From the Ashes

by Janet W. Butler

  “Now, go home and practice,” he said, rising to his feet. “Hold the image of how we did it today, and you’ll be fine. I’m going to spend some time with Al, so I’ll lock up.”

  She barely had time to fetch her things before he shut the studio door behind her, and Melody knew he was only half aware he’d all but pushed her out. But she hardly blamed him, not when he was so clearly looking for a safe place to hide.

  Something was wrong with this picture, she thought. Something about the way his hands had moved and shaped her own. She’d felt something she hadn’t expected to feel. Something that ought to have been different.

  Serves you right for snooping where you didn’t belong, she chided herself. But I’m not imagining it. Something’s going on with James that he can’t talk about…even with me.

  Shrugging, she pushed open the exterior door and raised her face to the falling snow. If only the answers to all the questions in her head would fall this easily at her feet!

  One way or the other, she vowed, she’d find out what was going on here — why and how she’d been assigned to a piano teacher who so steadfastly avoided letting her hear him play. Next time, she thought, I’ll ask him about it. And I won’t let him weasel out without an answer.

  Resolved, she left the music building. And wasn’t surprised when, thanks to memories of the remarkable lesson she’d had that day, she stayed warm all the way home.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Wow, the term’s over already.”

  Melody heard Barbara’s greeting as she stepped in the dean’s office, just in time to see Barb flip her calendar page, then gather a stack of files and place them in one two-door shelf unit behind her desk. “Hard to believe, huh?” the secretary finished.

  Melody shook her head. “Not for me.” She held up a thin stack of paper, bound on one side. “I’ve felt every bloomin’ footnote of this semester, thank you. I’m more than ready for a vacation.”

  “So there it is.” Barb grinned. “Your last paper?”

  “My performance paper, my wrap-up, the whole shot. Once this is in Dr. Duquesne’s mailbox, my time sneezing through the stacks at this place is over.”

  Barb raised an eyebrow. “Do you want me to put it in there for you? Or would you rather I give you the key and let you have the pleasure?”

  “Are you kidding?” Melody chuckled. “Give me that key. I want this privilege start to finish.”

  Barb tossed her the key ring. “Number forty-nine.”

  Melody exited the anteroom, made a quick right, and found number forty-nine near the end of one row. Deftly she matched key to lock, turned clockwise, and slipped her paper into the cubbyhole, where it joined several more like it. It was a good thing Dr. Duquesne had a large mailbox, she thought, shutting the compartment firmly.

  “Mission accomplished.” She returned the keys to Barb’s desk with a flourish. “Thanks.”

  Barb pocketed the keys. “Feel better?”

  “Eons.” Melody sank into her familiar chair. “If I never have to write another research paper again, it’ll be too soon.”

  “Well, there’s always your doctoral dissertation.”

  “Bite your tongue!”

  Barb laughed. “Oh, now, come on. You shouldn’t have had too many complaints with this one.” As she spoke, she re-boxed a stack of bond paper. “Considering this was the performance paper for your graduate recital, and you had all that special extracurricular help.”

  Melody grimaced. Once word had gotten out of her stupendous luck in snaring James’s concerto for her recital, she had no hope of giving it back. Her main problem became the incessant, if good-natured, teasing about being “teacher’s pet.”

  “Extracurricular, my foot,” she declared. “I didn’t complain because I was too busy to breathe. Do you know how hard it is to do a performance paper on a composer who’s still alive?”

  “But you collaborated with your teacher on it,” Barb teased, “didn’t you?”

  “My teacher and I saw each other for our normal work and lessons, left each other a phone message here and there, and made eye contact across the room at jury. Period.”

  Barb was aghast. “You mean—?”

  “James hasn’t read a word of this paper.” Melody sighed again. “You know what they say — all roads go through Duquesne? No exceptions, not even on this one. Otherwise, I have an unfair advantage over people playing the works of more standard repertoire.”

  “You mean that dull music by dead people?”

  Melody laughed again. “You’re incorrigible.”

  “Thanks. It’s almost as good as having a master’s.”

  “That and a buck will buy you a cup of coffee. Maybe. Or has the Student Union gone up again?”

