Love at First Note (20 page)

As quickly as she had arrived, she was gone. Grayson glanced over his shoulder, his eyes apologetic, then allowed himself to be
dragged off across the terrace. I watched as Agnes flapped her cape wings over to Greg, pausing long enough to kiss his cheeks and point him in my direction.

“So . . . Greg?” Elliott asked.

I spoke as I looked up and caught Greg’s eye.
“Greg McKenzie is an assistant conductor in Cleveland.”

“The jilted lover assistant conductor?”

I winced. “The very one.” Greg was only a handful of steps
away, but I knew he would bring up the spring tour. I
t had to be the only reason he wanted to speak to me, and I couldn’t fathom Elliott hearing about it from him instead of me. “Um, also? Don’t be mad. I should have told you before now, but Greg has been e-mailing me all week. Cleveland invited me to tour Europe with
them this spring . . . as concertmaster. They want me to come
back.”

There wasn’t time for Elliott to respond.

“Well, if it isn’t the lovely Emma Hill.” Greg leaned forward and
kissed me on the cheek. “You look beautiful
, as always.” He gave
Elliott a once-over, then turned back to me, his eyebrows raised.

“Greg, this is my boyfriend, Elliott Hart.” They shook hands but didn’t speak. It almost felt like they were sizing each other up. “What are you doing here?” I finally said to Greg.

He shrugged. “The Rockwells are old family friends. Jane’s father and mine grew up together.”

“How
did you even know I would be at the wedding?”

“Nothing but luck. An overheard conversation between my mother and Jane’s. Fortuitous though, isn’t it? That we both happen
to be here? Maybe now you’ll finally answer my question.”

I sank into my seat. This wasn’t anything close to what I’d expected from Grayson’s wedding. Elliott moved some chairs around so there was room for both him and Greg to join me at the table.

“I’m sorry I didn’t respond to your messages,” I said. “It’s been a busy week. And I wasn’t sure how to respond.”

“You’re considering it though, right?” Greg stuck his finger in his collar as if to loosen it, then glanced over his shoulder at the bar. “I could use a drink. Do you want anything?”

“Let me get the drinks,” Elliott said. “What are you having?” He waited for Greg’s answer, then headed to the bar.

Greg sat back and crossed one leg over the other. He studied me with
such quiet intensity I felt uncomfortable under his gaze. He motioned to Elliott with a light nod of his head. “Is he the reason you don’t know how to respond?”

“No.” My answer was immediate. “He’s a musician too. He understands things like this, but I did have my reasons for leaving, Greg. And none of those reasons have changed.”

Greg pulled a sheet of paper out of his suit pocket and unfolded
it before sliding it across the table. The paper was a full-page ad for
the spring tour, with a list of tour dates and locations, all superimposed on a close-up of
me
. I remembered the photo; it was from a final concert with Cleveland. It was taken in that moment of perfect stillness after the endnotes of a piece, when the vibrations
of sound are still humming through your body, and though you
can’t hear
the music anymore, you still feel it. My eyes were closed, my face
revealing every ounce of emotion I’d felt while I
’d played.

Elliott returned just in time to see the ad. “That’s an amazing photo.”

“Magical, isn’t it?” Greg said. “They want you to be the face of the tour, Emma. This is just a mock-up, but it’s all the board can talk about.”

“Why me? It’s not like there’s a shortage of talented violinists in Cleveland.”

“But it’s more than just your talent as a musician. It’s your ability to lead a section, to communicate with others, to
inspire people both on and off the stage. You’re also young, attractive, and an alumnus of CIM, which makes you extremely marketable. Let’s be real. The past few years, Cleveland’s audience has gotten, well,
old
. Ancient, really, and if we’re going to pull in a younger demographic, we need a fresh face to show the world.”

It was flattering—beyond flattering, even—but there was too much to consider. I looked up. “Why is this invitation coming from you?” It hadn’t occurred to me to wonder until then, but it didn’t actually make sense that Greg, an assistant conductor, was the one responsible for wooing me back to Ohio. “Why not Sandra or Dr. Hamilton?” Sandra Richards was executive
director, and Dr. Hamilton the music director. The invitation would have made a little more sense coming from them.

