by Teri Wilson
She didn’t want to count the beats anymore. She just wanted to dance. Really dance.
Working alone with the piano after hours might be exactly what she needed. She could do with fewer distractions. The only problem was that the man playing the piano was the biggest distraction of all, especially now. She was furious with him.
Julian had made a spectacle out of her.
He was already bent over the upright Steinway in the smaller practice room when she walked in after rehearsal. He didn’t look up. He kept pounding away on the keys until she stomped over to him and plopped her dance bag on top of the piano.
As soon as she did, the music came to an abrupt stop. Julian rested his hands on his thighs and glared at Tessa’s Capezio tote. “No bags on top of the piano.”
He was beyond impossible. Tessa crossed her arms and left her bag right where it was. “Why do you care? This isn’t even your piano.”
Besides, hadn’t he made some kind of snide remark the night before about the instrument? He had. Tessa remembered his exact words.
I play piano...but it’s not the same.
Julian lifted a brow. “I care because music is important to me, and this is a nice piano.”
Fair point, but did he have to be so bossy? “Well, this ballet is important to me, and you almost cost me my part earlier today. What do you have to say about that, Mr. Crankypants?”
The corner of his mouth hitched up into a spontaneous grin. Then he seemed to realize he was accidentally smiling, and his expression went cool again. Neutral. “Mr. Crankypants? That’s your nickname for me?”
“It suits you, don’t you think?” Tessa lifted a brow. They looked at each other for a prolonged moment, until she finally plucked her bag from the piano and dropped it on the floor.
But she wasn’t about to let him off the hook. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“About what happened earlier?” He narrowed his soulful blue eyes. If Tessa had been certain she could discern his words without having to read his lips, she would have looked away. The man was too beautiful for his own good. “I guess I’d say you’re welcome.”
He couldn’t be serious. “If you think I’m going to thank you, you’re delusional.”
“Suit yourself.” He shrugged and started playing again.
If Tessa concentrated very hard, she could hear each individual note and make sense of the melody. It wasn’t Debussy. He was playing something different, something more fluid. Jazz. It made her want to tap her toes.
She cleared her throat. “Look, you can’t do that again, okay? Promise me.”
He fixed his gaze on hers, but his hands kept moving over the keys. “I can’t make that promise. Sorry. The guy’s a complete ass. People ought to call him out on it more often.”
Tessa just stared at him, speechless. Although, why she’d expected an apology was somewhat of a mystery, given Julian’s generally bizarre behavior.
Finally, she shook her head. “If you want to fight with the ballet director, be my guest. But leave me out of it. I work hard every day to try and make sure no one notices that I’m different than the rest of the dancers. You can’t possibly understand what it’s like.”
He spoke slowly, carefully. Tessa no longer needed to read his lips to catch his meaning. “I understand more than you think I do, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart.
The endearment had been infused with a heavy dose of sarcasm, but it sent a tingle coursing through her all the same. Her face went instantly hot.
She swallowed and let her gaze wander to the scar on his face. She had a sudden overwhelming urge to reach out and touch it, to let her fingertips explore the raised skin and follow its rugged trail to the corner of his mouth. What must it be like to wear your brokenness on the outside, for all the world to see? Tessa couldn’t fathom it. She’d been fighting so long and so hard to hide hers.
Maybe he did understand. Just a little bit.
Julian stopped playing and signed at her. One word only. Why?
He was getting better at signing. Tessa wondered if he’d been studying. She also wondered why the thought that he might have done that thrilled her as much as it did.
This is work. And you’re still mad at him, remember? “Why what?”
He narrowed his gaze. “Why is this ballet so important to you? Why do you want to dance for Ivanov?”
“I’m not dancing for him. I’m dancing for me.” She was still getting used to the sound of her own voice, but it was raspier now. Raw. “Is that a good enough reason?”
“It’s the only good reason,” he said. His expression didn’t change. His mouth remained in the same flat line.
But somewhere in the depths of his moody blue eyes, Tessa spied a shadow of a smile.
* * *
Staying after hours for private practice wasn’t the worst way to spend an evening. Julian was acutely aware of this fact. If he’d been in any sort of denial about it before Tessa wound the satiny ribbons of her pointe shoes around her slender ankles, he was quickly corrected.
He loved watching her dance, and now—by virtue of his own idiocy, as Tessa so kindly put it—he had a front-row seat for every lithe arabesque, every breathtaking twirl.
He tried not to stare. He tried really damn hard.
Even without Daria there to monitor her no ogling rule, it didn’t seem appropriate. But he couldn’t stop himself. He began each round focused intently on the keys in front of him, but before Tessa was halfway through her combination, he was playing the music by rote while he watched her every move.
There was a purity in the way her body floated across the floor. An aching honesty that made Julian’s chest grow tight, especially during the adagio portions of the music. Debussy’s composition, with its glittering restraint and absence of traditional tonality, was the perfect backdrop for her artistry. As much as Julian loved music—as much as he’d lived and breathed it for the majority of his life—it was reduced to nothing more than background noise as Tessa danced. Sometimes he didn’t even hear it. It somehow fell away while she told a story with her lyrical arms and the sweeping turns of her pink-slippered feet.
