Between Hearts: A Romance Anthology

by Alexander, Erica

  “You like this song?” Ren has settled on the edge of the futon. One arm rests in front of the box of records and he holds his chin in his hand as he stares at me.

  “One of my favorites by him,” I tell him, still swaying. My shoulders have joined the party. “‘I Wish You Love.’ It was my theme song when I broke up with my boyfriend last fall.”

  The corner of Ren’s mouth flattens. I love that curl to his lips. I’d almost say that by now I find it comforting, because the absence of it feels off.

  “What?” I ask.

  “You’re okay listening to a song that reminds you of your ex-boyfriend?” His brow furrows. My fingers tingle on my thighs, wanting to brush over his smooth eyebrows. I’ve never seen a man with such well-shaped brows.

  “I guess.” I shrug. “As you can tell, from the lyrics, I don’t have any hard feelings against him. We just sort of… stopped working, if you know what I mean.”

  “People don’t just stop working.” This time, I can clearly read his dim expression. If I thought Renan Vidal was stubborn before, I had no idea. “You either didn’t work to begin with or you stopped wanting to work.”

  The room goes cold. Or maybe that’s me. I should be angry. Upset that he’d imply that what I had with my boyfriend before wasn’t real. But instead, I feel ashamed. Which is stupid. What does he know about my relationship? What I did or did not feel? I have nothing to feel bad about. I shouldn’t have told him anything.

  “Well, that’s rude.” My voice comes out just as flat as I’d hoped. “You shouldn’t make assumptions about other people’s relationships.”

  “It’s not an assumption.”

  The song ends, and a few seconds later another one starts up. I recognize it almost right away: “Let Me Love You Tonight.” Normally, I adore this song. The lyrics are achingly romantic, and something I always dreamed of. Spending a whirlwind night with a man, pretending to be in love.

  Remembering that sends my stomach rolling. What am I doing?

  “Please no more Dean Martin,” I beg, in something just above a whisper, bending forward with my arms wrapped around my belly. “Can you turn it off, please?”

  I can’t see him, but I hear his feet shuffle on the hardwood floor.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks.

  “I just… can’t think when I’m listening to music I know. It makes me nervous.” The explanation hardly makes any sense. Ren lets the song play out a few seconds longer, just enough for me to imagine him singing it, touching me, sliding his lips over mine to ask for a kiss. And then he cuts off the music abruptly.

  “Then let’s listen to something you don’t know,” he suggests, his tone softer than before.

  “Please. Can I lie down?”

  “Sure.”

  I take the three steps to reach the bedroom and curl up on the foot of the bed while he shuffles through more records.

  “Tell me, Penelope.” The apartment is so small that he doesn’t even have to raise his voice for it to reach me. “Do you listen to opera at all?”

  “Nope.”

  “Hm.”

  I maneuver my body so that I can watch him from my perch on his bed. His sheets smell clean, as if they’ve recently been through the wash. A tiny smile lingers on his lips as he replaces the Dean Martin record with another one. The kind of smile I don’t think he wears for show. This one is just for him.

  Chapter Five

  Samson et Dalila Act 2: “Mon cœur s’ouvre à ta voix”

  He lowers the needle again, and this time violins take up residence in the little room. Ren stands up as a woman begins singing. It’s impossible for me to understand, not only because it’s opera, but also because it’s likely in another language.

  “This opera is called Samson et Dalila,” he explains as he steps toward me, loosening his tie all the way and tossing it to the side of the bed.

  “Like the bible story?” I’m breathless, but I don’t know when it happened. He moves about his home with such masculine grace.

  “Like the bible story,” he repeats. He takes a seat next to me on the bed. We stare at each other, listening to the opera. I’m not a big fan, but whoever the singer is has incredible talent. “Tell me about your tattoo.”

  The question catches me off guard before I remember that he mentioned it before we left the party. I sit up, touching my shoulder again. On a normal day, I dread that inquiry. Tonight is no different. Except that I actually consider telling him the truth.

