Читать книгу Any Way You Want It - Kathy Love - Страница 10

“What is he doing?” Erika asked, frowning at the stage.

Maggie didn’t respond. She just watched as the musician, who she’d waited for like a groupie, fiddled with some of the sound equipment, oblivious to her, still seated at the bar. They’d finished playing nearly fifteen minutes ago, and he hadn’t approached her.

“I think maybe we should go. I feel stupid just waiting here,” Maggie said, keeping her voice even, trying to hide her humiliation.

What had she been thinking? That he’d really intended to talk to her again? After all, this was New Orleans. He’d probably had twenty conversations tonight just like the one they’d shared.

She glanced around the dim, run-down barroom, looked at the thinning crowd. She was the only one who’d waited. Even the tipsy group of wild women who’d worked all night to get the band’s attention, especially his attention, had left after the band stopped playing.

Maggie glanced at her friends. Both Jo and Erika looked pained and annoyed for her. Although she knew they meant well, their sympathetic expressions didn’t help. They just made her feel more pathetic.

Maggie rose from her barstool, turning to check if she’d left anything behind, only to realize that all she had was her purse—and that was in her hand.

She pulled in a deep breath, attempting to calm herself. She’d managed to stay composed through the band’s long set. There was no point to falling apart now.

In fact, she decided, this was for the best. What did she really expect to happen anyway? That Erika’s prediction had come true, and whatever happened with the musician and the music was Marie Laveau’s doing? That a voodoo priestess had somehow led her here? It was time to go back to the hotel and crawl into bed, as she’d been longing to do all night long.

She glanced back at the bar again, looking for what, she didn’t know. Darn, she was flustered.

“Okay, let’s…” Her words faded as she turned back to her friends to find herself staring at a V of chest and dark hair. Both familiar.

“Were you leaving?”

Maggie hesitated. Something inside warned her she should just say yes and head back to the hotel. After all, she was out of her element with this man. He had probably just come over now because he realized that, silly person that she was, she had actually thought he meant what he’d said earlier. So, now he felt obligated to come speak to her.

“It’s still loud in here. And hot,” he said, tugging at his shirt, which again drew her attention to his chest. He gestured to one of the side doors leading to the street. “Want to step outside with me?”

Maggie hesitated. While the bar had emptied out considerably, the pop music did make it hard to talk. And humidity did make the air thick and damp. Although she noticed he didn’t appear sweaty at all—not even flushed. She suspected she did.

She glanced at Jo and Erika. Erika grinned, widening her eyes with encouragement. Jo wasn’t as eager as Erika, but she didn’t give any signal that she thought Maggie should avoid him.

Maggie nodded. “Sure. It is kind of loud.”

Again that amazing smile appeared. He started to reach out as if he intended to touch her, perhaps place his hand on the small of her back, but then he dropped it back to his side.

“This way,” he said, again gesturing to the side door.

They stepped out onto the sidewalk, a cracked slab of stained concrete. The street they stood on ran perpendicular to Bourbon. Bourbon was still alive with partyers, despite the hour.

“I’m Ren Anthony, by the way,” he said offering his hand.

“Maggie Gallagher,” she said, accepting his hand, immediately remembering his hands as he held the mic. She’d thought he had nice hands then, but touching them, she realized they went beyond nice. They were…lovely. Long fingers and broad palms, an artist’s hand, strong and sculpted, but with a slight roughness of calluses, as if they’d known physical work too. Her body reacted instantly; energy zinged up her arm and throughout her body. Then he released her.

“Does anyone ever sleep in this city?” she asked, grabbing onto the first thought that came into her mind.

Ren turned to watch a large group of what appeared to be middle-aged men and their wives wander down the middle of Bourbon, loud and giddy.

“During the day,” he said. Then he turned back to her. “Did you come here to sleep? Because if you did, you are in the wrong place.”

She recalled her friends sharing a similar sentiment with her earlier. Although Maggie hardly saw it as a sign, Erika would. Maggie wasn’t that impractical, though. After all, New Orleans was a party-all-night kind of place.

But she did consider his question. “No. I didn’t come here to sleep.”

“So what did you come here for?”

Maggie met his gaze, realizing for the first time since they’d stepped outside that she’d been avoiding looking at him. But he’d managed to ask the question of the night, and that surprised her. What had she come here for? What did she expect from this vacation?

