“Believe it or not, I have. We played a regular gig in a pub in Dublin that had a photo of them on the wall, but they’d broken up twenty years or so before we had our gig. Billy McBride, that’s funny, it’s a small world. I’d like to show you someday. Now come over here and let me show you how I play the cello.” He sat on the sofa and set up the glasses again. “I’m going to play, and then we drink. For the record, this was broken before I picked it up.” He pointed to the broken f-hole of the cello and Fiona waved it away. “Are you ready?” She nodded with a big anticipatory smile.
Tate hugged the cello to himself like it was a guitar, and strummed out the tequila song and yelled “Tequila!” at the end and they both drank while laughing.
“That’s not how you play the cello,” she snorted.
“It’s how I play the cello. Are you impressed?”
“Absolutely, completely, yes. Utterly impressed.” Her smile was radiant and he suddenly needed to kiss her. “But it sounded pretty dreadful,” she said.
“Yes, yes it did. The cello, my lovely lemming, is shaped like a woman,” he turned the instrument around to look at the back of it. “Now, Fi, if you were to take off your clothes, and sit on the piano bench, you’d see what I mean.” She bit her lip. She’d like that. “Well, I’d see what I mean, you wouldn’t be able to see. I could take a picture.”
“Set me up again, Dylan, let’s see what happens.”
“Come here,” he put his hand out and put the cello down on the floor. His eyes locked on hers and he put his finger to her chin and tipped her face up to his and kissed her. She tasted of tequila and lime, and he wanted something that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Something more. More than what he’d had. He wanted all of her, he suddenly craved the picket fence keeping in the dogs rescued from the pound, and a crowd of black haired kids that smiled as sweetly as their mother. And then he knew what he wanted most was Fiona to love him, and it made all the blood drain from his face. No more tequila for him.
He felt her hands go to his sides and her nails lightly rake him and it tickled. He laughed and pulled away, grabbing her hands.
“You’re ticklish?” She was delighted. He shook his head and grinned, but he was clearly busted.
“No love, dance with me.” He drew her up to him as he stood. “Another glass of water first.” They drank the water and he went over to the stereo. Her iPod was plugged into the port and he turned it on to hear Connor halfway through a love song. He shrugged, it would do.
“This is after Genna’s arrival,” he said pulling her close. “All we do is love songs now.” She put her cheek to his chest and he moved her around the room gracefully. He put his lips to her hair and breathed her in. “Not that I mind in the least.” He sang the words, his voice was true and he was bold with it. Of course he would be, he did it for a living in front of thousands of people. She felt a small thrill that she was the one he held to him, she was the one he spent the past two weeks with, breaking all sorts of records, he had said.
“I really like dancing with you, Tate. You make me feel coordinated.” He chuckled.
“You just have to stop overthinking it and let your body move. There’s a dancer in all of us, just sometimes they can be shy.” He was a philosopher.
Fiona loved when he kissed her hair and the side of her face, hell, she liked his kisses in any form, but when he wasn’t compelled by lust; his kisses were different. More meaningful. It would bother her if all his kisses were like that, but having an even mix seemed to be perfect. She had never spent a more romantic evening, and it was simply dancing in her living room being serenaded by a beautiful man.
“Tell me what this song is about, ‘to lose’ what?”
“Oh, it’s Toulouse, as in Lautrec, the artist.” He laughed. “Many years ago we did a show in Paris, and Connor went to a museum with some girl, and saw all these paintings by the man. Con was fascinated, and it turned out the girl knew something about Toulouse, and she wanted to introduce him to La Feé Verte, Absinthe.” He rolled his eyes.
“So Connor talks us into going with them. We’re breaking all sorts of laws, the drink was still outlawed in much of Europe at that point, and we’ve a show to do the next night, so if we’re caught, Mikey’d have our gonads,” Fiona laughed. She’d never heard the use of the word gonads after she left high school. “Needless to say we’re nervous as hell. The rumors of the hallucinogenic effects of the drink have us shaking in our boots. We’re Irish, we can drink anything, but we’ve never been big on the drugs.