  “You mean you buy coffee elsewhere?” Barb feigned shock. “What’s the matter, don’t you already get the best prices in town here?”

  “That’s true. Especially today.” Melody rose from the chair and slung her book bag onto the seat in her place. “So, are you ready to party down?”

  Barb rolled her eyes, then rose from behind the desk. “If a table with punch and cookies in the student lounge is ‘partying down’ to you—”

  “Don’t even say it,” Melody warned. “Besides, it’s not just punch and cookies. It’s coffee and hot chocolate, too.” By a herculean effort, she kept a straight face as Barb shut the anteroom door. “And, of course, the carol singing around the piano.”

  “Please!” Barb winced. “I keep trying to forget about that. You’d never know we had voice majors on this campus, with the caterwauling I hear every year at this party.”

  “That’s the Christmas spirit. Plus being punchy from finals.”

  “Oh, good.” Barb nodded. “I’d hate to think we take this music-school stuff too seriously.”

  They wound around the corner of the corridor and entered a large, rectangular room brightened by the light through several long vertical windows. In the center stood an eight-foot Christmas tree bedecked in red bows, white lights, and sequined ornaments, with numerous candy canes — free for the taking — tucked amid its boughs. Fronting the tree stood three long tables covered by elegant foil-finished tablecloths, red and green paper plates, napkins, and cups, three cut-glass punchbowls, several coffee urns and pitchers of hot chocolate, and mounds of fancy cookies.

  “Mmm.” Barb stopped for a moment, admiring the array. “It’s almost too pretty to eat, you know?”

  Melody shot her a baleful stare. “Cosmetic perfection will never stand between me and killer cookies.”

  “That’s what I like to hear,” chimed in a third voice. “Show me a woman without a sweet tooth, and I’ll show you one with a sour disposition.”

  Both of them started at the unexpected, deep baritone, but Melody would have bet only she had ripples of delight shoot through her. As one they turned to face James, placing him between them.

  “Now, this I like.” He slipped one arm through each of theirs. “I take it neither of you ladies has an escort for this fabulous soirée?”

  Melody could have sworn Barb batted her eyelashes. “We weren’t awayh we needed one, Mistah Goodwin,” she drawled, in a flawless imitation of Scarlett O’Hara. “Would you be so kahnd?”

  “Of course.” He chuckled, another low, sweet sound that Melody felt all the way to her toes. “It’s only the gentlemanly thing to do.”

  He did look very much the gentleman today, she thought, from the flat black pleated cords and matching silk-lined vest to the white-on-white dress shirt. On closer inspection, his style was more Rush Street than Wall Street — his vest was unbuttoned and his shirt sleeves were rolled to below the elbow. And although he did boast a tie — a dignified gold paisley on black — he’d loosened it, and his hair was the nicest bit tousled. Playfully, she clucked her tongue.

  “Ah declayh, Mr. Goodwin, don’t you look shahp!” She wasn’t too bad at the Southern belle imitation herself, Melody thought. “To what do we owe this honoh?”

>   He gave them each an answering hug. If he lingered on Melody’s one second longer than Barb’s, no one but she was the wiser.

  “I put on the dog for juries, of course.” He tried for a Southern drawl, but mixed in with Boston, it didn’t fare too well, and his pace toward the table was pure Yankee speed. “Which I was just undoing when it occurred to me that I’d worked up a powerful appetite!”

  “Well, good.” Melody broke away lightly and picked up a red plate and napkin. “Barbara here thinks this is all too precious to actually eat, so we’ll have to make up for her.”

  She gave him the plate and napkin, brushing his fingers slightly as she did so. Every touch sent little sparklers through her; she was only hoping she masked it well. “You first,” was what she said aloud. “Faculty has its privileges.”

  “But chivalry supersedes faculty.” James handed her back the plate, then picked up a matching cup. “What can I get you, Mel? Coffee, hot chocolate, or punch?”

  “Today? Nine days before Christmas, it’s time to live dangerously.” She nodded toward the cut glass. “Make mine punch.”

  “And you, Barbara?”

  “I’m with Mel,” she said with a grin. “Make that two.”

