Passionate Persuasion

  “Probably not,” he said. “But it’s nice to have company on top of this one.”

  She found herself smiling shyly at him, as if this small, joint interest were more intimate than the other things they’d shared. And it was, in a weird way, and that made her clear her throat and try not to get flustered. Or more flustered.

  “Anyway,” she went on with a dismissive wave of her hand, “I’ve had some press and been featured on a few albums. Sophie suggested they offer me a job for the season. It’s a smaller symphony but a higher profile for me, something I can leverage for future seasons.”

  “So, you’re just here for the year?” he asked, with a note she couldn’t quite place. Carefully casual, as if he had a card close to the vest.

  “I don’t know,” she answered, trying to copy his tone. “Port Calypso feels like home, but I don’t want to get complacent and end up just playing…”

  “Second fiddle?”

  She laughed, even though it was a lame joke. Because it was a lame joke. “Something like that. Anyway, the contract is for this season. Next year we’ll renegotiate. New talent is good for the symphony, too.” She fidgeted with the handle of her coffee mug, because talking about the future seemed awkward, like they were both trying to pretend they hadn’t known each other long enough for it to be an important subject. “What about you?” she asked. “Have you found something you love as much as I love music?”

  She’d asked it that way on purpose, wondering if he remembered saying that. When she looked across the tiny table and Alex looked back at her, his words whispered out of the past. The world retreated and they weren’t in a sunset-lit patio cafe, but a bubble of intimate darkness on his dorm room bed, sharing kisses and whispering secrets and dreams.

  I envy you, he’d confessed then. I want to find something I love doing as much as you love music.

  “Maybe,” he said, bringing her back to the present.

  “Restauranting? Is that a word?”

  “No,” he told her, with a chiding look. “It’s not. I know that opening a string of bars must seem trivial to you…”

  “I didn’t say that. I actually think it suits you. It’s a very social sort of business.” He gazed at her, seeming dissatisfied with her response, leaving an awkward pause that she felt compelled to fill. “I mean, you were the Vice President of Keg Procurement.”

  “There’s a lot more than that involved,” he said. “And I’m good at it.”

  “You own four bars and a restaurant and you’re barely thirty,” she said, not understanding why he was getting so defensive. “You’re obviously really good at it.”

  He seemed to catch himself—his tone, her sincerity, and he apologized. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap. I just want you to respect what I do.”

  The admission rocked her back on her heels. And it looked like it surprised him, too. He got very interested in the dregs of his cappuccino.

  “I’m not one to knock the importance of simply making the world a happier place,” Kiara said carefully. “Some people would call playing the cello frivolous. My dad always did, until I started making money at it.”

  “No one who’s heard you play could call what you do frivolous,” said Alex, with flattering ferocity.

  “That wasn’t my point,” she said, turning the spotlight back on him. “I make people happy with music. You do with… restauranting.”

  He smiled at her use of the non-word. “It’s not about the liquor. It’s about the place to meet.”

  “Like a neighborhood pub,” she ventured, since that’s what he called his Waterfront establishment, which seemed extra special to him.

  “Exactly,” he said. “You can eat, play darts, socialize—and that’s not code for ‘pick up women.’”

  She traced the rim of her latte cup, because the silence got awkward again. “You did try and pick me up the other night.”

  “No,” he said, humor curling through his voice and thawing the distance between them, “I had a date with you. And what a debacle that was. Clearly I haven’t been keeping in practice.”

  Kiara looked up, met his smile with one of her own. “So I should be flattered you dusted off your killer technique for me?”

  “Damned straight. I don’t take a drink in the face for just any woman.”

  The longer he held her gaze, the more history passed between them, ancient and recent. Really recent. It was so vivid, such a full-sensory, virtual-reality replay, that Kiara wasn’t at all surprised when Alex asked about the thing she was reliving right that second.

  “Why did you kiss me in the office?” he asked.

  With an exaggerated sigh, she confessed, “To see if it was as good as I remember.”

  His gaze went hot and sharp…downright predatory, right there on Waterfront Drive. “Was it?” he asked.

  No, it was more of a growl, and it turned the spring evening into sweltering July.

  She wasn’t going to give anything up so easily. “You and I were young the last time we made out. It could have been all young adult hormones, or the college atmosphere of sexual revolution, or…”

  He grabbed the seat of her cafe chair and pulled her closer with a short screech of metal on concrete. Lifting beer kegs must be a hell of a workout. Suddenly his knees were on either side of hers and his hands were on the outside of her thighs and he leaned in, close and dangerous, like he was going to take a bite out of her.

  “Was it. As good. As you. Remembered?” His words were punctuated by the throb of her blood through her veins. Back in the day, he’d always made her feel bold and sexy and irresistible, but he’d never looked like he would do her right there on the table of a sidewalk cafe if he could get away with it.

  Her first violin teacher had told her, you have to bow the strings like you mean it. If you play like you’re afraid you’ll make a mistake, then all that will come out is a mistake. If you commit to putting the bow to the strings, then you at least have a chance of making something beautiful.

  She took a deep breath and dove headfirst into the deep end. “It was better. What are you doing Friday night?”

