After the Music (8 page)

"Is Sabina your real name?" he asked quietly.

"Yes." She looked back helplessly, locked to him by a gaze she was powerless to break, while her breath became ragged in her throat.

"Do you know who the Sabines were?" he continued in a voice like velvet.

She did, but she couldn't think; she felt hypnotized.

He bent, moving one hand to her throat. His fingers were cold, and she jumped.

"I won't hurt you," he whispered, misunderstanding the involuntary reaction. His fingers traced the wildly throbbing artery at her throat, and his mouth was so close she could taste the scent of whisky on it. It should have revolted her, but it didn't. Her eyes fell to his hard lips, and she remembered with aching clarity the way they'd felt when he'd kissed her.

"The Sabines," he continued huskily, "were women taken by the Romans."

"Ra...raped by the Romans," she corrected. Her voice sounded odd.

"Sometimes men and women enjoy wild lovemaking," he whispered. "Passion in itself is violent. Like the way I feel with you, tulip, when I touch you and feel you start to tremble. The way you're trembling now. You want my mouth like hell, don't you?"

She wanted to deny it, to rail at him. But she couldn't even speak. Her lips were parted and she wanted his. Wanted his!

"I want yours, too," he whispered roughly, and the hand at her throat slid down to her collarbone, tracing exquisite patterns on her creamy skin. "I want to touch you in ways that would shock you. My skin on yours, my mouth on your body..."

"Don't," she moaned, and her gray eyes, wider than saucers, looked up into his. "I'm...I'm Al's girl."

His nose nuzzled hers and his mouth threatened to come down and take possession of her lips. She could almost feel its texture, exciting, hungry. "Then why," he whispered, "are you begging me to kiss you?"

"Damn you!" she whimpered, swatting at him.

He stood up with a mocking smile on his dark face, his eyes sparkling as they met hers. "You fascinate me, Miss Cane," he said after a minute, fingering his whiskey glass idly as he studied her flushed face. "All that delicious innocence, waiting to be taken. Why hasn't Al had you? Are you afraid of sex?"

She was hardly able to catch her breath. Why did he affect her this way? "You have...a dirty mouth," she muttered, hating that faint amusement in his eyes.

"Yours is incredibly tempting, rock star," he replied, lifting his glass to his lips. "I'd like nothing more than to seduce you, right where you're sitting."

She started to jump at him, out of sheer frustrated fury, when another voice broke the silence.

"Where is everybody?" Al called from the hall. He sauntered in, oblivious of the tense undercurrents in the room. He was wearing a casual denim suit with a patterned blue shirt. It suited his fairness. But he wasn't any match for Thorn.

"You two look so different," Sabina observed quietly, glancing from one to the other.

"Our father was dark-headed and blue-eyed," Al explained. "And our mother was brunette and green-eyed. I guess we got the best of them both."

Thorn's face hardened. "Let's go in," he said, gulping down the rest of his drink. He set the glass down roughly on the desk and strode out ahead of them.

"Ouch," Al muttered, hanging behind. "I never know which way he's going to jump. He and Mother must have really had it out over the phone the other night."

"Don't they get along at all?" Sabina asked.

"Once or twice a year." He led her into the dining room. "Let's eat. I'm famished!"

It didn't help that Thorn kept watching her at the dinner table. He had a predatory look in his eyes, and a rigid cast to his features that was disturbing.

"How did you become a rock star, Miss Cane?" he asked over dessert.

She flinched at the unexpected question. "Well," she faltered, fork poised over the delicious cake Juan had just served them, "I sort of fell into it, I suppose."

His straight nose lifted. "How?"

"I was told that I had a voice with potential," she said. "I tried out in an amateur competition, where the prize was a one-night appearance at a downtown club. I won." She shook her head and smiled wistfully. "I was delirious. I'd been waiting on tables up until then, because it was the only work I could find. I did the one-nighter, and the club management liked me enough to keep me on. From there, I got other engagements. Then I met up with The Bricks and Sand Band."

"Jessie told me about that," Al added. "It wasn't so much a meeting as a head-on collision."

