Passionate Persuasion

  “Some friend—still toying with your feelings eight years later.”

  Kiara self-consciously touched the crystal-tipped hairpins holding up her updo. “I overreacted. I shouldn’t have behaved like a tacky reality TV person. The Real Housewife Hicks from Kansas. Not…” She gestured to herself, made up and dressed up in a chic little black dress that she’d gotten in a vintage clothing boutique in Paris. She liked to imagine it came from the wardrobe of an Audrey Hepburn movie. Maybe it had, maybe it hadn’t, but it made her feel strong and confident when she had to appear out from behind her cello.

  But her point was, “Girls who are maybe sharing a wardrobe with Audrey Hepburn do not throw drinks at people.”

  The bartender had been about to give her the glass of wine, but he pulled it back to eye her suspiciously. Kiara narrowed her gaze at him, and he handed it over with a just-kidding smile. Sophie smoothly took the glass and her own, and turned away from the bar. “Come along, sweetie, and stop flirting with the bartender.”

  She felt herself blush to the roots of her French twist. “I wasn’t…”

  “You can’t help it,” Sophie said over her shoulder. “You are a sexy girl with a friendly face. Why you should need Lydia Benwick’s help to get a date, I’ll never know.”

  Sophie walked off to find them a table, leaving no tip for the barman but a wiggle of her Sophia Loren hips. Kiara slid the young man an extra dollar along with her own, hoping he’d gone on to the next customer, but he was watching her, suppressing a smile.

  “It’s true,” the bartender said with a grin and a shrug. Then he gestured her in closer. “My cousin works for the Regis and he said that even Mr. Drake said he deserved it, and anyone who talked about it outside the pub would get fired.”

  The blush grew painfully hot and painfully… painful. “But your cousin told you.”

  He put two fingers to his lips, then held them up. “Bartender’s code of silence. Your secret is safe with us.” Then he nodded over her shoulder. “But be careful with your friend. I’m not so sure about her.”

  Kiara turned to see Sophie regaling someone with a story. She wasn’t sure it was the story, but she couldn’t be sure it wasn’t. Kiara groaned and slapped a ten dollar bill on the bar. “Give me a bourbon. Neat.”

  He poured out a generous dram, she downed it—not a very Audrey Hepburn thing to do—and went to rescue her reputation in Port Calypso.

  When she reached Sophie and the small crowd she’d gathered—as Sophie was wont to do—she was relieved to hear her own name, but not attached to anyone else’s.

  “Here’s your wine, sweetie,” she said as Kiara arrived. “I was just telling everyone that we met in school, here at PCU.”

  A lady arts patron—really, they all had a look that made them interchangeable sometimes—took up the conversational baton. “You two were sorority sisters?”

  Sophie linked elbows with Kiara. “That’s how I convinced her to take the job here! She’s just what we need to bring national attention to our little symphony.”

  “It’s not that little,” said a gentleman arts patron, gruffly enough to distinguish himself. She recognized him from one of her interviews with the symphony board and gave him a sympathetic smile.

  “No,” she agreed, “it’s not. I’m honored to play here.”

  Lady Patron sipped her wine and gave Kiara a coy glance. “Even with your old flame Alex Drake in the picture?”

  Kiara shot a not-at-all-coy glance at Sophie, who shot a glance at the ceiling as she downed her martini. Then she organized her face into a polite expression and turned back to the woman who’d asked the question.

  “Oh, that was ages ago. Bygones are bygones and all that.”

  “Oh really,” said the woman, more arch by the minute. “So there were no sparks flying at the Regis Pub last week?”

  Seriously? Did the Port Calypso Daily have a gossip column? Was someone going to Tweet this? She wasn’t exactly the Miley Cyrus of cello players.

  “No sparks,” drawled Kiara, since it seemed obvious The Disaster at the Regis Pub had made its way through the grapevine. “Just ice cubes.”

  Chuckles all around proved her right, so Kiara figured she might as well laugh, too. It felt good, like unbraiding her hair or peeling off her Spanx.

