Ethan didn’t know what to expect, but even without ever having heard Divya sing, he knew she’d be great. What did surprise him was her choice of songs. She started with Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” It apparently surprised the crowd too, because as she escalated her voice into the first chorus, a hush blanketed the room for the first time all night. She closed her eyes as she sang the verses, varying her pitch to the crescendo of the words. With no instrumental accompaniment, her voice sounded pure and clear. It filled Ethan’s soul with joy and arrested the audience into silence.
At the end of the song, the entire club burst into applause. Ethan stood, clapping as hard as he could. She wasn’t just good. She was Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin good, with a rich deep voice that was pitch-perfect. He’d never heard anything like it.
The deal had been for her to sing two songs. For the second song she chose “Country Road,” and the crowd went wild. This time she didn’t stand still. She picked up the microphone from the stand and walked the stage. The crowd joined in with her, thrilled with her nostalgic choice. The other vocalists had all chosen more popular, contemporary songs.
When she waved to leave the stage, the crowd stood and shouted “Encore!” That was also a first all night. They’d liked other performers but hadn’t asked anyone to stay.
Rick shook his head, but at the grumbles of the crowd he relented. “One more, but that’s it,” he bellowed and they all cheered.
Divya onstage was magic, her entire face transformed into sheer joy. This time she went with something more pop culture, but once again, Britney Spears’s “Baby One More Time” literally hit the crowd just the way they wanted it. One of the a cappella groups joined in from the crowd, giving her some background vocals. This time Divya didn’t just walk the stage, she danced too. If the audience loved her before, they were now smitten. She walked off to a standing ovation and calls for her to come back. Ethan was waiting at the bottom of the stairs, having correctly guessed that she’d be accosted the moment she exited.
Her eyes were wild with excitement, but he could feel the crush of the crowd wanting a piece of her, so he put a protective arm around her as he led her outside through a side entrance that he’d noticed earlier.
“That was great. Oh my God! They actually liked me.” They had exited into an alleyway that smelled of urine and something worse, but she didn’t seem to notice. She was positively giddy.
“You are amazing, Divya. You don’t just have talent, you have a gift.”
She twirled. “They didn’t boo me offstage.” The night had gotten cooler, but she didn’t seem to care about the goose bumps on her arms. Her face was aglow and it brightened his heart. “Can you believe I just did that?”
He smiled, watching her dance in the dirty alley, her laughter and happiness so infectious that when she grabbed his hand, he pulled her into his arms. She flung her arms around his neck and stood on her tiptoes to hug him tightly. His breath caught in his chest. She felt so right against him. Her exuberance reached in and sparked a long-dead fire inside him. She loosened her embrace but kept her arms around his neck. He looked down at her shining face and knew he wasn’t going to stop himself this time. He needed to kiss her. He lowered his head.
“Ah there you are!”
Both of them startled at the booming voice. The club door from which they’d just exited banged closed.
A tall, heavyset man with a round face and white T-shirt approached them. Ethan was immediately on guard. The man held out his card. “Jason Brugge from East Side Records. I’ve been coming to this club for years, and you are the first vocalist who’s gotten me to put down my drink. I want you to give me a call. I’ll set up an audition, see what we can do.”
Divya stood frozen, so Ethan took the card. He would have Roda look up the guy to make sure he was legitimate. Anyone could print up business cards.
“She’ll call you,” Ethan said, as Divya seemed incapable of words.
When the man was gone, she snatched the card and looked at Ethan wide-eyed. “People come to this club for years hoping to get a card like this.”
“I’m sure they do. But they don’t have your talent.”
She rubbed the card between her hands. “I’m going to frame this.”
He took the card from her and pocketed it. “Let’s go back to the hotel. We’ll open a bottle of champagne and celebrate.”
The alley was getting darker and danker by the minute. Divya hadn’t noticed, but Ethan didn’t like the look of the shadowy figures that had begun to make their way toward them from one end of the alley. He grabbed Divya’s hand and walked quickly in the other direction. His management team had repeatedly asked him to have a security detail. His face was well-known in the media, and they were worried that he was a target. He’d resisted the intrusion into his privacy. That, and he could only imagine how his parents would feel if he showed up with bodyguards. They already thought him too pretentious.
He saw a taxi almost as soon as they exited the alley.
Divya was still giddy when they got to the hotel. Ethan ordered a bottle of champagne and a couple of burgers from room service. As they ate and drank, they talked about the club and the other artists and the smell of beer that still clung to them.
Ethan had never had a hard time conversing with beautiful women. He’d dated his share of them. But it was different with Divya. He didn’t have to work at making conversation; it just flowed. And when there were lulls, they sat back in pleasant silence until one of them had more to say. It was easy and comfortable.
