by BETH KERY
Laila’s tongue felt knotted. She couldn’t think of how to respond to Tahi’s provocative question. Tahi took another sip of tea, frowned and set down her glass. She yawned widely. “I think my espresso high just gave out. Just think about what I said, Laila. I’m going to bed.”
• • •
The next afternoon. Laila hesitated on the sidewalk outside an elegant, Art Deco high-rise on West Webster Avenue. Lincoln Park was just across the street. It was ablaze with autumn color. She couldn’t believe she was here.
Abruptly, she turned and headed in the opposite direction. This had all been a mistake. What had she been thinking, stalking her first love after all these years?
A tall man entered her vision, walking toward her. Her heart seized. She stumbled in her boots. She steadied herself almost immediately, noticing the man’s expression. A stranger’s startled expression. She’d never seen the man in her life. He passed her on the sidewalk. Laila just stood there, stunned.
The random encounter had made another event jump into her mind’s eye: standing outside Crescent Bay’s downtown ice cream parlor at twilight, music from the park bandstand filling the summer night air . . . seeing a tall, dark young man and her body’s automatic, visceral response. All because for a split second, she’d thought it had been him . . . the man who had seen her naked at the secret inland lake.
A feeling of poignancy rose in her. Still, after all this time, just the idea of him made her uncontrollably excited. Maybe Tahi was right. Maybe there was some kind of connection between Asher and her, something that bypassed the years.
But what about all the hurt?
She turned and gazed up at the luxury high-rise again. The address had remained intact in her memory all these years. She recalled Asher telling her once, in an offhand way, that his parents owned a condo in downtown Chicago, and that he stayed there often during breaks from school. At the time, she remembered thinking that he was downplaying the scenario out of embarrassment or modesty or both. She suspected that the condo had actually been purchased exclusively for him. Having learned what she had about his parents, she wondered if they hadn’t provided the desirable living arrangement for their son in order to increase the chances of him visiting them.
Maybe the reason the address had stuck in her head all these years was that she was a little familiar with the neighborhood. Her family liked a pizza place, Mamma’s, nearby. They’d gone there three or four times after Chicago shopping trips when Laila was young. Mamma’s was long gone now. A nail and eyelash boutique had taken its place. When she and Tahi had bought their condo last year, the family had turned out in en masse to help them move. One night, her mother had suggested they return to Mamma’s. Laila had been hesitant about returning to the neighborhood. She hadn’t been there since that summer in Crescent Bay. She’d agreed, however.
It had been sad seeing Asher’s building, knowing from her online investigations that he wasn’t there, but instead on the opposite side of the globe. The chances of Asher’s parents still owning a place here, and that Asher was actually staying there on his visit to Chicago, were very thin.
But it couldn’t hurt to check it out, could it? What about that incredible connection Tahi mentioned? What about the fact that, presumably, they’d recognized one another . . . even through the veil?
The fact that her feet still didn’t move made her face the truth. She was afraid. Had he thought about her much, over the years? She’d hurt him. Time hadn’t dimmed her vivid recollection of his anger on that last day in his mother’s sitting room. His disbelief. His bitterness.
Chances were, he’d resent seeing her now. Maybe he’d reject her . . . walk away. Just like she’d walked away from him eight years ago.
Recognizing the source of her hesitation—of her fear—helped, but it didn’t lessen it a bit. Nevertheless, she began to walk toward the high-rise. Yeah, he might refuse to talk to her. Maybe she deserved that.
The doorman’s face remained wooden when she said Asher’s name. For a second, disappointment swooped through her. Asher wasn’t staying here—
“Asher Gaites, you mean?” the doorman asked.
“Oh . . . yes. Asher Gaites.” She’d forgotten he’d dropped the hyphenation of his last name. She knew that from seeing his byline on his articles.
The doorman smiled suddenly and stood from his chair, reaching for the phone. “That’s okay. I’ve been here a long time. I knew him when he was just a kid, and the Granville was still stuck to his last name. If you’re his friend, then you must know he’s come a long way since then. Not that he brags. I got a brother in L.A. who e-mails me links to his stories. You know he’s up for a Pulitzer?”