For the first time, she considered the idea seriously, that it might not just be to relax. Maybe she was looking for the fling that her friends said she needed. She considered telling him that, but she didn’t have the courage. Her gaze left his and dropped back to the stained sidewalk.

“Does my eye bother you?”

Maggie’s head snapped up. What? Why would his eye bother her?

Then for the first time, she realized why one eye looked so different. She’d noticed it was different back in the bar, but out here, surrounded by streetlights and the lights of the other buildings, she could see why it looked unusual.

While the lashes of his right eye were dark brown, a shade or two darker than his hair, the lashes of his left eye were perfectly white. Devoid of all pigmentation.

She couldn’t help but stare for a moment. It was so dramatic. And fascinating to look at.

Finally, she remembered he’d asked her a question.

“No. Your eye doesn’t bother me. It’s actually rather interesting.”

He smiled slightly—not the same as the smiles she’d seen before, though. This one looked hard, somehow. It didn’t quite reach his eyes. “You’re not worried it could be an evil eye or something? This is New Orleans. Voodoo and all that.”

There was a joking quality to his tone, yet like his smile, the amusement didn’t seem to reach his eyes.

“Well, I’m not sure about all the voodoo,” she said, offering him a small smile, “but I’m pretty sure your eye is fine.”

She smiled until she realized his gaze was locked on her lips. His eyes moved up to meet hers. A zing of awareness shot through her just as it had when their eyes met while he was onstage. The haunting strains of the song he’d been playing suddenly echoed in her mind.

“So is this just a vacation?” he asked, drawing her back to the moment, the music and the strange energy shattering and rippling away like the still waters of a pond when a rock is thrown into it.

“Yes.” She pulled in a breath, trying to gather herself. “For ten days. We’re staying right there,” she pointed to the large, many-windowed hotel across the street.

His gaze followed her gesture and held there long enough that Maggie began to wonder what held his attention so. Then he turned back to her.

“You probably shouldn’t announce that. Unless you want strange men to follow you home.” He smiled, the curling at the edges returned, though something was different about his eyes. “Do you?”

Maggie blinked, still trying to understand the strange, almost haunted look in his eyes.

“Do I what?” She totally missed what he was asking.

“Do you want strange men to follow you home?”

Her body reacted to the question instantly. He was flirting with her. Unbelievably, he really was. She had no idea how to deal with that.

“So do you live in the French Quarter?” she managed to ask, opting to ignore his question and get the conversation on some sort of normal ground.

He nodded, and again she noticed how silky his hair looked framing his face.

“I live on St. Ann,” he told her. “Why? Did you want to follow me home?”

She swallowed. Wow, she really was out of her element here. Guys did not flirt with her. They just didn’t. Except this one, and she had no idea how to respond. Her gaze dropped to the ground. Gum, beer caps, crushed cigarettes—these things she could understand.

Then a hand touched her, strong fingers gentle as they nudged her face up so her gaze met his.

“I make you uncomfortable, don’t I?”

Maggie licked her lips, trying to breathe, trying to speak as more sizzling awareness zipped through her, stemming from the place where his fingers touched her chin, then radiating outward in whirling spirals throughout her body.

She managed to shake her head. He did make her uncomfortable but not in the way he thought. He made her awkwardly aware of how attracted she was to him. And how little she knew how to handle something this intense, this strong. Peter had never made her feel so…

She let out a pent-up breath. So strange. She pulled in a slow breath to replace the one she’d released.

His gaze returned to her lips.

The one and only thought going through Ren’s mind was that he wanted to kiss this woman. She had a small mouth, bowlike, sweet, and he wanted desperately to taste it. But given the way she’d frozen when he’d touched her, he didn’t think she’d be very receptive to a kiss.

Man, he’d lived this life way too long. Only in New Orleans, only in the bar scene, was it even remotely acceptable to make out with a woman that you’d said less than fifty words to. Add that he was a musician, and he could usually knock off another twenty-five words.

But this woman wasn’t a part of that world…his world. She had an intelligence and innate innocence that was clear in her wide gray-green eyes. Even in the way she held herself—a little closed off, a little distant. As if she knew she was too close to something dangerous. The virtuous standing before the fires of hell.

What? When had he gotten so colorful in his thought processes? Night after night of the same old rock and roll and the same debauchery had drained all the creativity out of him. Even back at his most creative, that image would have been a tad dramatic.

