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“Why did you stop?”
“Did you hear the part about the third chair? I wasn’t very good.” We pause briefly to place our orders and hand off the menus to the waiter who has arrived at our table. Once he’s promised he’ll return with the fresh garlic oysters we’ve ordered as a starter, I pick up our conversation as if it was never interrupted. “I bet you, however, are a very good pianist.”
She almost chokes on her water, thumping a hand to her chest. “Me?! You wouldn’t know.”
“I can tell you are.”
I also spied and watched you play the other night…
“You’re flattering me for no reason. You’ve never heard me play.”
“Tell you what. I will play the violin for you, if you play the piano for me.”
The wary look she gives me, complete with an arched brow, is amusing. “That sounds more like it’ll work in your favor. You’ve already said you’re bad. All you have to do is show up, bomb a quick etude, and then I’m forced to let you hear me play.”
“You underestimate the level of humiliation bombing a quick etude will cause me.”
For a moment that stretches on, she regards me with narrowed eyes, twisted lips, and a scrunched up nose. The expression is unexpected and what some in my world would call unladylike, however, I’m amused.
“Fine,” she sighs eventually. “I guess I should get used to playing again. With Maximillion gone, she’s asked me to fill in.”
I keep my reaction tempered. “Maximillion’s gone? Remind me which one he is?”
…the same one whose throat I slit and then left dismembered in a ditch.
“Maximillion Keys,” she clarifies. “He’s basically the star of the Velvet Piano—or was, anyway. He was murdered the other night. You haven’t heard about it? The police are investigating.”
…and they’ll never trace it back to me.
“I’m afraid not. I’ve been preoccupied with three aortic aneurysms this week. Do they have any idea who could’ve done it? Did he have any known enemies?”
She shakes her head. “The police are stumped. Apparently, the killer didn’t leave much in terms of evidence aside from his dead body… almost as if they were taunting authorities.”
That’s exactly what I was doing.
“Such a shame,” I say, forcing a solemn frown. “He seemed so talented.”
“Yeah, I wasn’t a fan of the guy—he was kind of an asshole, actually—but I didn’t want him dead. It’s even weirder now my manager seems to want me to play. She put me on the door the other night because she didn’t want me to.”
“Then you shouldn’t.”
Her brows jump. “Shouldn’t… play? You can’t be serious.”
“Lyra, you are better than some dive piano bar where half the patrons are belligerently drunk,” I explain matter-of-factly. I dig into the pocket on the inside of my blazer and retrieve a business card I’ve intentionally brought along to this lunch. “Here,” I say, pushing the card into her hand. “This is the direct line to a friend of mine, Fyodor Kreed. He is on the hiring board at the Easton Opera House. They are always searching for new talent, particularly as the holiday shows are currently being put together. However, you have to have an impressive resume—or an insider connection—in order to land an audition. Tell him Kaden gave you his number and recommends you.”
Lyra stares. She stares and stares, holding the business card as though it’s a foreign object she’s never seen before. Then she looks up at me and pierces me with the same awestricken, speechless type of stare.
I settle back in my seat and wait out her shock.
She might not realize it, but in this moment, she’s quite an exquisite sight—long, natural lashes that flutter as her curious, almond-shaped eyes stare back at me, and she holds her mouth with her full lips slightly parted. Youthful cheeks curve into a delicate jawline and a round-tipped nose punctuated by a tiny silver loop that’s strangely…her.
That perplexingly adds to the uniqueness of her.
From where she sits, the sunlight filters in from the glass ceiling and leaves her smooth, dark brown complexion with a radiance that’s almost entrancing.
My mind jumps back to the other night, watching her play so eloquently, and I can’t resist melding the two instances—visualizing her like this, in a sunlit room where she’ll sit in front of the piano and play for me. The look of soft surprise that would linger on her face when I make my request and then attentively pose as her sole audience member.
Does she realize how talented she is? How striking she looks when she plays?