Laila nodded. She heard the pride in the older man’s voice. She recognized it because she’d felt it herself so many times, reading Asher’s words.
“Something else, that kid,” the doorman said. “Who shall I tell him is here, beautiful?”
She swallowed thickly. She experienced another wild urge to run.
“Ma’am? Sorry about the beautiful. You are, though.”
Laila laughed at his unexpected combination of sheepish gruffness. Her amusement penetrated her anxiety.
“Laila. Laila Barek.”
He nodded once and dialed the phone. A muted roar started up in her ears in the silence that followed. He wasn’t answering. Thank God, he wasn’t there.
Shit. Now I’m going to have to find the nerve to do this all over again.
“Asher.” Her stomach lurched. “It’s Pete down at the desk. There’s a young lady here to see you.” He glanced up at Laila and winked. “A real looker. You always did have the prettiest girls coming to visit. Uh . . . Laila. Laila Brek, wasn’t it?”
“Barek,” Laila said through a sandpapery throat.
The ensuing silence was unbearable. A slightly confused expression came over the doorman’s weathered face. He cast her a curious glance. Laila felt ill.
“He says he’s in a rush to make an appointment with his attorney,” Pete said awkwardly as he hung up the phone a moment later.
“Oh, of course,” Laila said, backing away, hiding her mortification and hurt as best she could. “It was just an impulse thing, stopping by. Well . . . have a good afternoon.”
Pete nodded once. She could still picture his sympathetic expression as she plunged through the revolving doors and rushed down the sidewalk.
Chapter Nineteen
She usually arrived at the club an hour and a half before showtime. Rafe had installed a small spa in the performer dressing room area, which included a dry sauna and steam showers. The spa helped her relax before a performance, something she sorely needed tonight. She’d been so tense and nauseated after that trip to Asher’s condominium, she hadn’t been able to eat again all day.
Rafe must have noticed her tension that evening when she arrived at her dressing room. He came up behind where she sat at a vanity and began rubbing her shoulder. Laila winced. Whether it was from her wound-up state or a reaction to his touch, she couldn’t say.
“What’s got you strung so tight?” Rafe asked, his handsome, thin face tightening with concern in the mirror.
“I might have overdone it at the gym.” She sidestepped the question, smiling. She reached up and grabbed his hand, a polite way to stop his massaging fingers. Their stares met in the mirror and she squeezed his hand reassuringly. “I’ll go and sit in the sauna. It always melts away all my knots.”
“Maybe I’ll join you,” Rafe murmured, his French accent thickening a little, as it always did, when he became aroused. Not that she knew the full extent of his amorous tells. They hadn’t made love yet. Laila was determined to take it slow with him. In fact . . . she usually took things slow with all her boyfriends. It was her modus operandi, and probably the chief complaint of a majority of her exes.
She watched in the mirror as he leaned down. He
r stomach muscles clenched. He pressed his mouth to the side of her neck. Her hand drifted up and clutched at his head as he kissed her neck and the slope of her shoulder.
“How would you like that? A nice. Hot. Sauna. Only Phoebe, Jared and Miguel are upstairs,” he said thickly between kisses, referring to a waitress, a cook and the club’s audio tech, who were there prepping for the night. None of the other members of her band had arrived yet. His well-trimmed goatee tickled her skin. Laila found herself wondering, off topic, what it would be like to be kissed by a man with a full beard.
“And there’s a nice thick lock on the spa door,” Rafe continued. He looked up and met her gaze in the mirror, his dark eyes smoldering. “What do you say, mon ange? I can’t afford to have you tense tonight. That reporter from Entertainment Weekly has said he’ll be here. That’ll be huge coverage for you.”
“Even if he does do a feature, it might not be a positive one. He could hate the show,” she said dryly.