For a moment, his gaze left her and focused on the building she’d pointed to earlier. A large, popular hotel…now. The original building, The Opera House, was gone. The beautiful building once filled with music and applause and talent, gone, reduced to ashes.

Perhaps the fire analogy wasn’t so far off after all. It certainly was a good reminder of what could happen if he got too involved with a mortal. He destroyed them, and he could easily destroy all the appealing things he saw in her.

But instead of walking away, as he should have, he returned his attention to her. Maggie. He studied the woman in front of him.

Was it so wrong to simply talk with her? To let her freshness clear away a little of the dirt that had settled into him? But he wanted to do more than talk, didn’t he? That’s when things got tricky; that’s when he was playing with fire.

Or rather, he was allowing her to play with fire. He slid another glance at the hotel, a looming reminder of how dangerous things could get if he went too far.

But instead of ending things here and now, he asked, “So what do you do back in D.C.?” A safe enough question. For both of them.

But again, she regarded him with a wariness that easily rivaled that of a cornered rabbit.

“I’m an authenticator. I do a lot of work for the Smithsonian and other museums.”

Interesting. “What do you authenticate?”

Again she seemed reluctant to say, but she did. “I actually research and authenticate classical music.”

Now it was Ren’s turn to freeze. Classical music. Was that why she’d reacted the way she had when he’d noticed her there at the stage, staring up at him as if she was seeing a ghost?

Of course, she had been seeing a ghost. But there was no way she could know that. That piece had never been heard outside of his father’s music room. Played in public once—and then forgotten. Except by him. It was still there, even after he longed to forget it, forget that night.

“You are a very good pianist,” he heard her say, and he shoved that long-ago night out of his mind.

“Not really.”

“That song you were playing at the beginning of the night—”

“You know, it is late.”

His abrupt words shut her down instantly. He knew they would. It wasn’t hard to crush a butterfly—and she was fragile and delicate as one. Just as he’d seen the pureness, he’d seen the vulnerability too, right from their first gaze.

But he could not talk about this, even though she couldn’t possibly know who he was. He wasn’t a pianist anymore. He wasn’t a composer. Renaldo D’Antoni was dead. A ghost.

“Oh,” she said, pink coloring her cheeks. “Right. I didn’t mean to—”

He couldn’t listen to her apology when she had no reason for making one. “I just didn’t realize the time. And I have a long night tomorrow.”

“Right,” she said again. Then she glanced around her, and for a moment he wondered what she was searching for. Then he recalled her friends.

The two women appeared as if they’d been watching. They stepped out of the bar to join them on the street, right at her side once they were aware Maggie needed them.

Ren liked that they’d remained close. New Orleans could be a dangerous city. It made him feel better to know his butterfly wasn’t alone.

They flanked their friend like tall, lovely bodyguards.

“Maggie,” the one with short brown hair asked, “who’s your friend?”

Ren could tell the friend’s inquiry was really just a way to gauge Maggie’s feelings. He watched Maggie closely too, even though he knew her emotions. He could feel them in the air—she was embarrassed. He hated that feeling on her. It was like a noxious perfume, as noxious as her wariness. More so—because embarrassment also involved pain.

But he managed to remain stoic as he offered a hand to the friend.

“Hi, I’m Ren.”

“Jo,” she said, not offering him a smile and only accepting his hand for a moment.

Jo wasn’t a vampire, but she obviously could sense her friend was uncomfortable. Of course, Maggie’s emotions were easy to read, every one of them flashing in her eyes.

“And I’m Erika,” the black-haired one said, regarding him with a small smile, and a look that was more speculative than judging.

But both women were ready to protect their friend. That should have made him feel a lot better, but instead he was filled with an odd desire to join her friends’ ranks. Maggie seemed to need protection.

Yeah, from you more than anyone, he thought.

He immediately decided he’d been wrong to even approach this woman. She wasn’t his type. Totally wrong. He should have chatted up the buxom babes who’d shimmied on the dance floor all night.

Maybe it wasn’t too late to find them. Then he looked back into Maggie’s big eyes, and a sinking feeling told him it was already way too late.

“Nice to meet you all,” he said, stepping back from the women. “I hope you have a great time in New Orleans.” He didn’t even bother to temper the abrupt good-bye. The whole point was to make sure she didn’t return.

Maggie Gallagher was a risk he couldn’t take. Who knew a butterfly could be so dangerous?