The gripping saga of how my star has fallen while yours has risen, Lily thought. Poetic dinnertime tales for the lovelorn.
“It’s a date,” he said.
“So to speak. Listen, I’m sure you’ve heard this from David about a hundred times already, but thank you for helping us on such short notice.”
She offered her hand, striving to regain some professionalism, but he took it and lifted it to his lips. Even that light brush of a kiss made Lily’s pulse stutter and race.
He lingered over her hand a little too long, seeming reluctant to release it. “You’re welcome. I confess I still have reservations, but I don’t mind being proven wrong.”
Lily had her doubts about that. Aidan Byrne’s reputation suggested otherwise, at least. On the other hand, his reputation also painted him as cold and reserved. Nothing about the way he was currently looking at her said “cold” or “reserved”.
She suspected his expression was only a mirror of her own.
Chapter Two
The first violinist left the afternoon meeting at three o’clock, still in a vile humor. David departed at four, leaving only Lily to handle the rest of the issues that had arisen that morning. The orchestra, it seemed, was unruly. Practically in a state of mutiny. Aidan could barely suggest a single adjustment without facing a stony wall of disapproval. He had been as reasonable as possible, he insisted, but he was the composer after all and his interpretation of the music should trump any earlier instructions. It was as simple as that.
Having watched some of Aidan’s attempts to work with the orchestra, Lily could see the problem was far from simple. Aidan might be the composer, and a noted conductor in his own right, but he was handling the situation poorly. The players were grieving and hostile; he was defensive and arrogant. The combination was disastrous.
By the time the issues were worked through to Aidan’s satisfaction, Lily had no guilt whatsoever about accepting his invitation to pay for dinner and a bottle of wine. And then a second bottle of wine.
“The thing is…” Aidan started, gesturing with a piece of bread as he paused to gather his thoughts.
“What is the thing?” Lily swigged back another gulp of the crisp Sancerre, savoring the tang against her taste buds. She’d had just enough to feel it, not enough to feel drunk, especially as she’d eaten a large dinner. The wine made her bold. She hoped it wouldn’t make her stupid.
“The thing is, they were doing it all wrong. They had the feel of it wrong. Oh, not your people,” Aidan hastened to reassure her. “The thing in San Francisco. God, that was a cluster-fuck.”
“Our people have the feel of it, at least? That’s something, anyway.”
“By and large. But some of the decisions your conductor had made were sort of—”
“Easy there,” Lily cautioned. She was not prepared to hear negative opinions about Dmitri.
“Not the decisions I would have made,” he finished smoothly. “This is why I hesitated when David asked me to help. I have to admit I spent the whole morning incensed that the musicians seemed to feel entitled to explanations for the changes I was making. I know it makes sense for them to ask, but…I still hear the whole thing in my head. It’s my music. How dare they question me about it? That’s the sort of thing I’ve been trying not to say all day.”
Lily used the crust of her bread to soak up some of the garlic butter in which her baked mussels had been drenched. “You should know Dmitri would have been the last one to mind if you’d made changes. He thinks you’re brilliant. Thought.”
David sighed, dredging his bread through his own garlic-laden sauce. “I gather he was pretty brilliant himself. Especially in the area where I’m weakest. Management.”
“It wouldn’t be so hard if it weren’t for all the idiots, right?”
He looked up, startled, and Lily winked at him. After a moment, he shook his head in admiration. “I didn’t even know about the sense of humor, back then at camp, I was too busy being dazzled by your looks. You’re right, though. I do feel that way about managing. Right now, the bigger problem is that they’re all so upset. I can’t fault them for their loyalty, but any change I tried to make this morning was taken like lemon juice in an open wound.”
Lily nodded. “I learned a lot from Dmitri, and you want to know one of the most important lessons he taught me?”
Aidan nodded and leaned forward, glass of wine dangling idly from his hand. His attention was all on her, and Lily couldn’t suppress a rush of flushed interest. It took her a second to remember what she’d been about to tell him.
