for your birthday.”

“Are there going to be French pastries at my party?”

“You’re
gonna
be swimming in them.”

“French champagne?”

He frowned.
“Maybe.”

“I’m going to be twenty-one, remember?
Old enough to legally drink.”

“Don’t remind me.”

She laughed softly and leaned her head on his shoulder. “Will there be brie at my party? And baguettes?”

“I’ll give you a big, hard baguette a little later,
ma petite
.”

He pinched the inside of her thigh, enjoying her little squeak. She was in high spirits the rest of the flight and all the way to the London hotel, and then the cloak of duty and stress seemed to smother her again.

Kyle ended up having to give Denise the report on their trip to
Spur
when Caressa shut herself in her room to practice. By the time he and Denise strong-armed her out to dinner, she was nearing hysteria over how unprepared she was and how badly she was going to bomb at the Royal Festival Hall. Kyle hauled her into the bedroom as soon as they returned to the hotel suite, intent on shutting down her tantrum before it started.

“Caressa, I’m telling you right now, don’t even start this.”

“I’m not prepared. I should have practiced more last week.”

“If you aren’t prepared by now—Jesus.
The tour’s over in less than a month, you realize.”

“You don’t—” She stopped the words at his warning glare.

“Listen here,” he said, emphasizing every word. “I do not want you to stress about this. Yes, we’re in Europe now. You did fine in the States and Canada. You’ll do fine here. Snap out of it.”

She stayed in her room that night, and he tried not to be offended by it. She was better the next day, but worse the following. She had a meltdown at a media event, bursting into tears when a hapless reporter likened her to Jacqueline du
Pré
. “She died, and I’m the one who didn’t die,” she yelled. “Do your research!”

He held her in the car afterward while she sobbed on his shoulder, trying to gauge where the moodiness was coming from. “Cara.
Sweet pea.
Is it only that the tour is ending soon?”

“I don’t know,” she sobbed.

“You know, I’m not going to leave when it’s over.
When my contract with you is up.”
He chuckled softly. “Not that we’ve been adhering to the contract guidelines anyway. But we’ll be back in New York together. We can go wherever you want from here.”

“I don’t want to go anywhere,” she said petulantly.

“Well, you’ll have to go somewhere.” He tried to kiss her but she shied away from him. They rode the rest of the way to the hotel in brittle silence, a silence that loomed too much in the following days. Kyle ached to reach for her, but she was armored again. He gave what support she would accept and spend his nights alone, not trusting
himself
to go to her.

It wasn’t until the first morning in Paris that she finally crept into his room, her face pale and her eyes red from tears. She crawled into bed with him and buried her face against his neck and begged for forgiveness. He did the only thing he could think to do, which was forgive her. She pressed against him and kissed him and he responded even though he’d told himself he was done with it. That she was a hopeless case.
A lost cause.
He’d already nearly killed himself over one lost cause. He wouldn’t do it again.