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THE NUMBER OF TIMES Chris had felt grief were so few and far between he could remember all of them. He relived each and every one as he sat at Citadel’s that Friday night and nursed a second glass of not-cheap whiskey. A single shot this time.
Every hurt, every disappointment, every little insecurity he’d ever felt, came back to him as he sat there alone, trying to hold on to faculties he refused to do without.
There was the time his father had called home and asked him to bring his mother to the phone, and Chris, running into her room to get her, had found her beneath a naked man he’d never met in the bed that his parents shared.
He touched briefly on the night Sara had given him back the diamond engagement ring she’d accepted several months before, but didn’t allow himself to linger. The void that Sara’s leaving him had created was soon filled again—by Sara. She was another man’s wife now, but she was Chris’s best friend.
He thought about calling her, telling her about Ainge, and took another sip of Scotch instead. Part of the reason she’d left him was because she couldn’t live with the constant possibility of his death on the ocean. He didn’t need to bring the possibility any closer to home.
Which left Chris with his morose trip down memory lane.
There was the morning he’d received the call that his parents had been killed in a pileup on the freeway just fifteen minutes from home. That was also when he found out they’d been on their way home from a court hearing because his mother, who’d already broken his father’s heart, had filed for divorce.
The last time had come a couple of days ago, when word had spread that Wayne Ainge had gone overboard, when they’d all waited as rescue crews attempted to get the young man up from the bottom of the ocean in time to save his life, and then heard the news that they’d failed, that the boy was dead.
Oh, and there was Christmas Day. He always had invitations for the day, places he was wanted and welcome. But for some reason that day got to him. Which was why he was usually the lone boat out on the ocean on December 25.
Still, only a handful of sad memories in forty years… He was a lucky guy.
“You playing tonight?” Cody was back, tipping the bottle over the top of Chris’s glass. He might have stopped him. Probably should have. Instead, he allowed the younger man to fill his glass and then raised it to his waiting lips.
The piano up on the dais was the reason he was there.
“Yeah,” he answered after he sipped.
Nodding, Cody headed down the bar. Chris was pretty sure he heard him say “Good,” but he could have just imagined it. No matter. He didn’t play for Cody. Or for anyone.
He played because music was good for the soul.
And because he could.
He played because doing so helped ease the tension that came with lobstering every day of your life.
* * *
SHE’D GIVEN ROB twenty-four hours to get out of the house. She’d told him she was going to stay with her mother. She’d known she could. Truthfully, she hadn’t planned anything. Contrary to her normal way, she’d spoken without first analyzing the various ramifications of her decision.
She didn’t have a house to go home to. She’d left her mother’s and she wasn’t going back that night.
Her attachment to her mother was probably part of the reason Rob had cheated on her. A woman with her mother attached to her hip couldn’t be much of a turn-on.
A woman who couldn’t climax probably wasn’t much of a turn-on, either. Lord knew she tried, but her body didn’t seem to be capable of letting go.
And even if her relationship with Rose had nothing to do with any of her problems, Emma needed to be away from her mother long enough to be able to breathe on her own.
First, she needed a place to spend the night.
She’d walked out without packing so much as a toothbrush.
She kept one at her mom’s. Along with pajamas and changes of clothes. Maybe she should go back. It made sense to go back. What was one more night going to hurt?
She could start her new life tomorrow. Right after she changed the locks on her doors.
And what if Rob was at her townhome tomorrow, waiting for her? What if he tried to change her mind? There she’d be, going straight from her mother’s house back to the secure life Rob offered her—albeit a life spent putting up with Rob’s philandering ways.
No, she couldn’t go to her mother’s. She couldn’t show up at home tomorrow, the same woman she was today—the woman who hadn’t been exciting enough to hold her man’s interest.
She couldn’t go home as the woman who settled for safety and security.
If she was going to change her life, it had to be tonight. She had to take a chance. To do something, anything, that wasn’t her norm. She had to be someone different.
