The First Kiss

by Grace Burrowes

  He wouldn’t be able to, if she held to his estimation of her.

  Though compared to a fidgety eight-year-old boy, James could be plenty serious when he put his mind to it. Trent liked music and bought the CDs James picked out for him, but only James had inherited their mother’s musical talent.

  So he ground through contracts, drafted articles of incorporation, argued with his clients’ tax attorneys—corporate returns being due March 15, not April 15—and he did not walk in Hiram Inskip’s woods.

  He did not lease a trail horse. He did not buy a dog either, though he did peruse the “free to good home” ads on the same page as the crossword puzzle of the local newspaper.

  A cat, maybe. Cats dealt well with periodic abandonment, such as when James had a marathon contract negotiation for a client. Cats looked nice in an aloof and inscrutable way.

  James drove home at midday Friday, wondering what Vera Waltham would think of him, taking up a musical instrument to replace his usual social agenda. He wasn’t sure what he made of it himself, but he didn’t cancel his lesson.

  If Vera hadn’t collapsed in a fit of rebound nerves, but had instead kissed him back with half the fire he sensed in her, would he have canceled this lesson? Kept his evenings and weekends free for a budding relationship with her rather than a never-ending struggle with eighty-eight keys and only ten fingers?

  He’d thought about that kiss and thought about it.

  Vera had been shy, true, but interested. He was almost certain she’d been interested.

  Trapping her up against the house, however innocently he’d intended it, had tripped her defensive responses, and that had been game, set, and match point to the lady’s insecurities. He’d crowded her, not comforted her, and that rankled.

  James was plodding through his major scales—all except F major, which he saved for last because of the fingering—when his doorbell rang.

  Vera Waltham stood on his porch, a satchel in her hand.

  “Hello, Vera.” He stepped back, mentally cursing the timing, because his piano teacher was due any minute. He did not, however, curse the identity of his caller. “This is an unexpected pleasure.”

  She stood on the front porch, looking stylish in low-heeled boots, jeans, and a leather bomber jacket.

  Stylish and horrified.

  “If you want to bless me out again,” James said, holding his ground, “let’s not do it where the neighbors will be entertained.” The neighbors being Inskip’s heifers, at present.

  She stepped into the house and peered into his living room. “This is where you live?”

  “Have for the past eight years. The place needed a lot of work, but Trent and Mac helped. I love an old farmhouse treated properly, and it’s comfortable enough for a bachelor. Not to be obtuse, but to what do I owe the honor, and can I get you something to drink?”

  Her gaze fell on the Baldwin baby grand in what should have been his dining room.

  “This isn’t a mistake, is it?” she said, crossing to the piano. “I got the address right, and you’re my one o’clock. Did you do this on purpose?”

  To James’s expert eye, Vera was getting worked up about something, but she’d mentioned one o’clock and…a gleaming full-size grand piano occupied her front room.

  She did exercises every day without fail. Finger exercises?

  She’d needed an entertainment lawyer.

  She been married to a man who’d been her agent. Not her literary agent, as James had assumed, but some other kind of talent agent.

  And in the same room as her big, black piano, James had seen shelves and shelves of music.

  “You’re my piano teacher?”

  “You’re my new student,” she said, eyeing him as if he were a reluctant eight-year-old boy. Or something worse. “Did you really not know from whom you’d be taking lessons?”

  Her expression rankled, because she ought to have faith in his honesty by now, even if she wasn’t smitten with his kisses.

  “Your ad doesn’t give a name,” James reminded her. “We never spoke in person on the phone about these lessons. I left voice mails, and I got your texts. No way I could recognize your cell phone number—or you, mine—because we’ve only traded landline numbers. Will you turn tail and run, or will you at least give me a fair hearing?”

  Smooth, that, calling a snakebit woman a coward, but James was damned if he’d be sent packing for offenses he hadn’t committed.

  One of Inskip’s heifers bawled, and Vera startled. James wanted to smirk—even the cows agreed with him—but didn’t dare. After a long silence from the bovine peanut gallery, and from James’s prospective piano teacher, Vera set her bag down on a cedar chest.

  “Is this piano tuned?”

  “Of course,” James said, keeping his expression deadpan while his insides were spiking the ball and doing a happy dance. Vera Waltham was not turning tail and running.

  Vera was his piano teacher. Not what he’d planned on, but it pleased him inordinately and lifted the sense of ennui that had plagued him all week.

  “The piano was tuned after the first frost, and it will be tuned again when the weather changes,” James said. “I take care of my equipment, Vera. All of my equipment.”

  * * *

  Vera pretended to study the piano while ignoring any double entendres hidden in James’s words, and any cows barking in his front yard.

  The piano was dusted, the keys and finish gleaming in the winter sunshine. The closed lid had no rings where somebody had carelessly left a drink to sweat and wreck the veneer, no dings and dents from a casual move. The piano bench was adjusted to accommodate a man with long legs, suggesting James truly played this instrument.

  James was silent while Vera inspected his piano, but when she turned to face him, his arms were crossed over his chest, his feet planted in a solid stance.

