Undone, Volume 3 (14 page)

He watched me,
mesmerized, as if he hadn’t taken a breath the whole time I’d
been playing.

“What was that?” he
asked, as if he’d just seen a UFO.

“Rachmaninoff.”

“Rach what now?”

I laughed. “He’s a
Russian composer.”

“Holy shit!”

“I know, right?”
He’d felt it, too, the power of it all.

“Here I was thought I
was making music all this time!” He brought a hand to his hair.
“Holy shit, Ana. You’re amazing!”

“Thanks.” Shyly, I
tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “Not amazing enough to make
a career out of it. But…”

“Why do you put
yourself down like that?” He brought a hand around my waist. And I
realized that the blanket had slipped completely down around my waist
while I’d played. I’d performed it all topless.

“Whoops.” I brought
the blanket up around my shoulders again, folding it demurely over my
torso.

“I have to admit,
that added to my enjoyment,” Ash teased me. “But, seriously, do
you know how talented you are?”

I shrugged. It was
complicated. And hard to explain it to a musician so famous he had
the world eating out of the palm of his hand. “The thing is, going
into music isn’t exactly an easy way to make a living.”

“You could do it,”
he insisted.

“Ash.” I shook my
head. “It’s not that simple. My parents groomed me be a classical
pianist, but my heart wasn’t really in it. And you have to love it
like nothing else if you’re going to do that for a living.”

“OK, so you don’t
want to be a classical pianist. What do you want to be?”

“I’m a children’s
librarian.” I deliberately didn’t answer his question about
future potential, choosing to ground myself in reality.

“I know what you are.
But what do you want to be?”

I let out a frustrated
breath. “It’s easy for you to ask me that, Ash. You’re a famous
rock star. You’re living the dream.”

“No, I’m not, Ana.
Half the time I’m so sick of the shit around me I want to scream.”

“Why don’t you?”

Now he sighed in
frustration. “There’s a whole machinery around me, Ana. Tons of
people making a living off of me, my band, the promotions, the
touring, the merchandizing. I can’t just walk away from it all.”

“Why not? If it’s
making you miserable?”

We looked at each
other, tense. Until, suddenly, we weren’t anymore. He smiled at me
and brought a finger to my chin and I melted into his touch, his
sweet kiss on my lips.

“You make a lot of
sense, Anika.” We sat together, touching foreheads. “But you
still haven’t told me what you want to be when you grow up.”

With a laugh, I
reminded him that I was already 24.

“And you think it’s
all over, then? 24 and done?”

“All right.” I held
my hands up in surrender. “You want to know what I really want to
do? But don’t get me wrong, I really do like being a librarian.”

“I know,” he
assured me. “I saw you in action. You’re very stern.” I glared
at him. “And helpful with the kids,” he added.

“What I’d really
love to do is compose. I love writing songs. There, I said it.” I
realized I was shaking. Why had that been so hard to admit? I guessed
there was the fact that my parents had told me time and again there
was no way to earn a living doing songwriting. Why pursue a dream
that made no sense?

“Cool!” Ash clapped
his hands together. “You’re so good at it.”

“What do you mean?”

“You figured out the
perfect way to end that song I’ve been working on for months. I
couldn’t get it. Then you jumped in, finished it off and made the
whole thing so much better.”

“Really?” That was
cool.

“Yeah.” He turned
to the keyboard again and began playing that song, the one we’d
done together so many times. When I’d first heard him playing it in
that stadium in Santa Clara, it had stayed with me, haunting me,
calling to me. And he was right, I had heard the ending. It had
flowed straight out of my heart and together now we played it
beautifully.

“This song’s about
you.” He turned to me almost shyly as he played.

“It is?”

“I don’t know how,
yet. I’m still figuring out the lyrics.”

“Nothing about
melting faces,” I cautioned him.

“Got it.” He
nodded.

Outside the window, the
view caught my attention. “It’s stopped!” I exclaimed,
clutching the blanked around me as I stood up and walked over to the
glass. “It’s not snowing anymore.”

