A Reckless Note (Brilliance Trilogy #1) - Lisa Renee Jones Page 0,26
all done,” she says.
“Wonderful.” I slide the folder into my bag and then sip my martini. “How long have you been at Riptide?”
“Seven years. It’s really a second home. Mark’s mother ran the auction house and I was her right hand until Mark joined the company.”
“And it was love at first sight?”
She snorts. “Oh what a story that is. I don’t know you well enough yet to tell it.”
“Now you’re killing me with curiosity.” We talk and laugh a bit about Mark’s asshole persona, but it doesn’t last long before she comes full circle. “Back to Kace,” she says.
I shake my head and laugh. “Really?” I take another long drink. “Why Kace?”
“Because I saw how you looked at him, too.”
I wave that off. “Please. I’m in awe of the man’s talent.” I settle my chin on my hand. “His music is magical.” My mind slips back to the stage and me in the center of the room while he played, my lashes lowering as I hear the violin in my head. “Kace is just—” A tingling sensation slides over me and I glance up to find Kace standing over us, but his eyes aren’t on us, they’re on me.
He arches a brow. “I’m just what, Aria?”
I’m so busted. I grab my glass and down my drink. Crystal bursts out in giggles. “I need to run to the ladies’ room.” She stands up and catches Kace’s arm to murmur something to him that I’m not privy to before walking away. Kace slides into the booth across from me and flags down the waitress. “Whiskey sour,” he says and motions to my glass. “Another?”
“God no,” I say. “I can barely feel my face right now.”
He laughs and so does the waitress before she walks away. “I’m not staying or intruding,” I quickly say. “I’m about to leave.”
“Don’t,” he says.
“Don’t?”
“Don’t leave.”
It’s exactly what he’d said to me at the bakery and as I sit here, drowning in his stare, I’m not even close to leaving. He leans forward. “What did the song mean to you?”
The alcohol has loosened my tongue and my answer comes quickly with no reserve. “Life. Death. Passion. Pleasure. Happiness. Sadness. Loss.”
His eyes flicker and burn with what I don’t expect, but after listening to him play, should have expected: understanding. “Then I was right,” he declares. “It was personal.”
I forget the denial that will get me nowhere anyway. “Very,” I say simply.
“Your reaction wasn’t about me at all,” he repeats. “I like that.”
My brows furrow. “Why?”
“Because it was about the music, just the music. Because your reaction was raw and real. That’s not easy to find.”
I lean in closer, and dare to speak what I feel. “Every time you play, it’s raw and real, Kace August.”
“And that matters to me coming from you because I know you mean it. And because I can tell that you truly love the violin. Do you play?”
“Not since I was a small child,” I confess when I would never admit this to anyone else, but he’s Kace August, and the world around him sees him, not me. And at least tonight, with a little drink down me, that idea is liberating, it’s freedom I embrace.
“Do you want to play?”
“As a child, but now, like millions of other people, I’d rather listen to you play.”
“I’m not thinking about millions of other people,” he says, his voice low, almost seductive. “I’m thinking of you. I’m right here with you.”
Until he’s not again, I think. “And that,” I say, “is exactly how you make everyone feel when you play.”
“I’m more interested in how I make you feel. Now. Right now.”
Heat spikes in the air, sizzling between us and that confusion he stirs in me sears me right along with the heat in his stare. Heat I can no longer dismiss as mine alone. It’s here. It’s real. It’s—
“Aria.”
At the sound of Alexander’s voice, I cringe at the timing, and Kace’s gaze jerks up and left. I follow his lead to find Alexander towering over me, dressed in an expensive three-piece suit and wearing a look of expectancy. “Can we have that talk?” he asks.
The air cuts and bleeds with Kace’s energy and when I look at him, his expression is closed, unreadable.
Crystal picks that moment to return as if she’d seen the disaster in the making, and dove right in to save the day. Kace stands up to allow her to access the booth and when he does, he steps into Alexander and speaks, his voice