Music pumped out of the three-foot-tall speakers with a strong beat and wailing guitars.
Watching Anna was an experience. She reached for a slice of pizza and stared at the speakers across the room, her concentration on the music total. She probably didn’t know that she blinked in time with the beat.
“All right, I think I’ve got it.” It was after ten and Anna’s brow was still furrowed in concentration.
“What do you mean, you’ve got it?” She was taking her intro to rock so seriously, Gavin didn’t know whether to laugh or pull his hair out.
“Sting, Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, Bruce Springsteen.” She ticked off her fingers. “Billy Joel, Huey Lewis, Bryan Adams, Elton John and what was that last one? Oh, yes. The Rolling Stones.”
Gavin shook his head and rolled his eyes. “I was hoping you would enjoy the music, not just memorize the names of the artists.”
“But I did enjoy it,” she claimed, brows arching.
She looked and sounded sincere, but she hadn’t relaxed once all night, hadn’t tapped her toe in time to the music, hadn’t smiled. “Coulda fooled me,” he muttered.
“No, seriously,” she protested. “Some I liked better than others, but—”
“Which ones?” He thought he’d catch her lying, just trying to make him feel as though he hadn’t wasted his time. And his money.
“Well, Sting has the smoothest voice, Springsteen the most raw, most elemental. I like the piano, so Billy Joel and Elton John appealed to me. Some of Bon Jovi’s songs were nearly as hard-driving as the Rolling Stones’, but I think I prefer Bon Jovi’s ballads. As for Aerosmith and Huey Lewis—”
“Okay, okay.” Laughing, Gavin held up both hands in surrender. Impressed despite himself, he shook his head. “You’re right. You’ve got it. You pass with flying colors. Even if I don’t think you really enjoyed it.”
She cocked her head. “Why do you think that?”
“Because you looked so serious.”
Slowly Anna straightened her shoulders. “Wait a minute. Were any of those songs yours? Did you write them? Was I supposed to, I don’t know, yell and scream or something?”
“No.” He laughed. “I didn’t write any of those songs, and no, you weren’t supposed to yell and scream.”
She shrugged. “I enjoyed listening to everything you played.”
If what he’d witnessed tonight was her idea of enjoyment, well, hell. Maybe the woman had no soul.
But Gavin wasn’t ready to give up. If music could soothe the savage beast—or whatever—surely he could find the right music to get a genuine reaction—a positive one—out of Anna Collins.
Music blared out of the radio as Gavin’s ’57 Corvette raced across the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco. Ben Collins tapped his fingers against the steering wheel in time with the music. No doubt about it, the car was a honey.
He threw his head back and laughed. The look on Gav’s face when Ben had driven off had been priceless. Honey, indeed. Ol’ Gav had looked as if Ben had been making off with his best girl.
Ben had a feeling that Gav wasn’t going to be too happy with him when he got back. Gav was a good guy, but sometimes he acted more like an older brother, or a father, than a buddy, carrying on about one thing or another.
But hey, he’d left him the key to the Harley, hadn’t he? It wasn’t as if he’d left Gav stranded.
Ben knew that Gav liked to carry on about his getting his act together, getting a job, staying away from the cards and the dice. Okay, so maybe Gav had a point. Ben was thinking on it. Meanwhile, L.A. had gotten a little hot when he’d bet a thousand dollars that he didn’t have on a card game, and lost.
He hadn’t been able to bring himself to go to Gavin for more money; he already owed him five grand. But Skinner wasn’t known for his patience. He’d vowed to take the thousand out of Ben’s hide if he didn’t pay up.
Since he couldn’t pay up, and since Skinner had put the word out and no one in town would take his bet these days, Ben decided it was time for a little vacation of the out-of-town variety, preferably not on the Harley they’d be looking for him to be driving.