“The wee lassie takes us down into this very dark pub in a sketchy part of town. It’s like a cave down there with a stone archway into a very dark recess, which was making us nervous, too. All heads turn at us coming in, and they watch us move to a back table but the barkeep refuses to serve us. The girl assures him we’re fine, and money changes hands, and pretty soon we each have a wee glass of the green stuff in front of us. He puts a pitcher of water and a bowl of sugar cubes on the table and leaves us to it.” Tate laughed. “We watch entranced as the girl balances a spoon-like strainer over her glass and puts a sugar cube on and carefully pours the water over the cube. When the water meets the Absinthe it gets milky, and she takes a delicate sip. We’re all bloody mesmerized.
“Ryan’s been watching closely, just like the rest of us and says ‘Fuck that,’ sticks his tongue down my sister’s throat right before he drains his glass while we watch him, our eyes wide in terror waiting for him to keel over. He rasps ‘Smooth,’ like he just drank fire, and the rest of us follow suit. Well, it was bloody poisonous stuff. Tastes just like medicine. We have a few rounds and start feeling pissed.
“There was no in between stage of drunkenness, we went from sober to very drunk, and fought with each other over the sugar cubes and eventually over the lassie. Christie has a video of the whole experience.” He laughed again. “When the tour ended and we got home we went round the pub and Christie points to a bottle of the stuff sitting behind the bar. They never outlawed it in Ireland, we could have done it all legally in the comfort of our own neighborhood pub.” Fiona laughed.
“You fought over the sugar cubes?” Another slow song came on and Fiona was way past thinking about taking Tate up to her bed, she wanted him right then. His soft lilting voice did things to her libido that had never been done before. The tequila might be working, too, but he was holding her close and making her laugh, it was bound to affect her.
“I think we’d gotten bored once the initial thrill had worn off and we weren’t tripping. And then there was the girl. She came back from the loo, and sat in my lap. The loo, I’ll have you know, was a hole in the floor, I kid you not.” She laughed.
“Yes, Turkish toilets, very hard to manage for a woman in pants.”
“I can only imagine. In retrospect I expect she didn’t sit in my lap by design, we were all very drunk by that point, but there she suddenly was, perched in my lap, and my instincts kicked in and I stole a kiss. She didn’t seem to mind, but Connor dived across the table and had his hands around me throat in milliseconds. Actually, if you do ever see the video, it took more time than that, we were moving in slow motion,” he chuckled. “Ryan and Christie were snogging like their lives depended on it at the next table, periodically stopping long enough to make a funny sound when they touched each other’s noses. ‘Boop, boop.’ Asinine, I tell you.
“They didn’t even notice Connor had his fingers around my throat. On the way down I made a weird ‘WOO!’ sound which I cleverly blamed on the girl.” He tapped his head showing how cunning he was and she giggled. “We hit the floor, and the only thing you see in the video is my feet in the air. The girl screamed, the barkeep proclaimed loudly that he’d never serve Americans ever again, which had us all falling apart laughing.” Fiona laughed, too.
“We left the pub and walked around Paris in the dark. It had started to rain, and we found ourselves in a fairly seedy section of the city, but there was a pack of us and we were fearless for the
drink.” He chuckled to himself. “The girl maneuvered us into a less sketchy part of town, which happened to be near the Pompidou. Have you been?” Fiona nodded.
“Yes,” Fiona said still smiling.
“You know the wee fountain with the colorful sculpture out front?” He asked giving her an amused look.
“Yes,” she smiled a little more. “You jumped in?”
“Two of us jumped in, the rest of us were pushed. Ryan O’Brian’s a right bastard,” he said laughing. “It’s funny, I never realized ‘till now how much of my history involved getting wet.”
The music changed to an up tempo beat and he pushed her away and held her at arm’s length and he started to move quickly with her around the room. She laughed as he spun her around and dipped her deeply. Too deeply, it turned out because they stumbled and before she knew it they were falling to the floor. Tate made the hilarious “WOO!” sound, but he somehow managed to not fall on her, and spun her on top of himself, but they both hit something that cracked loudly as their combined weight landed on it.
