by Tanya Huff
“I wasn’t,” she told him honestly. More or less honestly. “But I am now. When it comes right down to it, it was only a guitar. It could have been worse.”
He tightened his grip. “That’s a remarkably mature attitude, Chuck. If I’d lost my kit, I’d be lying on the floor, drumming my heels and screaming.”
She’d done a little of that back in Calgary, but Jack’s expression kept reminding her how much worse it could have been, so . . . “Yeah, well, you’re wearing a Hello Kitty sporran. Where the hell did you get that, by the way?”
“Esty shop. It’s a one off.” He patted the pink leather bag hanging over his crotch. “You like?”
“Ignoring the innuendo because Tim’s a foot taller than me, I’m just happy to discover they’re not in mass production.”
“I totally don’t blame Jack’s guardians for freaking,” Shelly muttered, cradling her upright bass against her chest and rubbing her cheek along the smooth finish on the edge of the fingerboard. “I mean, terrorizing grannies and toddlers is one thing, but destroying instruments is a whole other level of fucked up.”
“Aggie Forest, Captain Wedderburn’s keys, got caught in her cables and nearly went down with the stage, talk about fu . . .” Mark paused, twisted back around to face Charlie and said, “You had your guitar when we saw you last night. Tim went to ask if we could help with the rebuild, and you and me were sitting on that picnic table. You had your guitar then, Chuck.”
Oops.
“I had my guitar case then, Mark. Still have the case.” It had been in the back of Paul’s car. “Now this guitar is in it.”
Mark frowned. Ran his thumb along a bit of flaking varnish. “It looks like it got caught out in the rain. How’s it sound?”
Charlie picked out the first four bars of “Wildwood Flower,” segued into “The Boy’s Lament for his Dragon,” finished up with Zeppelin’s “Tangerine.” “Sounds okay to me.” She grinned at Mark’s expression—he’d dropped back to sprawl at her feet when she started playing—and kicked him in the thigh. “For the love of . . . well, Tim, learn to sit like a lady.”
He had his mouth open to answer when one of his sticks nailed him in the back of the head.
“Quite the hollow bonk,” Shelly murmured.
“A little respect for your fearless leader,” Mark commanded, scrambling up onto his feet. “But Tim’s right. We need to get this run through moving; he’s got a Kids on Keyboards workshop at one. Where the hell’s Bo?”
Tanis had been one of the Selkies who’d got her sealskin back. It was entirely possible Bo wouldn’t be able to walk for . . .
“Sorry, sorry, sorry.” As if called by the question, Bo bounded down the stairs into the rec room. “Happy girlfriend, happy me, happy idiot in a pickup doing thirty in front of me all the way into town. Let’s rock and roll in a Celtic sort of way that’ll win us this shindig, get us a recording contract, fill our pockets, and cover us with the limited amount of glory available.” He set his case down on the top of the sofa, pulled out his violin, and took a moment to look around the room. “What?”
Tim snickered.
Mark spread his hands. “Nothing.” Hands still spread, he spun in place. “You heard the man, people, let’s Celt and roll.”
Charlie kept a tighter than usual grip on her tendency to throw a you like me, you really like me charm or two out. Today, this first day back playing, she had no idea if a slip would throw out more than just a joy in the music cranked up to eleven.
“Chuck . . .”
“Sorry.” She needed to get some kind of barrier up to slow the seepage of . . . of her into the music so she could play without worrying.
Finally, three songs in—well, two because they took three runs at their cover of “And if Venice is Sinking” by Spirit of the West. Two with the erection, one without. Consensus after the fact kept the erection in. Point was, erection aside, by song three, she’d managed to work out a balance between putting her heart into her playing and throwing the rest of her in as well. It wasn’t entirely comfortable and it felt so much like slacking that when they finally ran through Mark’s “Wild Road Beyond,” she let the barriers drop and just played. It seemed safe enough. Bo had the lead and Mark’s insecurities ensured they’d never play the song in public, so she’d never be asked to repeat this performance on a stage.
