by Jae Dawson
“Good. Let me know ASAP so I can tell the district. We don’t want to leave your adoring fans waiting long.”
I snorted. “You mean Cade’s adoring fans?”
“Whatever gets the butts in these chairs,” he said. “We need to remember our long game here.”
“Right.”
Securing arts funding for the school. Sure, it chaffed that Cade was accomplishing through his mere presence what I couldn’t in years of slaving away. It seemed like everyone agreed I should just accept this fate, the “long game” as Mr. Kelley put it. Everything in me revolted at any thought of being upstaged. This was my moment to shine as the arts educator. My department to save. But . . . I wouldn’t let my pride get in the way of what was best for my students and this school.
The back doors opened and the Drama Club started to pour in for rehearsal, filling the space with the sound of bubbling voices and laughter. I smiled.
Principal Kelley rapped on the piano with his knuckle. “Nice job, Pagano.” He ambled back down the steps off stage.
I just grinned.
The kids cheered, followed by excited chatter after I delivered the news. I would let them burn off a little excitement before beginning today. Though, if I were honest, I was also momentarily distracted. Cade sauntered up to the stage, his hands shoved into the pockets of his black jeans.
My heart hammered out a little staccato rhythm at his approach.
“Congratulations,” he said.
“Well, apparently, it was all your doing.”
He flashed his grin at me.
Do not show weakness. Breathe . . .
Cade tilted his head and blond hair fell over his eyes. Dammit. “I have sold out every show for the past five years.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and arched a single brow.
He held up his hands. “Not that this is my show. People are genuinely excited to see Hartwood’s rendition of Little Shop.”
Okay, this I could combat. “And I thought I was supposed to kiss your ass, not the other way around?”
“It can go both ways.” His smile widened, showing those straight white teeth. That single look challenged me to fight harder. But if I did, I wasn’t sure I could remain strong in his presence.
“I guess you helped . . . a little.” I finished with an eye roll for added effect.
“You okay? Need a chair?”
I furrowed my brow. Could he sense I was on the verge of turning into a pathetic blob on the stage floor at his feet? My pulse kicked into a gallop and I nervously tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “Uh . . . why?”
“Admitting you need help is painful for you.” He gestured at me, as if sizing me up. “Clearly.”
“What?!”
“You’re a little wobbly on your feet from the effort. Don’t want you to faint and hit your head next.” His eyes hooded, a bedroom look that sent shivers through my entire body. “I would have to take over then, and well . . . the show must go on.”
I glowered at him. “Shall I pet your head and call you a good boy for your hypothetical sacrifice?”
He leaned in, softly biting his lower lip. “But I’m not a good boy.”
“No,” I whispered, suddenly wishing I had that chair. “Definitely not.” Breathe . . .
“But we could discuss the petting part.” Electricity arced between us. The tension was almost too much. Don’t look at his lips. Don’t look at his lips. Dark blue eyes searched my face, slow, as if reading my thoughts. As if his gaze were capable of trailing kisses down my cheek, along my jaw—
A student hollered out another student’s name and snapped me out of my Cade-induced trance. It seemed to pull Cade back into reality too. The lines of his forehead wrinkled before he stepped back and cleared his throat.
Looking anywhere but at me, he asked, “You think it will be enough? For the school board?” He shifted on his feet, watching the students talk and laugh. “Selling out, putting on an extra two shows,” he began again, this time his attention back onto me, “will you get your funding?”
“We better. My choices are limited.” I tried to smile kindly. But we both knew what almost happened. What had happened already. I stepped toward the piano and gathered my music. Anything to move, to keep us focused on our job and not our attraction. “There’s a school meeting the week of the show. Perfect time to make my last pitch.”
Cade nodded. “Want backup?”
I raised an eyebrow and did my best to squash my natural reaction to prickle at the offer of help. He was right. It was hard for me to accept help. It was a little disconcerting that he could have me pegged so well, so quickly. “What do you have in mind?”
