Haunted Tenor (Singers in Love Book 1)

by Irene Vartanoff

  JC signaled to the waitress for the check. “Let’s get a cab to this reprobate’s apartment.” He threw Sean a mock glare. “We’ll get your things, and then we can go to my place.”

  “Whoa. That’s a bit fast, buddy. I still want my innings to debrief my sister in private.”

  I gave Sean a look of disbelief. “No way. You think I kiss and tell?”

  “If I’m going to email Mom and Dad that you’re having it on with a miserable, no-good, broken down tenor,” he threw JC a mock punch to the arm, “I need more dirt. Facts, I mean.”

  “Even more reason why she should have a restful sleep at my condo,” JC stated firmly. Although I suspected we might not get much sleep.

  Sean thought the same. He hooted. “Sleep? That’s what you call it?”

  This was getting embarrassing. “Both of you are forgetting that I have to be at work at eight a.m.” I ignored their groans. They seldom saw mornings.

  Within a few minutes, JC had efficiently bundled me into a cab and leapt in next to me, leaving Sean to find space in the front seat. We headed for the east side.

  JC whispered in my ear, “Do you want to stay with your brother? Would not a nap be as refreshing?” His hand roved under my coat to touch my breast lightly. “We have so much more to discuss.”

  I shivered with renewed desire that burned away my exhaustion. I was tired, but I wasn’t crazy. JC had finally admitted he wanted to be with me. I would spend the night with him, not in my virginal bed at my brother’s apartment.

  Sean had only been teasing. He understood when we all trooped up to the apartment and I quickly threw necessities into a bag. Of course he had to rag on me. “I still don’t see why your reward for saving the nuttiest prince of the sixteenth century should be a bad night’s sleep.”

  “Sean,” I said in exasperation, looking up from the cache of underwear I had to keep in a plastic container under the bed. The room was too tiny for a dresser. “Stop it.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  “Although I’m glad you said the sixteenth century, since actually, the royal house of Spain made so many incestuous marriages that one century later, their king was hopeless.”

  Sean shrugged. “Don Carlo was hopeless, too.”

  JC came around the corner. My little cubby—it could hardly be called a room—couldn’t hold three adults, so he stood at the door.

  “I’ve had enough of your brother’s insults for one night. Don Carlo was a great hero—at least in his own mind and in Posa’s. Are you ready?”

  “Ready.”

  I gave Sean a hug. “I’ll call you tomorrow afternoon.”

  “See that you do. I want to be kept informed.”

  I heaved a dramatic sigh. “Yes, brother dear.”

  JC threw him a bland look and said, “You need have no concern. I shall take good care of your sister.”

  My breath caught. It sounded like the kind of thing he would say to a male relative at our wedding. Was it possible that JC was thinking about permanence? We hadn’t even hashed out what his feelings for me were. Not out loud, anyway. He had communicated plenty in his dressing room earlier. If I chose to believe our bodies over mere words.

  JC held my hand all the way to his apartment, and then he introduced me to his doorman. The man practically bowed us into the elevator. It felt so different this time. Was it?

  JC must have known my doubts, for as he unlocked his door, he turned to me. “Don’t think it will be like before. All has changed, mi vida.”

  Another Spanish endearment. By now I was used to people in the opera world saying the words from Italian and French operas. Easy words. This word was the “darling” of JC’s homeland. It meant more.

  After he hung up my coat, JC took a long look at me in my red dress. I could feel my nipples rise to hard peaks at the open appreciation in his eyes. He moved nearer and ran his hands up and down my body. His eyes grew smoky.

  “You should always dress like this. Show off your body. You are a beautiful woman.”

  “I—I,” with his hands on me, I could only stutter and sigh. He cupped my buttocks and drew me against his hard frame. I felt how aroused he was. My eyes widened.

  “So you see,” he acknowledged, “I lied a little, for there will be no rest for you immediately,” he said, smoothly leaning in to nip at my earlobe. My breath caught. One of his arms looped around my waist, bending me back a bit, as he slowly pushed down the bodice of the dress and exposed one breast.

