Once More With Feeling

by Nora Roberts

  Sausalito?”

  Raven laughed. “Is there anything you don’t know?”

  “I certainly hope not. Hello, Brand, nice to see you again.”

  Raven turned, smiling easily. The jolt of the memory had passed. “Hello, Brandon.”

  “Raven.” His eyes stayed on her face. “You haven’t met Lauren Chase.”

  With an effort Raven shifted her eyes from his. “No.” She smiled and looked at the woman at his side.

  Lauren Chase was a slender wisp of a woman with a thick mane of dark, chestnut hair and sea-green eyes. There was something ethereal about her. Perhaps, Raven thought, it was that pale, almost translucent skin or the way she had of walking as though her feet barely touched the ground. She had a strong mouth that folded itself in at the corners and a long, slender neck that she adorned with gold chains. Raven knew she was well into her thirties and decided she looked it. This was a woman who needn’t rely on dewy youth for her beauty.

  She had been married twice. The first divorce had become an explosive affair that had received a great deal of ugly press. Her second marriage was now seven years old and had produced two children. Raven recalled there was little written about Lauren Chase’s current personal life. Obviously, she had learned to guard her privacy.

  “Brand tells me you’re going to put the heart in the music.” Lauren’s voice was full and rich.

  “That’s quite a responsibility.” Raven shot Brand a glance. “Generally Brand considers my lyrics on the sentimental side; often I consider him a cynic.”

  “Good.” Lauren smiled. “Then we should have a score with some meat in it. Steve’s given me final word on my own numbers.”

  Raven lifted a brow. She wasn’t altogether certain if this had been a warning or a passing remark. “Then I suppose we should keep you up to date on our progress,” she said agreeably.

  “By mail and phone,” Lauren said, slanting a glance at Brand, “since you’re traipsing off halfway around the world to write.”

  “Artistic temperament,” Brand said easily.

  “No question, he has it,” Raven assured her.

  “You should know, I suppose.” Lauren lifted a shoulder. Abruptly she fixed Raven with a sharp, straight look. “I want a lot out of this score. This is the one I’ve been waiting for.” It was both a challenge and a demand.

  Raven met the look with a slow nod. Lauren Chase was, she decided, the perfect Tessa. “You’ll get it.”

  Lauren touched her upper lip with the tip of her tongue and smiled again. “Yes, I do believe I will at that. Well,” she said, turning to Wayne and linking her arm through his, “why don’t you get me a drink and tell me about the fabulous costumes you’re going to design for me?”

  Raven watched them move away. “That,” she murmured, toying with the stem of her glass, “is a woman who knows what she wants.”

  “And she wants an Oscar,” Brand remarked. Raven’s eyes came back to his. “You’ll remember she’s been nominated three times and edged out three times. She’s determined it isn’t going to happen again.” He smiled then, fingering the dangling amethyst Raven wore at her ear. “Wouldn’t you like to bag one yourself?”

  “That’s funny, I’d forgotten we could.” She let the thought play in her mind. “It sounds good, but we’d better get the thing written before we dream up an acceptance speech.”

  “How’re rehearsals going?”

  “Good. Very good.” She sipped absently at her champagne. “The band’s tight. You leave for Vegas soon, don’t you?”

  “Yes. Did you come alone?”

  She glanced back at him, confused for a moment. “Here? Why, yes. I was late because I’d forgotten about it altogether, but Julie left me a note. Did she introduce you to Lorenzo?”

  “No, we haven’t crossed paths tonight.” As she had begun to search the crowd for Julie, Brand took her chin to bring her eyes back to his. “Will you let me take you home?”

  Her expression shifted from startled to wary. “I have my car, Brandon.”

  “That isn’t an answer.”

  Raven felt herself being drawn in and struggled. “It wouldn’t be a good idea.”

  “Wouldn’t it?” She sensed the sarcasm before he smiled, bent down and kissed her. It was a light touch—a tease, a promise or a challenge? “You could be right.” He touched her earring again and set it swinging. “I’ll see you in a few weeks,” he said with a friendly grin, then turned and merged back into the crowd.

  Raven stared after him, hardly realizing she had touched her lips with her tongue to seek his taste.

  Chapter 6

  The theater was dark and quiet. The sound of Raven’s footsteps echoed, amplified by the excellent acoustics. Very soon the quiet would be shattered by stagehands, grips, electricians, all the many backstage people who would put together the essential and hardly noticed details of the show. Voices would bounce, mingling with hammering and other sounds of wood and metal. The noise would have a hollow, empty tone, almost like her footsteps. But it was an important sound, an appealing sound, which Raven had always enjoyed.

  But she enjoyed the quiet, too and often found herself roaming an empty theater long before she was needed for rehearsals, hours before the fans started to line up outside the main doors. The press would be there then, with their everlasting, eternal questions. And Raven wasn’t feeling too chummy with the press at the moment. Already she’d seen a half dozen different stories about herself and Brandon—speculation about their pending collaboration on Fantasy and rehashes of their former relationship. Old pictures had been dredged up and reprinted. Old questions were being asked again. Each time it was like bumping the same bruise.