She was so intent on blending in with the rest of the dancers. She never would. As far as Julian was concerned, that’s what made Tessa so special. He couldn’t shake her words from earlier.
I’m not dancing for him. I’m dancing for me.
Julian couldn’t help but wonder if dance had become her way of communicating in a world that had suddenly gone silent. If so, despite his efforts not to, he was hanging on to her every word.
But then something happened that gave him pause.
He might never have noticed it, if not for the metronome.
“Why do you have that?” Tessa asked as he pulled the device from his messenger bag and set it on top of the piano. “You just casually carry a metronome around wherever you go?”
“Maybe.” Of course he didn’t.
He’d spent nearly an hour looking for it in his apartment, after he’d read the article on nonauditory cues for deaf dancers that he’d told Chance about. It was just a regular metronome, nothing fancy. A Wittner, with a wind-up spring and a swinging pendulum that rocked back and forth, in time with the beat. But it should do the trick.
He picked it up and wound the crank. “I thought it might be useful.”
Tessa watched as he placed it back on the piano and the pendulum ticked to and fro. “So this was your idea?”
He shrugged. “I might have read something somewhere about visual cues for dancers with hearing impairments.”
She stared at him for six long clicks of the metronome before finally saying something. “That’s very thoughtful of you, Julian.”
He broke his gaze and played a chord, a wistful E minor. Tessa spoke through her dance, and Julian spoke best through his music. They
had more in common than he’d realized.
He glanced up. She was looking at him more closely than he felt comfortable with, especially when her gaze lingered so long on his scar. Maybe she was just reading his lips. It was hard to tell. “It’s nothing. Are you ready?”
She nodded and adjusted the wraparound sweater she wore over her leotard as she glided her way back to the center of the floor.
Julian waited until she struck her beginning pose and nodded to hit the opening note of the Debussy piece. He played each successive part of the melody with care, moving in perfect time with the metronome’s swinging arm.
Tessa glanced at it every few beats and seemed to be suppressing a smile. Julian was suddenly very glad that Chance was nowhere around to read more into the situation.
Is there more?
Julian’s jaw clenched.
No, there wasn’t. He was helping her...under duress now. That was it. Neither of them was particularly happy about it, tolerable though it might be.
Halfway through her solo, it happened.
Julian caught himself watching Tessa when he should have been concentrating on his music. Again. He cursed under his breath, but in the split second before he refocused on the piano keys, he noticed that she was off the beat. Her feet were moving too fast. Her count was probably a half second ahead of the metronome’s steady click, which wouldn’t have seemed exceedingly odd, except for one thing—Julian was also off.
He’d gotten ahead of the beat as well, probably because he’d slipped and let himself get lost in Tessa’s dance, when he should have been focusing on his playing. The fact that he was so out of practice probably hadn’t helped, but that didn’t seem to matter at the moment.
As he slowed the tempo of the music, Tessa’s movements slowed, as well. Even as he changed tempo, she stayed perfectly in sync with him. Note for note. Beat for beat.
She can hear me.
No. That wasn’t possible. Tessa was deaf. It had to be a coincidence, or something else. There had to be a sensible explanation. Maybe she could feel the piano’s vibration in the soles of her feet. That had to be it.
Except the music hadn’t even reached its swell. Julian was barely touching the keys, stretching out the adagio, letting the silence speak as much as the song.
They remained in perfect sync. Ignored, the metronome ticked away.
Mind reeling, Julian played on. As the music grew, billowing around them, so did his recollection of the ill-fated lift. It started with Tessa’s panic, and then the near fall. Without even realizing it, Julian had stopped playing. Ivanov’s tirade had followed.
Are you deaf or something?
Julian’s blood began to boil again just thinking about it. Of course he’d said something. He’d had to. But not right away...he’d done something first, hadn’t he?
He’d stood up.
When he did, the piano bench had fallen to the floor. It made a terrible racket, as falling furniture was wont to do. Suddenly, Julian hadn’t been the invisible guy in the corner. Everyone in the room flinched and then turned to look at him.
Everyone, including Tessa.
Had she heard something then?
Could she hear his music now?
The signs all pointed to the same conclusion—yes.
But it didn’t make sense. Tessa was deaf. She’d fallen and hit her head. Julian highly doubted she’d been faking her injury for more than a year.
He must be mistaken. Julian didn’t know the first thing about being deaf. He’d done a bit of research lately, but that didn’t make him an expert. Far from it.
Julian knew music, though. He knew harmony, melody and rhythm. He knew sound. And despite her mysterious fragility, Tessa was suddenly looking more and more like a woman who could hear.
By the time she finished her run-through, they’d clocked two hours of extra practice, enough to satisfy Ivanov. Between company class, rehearsal and the evening with Tessa, Julian had been playing for ten hours, with only a few small breaks here and there. Mentally, he was drained. But physically, he felt pretty good. Relaxed. Fluid. He hadn’t felt so loose in as long as he could remember.