  “It’s all okay,” she said, feeling like she was manufacturing a sound bite. “We’ve exchanged emails, and I apologized, and we’re all good. I’m looking forward to my season with the PC Symphony, and I’m very grateful to Mr. Drake for his contributions.”

  Her press conference tone put a period on the end of that subject. The lady patron and her interchangeable friends looked disappointed, but the cluster of people broke up and reorganized, the way they do at parties. Sophie walked off with one of the less-generic patrons—a man of distinguished grey temples and expensive designer suit—leaving Kiara, for the moment, alone.

  She returned to the bar, handed the bartender her untouched glass of wine and said, “Take this and give me another bourbon.”

  He did, but before she could hand him her cash, someone else beat her to it. A black-clad arm reached past her, giving the bartender a credit card. “Another one of those for me,” said Alex-effing-Drake. “And put them both on my tab.”

  Kiara glared up at him. She was wearing lower heels tonight, and she’d forgotten he was so tall. “High handedness isn’t going to earn your way back into my good graces,” she said.

  He put his elbow on the bar top, laced his fingers, and crossed one foot over his standing leg, the absolute picture of ease and innocence. “I hear from the rumor mill that we are ‘all good.’ So why can’t I buy you a drink?”

  “Oh my gawd,” she said, once she picked her jaw back up. “Are you serious? I barely had time to get over here and order a drink.”

  His mouth curved in a sexy, conspiratorial smile. “Someone was anxious to run over and get my take on the matter.”

  Kiara rolled her eyes. “Was it that lady wearing the fascinator, like she’s going to a royal wedding?”

  “Is that what you call those birds’ nest things women wear perched on their heads? Then yes.”

  She pressed her lips together over a smile of her own. “That’s not nice.”

  “But it’s true.” He picked up both their drinks and handed her one. It was completely unfair how good he looked in a suit, the stark black of his coat and white of his shirt making his eyes look bluer, the lines of his face more sculpted. He was handsome, but it was more—it was always—how comfortable he was in his own skin that made him so sexy.

  “Thanks for being so nice about the drink throwing debacle,” she said.

  Something about that seemed to amuse him. “Yeah, well, since I kicked off the debacle with my bad behavior, being nice is the least I could do.”

  “Yes, but—” she started, but he straightened from his pretend slouch on the bar, bringing him into dangerous proximity. Dangerous for her pulse rate, anyway.

  “Hey,” he said, sort of looming over her, but in a good way. A way she didn’t want to admit she liked. “Is the gossip wrong? Are we not good?”

  “Well,” she said, with a deep swallow that he followed with his gaze, which made her heart beat even faster. “If that’s what everyone is saying, it must be true.”

  “Okay.” He shifted his weight back without really moving, but it changed his whole vibe to something both close and comfortable. “Then let’s stop trying to outdo each other with the apologies.”

  The gallery where the reception was being held was a big, drafty place, but they stood in a little warm bubble of intimacy. A pianist at the baby grand in the corner was playing something more elevator than Elgar, but it wasn’t enough to cover the thump of her heart.

  “I don’t know what else to say.” She meant other than “I’m sorry,” but it came out way more general than that. More specific to that moment and the horrible, wonderful, eighteen-again way he made her feel.

  “Say, ‘Thank you
for the drink, Alex.’”

  The smile in his voice prodded one to her own lips, and she risked a look up at him. “Thank you for the drink, Alex,” she said, and took another sip.

  His gaze dropped to her mouth, long enough for her to notice. Long enough for her to know he wanted her to notice. She bit her lip to ease the lingering tingle that was half alcohol and half the impact of his attention.

  “You’re not playing tonight?” he asked.

  “What?” she asked, with a guilty start, because she’d been flirting with him and she knew it.

  But he didn’t sound like he was accusing her of playing games. He pointed to the pianist tucked out of the way. “No chamber quartet?”

  “Oh. No. There’s a big preview benefit dinner in a few weeks. I’m playing at that.”

