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A breakup, she thought, that would inevitably be filled with heartache if either one of them actually loved the other even half as much as appearances would indicate.
Enough already, Elizabeth silently chided herself. What’s wrong with me, anyway?
She knew she was living her dreams. She had to cherish that and stop dwelling on what she didn’t have. When had she gotten so negative?
Besides, careful what you wish for, remember?
With effort, Elizabeth drew her attention away from the romantic couple and closed her eyes, looking as if she were losing herself in her music.
What she was actually doing was protecting herself from making any further eye contact with Jack. She knew that in turn would leave the door open for him to make suggestions as to how to “put a smile on your face” as he liked to put it.
While she was grateful to Jack for the jobs, she would have been far happier just chalking it up to mere friendship. After all, if she were playing in an orchestra or ensemble that found itself needing a pianist, he would be the one she’d recommend.
But she had the uncomfortable feeling that he was actually sending gainful employment her way in a thinly veiled attempt at seducing her.
Eventually, she knew she was going to have to face up to telling him that there was absolutely no chemistry between them, that there was more chemistry between Columbus and the Native Americans when he landed on the shores of the New World than there was between Jack and her.
Elizabeth bit her lower lip, knowing that time was coming sooner than later.
Her eyes flew open as she heard Jack whisper, “I’m having a little party of my own after this shindig. If you’re interested…” he added meaningfully.
She upped the wattage of her smile—one of her best features according to her father—and said, “I’d really love to—”
Jack looked startled, but managed to recover quickly. “Great, I’ll—”
“—but I can’t,” Elizabeth continued in very hushed tones so as not to interfere with the music. “I’ve got to get ready for my studio gig in the morning. It’s for an episode of More than Roommates.”
The name of the popular sitcom evidently meant nothing to Jack since he didn’t watch episodic television. He frowned over his apparent strike-out. Again.
“That’s tomorrow?” he asked vaguely.
Elizabeth nodded, concentrating harder, determined not to miss a single beat. “That’s right.”
Jack grew silent for a moment. He was devoted to his craft, but he also clearly had designs on being more than just a fellow musician in Elizabeth’s eyes.
“Blow it off,” he told her suddenly. “I can get you another studio gig with—”
She cut him off with a slight, although emphatic, shake of the head. “I already agreed to it. You’re only as good as your word in this business,” she reminded him as tactfully as she could. Jack had it in him to be a really good friend and she didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but she didn’t like having her back to the wall this way, either.
Jack shrugged, his thin shoulders rising and falling rather hard beneath his tuxedo as he muttered, “Your loss.”
The way Elizabeth said “I know” helped assuage his wounded ego just as she’d intended. She could see it in his expression as he pulled himself away from the carefully couched rejection.
Maybe eventually they’d work this thing out, she thought. At least she could hope.
Elizabeth threw herself into the next number and tried to put this unpleasant episode behind her.
Her apartment felt lonelier than usual as Elizabeth let herself in later that evening.
She’d deliberately left a light on when she’d departed earlier for the Bar Mitzvah, anticipating that she just might need help in being upbeat when she came home.
Unfortunately, the light didn’t manage to do the trick—that aching loneliness was still waiting for her.
Or rather, it had ridden home with her in the car, growing more and more acute with every mile that brought her closer to her empty apartment.
Locking the door behind her, she threw her keys and purse onto the top of the small bookcase near the door and stepped out of her shoes.
Maybe she needed a pet, Elizabeth mused. A warm, happy puppy to jump up and greet her as she came through the door.
For a split second, she actually considered it. She certainly had an abundance of love to give to a pet. But then she thought of how guilty she’d feel about keeping the poor thing cooped up in the apartment while she was away at work. Considering how sporadic and unstructured her engagements were, the puppy wouldn’t be able to have anything that resembled a normal, regular schedule.
Besides, she reminded herself, Mrs. Goldberg had Lizzie and she was forever telling her how lonely she was for actual company ever since “her Albert” had passed on. The feline, while fairly affectionate, still didn’t fill the gap she had in her heart, the older woman had confessed sadly.
No, the cure for this loneliness that kept wrapping its tentacles around her lately was just more work, Elizabeth decided. It was while she was playing that she felt whole, as if she was contributing something worthwhile and beautiful to the universe. The violin was capable of making its audience both laugh and weep, and she could make it do both with aplomb.
Elizabeth glanced at the answering machine as she walked past it. The red light was blinking, telling her she had messages.
One, she knew, was bound to be from her father. That wonderful man always called her every night, no matter how busy his day had been, just to check in on her.
Now there’s something to really be grateful for, she told herself. Not everyone had a father like that, a man who had single-handedly raised her and her two younger brothers while he was juggling a full-time career as a physician.