He kept playing the piano while Tessa unwound the ribbons from her ankles and slipped out of her ballet shoes. Just a little free-form jazz. Soon it progressed into a familiar tune, one he used to play on his trumpet—“La Vie en Rose.” Louis Armstrong’s version, naturally.
Julian had no doubt found his way to that particular song by virtue of Tessa’s pink tights and pink satin shoes. “La Vie en Rose”—“Life in Rosy Hues.” It made sense. He’d been neck-deep in pink for three days running. But after he made his way through the prelude, the song’s lyrics floated to the forefront of his mind.
Armstrong hadn’t been singing about a color. He’d been singing about a woman. He’d been singing about what it felt like to hold her close and fast, to kiss her until heaven sighed. Until life took on a rosy hue.
Julian abruptly stopped playing.
He jammed a shaky hand through his hair and then focused on packing away the metronome and gathering his things together, while Tessa did the same.
“Thank you for staying,” she said as she rose to her feet and closed the distance between them. “I think it helped. I’ve got the combination down now.”
“Okay, then. Good.” He gave her a curt nod. It wasn’t as though he’d had a choice in the matter.
Julian was very ready to leave all of a sudden. But he wasn’t about to leave Tessa alone in the building, so he followed her out of the practice room and down the darkened hallway.
She paused near the door to the rehearsal space. “I think I left my coat in here earlier.”
Fall was nipping at New York’s heels. Leaves were already swirling in the air, and Central Park was blanketed with red-and-yellow foliage. She’d freeze without her coat this time of night.
Julian tried the doorknob and found the room unlocked. He pushed the door open. “After you.”
She slid past him, and Julian did his best to ignore the way his body hardened as her shoulder grazed his chest. It was just the barest of contact, but it was enough.
More than enough.
He blamed his overactive libido on the fact that he’d been a hermit for the better part of two years.
He hadn’t always been so solitary. There’d been women in his life before the accident. A lot of women. Sometimes more than one in a night, in his less gentlemanly moments.
Julian hated to think about it now. Not just the women, but everything else, too—the partying, the long nights on the road, the money. So much money.
He’d been at the top of his game. He’d been the best trumpet player in the country, if not the world.
He’d give anything to get those days back. Or even just one of them...a single day, which he’d spend immersed in his music from morning to night.
The root of his bitterness wasn’t the accident. It never had been. The reason he was so angry was because he deserved what had happened to him. He’d forgotten the only thing that mattered—the music.
He’d gotten caught up in the trappings and turned his back on everything he believed in. He’d tempted fate, and fate had paid him back in spades.
Things were different with Tessa, though, and he didn’t know why. Even after so much time alone, there was absolutely no reason why he should feel this way about a woman he barely knew. A woman he had no business pursuing. A woman he wouldn’t pursue.
He was darkness.
She was light.
But that didn’t stop him from wanting her.
Julian cleared his throat and averted his gaze from her slender, elegant frame. She moved with such eloquence, even when she was simply walking across the room. But the dance studio was covered in mirrors, from floor to ceiling, and there was nowhere safe to look.
Tessa
was everywhere.
He inhaled a tense breath and somehow spotted a flash of yellow out of the corner of his eye. A coat, slung over the ballet barre.
He picked it up. It looked just like the sort of thing she would wear. Cheery and bright, like a daisy. “I don’t suppose this is it?”
Tessa turned her head. “It is. Thank you.”
She’d either heard him, or she’d had her eyes trained on his reflection. Specifically, on his mouth. The possibility did little to minimize his erection.
He held the coat open for her, as much to shield himself as to help her into it. When Tessa reached him, she turned to slide her arms into the sleeves, and his gaze lingered on the graceful curve of her neck.
God, she was beautiful. Like a perfect, precious pearl. Her hair was still swept into a ballerina bun, and it shimmered like a copper penny beneath the moonlight streaming through the studio’s high-placed windows. Julian was practically spellbound by a stray curl that had escaped her updo and rested in a gentle swirl on her alabaster shoulder.
Tessa dipped her head to button her coat, and Julian knew it was time for him to step away. But he couldn’t seem to make his feet move. If anything, he leaned a fraction closer, drawn to her like gravity.
It occurred to him he could say anything to her right then. He could confess the worst of his sins, his darkest secrets, and she’d never know.
Unless he was right, and she could actually hear.
He wanted to know. More than wanted, truthfully. He needed to know. All it would take was one tiny whisper. Just a single word. A test, of sorts.
Don’t.
He knew damn well he shouldn’t do it. But he also knew he would. The temptation was too great, but the stakes were too tantalizingly high. He leaned a fraction closer and murmured the first thing that came to mind...the words he’d been struggling for the hours, for days, not to say.
“Kiss me, Tessa.”
Chapter Eight
Kiss me, Tessa.
She heard it as clear as day, just over her right shoulder. There was no mistaking the fevered longing in Julian’s voice. The ache. Even if Tessa had been imagining things, even if she’d somehow conjured the whispered command by wishing very hard, it would have never sounded like that. So decadent. So deliciously dark.