“It’s just…tell them all this. The orchestra, I mean. Tomorrow, tell them you want to start fresh and then let them know this stuff, right up front. This is awkward for you. You admired Dmitri’s work, and you know it’s really hard to make such a sudden transition. But with their help, you can do your part to keep the show going.”
David sipped his wine and seemed to think about this. “Dmitri taught you that?”
“Not in so many words. But it was his style to talk to the orchestra very openly, so that’s what they’re used to. He got them invested in what they were doing. Sort of like when somebody talks you into something by making you think it’s your own idea, I guess. Only in a nice way, not manipulative like I’m making it sound.”
“I’ll give that some thought. Anything would be better than today.”
“Thank you for dinner, by the way. You still haven’t told me your sordid story though.”
“It isn’t that sordid,” he admitted.
“I’m betting on melancholy. You have the whole troubled-brow, black-clothing thing going on, like Hamlet.”
Aidan glanced down at his tailored black trousers and black linen shirt. He had loosened a few buttons at the collar and rolled up his cuffs, a concession to the heat and informality of the day.
“Pretty stark, you have me there. Mostly it’s because I travel a lot and I’m performing a lot. Black sort of goes with everything. I don’t have that much fun in Paris though, I admit. Too much history. My ex-wife lived here for a long time. We happened to be here when we finally decided to split up last year.”
“I thought you were here on vacation.”
“I am,” he confirmed. “Well, more of a short sabbatical I guess.”
“Why come here for that if it has such bad associations for you?”
Aidan let several long seconds pass as he considered his answer. “I’m stubborn,” he said at last. “I didn’t want to let that baggage get the best of me. I thought if I came back here, faced those thoughts and worked them out or beat them down, I could figure out where the hell to go next.”
“Sounds therapeutic. And did that work?” Lily glanced at him, but his face was unreadable.
“Not really.” He didn’t elaborate, but the strain in his voice deepened and he swirled the wine in his glass until it threatened to spill out. “Or not yet. I’ve only been here a few weeks.”
“Going back to the start for a do-over. I could get behind that idea,” Lily mused. “Was it rough, your divorce?”
Aidan slugged back a hefty dose of wine. “Not really. It was mutual. We just couldn’t sustain it.”
“It?”
“The marriage. Love, I guess. The long-distance thing, living most of the year in different cities. Or maybe that was our way to rationalize it. But after it was over, I felt like…”
“Like your life didn’t remotely resemble the one you had expected to be living at that point?” Lily murmured.
Aidan looked up, startled. “Yes. Exactly.”
She nodded, contemplating her empty wineglass. On a tipsy whim she lifted her foot under the table, reaching blindly with her toes until she found Aidan’s knee. He looked pleased, if a little startled, but she rushed to disabuse him of his hopes.
“I’m not playing footsie, I’m telling you my story. Feel my foot.”
“What?”
“The arch of my foot. Go ahead, it’s clean. I showered after
rehearsal.”
He chuckled at that, then obligingly encircled her foot with his fingers, still meeting her eyes. Lily saw the moment when it dawned on him, when the smile drained from his face and he pulled back from the little bistro table and lifted the tablecloth to look at the scarred foot in his lap.
“Ouch.”
“Yeah, I probably said that when it happened. Some other things too.” She poured herself another glass of wine, emptying the second bottle, and took a fortifying sip before she continued. “I was walking into the theater one night about four years ago and stumbled on the curb. Rolled my foot over. It felt a little funny, but it didn’t really hurt much. Not enough to miss a show.”
“You were the prima?” he guessed.
Lily nodded. “From the time I started dancing for David. He recruited me away from the corps de ballet in a company in Los Angeles. Anyway, turns out the foot was broken after all. Spiral fracture. I found out halfway through the first act, when I landed on it from a grand jeté and that ‘funny feeling’ turned into a multiple compound fracture. Basically broke my foot in half.”
“Fuck!”