He had hit Las Vegas and made back the thousand he owed Skinner within an hour. If he had just stopped then and gone back to L.A. and paid Skinner, everything would have been fine. But how was a guy supposed to stop when he had a cool grand in his hand just begging to be gambled?
He had turned that grand into three, then lost it. Then he’d spotted a friend of Gavin’s on the strip.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he murmured with a wry grin, “Ben Collins has left the city.”
San Francisco had always been good to him. He would win the money back, then go home and pay off Skinner and Gavin. Who knew? He might even think about getting a job.
Wouldn’t Anna be surprised if he did?
He could have gone to her for the thousand. What the hell else did she have to do with her money, anyway? She would have gotten that sad look in her eyes that always made him feel lower than a slug, but she would have given him the money.
But he had promised her he wouldn’t ask her for money anymore. He wanted to keep that promise. She deserved that much from him, at least.
“Be good to me, San Francisco.”
Chapter Seven
“Bon Jovi.”
Donna Weeks stopped chomping her gum in midpop and gave Anna a quick double take. “What?”
“That song you’re humming. Bon Jovi, third cut on their ‘Destination Anywhere’ CD.”
“Well knock me over with a feather.” It was Wednesday morning, and the offices of the accounting firm of Smith, Smith, and Bernstein were quiet, with just Anna and Donna in the accounting office. Both grinning at each other. Which was odd all on its own, because Anna Collins was not a grinner. Now she was not only grinning, but admitting to recognizing a rock-and-roll song?
“And here I thought you never listened when I play the radio in the break room.”
Anna chuckled, and she wasn’t a chuckler. But it felt good to have something other than work in common with the woman she’d sat beside for three years. Good, and warm. “You could say I’ve had a crash course lately.”
And she wondered secretly what surprise Gavin Marshall might have waiting for her that evening when she went home from work.
Oldies. Gavin’s Wednesday surprise was Top 40 hits from the fifties and sixties. These Anna remembered from her childhood, because her parents had listened to oldies. But she began to understand that Gavin was waiting for something from her, some reaction to the music he selected. Because she wasn’t sure what that something was, she was unwilling to give him any but the mildest reaction, so she kept her knowledge of this music to herself, merely stating that she enjoyed listening to Buddy Holly, Elvis, Chuck Berry, the Platters, Nat King Cole, Dion, the Drifters.
“So?” Gavin eyed her skeptically. “What do you think?”
Anna ran what she’d heard during the past few hours through her bookkeeper’s brain, compared it to what she’d heard the night before. Her eyes narrowed in thought. “Considering the advancement in technology after these recordings were made, they’re surprisingly good, technically speaking.”
“How about musically speaking?”
“Not as hard-edged as some of the rock from last night,” she offered, “but some of it, like Elvis and Buddy Holly, are more—earthy, I guess you’d say. And overall, the lyrics of the oldies are more innocent, more fun.”
As Anna said good-night, Gavin shook his head and flopped back against the couch. The music wasn’t reaching her. She was too focused on analyzing it, comparing it, tallying the results as though she’d listened to a string of numbers rather than songs.
A few minutes later, before turning in for the night, Gavin checked his e-mail and learned that a friend of a friend thought he’d seen Ben in San Francisco, but wasn’t certain. If he found out for sure, he would let Gavin know.
Thursday night Gavin tried country music on Anna. Garth
Brooks, Reba McEntire, Brooks and Dunn, Alan Jackson, Trisha Yearwood, Vince Gill, Toby Keith. This time he at least got a smile out of her with songs like “Friends in Low Places.” A smile, but that was it. Again she analyzed, tallied and reported faithfully on what she’d heard.
Now he was really beginning to wonder if the woman had a soul.
Saving classical music as a last resort, because he knew the least about it, Gavin waited for her to come home from work Friday, wondering if the Broadway show tunes he’d selected would reach something inside her. Even if they were mostly the movie soundtracks instead of the stage production versions.
He started her off with a few of the more famous numbers from Oklahoma!, Showboat and The Music Man.