  “It’s of jasmine flowers in a vine,” I say.

  Without looking away from my face, Ren brings his hand up and replaces my fingers with his on my shoulder blade. His touch sets something alive within my chest. I suck in a sharp breath. Not from fear.

  “May I see?” When I hesitate, he adds, “You can turn away from me. I won’t look.”

  It’s not stripping in front of him that makes me nervous. It’s the fact that I don’t mind stripping in front of him. I take my clothes off in front of very few people, and the last man I took my clothes off for is my ex. Months and months ago. And yet I’m ready to expose not just my body, but something a bit more, to a guy I’ve known just a few hours.

  I turn away from him, sitting on the edge of the bed with my legs crossed in front of me. Quickly, wanting to do it before I chicken out, I peel the dress off, over my head. Unhook my strapless bra and toss it to the ground.

  Ren is silent.

  I try to picture what he’s seeing. Last time I saw the tattoo was last summer when it had just finished healing, and that was through a mirror. I know it’s a vine of white jasmine flowers starting in the middle of the back on my right side. It trails up, ending in a cluster of flowers just over my shoulder blade.

  “‘Mon cœur s’ouvre à ta voix,’” Ren murmurs.

  I freeze. I may have lost much of my command of French after graduating, but I do understand enough to know what he just said. My heart opens itself to your voice.

  “That’s the name of the aria,” he adds without even a slight chuckle.

  And then he touches my back again, this time at what must be the base of the tattoo.

  The opera song has slowed down to a more legato section. The harp, the heart of the entire orchestra, stands out above everything else in the song. Slow ascending notes accompany the singer’s desperate tone. Desperate like me, anticipating where Ren will touch next.

  Shivers flow up my spine as he traces my tattoo and deliberately makes his way up, up, up. He stops at the base of my shoulder blade, circling there as the song builds up into a quiet crescendo. My back arches of its own accord, as if sensing his closeness. Just as the singer reaches the top of the crescendo, and as the orchestra falls into broken chords, his breath fans over the top.

  I have no idea if my gasp is audible above the music, but if it is, it does not stop him. His hands move to circle low on my waist, pressing into my skin gently.

  “Why jasmine flowers?” he asks as the music quiets to a wordless orchestral section. His lips are a whisper on my skin. Barely even touching.

  I can’t breathe. “They’re pretty.”

  “Why so many?”

  The answer is lost somewhere in a sigh as his nose makes contact, tracing the line of a vine along my shoulder. I must have moved again, because he tightens his hands on my waist before rubbing up and down in a soothing pattern. It’s so, so unbearable. The clarinet’s melody, the broken chords, Ren’s lips and fingers and skin…

  “You can lie down,” he breathes.

  I do. I lie on my stomach, face against his pillow, and he barely parts from my back in the process.

  “Why so many flowers?” he asks again. He exhales, soft as nothing, against the back of my neck. Nowhere near my tattoo.

  “It took a long time,” I mumble, unable to concentrate on anything except his mouth’s journey down my spine. Nowhere near my tattoo. “And it hurt. A lot.”

  “Did it?” The bed shifts as he moves, presumably, away from me. And then his fi
ngers are back, tracing up and down the right side of my back. Goosebumps follow the trail.

  “It was the bravest thing I’ve ever done.”

  The aria is at a slightly faster point now, with lots of runs. My breathing picks up to match the tempo.

  I just told Ren the truth. That in my tiny little life, the most courage I’ve ever shown is enduring a few hours of pain to get a pointless, pretty tattoo on my back. Where very few people will ever see it.

  He rests his fingers at the base of my spine. Just above my panties. My legs quiver.

  “You are very brave, Penelope.” No one has ever taken such care when saying my name. Ren says it like he holds the world on the tip of his tongue.

  “I’m not. It’s stupid.”

  I wish I knew what this opera was about. Why the woman sounds so sad, almost as if she’s pleading with her song. It returns to the legato section, and Ren leans over me, hands on either side of my head. He touches his lips to the shell of my ear.

