to order with a dramatic flourish and a man she hadn’t been aware of stood and walked to a piano she’d barely noticed.
And then it happened …
The first sombre note of the Moonlight Sonata. It wasn’t called that on the programme so she was taken unaware. Her eyes were still locked on Hayden’s when recognition hit. The music that had played when they’d carried her mother’s coffin out of the chapel. The emotional elation of just moments before plunged dramatically as the first haunting notes filled every crevice in the concert hall. She gasped.
Sorrow held her rigid and all she could do was hold Hayden’s eyes, his fingers, as the warmth leached slowly from her face.
That horrible, horrible day.
His eyes darkened and his fingers curled around hers in support. She might have cried alone at her mother’s funeral ten years ago but this time Hayden Tennant was here with her. Holding on to her. The only other person in the room who knew what this music meant.
Her chest heaves increased as she fought back the tears she could feel forming.
In vain …
Her eyes welled as the beautiful music unfolded in isolation of every other instrument on the stage. The rich, saturated tones of the expensive piano formed a thick private blanket of sound to hide her grief beneath. From everyone but Hayden; he had an unexpected stage-side seat to her pain.
She let her lashes drop to block even him out.
From the sublime to the tragic in the space of two beats of silence. He’d been captivated by Shirley’s ecstasy in the face of the music. It had been so long since he’d felt anything, he was quite prepared to feed off her evident joy—her total absorption—like some kind of visceral vampire. He’d been able to stare at her for seven whole minutes unmolested as she reached some place high above the real world.
Buffeted and carried by the music.
Her eyes, when the first famous piece came to a powerful crescendo and she’d gifted him with her focus, had looked as they might in the throes of passion.
Bright, exhilarated, fevered.
And for one breathless heartbeat he’d imagined putting those expressions there, of inciting this strong, unique woman to cast aside the veneer of control that she always wore.
Possession had surged through him, powerful and unfamiliar.
But now those same eyes were off-limits to him, a fat tear squeezing out from under her long dark lashes and rolling down blanched skin. He knew what this music meant and he remembered how Shirley had looked—so small and bereft—the last time he’d heard it.
Her fingers tightened in his as if, by letting go, he’d be casting her adrift on a sea of remembered misery. He curled his other hand over the top and shifted forward so that she might feel his support.
The music turned more melodic, less mournful, and her lids fluttered open to reveal watery, sad eyes, a thousand miles from where they were, lost somewhere in memory. They looked right at him but he knew she wasn’t seeing him at all. She was seeing through him.
Exactly as he feared she might if she looked too closely.
That was why she’d never get this close again. After today.
Today she was just a fourteen-year-old girl who needed her mother, and the harder she fought the expression of her feelings, the more he wanted to hold her as she bled her grief out onto the Concert Hall’s plush carpet.
He shuffled his arm around behind her and pulled her gently to his shoulder.
The fact she came so very willingly told him a lot about how she was feeling.
They passed the whole piece like that, him curled protectively around her, giving her the privacy she needed, his eyes pressed closed against the evocative music. And against the warmth of the woman in his arms. He felt a few glances from the people around them but he didn’t care.
He pressed his lips to her hairline and left them there.
The final notes lingered, eddied around them and then rippled out through the venue and were gone. The audience was completely silent, the hard thrum of blood past his ears the only sound in the place.
The conductor lowered his baton and turned, the pianist stood and bowed, and the audience responded to his cue by bursting into loud fevered applause.
‘Shirley …’ Hayden said over the din.
Her arm curled around his neck and held him close, her shudder half-swallowed. He gave her a moment, lent her shelter, lent her his strength.
Surprised to discover he had any left at all these days.
But eventually one of them had to move. He cleared his throat. ‘Shirley …’
This time she withdrew—in body and in spirit—snaking her arms back into herself and pushing back in her seat. A furious flush stained her pale skin.
‘Are you okay—?’
She pushed to her feet, swiping at her eyes. Enough of the audience were on their feet to celebrate the brilliant piano interpretation that their departure wasn’t too shocking.
All anyone saw was an overwhelmed woman. They would have no idea what this evening meant to her.
‘Are you okay?’ he repeated the moment they were in the comparative silence of the empty foyer. A new piece began in the auditorium behind them.
‘I’m fine.’ She swiped at her eyes with a napkin she’d snatched from a foyer table and kept her eyes off his. ‘I just …’ She took a deep breath. ‘I wasn’t ready for it.’
‘It’s okay to miss her, Shirley.’
Her laugh was harsh. ‘It’s been ten years. You’d think I’d have a handle on it by now.’
What could he say? ‘Would that we could all be loved that much.’
She shuddered in a deep breath and appeared to revive before his eyes. ‘Thank you.’
‘What for?’
‘For arranging this. For her.’ She smiled, watery but strengthening, and he realised for the first time how very many smiles she had. And how differently he felt about each one of them.
‘I didn’t do it for her, Shirley. Or for me.’ Her delicate brows flickered. ‘I wanted you to have this.’
Not that he had a clue why. It wasn’t going to get him anything in return. Nothing she’d give him in a million years, anyway.
Her expression turned awkward. ‘You don’t think I’d have made it to the symphony unassisted?
‘You would have been halfway up the back. You would have heard the music but not …’ His fingers grasped for the words he couldn’t find.
She lifted her eyes. ‘Lived it?’
‘Breathed