  Twice a week she put through a call to the Fieldmore Clinic and held almost identical conversations with Karter. Twice a week he transferred her to her mother’s room. Though she knew it was foolish, Raven began to believe all the promises again, all the tearful vows. She began to hope. Without the demands of the tour to keep her occupied and exhausted, she knew she would have been an emotional wreck. Not for the first time in her life, she blessed her luck and her voice.

  Mounting the stage, Raven turned to face an imaginary audience. The rows of seats seemed to roll back like a sea. But she knew how to navigate it, had known from the first moment of her first concert. She was an innate performer, just as her voice was natural and untrained. The hesitation, the uncertainty she felt now, had to do with the woman, not the singer. The song had hovered in her mind, but she still paused and considered before bringing it into play. Memories, she felt, could be dangerous things. But she needed to prove something to herself, so she sang. Her voice lifted, drifting to the far corners of the theater; her only accompaniment was her imagination.

  Through the clouds and the rain

  You were there,

  And the sun came through to find us.

  Oversentimental? She hadn’t thought so when the words had been written. Now Raven sang what she hadn’t sung in years. Two minutes and forty-three seconds that bound her and Brand together. Whenever it had played on the radio, she had switched it off, and never, though the requests had been many, had she ever incorporated it in an album or in a concert. She sang it now as a kind of test, remembering the drifting, almost aching harmony of her own low tones combined with Brand’s clean, cool voice. She needed to be able to face the memory of working with him if she was to face the reality of doing so. The tour had reached its halfway point. There were only two weeks remaining.

  It didn’t hurt the way she had been afraid it would; there was no sharp slap across the face. There was more of a warm ache, almost pleasant, somehow sexual. She remembered the last time she had been in Brand’s arms in the quiet car in the hills above L.A.

  “I’ve never heard you sing that.”

  Caught off-guard, Raven swung around to stage right, her hand flying in quick panic to her throat. “Oh, Marc!” On a laugh, she let out a long breath. “You scared the wits out of me. I didn’t kn
ow anyone was here.”

  “I didn’t want you to stop. I’ve only heard the cut you and Carstairs made of that.” He came forward now out of the shadows, and she saw he had an acoustic guitar slung over his shoulder. It was typical; she rarely saw him without an instrument in his hands or close by. “I’ve always thought it was too bad you never used it again; it’s one of your best. But I guess you didn’t want to sing it with anyone else.”

  Raven looked at him with genuine surprise. Of course, that had been the essential reason, but she hadn’t realized it herself until that moment. “No, I guess I didn’t.” She smiled at him. “I guess I still don’t. Did you come here to practice?”

  “I called your room. Julie said you’d probably be here.” He walked to her, and since there were no chairs, he sat on the floor. Raven sat with him. She crossed her legs in the dun-colored trousers and let her hair fall over the soft shoulders of her topaz angora sweater. She was relaxed with him, ready to talk or jam like any musician.

  Raven smiled at Marc as he went through a quick, complicated lick. “I’m glad you came by. Sometimes I have to get the feel of the theater before a performance. They all begin to run together at this part of a tour.” Raven closed her eyes and tilted her head, shaking her hair back. “Where are we, Kansas City? God, I hate the thought of getting back on that airplane. Shuttle here, shuttle there. It always hits me like this at the halfway point. In a couple of days I’ll have my second wind.”

  Marc let her ramble while he played quick, quiet runs on the guitar. He watched her hands as they lay still on her knees. They were very narrow, and although they were tanned golden brown, they remained fragile. There was a light tracing of blue vein just under the skin. The nails were not long but well-shaped and painted in some clear, hardening polish with a blush of pink. There were no rings. Because they were motionless, he knew she was relaxed. Whatever nerves he had sensed when he had first spoken to her were stilled now.

  “It’s been going well, I think,” she continued. “The Glass House is a terrific warm-up act, and the band’s tight, even though we lost Kelly. The new bass is good, don’t you think?”

  “Knows his stuff,” Marc said briefly. Raven grinned and reached over to tug his beard.

  “So do you,” she said. “Let me try.”

  Agreeably Marc slipped the strap over his head, then handed Raven his guitar. She was a better-than-average player, although she took a great deal of ribbing from the musicians in her troupe whenever she attempted the guitar. Periodically she threatened them with a bogus plan to incorporate her semiskillful playing into the act.

  Still she liked to make music with the six strings. It soothed her. There was something intimate about holding an instrument close, feeling its vibrations against your own body. After hitting the same wrong note twice, Raven sighed, then wrinkled her nose at Marc’s grin.

  “I’m out of practice,” she claimed, handing him back his Gibson.

  “Good excuse.”

  “It’s probably out of tune.”

  He ran quickly up and down the scales. “Nope.”

  “You might be kind and lie.” She changed position, putting her feet flat on the floor and lacing her hands over her knees. “It’s a good thing you’re a musician. You’d have made a lousy politician.”

  “Too much traveling,” he said as his fingers began to move again. He liked the sound of her laughter as it echoed around the empty theater.

  “Oh, you’re right! How can anyone remain sane going from city to city day after day? And music’s such a stable business, too.”

