Another small Zoya factoid that he’d apparently remembered all this time.
Her heart contracted, hard.
It was one thing for him to show up in town and screw her into blissful oblivion with no strings attached. That she could deal with. Sort of. But when it came to them having meaningful discussions like adults and him, God forbid, being the romantic and thoughtful person she remembered all too well—that was going too damn far.
This kind of chaos always resulted when you relaxed your boundaries.
“You can’t go around bringing me stuff, Daniel.”
His grin wavered. “Why not?”
“I didn’t get you anything, for one.”
“I didn’t expect you to.”
She floundered. “How am I supposed to react to this?”
“With something other than open suspicion would be nice. Try girlish delight. Are you going to let me in?”
She didn’t want to let him in. Something about the convergence of Daniel and her cozy and safe world here in her beloved apartment was really playing tricks on her equilibrium.
Going to his apartment was one thing. This was altogether different.
“Won’t we be late for a reservation or something?” she asked hopefully.
“Nice try. Move.”
Zoya glumly fell back and allowed him through the door. Grinning again, a bounce in his step, he headed straight for the living room, where he neatly laid his coat over a chair. She slowly followed him, braced for the worst.
“Great apartment,” he said, taking it all in. She considered everything through his eyes. The cozy sectional with pillows, the pale gray and black decor, the bookshelves jammed with photos and knick-knacks from her travels with the orchestra, the baby grand with open lid in the corner by the windows, the view of the Hudson and—
“Hang on.” His face lit up as he pointed to the two black cases with handles leaning against the wall behind the piano. “Are those cellos? Are you playing again?”
“Yes and no,” she said lightly. “They’re the twins’. Miranda asked me to have them practice when they stay with me over the weekend. Their teacher isn’t very good, she says.”
His face fell. “Ah. I was wondering why they were so small.”
“I’m not playing again, before you get started. So don’t try to—”
“I didn’t say anything.” He held his hands up. “I am wondering why you’re so defensive, though.”
“Daniel…”
Turning his back on her and her gathering rant, he headed for the kitchen. “Corkscrew and glasses?”
“Hang on.” Put a little off-kilter by his willingness to let the topic go, she slid her coat off, tossed it on a chair and hurried after him. “You’ll never find them.”
“Have a little faith,” he said, glancing back over his shoulder at her. “I think I can—damn, Zoya.”
“What?” she asked blankly.
He turned all the way around, the better to give her a shell-shocked once-over that encompassed every aspect of her black knit LBD and spiky heels. The dress was no big deal although, to be fair, the scoop in front dipped kind of low to show some cleavage. But apparently, she’d chosen well because he watched her the way he’d watch Halle Berry if she stopped by to give him a lap dance.
“You look great,” he said huskily.
Sudden heat surged up her neck and blossomed across her face.
“So do you,” she hesitantly admitted. “Really great.”
His suit was European cut, with slim legs that emphasized his height, a white shirt and bright red tie. Simple. Elegant. Unforgettable.
He ducked his head, uncomfortable with the compliment, or maybe with her fervency. How the sexiest man in the world could be unaware of the affect he had on women—on her—was one of the many things that had always intrigued her about Daniel.
They stared at each other, the moment stretching into infinity between them. Her blood ran hot and thick. Her nipples ached. He tried to smile, but the arc of erotic energy between them felt way too strong to be joked aside.
“Can I, ah... corkscrew? Glasses?”
“Oh, sure. Sorry. Here.”
They continued into the kitchen, where he poured the wine and she found a vase for the flowers.
“I’m glad you didn’t expect me to pour white wine into a red wine glass,” he said, passing her glass over.
“I wouldn’t dare. What is this, anyway?”
“Harper Rose’s finest Chardonnay. Late harvest. It’s got a good—what are you doing?”
Zoya, who’d turned to the freezer, worked on her straight face. “Getting some ice.”
“Ice? Are you crazy? It’s already chilled! You don’t put ice—”
Zoya burst into laughter. “You’re so easy to play.”
Daniel stopped his tirade and went perfectly still for one arrested second, looking at her in a way she was positive he never had before.
His sudden intensity heated her from the inside out.
“Daniel…”
He put his own glass down. Took hers and put it down. Reached for her.
“I love this smile,” he said roughly, planting his hands on either side of her face. “Love it.”
Their mouths came together, hot and hard. The urgency of his need for her—and of her response to him—obliterated all other considerations in a fireball of desire. They should be getting to know each other again without sex clouding the issue, yeah, but his tongue was deep in her mouth and he tasted like mints and home. She needed to keep her head clear about the future of this relationship and guarding her heart against further anguish, true, but his skilled hands were gliding up under the hem of her dress now, stroking her thighs and the throbbing bud between them, making her cry out and her body writhe with pleasure.
When his hands went to her ass and used it as an anchor while he ground against her with a rock-hard dick, her only possible response was to wrap her arms tight around his neck, let her head fall back and feel.
