Playing At Love: A Rogue Series Novel

by Lara Ward Cosio

  When the band took a break, the crowd booed them good naturedly. No one was going anywhere, though, and it seemed the party would last through dawn. The revelers rearranged themselves just enough so that Conor and Colette could seek a drink.

  Vergina Weiss, a Greek beer modeled after a German Hefeweizen, was the easiest thing to procure. Conor downed one glass standing at the makeshift bar and ordered another while Colette went to the restroom. As he looked around at the celebrations, a still warm breeze sent a shiver down his back and he rubbed dry the sweat lingering at his hairline. Even with the connection he and Colette had on the dance floor, and the amazing sense of goodwill he received from the locals who welcomed him as one of their own, he felt as though something were missing in order for him to fully enjoy this once in a lifetime experience.

  Before he could examine this any further, he saw Colette at the corner of the stage, speaking with the bouzouk player. The musician wore his long black hair slicked back into a ponytail and was probably in his forties. He held the beautifully crafted wood and inlaid mother of pearl instrument absently as he gazed lustfully at Colette. Conor could see a tease of a smile on her lips.

  Great. Another one of her stunts where she tried to stoke a jealous reaction from him. With a shake of his head, he made his way to her, just as he knew she intended for him to do. Why had he ever thought they would get past this nonsense? She had played these games since the day they met and he had gone along with them, knowing it pleased her. But he had always assumed—incorrectly, it seemed—that the thrill would wear off once they were committed.

  “There he is,” Colette said as Conor joined her. She wrapped her hands around his bicep. “Conor, this is Markos. I was just telling him who you are.”

  “Your fiancé, you mean?” Conor asked with a nod.

  Markos smiled knowingly and pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket.

  “No, not that,” Colette said. “I was telling Markos what an honor it would be for you to join him on stage. That they should show you how to play this funny, skinny little instrument.” She plucked at the strings of the bouzouk.

  “Oh, no,” Conor said, horrified. “I would never impose. I am here as your audience. It’s a pleasure to see you and the others perform.”

  “But when would they ever get the chance to have Conor Quinn of Rogue play with them?” she asked, wide-eyed.

  “Sure, come on stage. Let’s see what you think,” Markos said, his voice gravelly and thickly accented.

  “I couldn’t, really.”

  “Ah, come on, rock star,” he said with a crooked smile. He took a deep drag on his cigarette.

  “Thanks very much, but I couldn’t possibly.”

  “Conor,” Colette said, “it would be so amazing to see you play here. Under the stars on this island in the middle of the Aegean Sea. Do something romantic for me, for once?” She pouted but her eyes were all mischief.

  “No,” he replied firmly with hands held up. The last thing he wanted was to take away the spotlight from this talented, and obviously beloved, local band.

  But then Markos placed the neck of the instrument in Conor’s hands and he gripped the heavy thing as a natural instinct.

  “Come. Giorgios will show you the way on his baglamas.”

  Conor looked up at the outstretched hand the man offered him and knew he had no choice at this point. He took his hand and was helped up onto stage, a place that normally felt like home. It was a very strange experience indeed to be on stage and feel so out of place.

  He tried not to glare at Colette as he watched Markos tell the crowd about the guest star that had just joined them. The people were in such good and generous spirits that they applauded wildly at the addition.

  Without warning, the man called Giorgios began delicately picking his instrument and nodding encouragingly at Conor. Conor tried to tune out the crowd’s rhythmic clapping and made an attempt at following along. The bouzouk was thinner than the guitars he was used to, with three pairs of strings. He used his pick to try to find his way but generated kindly laughter from the audience at his missteps. He smiled bashfully but stubbornly kept at it. Just as he started to get a sense of the instrument and make some noise that exposed his talent, the bouzouk was pulled from his hands.

  Markos held out an acoustic guitar in its place. Apparently he didn’t care to be shown up by an outsider.

  “Maybe this is more your ability, yes?” he asked into the microphone for all to hear.