“Are ye all right, Fi?” Tate was mortified. Fiona, however, was laughing silently, unable to breathe. Tate started to laugh, too, and they lay there giggling, holding each other until they could regain composure.
“WOO!” She said and they laughed some more.
Tate had something sticking in his back and he realized what it was they broke moments before she did. He watched her face as it dawned on her. He hoped the bloody thing wasn’t a Stradivarius or something equally rare, because the cello was in pieces.
Fiona’s mouth fell open and then she burst out laughing again. She needed to purge her life of all things Dean, but she couldn’t manage getting rid of his cello. It was something she’d lost sleep over, and now it was a non-issue, and she suddenly felt liberated. She leaned down and kissed Tate on his very surprised, but getting over it pretty fast, lips. When she pulled back away from him he craned his neck up to her. “No, no, Fi, don’t stop. Kiss me like that again. Like you can’t get enough of me.” His hand fisted her hair and brought her back to him.
“I can’t get enough of you.” She brought her mouth down to his again. He held her tightly to him, afraid to let her go.
“Everything okay in here?” The security agent asked from the doorway over the music. Fiona pulled up away from Tate. She looked like she’d been drugged, her eyes were heavy lidded and her lips reddened from his attentions.
“I don’t know, are we okay?” She looked at Tate and started to giggle again. “Are you okay, Tate-o?” That was when she realized she was drunk, and she started to giggle in earnest. It wasn’t the fact that she had fallen on her living room floor without any embarrassment, lying on Tate’s chest and kissing him like he was her life support, but that she called him Tate-o. There was a vague memory of someone calling her dad Billy-o, but she was too tipsy to care.
“Never better, love,” Tate said and kissed her again. He looked at the security guy and nodded with a guilty grin. She brought her hands to either side of his face and looked at him closely.
“This is crazy, but I’m having the time of my life.”
“Me too, Fi. Me too,” he said and she snorted.
“Somehow I find that hard to believe,” she said still smiling at him.
“So do I, and yet, here it is staring me in the face with pretty blue eyes,” he helped her off the floor and placed her on the sofa and then knelt next to the cello. It was completely destroyed.
“Let’s make those cookies,” she said excitedly.
“Fiona,” he said, bringing her back to the crisis at hand. “We’ve destroyed your cello, I’m afraid.”
“I know, and I’m okay with it. One more shot and then cookies.”
“You are the least high maintenance woman I’ve ever met.”
“Least high maintenance? That sounds funny. Least maintenance?”
“Lowest maintenance? Feck it, kiss me again.” He pulled her to him and clamped his mouth on hers. “You make a very fun drunk,” he said after a while.
“I passed the test?”
“Absolutely, let’s get naked.”
“Let’s get naked and dance some more.”
“Christ woman, it’s like you’re reading my mind.” He grinned again but then rolled his eyes as the security guys traded places, one upstairs and one downstairs. Fiona watched them confer quietly in the foyer and she sighed. “All right, we’ll bake cookies first, then we’ll go upstairs to dance, aye?”
“Aye, aye. Isn’t ‘aye’ a Scottish thing?”
“Aye. It’s more of a Connor thing. The man’s a feckin’ bellwether.”
“What? A goat?”
“A sheep, love. He’s the sheep the rest of us sheep blindly follow. We can’t help ourselves. He starts winking, the rest of us do; he says ‘aye,’ the rest of us do. A few years back it was ‘crikey.’ The press thought we were from Australia,” he laughed dragging her into the kitchen. “That was embarrassing.”
“For the Australians?” He laughed and wagged a finger at her.
“You are a very funny lemming.” He kissed her again. “But the Irish do say ‘aye’ and we say ‘crikey’. We say ‘like’ more though. ‘He’s as useless as a chocolate teapot, like.’” She laughed at his brogue.
“I love it. I love it most when you get all Lucky Charms, like.” Her accent was surprisingly good, he thought. It must be the ear for music. Or having grown up as Billy McBride’s daughter.
