of his hands.
She wants to gentle those hands between her own, to run a finger over that scar on his face, to kiss him. Hell, she wants to clean his house and make him dinner, and Phee is not a domestic creature.
But none of this is why she is here.
“I came to check on her,” she says.
“I assume by that you mean the cello and not my daughter.” His tone and his eyes are dangerous. “You’ll stay away from her, Phee. Oh hell. Too late.”
His gaze shifts and Phee’s follows.
Allie stands at the edge of the room, a personified question. “Who is staying away from whom?”
Even if Phee hadn’t been cyberstalking Allie for years, hadn’t seen her at the funeral, she’d have recognized the girl anywhere. Her face is modeled on the same plan as Braden’s, same cheekbones, same strong jaw and cleft chin, only more rounded, the cleft more of a dimple. Her hair is darker, and straight where his is wavy, but the resemblance is obvious.
“Allie—” Braden begins, but she cuts him off.
“Who are you?” she demands.
“This is the luthier who maintains the cello,” Braden cuts in before Phee can answer. “She brought flowers. She’s leaving.”
“I’m so terribly sorry about what happened.” Phee knows the words are useless, that Allie has heard them uttered so many times already she’s probably sick to death of them. She bites her tongue before she can add the usual “if there’s anything I can do” claptrap, because clearly there is nothing.
Allie’s gaze is unsettling, her eyes so like Braden’s, but the soul looking through them is entirely different.
The girl says nothing more, just swivels and stalks away. There’s the sound of footsteps running up the stairs, a distantly slammed door.
Braden follows her with his eyes. He looks stricken.
Phee’s knees have begun to quiver. She still hears the cello music, louder and clearer, if anything, and it’s not Allie playing. It has to be a recording, with a damned impressive sound system.
“I haven’t a clue how to do this. Do you? Have kids, I mean?” Braden asks.
Phee shakes her head. “A dog. And a family of instruments.”
“Easier to manage,” he mutters, evidence that he has never met Celestine and doesn’t understand the first thing about Phee’s relationship to the instruments under her care.
“May I see her? The cello?”
Allie has taken the fight out of him. He shrugs. “If you must.” He leads her down the hallway and stands aside to let her enter a large room that holds only a desk, a chair, and the cello. A window looks out onto a fenced backyard.
Whatever kind of speakers are wired into this house, Phee needs to get herself some. The music is as clear in this room as it was in the living room and in the dining room. An alarming suspicion grows inside her gut, the place where she sometimes knows unknowable things. It’s not a recording. It’s the cello.
Which is ridiculous, of course. The strings aren’t vibrating. Nobody is playing. No instrument, even one of her grandfather’s specials, can play itself. Whatever Phee is hearing is all in her own head, which is another problem to add to a rapidly growing list.
“How are your hands?” she blurts out, needing to say something, do something, and managing to get it exactly wrong.
“God. Not this again.”
“It’s been a long time. Healing happens.”
“Not for me.” He almost spits the words at her. “I can’t believe you are still on about this. Now, of all times. Yes, I still have nerve damage. No, I can’t play the cello. I can’t feel the strings or the bow. Can we be done with this?”
His hands are shaking again. More than anger or nerves, she thinks. There’s the wine stain on the living room carpet, still damp. The Librium. As usual, words pop out of her before she has the sense to keep them to herself.
“You look like a man who needs a drink.”
Braden flinches as if she’s struck him. His face goes dead white. “Now? I . . . can’t . . . ,” he stammers.
“Oh God. No. I wasn’t offering one. Just observing.”
“Good to know my sins are so clearly visible.”
“Been there, done that. Look. I know you think I’m an opportunistic bitch or some such, but consider this, anyway.” Phee scrabbles in her purse, not for the contract but for a scrap of paper and a pen. She scribbles an address and holds it out to him. “There’s a meeting here, tomorrow afternoon at four.”
“AA? I’ll