  Abruptly, the spark of joy she’d felt at the simple sight of him—the bonfire, to be honest—winked out.

  He was angry. Vera had established beyond all doubt that she could not deal with angry men.

  “This won’t work, James.” Vera picked up her bag, but he stopped her by turning his back to her and facing out the big picture window that looked over black-and-white cows, fallow fields, and pasture in the distance.

  “What is with you, Vera? We shared one kiss, nothing more, and not even a particularly erotic kiss. You’re lying to yourself if you’re calling that an assault.”

  Not even particularly erotic?

  “It wasn’t the kiss”—must he have such an elegant back?—“or not only that. You kiss very—you know what you’re doing, and then I fell apart. Nobody assaulted anybody, and I fell apart.”

  He shot her a glance over his shoulder but didn’t turn. “Was that a compliment? A complaint? Because as compliments go, you leave me a little uncertain.”

  “It was a statement of fact,” Vera said, deciding some discussion—a brief, matter-of-fact discussion—was in order, because she could learn from her mistakes, and she was not neurotic.

  She was snakebit, though. She sat on the piano bench, the place in life where she’d always felt most confident.

  James sat beside her. Right beside her. “I kissed you once, Vera, and after sampling my wares, you waved me off. I can get past that. Can you?”

  His tone was indifferent, and his right index finger skimmed over the white keys without making a sound. His hands embodied male competence, and Vera was inordinately interested to know if he was any kind of musician.

  Then too, he’d spun her meltdown into a casual instance of a lady changing her mind.

  “I didn’t sample your wares, James. You surprised me is all.”

  “I won’t surprise you like that again.” Now his left index finger skimmed down to low A, which meant Vera either suffered his arm to bump against her side, or she leaned b
ack as if she had an allergy to his touch.

  Which she did not, but they wouldn’t be tackling the four-hands literature, that’s for sure.

  “Play me something.” Vera hadn’t planned to issue a command, but music would help her make up her mind about James as a student, and give her time to get an utterly groundless bout of nerves, glee, mortification, and other inconvenient emotions under control.

  “Let’s get your coat off,” he said, rising. “You never told me if you’d like something to drink.”

  “I’m not a guest, James. I’m like a contractor who’s come here to install your washing machine.”

  The left corner of his mouth quirked up, and Vera’s upset subsided half an octave. If James could overlook her wrong notes, she’d be better able to forgive them in herself.

  “My mama,” James said, “of the famed mashed-potato recipe, claimed anybody welcomed under our roof was a guest, and to be treated as such.”

  “A glass of water then.” If he set it on the piano, Vera would lecture him up one side and down the other, and enjoy every second of it.

  James disappeared into the kitchen, and came back with one glass and a wooden coaster, both of which he handed to her. Vera had not watched his backside as he’d sauntered away, not for more than a single moment.

  “What should I play for you?” he asked, resuming his seat on the bench.

  “I’ll need a chair so I don’t crowd you on the bench.”

  He popped back up and fetched a chair from the kitchen.

  “Are you warmed up?” she asked. “If I don’t like what I hear, then we’ll agree I’m not the teacher for you.”

  “We will?” He sat back down square in the middle of the bench, right where he was supposed to be, nose aligned with middle C. “How ’bout if I play something anyway, before we agree to that? I’ll play you a piece I’m working on, so you can give me some pointers, before we go agreeing on anything.”

  “Fair enough.” More than fair. Vera did like this man—liked him a lot.

  She mentally squared her shoulders, prepared to hear him limp through some pop tune, or maybe—if God’s humor was to be inflicted on her today—a butchery of the Marche Militaire. A thumping piece, because boys without the musical gene invariably viewed the piano as an excuse to thump. The ones with the gene were inclined to thump occasionally too.

  James dug through some music and opened a book to a middle movement. A slow movement?

  After rubbing his palms down the denim on his thighs once, he set his hands on the keyboard, and in that instant, Vera realized she did not want James to make a fool of himself. She wanted him to be musical, to be proficient, and she wanted even more to teach him what he sought to learn.

  She closed her eyes and waited.

  The introduction was stately, almost baroque in its reserve and self-possession. Beethoven, fairly early, when he could look back to the classical more easily than he could forward to the romantic.

  Then the lyrical first theme, a lilting descant above a rippling middle register, and thank God and all the saints, James could play it. He was up to Beethoven’s weight, technically, and that was a relief.

  That he’d even choose a classical piece was a wonderful surprise. He stumbled, and Vera rejoiced to hear that too, because she could help him with the fingering. He came to the first cadence, and glanced over at her.

  “Finish the movement,” she said—another command. “It’s not that long.”

  So James played through the short development, and the melody grew befuddled when he had to cross his hands more consistently. He soldiered on without losing his focus, bringing the piece to a sweet, decorous conclusion.

  Then he put his hands in his lap and let the last few notes linger in memory, like any well-schooled performer would.

  “Beethoven had a fondness for, and genius with, the violin,” Vera said. “Think of this melody, here”—she pointed to the notes on the page—“as a violin, lilting along to the accompaniment of a submissive and admiring keyboard. Moonlight over water, a breeze ruffling the golden wheat. Touches so gentle you sense them emotionally more than tactilely.”