“I said that too, I suspect. After they put it back together, I did all the physical therapy and kept my fingers crossed for about a year, but finally had to face the fact I can’t go en pointe anymore. David had an opening for a dance captain though, so I was lucky enough to stay employed.”
But I still have to get a little drunk to talk about it.
“You were a good choreographer, as I recall. Ever thought of going that route?”
“In time, maybe. I’m still regrouping, I think.”
Aidan’s sensitive digits had found the tension in her foot, and Lily nearly purred as he began to work on the knot with long, smooth strokes. Each point of pressure in her arch seemed connected to the long muscles of her inner thigh, and higher still. She had to suppress a moan when his touch deepened.
“That feels wonderful,” she said instead, letting her eyes slip closed as she relaxed into Aidan’s touch.
“Enough of our sordid stories. This is your first trip to Paris, are you enjoying any of it?”
Lily was enjoying that particular moment quite a bit. “I might have to come back some day when things aren’t as strange.”
“I doubt Dmitri would want you to feel sad the whole trip. Don’t let a bad memory spoil the city for you. Take it from me, I know.”
She caught the rueful but amused tone and glanced up to see him smiling at her. Drinking her in. The look was intense, unnerving, and loaded with enough high-powered sexuality to make Lily feel as if she might melt straight through the seat of the uncomfortable bistro chair.
“Are you thinking of some new therapeutic approach to help me with that?” She was aiming for coy, but she got only as close as a breathy whisper.
Aidan nodded and an absolutely beguiling dimple appeared beside his mouth. “Positive reinforcement.”
That melting feeling Lily had experienced was nothing compared to the liquid heat that coursed through her as Aidan ran one hand up to the inside of her knee, clearly confident in the tablecloth’s capacity to hide what he was doing. The table was small and his arms were long, giving him plenty of scope for naughtiness.
“To be clear, I don’t usually do casual flings with near strangers,” Lily said. Then, hoping to lighten the mood, she added, “Not anymore, anyway. Only that one time, really.”
“Really? I was your only one-night stand?” He was still stroking, seeking out the sensitive spots at the back of her thigh right above the crease of her knee.
“Yep. Um, Aidan…”
“It was bad enough to turn you off the whole concept, huh?”
“Oh, please don’t do that,” she mock-begged. “The whole running-yourself-down thing does not sit well on you. It’s very unattractive.” She tried—not very hard—to pull her foot out of his lap. His grip on her heel was too firm and after a tug or two, she gave up. The whole encounter was inevitable anyway; Lily had known that from the moment David said Aidan’s name over the phone.
“I assure you I was being completely ironic, Lily. As I recall, you enjoyed every minute of it.”
She had. She wished her body would shut up a little about how much she had enjoyed it, because right now it was reminding her of that quite loudly. How high he’d taken her, so high it had taken her years to learn to duplicate the effect with anybody else. She’d experimented enough to know it was probably only a trick of the way her body and Aidan’s fit together, nothing more. But oh, what a good trick it was. What a long time it had been since she’d danced that easily.
“Yeah. I did enjoy it, that’s true.”
“I enjoyed it too.”
“You’re the guy, of course you enjoyed it.”
“That isn’t the sure thing you might think it is. I mean there’s enjoying and then there is enjoying.”
How well she knew it. At the moment, Lily was enjoying, and if Aidan’s fingers traveled much farther up her leg, he would be in no doubt about that.
“I…” she started, but had no idea what to say next.
Aidan bit his lip, an unexpectedly boyish mannerism. On anyone else it might have looked indecisive; on Aidan, it looked like laser-focused concentration.
“I don’t do one-night stands much either,” he said. “In fact I haven’t done any kind of stands, long or short, since my divorce. And if David finds a long-term replacement, I might only be with the company a few days, so I should probably stop this right now.”
“Yeah,” she gasped, blushing to the roots of her hair as Aidan’s elegant fingers traced a feathery line up to the soft pad at the top of her inner thigh, then down to find more sensitive spots at the back of her leg.
