“Laura?” He called her name, and her steady gait faltered. But she didn’t turn around. She didn’t even slow down. He could make a fool of himself and run after her, or he could salvage his dignity and let her go. If he let her go he would always wonder... He took off at a slow jog, following her, weaving past a couple of tourists and keeping his eyes on Laura’s back. She passed through the light from a street lamp, and the stream of light shone on her golden hair. He increased his pace, just a little.
With every step, he gained on her. He whispered her name, and once again her step faltered. Heaven help him, he was almost close enough to reach out and touch her shoulder. Another step, and he reached out to take her arm and bring a halt to her flight.
She didn’t fight him off, jerk herself free, and continue her escape. If she had, he would have let her go, he swore it. Her shoulders rose and fell with the deep, stilling breath she took, and then she turned to face him and he let his hand fall away.
God, she was as beautiful as ever. Big blue eyes in a pixie’s face, hair gold as the sun, a mouth so ripe he itched to kiss it. She licked those lips nervously, blinked twice, and said “Hi.”
Where have you been? I missed you, I need you, don’t ever leave me again.
All that and more went through his mind in an instant, but his heart was rising and threatening to choke him and all he could manage was a weak “Hi” himself.
They stood there silently for a minute, maybe longer. He couldn’t take his eyes off of her, couldn’t think of anything sufficiently earth-shattering to say. Finally he gathered the strength to raise his hand and touch her cheek.
She didn’t flinch, didn’t turn away from his touch, and that was when he found the courage to smile. This was his Laura, showing up out of nowhere like a Christmas gift to end all Christmas gifts, coming to him when he needed her most. She was scared, a little; he could see the uncertainty in her eyes, the gentle quiver of her bottom lip.
His hand slipped to the back of her neck, and he lowered his mouth to hers for a brief kiss, for a caress he remembered, dreamed of, wrote love songs about, and she didn’t hesitate in kissing him back.
It was a soft kiss, a gentle joining, and in that instant he was home.
Chapter Two
She didn’t want the kiss to end, but of course it did. Michael drew away slowly, hesitantly, taking his mouth from hers and very slowly sliding his warm hand from her neck. She’d never been able to think clearly when he kissed her, and apparently that hadn’t changed. Her brain was addled, and all she could think about was that kiss. She wanted another one. Now.
His hand rested on her arm, not too tightly but with a definite possessiveness. He leaned close and his body, clad entirely in black as always, sheltered her from the too-cool breeze. Still, she’d only said the single word “hi.” He must think she was a complete moron.
“I thought I’d look you up while I was home for Christmas,” she said indifferently, much too casually given the situation. Maybe not so casually as she’d thought, since her voice had an uncustomary breathless quality.
Michael grinned. “Good,” he whispered.
Her entire body tensed. “And then I thought maybe it wasn’t such a good idea after all.”
The fingers on her arm tightened ever so slightly. “You’re not going to run again, are you?”
Laura shook her head, never taking her eyes from Michael’s. Those green eyes were so much like Megan’s that looking at them caused an unwanted jolt to her senses. It wasn’t just the color; it was the shape, the clarity, a devilish twinkle. She needed to tell him why she’d come back, but not here, not like this. Not while they stood on the sidewalk, and not while her heart was pounding a mile a minute.
Michael slipped his arm through hers and led her back toward Forever Blue. Later, when she’d recovered from seeing and kissing him, she’d tell him about Megan.
“Let me play another song or two, and then cut out early. We can go somewhere for coffee.”
Thirty years old, and he was still playing in juke joints. “They won’t mind if you leave early?”
The grin he flashed was familiar and heartwarming. “What can they say? I work cheap.”
Laura sighed. She couldn’t help herself. Michael was talented, but music was a hard way to make a living. Very few aspiring musicians actually made it. He was so smart, he could do anything. With that smile and his natural charm he’d have made one hell of a salesman. When she’d mentioned that to him years ago he’d laughed at her. Michael Arnett a salesman? Maybe the very idea was laughable, she thought as she looked at him now.