  His eyes crinkled at the corners, like he at least suspected her line of thought. “I hear you’re pretty decent.”

  “Eh. I’m okay.”

  The crinkles deepened to a real, knowing smile. “You know what else I hear?” he asked.

  “What?” she breathed.

  He sipped his drink, watching her over the rim. “I hear that there is no spark between us.”

  She cleared her throat. She searched her overheated brain for something to say. She found nothing.

  “Um.”

  Alex leaned close, so close she smelled the starch in his collar, the spice of his soap. So close that she felt the heat of his neck on her lips, and the tickle of his words in her ear. “That is a bald-faced lie, Kansas. Which makes us even.”

  He brushed her jaw with the lightest of kisses, something that would pass for social from a distance. A far distance, too far to hear his inhale near her hair or see her hectic blush and the beat of her pulse in her throat.

  Then he stepped back with a smile that nearly blew out her fuses. “See you around, Miss Fredericks. You’ve got my number.”

  “Oh, I’ve got your number all right,” she called after him, when she could breathe again. Which was several long seconds after he moved out of reach.

  That big ol’ flirt just laughed.

  The gauntlet had been thrown.

  Kiara looked down at her empty hands and realized her drink had disappeared. The bartender wordlessly slid it toward her. Then, with a sympathetic look, he touched two fingers to his lips and held them up—bartender’s honor.

  She hadn’t even noticed when Alex had rescued the glass from her nerveless fingers. She could safely say this round had gone to him.

  Chapter Four

  “Just call her up and ask her on a date like a normal person.”

  Alex looked up from his paperwork with a guilty start. Or rather, he looked up from pretending he was concentrating on that month’s liquor order. He knew better than to actually work on the thing while he was thinking about the night before. Not when distraction meant the difference between ordering enough rum to float the Battleship Potemkin on a mojito, or leaving the Regis high and dry during the Memorial Day festivities on the waterfront.

  “How could you tell I was thinking about her?” he asked Greg, not even pretending that he hadn’t been.

  “Dude, the way your eyes are glazed over, it’s either that or you’ve got the flu.” Greg pointed at the wall, where someone—not him—had posted the flyer for the symphony’s new season. It featured Kiara rather prominently. “The hole you’re staring in that thing is a clue, too. It’s not like you don’t know where to find her.”

  Well, that was true. He’d gone to the cocktail reception last night because he’d known she’d be there. That had worked out better than he could have imagined.

  No, that wasn’t true. In his wildest dreams, he could have imagined her throwing herself at him and the two of them making hurried, hasty excuses and goodbyes and then going out to the car and back to his place. Or her place. But as long as it was his complete and utter fantasy, he might as well be on his home turf.

  Or maybe they wouldn’t have made it as far as his condo. They had a history with the back seat of his beat up college subcompact. His sport sedan was a lot nicer, and there would be that enticement of history repeating itself, the comparison of that versus this, then versus now. He knew he’d been the first one to get his hands under her shirt, to fill his palms with her pale breasts and feel her gasp of shock and pleasure against his kiss. Then less shock and more pleasure, and frantic, fevered fumbling—for both of them.

  There was something about her that always made him lose his cool, to want to get as much of his hands on as much of her skin as quickly as possible. He’d had a fair amount of experience before he met her. Not legions. Not even as much as Kiara seemed to assume. But those hectic hours together, it had sometimes been like her virginity was contagious, and he was all thumbs, and that wasn’t good for anyone.

  And sometimes it had been better than good. He’d dated Kiara for months without ever sealing the deal, which was a first for him. But holding off on sex made the rest—the stuff that, to his shame, college-Alex tended to rush through on his way to the end goal—more… Well, just more everything.

  Greg stood up abruptly, and Alex crashed back down to the present. “I’m outta here,” he said. “Whatever you were thinking about just now? Made it way awkward in this office.” He jerked the poster down from the bulletin board and dropped it onto Alex’s desk. “Ask her out. There’s nothing more distracting than the one that got away.”