  “Ahhh…how do you keep this fabric covering you, when it yields to me so easily?” His fingers caressed my breast with a light stroking that I knew I wanted repeated elsewhere on my body. Lower. And inside.

  “I yield, too, my prince,” I purred.

  He straightened, frowning. “I’m not a prince.”

  “I’m not confusing you with Don Carlo, if that’s what you’re getting at,” I said, suddenly brought down to earth. I hugged my body, covering my exposed breast. Feeling his rejection was like being plunged into ice water.

  “Why am I here?” I asked. “To slake your desire? Or because you care for me? I’ve already told you where I stand. You, on the other hand, have never admitted a thing.”

  He made to object, but I swept on, determined now to have my say.

  “We told Sean only the cleaned-up version. For months now you have accused me of being a crazy stalker. My actions tonight won’t have changed anything.”

  I strode around the room, then turned and faced him. “After all, perhaps I arranged for that piece of whatever to fall. Perhaps tomorrow, that’s what you will believe about me.”

  “No, of course not,” he said. “You’re upsetting yourself for no reason.”

  Pain struck my heart. “My coming here was a mistake. You still don’t trust me.”

  “I do. Let me prove it to you. Let me love you.” He enfolded me in his embrace.

  I felt all the soft, slippery emotions of ten minutes ago. Now I could not relax into them. I resisted.

  He let me go. “What can I say to convince you?”

  I felt sad and dead. “I don’t know. This has always been about what you thought was wrong with me. You pushing me away. You just did it again.”

  JC frowned, and rubbed the back of his head. “You’re exhausted, and I am being an idiot. Let’s get some rest and then talk about it.”

  At my instinctive refusal, he raised both hands. “I promise. Mi alma, I offer to hold you in my arms tonight and only give, not take.”

  He took my hand and kissed it tenderly. “Come to bed,” he urged.

  My exhaustion flooded over me. I let him lead me to the bedroom. He brought in my bag, found my nightgown and toilet articles, and pushed me gently to the bathroom.

  When I emerged, the condo was dark and he was already in the bed. I approached the bed slowly, and he raised up the covers so I could slip in. Still, I hesitated. I wasn’t afraid of this man. I was afraid that my love for him was leading me to be too trusting.

  “Come. All will be well,” he said.

  I lay down. He gently pulled me into his arms, settling the covers around me. “Sleep now. We can solve everything else later,” he said.

  I was sure I would lie there, tensed up, expecting him to make a move on me. A part of me longed for that regardless of what I said. Women could have very contradictory feelings despite our logical brains.

  JC was as good as his word. He held me in his arms, making no move to arouse me. The exhaustion I had been holding at bay slammed down on me, and I slept.

  Hours later, I woke. It was still dark. JC was standing looking out the window. When he turned and saw me watching him, he began to speak in a low tone. “A few years ago, a young woman stalked me. It never became publicly known. This young woman, a lonely, unbalanced person, became drawn to me. She did not have much money, but somehow she was able to convince opera houses that she was my girlfriend, and they would comp her a ticket. You perhaps know from Sean how it works in the early years. I would have
the right to those tickets anywhere, but in most cities I did not have relatives or friends who wanted to see me sing for a mere five minutes in an entire opera. My ticket privileges would go unused.”

  He shrugged, his hands in the pockets of the gray sweat pants he wore. “Anyway, this young woman somehow went from city to city attending my performances as my guest, without my invitation. It went on for over a year. Every night, she would be at the stage door. She would stare at me but never approach me directly, never speak to me. Somehow, I was able to compartmentalize, and my singing did not suffer. Then, staring at me was not enough for her. She began to send me notes and little presents. I asked someone’s advice and he said the best route was to ignore her completely. I followed that advice.”

  He put a hand to his temple. “This perhaps pained the young woman and she stepped up her efforts to see me. One night, I came back to my hotel room, and she was waiting in my bed. Naked. I backed out of the room and went downstairs and asked hotel security to remove her. They did.”