  “Sturdy as a crap table.”

  “You’ve a gift for analogy,” she told him, watching the skill of his fingers on the strings. “I love to watch you play,” she continued. “It’s so effortless. When Brandon was first teaching me, I . . .” but the words trailed off. Marc glanced up at her face, but his fingers never faltered. “I—it was difficult,” she went on, wondering what had made her bring up the matter, “because he was left-handed, and naturally his guitar was, too. He bought me one of my own, but watching him, I had to learn backwards.” She laughed, pleased with the memory. Absently she lifted a hand to toy with the thick, dangling staff of her earring. “Maybe that’s why I play the way I do. I’m always having to twist it around in my head before it can get to my fingers.”

  She lapsed into silence while Marc continued to play. It was soothing and somehow intimate with the two of them alone in the huge, empty theater. But his music didn’t sound lonely as it echoed. She began to sing with it quietly, as though they were at home, seated on a rug with the walls close and comforting around them.

  It was true that the tour had tired her and that the midway point had her feeling drained. But the interlude here was lifting her, though in a different way than the audience would lift her that night. This wasn’t the quick, dizzying high that shot endurance back into her for the time she was on stage and in the lights. This was a steadying hand, like a good night’s sleep or a home-cooked meal. She smiled at Marc when the song was over and said again, “I’m glad you came.”

  He looked at her, and for once his hands were silent on the strings. “How long have I been with you, Raven?”

  She thought back to when Marc had first become a semiregular part of her troupe. “Four—four and a half—years.”

  “Five this summer,” he corrected. “It was in August, and you were rehearsing for your second tour. You had on baggy white pants and a T-shirt with a rainbow on it. You were barefoot. You had a lost look in your eyes. Carstairs had gone back to England about a month before.”

  Raven stared at him. She had never heard him make such a long speech. “Isn’t it strange that you would remember what I was wearing? It doesn’t sound very impressive.”

  “I remember because I fell in love with you on the spot.”

  “Oh, Marc.” She searched for something to say and found nothing. Instead, she reached up and took his hand. She knew he meant exactly what he said.

  “Once or twice I’ve come close to asking you to live with me.”

  Raven let out a quick breath. “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because it would have hurt you to have said no and it would have hurt me to hear it.” He laid the guitar across his lap and leaning over it, kissed her.

  “I didn’t know,” she murmured, pressing both of his hands to her cheeks. “I should have. I’m sorry.”

  “You’ve never gotten him out of your head, Raven. It’s damn frustrating competing with a memory.” Marc squeezed her hands a moment, then released them. “It’s also safe. I knew you’d never make a commitment to me, so I could avoid making one to you.” He shrugged his well-muscled shoulders. “I think it always scared me that you were the kind of woman who would make a man give everything because you asked for nothing.”

  Her brows drew together. “Am I?”

  “You need someone who can stand up to you. I’d never have been able to. I’d never have been able to say no or shout at you or make crazy love. Life’s nothing without things like that, and we’d have ended up hurting each other.”

  She tilted her head and studied him. “Why are you telling me all this now?”

  “Because I realized when I watched you singing that I’ll always love you but I’ll never have you. And if I did, I’d lose something very special.” He reached across to touch her hair. “A fantasy that warms you on cold nights and makes you feel young again when you’re old. Sometimes might-have-beens can be very precious.”

  Raven didn’t know whether to smile or to cry. “I haven’t hurt you?”

  “No,” he said so simply she knew he spoke the truth. “You’ve made me feel good. Have I made you uncomfortable?”

  “No.” She smiled at him. “You’ve made me feel good.”

  He grinned, then rose and held out a hand to her. “Let’s go get some coffee.”

  ***

  Brand changed into jeans in his dressing room. It was after two in the morning, but he was wide
-awake, still riding on energy left over from his last show. He’d go out, he decided, and put some of it to use at the blackjack table. He could grab Eddie or one of the other guys from the band and cruise the casinos.

  There’d be women. Brand knew there’d be a throng of them waiting for him when he left the privacy of his dressing room. He could take his pick. But he didn’t want a woman. He wanted a drink and some cards and some action; anything to use up the adrenaline speeding through his system.

  He reached for his shirt, and the mirror reflected his naked torso. It was tight and lean, teetering on being thin, but there were surprising cords of muscles in the arms and shoulders. He’d had to use them often when he’d been a boy on the London streets. He always wondered if it had been the piano lessons his mother had insisted on that had saved him from being another victim of the streets. Music had opened up something for him. He hadn’t been able to get enough, learn enough. It had been like food, and he had been starving.

  At fifteen Brand had started his own band. He was tough and cocky and talked his way into cheap little dives. There had been women even then; not just girls, but women attracted by his youthful sexuality and arrogant confidence. But they’d only been part of the adventure. He had never given up, though the living had been lean in the beer-soaked taverns. He had pulled his way up and made a local reputation for himself; both his music and his personality were strong.

  It had taken time. He had been twenty when he had cut his first record, and it had gone nowhere. Brand had recognized that its failure had been due to a combination of poor quality recording,