Divya walked over to the suite bar. “Oh good. They have Black Label.” She poured herself a small amount. “You want some?”
He crinkled his nose. “Mind if we skip that?”
“You don’t like whiskey?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I can’t even stand the smell of it. Bad memories.”
She poured the whiskey down the sink and came back and sat next to him. He caught her gaze and sighed.
“You know I won’t be satisfied until you tell me, so spill it.”
“I didn’t tell you the whole story about my childhood on the plane.” He let out a breath and told her about Wade. “I like to pretend that my life only started with my stepfather. I’ve tried to forget Wade but I still associate the smell of whiskey with him. On the day my mother walked out on him, I went to give him a hug and he pushed me away so he could take a swig from the whiskey bottle.”
“Wade never came back into your life?”
Ethan shook his head. He’d never told anyone what he was about to tell Divya. “When my younger brother was born, I was barely eleven. In my juvenile heart, I thought I needed to let my mom be happy with her new husband. I felt like an outsider. So I saved up my allowance and took a bus to the old neighborhood and found my dad. He was still living in the apartment he shared with my mom. Same old drunk but with a new girlfriend.” He hazarded a look at Divya, inwardly cringing at the thought of the sympathy in her eyes, but he didn’t see any. She just looked at him steadily, hanging on to his every word.
“I asked if I could stay with him and he said he’d never wanted me.” There was one more part to the bile his father had spewed that day, but he couldn’t bring himself to say the words out loud. His throat was tight and the sip of beer he took just burned in his mouth. Why had he told Divya? He didn’t want her pitying him.
“Well, I bet when he found out you’re now a billionaire, he regrets it,” Divya joked. It was the perfect thing to say.
“Yep, he tried contacting me through my company, and I got the satisfaction of telling him that Bill is my father. He even tried going to the media and they dismissed him as a drunk.”
“Well, it’s great that Bill wanted you.”
Actually, he didn’t. But that was something he wasn’t ready to share.
“So, what’s next?” he asked, eager to change the subject.
“Now I can die a happy woman,” she sighed. They were sitting on the sofa in the shared living area between their two bedrooms. The lights of the city glittered in front of them. He sat one seat down from her.
“Seriously, Divya, you were amazing tonight. You need to pursue a music career.”
She chewed on her lower lip and he tried to ignore the stirrings deep in his core. “I don’t want to be a vocalist. I wanted to test out my singing voice, but what I enjoy most about music is creating new songs. Fusing the rhythms of classical Indian music with Western beats.”
“Why didn’t you sing one of your own songs tonight?”
“First, I didn’t have my guitar, but also I don’t think the Café Underground crowd would’ve appreciated my Indian music. What I really wanted to do was sing onstage to a real audience. Thank you for giving me that chance, Ethan. Now I can go back to India and remember this happy feeling.”
His heart dropped into his stomach. “What do you mean, go back to India? Wasn’t the whole point of this to see if you had any talent? You want to give it all up and go back to your previously scheduled life?”
“The idea was never to pursue this as a career. It was something on my bucket list, and I did it.”
“So tomorrow, you go back to your family and marry Vivek?” He couldn’t keep the bitterness from his voice. Why had he let himself hope that Divya would be any different?
“I am not marrying Vivek, no matter what. And I’m not leaving tomorrow. I want to make sure a few days have passed so the wedding guests leave and my parents can’t guilt me into continuing with the festivities. I’ll lie low, do some touristy things, let the whole wedding fiasco die down, and then I’ll go beg forgiveness.”
“Why won’t you pursue your dreams?”
“There’s a difference between a career and a hobby. My music is a hobby. It can’t be my life.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not the kind of existence I want. Being on the road all the time, away from my family.”
How could he argue with that? It’s exactly what he didn’t want, either.
She leaned down and rubbed her foot. He patted the seat next to him. “Hand me that foot.”
She raised her brow. “You give foot massages too?”
“I know you probably grew up with your own personal masseuse, but I’ll have to do for now.” He gestured again to her foot, and she swung her legs onto the sofa, adjusting her dress as she did.
“You’re one to talk. I’m surprised you don’t have your own personal masseuse on the plane.”
He took one foot in his hand and began massaging her heel. “I didn’t grow up with money. My dad is a high school teacher and my mom works at a diner. While we always had food on the table, money was tight for luxuries. I worked jobs all through high school and college to help pay for things.”
He tried not to think about how delicate her foot felt in his hand or how much he wanted to run his hand up her shapely leg.
“You must be thrilled that you can give your parents a better life now that you’ve done well.”
