“I have been to many places, not everywhere. And while I’m ready to stay home for a while, there’s no question that it’s been a blessing many don’t share to see the world.”
I don’t miss the humble tone wedged in that statement nor the past tense. “You really aren’t going to tour anymore?”
“Contrary to my manager’s and agent’s demands, yes, I really am quitting. A performance and event here or there for a good cause is fine. A tour, night after night in a hotel, is a whole other ballgame. One I’m done playing.”
There is absoluteness to his statements, steel in his jaw, and I wonder if this has been coming for years or decided suddenly, but that feels perhaps too personal a question. Instead, I ask, “Sara said you have several charity shows coming up with Chris?”
“Austin the day after tomorrow,” he says. “And then L.A. and San Francisco in two weeks. The final show is a big charity event Chris does at the Louvre Museum in Paris every Christmas.”
Unbidden, I feel the bite of him leaving for Europe when I shouldn’t. I may not even know him a few months from now and this is a fling, a one-night stand. Sex and pleasure. Nothing more. Afraid he will read this in me, I deliver a well-deserved tease. “You quit the touring circuit as well as I quit chocolate.”
He laughs. “I guess that means you never quit chocolate. However, I am quitting the concert circuit. I have nothing booked after that Christmas show. I don’t need the money. I have other demands and projects outside of my violin.”
“But the violin is a part of you. An extension of your very person.”
“It is,” he says. “But it’s not all I am and I want to play for me. I want to play with passion again and I don’t feel I have that anymore.”
“You play like you do. So very beautifully.”
“And while I know you mean that, and I appreciate it, it’s become a job. A punishing job on the road with a different bed and time zone every time I blink.”
“Hmm,” I murmur, sipping my wine. “That must be very hard. And lonely.”
“There was a time that everything it is suited me, and suited me well. It’s what I wanted. That time has passed. I’ve been touring since I was ten. I’m thirty-four. It’s time to slow down.”
“Ten?” I ask incredulously. “I didn’t realize you toured that young. Performed yes, but toured?”
“Ten. I was schooled on the road. Everything has been a moving target my entire life.”
I consider his words and don’t take lightly what he has shared with me. He’s a private man, who never speaks of such things in interviews, and while I crave a deeper look beneath his public persona, I’m tentative about pushing him too far. Still, I can’t resist asking, “Did your parents travel with you?”
“I had a handler.”
I blink. “A handler?”
He sips his wine and then downs the rest, refilling his glass as if it’s a topic that requires further sustenance. “Sherry Meyers. I used to joke that she was Michael Meyers’ mother. She was my teacher and guardian who was paid to travel with me. Cranky old woman, too, but she did keep me out of trouble, which I tried to find often.”
My lips curve. “You? Trouble?”
“I was a young boy teased and praised for the violin in my hand. I thought I needed to be tough to prove I was a man. I got in fights, excessively and frequently.”
“Obviously you shifted that energy and became the rock star of violins.”
His lips curve. “I stopped beating people up, yes. After I broke a bone in my left hand. Had it been my right, I wouldn’t be playing today. Some of us are hard damn learners. But yes, I matured and changed my point of view. And I changed as a person. Mostly. There are still a few people I wanted to beat, but I didn’t.”
I laugh, charmed by the easy conversation, and his ability to self-analyze.
His cellphone buzzes with a text and he snags his phone from his pocket, glancing at it. “That’s security telling me they sent our delivery person up.” He sets his phone on the coffee table. “I’ll be right back.”
“Where would I find a bathroom?” I ask.
He stands and takes me with him, and my God, this easy, casual touch, jolts me with awareness. I am so hypersensitive to this man that it’s insane. He knows it, too. I see it in the burn of his eyes, and the way his gaze lowers to my mouth and lifts. “Other side of the living room,” he says. “But hurry,” he murmurs, his eyes twinkling with mischief. “I’m suddenly starving.”
My cheeks heat and he laughs. “You were just naked on top of the piano but you still blush.”
“You were naked on top of the piano.”
“And you were naked on top of me.”
New heat rushes to my cheeks all over again and he laughs once more, turning me to face in the other direction, and leaning in close, his breath a hot fan on my neck as he says, “You, Aria Alard, are a contradiction I can’t get enough of. Go. Hurry. Before I make them leave the food at the door and take my T-shirt back.” He smacks my backside and I yelp, rushing away as I do, my backside warm, but then, so is my entire body. That smack of my butt was not aggressive or even painful. It was intimate, though. It was daring. He makes me daring.
I have never been daring in my life.
I reach the piano and that beautiful violin that reminds me of things I don’t want to think about right now—reasons I shouldn’t be here. Reasons I should not be daring. I ignore the instrument and its warning, grab my purse, and leave my dress, hurrying toward the bathroom. The living room is huge, the walk long, but I find the door and enter, quickly shutting myself inside the luxurious bathroom with a dark granite tub and counters. I quickly check my call log in the hopes of something from Gio, but there is nothing. I swallow hard and unbidden anger follows. He’s with Sofia, chasing our family heritage. He knows I don’t approve. And when he gets back, I will hurt him.
Anger is decidedly more comfortable than fear. I embrace it. I hold onto it. I shove my phone into my purse and set it on the sink. I do what I came in here to do, and wash up, only to groan at my image in the mirror. I’m with the most gorgeous man I’ve ever met and I have lipstick on my nose and my hair looks like I stuck a finger in an electrical socket. Worse, my purse is so small that I have nothing to fix the damage with me but a stick of concealer and a tiny comb. I put both to use and just in time. Kace knocks on the door.
I open it to find him, and like he was back at Riptide, he’s standing right in front of me, his dark hair rumpled, his blue eyes warm. His big body deliciously half-naked. “Just making sure you weren’t about to make a run for the door,” he says.
He’s worried I’m going to leave? Obviously, he is or he wouldn’t be standing here. I mean, he said as much, but I didn’t think he was this literal but clearly, he was. Kace August is really worried that I will leave. And he doesn’t want me to. I don’t quite know what to do with that, but stay. “I like your T-shirt,” I confess. “I was plotting a run for the door before you could take it back.”