“Aria?” Kace presses, and while his voice is low, soft even, there is an impatience beneath the surface.
“Because I feel the need to show you the exchange, but there’s something in it that I know will upset you.” I offer him my phone. “Read it. Pancakes and more sex will soften the blow.”
He arches a brow and then accepts my phone, glancing at the messages before he offers me my phone back. “I’m going to play while we wait for the food.” He starts to get up.
I catch his arm. “Kace—”
“He’s right, Aria. Everyone around me dies. The difference this time is that you’re close to me. They weren’t, not physically, not emotionally. And I just told you not ten minutes ago, naked and on this very couch, that I’m not letting you go. I’m not losing you. I’m damn sure not going to allow you to get hurt. And on that note, I need my violin in my hands right now.”
The raw intensity of him right now is just shy of where he was right after Alexander confronted us at the California event, and he had to go on to perform. But we are not in the same place we were before that event when he said the same thing to me. He is not pushing me away. He’s pushing his personal demons back into the box where they belong. He stands and I allow my hand to fall away from him.
By the time he picks up his Stradivarius, I’m sitting on the piano bench, offering him space, but silently letting him know that I’m still here. And when he begins to play, he surprises me. He plays the song he and my father wrote together. It’s beautiful, stunningly extraordinary. The song is called “The Daisy in the Wind.” Kace is, per my father, the one true daisy in the wind.
If my father did nothing without purpose, then this is no accident. It’s a connection that means something. The question is what? When Kace dramatically ends the song, I step in front of him. “Could the formula be in the song?”
“I was thinking the same thing. That’s why I played the song.”
“And?”
“If it’s there, it’s not obvious.”
“But it could be there? I mean could you be the one true daisy in the wind because he gave you the formula? Or the means to figure it out.”
“If he gave me the formula or the means to figure it out, it won’t be easy.”
“Nothing you do is easy,” I say. “You just make it look easy.”
“You have a lot of confidence in me.”
“So did my father.” The doorbell rings. “That will be the food,” I say. “I’m going to get the sheet music so we can look at it while we eat.” I wrap my arms around him and kiss him. “We’re close, Kace. I feel in it my Stradivari bones.”
He cups my head and leans in to kiss me as my belly growls. He laughs, the last remnants of that edge of minutes before fading with it. “Go grab the music, baby, and hurry back. If I’m going to tackle this, I need a full stomach and your Stradivari bones by my side.”
I laugh and hurry for the stairs, all but running to the vault. Once the song is in my hands, the magic is there in my belly. We are close. We really are. And Gio’s right. Kace is the answer to us reclaiming our family legacy, but he’s so much more to me. He’s the answer to every question I’ve ever had in my life, and the reason I was never whole. He’s the other part of me, the other half of my heart and soul.
CHAPTER SIX
Kace and I stuff our faces with the most delicious pancakes I’ve ever eaten while studying the sheet music. By the time we’re done eating, and I’ve literally licked my plate in as ladylike a manner as possible, Kace is antsy to put his violin to work. And so, he does. For the next few hours, I sit on the piano bench while Kace alternates between playing his violin, talking to me, and scribbling down notes. By three in the morning, his hair is a rumpled, finger-spiked sexy mess, his eyes shadowed.
“It’s time to stop,” I say, standing up.
“Not yet,” he insists, but by the time he reaches for the violin again, I’m in front of him, wrapping my arms around him. “We need to sleep.”
“I feel like I’m onto something like I’m a note from finding the right answer.”
“And too tired to find the note.” I lace my fingers with his. “Bedtime. Now. With me.”
Reluctantly, he allows me to guide him toward the stairs.
A half-hour later, the room is dark and we lay in bed, him on his back, me snuggled close, under his arm, my head on his shoulder. “Maybe we’re wrong,” I say, the twinkle of starlight outside the window we’ve left open to allow sunlight to be our alarm clock in the morning. “Maybe the answer isn’t in the song.”
“We’re not wrong,” he replies, his finger gently stroking my shoulder, almost absently, sending little darts of heat through my body. “We’re not wrong,” he repeats, his murmur soft this time, a barely-there whisper.
Over the past few hours, there is no question that he’s grown more and more dogmatic about his certainty that the formula is somehow in the song. If Kace is right, then Gio was right. The answer lies in Kace. He also believed that perhaps it lies, at least partially, in me. Why? What does he know that we don’t know? Because Kace was right—it’s not logical to believe my father would just hand over a secret to a teenager. And I was younger than Kace when my father disappeared.
Whatever Gio knows, he has to tell us. Now. Okay, in the morning at the breakfast he’d better show up for.
My eyes are heavy and I allow my lashes to lower, the song my father and Kace created together singing its own song in my head and I swear, there are words that match the music. I can hear them in my head, almost taste them on my tongue. At some point, sleep is a heavy blanket that slides further and further up my body and consumes me. Soon, I am without another thought. I drift off to sleep, shocked when I wake to piercing sunlight and the sound of Kace’s violin. He’s already working, trying to find my family secret. I’m not sure what we’ll do if we really find it.
Sitting up, the memory of my sleep haze comes back to me. There are words to the song, I’d thought then, but as I listen to the music now, all I find is a faded memory of my mother singing to me daily and often. No words come to me. None.
Frustrated, and nervous about breakfast with my brother, I grab my phone and text him: Are you coming for breakfast? I watch my screen, waiting for a reply, seconds ticking by, but Gio remains silent. The way he’s been silent for weeks on end. The idea scratches at my mind and emotions. He was alive and well and allowed me to worry about him, about money, about the future. I was making decisions for him. He was just making decisions.
I text Savage: Did Gio stay at his apartment last night?
Savage replies immediately: He went to McDonald’s at midnight and then home and stayed there where he did a lot of Google searches involving Kace.
Of course, he did, I think before I type: He’s supposed to come here for breakfast but I’m doubtful that he will show.
Savage’s reply is a little too honest, I swear. No respectful brother who hates his sister’s man will miss a chance to break them up, he replies. I’d bet a hundred on him showing up.