The Treble With Men (Scorned Women's Society #2) - Piper Sheldon

Chapter 1

Your vibrato is atrocious. Vibrate the string; don’t wring its neck like it’s a chicken.

KIM

A man’s voice stopped me halfway down the stairs.

“Kim . . .” His rich voice spoke my real name, though the rest of his words were too muffled to make out.

A chill shuddered down my spine. I smoothed the goosebumps from my arms and tiptoed down the plush carpeted stairs. When the doorbell rang a few minutes ago I had assumed it was one of my parents’ endless stream of guests. The only reason I had left my practicing was to get a snack. Snacks were typically my main motivation to move.

The guest was talking to my parents about me?

No matter how I tried to fight my innate curiosity, it always won out. The door to the drawing room was left open so I tucked behind it, hiding from the occupants of the room. The familiar shame at being a guest in my parent’s home pinkened my cheeks. Because that’s how it felt to me being almost thirty and living in my old bedroom. I wasn’t still living at home; I was a guest.

“She should be here for this conversation.” It was that new voice, deep and rumbling. Gentle, yet forceful.

“She’s practicing. She takes her schedule very seriously,” my dad stated.

That was like saying the Pope was pretty religious. Control over my schedule gave me peace of mind. I pressed my face into the crack between the door. The slice revealed my dad on the couch, his back to me. Across from him, I saw biker boots and worn jeans where I had expected dress pants and loafers.

A familiar thrill shot through my memory: the open air tugging through my hair on the back of the bike and the deep rattling of an engine vibrating through my bones. I clamped down my wayward thoughts.

“We’ll postpone this conversation until Kim is available,” the man responded.

“Christine,” my father corrected.

There was shuffling and then a pause. “What?”

“She goes by Christine Day now. As you know.”

The silence in response filled the room more powerfully than anything else could have. Christine Day had been my stage name for over five years now. The change made it easier to distinguish my former self from my present one. Most of Green Valley thought Kim Dae got caught up with Jethro Winston and the Iron Wraiths only to go MIA. It was better to be known as the girl who’d disappeared than the woman who was going nowhere.

This man’s voice was so familiar and yet completely out of place here. It was intriguing enough to have me reaching for the door. My hand dropped just as four heavy steps shook the floor so hard the china cabinet across the hall rattled. I pressed myself back against the wall as the door was thrown open. Thankfully, my foot stopped me from getting a bloody nose.

“Forty-eight hours.” He paused in the doorway to announce. “Then the offer goes to the next candidate.” The scent of sun-warmed leather filled the air around me. Even with the door between us, his lush smell drew me in.

I shivered.

The stranger didn’t wait for my parents’ response. His heavy work boots thumped down the marbled foyer. My head poked out to find a hulking frame filling out jeans to their maximum capacity across tree-trunk thighs and a sculpted … derrière. He wore a black leather coat, and a dark baseball cap covered thick, onyx hair that fought for freedom and reached almost to his nape. He was absolutely massive. I let out a slow breath.

This was not how grown women behaved. I should have just walked in the room and demanded that they include me in the conversation. And yet I was here. Behind a door. Creeping on a stranger with a racing heart and the urge to flee. I risked another peek.

I half expected him to knock out chunks of dry wall as he brushed through the front door, but when he reached the foyer, he stilled. His head shifted ever so slightly, like a predator sensing prey. In profile, his eyebrows furrowed into a frown—now, that was an expression I knew well. His leather coat squeaked as he slowly turned all the way around. His gaze found mine in an instant. He looked directly at me. No—within me.

I gasped and tucked myself back.

It was only a glimpse, but it was enough to have my heart slamming against my chest and my face heating with embarrassment. A black bandana with