  Alex frowned. “Do you think that’s all that this is? The one that got away?”

  “I don’t know, dude. I’m not in your head.” He went to the door. “Thank God.”

  He grabbed the knob and turned it just as someone knocked. It was only quick reflexes that kept Greg from getting knuckles to his head.

  Kiara’s knuckles to his head.

  She stood there like Alex’s thoughts had conjured her. Well, not exactly, because she stood, frozen, with one fist raised and her eyes wide with surprise. But otherwise, he could have conjured her from his wildest dreams. She wore jeans and a loose sweater and her hair was in a ponytail and for a second he thought he’d gone back in time.

  “Hi,” she said, not to him, but to the guy she’d almost punched in the eye.

  “Hi,” Greg repeated, with a shit-eating grin. “We were just talking about you.”

  Kiara shot Alex an accusing look, and Alex shot his best friend an I’m going to kick your ass look, and Greg shot past her and out the door. “You look good, Iowa,” he said, with a broadly exaggerated nod. “Welcome back to PC.”

  Then he was gone. Alex was stuck halfway out of his seat, because he’d started to stand then realized his wildest dreams were going to make that…awkward.

  So he sat back down and tried to ignore the way the neck of Kiara’s sweater fell off her shoulder to reveal the ridiculously tiny strap of some distracting lace thing.

  “Come in,” he said, not quite wincing at his businesslike tone. It was that or jump across the desk and grab her like a Neanderthal.

  She stepped into the office, and he noticed she had a manila envelope in her hands. “I want you to know, this was not my idea.”

  That pretty much exploded any notion that she was there because of her wildest dreams. “What’s up?” he said, finally standing so he could roll Greg’s chair to the front of his own desk and offer it to Kiara. “You want a” —He checked the clock— “coffee? Soda?”

  “No,” she said, and they seemed to have gone both forward and backward as far as their—her—comfort level. On one hand, she didn’t look as if punching him was on her agenda. He knew she was capable of it. Three big brothers, she’d once mentioned, made sure of that. On the other, the way she sidled around him and perched on the edge of the chair, was a far cry from the way she’d looked when he’d used all his willpower to step away from her last night.

  “No, thank you,” she amended primly, and crossed her legs at the ankles.

  So they were back to the ice maiden and the Neanderthal? That was only fun
in his fantasies.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked, sitting on the edge of his desk and lacing his fingers to rest on his thigh, like he was taking a freaking business meeting.

  She took a deep breath. “This is not part of my job description. I want you to know that I think it’s really tacky of Lydia Benwick to send me here.”

  Okay, now this was getting interesting.

  “I’m listening.”

  “You remember I said I was playing at a big Arts Council spring fundraiser thing coming up?”

  He did. He’d been wondering if that was going to be the next chance he had to “accidentally” run into her unless he started stalking her on Facebook or loitering outside the symphony practice hall.

  “I seem to recall you mentioning it,” he said.

  He thought she would catch on to his tone by now, but she was well distracted by her errand.

  “It’s this big, huge event, not just for the symphony but for the children’s program at the museum and the youth theater at the playhouse and, of course, the music education—”

  “Kansas,” he interrupted, and she finally looked him in the eye. “I know. I already bought my ticket. Is that why you’re here?”

  “No. Apparently the liquor sponsor has fallen through. As you can imagine, drink sales are a huge extra revenue, so if donations increase the profit margin or something…” She ran a hand over her face. “I don’t know. I just know that Lydia Benwick asked me to ask you if you could help us out.”

  “Sure.”

  She held up a hand, as if swearing on a bible. “I want you to know, I would never, as she suggested, use our history together to talk you into it. But we’re having it in a marquee tent here in the Waterfront District, so it actually could be good for your business—”

  “Maybe, but as long as I get a mention in the program or maybe some signage behind the bar—”

  “And I told Lydia that our history wasn’t exactly going to put you in a positive mood but she was insistent, so here I am, asking you to put that aside and consider helping out.”