Andy was sitting at a cafe table, sipping a diet soda and waiting for Killer Valentine to come out onto the small stage in the corner. People packed the small bar, which only held about fifty tables plus the bar, and were shuffling around each other and shouting above the music playing over the speakers. Lots of them coughed into the air, spraying germs. Almost all of them were drinking liquor, and Andy swore that she could hear their liver cells screaming and dying around her.
“Will they begin soon?” Andy asked the tiny, blond woman sitting at the table with her.
“God, I hope so,” Elfie said, yawning hugely and stretching. She stirred her club soda and cranberry juice.
Andy had been gratified when Cadell introduced her to Elfie, explaining that Elfie was a roadie—no, a technician with the band, he had corrected himself when Elfie had shot him a threatening look. When Elfie had ordered a non-alcoholic drink, too, Andy had settled right in with her.
Elfie said, “Jeez, I just want to go to bed.”
“It is late.” Andy checked her phone. “Ten-thirty.”
Emily was supposed to be napping at home until the Killer Valentine performance started, but texts from the nanny indicated that there was a lot of flopping around and singing coming from her bedroom.
No matter. Emily could sleep in tomorrow. It wasn’t like she needed to go somewhere the next day.
Andy chatted with Elfie for a while before Elfie looked at her out of the corners of her blue eyes and asked, “So how long have you and Cadell been together?”
“A while.” Andy fiddled with her soda.
“Nice ring,” Elfie said.
Andy turned her left hand over, showing Elfie. Think fast think fast think fast. “It was my grandmother’s engagement ring.”
A white friend of hers at school had worn her grandmother’s wedding rings as a tribute, which Andy thought was a nice gesture. Her grandmother’s mangalsutra, an Indian wedding necklace, had been melted down to make gold medallions for Andy’s mother and aunts after her grandmother had died.
“Oh,” Elfie said, her voice sliding through octaves. “Your grandmother was ahead of her time. It looks very modern.”
Andy’s patti had been so conservative that she had insisted that her mother buy a separate refrigerator for the garage to keep leftovers in because it was a sin to have them in the house, and she wore only nine-yard saris draped and tucked around her tiny frame. “Yep.”
The overhead lights dimmed. Andy grabbed her drink in case she couldn’t find it in the dark.
Elfie said, “Here we go.”
The band jogged out on the small stage, holding the acoustic versions of their instruments and tall bar stools. The woman pianist, Georgie, already had a keyboard set up, so she sat behind that, and the drummer, Tryp, had a small hand drum, kind of a large tambourine without cymbals on the side, and a double-headed drumstick. Other drum-like items, bongos and an actual tambourine, rested against the legs of his stool.
Andy knew all the names of the band members. She and Emily had taken turns naming them while Emily watched videos on her tablet when her father was touring.
Cadell was holding his acoustic guitar by the neck as he walked onstage, the one that he played in Emily’s room. His long legs covered the small stage in just a few steps as he walked. The other band members waved to the crowd, smiling and pointing at people, but Cadell lifted his guitar in a half-hearted salute and walked to his bar stool. His hair swung around his face as he walked.
When he got to the bar stool, he glanced up and saw Andy sitting just on the other side of the railing from the stage. He waved at her.
He was probably waving at Emily, not Andy.
Oh, crap. Emily.
Andy grabbed her phone and called Emily over the video call app.
The little girl’s brown eyes appeared on the screen. Her tiny lips moved, saying something that Andy had no hope of hearing above the crowd that was trumpeting like a herd of elephants around her.
Andy held the phone up so Emily could see Cadell and the band.
Cadell sat over to the side of the semicircle of chairs, nearest to where Andy and Elfie sat. He smiled first at Andy and then waved to her phone that she held to the side.
They played one of the older songs first, “Nine Circles of Hell,” a fast-tempo song that wound the crowd up. Andy’s table nearly bounced as hundreds of feet stomped the floor in time with the music. She tried to hold her phone still, but the picture on the screen jittered in time with the stomping.
She stole a glance at Emily, visible in the smaller window. The child’s eyes were squinting with glee.
