The First Kiss

by Grace Burrowes

  James took a snitch of a gooey cookie, then brushed his lips across Vera’s, all behind Twyla’s back.

  And that was…fun. Teasing and cooperating and anticipating a meal together and keeping one eye on Twy and having a completely silent grown-up conversation in the same room with the child was fun.

  The cookie was sweet, warm, and richly chocolate. James could hardly wait to have another, except he was a grown man. He could wait to get his cookies.

  He hoped.

  * * *

  “Play me the Chopin.”

  As she made the request, Vera curled up in what had taken only twenty-four hours to become “her” chair and pulled the old quilt around her.

  “I played that for you last night.” James’s tone was more teasing than cranky.

  “I enjoyed it then too. That waltz is special to you.”

  “I’ll get around to playing it again if you behave.”

  “What constitutes behaving?” Vera asked.

  “Being quiet would be a nice start. Unlike some people, I can’t deliver entire musicology lectures while I’m trying to get the notes right.”

  Vera fell silent, because playing for her couldn’t be easy. They’d skipped James’s lesson this week, but she hardly cared. Listening to James like this was more important than repertoire or technique. What he played for Vera now would be music, not mere notes.

  James started with his Beethoven slow movement, something the past weeks had seen bloom in his hands. The melody glided up over the right hand in the left and hung suspended in sheer grace above its accompaniment, only to nestle back down in the right hand, then rise again. He was playing the work entirely from memory too.

  Vera closed her eyes and considered which sonata she’d turn him loose on next. He’d soon be ready for the big ones, the Pathétique, the Appassionata, the…

  The beauty of the music distracted her, stealing thoughts and worries and tension from her mind, and from her body. The next thing she knew, she was lifted into James’s arms, and again carried up the stairs.

  “You’ll hurt your back.”

  “If loading a wagon of Hiram Inskip’s baled alfalfa doesn’t hurt my back, a little bitty thing like you won’t do it any damage.” James brought her to her bed and closed the door behind them with his hip, then set Vera on the mattress.

  “It’s warmer in here tonight,” she said. “Somebody turned down the bed.”

  “I put a little heat on.” James sat on the bed at her hip. “I turned the covers down so the sheets would warm up too.”

  “You won’t warm them up with me?” Vera took her time getting out of her bathrobe, mostly so she wouldn’t have to meet his gaze. She’d all but thrown herself at him in the kitchen, and now it was well after dark, Twyla was fast asleep, and they were alone, in a bedroom.

  Maybe James had simply been flirting with her—he was an accomplished flirt.

  Maybe he’d been being kind—he was endlessly kind.

  Maybe he’d wanted to reassure—

  His mouth settled over Vera’s, warm, soft, and easy. A slow kiss, an introduction to getting started kiss.

  Vera slid her fingers into his hair as he eased her to her back.

  “I’ve been wanting to do that,” she said when he pulled away and hung his head so his cheek lay against her chest.

  “Wanting to kiss me? You didn’t have to wait until bedtime to do that, Vera. I’m open twenty-four seven for your kissing convenience.”

  “That too. I meant get my hands in your hair. You have the sexiest natural tousle I have ever seen.”

  “I have a tousle.” James sighed against her skin, his breath a warm tickle. “I’m a lucky guy.”

  “Are you about to get luckier still?” Oh, how she hated the insecurity in her voice. Hated it.

  “Tell me about Alex.”

  Vera wanted to pull James’s head up by his ears and study his expression, for his invitation left her uncertain and much in need of reassurance. A man didn’t kiss like that and then turn down sex, or did he?

  Maybe James did.

  Maybe he should have.

  “For this discussion, I at least want the light out,” Vera said. She also wanted James’s arms around her.

  James killed the light. Vera heard the sound of clothes tossed onto the foot of the bed and wished James had reversed the sequence of his actions. Next time, she’d undress him herself before anybody turned off lights.

  If there was a next time.

  She had never undressed Alexander, and the very notion applied to Donal made her shudder. That James was in a different, better category than those two was cheering.

  James climbed in beside her and scooped her against him, gently pushing her head to his shoulder.

  “Tomorrow night, you play for me, Vera. I want that on the record.”

  Yes, Your Honor. “Tomorrow night, I play for you.” She took a whiff of his shoulder. How James always managed to smell good was a pleasurable mystery, though she’d never enjoyed mysteries before. “Tonight, I suppose you want another variation on the Life and Times of Vera Winston?”

  Her maiden name, and it had just slipped out.

  “A brief variation, if that’s all you’re comfortable with.”

  “What about the Life and Times of James Knightley? Will we rehearse those etudes?”

  “There isn’t much to tell,” he said, taking her hand and bringing her knuckles to his lips. “I have no former spouses, no children. I’ve gone on no world tours, never recorded a classical album that went platinum. I’ve never been physically beaten, except once by Mac when I mouthed off to my mother at the age of sixteen, and even then he pulled his punches and eventually apologized.”

  “Mac apologized?” James had put Vera’s hand over his heart, the beat slow and steady against her palm.

