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Heaven help her. This was fun.
She nodded, then turned to the audience. “Should I finish the song for him?”
The students answered with a rousing eruption of applause.
Landon stopped playing and allowed the piano to carry the tune. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the chords and surrendered to the inflection and intonation of each note as the lyrics came to her.
“But it’s not things that she really needs. It’s the unspoken promise, the tender deeds that show her what she really means, baby, on the romance scale of devotion,” she belted, hitting each note like her sole purpose on this planet was to sing those precise lyrics in this exact concert hall with Landon Paige by her side.
She exhaled a slow breath as the students rose to their feet, clapping, hooting, and cheering as if they’d witnessed a miracle—and maybe they had because she could feel it, too. The magic, the energy, the instant where a song stopped being a collection of notes and words and became a vessel capturing a moment, just like Landon had talked about.
And if that wasn’t momentous enough, another shift occurred. The roar of the crowd faded the second she met her husband’s gaze. Owning her with his soulful brown eyes, he came to his feet, rested the guitar against the stool, then strode the few steps between them.
“You’re spellbinding,” he breathed as he took her hands and helped her to her feet.
Electricity sparked inside her like she was part human and part firework. She gave the man her best feisty smirk. “You’re not so bad yourself, heart—”
Landon cupped her face in his hands before she could get out the last sass-infused syllable. “Always so damned sassy,” he breathed, then shut her up with a kiss.
And like the first time their lips locked, time and space meant nothing when his lips met hers.
Here’s the thing. They might have been standing in the spotlight, but this kiss wasn’t for the crowd or those tuning in on LookyLoo.
This kiss was for them and for them alone. She felt the intensity and the intimacy with every fiber of her being.
She sighed as he slid his hands into her hair and the concert hall whirled around them, and a cacophony of sparkling exuberance took hold. The man had most certainly sampled the chocolate ganache filling, and his chocolatey-sweet kiss melded with the vibrations of their music lingering in the charged air. It was a palpable presence, unyielding and enduring like the ground beneath her. There was a permanence to it, a solidness, a strength.
Did he feel it, too?
Landon pulled back, and the warmth of his cocoa-licious breath tickled her lips. “You’re vibrating.”
She opened her eyes as a reverberation rippled through her. “That might be true, but you’re vibrating, too.”
Another low buzz zinged through her, and…shit!
Those vibrations weren’t due to their musical magic.
“We’re both vibrating,” she exclaimed as the swirl of tasty kisses and rolling melodies vanished in a puff of chocolate-laced air. “It’s our cell phones. It’s our school pickup alarms for Aria.”
He checked his watch, then cursed under his breath. “We need to hit the road. We can’t be late—not today.”
“We could text Char and Mitch or any of our friends and ask them to pick up Aria—or wait with her at school until we get there,” she offered.
“No, it has to be us, and we have to be on time.”
That was odd.
Picking up Aria right after the school bell rang was important, but it wasn’t like the kid would be left out in the cold in a seedy part of town. It was early October in Denver. The temperature sat at a comfortable sixty-five degrees, and their friends would be there. They wouldn’t allow Aria to wait by herself. Not to mention, Whitmore was surrounded by multi-million-dollar homes. Aria had a better chance of being cooked a gourmet meal and gifted a jeweled tiara than having any actual harm befalling her in that neck of the woods.
“I’m going to wrap up this livestream pop-star style, and then we’re booking it out the back,” Landon whispered against the shell of her ear.
“I still don’t think we have to run,” she replied and checked the time on her phone. Granted, they were on the other side of town and it would take longer to get to Whitmore, but not that much longer.
“Trust me, bonbon. We’ve got to go.” He paused. “Are you wearing underwear?”
What?
He was all we-gotta-hurry five seconds ago, and now he was doing a panty check?