Xan announced another song, just as high-energy, and the crowd seethed around Andy and Elfie’s table, dancing. Andy was trying to recognize the songs from all the videos that she had watched with Emily, but it was pretty hopeless. Emily, however, was bopping and flapping her hands in excitement whenever Andy glanced back at the small window.
It seemed like that was a short song because it was over quickly.
Xan said into the microphone, “Just one last song, guys.”
The crowd groaned.
Andy adjusted her elbow on the table, trying to stabilize the camera for Emily.
Xan scooted back to sit by the piano. “This is a new one we’ve been working on. Elfie, would you come up?”
Elfie made a funny face at Andy over her drink, bugging her blue eyes out as she sucked on the straw, but she set the glass on the table and ducked under the railing to clamber up on the stage. She was a lithe little thing, even if she was a little thick around the middle for having such thin arms and legs.
Andy steadied the phone, zooming in on Cadell.
Emily went into giggles in the upper corner window, covering her mouth with her chubby hands.
As she looked through the phone at the stage, Cadell waved his hand, beckoning to her.
Andy almost looked behind herself to see who he was gesturing to, but Cadell must want to sing to Emily through the phone. He wasn’t waving Andy up onto the stage.
Elfie was sitting on a barstool beside Tryp, who was holding her hand and gazing at her like an enormous, love-struck puppy. Xan was half-sprawled over Georgie’s keyboard, grinning.
Okay, Cadell wanted to sing to his baby daughter. Andy could handle that.
Rather than try to stuff herself through the bars, she walked around the railing and onto the stage area, holding the phone out in front of herself the whole time. On the screen, Emily was practically having a seizure of delight, clapping her pudgy hands and chortling. She was so cute that Andy started laughing with her.
Cadell had placed an extra bar stool in front of his by the time that Andy got up there, so she perched on it. Their knees almost touched. His were covered by denim, but Andy had worn a sundress, and her legs were bare. She could swear that she could feel the warmth from his body touch her legs, but it was probably just the heat from the starry stage lights glaring down on them.
Xan lifted the microphone to his mouth again. “One for the ladies, and then we’re done for the night. It’s a new piece that Cadell is writing, and it’ll be on our next album. It’s called ‘Burn This Song.’ Five, six, seven, eight.”
The band began to play a tune that sounded vaguely familiar, but it sounded different than she had heard it. Maybe Cadell had been noodling on it while he had been sitting with Emily.
Andy watched the other band members while she held the phone up so that Emily could watch Cadell.
For such a negative title, the lead singer was crooning it right to the pianist, Georgie. He kept reaching over to her and trying to grab her fingers, but she danced her hands away from him to continue playing the keyboard.
Cadell was singing backup softly, leaning so that his mouth was near the microphone attached to a stand that angled beside him. He glanced at the camera and sang to it.
He was looking at the back of the camera, though, at Andy’s bright blue cell phone cover and the lens. Andy was watching the screen where Emily was giggling with her hands over her mouth, thoroughly delighted, in the small window. The video feed of Cadell filled most of the screen. His smile was thoroughly magnetic, Andy decided, but it was the kindness in his dark eyes that women must go wild for. Granted, he was handsome. Unbelievably so, once he pulled that long hair out of his eyes. His cheekbones and jawline were perfect parallel lines, slanting down to his lush lips.
But yes, it was his eyes that drew Andy’s attention. There was a light in there, an intelligence and intensity, a heat that smoldered, that was undeniably attractive.
Not that Andy was looking at Cadell. He was just her patient’s father.
And yet, she wanted to reach over and touch that soft bristle that ran down his jaw, just to feel it in her fingertips again.
Through the screen, Cadell raised his head and looked above the camera. Creases gathered around his eyes as his smile broadened.
He was looking at her.
When he put his mouth so close to the microphone like that and stared at her, it almost looked like he was kissing it, just like he had kissed her only a few days ago.
“Burn this song into your mind,” he sang. “Burn it into your memory. It burns in my heart and in my soul, but if you don’t love me, I’ll burn it down for you.”
That sounded a little violent. Andy hoped that “it” was the song. Otherwise, this was a little creeper-stalkery. She had heard that American boys could get obsessed.
