so?”
“Yeah, sure.” Alba edged toward the door. “’Bye, then.”
“’Bye.” Albert turned to the window to watch her cross the street and disappear through the King’s College gates. While he replayed every word of their conversation, every look on his daughter’s face, Alba walked to her room, wondering why she always felt drawn to that little bookshop and why on earth she’d just bought a book at random on a topic she wasn’t even studying, when she could get anything and everything she wanted from the university library.
Two weeks after that, Alba seemed to disappear. She stopped coming into college, going to the library or eating in the café. Albert waited for her every day but, by the end of May, he realized she wasn’t coming back.
—
Carmen sits at the piano in the empty bar. It’s past midnight, everyone else has gone home and she promised Blake she’d lock up. But first, she wants to play something, even if in her excitement her fingers won’t relax. She can’t wait for next Friday night: three days, six hours and twenty-four minutes. She can’t think of anything else. Choir practice hovers on the horizon of her week like a beacon of light calling her home. Now she stumbles around in the happy haze of someone who’s finally found IT: the one thing in the world that makes her feel more alive than anything else.
She should be worried. Tonight is the tenth of June and she can stay at Hope Street only another six weeks or so, until July 31. The idea of where she’ll go and how she’ll stay safe after that is a troubling one. But now that she’s started singing again she can’t seem to get worried about anything at all. As she rests her fingers on the keys, Carmen remembers the singer last night and the fiery beauty of her songs. Then she thinks of Alba. The plan to shake Alba up, to see her get drunk and dance on tabletops, might have failed the first time, but she will succeed in seducing Alba’s spirit with music, Carmen decides, no matter what it takes. She will free this clueless young woman, shut up tight as a clam, so that Alba can know joy and passion and love. And if Carmen is lucky, this good deed will undo the very bad deed she has done. Invigorated by the thought, she starts to play: something sensual and sexual, notes that bounce off the walls and shiver through the air. Then she starts to sing.
Sleeping in the office with his feet on the desk, Blake wakes with a start. He loses his balance, slips off the chair and falls to the floor. Then he hears the music. Slowly he gets up, opens the door, creeps down the corridor and steps into the bar.
When she sees him standing in the doorway, Carmen stops.
“Please.” He tries to swallow the longing creeping up his throat. “Don’t stop.”
For several moments they are both silent and still; the air around them is heavy with the echoes of music. And then Blake walks slowly up to the stage. This woman that he never paid much mind to before, except to admire her rather splendid curves, has suddenly activated his radar. Blake can sense a familiar feeling beginning to stir. He’s never been able to resist a woman who’s sexy and talented. He gazes at Carmen as if he wants to run his fingers over every inch of her body. Here is his antidote to Greer.
“You are a knockout.” Blake draws out every syllable. “An absolute knockout.”
Carmen stares back into his bright green eyes without blinking. She’s a little surprised by how direct he is. After six weeks in England she’s become used to the bumbling, stumbling seductions of British men. It’s unnerving to be confronted by this confident American, so completely sure of himself. Of course, she sees how Blake can afford to be so bold. He is, even including Tiago, the best-looking man she’s ever seen.
“I reckon I never heard singing like that before.” Blake smiles. It’s a smile of pure seduction, fixed on her as if she were the only woman in the world. Hypnotic. Dangerous. Designed to make Carmen lose her heart as well as her head. “Never in my life. Let’s have a drink.”
It isn’t a question. Carmen feels a little lightheaded. Cautionary tales about dating in the workplace, along with memories of Tiago, swim around the back of her mind. She isn’t sure if