  “Mac apologized, for him. He said he’d overreacted, and he was remiss for not keeping a closer eye on things. My loss of temper with Mom was understandable, though I was still wrong to give her the lip I did.”

  James giving a woman lip? “Were you truly wrong?”

  “I don’t know. I was sixteen and dealing with a lot. God knows, asking Mom nicely wasn’t getting me anywhere.” His tone held uncertainty and a hint of desolation.

  Maybe having the light off had been a good choice after all.

  “That’s one of the worst things about the death of a loved one,” Vera said. “You don’t realize as you’re going along, sometimes carping and sniping at each other, that someday when you apologize and get it right may never arrive. You bank on that someday, and then you lose your loved one, and you lose all the somedays too. Lose them forever.”

  “Was it like that with Alexander?”

  “Very much.” Vera fell silent, choosing her words and snuggling closer to the man sharing the darkness with her. James’s hand settled in her hair, and his fingers began slow circles on the side of her neck. She felt the patience in him, even as she knew he was listening to her silences as well as her words.

  “I had a terrible crush on Alexander when I was a girl. He was so very debonair, and his wives were kind to me. They thought it endearing that I was so taken with my manager. He was courtly and acted as a buffer between me and Donal when I wasn’t happy with Donal’s decisions, or my mother’s. Alexander was old-fashioned in the protective sense, and that can be good.”

  Also smothering and hypocritical.

  “But still, you were banking on the somedays?” James asked.

  James’s heartbeat was a like a metronome set at sixty beats, a relaxed, comfortable tempo.

  “At first,” Vera said, “I thought the best someday would be someday when I wasn’t touring so much, then I realized Alexander loved the touring, loved the seeing and being seen, the drama and tension of a looming performance before a full house.”
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  “You were the one bearing the tension.” James’s hands shifted to her scalp, and Vera was momentarily struck dumb by the sheer pleasure of his hands in her hair. Nobody had touched her like this, and she hadn’t the sophistication or the self-discipline to ignore it.

  “You learn to work the performance adrenaline to your advantage,” she said after a moment, “or you quickly crash. Alexander knew he could count on me. I was paid handsomely for what I did well, what I believed I was born to do.”

  “Believed? Past tense?”

  Damned lawyers. He would pick up on that.

  “I’m not sure anymore, James. The two years I’ve had away from it have been the most peaceful in my life, despite the divorce and moving and all the upheaval. Hotel rooms, even nice hotel rooms, carry a certain loneliness. Alexander distracted me from that loneliness, at least for a while.”

  Though he hadn’t always distracted her in a good way.

  “How long were you married to him?”

  “A few years, mostly good years, because I was on the road a lot. My star was rising, Donal was happy, and Alexander was showing off his newest trophy wife. Then we had Twyla to look forward to.”

  “So the bloom hadn’t worn off the rose when Alex died,” James guessed. “That must have been hard.”

  An entire chord of wrong notes sounded in Vera’s head. “It wasn’t quite like that.”

  “Come here.” James shifted her, so she was straddling him, her nightgown bunched between them. He wrapped his arms around her and gently pulled her down to his chest. “Tell me, Vera, and don’t pretty it up.”

  His embrace was warm and sweet, and yet Vera knew she wouldn’t escape the bed without parting with a few painful truths. Maybe a lot of painful truths.

  “A few weeks after we were married, I had a series of concerts scheduled around southern France and northern Italy. Spring is a beautiful time to be in a beautiful part of the world, and I was newly married. The critics were kind, the audiences wildly appreciative. We came back to the hotel after I’d played a lovely matinee, and life was perfect. My handsome, attentive husband was at my side. I had my music, my fans. A beautiful life.”

  James drew her a shade closer.

  “Alex suggested I lay down for a nap while he went for a walk along the water, and we’d have dinner later on the balcony as the sun went down. A fine plan, full of romance, but I was too wound up to sleep, though I was plenty tired. I went out on the balcony to wait for Alex, to enjoy the wonderful breeze and the wonderful life I’d landed in.”

  James said nothing; but then, he was a very perceptive man.

  “The hotel was built in a U shape, facing the beach, which meant I could see down onto the balconies of many of the other rooms, because we were in the penthouse. At first I could not believe what my eyes were telling me, but the hotel provided field glasses for watching the beach. My husband was on somebody else’s balcony, shamelessly making love—if you can call it that—with a woman I’d never seen before.”

  “And you were twenty years old and in love with him.”

  A lump rose, hard and painful, in Vera’s throat.

  “Not for long. When he came sauntering back into the hotel room, I confronted him, and he was very understanding. That was the worst part, his unflappable conclusion that his peccadillo had been no slight to me, but merely his considerate way of indulging my need for rest. Casual encounters were something a sensible wife tolerated. I had my music, after all, and he loved me. He would never infringe on my practice schedule, never publicly embarrass me. According to him, his devotion to me was beyond doubt, and my silly notions of fidelity were quaint and immature.”

  “That bastard. I hope you kneed him in the balls and threatened to take your music and get the hell out of Dodge.”

  Vera spoke the next words against his throat. “I ordered room service. Oh, James, I ordered room service.”

