the house.
She’d never known it was possible to be lonely in a marriage until she’d married Abe, married the man she loved beyond life.
Eyes burning, she touched careful fingers to the piano, not wanting to leave fingerprints on the glossy finish but unable to resist its beauty. It was such a lovely instrument, but she’d never heard its song. Abe had never, not once, played it in the time since she moved into his home.
It seemed wrong to her that the instrument had been silenced.
Taking a seat on the piano stool, she looked at the pristine black and white of the keys. She hadn’t had the chance to learn music as a child, but she’d made a real effort at learning the piano since marrying Abe so that she could talk to him about his passion. Her teacher had declared that she was “pedestrian but stubborn.”
That was fine with Sarah—she had no dreams of being a great musician.
Her passion was Abe; music was just a way to get closer to him.
But even a pedestrian musician could learn fairly complex pieces over a year and a half of intensive study comprised of ten or more hours of lessons a week. It helped fill in the time when she was alone in the house except for the housekeeper and the chef who came in for a short period each day. During the weeks while Abe was on tour, she asked the piano teacher to come every day. And then there were all the days when Abe was recording or planning songs with the band.
Sarah had a lot of time on her hands.
Staring at the keys, she lifted her hands, put them immediately back down.
This was Tessie’s piano. She knew that without ever having been told. It was obvious from the way it stayed draped in covers all year except on the anniversary of her death. Though Abe never talked about Tessie with Sarah, she’d seen the photos he kept around the house, seen the joyous smile and dancing eyes of Abe’s much younger sister, her tightly curled black hair in adorable little pigtails.
Tessie had been a midlife surprise for her parents, born when Abe was thirteen. Rather than being resentful of the tiny interloper, Abe had adored her.
“He was such a good big brother,” Diane had told Sarah one day while they shared a coffee before a family dinner. “He used to call her from boarding school and tell her bedtime stories, always took her on ‘dates’ during his vacations home. And whenever she asked him to play the piano, he’d play, and Tessie would put on her little tutu and dance and dance.”
Sarah didn’t think a girl with such joy in music would’ve wanted this piano to sit forever silent.
“For you,” Sarah whispered and put her fingers to the keys.
The piano was in perfect tune.
As she played a haunting nocturne, she realized Abe must keep it that way even though he refused to play the instrument. Her entire chest hurt for him, for her beautiful man with his broken heart and scarred soul. If only he—
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
CHAPTER 2
JERKING TO A STOP WITH A JANGLING OF THE KEYS, Sarah stood up so fast she knocked over the piano stool. “Abe!” Her pulse a racehorse, she stared at the man looming at her from only two feet away. “Where were you? Didn’t you hear me calling?”
“Get the fuck away from the piano.”
Even during the worst of the drugs, he’d never spoken to her with such dark anger. His eyes glittered in the moonlight, his black shirt and black jeans only increasing the sense of danger that clung to him, her husband with his skin the shade of rich mahogany and his wide shoulders.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, stepping away, then bending down to right the stool.
He didn’t help her, didn’t move, just stood there staring at her with those cold, hard eyes in a face that was all harsh good looks.
Her stomach twisted. “I just thought—”
“I didn’t marry you for your brains.”
His vicious words tore open her deepest vulnerability, stabbing right into her secret knowledge that she was a high school dropout from the wrong side of the tracks playing at being a sophisticated woman who belonged in this big north Santa Monica home with its shining floors and glittering chandeliers.
Sarah blinked past the stinging pain; she knew Abe was hurting. She wouldn’t take what he’d said to heart. After all, he didn’t know about her past. As