  He served both of them, then stepped over to one coffee urn and filled a large Styrofoam cup. Meanwhile, Melody and Barb reconnoitered the cookies at hand and narrowed their choices to three apiece, then found seats on an ancient couch at one end of the lounge.

  “Ahh, well, there goes that last pound I lost,” Barb groaned, tongue in cheek. “Fortunately, I’ve still got eight more days to lose it again. Then one more, and I’m at my goal.”

  “Huzzah!” Melody tapped her paper cup against Barb’s. “It’s a done deal.”

  “What is?” James asked, rejoining them.

  “Her diet worked.” Melody smiled in pride. “Doesn’t she look great?”

  “Yes, she does. Not that I’m one to ask about diets.” James sipped his coffee, then put one chocolate-dipped pretzel in his mouth whole, chewing it slowly as he sat down in an armchair kitty-corner from them. “My mother has been after me for being too thin since I was a kid.”

  Barb shot Melody a dark look. “Did you hear that?”

  “Indeed I did.”

  “Shall we hang him?”

  Melody nodded. “Yes. And soon.”

  “Uh-oh.” James popped another chocolate pretzel in, but managed to talk around it with a skill no doubt born of practice. “Maybe I should make myself scarce—”

  “Oh, Barb,” Melody cut over him solemnly. “I just remembered. We can’t hang him. He’s a teacher.”

  Barb arched her eyebrows. “So?”

  “Good point. But we’d get in trouble with his grandpa, too. Not a good idea.”

  The secretary sighed. “True enough.”

  “Besides,” Melody said with her sweetest smile, “it’s Christmas. And remember what Tiny Tim said to Mr. Scrooge?”

  “Yep.” Barb munched with gusto on a decorated shortbread. “Take yer bloomin’ hands off my cookies, you ol’ piker!”

  “Exactly.” Melody set down her cup and applauded. “I see you’ve put that Dickens course to good use.”

  James paused for one long moment, then drained his cup. “Like I said, I believe I was just going. Wonderful to be with you ladies again, but you’ll understand if I have to run. Amazing how time flies when one’s life is being threatened.”

  “Stay.” Barb fixed him with an imperious glare. “We may still need you.”

  He froze, feigning alarm, and Melody stifled a laugh. A positively wicked gleam lit up those eyes.

  “Oh?” He leaned forward, elbows on knees. “For what? School is over for the term, you know. Unless this is more — delicate in nature?”

  “Depends,” Barb said blandly. “Is getting us seconds a delicate matter?”

  He rose from his chair. “In this crowd, it could be risky. But I am at your service.” Peeking into his coffee cup, he nodded. “Besides, I’m a quart low myself. So what can I get you?”

  Melody laughed. “Nothing, James. She’s toying with you again. Seconds aren’t on her diet, and I don’t have time for them.”

  “You don’t?” He frowned. “Do you have to cut out right now?”

  “Soon.” Melody shot a knowing look at Barb. “We always try to make a fashionably early exit before they start slaughtering the Christmas carols.”

  “Well, don’t go quite yet.” He placed one hand lightly on Melody’s arm. “Let me get some more coffee and be right back. I want to talk to you before you leave.”

  Turning quickly, he made his way through the small clusters of people toward the refreshment tables once more. Melody, watching him go, was startled when Barb spoke up.

  “I think,” she said, “this is my cue.”

  To Melody’s surprise, the secretary was already out of her seat, crumbling her paper napkin and plate. Melody started to rise, too, but Barb shook her head.

  “No, Mel. He wants to talk to you. I don’t need to see it on a billboard to know he means privately.” She grinned. “I do have to shove off, anyway. My Christmas shopping is hardly started.”

  “But I need to get my stuff from Dean Thomas’s office.”

  “Don’t worry.” Barb nodded toward the crowd. “He’s in the corner with Dr. Lockwood, and that can mean only one thing…”

  “Fishing stories,” they chorused together.

  “Right. I’ll tap him on the shoulder, tell him the anteroom is still open and not to shut it until you’ve got your stuff.” Bending, she gave Melody a quick hug. “I’ll call you and we’ll do something decadent, okay?”

