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; “I do. A lot. More than you can imagine. Except, you brushed off dangerous fox and still call me your mouse. Why? Are you dangerous?”
His eyes darkened, filled by his big, black pupils. “No,” he said curtly.
I recoiled in my seat at the fierceness of his response. “Just— No. Not exactly confidence boosting. What is it you’re not telling me?”
“Telling you?” He folded his arms across his chest. “I should not have told you that silly expression. That’s what. It’s nothing, Callie. Whatever came to mind is in the past, done.”
“Your past? I know nothing of you, Stefan. What do you expect me to think?”
Another shade of darkness swept over his face. I had pushed some angry button. “I’ll go.” I reached for the door handle.
“No.” He shot his hand out and grabbed my arm. “I’m sorry.” His voice softened. “I’ve been abrasive. You have a right to ask questions.”
I turned back in my seat and let go of the door. “Yes. I do. You’ve fucked me, an intimate act, and I’m entitled to know more about you. You mentioned your past. I don’t even know how old you are.”
“I’m twenty-seven.”
Crikey. I’d thought him older, in his early thirties. Why had I assumed that? His appearance put him in a younger bracket. Behavior. The difference confidence made to his personality was obvious. I put him older, because he naturally exuded affable assurance, nothing contrived. A pang of envy briefly hampered my thoughts. I brushed it aside. “You studied music?”
“Yes. Composition and the piano. I don’t like performing.”
I was on a roll. The darkness had lifted from his face, his shoulders relaxed, drooping. What questions had he thought I was going to ask? He seemed almost pleased that they were mundane and superficial.
“In England? You studied here?”
“At Cambridge. I stayed on afterward. My dad built the house for me.”
A few droplets of rain landed on the windshield. “He paid for it?”
Stefan puffed out his lips. “He’s a brilliant designer and owns a building business. Successful. I have a trust fund. It takes the pressure off me finding work. Although, it won’t last forever. He calls me lazy. I should be composing, creating those symphonies, concertos. Unfortunately, my father’s rather pragmatic approach to architecture doesn’t apply to composing. He’s given projects. I have to fill an empty void from scratch. My inspiration has been lacking.”
He looked down at his hands. I sensed the burden his father had placed on his shoulders—parental disappointment. I understood how that felt.
The pattering on the roof grew louder, forcing me to raise my voice. “Where does your musical inclination come from—your mother?”
His face lit up as he raised his head. “Yes, very much so. She’s not a teacher or anything. She worked as an interior designer when she met my father. She sings beautifully. I’ve written a few songs for her.”
“She lives in Cambridge?”
“No. Devon. She moves about a lot, doing odd jobs. When she lived with my dad, she preferred to keep house. At least he was generous in the divorce settlement.” Another grating pass of resentment at his father played out in his voice.
“There, see? Not difficult, is it? Talking about yourself. Nothing dangerous about you, Stefan. Sad, perhaps.”
“Sad? Maybe. A sad fox. Doesn’t have quite the same ring about it.”
I tingled, a satisfactory sensation. He’d given me something. I had to give back. I let my hand wander across the middle of the car, over the dividing line of the handbrake, and plant itself on his thigh. “Why don’t you come in and show me a little danger?” I held my breath and stared as hard as I could with a confidence I rarely displayed.
He curled his lips upward. A telltale sign of acceptance, delight even.
“Sure. Work tomorrow?”
“No rose delivery. Eight o’clock start.”
With his head bowed as the rain hammered down, he followed me into the house, carrying my music stand in its torn bag. We bypassed the downstairs and went straight to my bedroom. No king-size bed. My standard double took up a large amount of floor space. Adding in the wardrobe and chest of drawers, you could barely swing a cat. He didn’t comment. I unburdened him of the stand and dropped it and the bag into the ottoman at the base of my bed.
I ran a trembling hand through my hair. “Shall I take your coat?”
He wordlessly slipped it off his shoulders and handed it to me. A few raindrops dripped onto the carpet. I hung it on the coat hook attached to the back of the door, along with my own damp coat, then succumbed to another bout of silly hair twirling. He took a small step toward me and his lofty advantage cast a shadow over me.