  This didn’t bode well, but I hardly dared breathe, let alone interrupt him.

  JC continued in a low voice. “After that incident, I was disturbed by the lengths she might go to. As I happened to be in Paris, I sought advice from my voice teacher, who lived there. She told me to swear out a complaint against the stalker. I did. A week later, the young woman threw herself into the Seine and drowned.”

  “Oh, JC. How sad.”

  He dragged his hands over his face. “It was horrible, tragic. As for me, by sheer luck, the investigating officer who went through her personal possessions was an opera lover. He kept my name out of it and did not publicize her obsession and shame her to her family. Or shame me to the world. The case was closed quietly.”

  I put a hand to my head, “When you saw me staring at you, half-crazed, you thought, ‘Here I go again.’”

  “Exactly. I had erred by being too kind, according to what some stalking experts say. So this time, I decided to come down hard immediately, in the hope of scaring you off.”

  “You must have thought I was even loopier than she was, with all my talk of ghosts.”

  He smiled a little. “Yes, at first.”

  “Why did you keep seeing me?” I asked. “You didn’t have to take me to a café, or to lunch and dinner. In fact, if you really thought I was a stalker, inviting me anywhere was stupid.”

  “You think that didn’t occur to me?” He drew nearer the bed, looking down at me. “There was something about you. Once we talked that first time, at Sean’s party, I wanted to see you again. I was drawn to you despite my concern that this could be a repetition of the past.”

  I sighed happily. JC had cared from the first, even though he’d hidden and denied his feelings for me.

  I reached a hand toward him. “You should not feel guilty about that girl, JC. She derived pleasure from her fixation on you.”

  “How can that be true?”

  I got out of the bed and put my arms around him. I stroked his back as I said, “In college, I knew girls who got crushes on guys for months at a time. These boys would not give the girls the time of day, but the girls kept yearning. It’s something immature females do. Probably males, too. They enjoy the fantasy even if it’s a painful, unfulfilled one. In your case, her fantasy was her unrequited love for you. When she crossed the line and tried to act out her fantasy, and you reacted by swearing out the warrant against her, she knew she had made a mistake.”

  “I’ve never looked at it that way.”

  “It was all in her head. Never your fault.”

  He was silent, his mind obviously on the sad events he had described. Finally, his eyes seemed to focus on me again. Solemnly, he said, “Thank you.”

  I held him tighter. “You’re welcome.” We were still by the window. “You should have told me this months ago. After we—you know. That’s why you said what you did to me then, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. We hardly knew each other.”

  Despite not knowing each other, we’d hooked up. We both had been stupid months ago. No more.

  I said, “Come back to bed. You need rest, too.”

  “We need to talk,” he said.

  “True, but it can wait.” Of course there was more to be said. Not right now, when we both needed to feel that our relationship had finally turned a good corner.

  His eyes searched my face in the light from the city that never sleeps.

  “Are you sure?”

  I nodded.

  We went back to bed. We made love, healing from the hurts of the past. JC communicated his feelings to me in the most elemental way, ravishing me completely. His body sang to me and made mine sing for him.

  Chapter 12

  In the morning, sated and happy, I made to break away from his embrace at last. I slid out of the bed, saying, “I have to go to work.”

  “I’ll call your boss and get you the day off.”

  I aimed a mock disapproving look at him as I headed for the bathroom. “You like to throw your weight around at the Nat, don’t you?”

  “Joking. I know Ralph’s in Europe. I was the one who gave him the tip about Astrid.”

  “The mezzo in Berlin?” I peeked around the bathroom door, toothpaste and toothbrush in midair.

  “The very one.” He was lying relaxed in the bed, his chest bare, his arms flung over his head. Good thing he’d covered the rest of his body with the duvet, or I might have dived back in with him.

  I quickly showered. By the time I got out, I could hear him in the kitchen and smell coffee. I dressed quickly, then went to join him. In his condo, the kitchen was an entire room, and beautifully modern. Not the make-do corner space Sean had. The difference between being halfway there in a career and having had years of worldwide success.