Switching from her MP3 player, which was loaded with classics—soft and soothing music that was there to relax her after a day with rambunctious high schoolers—Emma stopped at the first satellite radio station that was blaring a beat.
The LED dash display broadcast the song title and artist in little green letters. She recognized neither and turned up the volume. She’d drown out her thoughts. And if she ever found a song she knew, she’d scream the words at the top of her lungs and pretend that she was singing along.
* * *
THREE HOURS INTO Friday evening, Chris was on his third drink. He wasn’t drunk, but even the ageless hag at the bar was beginning to look a little better.
Awaiting his turn on the piano, he listened to his competitors pounding the keys of the baby grand on the raised carpeted dais that was the restaurant’s centerpiece. The dais turned; the tables surrounding it did not.
The gleaming black instrument shone under professional spotlights and was the only furniture on the stage.
Chris’s number in the single elimination competition was up soon. He’d won the last draw of the night, which meant that he’d be up against the pianist voted by preselected judges as the best of the bunch. Chris liked the spot because he could stay onstage after he’d finished his set and play for as many hours as it took to wipe away the tension from the past week.
He didn’t need another win. He needed relaxation. He needed peace.
He needed to forget the grieving faces of those who’d loved—and lost—a man of the sea.
* * *
THE PLACE SMELLED as heavenly as she’d remembered—a mixture of spices, freshly baked rolls and prime cuts of steak marinated in Citadel’s secret sauce. Locals didn’t usually patronize the glitzy establishments on the tourist strip in downtown Comfort Cove, but a son of one of the teachers at school had played in a piano competition there a couple of times and Emma had accompanied the divorced mother on both occasions.
Now, sitting alone at the bar—something she’d never have considered doing before—she sipped a glass of white wine and concentrated on convincing herself that she could stay right where she was at least until she finished her drink.
Making deals with herself.
If she stayed fifteen minutes, she could make a trip to the ladies’ room to reassess.
If she stayed half an hour, she could think about getting a table. Maybe even order something to eat. If she made it an hour, she’d have to call someone—her divorced teacher friend, probably—and let her know where she was.
If she had more than two glasses of wine she’d call a cab.…
To take her…where?
Raising the heavy crystal glass to her lips, she gulped. She’d figure that out later. There were plenty of hotels downtown.
And because she paid her credit card off every single month, she had plenty of limit to cover whatever exorbitant fee they’d charge.
She’d show Rob.…
No. She was there to show herself something. To save her life.
She sipped again, raised her gaze and took in the people around her. A couple of men sitting alone at the bar, both dressed in suits with their ties loosened at the collar. A woman who was also alone and probably there on business. Just not the white-collar kind.
There were couples—both at the bar and filling the tables around the center stage—but those she ignored. And there were families, healthy groups of people who laughed and talked and fought and took one another for granted. She’d spent a lot of her youth wondering what it felt like to be one of them.
And then she’d grown up and realized she could make a family of her own. That’s where Rob had come in. They had plans to make a family.
And she’d kicked him out.
She had to phone him. To apologize for her hastiness. He’d be expecting the call. So maybe she should text him instead.
“And I did it my…” She suddenly heard the famous melody and it caught her attention.
Reaching beneath her jacket to make sure that her red silk blouse was still tucked into her black slacks, Emma sat up straighter. The words continued to play in her mind.
But they’d been placed there by the pianist up onstage. The timing seemed odd. Fortuitous. As though this song had been chosen for her. A song about facing the end of one’s life with absolutely no regrets.
And the way to do that?
Live by the dictates of your own heart. And only your heart.
Have I ever done that?
Emma sipped her wine.
She watched the pianist’s strong masculine fingers fly over the keys. She’d seen him play before. He’d won the competition on both the nights she’d been there.
Forgoing her fifteen-minute-mark trip to the ladies’ room, she ordered a second glass of wine and let the music envelop her. The man played with more passion than Emma had ever dared feel in her entire life.
And he did so as though completely unaware of all of the people watching him from the tables below.