  Conor took the guitar, refusing to be baited into a dick measuring contest, despite the whistles and howls from the audience. The rest of the band fell into place behind Markos’ direction. Conor strummed the guitar in support of the song and was given generous applause when he stepped down from the stage.

  ~

  “He should’ve given you half a chance.” Colette rushed to keep up with Conor’s pace.

  He was moving through the crowd, slowed as they clapped him on the back or shook his hand.

  “Would you hold on?” she asked when he moved ahead of her by several yards.

  The broken stone street they found themselves on was moonlit and opened up onto a view of the ink-colored sea. The three-story whitewashed buildings with hanging cherry-red bougainvillea planters and weathered blue shutters should have felt charming. Instead, it felt oppressively close.

  “What the fuck was that all about?” he asked when she got to him.

  “What? I thought it would be amazing. For you to learn the instrument. For these people to see you. I don’t understand what you’re upset about.”

  “Colette, that was about the rudest thing you could do to a musician. How could you think putting me on stage in front of his home crowd on a special day like this to show him up would be a good thing? How could you not know I would hate that?”

  She rubbed her arms, as a breeze swept through the corridor of the buildings. “Why do you have to be in control of everything? Why can’t you ever just loosen up and go with things?”

  “It’s not fucking about that. Any other issue and I’d agree with you. But this is something more. It was so disrespectful. To me. To that band. Jesus, I just wish you—”

  A high-pitched whistling filled the air, followed by a crack and pop as fireworks exploded in the sky. They turned the dark sky bright with their colors, followed by great puffs of white smoke.

  “What? You wish I, what?” she asked, her voice raised above the din.

  Conor grimaced and shook his head. In deciding to win Colette back, he had thought they made sense, that she understood him. Now he saw clearly that all she understood was the superficial. She didn’t appreciate his talent, she craved only the spectacle he could provide. This must have been the case when they were together before, but it hadn’t registered. There was no need for more then, not when he had Sophie occupying his heart. He and Colette had been good together before precisely because they both gave—and enjoyed—a surface-level connection. It suited them. But now that he was free of his emotional entanglement with Sophie, and he could actually give and receive more, he realized what he had with Colette was lacking. How could he blame her for this when she wasn’t the one who had changed? He had. That meant he needed to be the one to make this work.

  He shook his head and bit his tongue as he felt the boom of the fireworks in his chest. They were being set off from the sea, but very close by. Too close, he thought. The acrid smoke overwhelmed the beauty of the spectacle, filling his nostrils and stinging his eyes.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  When they could no longer reasonably hold the table at the restaurant, Gavin and Sophie left the hotel together without verbalizing a plan. They walked side by side along the harbor, their fingers grazing now and then but neither taking the initiative to touch more purposefully.

  “What were your plans for the day?” he asked.

  “Um, I was thinking of going to Bondi or Manly.”

  He thought about lounging on the sand or soaking in
the water with her and he liked the idea. Especially the visual of her in a bikini.

  “But maybe something else would be better today. Like Darling Harbour?” she asked.

  “Em, yeah, sure.” Going to the tourist trap of museums, restaurants, and shops wouldn’t get her less-clothed but it meant he would get to be with her. And that was all he wanted.

  They could have walked but took a water taxi for the novelty of it. A large family followed them on board the bright yellow boat, stealing any privacy, and requiring them to sit closely together so everyone could fit on the benches.

  Gavin wrapped his arm around Sophie’s shoulders and pulled her to him with the pretense of an apologetic smile. She shook her head with a little laugh and leaned into him. He was happily surprised by how quickly she was warming up to him.

  The ride was short but they spent the whole time being stared at and whispered about by two of the family’s teenagers.

  “We’ve been discovered,” Gavin whispered to her.

  “You mean ‘You’ve Been Found Out?’”