In the late afternoon
light, the snowscape looked both gorgeous and eerie. Crystal white,
icicles hung from the rooftop. I couldn’t make out any distinct
shapes in the yard, only mounds, drifts and swells of white. No
paths, roads, or other houses, only huge pine trees weighted down by
pounds of white snow still stood tall, bearing their heavy load.

“The storm’s over.”
Ash came and stood next to me, sounding somewhat regretful.

“It’s so quiet all
of a sudden.” No wind raging, no limbs snapping off of trees or
heavy whumps of snow falling off roofs. Just us inside, and the
silent frozen expanse outside. Soon, snow plows would have it
cleared. Soon, we’d have to leave. My heart sunk. There it was,
reality. I’d never wanted it to come back.

“You know what that
means? Now that the snow’s stopped?” Ash took my hand and
squeezed it in his own. The tone of his voice sounded way more upbeat
than I felt. “Hot tub!” he exclaimed, pulling me along with him.

Out past the master
bedroom, to the side was a sliding door which I had to admit I hadn’t
even noticed. We hadn’t exactly been whiling away long, boring
hours in the bedroom for me to study all the features. When I’d
been in the bedroom, I’d either been tied up and having the best
sex of my life, or passed out cold after having had the best sex of
my life. It didn’t exactly hone my powers of observation.

Ash flicked on exterior
lighting and I could barely make out the shape of a large, white
mound surrounded by other, smaller mounds of things. What was it
exactly?

“I’m going to need
a shovel,” he declared, and dropped my hand to start heading
somewhere.

“Get one for me,
too!” I called after him. I put on some sweatpants and a sweater I
found in a drawer, both too big for me but they’d work. What I
didn’t have were snow boots. He’d managed to bring my bags when
he’d kidnapped me, but inside I didn’t exactly have snow gear.
The best I had was sneakers, the cute kind with neon pink laces.

Ash came back up
looking like he’d gotten attacked by a giant coat. He wore massive
snow boots up to his knees and wild tufts of fur framed the hood
around his face.

“Are you in there?”
I asked.

“You laugh,” he
told me. “But just you wait. I’m going to shovel you out a hot
tub.”

“That’s my man.”
I patted him on the back and sent him out into the snow. Just opening
up the sliding glass door took some doing, and it became my job just
sweeping up the snow that billowed into the bedroom. Ash got to work,
shoveling load after load of snow until, slowly, a large circle
emerged, then wooden benches, then, the hot tub, itself. He pried off
the top, flicked on a few buttons and lights came on inside the tub.

“Victory is mine!”
He exclaimed, holding the shovel up above his head like a gladiator.

“You did it!”

He came in and swept me
into a huge, snowy embrace and kiss. “What’s my reward, wench?”

I laughed. “Naked hot
tubbing?”

“Arg!” He began
stripping off his clothes. I followed suit.

“Wait, were you being
a pirate just then?”

“With the ‘arg’?”
he asked and I nodded. “Not entirely sure.” He helped me out of
the sweater and took my hand. “This tub gets hot fast, but we’ll
have to give it a few minutes. The caretaker only had it set to 75.

“It’s already
warmed up?” I asked, astonished.

“I’m prepared for
every scenario.” Ash winked at me, giving me another “arg,” for
good measure. He disappeared into the kitchen and came back with a
bottle of red wine and two glasses. I grabbed a couple of towels and
jammed my feet into a pair of slippers I found in the closet.

Outside, steam rose
thick and fast out of the tub. Ash pressed a button that set it to a
low bubble and it looked like a witch’s cauldron, hissing and
spewing into the night air.

“Are you sure this is
OK?”

“Are you afraid I’m
trying to cook you? This is like a Hansel and Gretel thing?” He
stretched out his hand and said with a grin, “I can’t promise I
won’t eat you.”

“At least you’re
being honest.” I took his hand and we both took a few tentative
steps out into the cold. Make that freezing. And I wasn’t wearing
anything. But in a few more steps, we reached the tub and we hustled
in as quickly as we could.

The shock of the heat
mingled with the chill of the cold air had my senses whirling faster
than the hot tub, itself. But slowly, I adjusted, letting the
peaceful hum of the water lull my senses. Up above, a crystal clear
night sky expanded limitless and promising, countless start twinkling
down on us.

