I went up to her room and retrieved her violin, then I went to get mine.
We were a bunch of musicians who played using emotion. Music always made us feel better. It certainly did for me when I was depressed. Maybe it would work for Lucy.
When I returned to the living room with the violins, Lucy looked up at me. Tears were already forming in her eyes, now red from the crying session she'd had all day.
"We haven't done this in a while," I stated handing Lucy her violin. "And I haven't seen you play once since we got here."
I’d never known Lucy to let a day pass without playing. Not even when she was sick.
"I'm too sad," Lucy replied as the tears spilled down her cheeks.
"You always said that our emotions guide the music." I smiled down at her.
"I play when I'm happy, never sad. I've never tried." She shook her head.
"I play with both. You should try it," I replied with deep conviction.
When Lucy nodded I pulled up a chair. I noticed that Gage had straightened up and was looking over at us eagerly with keen interest.
"How about some good old Vivaldi? Maybe Storm is in order," I suggested.
Lucy smiled at that. It was one of our favorites. We didn't need sheets for it either. We knew it from memory even though it had been years since we played together.
"Storm is definitely in order." She smiled dabbing at her tears on her cheeks with her beige silk handkerchief.
"On three. One, two, three..."
I closed my eyes as we began. With this piece I never had to try.
My mind and body knew it, and it poured out from my soul. My soul would take over and guide the bow in my hands and the notes from my brain. It was one of the pieces that transported me to a higher plane of existence of transcendence and I no longer existed in this world.
But something different happened. My mind would have usually drifted and gone long ago, but for the passion I heard as Lucy played.
It reminded me of that day so long ago when I'd first heard her. My eight-year-old mind had been consumed with the music because it sounded like something from a fairytale. It was magical then, just as it was magical now.
Except that Lucy was playing with sadness.
This was what it sounded like when she played with sadness. Like a breaking heart, like the world had ended and all hope was gone.
It gripped me.
The music was beautiful, mesmerizing and spellbinding, but it gripped at my heart and I felt sad too.
How many times had I heard Lucy play this piece? How many times had I heard it at school, college, at concerts? But never like this.
I played on, but it was more like I was backing Lucy up rather than accompanying her. As we hit the finale, Lucy took it to another level. I stopped and gave Lucy the honor of finishing.
When I did, she lingered on the last note as if she were holding on to the thought, no... her belief that Angelo was alive.
That got to me even more.
Lucy actually laughed when she finished, and Gage was clapping.
"That was incredible." He was saying, but I couldn't take my eyes off Lucy.
"My dear Evie," Lucy began, reaching across and cupping my face. "You are amazing. You cannot be the little cherub who lived next door. You can't be that little eight-year-old girl who I taught." She looked so proud of me. "Truly, the student has surpassed the master." She smiled.
I shook my head. "No Lucy. You were never just a master. You're a legend. You can't surpass legends." I meant that from the depths of my heart. I truly did.
My words seemed to have taken Lucy by surprise because she stared at me in complete awe.
She pulled me in for a hug and said, "thank you. I needed that. Thank you for being so dear to me."
She gave me a soft kiss on my forehead as we parted. It was then that I saw Gage looking at me.
He was staring at me in that transfixed way as if he could see something that fascinated him. I looked at him too and found myself once again lost within the depths of his gaze. My heart expanded and glowed, and this time I didn't have to touch him to hear the music. The whole symphony was there, in his eyes, all over him, everywhere.
"Let's do another one." It was Lucy's voice that broke the trance.
I looked back to her and smiled against the swirl of emotion that rushed throughout me.
I was normally so in control of everything around me, but it was the first time I'd ever felt out of control. As if some ethereal force had consumed me, and it happened to me every time I was with Gage or in his presence.
* * *
I swung the pendulum shaped crystal across the entire map of Italy just like we did in that show I used to watch when I was in College. Charmed it was called, and this little trick of mine was scrying. The show was about three sisters who were witches, good witches. We'd always do this first when we were looking for someone or something. It was a magical way of searching or getting answers to serious questions. The crystal would swing until it stopped or pointed out into a certain direction. That would be where we'd find whatever we were looking for.
I was hoping for the same results here. One time I was certain it worked. I'd been looking for my friend's dog that had gone missing for two days. We'd searched everywhere and only found him when we scryed. Granted he was found at one of his usual hang out spots we'd missed the first time we looked, but just maybe scrying pointed us back in that direction.
"What are you doing?" Gage asked coming up behind me in the lounge.
"Shhh." I hissed at him.
"What are you doing?" he whispered. "It's midnight."
"This works best at midnight," I retorted.
"What?"
"Witchcraft." I simply answered. Gage looked at me with narrowed eyes and burst out laughing.
"Evie, what the hell?"
"This is what you call trying everything, and I'm going in big. I'm not just looking for the sisters I'm going to find Angelo."
He only laughed at me even more. "With a crystal on a piece of string and a map."
"Yes."
"Okay have you also prayed?"
"Of course I have, God's working on it. I'm just helping things along. Like I said I'm trying everything here."