“Impossible. You’re incredible. You have the richest vein of talent I’ve ever known. And the world is about to discover you.” He clutched her shoulders tighter. Again, she flinched. Rafe didn’t seem to notice this time. He just pressed his mouth to her neck again. “I can’t think of a better way to relax, can you?”
“It might be a little too relaxing, not to mention dehydrating,” she teased, to defray the topic.
He growled deep in his throat and lifted his head. He smiled at her wryly in the mirror. “I think I just struck out again, as you Americans would say.” She laughed. Rafe had lived and worked as a club owner and artist manager/promoter in the United States for ten years, so he was pretty Americanized. Nevertheless, she’d learned recently that he’d never experienced baseball. So she’d taken him to a Cubs game.
“I’m sorry,” she said, grinning. “I’m just not picturing it in the sauna. Not for . . . you know.”
“Our first time?” he asked gruffly, planting one last kiss on her neck and standing. Laila swallowed thickly and nodded, watching him in the mirror. Relief swept through her when he finally removed his hands.
Snap out of it. What’s wrong with me?
Maybe she’d never been in a rush to get into bed with Rafe, but she’d always enjoyed his touch before. Asher’s reentrance in her life, and then his impersonal rejection of her this afternoon, had rattled her, whether she liked it or not. No, it had done more than rattle her. It had hurt her. Badly. It felt like there was a place deep in her chest cavity that had been rubbed raw. She couldn’t ignore it. The sting only grew worse by the minute.
“At least I got you to admit there will be a first time,” Rafe said, interrupting her ruminations. “I’ll leave you to find relaxation in your own way, then.” He straightened his tie while watching her in the mirror. “And I’ll just go on imagining the day when I can relax with the most beautiful, talented woman on the entire planet.”
She shook her head in amusement at his shameless flattery. He planted one last kiss on the top of her head and walked out of her dressing room. She stared at herself sternly in the mirror.
Get over yourself. You didn’t lose anything today that hadn’t been lost years ago.
Her self-lecture, a muscle-melting stint in the dry sauna and a long, hot shower helped her regain her equilibrium a little. It lasted until about an hour before showtime, when there was a knock at her door.
“Yes?” Laila called, setting down a bottle of lotion on her makeup table. A blond woman stuck her head around the door. “Hi, Phoebe,” Laila said, startled. No one but Rafe, and occasionally one of the musicians from her band, ever came to her dressing room. She’d met Phoebe briefly a few times when she’d ventured up to the kitchen before or after a performance, to get a cup of tea or a bite to eat.
“Hi,” Phoebe returned. She looked behind her, seeming a little flustered. Laila stood slowly.
“Phoebe? Is everything okay?”
“Someone wants to see you,” Phoebe blurted out. She gave Laila an apologetic look before she opened the door wider. Laila froze when she saw the tall man standing behind her in the door. He seemed to tower over Phoebe. His appearance was made all the more intimidating by an opened black overcoat. Beneath it, he wore a pair of jeans and a pale blue button-down shirt.
She straightened and lifted her chin, recognizing his formidability. He’d shaved. Seeing his lean, handsome face exposed made her experience her defenselessness like a knife’s edge pressing subtly against her skin. His face looked strangely vulnerable, due to the lack of the beard, and yet harder than stone all at once.
“He said that he knew you years ago, and . . . well, I hope it’s okay that I brought him down.” Laila jerked her gaze off Asher Gaites and focused on a nervous-looking Phoebe. Had Asher bribed her to bring him down here? Was that why she was so anxious? Or was it just Asher’s good looks, seething sexuality and aura of power that had convinced her to break the steadfast club rule about guarding Laila’s privacy? Either way, Rafe would probably fire Phoebe on the spot if he found out what the waitress had done.
“It’s okay, Phoebe,” Laila said, her gaze flickering back to where Asher stood. “I do know him. Come in, Asher.”
Phoebe seemed relieved when Laila said his name. She backed out of the room.
“Phoebe,” Laila called. “You don’t have to tell Rafe about this.”