  He heard the tap of my shoes, and turned to offer me a cup. He was wearing navy gym shorts and nothing else.

  “Milk? Cream and sugar? Black? I don’t know your preferences yet.”

  Yet. That sounded hopeful.

  I took the cup because he offered it. “So sweet of you, but I don’t drink coffee.”

  “Perhaps I can change your mind.” He retrieved the cup, carefully set it down, and pulled me into his arms. Then he outlined my lips with his tongue. I could taste the coffee. When his tongue ventured delicately into my mouth, the coffee taste was stronger. My head swam.

  “Suddenly, I love coffee,” I said, smiling. We kissed some more.

  Finally I stepped back, pretend fanning my face. “Must. Go. Job.”

  He looked disappointed. His fingers played with my hair. “I liked that wig, but your real hair is softer.”

  “Oh! I’ve got to return it. The wig. I borrowed it from the company costume shop.”

  He burst out laughing. “Shame on all those ushers I had searching for you. They should have recognized it.”

  I raced around getting the last things.

  “You should eat first,” he said, trying to delay me.

  “I’ll get a bagel from somewhere.”

  “I’ll send you one.”

  I looked up at him, quizzically. “You would pay to have only one bagel delivered?”

  “Fine, I’ll send you a bagel and the bill, how’s that?”

  I giggled, but then noticed the time on the kitchen clock. I should dash. Still, I lingered even after I had donned my coat. These minutes with JC were so precious. So normal.

  “What will you do today?” I asked, fingering one of the curls behind his ear.

  “Goof off. The usual the day after a performance. I’ll come take you to lunch. Then we can talk. We need to talk.” His hands stroked my arms through my coat. It shouldn’t have been possible, but I felt electricity. I drew back, startled.

  He smiled at me, one eyebrow raised. He’d felt it, too.

  “All right,” I said. “It’s a date.” A part of me fretted that whatever he said at lunch might not be exactly what I dreamed of. As long as we postponed talking about his feelings, I c
ould be cocooned in my belief that he loved me as I loved him.

  I did try to leave. JC wouldn’t let me go easily. At the door he spun me around and kissed me again.

  “JC,” I gasped, fighting both of us. “I’ll be late.”

  “You’re sure you can’t take the day off?”

  I smiled, a delighted smile. My handsome prince wanted me. I shook my head. “No. Be good and let me pass, milord.”

  He responded with one of his best operatic bows. I curtsied, rather awkwardly in slacks and a top, and escaped.

  When I reached the building’s entrance downstairs, the doorman had already gotten me a cab. This time, I felt cherished rather than insulted.

  “All paid for, miss. Enjoy your day at work,” he said, and tipped his hat.

  I floated into the taxi and let the driver take me across town in style. I arrived on time, too. What a glorious day. The morning flew by. Ralph emailed that he had signed the mezzo. We had prepped a contract beforehand. Nice for him. Of course I would never meet that mezzo. She’d be singing here in five years, when I would be long gone. To where? What did I want next? JC. I knew I should think of my career or my studies, but he was all I cared about right now.

  In a tiny corner of my brain, there also was the question of the ghost. Through me, the ghost had saved Don Carlo—and JC. There was one more performance of the opera this season. Thursday night. Was the ghost satisfied? Was this enough?

  When JC showed up for our lunch date, he took advantage of the empty hallway where I sat, and pulled me immediately into an embrace.

  “We should be more discreet,” I protested even as I started kissing him back enthusiastically.

  “Ahem.”

  We turned. It was the general manager, Julian Schwartz, himself.

  “Glad you’re both here. Let’s use Ralph’s office, shall we?” He gestured us both inside, then sat on Ralph’s desk, swinging one leg. He indicated we should sit in the chairs facing him.

  “Kathleen, I understand from JC that it was your ESP that saved him from being hit by that equipment last night. That you hypnotized Charlie—the singer who was the monk—into pulling JC to safety.”