With very little warning, he’d been blindsided by his wife’s sudden onset of pancreatic cancer and just like that, he’d found himself a widower with three young children.
Rather than farming his kids off to a female relative, or gladly abdicating his role to some full-time nanny he paid to raise his children, he’d painstakingly rearranged his life so that he could be there for every school play, every concert, even every parent/teacher conference. Elizabeth would forever be grateful to her dad for all the sacrifices he’d made over the years. There wasn’t anything that she wouldn’t do for him—and she knew her brothers felt the same way.
Maybe that was part of why she was having such trouble finding someone to share her life with, Elizabeth thought. She wanted to meet a man who had the warmth, the integrity, the sensitivity that her father had. She supposed that her standards were just too high.
But then, her father met those standards. So wasn’t it reasonable to believe that there might be someone else in the world like that? Someone who, in addition to all the aforementioned attributes, could also make her world stand still.
That was how, she remembered, her mother had told her that she’d felt the very first time that she’d met her father.
It was one of Elizabeth’s most cherished memories, sitting beside her mother, flipping through an album of old photographs. She remembered it was raining that day. She had to have been around four or five. Eric had been around two, and Ethan was still in his crib. She and her mother had looked over the album for hours. Her mother had a story about every photograph.
The next summer, her mother was gone.
Just like that.
A victim of an insidious, cruel disease. It had taken her father nearly two years to forgive himself for not being able to save her.
That was real love, she thought.
And that was what she was never destined to find for herself. Elizabeth pressed her lips together. She was just going to have to make her peace with that—if she was ever to have any peace at all.
Besides, she thought, how would she feel if she finally found that one special someone and then lost him, the way her father had lost her mother? Maybe it was for the best to just avoid the pain altogether.
With a resigned sigh she went to the refrigerator to see what she had that might lend itself to at least partially filling the emptiness she felt in her stomach.
There wasn’t much to choose from.
Her father always sent her home with food whenever she visited him. In addition to being a top-notch physician, her father was also a terrific cook who could throw together sumptuous meals out of next to nothing.
She, however, lacked the cooking gene that thrived so well in his veins. Despite the fact that her brothers both knew how to whip things up, her father had failed to pass that particular trait on to her in any manner, shape or form.
She burned water when she boiled it.
Consequently, the only items that resided in her refrigerator after she ran out of the home-cooked meals her father loaded her down with were leftovers from the local take-out restaurants.
She took a quick survey—not that there was all that much to look over.
“Leftover Chinese it is,” Elizabeth murmured, pulling out a couple of cartons with red Chinese characters embossed on the sides.
She brought the cartons over to the small dinette table she had set up in the alcove. Taking the portable phone receiver over with her as well, Elizabeth made herself comfortable. She took a few bites of food—she wasn’t altogether clear on exactly what she was eating at this point since the meals all tended to blend together after a couple of days—and pressed Play.
The first call, as she’d guessed, was from her father.
Elizabeth smiled as she listened.
“Are you there, Elizabeth?” There was a slight pause as he waited for a pickup. “No? Guess you’re busy playing. I know, old joke. But I still like it. Old has its place, you know. Like your old dad.”
“You’re not old, Dad,” she murmured affectionately. “You’re distinguished.”
“Hope it was a good evening for you,” her father continued. “Sorry I didn’t get to talk to you in person. Nothing new on this end. One of your brothers is working, the other one isn’t.” A slight chuckle accompanied the statement. “Two out of three isn’t bad, I always say. Sleep well, my virtuoso. I’ll try to catch you tomorrow. If not, see you on Thursday. Love you.” It was the way her father ended every phone call to her, the way he sent her off each time they parted company. Hearing it always made her smile—and feel safe.
“Love you, too, Dad,” Elizabeth said softly to the machine.
Just the sound of her father’s deep, authoritative voice somehow managed to make her feel better, she thought as she pressed for the next message.
Ten seconds into the call, she pressed the button to bypass the message. It was someone asking for a contribution to some college on the East Coast that she had never heard of.
The third and last message was the kind of message that she listened for, the ones that involved her bread and butter.
The deep, resonant voice caught her attention immediately. Putting down her fork, she picked up a pen, drew her pad to her and listened for details.
“I’m not sure if I have the right number, but a Mrs. Manetti suggested I call. She’s catering for me. Well, not me, but my parents, except they don’t know—” She heard the man sigh, as if annoyed with the way that had come out. “Let me start over,” he said.
“Go right ahead,” Elizabeth murmured, amused. She popped a quick forkful into her mouth, picked up her pen again and waited.
“I’m hosting this special party and someone suggested that music would be good—”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said to the phone, heartily agreeing. “Music is always good.”
And so was getting paid for making it, she thought fondly.