“It was my idea to bring you back.” He glanced at Elliott.
“They thought I might have the most luck convincing you to say yes.”

I motioned to the advertisement. “So this is all because of
you?” I didn’t mean to sound accusatory, but I also didn’t want to make a major career decision (or not make a decision because, hello, I wasn’t going back to Cleveland) based on motives that weren’t 100 percent musical in nature. If Greg had asked only because he hoped the one kiss we’d shared would turn into something more, the offer wasn’t even worth consideration.

“It’s the right move for the symphony. I promise my motives are pure.”

I couldn’t say it wasn’t tempting. But I’d worked too hard to make peace with leaving the first time around. Going back couldn’t
be an option. I shook my head. “I can’t do it. I can’t leave the life I’ve created here for a marketing campaign. I have students and a
quartet. I have a symphony here now.”
Also Elliott
, my brain supplied.
And Mom.

“
This is about more than a marketing campaign, and you know it. We want you to play for a symphony that is worthy of you. It’s where you belong.”

I looked Greg right in the eye. “You know it’s not that easy.”

He took a deep breath, forcing it out through his nose in a noisy huff. “It should be. I can’t fathom how your priorities could place anything over an opportunity like this. Just promise me you’ll think about it. Take a few months. Rehearsals won’t start until February, so there’s still plenty of time to decide. You have to at least give me that
.” He picked up the paper and folded it into thirds, then reached for my hand and pressed it into my palm. “You’re destined for great things. Don’t squander all you’re capable of.” He gave my shoulder a gentle squeeze, then disappeared into the crowd that filled the dance floor.

“You okay?” Elliott put a hand on my back, giving me reassurance I didn’t realize I needed until it was there.

“Not at all. I’m feeling a little overwhelmed.”

“
Are you thinking about going? Is that why you didn’t tell me?”

“No. I didn’t tell you because I
wasn’t
thinking about going. I mean, it’s Europe. I’d love to go, but . . . I can’t. I can’t ignore all the reasons I came back home in the first place.”

He motioned to the ad I still gripped tightly in my fist. “Musicians dream of that kind of face time with the press. You’d be
the
face of the tour. That’d get your name out there in a big way.”

I dropped my hands into my lap. “Last week I found Mom
in her bedroom, where she’d been working for more than twenty minutes just to put on her socks. Her days of mobility are dwindling, Elliott. How can I leave when she’s at such a critical point with her health? She needs people around her who can help.”

“Emma, I believe you. But you said it yourself: if your mom knew you were sacrificing your career for her, she’d never forgive you. More than she wants your help, she wants you to be happy and successful and fulfilled.”

“But I’m not unhappy. Europe would be nice, but I like my life here.”

He hesitated but eventually nodded his head. “Okay. I believe you.” He leaned forward and kissed me softly. “If it matters, I like your life here too.”

I unfolded the ad Greg had given me and looked at it one more time.

“What can I do for you right now?” Elliott asked. “Do you want to sit here and make a list of all the reasons why staying in
Asheville is a good idea? Or we could dance, maybe? Go for a walk? Bust out of this joint and go get some cheeseburgers? Tell me what you need.”

Despite the turmoil I was feeling inside, I couldn’t help but smile. “No lists,” I said. “I don’t want to think about this anymore. Not tonight anyway. But dancing
sounds fun.”

He shrugged out of his suit coat and hung it on the back of his chair, then offered me his hand. “Your wish is my command.”

The next forty-five minutes were filled with the most fun I’d ever had at a wedding reception. Elliott was a great dancer. No, that wasn’t the right way to say it. He was a good dancer, but he was so completely unaffected by what other people thought of him his ability to cut loose
turned him into a great dancer. As fancy and stiff as the Rockwells seemed, I hadn’t expected the reception to take such a turn, but by nine thirty, it was a full-on dance party. I introduced Elliott to a few people I remembered from high school, one who made him promise he wouldn’t leave until she’d found something he could sign for her. He also met Jane, who was much more decorous in her compliments. She and Grayson looked really happy together, something I was glad to notice.