The waitress looked a little stunned, and then relieved.
Asher stepped across the threshold, and Phoebe shut the door. For a few seconds, they just stared at each other silently. She’d always thought her dressing room was relatively roomy, but he shrank it just by standing in it. She realized she was absorbing every detail about him, soaking up his image like a sponge even though her mind was blank as to what to say. It took her a moment to realize he was doing the same. Even though his face remained impassive, his eyes gleamed as they moved across her face and dipped down over her body. She self-consciously tightened the belt on her robe, the movement of the fabric amplifying the prickling sensation his gaze had ignited on her naked skin. She felt her nipples stiffen. It wasn’t the most opportune time to be caught wearing nothing but a robe.
“You changed your mind?” she said. She noticed his dark brows arching in a questioning gesture. God, he was just as beautiful to her as he ever was. More so. His body was as lean as it ever was, but his chest and shoulders looked a little broader. He’d grown harder with age . . . more distilled. Infinitely more compelling. “About seeing me,” she added.
Her anxiety ratcheted up when he didn’t respond immediately.
“I told myself I didn’t want to see you,” he finally said bluntly. A shadow of self-annoyance crossed his bold features. “But some things don’t change much, apparently. I told you once that I’d come whenever you could see me.”
Her smile was forced. “That was a long time ago.”
“You’re right. It was.”
The way he was studying her face made her jumpy. She couldn’t decide if he was angry or . . . hungry.
“And yet here I stand,” he said. She could tell by the way his mouth slanted slightly that he wasn’t exactly pleased about that fact.
She felt her strained smile wavering. “Please. Sit down.” She waved at the seating area of her dressing room, where there was a couch and two chairs.
“I’ll stand.”
She nodded, floundering for what else to say. This brooding, simmering, mature Asher wasn’t one she knew how to relate to, and yet he was surprisingly familiar, as well. The contrast only increased her awareness of him until it was cuttingly sharp.
“I’ve followed your career. I’ve read a lot of your articles. Whatever I could find online, anyway. They’re so amazing, Asher. You’re very talented. I always knew you would be, but actually reading your stories . . . well . . .” She realized she was prattling on nervously when he didn’t speak. “I just . . . I wanted you to k
now. Every time I read one, I felt so—”
She cut herself off when he tensed perceptibly. A muscle jumped in his cheek. She swallowed back the praise on her tongue, realizing her mistake. She’d been about to say she’d felt so proud of him, reading his writing, glimpsing between the lines and the words into him. His soul. That was too personal . . . too intimate of a thing to either say or suggest, when they hadn’t seen each other in almost a decade.
“Why did you come to the condominium today?” he asked.
She shrugged, wrapping her arms around her waist in an attempt to diminish her vulnerability. “Because of seeing you on the subway, of course. Once I realized you were in Chicago, I thought maybe you’d be staying there. You mentioned that building a few times.” Her gaze flickered up to his stoic expression. “When we were young,” she added hoarsely.
Against her will, a vivid memory popped into her brain of lying on the beach, Asher staring down at her with a hooded, hot gaze while she shook in orgasm. She flinched slightly at the intrusive, intensely intimate memory.
“Are you sure you won’t sit down?” she asked him again.
“When I saw you up on the stage,” he said, ignoring her hollow attempt at politeness—she’d forgotten how he always cut to the chase. No idle chitchat for Asher. “I knew it was you. Or at least part of me did. The other part couldn’t believe it.”
“Why not?” she asked uneasily.
“The Laila I knew was too shy to ever put on a performance like that. So raw. So sexy,” he added in a quieter, gruffer voice.
She swallowed thickly and looked away from his stare. It burned her.
“But then I got it. The curtain. That’s how you figured it out. How to show the world your talent. Your gift. How to express it safely. Without hurting anyone?” he asked, and she heard the sarcasm in his tone. “I’m assuming your family doesn’t know that the Veiled Siren is you?”
“Tahi knows. She and I own a condo here together.”