  The tears leaked from her eyes as she cried silently yet again. James held her, and soothed and caressed and, God bless him, he did not try to talk her out of her sorrow or her anger.

  “I’ve cried for him,” she said a few minutes later when James had tucked a tissue in her hand. “I have cried and cried for Alex, but I was twenty-two when he died, my daughter not even toddling, and I was so scared and lonely. I never thought to cry for me.”

  “No wonder Donal seemed like a safe bet,” James murmured. “The marriage you set up with him was at least immune from the kind of betrayal Alexander handed you.”

  “Betrayal.” She turned the word over in her mind, finding it a perfect fit with her feelings. “I’ve never put that label on it, but yes, Alex betrayed me not only with his infidelity, but also with his condescending assumption that I should get used to it.”

  James tucked the covers up over Vera’s shoulders, cocooning her in warmth, softness, and a hint of lavender. “I have never understood why, when a man cheats, the lady he cheats on is ashamed of herself.”

  Vera found that word startlingly apt too. “Ashamed? Yes. I was ashamed. I had assumed I’d be enough to hold Alex’s intimate interest, but I soon found out that growing up on a piano bench does not make for a sophisticated outlook on life. I had little experience when I married, and the sense that Alex was being tolerant of my virginal overtures became unbearable, when I knew he was taking his needs elsewhere as well.”

  “And yet, you’ve told me it was a good marriage.”

  And James had paid attention. “I did, didn’t I?”

  Vera recalled her words, and at the time, she’d meant them. “Maybe compared to what I ended up with in Donal’s house, it was, and maybe compared to being alone, it had some benefits. My revenge was that I would never initiate sex with Alexander. He had to come to me, and the occasions became infrequent. My playing blossomed.”

  “How did that work?”

  James’s hands moved on her back in the same lyrical, tender mode as those hands played the Beethoven slow movement.

  Vera had to mentally replay his question before she could answer.

  “I was mightily, mightily hurt,” she said, “and became ruthless in my practicing. If Alexander wanted to cheat with some Hungarian countess, I would cheat with Franz Liszt, a notorious womanizer in his day. I’d cheat with Rachmaninoff and the entire London Philharmonic. I’d cheat and cheat and cheat until Alex was so lonely for me, he’d leave off his wandering. He was getting the message before he died.”

  “While you were growing bitter. At the age of twenty-two, the concert world at your feet, you were growing bitter.”

  Bitter, lonely, and hollow. A violin was hollow too, and could make beautiful melodies, though it shattered upon the slightest impact.

  “Alex apologized for that,” Vera said, the memory a sad comfort. “The day before he died, we were having breakfast, again in the South of France, again in the middle of a successful tour, and he told me he regretted not appreciating the beauty he had in his wife, and would I forgive him and start over?”

  James’s caresses on Vera’s back paused. “Did you lay down terms?”

  “I told him I didn’t know if I could start over, which was honest, but then he died, and my honesty only created that much more guilt. If I’d been less honest, would he have been driving more carefully? Would his reflexes have been quicker? Would he have watched his speed more closely? Would he have been home with his wife?”

  Would Twyla be growing up, knowing her father rather than half-orphaned as Vera had been?

  James’s arms closed around her. “God Almighty, Vera, you can’t do that. You can’t torture yourself that way.”

  His embrace was swift, certain, and a better balm to her heart than even Chopin.

  “That’s what Donal told me. He said he’d watched Alexander moving in, watched him dimming the light in my eyes, watched the change in my playing, and hadn’t known how to sto
p it. Donal offered marriage by way of apology.”

  James brushed Vera’s hair back over her shoulder. “You believed him?”

  Yes, she’d believed him, because Donal had been telling the truth. Donal was many things, but a liar was not among them.

  “I still think Donal’s motives were at least partly above reproach,” she said. “Donal is not given to displays of sentiment, but he has some decency.”

  “If you say so.”

  James had decency to spare, decency enough not to argue.

  They fell silent, but Vera was intensely aware of the man over whose body she was draped. Physically, she was relaxed, and mentally, for all the misery and tears in their discussion, she felt lighter, more at peace.

  “You think I’m damaged goods,” she said. “This wasn’t what I had in mind when I asked you to cuddle with me.”

  “Not what I had in mind either,” James said, his tone bemused. “You’re not damaged goods, Vera Waltham.”

  She sat up and organized her nightgown, which had bunched up between them. “I’ve kept Alexander’s name because of Twyla, but I’m thinking of going back to Winston.”

  “I wouldn’t if I were you. Twyla won’t understand, and forever after, you’ll have to prove to the school and the soccer team and the summer camp that you have custody of her.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  James urged Vera back down, and she went willingly into his embrace.

  “Family law teaches you that children see things differently from adults. And, Vera, I want you to listen to me.”

  James rolled her, so fast she hadn’t felt it coming, and then he was looming above her, braced on his elbows.

  “You were married to a spoiled boy and then to a cranky old bully. They weren’t, either one of them, the right man for you. You were too young or too upset to see their agendas clearly enough to protect yourself, but the fault for the harm you suffered lies with them and with life, not with you.”