He pulled up a chair making it screech against the wooden floor. I shushed him again.
"Evie, this is ridiculous." He was still laughing.
"Gage, you're messing with the energy in the room. If you don't keep it down, I will tape your mouth shut and turn you into a toad."
And he laughed even more. "Both?"
"Gage." I said his name more insistently this time. "I'm serious."
"Alright. I'll just sit here and watch then, like an owl." He smiled. I looked him over. His hair was a little messy and had that playful look. He also had a five o'clock shadow that made him look more rugged. "Thank you for earlier. You really cheered Lucy up."
"I just wish I could find Angelo. It's Sunday Gage." I shook my head remembering it was just after midnight now. "Monday morning. We've been on this hunt for over a week. We have nothing."
I lowered my hand to the table and dropped the crystal. It was ridiculous. This whole thing was. We'd come to Italy with nothing but faith, and so far that was all we still had.
"What do you think we should do?" he asked.
I was surprised he was asking me.
"I'll keep looking." Of course I would. I would do all I could.
"And when we get to the end of the list? What if we're still at square one?"
I didn't want to think of that.
He pulled in a breath. "Or what if he's dead? What if the reason we can't find anyone is that they're all dead?"
I didn't want to think that either, although it was starting to look that way. There were other reasons, but with such a huge time gap that was the most glaring possibility. "I have to believe that our not. Well, at least Angelo. If Lucy says he's alive, then that's enough for me."
He gave me that loo
k of adoration again, the one I was readily growing accustomed to.
"Miss Evie, you really are something else you know that?"
I smiled at him as he took the crystal from me.
"I guess I am."
"Look what you have me here doing? You'd better not breathe a word of this to anyone. Football meets witchcraft." He chuckled and started swinging the crystal around. "Am I even doing it right?"
"No," I shook my head. "You have to do it with some oomph." I took it from him and flicked my wrist swinging the string out so the crystal would have some momentum, but I did it just a little too forceful, and it slipped from my fingers. To my horror, it went straight in Gage's face.
"My eye." He yelped springing from the chair and covering his right eye.
Dread filled me as I watched him. "Oh my gosh. I'm so sorry." I moved over to him and tried to move his hand away from his eyes.
"My career is over. You can't play pro football with one eye." He wailed.
"Let me look at it." I felt terrible. In the past, I'd imagine hitting him with something several times, but this was ... well, it was just terrible.
"Oh the pain." He moved over to the sofa and sat, still holding his eye. "The terrible pain." He winced.
I kneeled next to him and reached out to touch his face. "I'm going to call the ambulance."
It was only when I said that that he started laughing and I realized that he'd been messing with me the whole time. He moved his hand away from his eye and laughed even harder when he saw the irritated look on my face.
"You jerk." I scowled smacking his chest. "I can't believe you just did that to me. I thought I blinded you." Now I was annoyed. I grabbed one of the cushions and hit him with it several times as he continued to laugh.
I moved to get up, but he swept me up, weightless and held me before him, gazing at me. "Not so fast. You still got me."
"It serves you right," I snapped.
"I wasn't doing anything to deserve that. Look, it got me here." He pointed to just under his eye. The crystal hadn't even left a mark. "The impact could poison me, or something."
"Poison?" I had to laugh.
"Yes, poison. Some strange things can happen sometimes. Then just imagine it. All my hopes and dreams of playing football for the rest of my life would get dashed by the wayside. I'm not talented enough to do anything else in this world." Talk about dramatic. Gage was wallowing in it. "If only there were something you could do to keep that from happening to me."
"Okay Gage, I'll get some antiseptic wipes." I moved to go again, but he pulled me back. This time so close I had to press my hands against his chest to stop myself from falling on to him.
"That won't work. I need something much stronger. Like..." He paused for effect, and his blue eyes grew wild as he took me in with appreciation.
"Like what?"
He ran his fingers along the edge of my waist making my skin tingle and my nerves scatter.
"A kiss," Gage said. His eyes clung to mine, analyzing my reaction, searching my face, reaching my thoughts.
A kiss.
That should have made me run a mile, it should have made me cringe from just the thought but as I stared at the beautifully handsome man before me, that looked like he'd stepped out of some fantasy my heart skipped several beats, and I found myself paralyzed by the magnetism of his smile.
"Kiss," I said, more to myself than him.
"Yeah, a kiss would do the job." His mouth curved with tenderness.
Nervously, I moistened my lips and lowered towards him to kiss just under his eye where the crystal hit. "There all better."
"No, that did nothing. You have to kiss me properly."
It may have seemed easy, but I didn't know if I could. Nerves got the better of me, and I froze.
"It's just –" before I could finish he pulled me into his lap and smoothed his hands behind my head to bring me straight down to his awaiting lips.
The minute his lips touched mine a shock wave coursed throughout my body, emptying my brain and engulfing my entire being. It awakened every single cell within my body and made me feel alive as if I hadn't lived until this moment. It was like everything I'd felt before now was nothing, and this was everything.