“Do you now?” He pulled her close. “That can be arranged, don’t ya know? It’s funny, my mates in Ireland say I sound like an American.” She shook her head and ran her fingernails above his ears through his hair. His eyes fluttered closed. “Crikey. That feels good. Speaking of Australians, do you know what an Aussie’s kiss is, love? Because I’d like to give you one, like.” She giggled.
“Nope, is it like a French kiss?”
“Aye, just so,” he took her hand and led her toward the stairs. “Only it’s down under.” They laughed and ran up the stairs, all thoughts of cookies gone.
***
Slamming her government book shut for the night, Tess stood and stretched. It had been days since she did her Tai Chi and her body complained. Maybe a run was what she needed. The feeling of being caged was getting more intense every day, she didn’t know how much longer she could stand her captivity. She wished she could just run in peace, without the bodyguard. She looked at the clock, it was almost 11:00. A run, definitely.
Changing quickly into an athletic bra, a hoodie and yoga pants, she trotted down the steps and saw Sam at the door, checking it was locked. He looked up at her, his face unreadable.
“I thought Martinez was here.”
“He was, he got off an hour ago. Now I’m here, Liz is catching a nap.” He said looking at her outfit. “Are we running?”
“I need to blow off some steam, do you mind?” He shook his head.
“I’d rather do it in the daylight, if it’s all the same to you.” She looked longingly at the door and then turned to go back upstairs.
“You’re right, this is stupid.”
“Hey, if you need to blow off steam, how ‘bout we spar a little. You game?”
“Like boxing?”
“Hand to hand. You do Tai Chi, right?” She nodded. “Okay, I’ll teach you how to fight dirty.”
“I don’t want to fight dirty, this is about the Zen of movement.” He took her by the shoulders and looked her in the eye making her breath hitch.
“Why’d the Major teach you Tai Chi in the first place?” Sam asked her seriously.
“Edgar? Because I asked him to.” He let one shoulder go and moved his hand in a circular motion so she’d continue. “Because I didn’t want other people fighting my battles, and because I don’t like feeling vulnerable.”
“Was there a particular incident?” She remembered that summer a few years ago, when she was at her most vulnerable and she swore to never be again, and the lame boyfriend who was i
ncredibly rude when she could have used a friend.
“Yes, I wanted to kick someone’s ass,” she said and Sam laughed, his whole face softened and Tess could only stare at him.
“So, this someone, would he have fought fair?” Tess thought about it. The worst Rory would have done was probably try to cop a feel. Unsavory, but not life threatening. The other guys that summer and the Russians who were after the blood diamonds they thought Fiona had, however, would fight dirty. That was why she had an armed guard 24/7. She looked Sam in his deep brown eyes with resolve.
“Teach me how to fight dirty.”
“That’s my girl,” he said, only a little surprised she didn’t hem and haw. Tess felt a warmth settle in her belly at his words.
***
The cookies were in the oven and Tate was chopping tomatoes for the salad. When he squatted in down to get the salad bowl out of the cupboard, his t-shirt rode up and Fiona saw scratch marks descending into his pants, and she felt dizzy. She pulled his shirt up and looked more closely. He stilled his body and turned his head to look at her. At the expression on her face he stood up and turned around completely, making her look him in the eye.
“What is it? Have I got a great big hairy mole? Resembling a spider?”
“Tate, I’ve hurt you.”
“No,” the word was drawn out. “That I would have noticed. You make me feel good, Fi.” Way too good.
“I’ve broken your skin,” she looked at her nails to see if there was any blood under them. “I’m so sorry.” He cocked his head and held her close.
“Fiona, when we first made love I told you I wanted to feel you rake your nails down me spine, I wasn’t joking. I like it. When you lose yourself like that, I feel bloody brilliant. The scratches remind me through the next day that I made you a little wild, that I made you scream my name in ecstasy, and you wanted me as deep as I could get. And Fi, you were screaming, bursting at the seams and by Christ, love, I like that a lot. It makes me feel invincible.” He kissed her and grinned. “And it’s like you’ve marked me as your own.”
Bassist Instinct (The Rocker Series #2) Page 21