Her mother’s other warnings about American boys rose in her mind, so many fears and terrors and scary stories about things that had happened to one person hundreds of miles away and a dozen years before.
Cadell sang about the words and the notes going up in flames, love notes and musical notes burning away.
It was the song that would burn, and the lyrics meant that the song was as delicate and easily destroyed as new love.
The vulnerability of it entranced her.
Besides, Cadell wasn’t the type to go all crazy-violent over anything. He was, if anything, shy, very shy for a rock star guitarist.
Indeed, he would probably not lash out at anyone but himself and slide back into heroin addiction.
Her heart clenched.
Through the camera screen, Andy saw fingertips fluttering through the air at Cadell. She hadn’t even made the decision to reach over to him, but her hand was hanging in the air.
Well, that was stupid. He was playing the guitar with both hands, one hand clenched around the neck of it to depress the strings and the other plucking the strings over the body of the guitar.
His eyes slid sideways, toward her hand reaching out to him. His smile widened. He couldn’t let go of the guitar, of course, but he acknowledged that her hand was there.
Now she was stuck. She couldn’t just pull it back. That would be weird and rude. She couldn’t grab his hand because then the music would stop.
So she sat there on the barstool, her hand hanging in the air, looking like an idiot.
Yeah, Andy graduated summa cum laude from Columbia and was top of her class in medical school, and she was the biggest doofus on the planet.
She let her fingers drop to his knee.
Under her fingertips, the thick denim covered his thigh, and his leg hardened as the muscles flexed under her hand.
This was better, right? Grabbing a guy’s leg on stage in front of a huge crowd?
Sure.
And now it was too late to let go.
When she looked up, Cadell was looking straight into her eyes, still singing to her with his mouth hidden behind the silver bulb of the microphone, but the curved lines around his eyes showed her that he was still smiling.
He turned his head and watched his fingers play over the neck of the guitar, fluttering over the strings.
The notes came so quickly that Andy could barely distinguish one from another, and she lowered one eyebrow, trying to watch his fingers and how he was doing it.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that Cadell was watching her, and his fingers slowed on the strings. The notes rang in the air, shimmering, and the connections between them cleared. It was easier to follow the melody when he played it like this.
When she glanced back at Cadell, he was looking at her instead of at his fingers, examining her expression.
The way he played now pulled at her, haunting and evocative, and the music dug into her heart and sounded like longing and desperation.
Cadell smiled at her and returned to watching his fingers on the guitar’s neck.
Under her fingertips, his leg moved, just a quick fidget, but it reminded her that she still had her hand on a man’s thigh.
She was grabbing a guy’s leg in front of a huge crowd.
Andy swiveled her phone back so that the lens pointed directly at Cadell.
In the small window on the screen, Emily was standing on top of her bed, dancing. A bandage covered the back of her left hand where they had pulled the IV out that morning when she had been discharged from the hospital. The new nanny stood beside the bed, one arm hovering beside Emily, but she was also grinning and watching the video.
Great. Emily was watching Andy grope Cadell in front of a packed-full bar, too. Just lovely.
Xan Valentine wasn’t singing anymore, and when Andy stole a glance, she saw that he was kissing Georgie, who was holding a piano key on the keyboard down with one finger to let that last note ring in the air.
Over on the other side, Tryp had leaned over and was kissing Elfie who stood beside him. One of his thick arms wrapped around her tiny body while he shook a tambourine with his other.
In front of her, Cadell finished a glide up the guitar and let go of the instrument with both hands. The bright blue strap over his shoulder kept it from tumbling to the stage.
He glanced behind them at the other musicians and saw what was going on.
Oh, no. Surely he wouldn’t kiss her on a stage in front of a whole bunch of people. Her heart shuddered in her chest at the thought of being so exposed at such a private moment.
It would be only her second kiss in her life.
Cadell lifted her hand from his knee and brought her knuckles to his lips. His eyes closed.
Okay. She could handle that. Indeed, he had found a perfect compromise.
His mouth brushed her hand, and his warm breath collided with her fingers. His lips were dry on her skin. He wasn’t slobbering all over her like she had seen in American movies. His thick eyelashes were a dark fringe above his cheekbones.