When they finished, Bo’s last note circled the basement half a dozen times before fading into silence.
Then someone sniffed and all five of them turned to stare at Shelly’s brother-in-law’s cousin and what looked like the entire extended family perched on the basement stairs. They looked at Grinneal. Grinneal looked at them. A burly older man wiped at his eyes with the hem of his T-shirt.
The applause when it came was loud enough Mark’s cymbals shimmied with it.
Later, after all the women and half the men had come the rest of the way downstairs to hug Bo, Shelly sagged back against the sofa cushions, bass cradled between her legs, and bounced a finger up her E making it sound. “All in favor of adding ‘Wild Road’ to the set list?”
“No.” Mark jumped in before anyone could answer. “It still isn’t quite right.”
“Dude, if it was any more right, it would ascend.” She glanced around the room. “Little help, guys.”
“Personally, I’m willing to play that song twenty-four/seven. I want it played at my fucking funeral. Hell, I’ll come back from the dead to play it myself.” Bo stripped off his sweat-soaked T-shirt and caught a dry one Tim tossed him. “But . . .” He sighed as his head emerged. “. . . it’s Mark’s song. His call.”
“Charlie?”
Charlie grinned. “I’m sorry, I was distracted by Bo’s happy trail. What was the question?”
“Charlie!”
“Mark’s song. His call.”
Shelly rolled her eyes. “And I don’t even need to ask Tim, do I? He’ll back Mark’s play. Fine. But we could win with that song.”
“Please,” Charlie snorted before things got heated, “we’ve heard the competition. We could win with ‘I’s the B’ye.’”
“You bitch,” Mark muttered as Tim filled the bellows of his accordion and began to play. “I should never have told you how much I hate that song.”
That afternoon, they could’ve won with “Farewell to Nova Scotia.” Charlie didn’t have to keep herself from leaking into the music, there wasn’t room. It leaked into her, thrumming through her body. The crowd fed off Grinneal’s energy and bounced it back at them. Out and back. Out and back. Until they weren’t a band and an audience, they were one musical organism.
When they finished, Shelly couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry as she stood shaking in the circle of Charlie’s arms. Tim stared at Mark with equal parts awe and lust and Mark stared back wearing exactly the same expression. Charlie prudently stepped out from between them, taking Shelly with her. Bo beamed in the center of a circle of babbling fiddle fans until Tanis threw herself at him, shrieking his name and practically glowing.
Actually glowing.
Charlie threw a charm at her before anyone came far enough out of the music to notice.
Their performance bled off into the band after them and Faic Tusan kept the audience up on their feet, dancing and singing along.
Charlie wandered through the crowd, nursing a beer, and enjoying being told how amazing Grinneal’s set had been. That never got old. She saw Eineen and Paul, waved but didn’t go over. The Selkies’ problems were solved—thanks to her, not that anyone except Paul had expressed any gratitude—it was time to leave the mine behind and enjoy the sunshine. She did notice that Paul was in a golf shirt, cargo pants, and deck shoes, but that was Eineen’s problem.
She was a little surprised when Neela’s husband Gavin found her later and asked if she thought Mark might be willing to share out the score for “Wild Road Beyond.” By the end of the evening, nearly every fiddler at the festival, both performers and audience members, had spoken to her. Seemed like Bo h
ad been talking. Fiddlers married to Selkies—and there were half a dozen in attendance—had come to her because of who she was. The rest had come to her because the other fiddlers had.
Charlie told them all the same thing. They had to talk to Mark.
No one could find Mark.
Or Tim.
And everyone apparently needed to follow that information with an enthusiastic wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
Sipping a glass of tolerable champagne, Amelia Carlson found herself enjoying the charity casino put on by the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada far out of proportion to the enjoyment actually available. Partly that was because she was there with Evan Damon, recently divorced, owner of the largest steel works in the Maritimes, and partly it was because his invitation had saved her from attending some sort of local music festival in Louisbourg. Wandering unprotected through crowds of tourists listening to fiddles and accordions extolling the virtues of a subsistence lifestyle was a little more “of the people” than she was interested in. Honestly, she employed “the people;” what more did they want?