“I mean, I’m sure you can handle it on your own, but I could come and talk about my career . . . tell them I wouldn’t have found success without the encouragement I had here as a teenager.”
It was one thing to come to court-ordered rehearsals, but another all together to take his free time to attend an interminable school board meeting. “You would do that?”
He lowered his head until strands of hair fell over his face, his gaze fixed onto the scuffed-up Doc Martens boot of his that currently toed circles on the stage floor.
“For you, Bella . . . of course.”
Not Ms. Pagano. But my name, spoken as if a confession.
Cade’s gaze flicked to mine and I softly blinked. There was an intensity in his eyes that spun me back to the gazebo. A few minutes ago, I wanted to kiss those lips all over again. But not anywhere near as desperately as I did now.
Oh God.
I was so screwed.
“Miss Pagano! Are we here to chit chat or are we here to rehearse?” Paloma called out from the stage’s far side, parroting the exact words I had used on them a half a dozen times, and the students laughed.
My cheeks flamed, but I did my best to shake it off while striding toward the piano. “What do you think?”
“Rehearse!” the students shouted.
“Rehearse,” I agreed, sitting down on the bench. “Should we do Feed Me? We needed to figure out the last bit of the choreography for the chorus.”
“Actually,” Paloma said, “Marcus and I weren’t quite sure on the choreography for the last verse of Suddenly, Seymour. Can we go over that again really quick?”
Hmm. The blocking on that song wasn’t complicated; it was mostly just freeform, until the main couple got closer and closer and embraced at the end. “Let’s save that for later, since it’s just you and Marcus who want to review the blocking. Everyone else can head home.”
“We don’t mind!” Katie, another senior, shouted from the third row. There was a wave of tittering laughter.
My eyes narrowed slightly, and I looked around the auditorium. Something was afoot.
“Maybe you and Cade could just show us?” Marcus, who played Seymour, stood next to Paloma. “It would help me to see the whole thing. You know, from the audience’s perspective.”
“I’m sure Mr. Owens doesn’t even know the lyrics—” I began, but Cade was already vaulting onto the stage from the front row seat he’d taken when I had moved to the piano.
“Come on, Ms. Pagano.” He held out a hand to me and winked. “For science.”
I looked at that hand as the kids started chanting, “Bella, Bella, Bella,” and I knew I had been vastly out maneuvered.
With dramatic acceptance, I placed my hand in Cade’s and the students all cheered. His fingers were warm and strong—calloused from his guitar strings. The pleasant tingles running up my arm, from where my hand connected with Cade’s, were impossible to ignore. I hope it didn’t show on my face. Just the very thought threatened another embarrassing blush. Cursed seed of intention. This was ridiculous.
Cade led me to a chair on center stage, where the song started
“There’s no one to play the music—” I attempted one final protest, but Charlie, my backup pianist, had already slid into place on the bench. I sighed. It was hopeless.
“Sing for me, my angel of music . . .” Cade’s eyes were sparkling.
He knew Phantom of the Opera?
Don’t look at his lips. Don’t look at his lips . . .
Thank the Universe I finally had a chair. Damn.
But I couldn’t let him win our game of flirtatious prodding. So, I bowed mockingly to him from my seated position. Cade may make millions singing in arenas. But I wasn’t half-bad myself. Those taunting blue eyes caught mine for a single roaring beat of my heart. Then the music began and he backed off, shoving his hands into his pockets while donning the guise of the shy, tentative male lead.
Right.
The piano notes danced on the air and echoed all around us, and a pleasant warmth nestled deep inside me. Cade’s voice was like velvet and grit—deep and smooth with crooning softness, then rough around the edges when emotions swelled. The lyrics almost seemed personal when he sang them to me. Each word a comfort that everything would be okay, that my job was secure, that life would get better. That he was here for me. I was so mesmerized, I almost missed my cue for the first line of the second verse, when Audrey comes in.