If there’d been a competition that evening, it was over.
The man with the weathered face and longish hair had the stage all to himself.
* * *
HE’D WON AGAIN. If Chris were the sort to care about what other people thought, he’d probably be embarrassed. He didn’t care. So he wasn’t.
He also wasn’t stone-cold sober, not that anyone was paying his state of inebriation any mind. His room at the inn across the street would be waiting for him. He rarely used it, but every Friday night he had a free room at his disposal—paid for by Citadel’s owner as part of their business agreement.
Tonight he was going to use that room.
Breaking into one of his own compositions, a piece that flew from his fingers without any conscious thought, he let the music take him on his own private journey. He was a little boy, scared of the waves that crashed against his father’s boat. And he was the waves, with the strength and the will to steal men from their lives, their loved ones. He was the source of all power. Others were afraid; he was invigorated.
He played until he trembled from the inside out, until emotion rose in his chest, and threatened to choke him. And still he played.
With the demons of hell at his back, with the determination to go to his own grave with no regrets, he ran as fast and as far as he could from the sight of a mother’s face who’d buried her son that day, from the memories of the faces of the other women there—those who, except for a fate he’d never understand, could have been the ones grieving. He ran from the expressions on the faces of the men left behind who would not—could not—spare their loved ones the risk of a similar fate.
And maybe, just maybe, he ran from the fact that he was all alone.
* * *
EMMA WASN’T PARTICULARLY hungry. But she ordered food, anyway, so that she had an excuse to stay in her seat at the bar and continue to lose herself in the music emanating from the fingers of a man she’d never met but knew she’d never forget.
He’d changed her life that night. He’d shared his music with her, wrapped her in its graces, holding her there so that she didn’t run back home.
She ordered more wine, too. A third glass.
The pianist pulled things from her raw and gaping heart that were unfamiliar to her. Parts of herself she hadn’t had to face. He held her fast in life’s grip, keeping her rooted in that seat.
She ate a little bit. Pushed the plate away and sipped her wine and listened. It was after midnight. The man had been playing, with only one small break, for more than two hours.
He was bound to stop soon.
She couldn’t bear the thought. Not now. Not yet. She wasn’t ready for him to let her go, to leave her to fend for herself.
She wasn’t changed enough.
She needed more.
She had to meet him.
CHAPTER FIVE
WITH HANDS USED to pulling in heavy lobster traps in rapid succession, Chris communed with the ivories. The music his playing sent out into the night was a byproduct—he felt melodies and harmonies and chords more than he heard them. He didn’t understand how it worked—the music and his inner self healing. He didn’t ask. He just presented himself to the keys and played until he knew he was done.
Until he knew he could sleep.
At least, that was how it had always worked before.
So why wasn’t it working?
When midnight passed and he was still driven to play, when the tunes he produced changed from popular ditties to intense renditions of classical masterpieces with a few of his own compositions mixed in, when his fingertips grew numb with pounding, he ordered a fourth drink to help the peace he was seeking find him more easily. To assist the piano in its work.
“You’re here late tonight,” Cody said as he delivered the drink himself. Other than a waitress on the floor and the checker at the door, Cody was the only employee left for the night. The kitchen had been closed for a couple of hours.
“So are you,” Chris said, tipping his glass to the friendly guy. “I’ll bet your wife has a bit to say about that.” About the long hours. The time away.
“As long as I get home in time to crawl into bed with her, she doesn’t complain,” Cody said. “I’m home with her and the kids during the day and now that they’re in preschool we’ve got lots of time just the two of us. It’s nice.”
Chris nodded, one hand on the keys, trying to imagine what it would be like to be home with a wife and kids even for an hour, and coming up blank.
“Who’s the woman?” He’d noticed the woman in the tailored black suit and red silky-looking top over the past few hours and she was something he could converse about, though why he had a sudden urge to hang out with the bartender was a mystery.
“Not sure,” Cody said. “I don’t know her and she hasn’t said much.”
