she couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d heard his voice somewhere before. On a commercial perhaps? Elizabeth stopped packing up her violin in its case and gave him her undivided attention.
“Yes?”
Theresa hadn’t mentioned that the woman was a knockout as well as talented. He found he had to struggle to maintain his train of thought. “Are you Elizabeth Stephens?”
Definitely a familiar voice, she thought. But where had she—?
“Yes,” she answered, her curiosity piqued.
Jared decided to treat this like an ad campaign and plunged right in. “Theresa Manetti suggested that I get in contact with you.”
Elizabeth shook her head. She had no idea who he was referring to. It certainly wasn’t the name of someone who had hired her to play before. She had each and every client’s name and number memorized.
Raising her head, Elizabeth looked the man straight in the eyes—noting that they were a knee-numbing light green.
“I’m afraid I don’t know who that is,” she told him.
He had to have her confused with someone else, she decided—then immediately backtracked. The man knew her name, so he couldn’t have her confused with someone else. But who was this Theresa Manetti, and why was she sending this man to her?
“Really?” Jared asked, somewhat confused himself. “She speaks very highly of you.”
And then it hit her—why his voice sounded so familiar. It was the same voice she’d heard stumbling on her answering machine last night. He was the incomplete call that had abruptly ended in midsentence.
Her eyes pinned him in place, daring him to deny what she was about to say. “You called me last night.”
Instead of denying it, he surprised her by owning up to the botched call. “I did.”
“But you hung up,” she pointed out.
He looked slightly chagrined, like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar and unable to pull it out, or even come up with a plausible reason why his hand was there in the first place.
“Sorry about that,” he apologized.
Face-to-face, he could easily make up an excuse as to why he’d terminated the call. Power failure, a dropped signal—there were myriad reasons for him to choose from. But he didn’t see the advantage of beginning what would only be a very short association—his parents’ anniversary was in three and a half weeks—with lies and excuses.
So he told her the truth. “I’m not very good when it comes to talking to answering machines,” he confessed.
“I noticed,” she acknowledged, then laughed softly. “Just between you and me, I’ve got the same problem. If you call in person, I can guarantee that I pretty much could talk your ear off. But if I find myself on the other end of some robotic-sounding recorder, I go completely blank.”
Her summation of the problem amused him. “Nice to know I’m not alone.” He became aware that the director was looking expectantly in his direction. “I think we’re in the way here,” Jared said.
Now that he’d met her, he wasn’t so keen on pulling the plug on the music anymore. He looked around the soundstage, but there didn’t even seem to be the hint of a vending machine around.
He looked at her. “Is there somewhere we can go where we can talk?”
Though she told herself she was letting her imagination run away with her, Elizabeth felt her pulse kick into high gear.
She inwardly chided herself for getting carried away. The man obviously meant he just wanted to talk to her about her playing abilities, not because he was as drawn to her as she was to him. Someone who looked the way this man did was either married, spoken for or extremely busy socially.
“Well, you could walk me to my car,” she suggested. “Other than that, I think there’s a coffee shop about a block away outside the gates,” she told him, trying to picture the place.
He glanced at his watch. He just wanted to make sure that he didn’t lose track of time. He had an early meeting tomorrow and he needed to have some rough drafts of the new campaign for Getaway Resorts done before then.
“Ordinarily, coffee would sound great, but I’ve already had twice my quota today…and if I have any more, there’s no way I’m going to get any sleep tonight. Maybe I should just walk you to your car.”
She nodded, surprised at the sliver of disappointment that seemed to slice through her. She told herself she was behaving like an adolescent, but somehow, that didn’t seem to change her feelings.
“Walking it is,” she declared dramatically, then lowered her voice as if she were part of a stage performance. “Although I should warn you, I didn’t exactly park close.”
Elizabeth led the way out of the soundstage, taking a side door marked Exit.
The darkness enveloped them the moment they came out.
“As a matter of fact,” she went on to say, “if you didn’t have time to get in your morning run today, this will probably make up for it—and then some.”
Her comment bemused him. “What makes you think I run?”
She looked at him as if the question didn’t even really require an answer. “This is Southern California. Everyone always claims to be into all kinds of exercise out here. Running was the first thing that came to mind.”
Also, a body like yours doesn’t come from a mail-order catalog, she added silently. He made her think of Michelangelo’s David—except more so.
“Do you?” she asked out loud. When he looked at her somewhat quizzically, she added, “Run?”
“Only when I’m late getting somewhere and the car doesn’t work,” he quipped. He had no idea what made him share the next piece of information with her. “I’ve got an elliptical trainer in the garage that guilts me out every night when I park my car inside.”
“That’s simple enough to avoid,” she told him, then suggested, “You could try parking your car in the driveway instead.”
He saw the twinkle in her eyes, and laughed. He liked her sense of humor. “Sounds like a plan,” he murmured.
As the sound of his laugh wrapped itself around her, Elizabeth caught herself returning his smile.
Chapter Three
“So,” Jared said once they stepped outside Paragon Studios, “where’s your car?”
“You can’t see it from here, but it’s that way,” Elizabeth told him, pointing in the general direction. “We’re going to have to walk a little bit before you can see it.”
Jared shook his head. He’d thought she was exaggerating before. Obviously not. “You weren’t kidding about your car being
