The First Kiss

by Grace Burrowes

  “A half dozen or so.”

  “Then pick up the Well-Tempered Clavier, and start reading in the major keys.” Vera explained how the series was set up, with a prelude and fugue in each key. Bach was emotionally safe, nearly mathematical in his structure, and he wouldn’t challenge the artist in James unduly, though he would gratify the lawyer.

  “Ever work on any Brahms?” she asked.

  “Nope.”

  “You might like him. Let me think about it, and next week I’ll bring you some suggestions.” Next week… When had she decided that, and why?

  “Suggestions?” James was back to tracing a fingertip silently over the white keys.

  “I’m a benevolent dictator. You’ll need a notebook, James, to keep track of your assignments, and from time to time, I’ll bring you CDs to listen to, and I might even send you to the occasional concert.”

  “I’ve seen you perform, you know.”

  Vera was so mesmerized with the repetitive stroke of his hand, up two octaves, down two octaves—in the same rhythm as he’d once stroked her back—that his words took a moment to register.

  Then she needed another moment to recover from the shock.

  Chapter 8

  Vera hadn’t been before an audience for several years, and yet James had just told her he’d heard her perform. She felt ambushed rather than pleased. Classical performers never became household names in America, and she’d treasured that increment of privacy.

  “Where did you hear me?”

  “The only place I could hear you live was when you played in DC, nine years ago, and six years ago. Your hair was a lot longer, not that I could see much from the back of the second balcony. You weren’t much more than a kid the first time, but you had fire.”

  Vera hadn’t expected this, hadn’t foreseen that her divorce lawyer’s brother would be a fan. “Did Trent tell you?”

  Did she have any of that fire—wonderful term—left?

  James opened the book of finger exercises, and pointed to her maiden name scrawled in the corner.

  “Veracity Winston,” he said, tapping the letters. “I suspected when I heard you ripping through the Beethoven, because I got the same rush as I did both times when I heard you live.”

  Vera looked not at James, but around the room, a space that combined country comfort with a certain elegance, and views of muddy black-and-white cows with bleak, uncultivated land.

  “I’m on hiatus,” she said, feeling miserable and pleased at the same time. That James liked her music was a stroke to her ego; that she had to admit to him she wasn’t performing was awkward.

  Like a first kiss neither party had seen coming and couldn’t get quite right.

  James sat beside her on the piano bench, hip to hip, close enough she could catch the scent and warmth of him.

  “Was it your choice to go on hiatus?” he asked.

  He didn’t politely dance around the topic, but he’d tread lightly, and Vera hadn’t ever considered exactly who had put her on hiatus.

  “I more or less backed into it. Donal booked a series of dates without my approval, and I didn’t feel I could honor them all. I started canceling them, and didn’t stop until very little remained on my calendar.”

  Vera had had a tantrum, in other words, maybe one long overdue.

  James closed the book of finger exercises and propped it front and center on the music stand. “Very little remains on your calendar?”

  “I still have a few option dates. Donal will want me to play them, so he gets the commission, and I’m not wild about that idea.”

  “The issue isn’t simply him and the money, is it?”

  Lawyers heard people’s personal business all day long. They worked with the wreckage of human relationships, and James, as a lawyer, wouldn’t be squeamish about Vera’s personal business.

  Though—lovely man—he wasn’t raising the topic as a lawyer. He was asking, as a friend would ask. A good friend.

  “Every time I try to wrap my mind around the issue, James, it gets more complicated. Grief, anger, fear, naiveté, inexperience, and even laziness have brought me to where I am. Until the divorce came along, I never dreamed that I might have a life away from the piano.”

  And until James had come along, the matter of Vera’s happiness hadn’t gained her notice either.

  “Your talent is beyond doubt, Vera, but if you no longer enjoy performing, then you shouldn’t perform.”

  You’re a grown woman, and you’re entitled to decide with whom you do and do not socialize.

  To James, Vera’s independence, her right to base her life on her own judgments, was beyond question. How could she not treasure that about him, even as the standard he set daunted her?

  “From my family I get the you-owe-it-to-the-world speech, or the get-back-on-the-horse speech,” Vera said, which accounted for the infrequency of her phone calls to her mom and brothers. “I get it from everybody else but Twyla.” She’d more or less heard it from Olga, except Olga’s version was subtle.

  “I was in general practice when I first got out of law school,” James said, patting her knee—a very different touch from Olga’s use of the same gesture. Comforting, not the least admonitory.

  “I was a crackerjack at divorces,” he went on. “Tore through them like hell on wheels, and got one badass reputation as the son of a bitch to go to when you wanted to stick it to your ex.”

  Another pat to her knee, even gentler. “I hated it, Vera. I can’t be that person, the terminator of marriages. I was more relieved than I can say when Trent stepped up to the domestic law plate. I owe him more than he knows. Same thing with the criminal cases. I could not—could not—live with myself when I knew my low-down, rotten, conniving client had gotten off on a technicality. That ate me up, despite the money rolling in from all directions.”

  “Did you choose business law?”

  “About as much as you chose to go on hiatus.”