  “The hell with Friday night,” he said, pulling her to her feet with one hand and grabbing the cello case with the other. “Ask me what I’m doing five minutes from now.”

  For a second, Kiara thought Alex was serious about the cafe table. Then he tugged her toward the sidewalk and she remembered his condo was around the corner. It made everything real, and it made the air thin, and she was half-relieved and half-terrified that she wouldn’t have days to debate this decision.

  Oh my God. I’m going to have sex with Alex Drake.

  It wasn’t the sex part that scared her. It was the Alex Drake part. She’d loved him in college for how his friends admired him and went to him with their problems. She’d loved the way he talked to his mom on the phone when she called to check up on him. She’d loved that he’d gone to her chamber music recital after only three dates.

  She loved that when they got to the elevator of his building, he swept her up in one arm and kissed her like he was starving for her, and still kept a hold of Magdalena in her case, careful not to knock her against the wall or the hall or on the door of his apartment.

  He fumbled his keys, but not her cello.

  She was done for.

  Once in the apartment, Alex set the case aside and turned to her, suddenly cautious, as if she might spook like a rabbit. Maybe because her heart was pounding like a hare running from a greyhound.

  “Do you want a drink?” he asked, like she hadn’t just had a latte downstairs.

  “Do I look like I need a drink?” She hoped not, but she knew she wore her emotions all over her face.

  His lips quirked in a half smile. “That’s code for, Is this going too fast.”

  “Oh.” She breathed in the air of his living space. It smelled of leather and wood and books and bourbon and a little bit of the spicy warmth she’d only ever smelled on his skin. “I’ve been wanting this for
eight years, so I’m thinking no, it’s not going too fast.”

  “Thank God,” he said, and scooped her up in his arms, carrying her into his bedroom like he was Rhett freaking Butler.

  He dropped her on the bed and she couldn’t get out of her clothes fast enough, or him out of his. He’d left the light off, leaving just the glow of dusk through the slats in the blinds. He was gorgeous and toned and tan, and she explored all the lines of tendon and muscle, the places that made him twitch, the spots that made him moan. He breathed her in like fine perfume, kissed the crook of her arm, the dip of her navel, the pulse at the base of her throat. He laughed at the unexpected tickle of her callused fingers on his ribs, and when she laughed, too, and tickled him lower, he grabbed her hands and rolled her under him, tangling their limbs, knitting her to him.

  “You are worth waiting eight years for, Kansas,” he whispered, his face a silhouette, his voice warm, rumbling through his ribs to hers, making her his instrument, her nerves singing like strings.

  “Some things are worth waiting for,” she said, wrapping herself around him. “But not another eight years.”

  “No,” he said with a laugh. “Maybe not another eight minutes.”

  “Pace yourself, cowboy.”

  “Man, you beauty queens are demanding.”

  “Damned straight, we are,” she said, using his favorite expression. “Now show me why my mother warned me away from boys like you.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Chapter Six

  The ping of a text message woke Alex from an exhausted doze. For a second he couldn’t remember why he was tired, and why he was so damned happy, and then he realized that the scent of Kiara’s shampoo was not in his dreams but in his bed, and he remembered exactly why he was so damned happy.

  A couple of years ago, after the breakup of one of his longest relationships, he’d gone grocery shopping and somehow found himself in the toiletry aisle, sniffing women’s shampoo. He was halfway down the shelves when he realized he wasn’t looking for his ex’s scent, but the lavender and mint smell that he hadn’t smelled since college.

  How long had he been comparing girls—women—to the girl from his past? How long had it been since sex had made him not just satisfied but happy?

  And how long, he wondered, feeling across the empty sheets, had Kiara been out of bed?

  His phone pinged again, and he reluctantly checked to make sure there wasn’t a crisis at the bar. No, just Greg, wondering what momentous event kept him away from Regis. None of your business, Alex texted back. By the time he’d rolled out of bed and pulled on a pair of sweatpants, the reply pinged in return.

  Miss Iowa State Fair?????!!! You dog.

  Alex texted back, Kansas, and went to find her.

  It wasn’t hard. She was in the kitchen, looking for something to eat. “Make yourself at home,” he said, and she jumped, bumping her head on the refrigerator door.

  “Ow!” She rubbed the spot, harder than she’d hit it. “Sorry. I am. Making myself at home. Is it weird that I feel like all that time never happened?”

  “No.” He moved closer, wrapping his arms around her. She’d pulled on his shirt, which was about the sexiest thing ever. “I feel sort of the same.” He ran his hands up her back and then down to her hips, pulling her close in an invitation to get closer. “You have this sophisticated, sexy outer layer now, but you’re still the same big-hearted music geek inside.”

  “Don’t forget farm girl,” she said, running her thumbs along the drawstring of his pants.

  He studied her in the light of the open refrigerator, from her kiss-swollen lips to the tangle—the wanton tangle of her hair. “I don’t know if there’s much of that left. You’re one of those wayward city girls now.”

  Something about that put a divot of a frown between her brows, just for a moment. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “As long as it’s ‘Can we get food delivered?’ or ‘Can we go back to bed?’”

