“Anyway, I found that I loved playing, just for its own sake,” she concluded.
The pizza arrived and the discussion was temporarily tabled as they both made small talk, commenting on how good the pizza smelled, etc. Jared confessed that he hadn’t realized just how hungry he actually was until the aroma had hit him.
“I tend to forget to eat when I get busy or distracted,” he confided.
Did she come under the heading of being a distraction? Elizabeth wondered. Or was he saying that he’d considered coming to hear her play on the soundstage as “being busy”?
She realized that, given a choice, she would have preferred having the good-looking man think of her as a distraction. The implications of that were far more promising.
You’re letting your imagination get the better of you. That’s what you get for listening to Amanda.
Amanda was one of the other violinists. They’d initially met in high school, had wound up going to the same college and had gradually become best friends. Amanda was the one who kept telling her that she needed to get “really emotionally, soulfully involved” with someone in order to bring a deeper meaning to her music. Her friend’s theory was that until she experienced falling in love, and then losing that love, she couldn’t truly make her violin weep.
Her answer to Amanda was that she was willing to settle on having her violin sob quietly. What she didn’t admit to her close confidante was that she’d gone the romance route and been rather badly disappointed. That was no one’s business but her own.
“I don’t think I’ve ever forgotten to eat,” she told Jared. “My stomach is very good about reminding me that it needs to be periodically fed.”
So saying, she liberated a piece from the rest of the pizza and, rather than put it on her plate, she brought the pointed edge up to her lips and proceeded to take a good-size bite.
Her eyes fluttered shut as she allowed herself to slowly savor the taste. “This is really good,” she enthused.
Watching her, just for a moment, Jared found himself caught up in the way she was relishing her food. Most of the women he’d gone out with seemed to pick at their meal, eating little and appearing to enjoy it even less. Eating pizza, especially the way Elizabeth did, would have been viewed as something that was beneath them. Eating with their hands was simply not done. “Uncivilized barbarians ate with their hands” was the way one of his dates had put it.
He smiled to himself now, watching Elizabeth. There was definitely something to be said for “uncivilized barbarians,” he thought.
“I know,” he agreed. “That’s why I suggested coming here. I’d rather have a good pizza than practically anything else. I think I actually horrified my sister by casually suggesting we have pizza at my parents’ anniversary celebration. I had to reassure her that I was kidding.”
Elizabeth scrutinized his handsome face for a moment. “But you weren’t kidding, were you?” she surmised. Before he could answer, she asked, “Do your parents like pizza?”
“They do,” he admitted. “But I have a feeling that some of their friends will ask them if I’ve suddenly fallen on hard times if I have their thirty-fifth anniversary catered with pizza.”
Personally, she liked that idea. Serving something simple that most people really enjoyed. She firmly believed in the “life is short” adage and felt that people should be able to do what they liked—as long as it didn’t hurt anyone else—and having pizza certainly wasn’t hurting anyone.
Subtly, she tried to steer Jared toward rethinking his menu choice. “You know, there’re a lot of different varieties of pizza—you could go all out and have the caterer come up with, oh, twelve or so different kinds so that people could have their choice and still have pizza. Frankly, in my opinion, having all those different kinds to choose from beats having to eat a single, set meal.”
Maybe she had something there, Jared thought, turning the idea over in his head.
“It does, doesn’t it?” he said thoughtfully. “Still, I know how my sister’d react, and, frankly, there isn’t a meal in the world that’s worth having to endure Megan’s ire when she goes on a tirade.” He shrugged. “Going along with her choices saves a lot of wear and tear on a person’s nerves. And lately, she’s been more high-strung than usual, but then that’s to be expected, I guess.”
He realized by the silent, befuddled look on Elizabeth’s face that he’d left out a single, rather salient detail in his narrative.
“Oh, I think I forgot to mention that my sister’s pregnant with her first child. And right now, not the most patient of people—not that she was exactly the soul of patience before.”
In all honesty, they couldn’t wait until the ordeal was finally over—and she still had three months to go. Just before his sister left on a cruise that her husband had booked for them as a surprise, Megan had been lamenting that she already felt so huge. Jared had tried to persuade her otherwise on numerous occasions...but there was no consoling her when she called him in hysterics from the cruise ship terminal because a fellow passenger asked if she was carrying twins! He still shuddered every time he remembered that excruciatingly awkward phone call.
“Yes, you forgot to mention your sister’s condition,” Elizabeth responded with a nod. “That does explain why you’re tiptoeing around her.” Although she really only had his word that that was what he was doing, she added silently.
She was well aware that brothers had a definite tendency to exaggerate details when it came to their sisters. However, Jared did come across as very genuine in his concern for his sister. Elizabeth smiled at him. The man did seem to have hidden qualities that she found quite admirable and appealing.
“You know,” she told him, “for a brother, you’re awfully sensitive and thoughtful.”
“For a brother?” he echoed, somewhat bemused. “Care to explain that?”
Elizabeth nodded, holding up her finger to silently indicate that he was going to have to wait a second longer for her to elaborate. First, she needed to swallow what she’d just bitten off.