  There was an edge in her voice, and he couldn’t blame her. The song title she referenced had been announced along with the others in a slow trickle on social media to stoke interest in the album’s release. She couldn’t know the words to the song, but the title had obviously had an impact on her. And now it made him shift in his seat as he hadn’t allowed himself to imagine how she would react to the lyrics he had penned in the new album.

  “It’s okay, Gavin,” she assured him. “I guess I should expect the rest of the album to be as honest?”

  The water taxi docked, and Gavin used the distraction of letting the family exit first delay his response. He helped Sophie out of the boat, then placed his hand on the small of her back as they wandered among the crowds. The heat felt more stifling here as the breeze died.

  Before long, they found themselves drawn to the Chinese Garden of Friendship where a pair of Foo-dog statues greeted them at the entrance. They were a hybrid of dog, lion, and dragon. Despite the intimidating design, they learned the Foo-dogs represented loyalty, strength, and prosperity. Gavin took this as a good omen for his efforts to win Sophie back.

  Sophie and Gavin explored the grounds without speaking, but they walked together with an evenness of step, reading each other and falling into sync without conscious effort. The lakes and weeping willows of the walled gardens offered a sense of shelter and serenity, a spell disrupted only occasionally by the Darling Harbour hotels and Ferris wheel cutting into the skyline.

  Moving through the courtyard and among the rock sculptures, they took in little waterfalls and the stone dragon statues rising from the ponds among the water lilies, making their way to the Gurr, a beautiful hexagonal two-story building. They stood transfixed by the way the sun set the gold roof tiles ablaze. They traded pointing out design details of the intricate wood carvings on the building before circling back around toward the Lake of Brightness.

  The beauty and tranquility of this place seemed to have restored something between them. Gavin looked down at Sophie’s hand and noticed that she was absently playing her thumb against the back of her wedding rings. This familiar habit made him smile. It had always been something she did not out of worry or agitation as some might, but rather in contented moments. It emboldened him to reach out to take her hand in his. But he was knocked away from the effort when two kids ran by them in a fit of giggles with their harried and apologetic parents following after.

  “Let’s sit,” Gavin said, as they came upon a bench with a view of a traditional tea house beside the Lotus Pond. The structure’s rust-colored pillars supported a slate gray tiled roof, the corners of which were arched elegantly skyward.

  They spent a moment watching a group of tourists argue over which way to proceed.

  “So, the name of the album . . . .”

  “Ache & Swell,” he confirmed.

  She smiled as she focused on the orange and white koi swimming lazily in the sun dappled lake. “Let me guess. You’ll let people assume the ache and swell is a sexual thing but it’s really about your heart, right?”

  Gavin closed his eyes for a moment as he was overwhelmed by a longing to be with this woman again. “Darlin’, there’s no one that knows me better than you.”

  She didn’t look at him. “So, how much worse does it get with the lyrics?”

  “I didn’t write anything to be vindictive. I was just processing things as they came to me.”

  She turned to him now and took this in. “Okay. What’s the lyric that will make me the most uncomfortable?”

  He hesitated. “Probably, ‘I don’t have the right to wonder, but I do/Did you think of me when he touched you.’”

  “Hmm . . . .”

  Glancing at her, he couldn’t decipher her reaction. He looked down at his hands. He had squeezed them tight into fists when telling her the lyric, and now he forced himself to relax.

  “You know this album is going to be huge, right?” she asked.

  He turned to her. “Why would you think that?”

  “Breakup songs, songs about betrayal, always resonate strongest.”

  “It’s too far gone to change anything now. It’s being mixed—”

  “I would never ask you to change anything, Gavin. Honestly. I can handle it.”

  “There’s love on there, too. And hope.”

  She nodded and then stood up. “Let’s keep looking around.”

  “It’s not all about you, you know?” He stood up with her.

  It took her a moment, but then she laughed. “I guess I deserve that.”

  “No, I don’t mean it like that. It’s just—it’s not all about heartbreak over you. Yes, there’s that. There’s the heartbreak over Conor. Over my mother. Over being forced to see things through a more realistic view than I think I ever wanted to. Especially with my mother. In all my fantasies, I never imagined her to be as I found her. She has nothing to give me.”