He caressed my lips with his, teasing me to surrender to him, and surrender I did, giving myself freely to the currents of desire that heated my mouth with burning fire from his passionate kiss.
My lips actually lost heat when he pulled away.
"Evie." He said my name on the edge of a breath, and as I looked at him realization dawned on me, and I moved back.
"No." I couldn't. It was too much, and I didn't know how to deal with the emotions that coursed throughout me. I got off his lap and stood up to rush up to my room, but he took hold of my arm stopping me. The mere touch of his hand sent a warming shiver throughout me.
"Why?" He searched my eyes.
"I'm not supposed to like you." The answer sounded so silly, but yet it was true.
Things were simple in the world where I didn't like him, but they were beautiful and fascinating, musical and mind- numbing even in the world where I did.
"Newsflash. I like you too." He smiled, then he did the sweetest thing. He leaned forward and brushed a kiss across my cheek. "I like you too." He repeated. "Maybe it wouldn't be as bad as you think." The tenderness in his expression amazed me.
I gazed up at him as he backed away and left the room, leaving me to my thoughts and feelings. I placed my fingers to my lips that were still warm and moist from his kiss.
* * *
He wasn't there when I woke the next day. Lucy said he went into town from early.
When twelve came, and he still wasn't back I started to worry and decided to call him. I'd never called him before and felt unnerved when the phone went straight to voicemail.
I thought about him for hours last night, and I couldn't get what he said out of my mind.
He told me he liked me, twice. As if he wanted me to have confirmation. Maybe he'd left because I'd offended him and he'd gone out to blow off some steam. I tried to recall what I'd said to him, and my reaction. Maybe I freaked out too much and ... well, I couldn't help my natural reaction. He was after all Gage. How else was I supposed to react after kissing him?
I was still freaked out, and for all I knew he...
I sighed as the thought irritated me. For all, I knew he could be with Giselle. That was entirely possible. Again it was Gage, and that was how he was. If one woman turned him down, he'd just move on to the next available one. But I didn't exactly turn him down.
Sure I said no, but I didn't mean no as in no. Realistically I didn't know what I meant, but wouldn't fool myself into denying that I did like him. I may have experienced a gamut of perplexing emotions that confused my poor brain, but I knew I liked him. I liked him a lot, and that could be quite a problem for me.
"Are you okay dear?" Lucy asked coming up behind me in the kitchen.
"I'm fine," I lied. Truthfully I was thoroughly annoyed at myself for letting my guard down.
"You don't look fine." Lucy looked concerned. "It's the situation isn't it."
Which one? There was so much going on.
No… I knew what she meant. "No. It's not. I'm okay honest. I guess I'm just a little tired."
That part was the truth. I'd been up late doing witchcraft - of all the things - then I kissed Gage and was suffering all manner of consequences now.
"Have you spoken to your mom?"
"Practically every night. I don't know if I should be worried that she was happy to reschedule our plans." I smiled. My mother was a nurse and loved her job just a little too much. A little like the way I loved mine. "She said a new boy just got transferred on to her ward and she wanted to be there when her went in for surgery."
My mother worked on the children's ward, with the children who had life-threatening illnesses like cancer. The boy my mother referred to had leukemia and was going in for a bone marrow transplant.
> "Your mother's an angel."
I nodded. "Yes, that she absolutely is."
"I'm sorry I took you away from your family. I know you don't see us much and I'm very grateful that you're here. Lord knows what would have happened if I'd managed to get here myself. I would be so lost." Lucy clasped her hands together.
"I'm happy to be here and help in whatever way I can. Besides, being here has made me realize that I need to have more time for things that matter. Music matters, but it shouldn't take over my life."
Lucy nodded at that. "I'm glad you realize that dear, nothing is truer.
“Sometimes I look back, and I wished I would have spent more time with my family. I was always just so busy playing and teaching."
"Well, I've decided that when we get back, I'm totally going to take whatever holiday I'm entitled to. Maybe we could go to the Caribbean?" I beamed. I was trying to cheer her up.
"Evie, what would you be doing with little old me in the Caribbean?" I laughed.
"It'll be fun you have to come."
"Okay. I'll come." Lucy continued to laugh. "Should we start dinner?"
Dinner. Was it that time already? I looked at the antique clock on the
wall. It was nearly four.
We usually had dinner around five. I guessed wherever Gage was he was having a good time.
It was just bordering on four thirty when he came back. I was sitting in the living room distracting my mind by flicking through a fashion magazine, while Lucy finished up in the kitchen. Gage had that smug expression on his face again and acted like nothing had happened. As if he hadn't been missing for the whole day.
"Where were you? I was about to call the police." I snapped at him probably releasing more emotion than I intended.
"The police?" he chuckled.
I slipped off the sofa and observed him. He was all dressed up in one of those light cotton shirts and had the nerve to have a tan that made him look even better than he already did. And, it wasn't just any old tan either. He was full on brown, like Malibu Ken doll brown.
"Were you sunbathing with Giselle?"
He laughed at me. "Can you stop being jealous of Giselle?"
Play of Love: The Gladiator Players Box Set Page 41