By the time Elliott had signed the back of a catering menu for my old friend, the cake had been eaten, and the bouquet tossed—
nope, I didn’t catch it—I was ready to be done wearing heels.

“You ready to get out of here?” Elliott asked.

I nodded. “Absolutely.”

Rather than cut back through the hotel, we left the terrace and walked through the dimly lit gardens surrounding the Grove Park. The stone walkways curved up and down and around, following the contours of the mountain that hugged the entire resort. The air was cool against my skin but not uncomfortable, a slight breeze lifting the tendrils of hair that had fallen loose throughout the night.

“It feels amazing out here,” Elliott said. “I’m glad it warmed up.”

I grabbed hold of his arm, bracing myself as I removed my shoes.
It wasn’t so cool that I minded walking barefoot. “This is much
more typical of October,” I said. “Last week was unseasonably cold. Normally it’s just like this: beautiful fall colors, amazing views of the mountains, and nights that feel like this, when the humidity is gone and it’s just . . .” He held my gaze with such buil
ding intensity I couldn’t even finish my sentence.

“Perfect?” he finished for me. He wrapped one arm around my waist and pulled my hand to his chest, holding it there with his own.

“That’s the word I was going for.”

He smiled. “Want to hear my confession?”

“Okay.”

“Every minute I’m with you I worry I’m nothing but a word away from screwing things
up,” he said.

“You shouldn’t worry. I’m not going anywhere.”

He leaned his forehead against mine and hugged me tighter.

“You know you could also just kiss me,” I whispered. “I promise that’ll never screw anything up.”

He leaned in slowly, but the kiss was well worth the wait.

When we broke apart a moment later, we were both breathless.

“Nope, that didn’t screw anything up for me,” he said. “You?”

I laughed softly and shook my head. “Not even close.”

Elliott kissed me good night
right outside my apartment. Even after all the time we’d spent together, it was still disconcerting that he only had to cross the hallway to go home. Knowing that if I wanted to see him it would only take fifteen seconds to get to his door made it incredibly difficult to get him out of my head. But after the wedding, I was happy to have him consume my thoughts. Replaying the night’s events was the perfect way to fall asleep. Everything really did feel perfect.

A knock sounded on my
apartment door at 8:00 a.m., when I was seconds away from jumping in the shower to get ready for church. Thinking it might be Elliott, I threw on some yoga pants and a hoodie and hurried across the living room. I swung open the door, and he stalked in, agitation clear on his face.

“Has anyone contacted you?”

“What?”

“Any press. Have you gotten any calls?”

“I don’t think so. My phone’s been silenced since the wedding. I haven’t checked. What’s going on?”

He sighed. “Where’s your laptop?”

“It’s right there on the desk. Is everything okay?”

I watched as he opened the computer and navigated his way to
an Internet browser. Curious to know if I really had received any
calls, I raced back to my bedroom and grabbed my phone. I pressed
the home button, lighting the screen, and my heart started to pound.
I had fourteen missed calls. I walked back to the living room.

“Elliott, please tell me what this is about.”

He pushed back from my desk and collapsed onto the couch, motioning to the computer with a jerk of his head. “Read it.”

He’d pulled up some sort of Hollywood gossip site where the feature photo was a close-up of Elliott and me kissing in the garden at Grove Park Inn. I felt sick. I hadn’t bothered to sit, but I suddenly needed to. I reached for the rolling chair behind me and pulled it forward, gripping the armrests as I read through the article that accompanied the picture.

Just weeks after an announcement from pianist and
Talent
Hunt
winner Elliott Hart’s camp that he was stepping away from the Hollywood scene to work on his highly anticipated third album, it appears Elliott’s finding ways to spend some time outside the studio as well.
This picture was snagged while the superstar attended a wedding at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, North Carolina.

“This wasn’t even twelve hours ago,” I said. “How? Did someone follow us into the garden?”

“Apparently so.” Elliott sounded exhausted. “Keep reading. It gets worse.”

I scrolled past an ad in the middle of the article and found the rest of the text.

No word on how Elliott knows the bride and groom of the elaborate Grove Park affair, but our sources say his love interest is a musical darling in her own right—violinist Emma Hill, who this spring will launch a European tour with the Cleveland Orchestra. No comment from Elliott’s
team on the photo. The Cleveland Orchestra also declined to comment. As for us, we wish the couple well and hope they’ll be making beautiful music together for years to come.