  “Decadent sounds great to me.”

  Barb looked pointedly from James back to Melody. “Yeah, I’ll bet it does.”

  Melody flashed a second smile, all teeth. “Didn’t you say you had to leave?”

  Barb laughed. “I’m already gone.”

  And by the time James was two strides away, Barb made good on her word, merely waving to him as she wended her way toward the group Dean Thomas held in thrall. James stared after her for a moment, then sat down.

  “Something I said?” he asked.

  If you knew! Melody thought. “Oh, no,” she reassured him. “She’s got lots of shopping to do for Christmas.”

  “What a coincidence.” His eyes smiled above the rim of his cup. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “Christmas shopping?”

  “Related to it.” He leaned back in the chair, letting out a long breath. “You know, I never knew the academic life had so many demands to it. I’m bushed.”

  “Uh-oh.” She chuckled. “Don’t you even think about it, James.”

  “Think about what?”

  “Are you kidding? I can see it coming. I’m way ahead of you.” She pantomimed quote marks in the air. “’Faculty member pleads fatigue, sends graduate assistant to do all his Christmas shopping.’”

  James laughed out loud. “You think I’d pull a sexist move like that? Like the guy who sends his secretary to buy his wife’s anniversary present?”

  She didn’t like remembering that once James had had a wife, and an anniversary, and all those trimmings. She shrugged, hoping it looked careless. “Sounded like it to me. Leading in with that heartrending tale about how tired you are.”

  “No, Mel. Not even close.” He drained his cup, banked it on the fly into a decorated garbage can, then bent toward her. “Let’s go in the studio to discuss this. I can see the hordes advancing on the piano as we speak.”

  Melody could see them, too, but now she doubted she’d even hear the carols over the sudden racing of her heart.

  “Come on.” Now he was out of the chair. “These walls have ears.”

  Funny, Melody thought, how a man who seemed to be concerned about walls having “ears” didn’t care about their eyes. That was the first thing she noticed when, without hesitation, he reached down and laced his fingers through hers.


  The second thing was more alarming — that his hands were cold, and the fingers stiff, as he assisted her to her feet. Melody frowned. She’d have to see about getting better heating in that studio.

  She’d barely filed that thought away for future reference, though, when she heard a shout and looked around James to see two raucous theory majors hurrying toward them.

  “Not so fast, Mr. Goodwin,” one of them said. “We need you over here!”

  James’s hand released hers — reluctantly, it seemed to Melody. “Now, Eric, the term’s over. I’m off duty, remember?”

  “We’ll pay you.” The second one spoke up. “All the cookies you can eat.”

  “Been there, done that.” James stroked his chin as if in thought. “But we can dicker price later. What is it you need?”

  “Accompaniment.” Eric gestured expansively toward the upright piano. “For the Christmas carols.”

  Melody thought she saw James’s mouth tighten. Thought she saw his shoulders tense. But she couldn’t be absolutely sure.

  “Y’see, you don’t know this, being new and all,” Eric’s crony chimed in. “But one of the piano profs always plays for the carol sing.”

  “What?” James laughed, a touch shortly. “In a school with fifty piano majors?”

  “Fifty piano majors exhausted from juries,” Eric finished, laying on a dose of pathos.

  James gave them both a forbidding glare. “You don’t know what exhaustion is until you’ve had to sit and listen, gentlemen. Not just to those fifty, but to all of you, too, fumbling your way around basic keyboard exercises.”

  “He’s right, you guys,” Melody put in, laughing. “If you push my boss too hard, he’ll take it out on me.”

  Eric’s sidekick leered at her. “And do what, make you stand in the corner?”

  Melody smiled sweetly. “They only do that to you, Clyde.”

  Eric guffawed. “Nice, Mel. Couldn’t have said it better myself. But you know as well as I do, this is tradition. Besides, we’ve got higher authority behind us. Dean Thomas told us to bug him, and we’re not taking no for an answer.”

  Melody rolled her eyes. “The dean. Why am I not surprised?” She reached out one hand and gave James’s a quick squeeze. “Look I’ll go over there and make excuses for you. Dean Thomas plays a mean Carol of the Bells himself.”