Isabel Sharpe – Light Me Up (страница 8)
“So what’s this song you wrote?”
Seth pulled two beers from his state-of-the-art stainless refrigerator, popped off their tops and handed her one, then hit a button on his microwave, which started whirring. “Love song.”
“Really.” His songs tended to be about failed relationships, thwarted dreams and other forms of misery. Ironic for a man who had everything. “Happy love? Like, ‘I love you and it’s great’?”
“Yeah, like that.”
Bonnie took a long swig from the bottle, maybe not the greatest way to soothe her suddenly agitated stomach. Had he met someone? She wasn’t really excited to hear about how much he loved someone else. “How’d that happen?”
“A friend of mine was talking about marrying this girl he met after dating one disaster after another. He got me thinking.”
Bonnie took another nervous swig, shorter this time since she’d skipped lunch. “Got you thinking about what?”
“About a song I could write.” The microwave dinged and he moved toward it.
Bonnie shook her head. Trying to get Seth to talk about feelings … well, why the hell
“Here you go.” He handed her a heaping plate of dumplings and bok choy, steam releasing a fragrance that made Bonnie’s stomach lurch with hunger instead of stress.
“All for me?”
“I ate earlier. Bring it in with you. And I’m not letting you leave until you finish it. You’re skeletal.”
“Yes, Daddy.”
He shot her a scowl over his shoulder and headed for his studio. Bonnie followed, grinning, touched that he was worried about her. She had dropped weight. At first she was thrilled. Who didn’t celebrate when pounds came off? But while her new body might be fine for a magazine shoot, she wasn’t out to join the scary-thin crowd, and shouldn’t lose any more.
“Now.” Seth seated himself at his Bösendorfer grand, having put his beer carefully down on a nearby table. The piano and his extensive array of recording and soundengineering equipment were the only things he was meticulous about. His bedroom and bathroom looked as if a fraternity had moved in and partied for two weeks.
He rubbed his hands on his long thighs, picked out a note or two, rubbed his legs again. He was nervous. Interesting. This drill was totally familiar for both of them. He loved playing his songs, she loved hearing them; they did this all the time. Bonnie had never seen him like this.
“Ready?”
“I’m ready.” She stuffed a warm pot sticker, dripping soy sauce, vinegar and chili oil, into her mouth and groaned ecstatically. Seth’s mom had been an incredible cook and passed along that passion to Seth, the youngest in a family of five boys and the only one who’d been interested. “No, wait, I can’t listen right now. I’m having an orgasm.”
“No, you’re not.”
She stabbed another dumpling with her fork and stuffed it into her mouth, moaned again. “Yesh, I am.”
“Nope.” He started playing a classical piece. “You’re
Bonnie glared at him, sitting at the piano wearing an I-
“You need cheering up.” He switched from the classical to a ragtime number, which he seamlessly fed into smooth jazz. She waited in delight until he wove in, as he invariably did, snippets of the
Talent was really, really sexy. As if Seth wasn’t sexy enough on his own. Worse, he was staring intently at her, half his mind on what his fingers were doing, half on the impact he knew he was making.
Deliberately she shoved another dumpling into her mouth and followed it with a fourth, going for the unappealing chipmunk-cheek approach to keeping herself sane.
“What ‘bout the shong?” She chewed noisily, and found it didn’t help, because he was giving her that half smile that said she was adorable. Damn him.
“You’re ready now?”
“I’m ready.”
He nodded. Took his hands off the keys and rested them on his lap. Bonnie swallowed her dumpling. He was
“Here we go.” Soft chords filled the room, then a clear high piano melody, slow and sweet, repeated lower, then dissolving into a gentle arpeggiated accompaniment with occasional rhythmic and harmonic twists that kept the song from settling into predictability. Bonnie put down her fork, heart swelling with pride at the beauty of the music. This tune felt different than anything he’d written, yet it was Seth all over.
He lifted his head, gazing out at a point beyond the piano, expression earnest, and the closest to vulnerable Seth ever got. His smooth, rich baritone filled the room.
He held the last note, let the chord under it die into silence. Bonnie swallowed convulsively, tears she hadn’t been able to hold back spilling onto her cheeks.
If he turned and looked at her now, if he gave any indication he understood what the song was saying, not about them, but just about the love it was possible for two people to have, something he’d never acknowledged before, she was going to shatter all over his carpet. He’d be picking up bits of Bonnie for the rest of his life.
Maybe that’s what he deserved.
He didn’t look at her. He took his hands off the keys and put them in his lap.
“Beautiful, Seth.”
“I hoped you’d like it.” He cleared his throat, drew his finger across the keyboard without depressing notes enough for sound.
Bonnie wasn’t sure what to say next. She felt as if she were walking on eggshells with this man who was so terrified of all the same emotions he’d just put down on paper. “You haven’t written many romantic songs like that.”
“Nope.” His fingers turned restless, picked out a tune she didn’t recognize.
“Your friend talking must have … I don’t know, brought out something in you?” She laughed slightly hysterically. “I don’t even know what I’m trying to say.”
“Yes, you do, Bonnie.”
Adrenaline bolted through her. He was right. She did. But she couldn’t admit it out loud, and neither could he. They’d never get over their fears, either of them. Bonnie of being hurt, Seth of losing himself. It was such a poignant, frustrating and colossal waste.
She’d been looking at online dating sites—just looking for now. But more and more often she’d find herself thinking what she might like to say in her profile. After college she’d dated a couple of guys, friends of friends, but with Seth still firmly lodged in her heart, nothing had a chance of working out. Checking out dating services was a good sign, now, that she was really getting ready to burst free of the Seth-chains and find a relationship she could truly indulge, not one defined and bound by what it wasn’t and couldn’t ever be.
“I guess I wanted to know why you got so sentimental about love all of a sudden.”
He wrinkled his nose, finally meeting her eyes with his sultry gray ones. “It’s not all of a sudden, Bon. This is the first one I was happy with, though I still think it needs something. It’s not quite there.”
“Who else have you played—”
“No one’s heard it but you.” He spoke aggressively. She held her breath, waiting, but he didn’t go on, not that she really thought he would.
Too late. She could feel her eternally, relentlessly stupid hope rising yet again. Who was she kidding? Bonnie hadn’t learned a bloody thing where Seth was concerned.
She pushed a dumpling across the plate, then gave up, appetite gone. “Well, I’m not a musician, but I think it’s perfect.”
“Thanks.” He looked up, grinning that divinely goofy grin, and their eyes locked. Held.
“Bonnie.”
“Yeah?” She knew what was coming, she felt it. Please, God, give her the strength, courage and balls, if necessary, to slap him down.