LIAM
Leaning back in my office chair, I close my eyes. The strains of the violin wash over me, soothing the rough edges inside me. I’m in agony thinking of the day when the room next door will be silent. What will happen to every jagged, violent thought inside me?
And even still I look forward to the day that she’s gone. Because she shouldn’t be near me, shouldn’t have to soothe the devil that pants and snorts inside me. A goddamn bull, that’s what I am—and her innocence is the red I run toward.
Well, I won’t be able to ignore her today. We need to talk about the e-mail from Kimberly Cox. Good news, the subject line says. She goes on to explain that Samantha was given a short mention in the digital edition today to raise publicity for the tour, in advance of her deeper profile in the print magazine.
There are a hundred amazing things about Samantha Brooks. The mention could have shared any number of those things. The way she plays like a goddamn angel. The way she mastered violin beyond what most grown men can do at the tender age of six. The way she infuses new life into the classics, drawing the interest of maestros and luthiers from around the world.
Of course the mention doesn’t say any of that.
That would make too much sense.
Instead it laments the mark of grief that Samantha still bears from losing her father at a young age. She used to hide under the desk in his office in Saint Petersburg.
In fact she was there the fateful day that he died.
The sentence makes my blood run cold. I never should have let the damned reporter speak to Samantha alone. Except that she’ll be alone on the tour. I can’t stand next to her for the rest of her life, putting limits on how much she says.
I stand and follow the music like she’s the goddamn pied piper. I want to follow her anywhere, everywhere, want to drown if that’s where she leads me—and I suppose I’m halfway there.
It’s my habit to wait until she finishes a piece. The last note sails through the air, sweet and melancholy. There are only four fucking strings on the instrument. She imbues each and every touch of the bow with some new emotion. It reaches into the hard core of me, deadly, devastating.
“Did you read it?” I ask, my voice a harsh echo in the chamber.
She blinks at me as if coming out of a deep sleep. That’s what music is for her, a kind of trance. Her cheeks are flushed with awareness. “Read what?”
“The e-mail from Kimberly Cox, the reporter from Classical Notes.”
“Oh, about the digital feature? Yeah, that’s cool.”
Cool. Not the word I would have used to describe it, but then I know that her father didn’t die of a heart attack. “They printed the story about your father.”
“Right. Well. It would have been more interesting if it were about music, but I guess they figure it was more of a public interest story that way.”
“She had no right to share that.”
Samantha gives me a strange look. “Are you worried that I’ll remember it?”
Yes, but not because of the fear and anxiety the moment would give her. I’m worried that she’ll remember it because then she’ll know I was there that day. A blessing. That’s what the psychologist said about her memory loss. And I couldn’t disagree.
I crouch down in front of her, the same way I did when she was twelve years old. Even then she would clutch her violin for comfort. She does it now without even realizing. “Samantha, I told you that your father had enemies. If they think you know something—”
“I was just a child.”
Children can be dangerous. This one had always terrified me. “A child who might remember something from when she was hiding under her father’s desk. Not only from the day he died. From before that. A phone call. A conversation.”
She stares at me, bewildered. “What could I have heard that’s dangerous?”
Because her father was a diplomat between politicians who aren’t in power anymore. That’s what she means. But what she doesn’t know is that he was a traitor to his country. That his actions disrupted governments—this country’s government—with repercussions that continued past his death.
Yes, people would kill to keep those kinds of secrets quiet.
“I’m going to ask you to do something, Samantha. When you do the press for the tour, when the reporters ask you about this, say you don’t remember anything.”
She blinks. “They’re only going to ask about the music.”
“Kimberly Cox didn’t only ask about the music.”
Her brown eyes turn dark. “Are you sorry she came here?”
She isn’t asking about the damn questions. She wants to know about the kiss. I should say yes. I should be sorry that the woman kissed me, that I kissed her back for even a split second, wanting her to be someone else. But that led to me walking in on Samantha. As wrong as it was, it was the single most erotic experience of my life. It was more than I dreamed I’d ever have of her.
To my shame I’ve jerked off to the image of her in my head every single night. Every morning. My cock throbs in my slacks right now, eager to push through the fabric. To shove aside her skirt and press itself into her warm, welcoming body. She’d let me. She’d beg me to keep going.
“No,” I say, my voice rough. “I’m not sorry.”
Hurt flashes through her eyes, but I can’t begin to explain the complexity of my feelings for her. The way I shouldn’t want her. The way I want her anyway. My father always said I had the devil inside me. Part of me never really believed him—at least until I saw her masturbating. It took every last, torn shred of decency I have left inside me to walk away.
Her chin rises, because she’s always been so damn strong. She’s always deserved better than me. “I’ll agree to your rule if you answer one question. Honestly.”
My insides tighten. I don’t want this bargain, but her safety is worth it. It’s worth anything. “What’s the question?”
I expect her to ask something about her father, to finally back me into a corner and demand the truth. She deserves that much. Why did you get custody of me? What happened to my father? I would have to tell her.
“Did you ever want me?” she asks. “Really want me.”