His heart fisted. “I wish. They won’t take money or anything from me.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. It’s not like its blood money. I earned every bit of it. They went through some hard times when my mom’s diner had to close, and that was right around the time my company really started to take off. I know I got lucky at a time when other people were suffering…”
“Wait a minute. You shouldn’t feel guilty about your money. You invented a product that’s useful to people.”
He hadn’t said he felt guilty about his money, so how did she know?
As if reading his mind, she said, “I’ve been around wealthy people all my life. Until today, the only time I’ve seen someone carry hundred-dollar bills in their pocket and go around giving outrageous tips is in the movies. It’s like you’re trying to give your money away.”
He smiled. He donated a big portion of his wealth to charity, had even started a foundation of his own that gave scholarships to underprivileged children. And yet his mother still worked at a diner. She was sixty-four years old, his father was close to seventy, and they were still working.
“I never expected my company to become an overnight success, especially during the COVID-19 crisis. I don’t need this kind of money and never wanted it. My parents taught me to work hard for my successes. I feel like I haven’t done that. I just got lucky.”
She shook her head. “Would you say that to me if I became a famous singer and made billions?”
He stared at her. “It’s really hard to make billions from singing. Millions, maybe.”
She gave him a patient smile. “You’d say I have talent and am making money from it. The same applies to you. Whatever’s going on with your parents doesn’t diminish your accomplishment.”
He wanted to take her words to heart, but somehow he knew that if he was laboring away at a nine-to-five job, or perhaps if his brother, Matt, was the one giving it, his father would be more inclined to take his money. The thought burned a hole in his heart.
He switched his attention to her other foot, and she winced. He looked down to see that she had a scrape along the side of her foot. “Those heels were the wrong size, weren’t they?”
She scrunched her nose. “A little bit. But it doesn’t help that I’ve been wearing heels all day.”
“Stay here.”
He returned with a wet washcloth and cleaned and bandaged her foot.
“First thing tomorrow, I’m going shopping for some sneakers and maybe some yoga pants.”
He laughed. “So you’re not the kind of girl who wears couture around the house?”
“I’m not the type of girl who wears couture outside the house. Much to my mother’s disappointment, I am a T-shirt-and-jeans type of girl.”
Exactly the type he liked. She pulled her feet back and slid closer to him. “Thank you for today. Singing in front of a real audience, that’s been a dream of mine. It’s the only thing I’ve ever really wanted to do and you made it happen.”
He shook his head. “You made it happen. With your voice, with your talent.”
She leaned closer to him.
“Is it okay if I kiss you?”
Had she really asked him that? “What guy in his right mind would say no to a question like that from a beautiful woman?”
She gave him a slow smile. “You think I’m beautiful?”
I think you’re freaking gorgeous.
He wasn’t going to let this moment go. He leaned forward and their lips crashed together.
* * *
Divya didn’t consider herself a sex goddess, but she was confident with her romantic experiences. Then came the kiss with Ethan.
She’d leaned into the kiss, fully intending to take charge. Except it wasn’t the usual tangle of tongues and lips. Ethan took his time tantalizing her lips, sucking on them gently, flicking his tongue and letting her breathe in the heady scent of his aftershave. Her core tingled with anticipation. She pushed her fingers into his hair, eager to deepen the kiss, to bring his mouth closer. She heard him groan, and hot desire flared deep inside her. She wanted him. Bad.
He broke the kiss. “This probably isn’t a good idea.”
That was not the reaction she’d been expecting. He leaned back. “It’s been quite a night,” he said gently.
What am I doing? Maybe it was the high from Café Underground that had made her throw all sense of propriety to the wind. Here was a nice man who had helped her out and she’d put him in an awkward position by asking to kiss him. How was he supposed to respond to that? “Sorry, I shouldn’t have kissed you,” she said.
“I thought I kissed you,” he said, moving back on the couch so no part of their bodies was touching.
“Why did you kiss me if you thought it was a bad idea?”
“I…” He ran his fingers through his hair. “I…we both almost married other people today. It seems like a bad idea to jump into something new.”
It was as if someone had stuck a pin in her balloon. But she shouldn’t be surprised. Ethan was wealthy and good-looking and dated women who looked like Pooja. How could she possibly compare? Her dating history consisted of Indian men who were into her because she came from a highly desirable family. Ethan was the first man who focused on her and not what her family had to offer. Of course he was rejecting her.
“Well then, I guess we both better get to bed, the sun will be up soon.”
He nodded. “Good night, Divya.”
She stared at him for a beat. He looked down at his phone. Guess there was nothing left to say.
“Good night, Ethan.”