“Progress,” he muttered when she laughed out loud at a young Ron Howard’s rendition of “Gary, Indiana” from The Music Man.
But it was while she listened to the original cast recording of The Phantom of the Opera that Gavin first got a hint that something new was happening inside Anna.
During the instrumental version of the title song, near the beginning of the two-CD set, she started sitting up straighter. When “Angel of Music” hit its full-bodied stride, Anna slowly pulled away from the back of the couch. When Christine and Phantom sang the title song, Anna’s breath came faster.
Gavin felt his own pulse begin to race in response to Anna’s reaction to the music.
Then “Masquerade” filled the room with its vibrant, swirling power, and Anna scooted to the edge of the couch. “Oh, my.” Her eyes widened as she held out her arms and stared at the gooseflesh that had risen there. She looked at Gavin with glowing eyes. “This is what you’ve wanted me to feel?”
She may have been tuned in to the music, but Gavin was tuned in to her. The excitement, the life in her eyes, the way her pulse fluttered at the base of her throat, her struggle to keep air in her lungs... Damned if he wasn’t getting turned on just watching what the music did to her.
It was as though he’d been seeing her through a film that had just been swept away. Or fog, now blown away by the wind.
This, he thought, was the real Anna Collins.
They sat that way, facing each other, Gavin staring at her in awe, Anna staring blankly at him, until the final echos of “Music of the Night” in Michael Craw-ford’s powerful voice faded at the end of the final CD, leaving the room vibrating with silence but for the sound of Anna’s breath catching in her throat.
“Such...power,” Anna whispered, dazed by it. “Such emotion.”
“It’s excellent music,” Gavin managed.
Slowly Anna shook her head. “I don’t mean the music, exactly. I mean what I feel, inside, when I hear it.”
Gavin’s pulse thumped. Damn, if she didn’t stop looking at him like that he was going to have to kiss her. And the way he was feeling just then, it wouldn’t stop there. “What do you feel?” he managed.
She tilted her head back and closed her eyes, baring her throat to him in a gesture that struck him as erotic. The look on her face was that of a woman being joyfully filled by a man while making love.
Sweat beaded along Gavin’s spine.
“I feel...stirred. Moved. Powerful. Breathless.” Her pale, exposed throat worked on a swallow.
Gavin found himself swallowing with her.
Then she straightened and opened her eyes, looked away. “You probably think I’m being foolish.”
“No.” His voice rasped, as if he hadn’t used it in days. “No, I don’t.”
“Is this what you feel when you listen to rock and roll?”
One corner of his mouth curved up. “Not usually, no.” What she felt, what he was feeling just then, was something he doubted he’d ever felt, even during sex.
Someday, he vowed, he would make love with Anna Collins with that music that had stirred her soul washing over them.
Better yet, he wanted to be the one to put that look in her eyes, that hitch in her breath. To stir her soul, the way watching her for the past hour had stirred his. No phantom between them when they made love. Only the two of them and the passion.
The pleasure, the power of it, would likely kill them both.
It wasn’t so much the music that followed Anna into sleep that night as the look in Gavin’s eyes when, gazes locked, they had listened through the end of the CD. Even knowing that there was no new word on Ben through Gavin’s e-mail failed to chase Gavin’s look from her mind. He had looked, she thought, as if he could have eaten her alive.
When she woke Saturday morning, the memory of it shook her, more so than had the actual event.
At the time, she had been wrapped up in the music and he had been part of it. But the music was gone now, only a faint whisper left in the back of her mind. The look in Gavin’s eyes, the husky timbre of his voice, still stirred something deep inside her. Something hot. Exciting. Forbidden.
Lust.
Good grief. She sprang up in bed, her eyes wide, her heart pounding. She, Anna Lee Collins, was in lust.
It struck her then, the irony of it all. She had felt more last night, was feeling more right now, than she had the one and only time she’d had sex. In sheer delight, she laughed out loud.