“It’s so gorgeous
here.” I exhaled, sinking down into the water. I guessed some city
people would consider where I’d grown up rural, but honestly it was
pretty suburban. We had plenty of traffic lights and stores that
stayed open all night and you were hard-pressed to find any part of
town where you felt all alone. Out here in the mountains, it felt
different. The silence, the darkness at night, the mountains rising
in the distance. Days could pass without any interruptions. We’d
just experienced it. I didn’t want it to end.

As if he were reading
my mind, Ash cleared his throat and said, “This doesn’t have to
end, you know.”

I looked up at him, not
sure what he meant. Of course our time up in this cabin had to end.
Roads would be cleared. Planes would take off. The future would
descend upon us whether we liked it or not.

“This between us,”
he went on, seeming uncharacteristically hesitant. “I know we
signed that contract. That this was a fake thing between us, for a
month.”

I swallowed, wondering
if he was saying what I thought he was saying.

“We don’t have to,
you know…” He swallowed, too, and I realized he was nervous. Ash
Black was nervous, talking to me. My heart swelled.

I reached over to him.
“We’ve already kind of done things we said we wouldn’t in that
contract.”

“Yeah.” He wrapped
an arm around me, drawing me close. “The no-sex clause didn’t
exactly happen.”

“We ripped that right
up,” I agreed.

“So, about what we
have going here.” I could feel his heart beating fast. “Do you,
ah, want it to end in a week?”

“No,” I answered,
quickly and honestly.

I felt him exhale. But
he still held himself tense. “I thought you might, that night in
Vegas.”

“You mean the night
you kidnapped me?”

“Yeah, that one.”
He sounded sheepish.

“I’m glad you did,”
I reassured him. “But, you’re right. I was thinking about
breaking things off. Fake or real or whatever this is.” Now I was
stammering a bit, too. “Because, the thing is, Ash, I can’t
really do that whole scene in L.A.”

“No, I can’t
either,” he agreed with me urgently.

“Really?” I looked
up at him. “Because that’s pretty much your scene.”

“No,” he protested,
but I kept looking up at him, waiting for more. “OK, yes, it was.
It used to be.”

“Until you met me?”
I couldn’t help it, my question was laced with doubt. It wasn’t
that I didn’t think much of myself. I had a pretty good sense of
what I was bringing to the table, both great and not-so-great. But
Ash had lived a hard-partying life all his 26 years. A flash romance
with me wasn’t going to change all that.

“It sounds like
rubbish, I know,” Ash admitted, shaking his head. “But I’ve
been tired of this crazy life I’m in for ages. A couple years now,
if I’m honest. I’m done with it.”

I wanted to believe it,
take it at face value and just let it make me feel good. But the
pragmatic part of me had to interfere. “That’s pretty easy to say
when you’re snowed in here with no one but me to keep you company.
What about when we’re back?”

“I don’t want to go
back,” Ash answered, holding me close.

“Neither do I,” I
confessed. “But at some point we have to go back.”

“Not to the way I was
living. I’m not going to do it. I want to figure out something
new.”

“You do?” I looked
into his eyes, so dark and sexy.

His lips parted, full
and red. “I do. I know it sounds like bullshit. But you have to
remember, it’s like show and tell in school.”

“Like show and tell?”
Sometimes it got hard to follow exactly what he was saying, he was so
freaking hot. His shoulders so broad and muscled, rising above the
bubbling heat. His jaw so strong, that stubble dark and rough. I
wanted to feel it on me. Between my legs.

“Show and tell,” at
least he continued the conversation. “You’d bring something in
from home and talk about it?”

“Yes.” I remembered
show and tell.

“I’m better at
showing how I feel than telling.”

“Yeah?” My question
came out breathy. I really wanted him to show me.

“Yeah.” His voice
sounded deep and husky and he brought a hand to my neck, slowly
trailing a thumb down my skin to the hollow at the base of my throat.
“Can I show you how I feel?” he asked.

“Hell, yes,” I
managed before I sank into his kiss, kissing him more deeply, more
passionately, more breathlessly than any lead characters in any of
the historical romances I’d read in the basement of my town
library. We kissed and kissed, twining our limbs, drifting our hands
along each other’s skin, kissing each other like we’d never stop.