  “Back in the day,” she began, and when he groaned, her look turned impish, “Did you dream we’d be together like this someday?”

  He laughed, happy to stay in that moment. “We haven’t even begun to make a dent in all the different ways I dreamed we’d be together.”

  She blushed, and he loved that she did that. He loved the finger she ran down his sternum. “Last time I’ll talk about then. After this, it’ll be all now.”

  “Okay,” he said warily.

  “I’m not going to ask you why you broke up with me.”

  “Okay,” he said, less warily.

  “I already figured out it had to do with my inexperience. But not in any straightforward way.”

  He wanted to correct her, though she wasn’t entirely wrong. And she was totally right about it being complicated. So, since she didn’t seem upset about her conclusion, and it didn’t seem to be the gist of her question, he let it stand rather than risk making another mistake with her. He’d made so many already.

  She took a deep breath as if bracing herself for his answer. “Did you decide to go on the blind date with me because you saw my publicity shots? You know they airbrush the hell out of those pictures, right?”

  Thank God. Something he’d actually done right. “I set up the date before I even clicked your webpage link.” He tightened his arms around her waist. “You could have grown a third eye in the middle of your forehead and I wouldn’t have known it until we met in the pub.”

  “Whew,” she said. The sigh was exaggerated, but real. “What a relief. You haven’t found my third eye yet.”

  He grinned and started unbuttoning buttons. “I haven’t even begun to look.”

  Sometime during the night he assured himself she didn’t have a third eye anywhere. Sometime they found something to eat, even if it was just saltines and some soup he’d brought home from the pub. Sometime they’d fallen asleep again and Alex had woken to feel Kiara’s eyes—just the two of them—on him.

  “Why a pub?” she asked. “That’s so specific.”

  “And such a random question.”

  “Not really. Why you do things says a lot about you.”

  Alex sighed and looked up at the ceiling. “I told you my dad’s job moved him around a lot, right? We moved around all the time as kids. The four years I spent at PCU were the longest I’d ever lived in one place.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. So when Greg and I were in England, we would go to these pubs, and all the locals would be there for a pint, or to eat dinner, or just to find out the news of the day. You had the parish church and the village pub. And since I didn’t want to become a priest…”

  “Thank God.”

  “Right. Well, the Regis and the Waterfront are what I’ve been working toward.” She was lying on his shoulder, and he had one arm curled around her back. He was perfectly comfortable, and it seemed perfectly natural, and right, to be talking in the dark this way, like he’d first shared his wish with her—that he could find something he felt as passionate about as she did her cello.

  “I told you another lie by omission,” he confessed. “When I said I wasn’t on the city council? I’ve actually filed to run in the next election.”

  Kiara sat up, a slender silhouette in the dark. “No. Shit. I’m sleeping with a politician? What are you trying to do? Ruin my reputation?”

  “Ow. Maybe I’m trying to elevate mine. Those arts patrons have a lot of money.”

  “And here I thought you were just using me for my body.”

  “That, too,” he said, and pulled her down beside him, wrapped her up in his arms as he kissed her. After a long moment, he confessed something else. “I broke up with you in college because I was scared I’d break your heart.”

  He expected a big reaction, considering everything that had happened. But she just looked up at him—he could barely see her—and said, “You know what your problem is? You don’t have enough confidence. I mean, assuming a girl is going to fall in love with you? That’s real hu
mility. “

  “Yeah, I know,” he said, grimacing at his own younger, arrogant self. “But I know you wanted to… well…” He indicated their current entanglement. “But I was afraid a girl like you would mistake sex for love. That happens.”

  “That sounds like the kind of jackass advice a fraternity brother would give. Did Greg tell you that?”

  “Greg?” he said, genuinely surprised, then a little wary. “No. What makes you think anyone told me that?”

  “A college guy giving up guaranteed sex without someone talking him out of it?”

  Good point. This was getting uncomfortably close to a truth he didn’t want to talk about. Fortunately, Kiara moved on.

  “Tell me,” she said, running her fingers through his hair, “does it ever happen that a guy like you might mistake love for sex?”

  It was an uncomfortable question, because it touched a warm, comfortable place in his heart. “Maybe it does,” he allowed. Then he hedged, “Sometimes.”

  “Sometimes is more often than never.”

  She said it, not tentatively or shy, but as a solid truth she was offering him, if he wanted to take it. “Love” was such a big word. Like “home” and “family” and “forever.”

  “It would be impolitic of me to say ‘never,’” he finally said, because he had to say something. And it might not have been the absolutely right thing to say, but at least it was right enough to make her chuckle and snuggle close, laying one arm across his heart.

  Whose heart was he protecting now? He’d put down his roots in this city. She only had a yearlong contract with the symphony, and then she’d be off to a bigger city with a better known orchestra. This time, she was the one with an expiration date on a relationship, and he had just as much on the line as she did.

  That was a lie. He’d had a lot at stake then, too. Telling himself he was doing the right thing for her was a way to convince himself he wasn’t backing off for his own sake. He was about to graduate and head off to God knows what adventure. When he’d first started going out with her, he knew that she knew that. But then her best friend Sophie had cornered him one day.