When he picked her up and set her lightly onto the counter, reaching for her panties, she couldn’t wiggle out of them fast enough.
And when he slowed just long enough to skim his fingers against her bare flesh...
“Daniel.”
“You’re all mine, aren’t you?” he said, nipping and licking the words into her ear.
“Yes.”
His perfect fingers circled...circled...
“All of you?”
Why deny the obvious? “Yes.”
Her reward for this raw honesty was a swift return of his mouth to hers, the voluptuous surge of his lips and tongue unraveling her. Owning her.
And then he was back in her ear again, demanding answers she didn’t want to give.
“Anything I want you to do, Kitten—”
“I’ll do it,” she said quickly, her eyes rolling closed, need making her desperate. “Ah, God, you know I’ll do it.”
He made a sound that was part groan, part triumphant growl, and tapped her under her chin to get her attention. “Open your eyes,” he demanded. “Look at me.”
She did and he was right there in her face, brown eyes glittering with a feverish urgency that would have scared her had she been anywhere close to her right mind.
“You still love me? You trust me again?”
Just like that, they crashed headlong into a brick wall.
Involuntary reflexes took over, stiffening her entire body and slamming her legs shut against his hand.
Their nose-to-nose position gave her a perfect view of the wave of despair, quickly mastered, as it washed over his face.
Funny how it perfectly reflected the way she felt.
He withdrew his hand. Eased back a couple steps.
She hopped down from the counter with real doubts about her wobbly knees. But they held and she pulled her hem down while trying to catch her breath.
Without a word, he handed her panties back and she slid them on.
He put both ha
nds on top of his head and turned away from her, blowing out a hard breath.
When he turned back, the tenderness was gone from his expression and he was all tight lips and lowered brows. Renewed anger, bordering on hatred, and it was no good telling herself that hatred was just a hop across the border from love.
“What do we have to do to get back to where we were before, Zoya?”
“I don’t know,” she said helplessly. “It’s not like I have the answers and I’m hiding them from you.”
Some of the anger leached away from him, leaving something that looked like regret. Maybe fear. Definitely heartache.
“Why can’t I touch you?”
She wasn’t sure she wanted to go there, but if they were rebuilding this relationship, now was not the time to be timid.
She paused, trying to get her words right. “I’m not sure that was touching as much as it was controlling.”
Wicked grin. “You weren’t complaining the other night with the blindfold.”
Her face burned, but she was determined to stand her ground. “The other night, you weren’t trying to force me to say something I wasn’t ready to say.”
He blinked, his grin fading and leaving quiet desperation in its wake. “Tell me how to get your love back and I’ll do that instead.”
“Not like this,” she said, which was a lie.
The truth was, every part of her belonged to him and always had, including her heart. If he wanted to toy with her emotions or dominate her, she was fine with that. Hell, yeah, she was fine with it. As long as he promised to stay and never leave again.
Her only saving grace?
That he didn’t know how much more she loved him than he’d ever loved her.
“Can we get there from here, Zoya?” He paused and tried to clear some of the raspiness from his voice. “Or are we wasting our time?”
“I want to get there from here,” she said. “It’s just that…We were together for two years. You were everything to me. And then you were gone, with no warning, and I had to pick up the pieces by myself. It’s not that easy to open my heart again. It’s not that easy to trust that you won’t disappear again the next time we hit a rough patch. And all couples hit rough patches.”
He sighed, his expression turbulent. “But you still want to work on it?”
“You have no idea how much I want to work on it.”
After a long couple of beats, his eyes crinkled at her.
“Yeah, I do,” he said, reaching for her hand. “Come on. Let’s drink our wine.”
Reeling her all the way in for a side hug and forehead kiss, he held her for a minute and she snuggled close and held him as tightly as she could, grateful that they hadn’t just ruined their evening ten minutes in.
“Not too close,” he murmured above her, and she heard the amusement in his voice. “Unless you want to wind up back on the counter.”
“You promised me a date,” she said. “Where’re you taking me, anyway?”
He hesitated.
“To see the regional symphony orchestra. They’re playing Vivaldi tonight.”
Once again, surging panic forced her to stiffen into marble in his arms. “What?”
With a resigned sigh, he let her go, freeing her up to lose her shit.
“I don’t want to see the orchestra, Daniel!”
“Sure you do,” he said, unperturbed.
“And you’re trying to control me again!”
The beginnings of something nasty, like a panic attack, started pounding away in her tight chest. Something of her wild-eyed fear (did he really think it would be easy for her to sit and watch other cellists play the music she loved and live the life she’d given up?) must have shown on her face, because he put a steadying hand on her shoulder and massaged it just enough to loosen her up a little.
“Easy, little Kitten. Put those claws away. Be brave. I know you can do it.”
She stared up at him, lost in her indecision. The truth? The idea of seeing an orchestra again, any orchestra, made her heart swell until she damn near levitated with excitement. Which was a bad thing, right? She was no longer a cellist. She didn’t even own a cello. Not that she wanted to play again. Of course she didn’t. Please. That part of her life was over, so why bother turning on the lights in all those dark rooms?