As the MS Society was a particular charity of the Premier’s, the entire cabinet plus wives, husbands, and children of legal age were in attendance. The Minister of Health was having remarkable luck at one of the roulette wheels, the Minister of Transportation had just successfully drawn to an inside straight, and the Minister of the Environment hadn’t left the high stakes blackjack table all night.
Granted, the high stakes weren’t all that high, but Richard Conway played with a focus Amelia found intriguing. She drained her glass, snagged another from a very attractive waiter, and wandered casually toward the blackjack table. Over the last few years, she had spent more time with the minister than with any other person in the room, including Evan, so it was only polite she spend a little social time in the honorable member’s company.
Paul had never gone to work leaving a woman in his bed.
Not that there’d been a lot of women over the last few years; Amelia Carlson required one hundred and ten percent of his attention. Bad math, but standard business practice. The few women who’d stayed over, he’d taken out to breakfast and then home. Only one of them had stayed twice and, although she’d been determined to take their relationship to the next level, she hadn’t been able to compete with his job.
His relationship with Eineen had no “next level” to go to; from the moment she’d come out of the sea Thursday night, she’d become everything to him. Sure, in the beginning, he’d believed he could have what he had with her and keep Carlson Oil, but their adventure Friday night had forced him to face up to the fact that working for Amelia Carlson had made him complicit in the Goblin attack that had nearly killed the woman he loved.
She lay on her side, facing away from him, one arm tucked up under the pillow, the sheets pleated in the hollow of her waist, rising to drape over the perfect curve of her hip. They were cheap motel sheets, not the twelve hundred thread count Egyptian cotton she’d be wrapped in if they were in his condo in Halifax instead of a Sydney motel room, but against the satin of her skin, they looked like finest silk.
“You’re staring at me.”
Paul could hear the smile in her voice so he smiled back. “You’re the only thing in this room worth staring at.”
“True.” She rolled over, hair spilling across her breasts, and held out her hand.
“I have to get into the office,” he told her, sitting on the edge of the bed and catching her hand up in both of his. He kissed along her knuckles, then turned her hand over and placed one last kiss in her palm. “I have to tell Ms. Carlson that blackmailing Two Seventy-five N is no longer on the table. I have to give her a chance to admit that it was the wrong thing to do. I have to try to make her see that if that’s what it takes to get this well put in, then that alone is reason enough to find another field to tap.”
Eineen traced the line of his jaw with the first two fingers of her other hand. “Why?”
“Because I gave her two years, five months, and . . .” He frowned. For the first time in two years, five months and whatever, he couldn’t remember exactly how long he’d been Amelia Carlson’s assistant. That was . . . freeing. “The point is, if she can be made to see she was wrong, then . . .” Reluctantly releasing Eineen’s hand, he stood and tightened his tie. “Then I didn’t flush that time down the toilet. If I can make her see she was wrong, I’ll have begun to make amends.”
“I don’t need you to . . .”
“I do.” He was wearing the khaki suit today. It was one of Ms. Carlson’s favorites. He shrugged into the jacket, checked he had everything he needed in his briefcase, and walked to the door. “If this goes well, I may be a while.”
“And if it goes badly . . .” Eineen patted the bed beside her. “. . . come right back to me.”
Paul had not been in his office when Amelia arrived. The schedule for the day, printed out and left neatly centered on her desk, looked to be the same schedule sent to her phone. The same schedule Paul had drawn up Friday evening. There’d been no changes made as the oil industry and oil futures changed over the weekend. That was a first. Given where most of the world’s producing deposits were, change was, as her third-year sociology professor had said, a constant.
Settling into her chair, she slid the printout off the desk and into the garbage. It was possible Paul hadn’t been able to track any of the weekend’s changes, but it would have been the first time that had happened in over two years. He’d be busy catching up when he finally got his very fine ass into the office, particularly given the news of certain changes she had to share with him.