Under the article was a second photograph, this one a copy of the Cleveland spring tour ad that Greg had given me.

“Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no.” I still gripped the armrests,
needing something to anchor me, to keep my head from spinning. “Who did this?” I finally managed. “Who would . . . and where did they find that ad? And how can they just print something if they don’t even know it’s true?”

“Websites like this don’t generally care about truth.”

“But who, Elliott? We were alone in that garden. Who would do this?”

“The photo credit goes back to someone named
Najim Berkley.
He works for
Asheville News and Culture
. You ever heard of it?”

I shook my head.

“It’s some sort of online magazine. I don’t know if Najim was a friend or if he was there to cover the wedding. The Rockwells seem like the kind of people who would warrant a little bit of local press coverage, but he’s definitely the source.”

“I must have left the Cleveland ad on the table when we went
to dance. I thought I put it in my purse, but . . .” I
pushed my head
into my hands. “What do we do now?”

“We do damage control as best we can.”

“Damage control.”

“Yes. You need to call whoever is in charge of Asheville Symphony as soon as you can. Maybe they don’t read celebrity gossip on the Internet, but eventually someone in the symphony will, and word will get back to them. If you talk to them first, there won’t be any
question about where you stand. You also need to take down your teaching website. The less people can find about you online, the better.”

“But my students use my website. Parents send in their payments and record practicing sessions and send me e-mails. I can’t just take it down.”

“How many voice mails do you have?”

“What?”

“On your phone—
voice mails and missed calls? How many have you gotten?” There was nothing gentle about his voice. His tone was edgy and harsh.

“Fourteen.”

“How do you think those fourteen people got your number?
Emma, you’ve never had to fight this kind of a battle, but I have. You have to trust me. If you leave that number up, they won’t leave you alone. At the very least, strip the site of any contact information.”

“For how long?” It was a stupid detail to cling to, but I felt like my entire world had been flipped upside down. “What’s the
point of even having a website if people can’t use it to contact me?”

Elliott looked beaten. “For as long
as you’re with me.”

“So, what? I’m just supposed to go underground? What about Facebook and Twitter? Should I delete that stuff too?” I sounded defensive—more defensive than I felt, but the reality of what dating Elliott actually meant was like a cold slap in the face. I’d never felt like my privacy was in question, but suddenly strangers were trolling my website, stealing my contact information for nefarious purposes. What was next? Would they show up at concerts? Call my family? The next time Elliott did something newsworthy, how far would the media attention extend? To me?

He pushed his head into his hands. “I’m sorry, Emma. I’m sorry
about all of it. My people are working to get any mention of you
removed from the website. But honestly it’s an uphill battle. Other sites will pick up the article, someone will blog or tweet about it. Fighting the spread of I
nternet gossip is like trying to fight a forest
fire with a watering can. There’s no way we’ll be able to contain it
all.”

“People. You have people?”

“Yeah. My agent and my publicist. They’re good at what they do, and they’ll try their hardest to squelch this. I’m just trying to be honest with you about it. There’s never an easy, instant fix with rumors.”

It was frustrating that I was going to have to explain myself, probably multiple times, to the people in my symphony, to the board, to the personnel manager, even to my fellow musicians. But more than that, it was embarrassing that a moment so intensely personal was now fodder for public speculation. My career, be it in Cleveland or Asheville, was only interesting because I was the girl Elliott Hart had decided to kiss.
And that was a realization that struck me all the way down to my core. If I had any kind of a future with Elliott,
everything
we did would be cause for public discussion.

“Don’t answer your phone for the next few days,” he continued. “Not unless you know the number. There’s no reason for you to talk to any press at any time. You
can’t
. If they think you like the attention, even for a second, they’ll run with it, pumping you for
information about your personal life and our relationship.”

“Do I need to worry about someone trying to find me in person?”

“I don’t think so. Najim
what’s-his-name, since he’s local, may
try to track you down. But I don’t think anyone from the tabloids
will. If they do, though, you can’t give them an inch. Do you under
stand?”