He led her into Forever Blue, and all eyes turned toward them: the bartender and a beautiful cocktail waitress in a very short skirt, a man who had obviously imbibed too freely and a woman with big red hair, and all the rest. She didn’t want to look too closely at the man who’d entered the club on crutches, since she’d almost barreled him over in her haste to escape. Still, she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. He was now sitting with an attractive brunette, and didn’t seem to be holding a grudge.
A fair-haired man wearing a Hawaiian-print shirt sat comfortably at a table they passed close by. The woman he was with was wearing a very nice navy blue suit, and would have been the very picture of decorum in this menagerie if she hadn’t been singing at the top of her lungs—and rather badly.
Michael ignored them all. He placed Laura at a table near the stage and jumped onto the platform, and without a word he sat at the piano and began to play. She didn’t know the name of the piece he played, but it was fast and bluesy and intricate. It was her turn to smile. Michael always went to the music when he was nervous. Some people smoked; some went in for a primal scream or a long run. Michael Arnett played the piano.
And what a piano it was, taking up nearly the entire stage. How many juke joints had a grand piano like this one? Not many, she was sure.
When the piece ended abruptly, Michael looked over the small audience. “One more number, folks, and then I’m out of here for the night.”
“‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas,’” the drunk called out sullenly. “You didn’t finish last time, and I want my song.”
“No!” The woman with the big red hair shouted. “‘Jingle Bell Rock.’ That’s what I want to hear.”
For a couple of uncomfortable minutes, the two shouted at one another across the room. Their voices got louder, the insults became personal, and the redhead wickedly pitched a pretzel toward the drunk. Laura looked up to see Michael staring at the keys before him, lost in thought. If he heard the argument he paid no mind to the words.
When he laid his hands on the keys to play a silvery chord, there was silence from the dissenters, as they waited to see what he would play.
Bless his peacemaker heart, he played both—at the same time. The melodies intertwined into something beautiful and exotic and hauntingly entangled. No one in the place said a word as he played the impromptu mash-up. Even the bartender stopped what he was doing and leaned against the bar to listen and grin.
Laura listened, and smiled, and watched. He gave so much of himself to the music, and she could see it in his face and the set of his shoulders. There had always been something inexplicably erotic to her about watching Michael’s hands as he played, exquisite, strong, long-fingered hands that moved with ease over the keys. She’d fallen in love with those hands before she’d ever spoken a word to him.
When the unusual song was finished there was a long moment of stunned silence. Someone behind her let out a single whoop. The cheerful cry was followed by a burst of applause that went well beyond simply polite.
True to his word, Michael left the stage. He took Laura’s hand as she rose, and together they headed for the door. They walked past the drunk, who placed his forehead on the table and muttered, “I’m confused.”
When they passed the table where the singing woman and her companion sat, Michael nodded but didn’t slow down. “I’ll have that song ready for you next week, Modine.”
The man named Modine just nodded in response, and the next thing Laura knew they were at the exit. Michael turned and waved to the bartender, who was a barrel of a man with a crew cut.
“Chuck, I’m taking off,” Michael said easily. “How about a round of drinks on the—” He stopped in mid-sentence, glanced down at Laura, and after a moment of silence he finished. “How about a round of drinks on the piano player. Put it on my tab.”
There was a smattering of applause, and the bartender raised his gruff voice. “On your tab?”
“Yep.” With that short response, Michael ushered her from Forever Blue and onto Beale Street.
It wasn’t fair, but then life wasn’t fair, was it?
He wanted Laura back. There hadn’t been a day in the past five years that he hadn’t wanted her back, but right now the need was immediate and pressing. Knowing Laura, it wouldn’t be easy. Beneath that reticent demeanor she was probably as stubborn as always, and there would no doubt be problems to work out.
One problem he wouldn’t have to face: there was no wedding ring on her finger, and he knew his traditional, conventional, by-the-book Laura wouldn’t be here if she was still a married woman.
Yes, he definitely wanted her back, but not with the confession that he was richer than he’d ever dreamed, that she’d been wrong when she’d said making it in the music business was impossible. He wanted her to take him as he was. For better or for worse, for richer or for poorer.
If she’d gone to the trouble to Google him, then she knew he’d found success. But it would take an extensive search to uncover the details, for her to know how well he’d done and that he owned the bar where he played. Laura was a lot of things, but she was no stalker.