I drew in a long breath and then Audrey’s longing rushed out.
Cade’s eyebrows shot up, and my students started hollering and clapping. It was all I could do to keep the smile off my face as I sang—to him. I wasn’t model-perfect like the women he knew. I was a simple, average girl, whose daddy left her with a mamma who was poor—just like Audrey. But I had a clear, powerful soprano, one that vibrated through my body and blissfully carried my pulse into the music’s beat and into the melody’s rhythm. Singing, like dancing, like playing the piano, was one of the things that had always come naturally to me.
Somehow, on legs that managed to find strength, I stood from the chair. My heart thundered as Cade and I circled each other on the stage, our voices blending in a harmony that sent chills down my spine. A rare silence had fallen over the auditorium—in some small corner of my mind, I knew that my students were watching with rapt attention—that they were still there.
But it was Cade who consumed me.
Cade, as he forgot the awkward fumblings of his character and owned the stage with his sexy-as-hell electricity. Cade, as he took my hand like it was as natural as breathing, as he circled behind me, smelling faintly of rain and moonlight, his tall, muscled form surrounding me with every inch of his presence. Cade, who felt so goddamn right . . . whose body fit mine as perfectly as our voices did.
And it was Cade when the final note lingered on the air, and I found myself wrapped in his arms, my lips just inches from his. Our eyes locked together in a silent acknowledgment that some invisible wall between us had just officially crumbled, and there would be no going back.
Chapter Fifteen
Bella
It was Friday night in Hartwood Falls, and I had a date with not one, but two Owens men.
Cade sat beside me in the passenger seat, drumming on his knee and nodding his head to a Chris Stapleton song on the speakers. It had been Gramps’s musical pick—he had requested “something with real words, not that screechy stuff.”
“Frank, do you listen to Burning Umbrage?” I asked over my shoulder.
Cade stopped drumming, seemingly curious to hear the answer.
“Oh yes,” Gramps said. “Frances had a ritual when one of Cade’s albums came out. We would drive into Seattle and pick up the record, and then we’d go to Ivar’s and get fish and chips. She loved those fish and chips.”
Cade and I exchanged a humored look. “I didn’t know your albums were on vinyl.”
“I sound good on vinyl.” Cade grinned at me. “Scratchy. Vintage sexy.”
I snorted. “I had to get rid of my turntable when I moved. I haven’t listened to vinyl in ages.”
“Well, you’ll have to come over after we get our costumes. I have an extensive collection—” he dramatically paused and winked, biting his lower lip playfully “—in my childhood bedroom.”
Old gods save me.
That look was all kinds of dangerous.
“Girls are only allowed in your room, Cade, if you keep the door open.”
Now it was Gramps’s turn to wink at me and I laughed. Cade, however, slid Gramps a look that conveyed “cock block,” which made the old man grin in return. A handsome smile, I noted, that was just as impish as his grandson’s. The two of them were a pair, always playing off the other. And Gramps didn’t seem to mind innuendo either. In fact, a few times he threw out his own. Such a stark contrast from when I escorted them to Maple Lane. I already appreciated the way Cade cared for his grandfather. But this?
This showed me a side of Cade I found irresistible. His care wasn’t out of obligation or some twisted sense of duty. He genuinely loved his grandfather and enjoyed hanging out with him too.
When Gramps returned his attention out the window, a devilish smile softened Cade’s lips and he mouthed, “door closed.”
I had to bite back another laugh, then rolled my eyes.
Still . . . a little trill of excitement went through me. Something had shifted between me and Cade after the assisted living retirement home and Tuesday’s rehearsal. He had asked for my number to arrange this little trip to a costume store and had been texting me ever since. Just little things, but every time a message popped up from him, I felt a quick surge of adrenaline. How could I have been so totally wrong about him? Cade was down to earth in a way that was almost astounding in the face of Burning Umbrage’s popularity. The person he portrayed to the public—the arrogant, give-no-shits handsome frontman—it was a mask he wore. Something he could give his fans and the industry while still keeping something for himself.