I swallow hard. “That’s what you want to know?”
The milestones are coming at me fast, and they’re coming hard. Soon she’ll graduate from high school. She’ll turn eighteen. Those milestones are taking her away from me, bit by bit. None of them compare to what happens when her tour begins. Then she moves to Tanglewood for two months of practice for the tour and the opening show. She’ll travel the whole world.
“Yes, I want you,” I say, my voice hard. “No, that doesn’t even begin to describe… I need you. I crave you. I dream about that kiss in the club.”
“Then why won’t you—”
“Because you’re not eighteen, for one thing. Almost doesn’t count.”
“What about when I turn eighteen? Isn’t there a chance that you and I—”
I would fall to my knees if I thought she should. “I don’t see why you’d want to,” I say, keeping my voice bland. “You’ll have a career then, a record deal, a string of performances under your belt. There will be any number of men.”
She reaches out, her hand cupping my face. God, she’s innocent. She can’t know what she does to my body, the soft touch of her palm, the warmth of her. Or maybe she does know. Maybe she enjoys torturing me. “At the club you said you don’t think of me like a daughter.”
Slowly I shake my head, my gaze locked on hers. “I don’t.”
“Then how do you think of me?”
My greatest pride and my deepest regret. And I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I kept her tied here in the middle of nowhere. If I trapped her in the closet with me while I watched her slowly starve. “You saved me,” I say simply, unable to lie about this.
Surprise flashes through those pretty brown eyes. “It was the other way around.”
“Ah, no, Samantha. I was nothing when you
came to me. A man with a death wish. A business that kept me from drinking myself into a stupor every night. When you came to me, it gave me something to live for. Something to believe in.”
Enemy fire. Missiles. Ambush. There are things I could handle on the fly, but only one thing could strike fear into my heart—and that’s the hope in her eyes. “Then you love me?”
I squeeze her knee and stand up, removing myself from her gaze. “Samantha. I’m sorry. You deserve a family who loves you, but that’s not me. I’m not capable of the emotion.”
Her eyes glisten with tears before she looks down. “You’re wrong.”
“And you have unbearably low standards. I only look like a good father because your own was such a bastard. When you go out into the world, you’ll understand. You want to come back after the tour? Fine. I’ll leave your room the way it is. What do I need it for, anyway? It will keep its pink walls and its white ruffles. And if you tour the world for a year and a half and still want the emptiness that’s waiting here for you, you’re welcome to have it.”
Chapter Fourteen
Composer Franz Liszt received so many requests for locks of his hair that he bought a dog and sent fur clippings instead.
SAMANTHA
I give Liam the silent treatment the rest of the week. It makes me feel like a child, but I can't help it. He has all the power in this relationship. All the secrets. Beatrix wasn’t completely wrong. He’s really a bastard sometimes.
He's also the closest thing I have to family.
It wasn’t only him. All three of the North brothers took me in.
Josh taught me how to throw knives even though Liam nearly killed him for it. I'm weirdly good at them. Turns out the upper body strength and nimble fingers you cultivate playing violin translates well to six inches of stainless steel.
I can hit the painted targets almost as well as a soldier.
It was the youngest North brother who drove to the convenience store to buy maxi pads because I started bleeding when Liam was on an overnight trip. It was my first period. Even if Daddy had been alive, I don’t know how he would have handled that. Probably one of his aides would have taught me. Instead Elijah knocked at the bathroom door, grim-faced as he answered my questions—how long would it last and why did it happen.
Probably I should be grateful to have them. So grateful that I don’t ask any more questions, but I can’t let go of my past. I can’t forget the guarded look in Liam’s eyes when I asked him about my father. What’s he hiding?
It’s easy to keep up the silent treatment, because everyone’s busy with the wedding. Rows of white chairs replace tractor tires. Flowers overflow rustic wood containers. The entire lawn transforms from a high-impact obstacle course to a romantic lawn in a matter of days. These are soldiers. They perform their mission with precision and fearlessness, even if it involves canapes instead of sniper rifles.
Of course, there probably are sniper rifles hidden around the property. I’ve played the violin in the room beside Liam’s office every day for the past six years. I can hear him even when he thinks I’m focused on the strings. He would see the wedding as an opening, something that an enemy could exploit. There would be even more defenses in place today.
Liam is the best man, looking austere and remote in his tuxedo, standing with Hassan at the makeshift altar. There are faint shadows under his green eyes, the only hint that he did anything other than sleep. They’re interesting, those shadows, because of how rare they are.
This is a man who doesn’t show signs of weakness.
It might be daunting to some brides, the preponderance of stern, muscled men filling the white folding chairs. Jane teaches kindergarten at the local elementary school. Nothing scares her. That’s what she told me the first time we met, and it looks like it’s true. She’s beaming in her white dress with lace that cups her bodice and flares out to a wide skirt.
Hassan swallows hard as she steps out of the tent, his eyes glittering.
Play whatever you want, she told me. I’m sure it will be beautiful.