“Are you going to tell me to stop, Lily? If so, now would be a good time.”
She knew it was a bad idea. The last time had taken a lot of getting over. They were supposed to be focused on the show. If somebody in the company happened to see them, she would never live it down. None of that mattered though. Only Aidan, and the tiny sliver of Paris where they were sitting while he touched the trembling flesh of her thigh.
Taking a deep breath, Lily closed her eyes again. “No. I don’t want you to stop.”
* * * * *
They agreed to restraint, to discretion.
“We have to be smart about this,” Lily said as they settled up the tab and left the restaurant. Even as she said it, she knew there was nothing smart at all about having road-show sex with Aidan Byrne.
“Agreed. First of all, give me your cell phone number. Your email address too, while you’re at it.” Lily stared at him in confusion. Aidan just smiled that devastating smile as he took his own phone from his pocket. “I’ve always regretted our no-strings pact from last time. I thought about tracking you down anyway, but then I got busy and…I didn’t have the nerve, to be honest. I was stunned that you did it with me even that one time. You seemed so out of my league.”
“We’re even then.” Lily plucked his cell from his fingers and started entering her information. “Now you seem out of my league.” She called herself before handing the phone back to him, to make sure she had his number as well. Whether they used the information later didn’t matter as much to her as his willingness to make the gesture.
“I don’t think there’s a league beyond whatever one you’re in,” Aidan protested, taking her hand and leading the way down the street to the hotel.
“Smooth, maestro. Very smooth. Your pickup moves have improved in the last seven years.”
“Hopefully other things have too.”
Lily honestly couldn’t think of an area that needed improvement with respect to the sex. Any better and she might not survive it. She realized she was actually living out the “if I knew then what I know now” scenario, getting a do-over, only she and Aidan both knew more this time around. If it had been fantastic before…
Their restraint and discretion lasted another block before Aidan tugged Lily
into a narrow alley and pressed her up against the wall with a slightly apologetic fervor.
“I can’t wait anymore, I’ve needed to do this since I saw you in the theater this morning,” he explained, taking her chin in his fingers and tipping her face up to his.
Lily didn’t protest, just let him lower his mouth to hers and take her in a slow, sweet kiss. She had that same sense of inevitability she’d known in the restaurant, and earlier. Whatever else happened, she would kiss this man, and have sex with him, and deal with the consequences later. The universe had shoved them together too forcefully to resist it.
The slow part didn’t last long. Within moments they were a hairsbreadth from embarrassing themselves and the blessedly few passersby, and Lily had only enough thought left to ponder why on earth Aidan’s tongue doing that inside her mouth felt so damn fantastic, when most other men’s tongues doing that felt merely squirmy and strange?
He kisses like he’s auditioning for oral sex.
The notion struck her like a thunderbolt, even though they had never done that particular act in their brief prior acquaintance. In her mind, she cast him for the part long before the audition was over and they parted, trying not to gasp too audibly.
The idea stuck with her, clear and visceral, even as she met Aidan’s stunned gaze and tried to gather her own muzzy thoughts. She could see, almost feel, his tongue between her legs, agile and wicked. She wanted it so badly she felt as if he must be able to read it on her face.
“The hotel,” he said a little shakily. “I think we shouldn’t do that again until we get back to the hotel.”
“Me either. Um, too. Me too.”
“Lily?”
“Yeah?”
They had leaned closer again, angling in for the next kiss before they had even finished rationalizing the first.
“Damn,” Aidan muttered, and then his mouth covered hers again.
Lily’s heart beat frantically, making her too aware of her pulse points, throbbing in sensitive places. She swirled her tongue in counterpoint to Aidan’s, reveling in the velvet slickness of their mouths together. A slightly indignant throat-clearing startled them apart, and Lily blushed with chagrin at the scowl she received from the elderly woman walking by with a string bag of bread and produce.
Intermezzo Page 2