There was a coffee shop a couple of blocks up from Forever Blue that had recently reopened. No one there knew him, and that was where he took her.
They claimed a booth in the corner, and he ordered coffee for both of them. Regular, even at this time of night. He rarely went to sleep before dawn anyway, and caffeine had never bothered Laura. If he remembered correctly, and when it came to Laura he was sure he did, she could drink a pot of coffee and then slip into bed and fall immediately into a deep sleep.
How to begin? What to say? Dammit, this was much too awkward for his liking. Even after the waitress placed their large mugs of coffee on the table, Laura fidgeted. She bit her lower lip, briefly and just once, and she didn’t look directly at him anymore. If he could just kiss her again the awkwardness would go away, he knew it.
He tried to think of something brilliant to say, and failed miserably. “Still a bean counter?”
At least that got a smile out of her. A small smile, but it was a start. “An accountant,” she corrected. “Yes.” She finally looked him square in the eye again, and the effect was immediate and powerful, as though he’d been punched in the gut. Or the heart. “You’re still the piano man, and better than ever from what I heard tonight.”
It was an old joke, and not a very funny one. How had a bean counter and a piano man who had no beans ever gotten together in the first place?
“And writing,” she added softly. “1 heard what you said to that man as we left.”
She didn’t say more, but he could read Laura easily. People didn’t make a living writing songs, not in her world. In his world, however, they did quite nicely. “I play with it a little bit,” he admitted.
Laura nodded and gave him a noncommittal hum, and her eyes dropped.
“So,” he said, anxious to change the subject. “You’re home for Christmas. Staying at your mother’s?”
She shook her head. “No. We’re staying at a hotel nearby. The Original Heartbreak Hotel over on Blues Street.”
We. It was a small word, casually thrown out there and weighing on his mind like a ton of bricks. He didn’t even realize he was going to repeat the word aloud until he heard it coming out of his mouth.
Laura went pale and bit her lip again, but she didn’t lower her eyes. “My daughter and me,” she said very softly and quickly. “I have a daughter,” she added unnecessarily. “We have...” She swallowed hard and blinked twice. “We have the most outrageous room in this odd hotel, and I swear there are Elvis impersonators everywhere I turn. In the elevator, in the lobby, in the cafe, on the street. Megan doesn’t know quite what to think of it, but there wasn’t a lot to choose from. I waited too long to make my reservations, you see, and this was all I could find.” She went on, her words coming faster and faster until Michael was afraid she would explode. Did she take a breath? He didn’t think so.
“Just you and Megan?” he interrupted. God help him, he had to know.
“And Jennifer,” Laura added more calmly. “Elaine’s oldest daughter. She agreed to come along and baby-sit.”
No husband mentioned, Michael noted with what had to be a noticeable sigh of relief. He found that right now he didn’t care what had happened to the smiling man who had chased Laura down the stairs three years ago to take the baby from her arms. He didn’t care if they were divorced or separated or if the bastard was dead. Laura was his. She always had been.
Her hand was resting on the table beside her mug, and he reached across to cover that hand with his. He was different with Laura, better; his heart and his soul were stronger. No way was she getting away from him again.
***
They’d been at the coffee shop for hours, and as they talked the awkwardness fell away, crumbling a bit at a time until it was as if they’d never been apart. They’d talked about everything, catching up the way old friends do, worried one minute that they wouldn’t have anything to talk about, worried the next that there wouldn’t be enough time to say everything that needed to be said.
She’d learned that Michael lived in a room over Forever Blue, performed in the club six or seven nights a week, and played with writing songs on the side. Obviously his beloved music hadn’t been financially kind to him in the past five years, but he seemed healthy and happy.
Yes, they’d talked about everything. Well, almost everything. She still hadn’t told him that Megan was his daughter. She almost had, but she’d chickened out and started babbling. What was she supposed to do? Interrupt one of his stories about playing piano for the news flash? Interject it into one of her spiels about her daily routine?
I have an apartment in Birmingham, my baby sister Karen got married the summer after we broke up, and, oh, yes, Megan is your daughter.