“I have two brothers,” she told him the second she could, “and I know for a fact that they would relish irritating me about absolutely anything rather than being mindful of my feelings. Hence, since you’re being so considerate of your sister’s condition, that would make you sensitive and thoughtful.”
He couldn’t see anyone actually deliberately trying to get under her skin. Under her clothes, maybe, but—
Almost startled by the direction his mind had just wandered off in, he abruptly shut down his thoughts. He needed to exercise a little better self-control than he’d been doing. For heaven’s sake, he was planning music for his parents’ anniversary celebration, not for a quick tryst of his own.
Clearing his throat, he focused on what she’d just told him and not on the image that had popped up in his head. “They’re probably just good at hiding their true feelings about you.”
She laughed shortly. “No, my brothers aren’t trying to hide anything,” she guaranteed. “I’m very aware of how they feel about me. I’m their big sister, the one they always went to to borrow money from or to run interference for them with our dad whenever they did something stupid. The one who always wound up lecturing them about it.”
“And did you?” When she looked at him in confusion, he framed his question more succinctly. “Lend them money and run interference?”
Elizabeth shrugged, avoiding making eye contact and looking at the remainder of the pizza on the tray rather than at him.
“I’d like to say no, I didn’t, but I really seem to have trouble saying that word when it comes to family,” she divulged. And then she rethought her words. Her confession wasn’t broad enough, she decided. “Actually, I have trouble saying no to anyone.”
The moment she made the statement, she realized how that had to sound to him. As if she was some pushover people easily had their way with. She definitely didn’t want him getting that impression. “I mean, as in doing someo
ne a favor, not as in anything that...”
She was searching for a graceful way out of this, he realized. Jared had no desire to see her twisting in the wind like this. “I understand what you mean,” he assured her.
She breathed a quick sigh of relief, not altogether sure just how she’d managed to paint herself into that kind of a corner. She didn’t ordinarily get flustered or tongue-tied. And she was usually a great deal clearer when she spoke.
Had to be those mesmerizing green eyes of his, she concluded. Every time she gazed into them, they seemed to completely undermine her ability to think coherently.
His eyes seemed to have the exact same effect on her pulse rate. It hadn’t really settled down since she’d spotted him standing off to the side, listening to her play on the soundstage.
“New topic,” she declared, feeling it was the only way to start over. She returned to what she knew: music. It was the only safe topic available to her. “Are you going to want to have an ensemble playing at your parents’ party, a band, or what?”
Amused at her choice of wording, he asked, “What’s an ‘or what’?”
Elizabeth didn’t even hesitate. “Anything you want it to be,” she informed him.
The word want seemed to pulse in his mind for a split second. What he found himself wanting at that moment had nothing to do with orchestrated music and everything to do with the woman sitting opposite him in the small booth.
After a beat, he realized that while the eatery was far from silent, the silence between them was drawing out. She was obviously waiting for an answer and expected him to make a decision right here and now. Not that waiting would be of any help.
He went with his gut.
“A band, I guess,” he responded.
“What sort of musicians do you want in this band?” Elizabeth pressed, wanting to get as much information out of him as possible. She didn’t want him to think that she was going to manipulate him into giving her friends jobs as well.
Jared shrugged. He definitely hadn’t thought this part out—or had even been aware of it. When Mrs. Manetti had suggested music for the party and given him Elizabeth’s name, it had seemed like a good idea. It had also seemed like a complete idea, not one that required more decisions.
“Good ones,” he finally told her.
She pressed her lips together to keep the laugh that had risen back. “Besides that.”
He thought for a moment, trying to recall something he’d once seen. “Someone to play the keyboard, maybe a guitar...”
He was searching, she realized. The next question she asked him was for form’s sake, already rather certain she knew his answer. “Have you hired anyone else for this band?”
“No,” he answered, then confided, “I’m really kind of new at this.”
For the second time, humor tugged at her mouth, a laugh bubbling up in her throat. She suppressed it. Men didn’t appreciate being laughed at, no matter how much they deserved to be.
“You could have fooled me,” she said with as straight a face as she could manage, under the circumstances.
He saw right through her. “No, I couldn’t,” Jared said.
Elizabeth released the laugh that all but begged to be freed.
“Okay, you couldn’t,” she allowed, quickly following that with a distracting, practical suggestion. “Why don’t we discuss the kind of music your parents would enjoy hearing at their party and, in addition, what you might want to hear played. If you tell me that, I can try to figure out the kind of instruments you’re going to need for this ‘band.’” He looked to be a little stumped by her suggestion, so she tried to simplify it for him as much as possible. “To begin with, how many people do you envision playing in this ‘band’?”
In his mind’s eye, he’d seen a handful. “Five sound like a good number to you?” he asked her. “You’re the expert, after all.”
Now there he was wrong. She played violin, she didn’t put together bands or ensembles. At least, not until now. “I’m not an expert,” she protested.
He wasn’t about to retreat from his assessment. “Compared to me, you are.”