  Vera hadn’t talked with anybody about the decision to stop performing, but with James, the topic was comfortable. The entire lesson had been comfortable, in fact.

  “Your music helped,” he said, sliding the cover over the keys.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You’d won some big award right as I finished law school, and you did a lot of recording in a very short time. I have every one of your CDs, and bought sets for Trent and Mac. Trent says nothing helps him change gears at the end of the day like popping in a classical CD on the way home.”

  “He’s never said a word to me about this.”

  “He wouldn’t want to crowd you,” James said, nudging her with his shoulder. He had broad shoulders, heavy with muscle.

  “Practice your little fanny off this week,” Vera said. James had a lovely fanny too. “As my student, you’re on permanent probation.”

  “Because of one barely-worth-mentioning kiss?”

  Now it was barely worth mentioning? “No, not because of that.”

  “Then why?”

  “Because I’m Veracity Winston, and I say so.”

  “Good enough.” He smiled, just as he had when she’d said something to Twyla of which he approved. He had Vera follow him into the big, tidy kitchen so he could get his checkbook, then walked her to her truck. He thanked her twice for taking him on, though he didn’t shake her hand, and he made no move to touch her.

  Which was oddly disappointing.

  * * *

  Trent motioned to his wife to come into his office while he cradled the phone against his shoulder. “Trent Knightley here.”

  “Glover here,” said a gravelly baritone. “I’d hoped I was done with your love letters, Trent.”

  “I’d hoped I was done sending them to you, at least as regards the Walthams.”

  “But it’s family law, so the cases never die,” Glover
said on a sigh. “I wanted you to know I’m sending along the appropriate reply. You can start peeling Ms. Waltham off the ceiling in anticipation.”

  “That reply would be?”

  “My boy is innocent. Innocent, I tell you!” Glover infused his voice with mocking irony. “Donal says the last thing he wants to do is antagonize the golden goose so close to when the restraining order expires and he can actually brow…talk to her again.”

  Hannah meandered into the office, closing the door behind her. She’d taken to wearing her dark auburn hair down, which was nearly as much of a distraction to Trent as when she’d worn in it in a tidy bun.

  “Aaron, I know you have a client to represent,” Trent said, “but Vera doesn’t want to talk to him, doesn’t want to see him, doesn’t want to have jack to do with him. She’s been very clear about that, and given the injuries—”

  Trent had seen far more serious injuries in domestic altercations, but a single blow could leave unseen damage that never healed.

  “I know,” Glover interrupted. “Believe me, Trent, if I could back out of this case or hand it on to successor counsel, I would, but there’s a problem with Rule One that my client and I are resolving over time.”

  Rule One in private practice: Get Paid.

  “I sympathize,” Trent said as Hannah took a seat opposite his desk and crossed the prettiest legs in the known universe. “But don’t think if MacKay goes after his ex-wife to start performing again that it will have any impact on your Rule One problem. She’s as done with Donal as an agent as she is with him as a husband.”

  A silence, and Trent realized he’d probably been a little too zealous. Aaron Glover had balls of steel, but he had the ethics to go with them.

  “For the record, Knightley, I told Donal to his unsmiling face that if he violates the restraining order, he will go to jail. Not even your brilliant and charm-free older brother could save Donal from his own stupidity if he violates that order.”

  Hannah began messing with the Rubik’s cube Trent had borrowed from James’s office.

  “So what’s Donal’s alibi?” Trent asked. “Where was he when somebody, who shall remain nameless and had no discernible motive, was slashing Vera’s tire?”

  A pause on the other end of the line, as if Glover were closing a document, or making an entry in a client file.

  “Wish to hell I knew. Donal claims he’s innocent until proven guilty, a quaint but popular notion in some quarters. I didn’t lean on him very hard, though. I expect he was looking at naughty pictures or having a hair-loss treatment.”

  “So your letter will tell me, essentially, to buzz off?”

  “I like that. Buzz off. Marriage must be agreeing with you, but yes, you can buzz off, and warn your client that my client intends to resume cordial relations when the order expires.”

  Across the office, Hannah let her pump come partway off, so it hung by her toes while she swung her foot in an impatient rhythm.

  “Vera will be posting her property if I have anything to do with it. I’m serious, Aaron. Donal is not welcome back in her life on any terms.”

  “Yeah, yeah. She wouldn’t pee in his face if it were on fire. I’m a divorce lawyer too, Knightley.”

  “When’s the last time you had a vacation, Aaron?”

  “About the last time you had one. The way I hear it, you and the new Mrs. Knightley haven’t even had a honeymoon, but fear not: you know at least one good divorce lawyer if things with the lovely Hannah go south.”

  Hannah’s pump, a raspberry confection with a hint of heel, slipped off her foot.

  “Not funny, Aaron.”

  “Skipping your own honeymoon is?”

  He ended the call, leaving Trent with the mixed feelings common to a profession where his adversaries were also his colleagues, and the only people who could truly sympathize with the burdens of being in practice.

  “That was Aaron Glover?” Hannah asked.

  “On the Waltham case. He’s done a yeoman’s job with what Donal has given him to work with, but I suspect Aaron does not have control of his client.”

  “Never a good thing.”

