Any Way You Want It. Kathy Love

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СКАЧАТЬ Jo said from beside her, dragging Maggie’s attention away from the music. “Good eye. That guy’s pretty darn hot.”

      Maggie blinked back at the stage, for the first time noticing the man actually playing the music. He was tall with long hair in a shade somewhere between chestnut brown and dark mahogany, cascading over his broad shoulders.

      He was looking down at the keyboard, his hair falling forward, shrouding most of his features, so that Maggie wondered how Jo could tell whether he was hot or not.

      The thought quickly vanished as she watched his long fingers travel over the keys, playing a particularly difficult combination of chords. Exactly the combination she’d read before she’d left. A fusion of notes that seemed to be a signature of sorts, the signature of a composer she was willing to bet this guy from a cover band on Bourbon Street had never even heard of.

      Yet here he was, playing it. Playing a piece that no one knew. An undiscovered composition probably by a little known composer.

      Then two things happened at once: the beautiful, haunting tune abruptly switched into the intro to the classic eighties rock ballad “Sister Christian,” and Maggie realized that the musician was staring directly at her. And she was staring back.

      “Ah, man, he has a lazy eye,” Erika said with a disappointed sigh.

      Maggie heard her friend’s words and regret, but they didn’t seem to quite reach her, as if they echoed from a distance or through a somnolent haze. She just kept staring at the man, unable to look away, even though everything in her told her to.

      “There is something up with his eye, but I don’t think it’s lazy,” Maggie heard Jo say.

      Maggie wanted to speak, to say there wasn’t anything wrong with his eyes, but the words in her head couldn’t fumble their way past her lips.

      All she could manage was to focus on him—on the eyes in question. Eyes that seemed to match the music he’d been playing: complicated, intense, haunted. And just as the music held her entranced, so did his gaze.

      Until finally, a small smile curved his lips and his gaze left her to concentrate on his keyboards.

      Maggie actually jerked, as if some invisible line had been cut between them, and she was freed. The room tilted for a moment as the whole world seemed to shift on its axis. Then it slammed back into place.

      On rubbery knees, she walked toward the bar.

      “Where are you going?” Erika asked.

      “I need to sit,” Maggie murmured, relieved to find a vacant stool, which she collapsed onto. What had just happened?

      “I think that guy was checking you out,” Jo said, wiggling her eyebrows.

      Maggie ignored her as she tried to visualize the sheet music she’d just begun to study before she left her office for this trip. She could see the notes, scratched across the page, ink faded on yellowed, brittle paper. Faint notes, but still there. Like the already fading notes of what she’d thought she’d just heard. Those notes gone now amongst the chords and rhythms of the rock ballad.

      “What’s going on?” Jo asked, when Maggie continued to stare off, lost in the images in her head.

      Maggie shook her head, not quite ready to say aloud what she was thinking. It seemed so ridiculous.

      “Maggie, I can’t believe just having a guy notice you has you that shaken,” Jo said, wedging herself between Maggie’s stool and the one next to her. The businessman seated on the neighboring barstool, who Jo had bumped into, turned to glare at her. His annoyance faded as soon as he saw Jo’s profile, her lovely features accented by cropped, glossy brown hair and big dark brown eyes.

      Jo didn’t notice the man twisting on his seat to peer at her. Nor did Erika notice his friend, checking her out as well. Erika, with her thick midnight black hair and killer smile. Then again, attention from men was a common occurrence for both her friends. Not for Maggie, however, with her less than lithe form and limited fashion sense.

      Then she recalled the link she’d felt when she’d met the eyes of the man on the stage. A connection had coursed between them, strong and…almost alive. A feeling she’d never in her life encountered. Of course, it wasn’t his attention that had shaken her. Okay, maybe it had a little, but she wasn’t sure that what had occurred between them was even attraction.

      It was almost as if they were both in on a secret. A secret he acted like only they knew. Of course, she wasn’t actually in on that secret, was she?

      Was it the music? Was that what they’d shared? Did he know she knew the piece he’d been playing?

      And she did know it. Maggie was certain. Okay, she had only given a few of the pieces a cursory glance as she readied to leave for vacation. Certainly, packing and getting ready to leave could have made her less observant than usual. And there had been dozens of compositions that needed authenticating. Literally dozens. Symphonies, concerti, and sonatas. Even what appeared to be a complete opera.

      Quite a discovery, and she couldn’t resist sneaking a little peek, even though she couldn’t really do any intense analysis until she got back.

      Still, even with her brief perusal, she knew the keyboard player up on that stage had been playing one of the pieces she’d seen. A sonata.

      She wasn’t wrong—although now, with yet another classic rock standard playing behind her, she was starting to question her own memory.

      “That guy—on the keyboards,” she said, still hesitant to say the words aloud, because they were so implausible, “he was just playing one of the pieces I’m researching. A piece that may very well have never been seen by any musician other than the composer.”

      Her friends stared at her. They thought she was nuts too.

      “Oh, no,” Jo said, shaking her head. “No, no. You are not going to think about work.”

      “That’s right,” Erika agreed. “You are too obsessed with it as it is. You are not going to think about it now.”

      “But I wasn’t. Not until I heard what he was playing.” Maggie knew what she heard. Even though she knew it wasn’t possible.

      “How would some musician on Bourbon Street know the stuff you research? Aren’t they lost pieces of classical music?” Jo frowned, then waved for the bartender.

      “Exactly,” Maggie said. “But I know it was one of them. In fact, it was the last piece I looked at before leaving the office.”

      Maggie cast a look between her two friends. Erika’s eyes shone with concern. Jo frowned, the downward curve of her lips somewhere between worry and exasperation. And neither one looked as if they believed her.

      “You know what I think,” Jo said, after ordering something from the bartender that Maggie couldn’t quite hear over the newest rock anthem pounding behind her. “I think it just reminded you of that piece. And wasn’t that the large collection you and Peter were supposed to be working on together?”

      Maggie nodded. This job was one of the few things she’d gotten to keep when Peter left.

      “Maybe subconsciously СКАЧАТЬ