He lowered her hand and opened his eyes, and all the vulnerability from the song lingered in his expression. His plush lips were still parted. His long hair almost hid his eyes, but he was looking at her, watching her, waiting for her.
She could let go of his hand. She should turn the camera around and let him see Emily.
His warm hand still held her fingers, and her eyes were too wide.
Just barely, just so she could hardly feel it, he pulled her fingers about an inch toward his chest.
Andy slid off the barstool, which meant that she was standing between his knees. One of his thighs brushed her waist.
She couldn’t go any further. She didn’t know what to do, so she let her lips barely part.
Cadell reached with his other arm and slid his hand up the side of her neck to the back of her head. He held her, tilting her head backward, and he bent over his guitar between them to kiss her.
His lips touched hers, and she closed her eyes.
The softness of his mouth on hers was so different than the first time he kissed her, when he had shoved her up against the door and pushed his mouth and body against hers. This time, his gentleness astounded her—the way that his lips gathered hers, their slight suction pulling at hers and enticing her to let him touch her—and she stepped closer to him. The dark taste of liquor wafted on his breath, just a little, like one drink.
He let go of her hand, and her fingers fell against his chest. His chest rose under her hand when he breathed, the thick muscles lifting into her palm. His other arm slipped around her waist, holding her, and his fingers on the back of her neck threaded into her hair as his lips caressed hers.
Her legs melted, and the clamor of the audience faded away.
He drew her another step toward him, and he pressed her body against his guitar and tightened his arms around her.
He still kissed her gently, brushing her lips with his.
His lips slowed, and he held the crest of each slow suck a little longer each time. Finally, he lifted his head.
Breath rushed in her body, and she was trembling and fluttering and wasn’t sure she could stand on her own. Her legs wobbled under her like the floor was bouncing. When Cadell looked down at her, she knew that she must have some stupid expression on her face, something ignorant and stunned by the heat that was flowing through her.
Cadell’s dark eyes shone in the stage lights, too. His arms around her steadied her until her knees strengthened again and she was almost breathing normally.
He released her carefully, trailing his fingers down her upper arm, and Andy stepped back, bumping into the barstool behind her.
The phone fell from her fingers and clattered across the stage.
Oops. Emily.
Andy ducked and fumbled with the phone until she managed to snag it with her shaking fingers.
In the small window, Emily was staring at her with wide, brown eyes, like she was worried about them. Andy waved at her a little sheepishly, and the worry on Emily’s face softened.
The noise of the crowd came roaring back, and Andy looked around. The stage lights blazed above them, so much that it was hard to make out a lot of the audience in the glare.
Beside her, Xan Valentine raised his arms, and the crowd screamed in response. The harshness of their crazed voices washed over Andy. She wanted to run off the stage, but she lifted her phone and showed Emily the crowd and Cadell bowing briefly to them.
When she looked at the screen, Emily was smiling again.
Cadell took the phone from Andy’s hand, smiled and waved at Emily, and handed it back.
The stage lights snapped off, darkening the air around her, though she could see dimly in the light reflected from the audience and the beams from their cell phone flashlights.
He leaned near her shoulder. Andy barely heard him shout above the din, “Come on! Let’s get out of here.”
He carried his guitar off the stage and packed it in its case.
Xan Valentine followed them into the small space with the instrument cases behind the stage area. “Hey, Cadell!”
“Yeah, man?” This particular time when he swung the backpack straps over his shoulders, Andy saw him wince. It wasn’t a big, theatrical wince like he was vying for attention, just a tightening between his eyebrows and a flinch around his mouth.
Xan said, “That was it tonight. You settled down with the arpeggios and played straight from the heart.”
Cadell said, “Did I?”
“Yeah. It’s coming together. Just like that, okay?”
Standing between them, Andy felt like she was barely coming up to their sternums, and craning her neck so far back to look up at the two very tall men was uncomfortable. She stepped backward.
Cadell’s expression didn’t change as he settled the guitar case straps on his shoulders. “Okay. Cool. I’ll work with that.”