“Is that the shop?” Cade pointed and I slammed on the brakes, before making a wild turn into the Damsels & Devils costume shop parking lot.
“Easy 007.” Cade had his hands on the dashboard to brace himself as we came to a stop in a parking spot.
“Sorry, I was distracted. Everyone okay back there?” I looked at Gramps through the rearview mirror.
“Just cuz I’m old doesn’t mean I want to go today.” Gramps said. But his mouth was twisted, as if he were struggling to keep a smile off his face.
My mouth, however, dropped open. To play up the mock-offense, I unbuckled my seatbelt and got out, cursing loudly in Italian. Then I spun on them and threw my hands into the air, the kind of gesture that communicated that no amount of boyish charm from two men who depended on my driving skills would win this argument. “I’m an excellent driver.”
Cade helped his grandfather out of the back seat, then stage whispered, “just let her think so.”
Gramps chuckled. “She yelled at you in Italian, Cade.”
“Cursed at you both in Italian,” I corrected.
“Even better.” Gramps chuckled again. “Come on, son,” he said, clapping Cade on the back. “Let’s go get me a damsel costume before she places a curse on us.” He moved out from underneath Cade’s assistance and started across the parking lot, leaning heavily on his cane.
“And I didn’t even tell him your mom was a witch,” Cade whispered over his shoulder.
I followed, but not ready to give up this flirtatious fight yet. “You’ve never complained about my driving the last dozen times I drove your ass home.”
Cade grinned—a dare to curse him in Italian once again. “And piss off the woman driver?”
I slowed my steps and arched an indignant eyebrow. “I’m not the one who lost their license.”
No Italian for him. The asshole.
“You play nasty.” Cade slung his lean arm around my shoulders and led me toward the store. “All right, favorite groupie.” I stiffened and he smirked. “I get it. Unfair stereotypes suck. Kinda like when someone makes a judgment about all rock stars based on the actions of one particular musician.”
I looked at him sideways. He was so close like this. So warm and familiar. The fresh scent of his soap and aftershave filled my senses until I was heady an
d hyperaware of everything—the way his shirt clung to his chest, how his hair fluttered in the slight breeze, the slant of his lips. I wanted to bury my face in his neck and inhale deeply. But I needed to focus.
“That wasn’t exactly a stereotype,” I somehow managed, and with the same amount of sass as before. Dammit, why did he have to be just the right height for his arm to rest comfortably around my shoulder? I cleared my throat and continued, “More of a personal aversion based on lived experience.”
“And surely you’ve realized that not all of us are like that—”
“What, arrogant and used to getting their way?” I offered lightly. “You’re not really helping your cause right now.”
Cade paused, halting us just steps from the front door. “And what is my cause, Ms. Pagano?”
My breath hitched. His arm was still around me, drawing me in close. My eyes flickered to his perfect lips. We had been interrupted twice now––
The door tinkled open and Gramps shoved his head out. “Are you two going to fight all day or are you coming inside?”
I shook my head with a rueful sigh. Make that three times.
Halloween was less than two weeks away, and signs of it were popping up all over this small town. Hartwood Falls loved their holidays. I did, too. But with my busyness with the musical, I hadn’t even decorated my yard yet this year.
“All right, Gramps,” Cade asked as we stood in the entryway to the sprawling store. “What should we look for? Sailor? Scottish warrior?”
“No servicemen.” Gramps shook his head. “I wouldn’t want to disrespect those who have actually worn the uniform. I’m not sure. I haven’t dressed up since Frances made me go to a town square dance a few years back.” At the mention of his late wife, Cade’s grandfather put out an arm to grasp the nearest rack of clothes—as if the thought of her made his legs weak.
Cade cupped his grandfather’s shoulder gently. “We’ll find the perfect thing. Gran will be looking down from heaven, marveling at how good you look.”