I didn’t answer. I was barely holding back tears, images swimming through my mind of paparazzi and grungy tabloid journalists pouncing at me from behind the bushes in front of the house. It was
like the disgusting guy at the beer festival all over again, only this
time STUD guy had my phone number.

“Emma, do you understand?” Elliott repeated.

I looked up. “I get it, all right.” A single tear fell. “I get it. You don’t have to yell at me.”

“No, no. I’m not trying to yell.” He
crossed the room to where I still sat in the chair and reached for my hand. He pulled me up and wrapped his arms around me, whispering into my hair. “Please don’t cry.” He took a deep breath. “I hate that they’ve done this to you. I hate that I’ve pulled you into a place where you’re under such
scrutiny. I don’t want this. I don’t want them to hurt you.”

I looked up and met his gaze, a question in my eyes. He didn’t want this? Or he didn’t want me?

He answered me with a kiss, soft at first, then with the same
stupid heat that always flared between us. Even frustrated and upset, tears falling down my cheeks and onto his face, kissing him was still enough to threaten my sense of reason.
He intensified the kiss, bracing his arm against the wall behind me, making me curse the fact it was just past 8:00 a.m., I was wearing yoga pants, and I still hadn’t brushed my teeth.

I clung to the one logical thought pulsing through my brain
and willed away the fire flowing through me.
Kissing wouldn’t solve anything. Maybe it made his intentions clear, but what about mine?
I realized with sickening clarity: I had no idea what I wanted.

Him? Yes. But all that came with him? Twelve hours before, I would have screamed yes without hesitation. But now? Yes felt scarier and heavier than ever before.

I broke the kiss and leaned into his chest, pressing my forehead against him. “Elliott, I need some time.”

I could hear the resignation
in his voice. “I know you do.”

“Everything just happened so fast. I’m feeling a little overwhelmed.”

He gave my arm a final squeeze and moved to the door. “I’ll check on you in a little bit.”

* * *

Five hours later, Lilly found me on the couch, a list of symphony board members in front of me, half the names crossed off.

She dropped her bag on the chair by the door. “Hey. What are you doing here? No church?”

“I kinda had a crisis. Where have you been?”

“I was at Trav’s. What happened? What crisis?”

I was too overwhelmed to explain. “Go Google Elliott. Better yet, Google me.”

Lilly sat at the open laptop and keyed my name into the search engine. “Oh my word,” she said as she scrolled through the hits. I looked over her shoulder. It hadn’t taken long for the one news story from this morning to morph into more than twenty, gossip sites and blogs reposting the picture over and over. Some just posted the picture, eliminating the details of who I was and what I did for a living, but others went the opposite direction, digging up details about my current position in Asheville, speculating about my planned move to Cleveland in the spring, and projecting how I fit into Elliott’s picture.

Lilly
shut the laptop without even closing out of the browser. “You don’t need to be reading this stuff.”

I sighed and collapsed onto the couch, rubbing the back of my neck. I was stiff from sitting still so long, from making phone call after phone call, trying to smooth any feathers of Asheville’s symphony board. Only our personnel manager, Chloe, had heard the news. “I can assure you,” I told her, “I don’t have any plans to leave Asheville. Cleveland made me an offer, but I haven’t accepted it. This is all just a misunderstanding.”

She accepted my explanation right away but then proceeded to grill me with questions about Elliott. How did we meet? Was my relationship with him serious? It just illustrated what had hit me so hard earlier that morning. It wasn’t so much that my career was the story.
I
was the story—and only in the context of what I meant to Elliott.
I felt both sensationalized and trivialized at the same time.

Lilly moved to the couch and sat next to me. “So, big night, huh?”

“I don’t even know what to think.”

“You wanna tell me if I’m gonna need a new roommate in the spring?”

“Oh! No. Greg McKenzie was at the wedding. He’s one of the conductors in Cleveland, and he offered me my job back. Actually he’s been e
-mailing me about it all week, but I’m not going to take it. The ad was just a mock-up of what they want.”

“He’s been e-mailing you all week, and you didn’t tell me?”

“Don’t be mad. I didn’t tell Elliott either. I didn’t tell anyone.”