What had it been—four years, five—since that highly forgettable experience with a man who’d come and gone from her life almost as fast as she’d wished he had? Any sense of anticipation that had led up to that interminably long thirty minutes had been lost in nerves.
Yet now, just remembering the look in Gavin’s eyes had anticipation sizzling through her blood. Who would have thought that blue could be so hot?
Not that there was a thing in the world she would do about it. Her laugh this time was self-directed. There was no way that a big-time rock-and-roll songwriter from California would be even remotely interested in a mousy bookkeeper from Oklahoma. He was temporary in her life, here only because of Ben.
But still, Anna was suddenly glad Gavin Marshall had come into her life, no matter how temporary, no matter the reason. She liked him.
The thought surprised her. She genuinely liked him. If she felt more than that, well, that would just be her little secret. There was no need to embarrass them both by letting it show.
“So what’s on your agenda for today?”
Anna had her head beneath the kitchen sink, her rear in the air, fishing out her rubber gloves when Gavin’s voice came from directly behind her. Startled, she gave a small cry and instinctively raised her head. Right into the underside of the sink. “Ouch!”
“Bet that hurt.”
“You scared me. I didn’t hear you coming.”
“Sorry.” He flashed a grin. “So, what are you doing?”
“Getting ready to clean house.”
“Didn’t you just do that the other day?”
“Last Saturday.”
“Ah.” He nodded. “You’re one of those.”
“One of those what?”
“One of those people who sets herself a schedule and sticks to it week after week, year after year.”
“And your point?”
“Reminds me of my mother. Cleans the house every week right on time whether it needs it or not.”
Anna tugged on a rubber glove and smiled. “Believe me, after a week of you, the house definitely needs cleaning. Your poor mother. I imagine that while you were growing up, the house needed cleaning every day. It sure does now,” she muttered.
“Hey,” he protested good-naturedly with a hand to his chest. “I resemble that remark.”
“Yes.” She smirked. “You certainly do. What is that saying? If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem?”
“Ouch. I’ll just, uh, stay out of your way, then.”
“Good idea, unless you want to be dusted and vacuumed.”
She pulled on the other glove, grabbed a handful of cleaning rags from the bottom drawer, and gathered her cleaning supplies from beneath the sink. On her way out of the room, she paused and looked back at him
. “Gavin?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you for the music.”
His smile warmed her to her heels. “Phantom?”
“All of it. I can’t remember when I’ve spent a more enjoyable week,” she said softly. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure.”
The way he said it in that deep, gravelly voice of his made her almost believe it was. With her pulse beating just a little too fast, she hurried into the bathroom and attacked the tub with its week’s worth of soap film and hard water deposits.
During the course of cleaning the bathroom, she heard Gavin go into his room and shut the door. He came out a few minutes later, then the kitchen door opened and closed. She didn’t think anything of it until she’d cleaned her way back to the kitchen thirty minutes later and realized he had never come back into the house. She was just about to step outside and look for him when she heard the outside water whining through the pipes.
Frowning, she opened the door to the garage.
She should have guessed. The big door was up, and Gavin, wearing nothing more than a ratty pair of denim cutoffs, was washing the motorcycle in the driveway. It was hard to decide which to shade her eyes from, the blinding reflection of sunlight off chrome, or the breath-stealing display of bare skin stretched over flexing male muscles. Mercy. Ben never looked like that in his cutoffs.
That’s not your brother you’re drooling over, Anna, girl.
And she was drooling, metaphorically speaking. The instant she realized it, she stepped back into the kitchen and slammed the door. Good grief, her heart was pounding. Just from looking at him.
Yes, but there was so very much of him on display for you to look at. All that skin, bronzed by the sun. All those muscles, strong and toned. That dark patch of hair on his chest. And all of it sparkling with a sheen of sweat and a fine mist of water from the hose.
Until You Page 10