The man with the deep voice cleared his throat several times, and she waited patiently for the message to continue.
“I’ll…uh…try to get you later,” he finally said just before terminating the call.
That’s it? Elizabeth stared accusingly at her answering machine.
“I can’t believe he just hung up,” she said incredulously. She pressed the button that allowed her to look at the previous call, wanting to find the man’s phone number via the caller ID feature since he hadn’t left it on the garbled, aborted message.
The word private spread out across the small screen. Using the *69 feature on her phone yielded the same frustrating results. No phone number, no name, no nothing. The man with the sultry voice and the tied tongue obviously valued his privacy.
Elizabeth blew out an exasperated breath. Nothing she hated more than to think she was going to be offered a job only to have it reneged.
Or, in this case, dangled before her, and then pulled like some carrot on a string.
Maybe he’ll call back, she thought, putting the receiver back down. All she could do was hope. She wasn’t at a place in her life where she could just shrug carelessly when it came to the promise of money. She needed every gig she could line up.
“Maybe tomorrow will be better,” she murmured to herself.
She erased message number two and three, clearing space on her machine for more messages. If Mr. Sultry Voice didn’t call back, someone else would. Happily, someone always did. After all her monthly bills were taken care of, she’d put the remainder of whatever money she’d earned aside in what amounted to a tiny nest egg. She turned to the latter on those occasions when she found herself needing to bridge the financial gap between engagements.
Lucky for her that her needs were few and her tastes were the exact opposite of extravagant, she thought, making short work of the leftover Chinese food.
Chapter Two
“So, how did it go, Jared? Were you able to reach Elizabeth to make the arrangements?” Theresa Manetti’s melodic voice asked early the next morning when, bleary-eyed and semiconscious, he’d managed to pick up the phone receiver on his second attempt.
The caterer had caught Jared Winterset completely off guard. He’d been up late, working on an ad campaign that needed some serious last-minute revamping and fueling his flagging energy with bracing black coffee, which could have walked off on its own power at any time. Consequently, he wasn’t firing on all four cylinders this morning when he answered his phone.
Jared liked the woman. His path had crossed Mrs. Manetti’s because, in his line of work, he occasionally had to throw a few parties for his clients. Someone had given him her card a couple of years ago, along with a glowing recommendation that turned out to be right on the money. Theresa took pride in her work and had a personal stake in every affair she catered. The food, he could honestly say, was incredible.
Over time, they struck up an easy friendship. She was like the doting aunt he’d never had and he valued her input. It was Theresa who had given him the name and phone number of the violinist he hadn’t been able to reach last night.
He wondered now if possibly the two were related. Why else would Theresa be calling at this hour to find out how it went?
“No,” he answered. “She wasn’t home. I tried to leave a message on her answering machine, but that didn’t work out too well.”
Rather than just letting it go at that, Theresa surprised him by wanting to know, “What happened?”
For the second time in two minutes, she’d caught him off guard.
“Bad connection,” he answered. Okay, so it was a lie, he thought, but he really didn’t feel like going into the fact that he’d hung up midmessage after becoming tongue-tied and unable to articulate even the simplest of thoughts.
Instead of making a second attempt at leaving a coherent voice mail, Jared had decided to just try again another time. His hopes were that the future call would get him in contact with a human being rather than an irritating recording announcing that no one could take his call at the moment, but to please leave a message after the tone.
The sad truth was that answering machines left him somewhat disoriented, and if not exactly flustered, certainly not at the top of his game. After all, he was an ad executive who had great people skills according to his annual evaluations at the firm, not to mention the input given to his superiors by very satisfied clients. But, despite all that, there was no getting away from the fact that he just didn’t feel right talking to a machine—in this case, the answering machine.
Jared would have been the first to admit that inanimate objects held no interest for him. That was the main reason why, other than when the necessity for extensive research arose, he spent next to no time online. He had no overwhelming desire to look up old acquaintances or strike up new friendships via the internet.
He was and had always been a one-on-one kind of a guy and he liked it that way just fine. It was what made him so good at ad campaigns. He made them seem as if they were speaking solely to each person in the audience.
“But you’ll try getting in touch with her again?” The way Theresa asked the question, it was as if his answer was a foregone conclusion.
“Well, I’m going to be kind of busy for the next few days,” he told her. There were still a great many details about the celebration to iron out, not to mention that he had several clients’ hands to hold through a rough time. “I’ve got an idea,” he told Theresa. “Why don’t you just make the arrangements for a band for me?” he suggested. “I mean, you’re already handling the catering and you’ve always done a bang-up job with that.”
No, no! You’re not getting the point, Theresa thought in frustration. Frustration she managed to completely hide from the intended target of all this effort.