But still. The orchestra.
Nope. Bad idea.
She couldn’t do it.
She couldn’t even form an exploratory committee to think about how she could do it.
Daniel stooped to look her directly in the face. Hit her with that steady warmth of his.
“You can do it, Kitten. I know you can.”
His voice was so calm and reassuring.
His grip on her shoulder was so firm.
And his gaze was so tender and unwavering on her face.
She exhaled a long and shuddering breath.
“Fine,” she said. “But when I have a screaming panic attack in front of a thousand people while the orchestra is tuning up, you make sure you tell the EMTs this was your brilliant idea.”
“Fair enough,” he said, laughing. “Now finish your wine so we can go.”
Chapter 21
“Maybe I’m crazy,” Daniel said later that night, as soon as they were seated at their table in a great Italian restaurant on the outskirts of Journey’s End and ordered their wine, “but it seems to me that if you have a near panic attack at the idea of going to a concert and then cry your whole way through the concert, maybe you’re not as over the cello as you keep telling yourself.”
“I didn’t cry the whole time.” Zoya shook out her white napkin and dabbed her eyes. “I think it’s rude of you to point it out.”
“Kinda hard to miss,” he said, raising his brows as he checked out the menu. “Didn’t you like the music?”
“Like it?”
He looked up, watching her with a new stillness.
Like it?
How could she make a non-musician understand the way those notes, as familiar as her own face in the mirror every morning when she brushed her teeth, made her soul dance and then soar? Or the fierce longing to jump up from her horsehair seat in the orchestra section, leap onto the stage and wrestle the cello from the nearest cellist so she could play the piece instead?
How could she crack open the walls around her heart and allow for the possibility that it might be okay for her to pick up a cello again? Might, in fact, be time for her to pick up a cello again?
“Zoya?” he said quietly.
“I loved it,” she confessed, her voice ragged with emotion. “I really loved it.”
His expression glowed with warmth and quiet satisfaction. “I thought you might.”
“Don’t get smug,” she said tartly. “You don’t know me that well.”
“I think I do. But I don’t know what it was like when you played for the symphony. I’ve been wondering. How was it?”
Zoya thought back to that difficult time, immediately after Daniel left town, when she’d auditioned and landed a role with the symphony. The job was, of course, the culmination of everything she’d worked so hard for her entire life. Would she have made it through their breakup if she hadn’t had the distraction and adventure of traveling the world with the orchestra? Doubtful. Was it an invaluable learning and growing experience she was glad she’d had? Absolutely.
“Well, you know,” she said, smiling up at the server as he dropped off their wine. “It wasn’t exactly the best time of my life. It kept me busy, though. I’m grateful I had the chance to do it.”
He swirled his wine, frowning down at it. “I thought it was your biggest dream.”
“It’s hard to play with a broken heart.” She took a deep breath, sacrificing a huge chunk of her pride to make the admission to the man who’d caused the damage. “Some people can turn to the music and play through anything, but it turns out I’m not one of those.”
“I would have thought that absence makes the heart grow fonder.”
She shook her head. “You couldn’t stand to look at me? I couldn’t stand to look at my cello. So I put it away. And then when my father got sick and he had all those medical bills...It didn’t make sense to have a twenty-five-thousand-dollar cello lying around the house. It was almost easier once it was gone. Then I didn’t have to know it was there and think about my old life.”
“Or me.”
“Or you,” she admitted, a flush creeping over her cheeks.
“Hmm.” He rested his elbows on the table and leaned in, holding her gaze. “In case you’re wondering, you’re not the only one who was lost back then.”
“No?”
“Did you think you were?”
“Yes. Sometimes.”
“You were dead wrong.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“My misery makes you happy.” He made a wry face. “I consider myself duly warned. But back to the cello. Don’t kill me.”
“Oh, Lord. Can’t we just order an appetizer?”
“Why don’t you play now?” he persisted. “Don’t tell me you don’t want to. Playing the cello is like reading or breathing for you. I could tell how excited you were tonight. It was like somebody strung a wire through you and plugged you in.”
“I’d be way too rusty—”
“You’d practice.”
“—and I don’t have a teacher—”
“One could probably be located.”
“or an orchestra to play with— ”
“Maybe I can help with that.” He reached into his breast pocket, pulled out a piece of folded paper and slid it across the table to her.
“What is it?” she asked, arrested by the gleam of excitement in his eyes. “Recording contract with the philharmonic?”
“Open it.”
She did, her heart thundering.
The first sheet was an announcement about the regional orchestra’s pending auditions for the upcoming season.
The other one was for a local quartet (she’d actually heard them; they played at weddings and other special events) whose cellist was relocating to Florida.
She slowly lowered the papers and looked up at Daniel, dumbstruck.
Unforgettable Page 20