Elizabeth inclined her head, conceding for now.
“Point taken. Yes, five’s a good number,” she allowed. She took a breath. Depending on the kind of songs he wanted played, the instrument she played might not even be the best for what he had in mind. “At the risk of talking myself out of a job, are you sure you really want a violin in this mix?”
He looked at her, his eyes instantly taking hers prisoner. Elizabeth was certain she felt something electrifying zigzagging through her body at just under the speed of light.
“Absolutely,” he told her.
There went her pulse again, she thought. Focus, Liz, focus, she silently ordered.
“All right,” she said out loud. “The keyboard’s a good suggestion and you might want to think about getting a cellist as well. That way, you could run the gamut of music from classical, to jazz to pop.” She watched him, chewing on her bottom lip as she waited to see what he thought of her suggestion.
From out of nowhere, a jolt of desire ambushed him. He would have blamed the whole thing on the wine—except that he hadn’t had any tonight. Rousing himself, he realized that she was waiting for a response from him.
It took him a moment to recall what she’d just said. Or at least part of it. “Sounds good to me.”
“All right, I know a cellist who’s reasonable—and good,” she emphasized in case he thought she was just trying to get work for a friend. “And there’s this musician I know who can practically get a keyboard to talk—” She paused for a second, deciding she needed a little more input from him. “You know, it would really help if you could give me the names of a few of the songs your parents like to listen to.”
He would if he could, but for the life of him, not a single song title came to mind. His mind still a blank after several attempts, he finally said, “That would be my sister’s department.”
Fair enough. She doubted if either one of her brothers knew the title of a single song their father liked. “When do you think I could meet her?” she asked.
That was going to be tricky, he thought. “Megan’s not around right now. Her husband booked this cruise as a surprise for her way before they knew she was pregnant and the deposit was nonrefundable—so they went,” he told her. “Megan didn’t want to hurt his feelings—this is the first thing Max, her husband, ever planned on his own, and she’s afraid that if she squelched it, he’d give up and never try to surprise her again. But I have to admit that this is really cutting things rather close. She’s coming back two days before the party.”
And that wound up putting the burden of keeping track of all the arrangements for this celebration squarely on his shoulders.
“Okay, we’ll approach this from another angle,” Elizabeth said gamely. “Do your parents have a CD collection?”
She saw him smile at that. “Vinyl,” he told her. “They have an old vinyl collection.”
Things clicked in her head. Even better. “They like the oldies,” she concluded.
This was promising...
A light came into his green eyes, making them even more magnetic, in her opinion, than they already were. “Yeah, I guess they do.”
“Great. Now we’re getting somewhere.” Wiping her fingers off on a napkin, Elizabeth dug into her purse and pulled out a pen and pad, ready to jot everything down. “Do they have a favorite artist, group or style?” And then she held up her hand to stop him in case he was going to tell her that he didn’t know. “When you were a kid, do you remember the music they played? Close your eyes,” she prompted.
“Why?”
“It helps. Trust me.”
He shrugged. “Okay.” And he shut his eyes.
“Now, what do you hear? Concentrate,” she underscored.
He took a deep breath and did as she suggested. His mind drifted back over the years. For a long moment, he was very quiet. And then
he heard it, heard a fragment of a melody transcending time.
“I think my dad liked listening to the Rolling Stones,” he said. Yes, it was definitely the Stones, he thought, a note of triumph echoing through his veins. “My mother tended to favor something Dad referred to as ‘bubblegum music.’ He’d tease her about it. She’d turn up the volume to drown him out.” His eyes flew open and he looked at Elizabeth, somewhat stunned. “I’d forgotten all about that,” he confessed, a note of pleasure in his voice.
Elizabeth nodded, her smile all but radiant. “This is good,” she told him. “Very good. I can bring over a sample of some of the old CDs my father has so we can home in on some of your folks’ favorite songs. We’ll get a playlist together that they’ll love—and your sister will approve of,” she added for good measure.
Jared leaned back in his seat and watched as Elizabeth got rolling and picked up steam.
As he listened to this vibrant dynamo pull things together, he silently blessed Theresa Manetti for bringing Elizabeth Stephens into his life.
For possibly more than one reason.
Chapter Seven
“Are you sure you’re not forgetting something?” Megan Winterset MacDonald pressed, her usual friendly tone bordering perilously close to impatience after her brother had assured her that everything was “fine.”
Even on this ship-to-shore call, Jared could vividly envision the furrows forming on his sister’s brow. “No, I’m not forgetting something, Megan. You left me a list, remember?”
“And you didn’t lose it?” she wanted to know, sounding skeptical.
“If you recall, you anchored it with four magnets onto my refrigerator and, so far, I’m happy to report that I haven’t lost my refrigerator.” He loved Megan dearly and they’d built up a good relationship once they’d left their teens, but there were times when he could totally recall why he had once dubbed her Princess Royal Pain. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t you supposed to be having fun right now?” he reminded her.
A Perfectly Imperfect Match (Matchmaking Mamas) Page 7