So I play the song I would want if I were to get married, the one I’ve imagined walking down the aisle to, even though I’d never admit it out loud. Pachelbel composed “Canon in D” to play with three violins and a bass continuo, but I love it even more with a single lilting strain. My Nicolo Amati violin is small and proud. It prefers to play solo. That’s where it really sings.
My troubled gaze finds Liam. He’s watching me, those green eyes sharp in the sunlight. He owns the land we’re standing on, acres and acres of it. He owns the company that employs almost everyone here. He’s a leader and a soldier and a confidant to the men beside him.
And he’s my guardian. He wouldn’t hurt me. I have to believe in that, because without that I don’t know what I’d think. I don’t know who I could trust.
I try to imbue the words into the bow, into the strings—I trust you, I trust you. But I’m afraid they aren’t completely true. I love him. I need him, but I don’t necessarily trust him. Maybe it’s part of growing up to realize that they aren’t the same thing—and I’m forced to look away.
He finds me after the ceremony. “We should talk.”
I give him a pointed look.
“Still giving me the silent treatment?”
When I was twelve years old, on the cusp of homelessness, of ruin, it was enough to know Liam would take care of me. I didn’t need details. Maybe I didn’t want details.
Now it feels scarier not to know, to go into the world misled.
Without a word I tuck my violin case beneath the risers near the house. It’s always strange to walk around carrying something worth a quarter of a million dollars. Some people say the violin is like a limb, but it’s more than that. It’s my heart. My soul.
And it’s sitting in a velvet-lined case on the grass. No one would dare steal from Liam North, and technically the instrument belongs to him. How vulnerable it makes me to have something vital to my existence belong to another human being.
A massive white tent covers endless platters of meat, pork belly sliders with homemade coleslaw and beef chuck-eye roast with a paprika herb rub. The bar serves blueberry mojitos with muddled mint leaves and fruit.
A little glass pot contains scoops of warm tri-colored mashed potatoes. I add chives and shredded cheese before carrying it with me, circling the edges of the party. This far away I can see Liam with a mug in his hand, surrounded by people. He’s holding court, I realize. Some of the guests are clients of the company. Even wealthy men, successful men, look to him. He grants his audiences rarely with a reserved nod.
He gives approval even more rarely.
Josh slides into the seat beside me, a beer in his hand. “Nice job on the music,” he says. “Half the bridesmaids started crying, I have a hell of a time hitting on a girl with mascara running down their cheeks.”
That makes me snort. “I wouldn’t think that would stop you.”
“Well, I’m not saying I’m going to stop.”
“If you want my advice, pick one this time.” There was an incident last year where he’d lured two women into his bed for a threesome. Except he had only mentioned it to one of the girls. The other one had not been pleased to realize she wasn’t the only one joining him.
“In my defense, I was falling down drunk.”
“How is that a defense?”
He grins, unrepentant. “She still called me for a date the next day.”
I can’t help but glance at Liam, where a woman touches his arm as she laughs, leaning close to give him a view down her dress. Will he invite her to his bedroom? There’s no question what her answer would be. Morosely I take a bite of the mashed potatoes, but even the buttery carbs can’t soothe the jagged edges of jealousy.
“You have nothing to worry about here,” Josh says, his voice dry.
“I’m not worried.”
“He hasn’t slept with a woman in so long I’m pretty sure he’s forgotten how. Or maybe key parts o
f his anatomy have atrophied and fallen off. It’s not healthy.”
I give him a sideways glance. “How would you know?”
“Because no one who’s gotten laid would be that tense.”
He does look tense. His knuckles are white where he grips the coffee mug. And who drinks coffee at a wedding, anyway? Everyone around him laughs and dances and flirts. These men put their lives on the line every time they take a job. They work hard, and they party even harder. This reception will continue long into the night. It won’t stop when Hassan and his pretty new wife leave for Hawaii.
Liam looks like he’d rather be anywhere else.
“Is it the Red Team?” I ask. Those kinds of things are top secret, but you hear bits and pieces when you spend hours outside the office every day.
“Maybe,” Josh says. “But I think more than that, it’s the wedding.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“So much happiness and love in the air,” Josh says in agreement.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the brothers had a rough childhood. Even this violinist knows that much. Only the details are hazy. “So he doesn’t believe in happily ever after?”
“He believes in it for some people. Just not for himself.”
The man in question looks this way, as if he can feel my regard. His green eyes burn as he stares at me from across the room. “That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“You want my advice?” Josh asks.
“Not really.”
“You got a hard-on for your legal guardian? Go for it. You want to work out some good old-fashioned daddy issues with Liam North, be my guest. I’m not the goddamn morality police, and Lord knows he could use the relief. But don’t expect anything more from him.”
My cheeks flame. Is my lust for his brother that obvious? Even more than embarrassment I’m furious that he would presume to warn me away. “Maybe you’re not giving me enough credit. Someone might be interested in me for more than just sex.”
He looks vaguely surprised. “Of course he wants you for more than sex. That’s not the issue.”
Falling for the Forbidden: 10 Full-Length Novels Page 44