  “You were brave then. Brave tonight.” He exhales over my cheek. “You could have the universe, if you wanted to.”

  I don’t even register his words, because then he’s holding my waist again. And then sliding up until his thumbs meet in the middle of my back.

  “Réponds à ma tendresse,” he murmurs, his mouth too close to my skin. “Réponds à ma tendresse.” My limited French allows me only to understand the first part of his command. I’m almost glad for the fact, because he adds, “It’s the lyrics.” And even without knowing the backstory of the opera, I know that the lyrics are not words I want to hear.

  He caresses the opposite side of my back, sliding his soft-as-air fingers over bare skin. Until I’m holding my breath every time he’s not touching me.

  The music builds up again. Ren sets his lips at the base of my spine, drags them up, and then there’s broken chords and broken chords and my back arches and my mouth falls open and I grip the sheets not nearly hard enough.

  And then the song quiets. The harp returns.

  Ren’s head is next to mine again. I reach up with a trembling hand and tangle my fingers in his hair. It’s just as soft as I predicted, sliding through my fingers like silk. Our mouths meet, open and quiet, but we don’t kiss.

  It’s wishing for a kiss.

  The song ends. His sigh slides across my bottom lip before he pulls back.

  “Stay over tonight?” he asks, almost as breathless as I am.

  I do nothing but nod.

  He moves back and places his button-down shirt next to me. I’m not sure when he took it off, but I take it all the same. As I sit up and twist it around to put it on, another aria comes on. I recognize it from the first note.

  “La Bohème?” I ask, grinning over at Ren, who is in the kitchen area.

  He gives me a sideways smile. “So you do know opera?”

  “Just this one.”

  For my twenty-first birthday, Mira’s mother took Mira and me to the opera. Mira had tried to convince her mom otherwise, but Tatiana Levitzky was dead-set on me celebrating my new adulthood by doing the most adult thing of all—attending the opera. So we went. And while it wasn’t my ideal birthday outing, I enjoyed it. Music is music.

  “Act 2,” he says. “‘Quando m’en vo.’”

  When he returns to the bedroom carrying two glasses of water, I’m turned to the side. So he can see that I’m wearing his shirt backwards, leaving it open to show off my tattoo. If his wide, even grin is anything to go by, this pleases him. I knew it would.

  He hands me one glass of water after I’ve burrowed under his covers and propped myself against the wall. Once I’m situated, he gets in the other side. We watch each other while the La Bohème character attempts to make the painter jealous. My heart rate can’t slow down. I’m flushed all the way down my body, but Ren doesn’t seem to mind.

  The area around my tattoo tingles as if his touch has left marks there, too.

  When I finish the water, I set it on the floor near the bed and snuggle down into the covers, closing my eyes.

  “Ren,” I say.

  “Yes?”

  “Tomorrow—I mean, when we wake up. This won’t be real, right? It’ll just be a fairytale?”

  He doesn’t speak for a very long time. Then, as the song reaches its last crescendo, he says, “Just a fairytale.”

  About the Author

  Micki Woodfield likes to write stories that have a bit of fairytale in them. Besides writing, she lives a particularly uneventful life that often includes driving fast, traveling cheaply, and searching the land for the best cupcakes. She is currently working on the first book in the series about Penelope, Ren, and their friends.

  Penelope’s Playlist.

  Here are a few places to find Micki (although you are most likely to find her on Twitter than anywhere else):

  Facebook Fan Page

  Goodreads

  @mickiwoo

  mickiwoodfield

  Off the Playbook

  Playing the Game Series

  HL Miller

  Edited by

  Valorie Clifton

  Chapter One

  I hurry down the hallway, my face flushed, heels clicking loudly on the hardwood floor. Why did she have to get the promotion? I’ve worked my butt off for the past two years trying to impress my boss. Alicia spends more time sucking up to Steve than she does producing any halfway decent marketing material.

  Stopping in my cubicle, I grab my purse. There’s no way I can stay here. Alicia’s cube is next to mine, and after she returns from the conference room, she’ll hold court with her little clique of snobby bitches, lording her victory over me. Her smug look after Steve announced her new position made me want to vomit.