  “Not when your client has violent tendencies. May I ask you something?”

  Hannah slipped her shoe back on, glanced behind her at the closed door, and nodded.

  “Can we ditch the girls with James and Mac over spring break and go on a damned honeymoon?”

  Hannah made a pretense of considering the question, but then she leaned forward and pitched her voice for his ears only.

  “Hell, yeah.”

  * * *

  “I’ve noticed something.” Mac set his lunch tray down across from Trent, then took the chair opposite in the cafeteria in the basement of the Damson County courthouse.

  Trent hadn’t planned to share a meal with Mac, but the timing was fortuitous.

  “You’re always noticing things, MacKenzie. You’re constitutionally incapable of turning off the ability to notice, unless it has to do with females. You don’t notice them.”

  “I notice your new wife is happy,” Mac said, accordion-folding the paper on a plastic drinking straw until it was compressed into a small wad. He used his straw to let a single drop of water touch the paper, causing it to expand.

  “Hannah’s female,” Mac went on. “I notice your daughters aren’t bothered with sibling rivalry, though by rights they ought to be a couple of screaming meemies.”

  “Give it a few years,” Trent said, wondering if Mac would do the same thing to his straw papers when he was an old man. “Adolescence looms close at hand.”

  “True, though your girls are blessed with uncles who will bust the chops of any young swain who thinks to take inappropriate liberties, so rest easy.”

  Trent was more than capable of busting said chops. “Hadn’t thought of that. Hannah will be relieved.”

  “Hannah will?”

  “She worries,” Trent said, being purposely obtuse, of course. “She’s worried about leaving the girls with James and you when we leave town next week too.”

  “We’ll manage,” Mac said, unfolding a napkin over his lap. “Let her make a bunch of lists, but take her cell phone when the plane lands, and don’t give it back to her unless she makes a real effort to enjoy herself.”

  Thus spoke a bachelor of the subspecies Hopelessly Clueless.

  “I don’t think taking her phone will go over very well with Hannah.” Trent put some fries on Mac’s plate, because some forces of nature were not worth fighting.

  “Then she’ll have to accidentally lose her phone, won’t she?” Mac took the longest fry on his plate and began to munch it down from the end, the same way he’d eaten his fries since toddlerhood. “Today’s Friday,” he said.

  “Praise Jesus for that. Jenelle came back from maternity leave just in time. If Hannah had to do one more child-support case, she would have turned in her license to practice.”

  “You’ve been at court the past few Fridays, but I’ve been back at the office, and I have noticed that James is taking leave on Friday afternoons.”

  Trent looked up from dabbling a fry in his ketchup. “You mean he’s off seeing a client, or shagging some woman, or doing both?”

  “Neither. I mean on his time sheet, he marks Friday afternoon as leave without pay, though he has plenty enough billable hours that it doesn’t affect revenue.”

  Trent sketched a unicorn in his ketchup. “He isn’t burning the midnight oil quite as steadily either. I’ve put in some late hours, and it used to be James was always right down the hall, beavering away on some pleading or correspondence, or having serial phone sex with his flavors of the evening. For the past few weeks, you’re right: no James.”

  “I am mildly concerned,” Mac said, starting that munching-from-one-end thing with a second fry—the second longest of the pile on his plate.r />
  “You’re beside yourself, wondering why James has abruptly taken holy orders. I wondered if he’d picked up an STD.”

  Mac’s eyebrows rose, then came crashing down. “I taught you both better than that.”

  “Condoms aren’t foolproof. I have two daughters, Mac, and I practice family law. I know more than I ever wanted to about certain subjects.”

  “Give me the criminals any day. You don’t really think James is…afflicted?”

  “Not with an STD, exactly. Do you recall when he took an order out to Vera Waltham for me?”

  Fry number three met its fate. “That was a while ago.”

  “And James is not a man to waste time, but he has patience and determination to burn when it really matters. I have a theory, and Hannah agrees with me.”

  Mac chewed through the rest of Trent’s fries, but he also listened. When Trent was done setting forth his theory, Mac was looking very thoughtful indeed.

  * * *

  “I told you, Chopin’s too damned frilly for me.” James wiggled his fingers in the air at eye level, his expression disgusted.

  “You don’t get to choose.” Vera nearly rapped his knuckles with a rolled-up volume of Bach. “You will at least read through the nocturnes, one a week, or I’ll make you do the waltzes, and they are frilly.”

  “I like the C-sharp minor waltz,” James mumbled. Vera’s assignment had him sitting before the keyboard like a big, sulky boy kept from his sandlot ball game.

  He was beyond the waltzes, though the C-sharp minor was lovely.

  “You can read through the longest nocturne in about twenty minutes,” Vera said. “Twenty minutes out of your whole, entire week, James, so stop pouting.”

  Brooding rather. James was a grown man.

  “Why’d he call them nocturnes?”

  Ah, a glimmer of interest. “The form was first used by an Irish composer, Field, though there was an Italian form, the notturno, to which it might have borne some relation. To me, nocturne suggests music for the evening, a brooding, sunset mood. Have you heard them?”

  “You haven’t recorded them.”