"Ricky Turner and the boys were hired to play for me the first night at a rather sleazy little joint off Bourbon Street," she said, her eyes twinkling. "Somehow, they'd gotten the idea that I was a stripper instead of a singer, and the drummer made a remark that set me off the wrong way." She shrugged and took a deep breath. "Well, to make a long story short, I knocked him into his base drum five minutes before the performance."

Thorn's mouth curled up reluctantly. "But you still teamed up?"

"We didn't have a choice that night." She shook her head. "Ricky laughed himself sick. The drummer had quite a reputation. We did several numbers, and we seemed to score big with the audience. The manager suggested that we stay on for a few more nights. His business boomed. So Ricky and the guys and I decided to team up." She smothered a laugh. "To this day the drummer still avoids me, but now we've got more offers than we can accept."

She didn't tell him that she was trained to sing opera, or that she'd gone hungry a time or two to afford the lessons. Or that all the doors to the Met were closed by her dwindling, finances. Or that the amateur competition she'd won had been won with an operatic aria. When the nightclub offer came, it was for quite a sum of money and she'd needed it too much to refuse. She thought about the $20,000 check Thorn had written out so carelessly and could have cried. It was nothing to him, but at one time that much money would have been her mother's salvation.

"Hey, you're a million miles away," Al teased.

"Sorry," she said, forcing a smile as she finished her dessert.

Thorn was still watching her from his kingly position at the head of the table. She couldn't look at him. The luxury of letting her hungry eyes feast on his handsome features was too tempting. It made her remember how she'd felt when he'd kissed her. She'd been shocked by her wild response to him. He appealed to her senses in delicious ways. But he was the enemy, and she'd do well to remember it.

"Our mother also performs on stage," Al volunteered, ignoring Thorn's glare. "She does character parts. Right now she's doing a play in London."

Thorn set his cup down hard. "Al, I'd like to discuss that new field we're considering."

Al's eyebrows shot up. "You couldn't possibly be asking my opinion," he chided. "You never have before; you always go ahead and do what you please."

"You're coming into your majority next year," Thorn reminded. "It's time you took part in board decisions."

"My God, I'll faint," Al said with a little sarcasm. His eyes narrowed as he studied the older man. "Are you serious?"

"Always," Thorn said, with a pointed glance at Sabina. "In every way."

He was reminding her that he'd warned her off Al. She lifted her cup in a mock salute and smiled at him challengingly.

"Let's go," Thorn told his brother, rising. "You'll excuse us, Miss Cane? I'm sure you can find something with which to amuse yourself."

She glared at his broad back as he led Al into the study and closed the door firmly.

Old Juan, the man who kept house for Thorn, came to clear the table, and she offered to help. He smiled and shook his head. "No, senorita, but muchas gracias," he said charmingly. "Such work is not fit for such dainty hands. I will bring coffee and brandy to the living room, if you care to wait there."

"Thank you," she said, smiling at the dark little man. She'd expected Thorn to have an older woman doing the cooking and cleaning, but it seemed he didn't like any women around him. He had definite prejudices in that direction.

She wandered into the living room and stopped in the doorway to feast her eyes on the interior design. Like the den, it mirrored the personality of its owner. It was done in browns and tans with a burgundy leather couch and love seat and big sprawling armchairs in desert patterns. There was a huge Oriental rug by the ornate fireplace. Over the mantel was a portrait of a Hereford bull. On a nearby antique table stood an elegant chessboard and hand-painted wooden chess pieces. The drapes echoed the color schemes of the furniture, dark colors that gave the room a bold, masculine atmosphere.

There was a piano beyond the chessboard, a Baldwin. Sabina was drawn to it irresistibly. She sat down on the bench, her back straight, and raised the lid over the ebony and ivory keys. There had been a piano at the orphanage, and one of the matrons had taught her painstakingly how to play it, taking pity on her fascination with the instrument. Her fingers touched the keys, trembling with wonder at its exquisite tone.

Slowly, softly, she began to play Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto, a passionate piece of music that mirrored her own confused emotions. Her eyes closed as her fingers caressed the cool keys, and she drifted away in a cloud of music.

She wasn't sure exactly when she became aware of eyes watching her. She stopped in the middle of a bar and stared nervously toward the doorway where Thorn was completely still, spellbound, with Al at his shoulder.