  I glance at my phone on the way out. It’s four pm, not horribly early to sneak out on a Friday. Hearing a noise in the hall behind me, I speed up, hoping it’s not someone who will call me out on leaving early.

  “Jana!” Heather exclaims. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  Releasing the tight grip on the strap of my purse, I turn to face her. Heather is my closest friend at work, and I trust her. “I had to get out of there.”

  Heather’s expression is full of sympathy. “I’m sorry about what happened. You deserve it over her.”

  “Tell me about it.” I glance around the hall to see if anyone is within hearing range. It’s not safe to have this conversation here. Alicia has plenty of supporters. “You want to sneak out with me for happy hour? I could really use a drink.”

  Her lips turn down in a frown. “I would, but I’m meeting Seth after work. I can cancel it, though . . .”

  Part of me wants to take her up on her half-hearted offer, but she hasn’t seen her boyfriend for two weeks. He’s been out of town and busy with work. “No, that’s okay. It can wait. You don’t get to see Seth enough. Have fun with him this weekend.”

  Heather smiles and her eyes light up thinking about him. She’s so completely in love that it would be annoying if she weren’t my friend.

  “Thanks. We will. He told me he has a surprise planned for this weekend,” she says.

  “I hope he doesn’t drag you to some boring football game. Didn’t you say he has to work a college game tomorrow?” Seth’s a sportswriter for the largest newspaper in Philadelphia.

  “Actually, I’d enjoy it because I love football, unlike you. Anyway, we’ll catch up on Monday. Let’s do lunch.”

  “Sure, that’ll work. See you later.”

  I hurry to the elevator lobby before I run into someone else. Talking with Heather calmed me briefly, but I need to leave the office before my anger spills over. Jabbing at the button for the elevator, I pull out my phone. A text from my mom flashes on the screen.

  Mom: Congrats on your promotion, sweetie! I know you got it!

  A frown spreads over my face at the reminder of my failure. My mom is all Zen attitude, and if I tell her I didn’t get the promotion, she’ll say it wasn’t meant to be and babble about the moo
n and stars not being aligned. If I express my frustration, she’ll remind me that I need to focus on positive thoughts and to stop acting like my father. She’ll tell me to breathe deeply and do some yoga, and all my stress will melt away. I love my mom, but I can’t handle her at the moment. Neither can my dad, which is why they divorced ten years ago, when I was fourteen.

  Stepping into the elevator, I scroll through my texts. I need to find someone to meet me at happy hour. Otherwise, I’ll be drinking alone. Descending to angry, depressed, solitary drinking would make me a complete loser.

  My thumb stops on Gavin’s name. That’d be Gavin McGraw, wide receiver for Philadelphia’s professional football team, the Condors. He’s cocky, brash, intense, and hot as hell. He’s also my sometimes no-strings-attached hookup. We met last year when he signed onto our marketing campaign for a sports drink. His agent left town after the contract was final, leaving me to wrangle Gavin into showing up for photo shoots, filming commercials, and making appearances. His entire focus is on his team during the season, and he didn’t bother remembering anything as mundane as non-football-related appointments. It was a lot of effort on my part to get him to do what was needed.

  I’m still not sure how I ended up sleeping with Gavin McGraw. A month after the campaign ended, I ran into him at a bar. I was a little tipsy, and I didn’t blow him off when he offered to buy me a drink. The alcohol and his charming smile affected me enough that I said yes when he asked me to dance. He’s a great dancer. All those firm muscles give him power, and his graceful moves carry over from the football field. My body was hot where his hands gripped me firmly on the dance floor.

  Gavin’s touch and those sexy, smoldering blue eyes were overwhelming. I didn't push him away when he kissed me. His lips pressed against mine, and I stopped noticing anything else besides him. His tongue stroked me, and I forgot all the reasons I disliked him. My head spun from the warmth of sexual desire that spread over my body. Or perhaps that was the alcohol.