So where the hell was he?
She’d been waiting for nearly thirteen minutes before she heard Paul’s distinctive stride. “You’re late,” she snapped. “Get in here.”
He wasn’t carrying a green tea, soy latte. They’d have words about that later. He was wearing her favorite suit though, the one that made his shoulders and ass look amazing, weighting the scales back slightly in his favor.
“Ms. Carlson, I have something I need to tell you.”
“Later. I have something I need to tell you.” Smiling broadly caused crow’s feet, but she couldn’t stop herself. “I’ve never liked being involved in Catherine Gale’s activities,” she began. He looked relieved. Of course he did, he knew where she was coming from. She’d never had an assistant who understood her like Paul Belleveau did. Sitting back, she crossed her legs. “It wasn’t that the whole thing was weird to the nth degree, I can deal with weird if it gets the job done, but I hated the lack of control. I hated being dependent on her. And yes, I know I was paying her, but we both know she’s not the kind of woman to be dependent on those payments or to follow the golden rule—those who have the gold make the rules. But I’ve solved the problem.”
“Ms. Carlson . . .”
He no longer looked relieved. Of course he didn’t, he hated being out of the loop. It made it harder for him to take care of her. “Don’t worry, things couldn’t be better. It seems the honorable Richard Conway, the Minister of the Environment for Nova Scotia and Cape Breton, has a gambling problem.”
“A gambling problem?”
If she kept smiling like this, Paul would be booking her an appointment with her esthetician the moment he reached his desk. “He can’t stop playing, he can’t count to twenty-one. He owes money to some very unsavory people. Or he did. Now, he owes me. Or he did.” She glanced at her watch. “As of half an hour ago, the permits Carlson Oil needs are signed and a copy has been sent to this office by courier. An electronic copy was sent to both of us immediately after his signature was applied. They’re calling for clear skies, I called Captain Bonner myself on the way in, and the barges can go out this afternoon.”
“This afternoon?”
“Yes, this afternoon.” Paul looked horrified. It wasn’t a good look on him. Although she strongly disapproved, she was not adding to the damage she’d already done her face by frowning. “If you don’t ha
ve press releases and potential scheduling in place, ready to go when we got the word, you’re not the man I think you are. And if you’re not, there’s no real reason why I should be paying you.” He didn’t laugh with her, but then he’d always been a little sensitive about money. “As far as our more recent problems are concerned, Carlson Oil no longer requires Catherine Gale’s assistance and Two Seventy-five N can test their flotation rating by taking a long walk off a short pier.” She leaned back and crossed her legs. “Now, tell me how amazing I am and then I want to see the best case scenario for actually getting that rig up and working and finally getting oil out of that well.”
He stood and stared at her for a moment, opening and closing his hands.
Amelia sighed. “For heaven’s sake, Paul, spit it out so you can bring me a latte and then get some work done.”
“Ms. Carlson . . .”
“That’s my name.”
“I quit.”
“So, what’re you planning for the next few days?”
“Nothing much.” Charlie slid Shelly’s tool box under her groping hand and went back to leaning on the back of the car. She had nine days’ worth of sunlight to catch up on. “Probably head into Halifax and talk to some guys about maybe lining up studio work.”
“Probably? Maybe?” Shelly’s sneakers kicked twice, then she squirmed backward until she could drop her lower body off the tailgate and stand. “You don’t sound very juiced about it.”
“Honestly, I’m not.” Charlie shrugged, her back sticking to the car around the ties of her halter. “But a girl’s gotta make a living.”
“Too bad Jack had to go home. He’s a cool kid and you’d have had a blast showing him around.” Flicking her sunglasses down off the top of her head, Shelly pulled Charlie into a hug. “If you get bored, head up to Dingwall. There’s plenty of room and my gran loves company.”
“If I get bored, you’ll be the second to know.” Charlie waited until Shelly got into the car, then sketched a back off tailgaters charm in the dust. It’d only last until the next rain, but the forecast was a week of clear skies.