"Don't stop," Thorn said quietly. He moved into the room and sat down on the sofa with a cigarette in his hand, motioning Al into a chair. "Please," he added gently.

Distracted, it took her a minute to pick up where she'd left -off. Thorn's penetrating gaze made her nervous. But, as usual, the music swept her away, just as it did when she sang. She finished the piece with a flourish, closed the lid and stood up.

"You play brilliantly," Thorn said, and the words seemed to be forced. "Where did you learn?"

"I was taught by a friend," she said, neglecting to add whom or where. "She wasn't a professional, but she read music quite well. She taught me to sight read."

"She did a brilliant job," he said. "You could play professionally."

"No, thanks," she said with a nervous laugh. "It's too wearing. At least when I sing, I don't have to worry about where my hands are going. On the piano I'd do nothing but make mistakes in front of an audience." She sat down on the arm of Al's chair. "Do you play?" she asked him.

"No. Thorn does."

Surprised, she looked at the older man.

"Shocked?" he taunted, taking a draw from the cigarette. "I enjoy music. Not, however, that noise that passes for it in your world."

It was a challenge. He didn't like her ability; it irked him that she didn't fit the mold he was trying to force her into. Now he was going to cut back; his eyes told her so.

"Noise is a matter of taste," she told him. "I like rhythm." He lifted an eyebrow and an amused smile turned up his hard, chiseled lips.

She stood up. Well, she might as well live down to the image he had of her. "Say, what do people do for amusement out here?" she asked Al.

"We watch movies," Al told her with a chuckle. "Thorn, want to join us?"

Thorn shook his head. "I've got some paperwork to get through."

Al led Sabina out of the room and down the hall to another, smaller room. "We've got all the latest movies. Which would you like to see?" he asked, showing her the collection stowed beneath the VCR's giant screen.

"I'd really like to sit on the porch and listen to the crickets, if you want to know," she confessed. "But that would bother your brother. He likes me to run true to form."

He ruffled her hair. "Don't let him get to you. Thorn's crafty."

"So am I," she said. "Why does he dislike me so?"

"I think perhaps you remind him of our mother," he said slowly. "She's very much like you, in temperament. Though not in appearance. And there's something else...He really doesn't know how to handle his own emotions, so he pretends not to feel them. You get under his skin. I've never seen him like this."

"Maybe I ought to leave," she suggested hopefully.

"Not yet," he said with a twinkle in his eyes. "Things are just getting interesting."

"You won't leave me alone with him?" she blurted out. He frowned. "Afraid of him?"

"Yes," she confessed.

"That's a first."

"I suppose it is," she said on a sigh. "He really gets to me, Al."

"Has he threatened you," he asked suddenly.

Not wanting to alarm him, she laughed off his question. "In a way. But I'm not worried."

"I think I am," At said quietly. "There's a very real hunger in his eyes when he looks at you. I've never seen exactly that expression in them before. He's crafty. Don't let him too close."

"Never mind about me," she reassured him. "I like a challenge. He is a sporting enemy, you know"'

"You're incorrigible."

"Not to mention stupid," she teased. "Enough of that. You said you were going to manage some time with Jess. How?" she asked with a wry smile. "He's very sharp. If you invite her here-"

"Yes, I know," he said, checking his watch. "But if he thinks that you and I are watching a movie together, he'll be busy elsewhere, won't he?" he asked with a grin.

"Genius," she said, laughing. "But won't he hear the car?"

"No. Because I won't be driving it. Jessica's going to meet me about a quarter of a mile down the road. When the movie ends," he added, putting in the videocassette, "just go straight upstairs. I don't imagine Thorn will come out of his study for hours yet."

"What if he does? Or if the phone rings for you?"

"Tell him I've gone to the bathroom, and you'll give me the message when I come out," he said, gesturing toward the bathroom in the corner.

"Have it all figured out, hmm?" she teased.

"You have to, around Thorn. Sabina, I'll never be able to pay you back for this," he said gratefully.

She stood on tiptoe and brushed his cheek with her mouth, just as the door swung open and Thorn glared at them. He was wearing a tweed jacket with a white shirt and tan slacks, and looking irritated.