  “You said you offered to be friends with her.”

  He looked away from her, studying the way the leaves of a weeping willow teased the surface of the green water.

  “I didn’t know how else to get out of there.” He could feel his heart beating faster and his body tensing at the memory of that night. “Because at that point, it was the last place I wanted to be. I didn’t want to be with this . . . damaged woman, trying to fabricate a relationship.”

  Sophie took a step closer to him but he couldn’t meet her eyes. He felt her take his arm, squeezing his bicep and leaning her body into his before leading them forward. The gratitude he felt for this silent measure of support was so great that he had to blink back the wetness rushing to his eyes.

  He lifted his chin and took a deep breath as a soft breeze rustled the hanging branches of the nearby trees.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  A gentle breeze carried with it the briny scent of the sea and Conor inhaled deeply before opening his eyes. He lay in their hotel suite’s bed and knew before looking that it was too early to be up.

  He and Colette had gone back to the party after the fireworks display but the mood had been off for the rest of the night. While everyone around them drank and chatted and danced, she suddenly found an interest in trying to talk to her cousins and other extended family. He had reverted to his loner tendencies and watched everything from a distance.

  The air was just beginning to cool when they called it a night. Conor had wrapped his arm around Colette’s neck as they walked through the narrow streets. After half a block, she wrapped her arm around his waist in return, and he kissed her cheek. It was the best he could do.

  Now he propped himself up with a folded pillow and gazed out at the water. It looked close enough to touch and mesmerized him. The morning sun had already warmed the room. They had left the windows open so they could wake to this view and the heat was worth it. He pushed the sheet off of his naked body and stretched. It had been too long since he had a proper workout. Perhaps a good
hard run would release the anxiety he felt.

  Colette lay with her back to him, the sheet pulled just to her waist. Her smooth olive skin was bare and he reached out to trace the ridges of her spine. She stirred but did not turn to him, though her disrupted breathing pattern told him she had felt his touch. It seemed fitting that even in her sleep she had the power to vex him.

  After a moment he turned back to the sea view. He took and released a deep breath and then held his palms firmly to both ears, employing a technique he had come to enjoy. In the quiet, he could hear his pulse. This usually resulted in its intended effect of shutting everything else out and he was either onto a guitar lead or asleep. This time, he fell to tapping his fingers against his chest with his fingers in time to his heartbeat, and the trip to Belfast with Felicity came to mind.

  She’d been “concerned” for his heart. She meant Sophie. But that obsession was, at last, over. It was the time and distance that finally did it. And, of course, the fact that Sophie made it clear that she wanted Gavin. If he was honest, he had to admit he had also chosen Gavin. He could have pursued Sophie when Gavin abandoned her. He chose Gavin and Rogue instead.

  So, Felicity should have been more concerned over the fact that he let the love of his life go in order for his friendship and his band to continue. Where was the heart in that?

  And what was she doing even prying into matters of his heart? What stake did she have in it? That protective wall she had built for herself as a teenager still held firm. She certainly wasn’t opening up about her own love life. But she was open to flirting. The chemistry they had was undeniable. He’d felt a spark at their reunion at that café, but dismissed it as nostalgia. Then at The Basement, he’d been surprised by jealousy over the attention she gave Gavin. Outside, the goodbye peck turned into something more heated. Again, he had pushed off thoughts that there was anything to it. But in Belfast he had known there was something deeper between them. Their connection was so easy and comfortable, with a sexual tension he knew was mutual, despite the way she liked to tease him. There was something about being in her company that gave him a sense of calm, even as he was also compelled to admit things to her he had never shared with anyone else. Things that didn’t necessarily show him in a good light. But just as when they were kids, she accepted him without judgment. He was fairly sure that had the timing worked out differently, they would have taken their renewed friendship to the next level.