  His slow smile distracted her.

  “What?” She searched over the piece to find the exact place where James had lost his ear for the melody.

  “So I passed?”

  “We’ll see,” she said, flipping pages, but, yes, indeed, he’d passed. “Play that.”

  “I don’t know it.”

  “Sight-read it.”

  To demand that James sight-read in the first lesson was cruel, but highly diagnostic too. Vera had turned to the Trio in the same sonata—the C Major. A tricky, fun two pages full of pitfalls for the unwary disguised as rapid arpeggios.

  James sailed into the opening measures gamely, reading the notes fairly well, but missing the punch lines to the phrasing the composer had set up.

  “I like it. You want to choose something else?” he asked when he’d finished.

  “No.”

  James looked good on the piano bench, relaxed, confident, competent. The easy choice would be to shuffle him off to one of Vera’s advanced students, to tell him he wasn’t ready for a teacher who’d demand as much as she would, except that would be dishonest.

  Vera demanded progress only, not virtuosity. Anybody who put in a reasonable amount of time with the instrument each week would make some progress.

  Olga’s distinction, between humility and fear, came to mind, as did her admonition to be the kind of musician Twyla could respect. James had done nothing wrong. He’d kissed Vera once, and when she’d told him to desist, he had. The fault—if there were one—lay with her.

  Vera had learned about James by listening to him play, seen aspects of him she hadn’t sensed even when he’d kissed her.

  James Knightley valued proficiency, and he valued privacy. For a man who hadn’t been taking lessons for some time, he’d retained good basics, and somehow kept his hand in beyond the typical amateur.

  And yet, emotionally his music lacked the joyful abandon of the devoted amateur.

  Soul. James’s music lacked the added extra that transcended wrong notes, muddy pedaling, and cavalier phrasing. He was conscientious with the music, respectful of the composer’s intentions, but he held back too.

  The music lacked a piece of his heart.

  Vera knew what she was listening for, because for the past two years, her music had lacked the same quality.

  Well, damn.

  “You sight-read well enough,” Vera said, “but you don’t listen as consistently as you could. Listening helps you pick up the patterns in the music, and that helps you read more smoothly. Read through the whole sonata at least a couple of times this week, and do it at one sitting.”

  “It’s thirty pages!”

  A mere warm-up, thirty pages. “We’re working on your stamina too. When you get to the Trio—move over—pay attention to the phrasing. Listen.”

  Vera took the middle of the bench, leaving James a corner into which he didn’t quite fit.

  “You did let the phrase rise and fall,” she said as she played, “but the accents are on three and one. Beethoven gave it a two beat, off-kilter feel. We’re in the Scherzo—the lightest moment of the piece—so musical humor should be expected. The proper term is hemiola. Hear it?”

  Vera played at easily twice the tempo James had—though not up to performance tempo—the better to show him the lift and lilt of the music. James didn’t have the control to play at such speed, but she wanted him to hear how the music was meant to be played.

  “Jesus God, Vera, you play the hell out of a piano.”

  She stopped at a cadence, though she was tempted to finish the movement. “Thank you—it’s a fun piece. Did you get the phrasing?”

  “I will eventually, but I still won’t sound like that.”<
br />
  James’s consternation pleased her inordinately, as if he’d just learned she had both a CPA and a law degree in piano.

  “You are not to rush the arpeggios,” she said sternly. “You understand about making haste slowly? You play it seven times slowly before you even attempt once at a slightly faster tempo, and you keep that seven to one ratio until I say otherwise.”

  Was he trying not to smile?

  “How much do you expect me to practice each day?”

  Fair question. “You have a foundation. You should practice the same amount you did to reach this point, but I am a fiend for technique.”

  James closed the volume of Beethoven and set it aside. “Finger exercises, you mean?”

  “Drills, finger exercises, technique, call it what you will. You have to confirm the motor skills before you can tackle any real repertoire.” Vera fished in her bag and produced a worn volume of good old Pischna. “These are butt-ugly exercises, but they’ll get your hands in shape faster than anything else I know.”

  She made him work through the first three drills, and told him to play them in a different major key each day. They went back over the Beethoven slow movement, measure by measure, with Vera doubling the melody an octave above, until James began to hear it as a melody, not simply as pretty notes tinkling around in the higher range.

  “You can borrow my Pischna for this week,” she said, though she typically did not lend her own books. “Order the same edition off the Internet, because I assure you, Pischna will become an old friend.”

  James took her dog-eared volume of finger exercises and leafed through it. “That’s it? Finger exercises and Beethoven?”

  Like folding socks and doing fractions? “You think your sentence is too light?”

  “I’d like to work on more than one piece. Get a little variety in my playing.”

  A restless mind. Of course, for all his slow speech and graceful manners, James Knightley’s mind would need variety.

  “What about Chopin?”

  He made a face. “Too damned prissy.”

  Too emotionally transparent. “You’ve done the Bach two-part inventions?”