And so, almost automatically, she clambered up onto the cabinet where she could reach onto the top shelf of the bookcase. She’d done it so often now that she could take the violin and bow down in the dark.
The truth was, she’d played it a lot this week. The music soothed her restlessness, calmed her and focused her. And if Sebastian was going to come back tonight, she’d need to be calm and focused.
She resined the bow, tuned the violin and began to play.
She played her Mozart etudes and her Bach minuets. Harm never started to howl until she got to the Vivaldi. And she told herself he wasn’t really protesting, he was moved and was singing along.
She could see him silhouetted against the lights from Queen Anne Hill that shone across the water, his head lifted as he warbled while she played, when all of a sudden a voice said, “Cut that out!”
The bow screeched across the strings and stopped abruptly. Harm’s accompaniment lasted a couple of seconds longer.
Then another silhouette rose, this one from the far side of the sofa where he’d obviously been lying in the shadows. And Sebastian turned her way and said, “Not you. The dog.”
Horrified, Neely stared at him, her fingers strangling the bow. They suddenly felt so clammy she was afraid she might drop it or, worse, the violin. “I thought you were gone!”
“Think again.” Sebastian came around the sofa and crossed the room toward her. Neely set the violin down on the cabinet top as carefully as she could and backed toward the kitchen. A stupid move, if she’d thought about it, as there was only one way out.
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly.
“Why?”
“I shouldn’t have played it. I—”
“It was meant to be played. That’s what it’s for.” He was much closer now. Practically looming over her, and there was nowhere to go.
“Yes, but you don’t play it,” she protested.
“Because I can’t,” he said simply.
“What?” She stared at him, astonished.
He shrugged. “I never learned. It’s my grandfather’s violin. He played it. Almost as well as you,” he added after a moment, a corner of his mouth tipping up, his tone reflective.
Neely swallowed, still wary, but beginning to realize he wasn’t angry. “Thank you. But I still…should have asked.”
“When? You were never here when I was.” He was sort of smiling now, teasing a little.
She didn’t want to be teased, didn’t want to smile back. Wanted to hang on to her sanity. Definitely needed to resist.
But Sebastian said, “You can play it whenever you want. However much you want. You’re very good.”
“Not very,” Neely said. “You have low standards.”
He shook his head. “I don’t, you know.” He was quite firm about it. And he was barely a foot from her now, definitely looming. Also smiling.
Neely, feeling the force of the smile, sensing the electricity that always seemed in danger of sizzling between them, felt herself melting. She raised her palms, then discovered that the only place to put them was on his shirtfront.
Quickly she let them fall to her sides again, cleared her throat, tried to look for a way to duck around him.
“If you think you ought to give me some recompense, though, I’d understand,” Sebastian went on, his voice almost a soft purr.
“You mean pay for the privilege? I could do that,” Neely said. “It’s a terrific violin. I’ve never played one that good. How much do you want?”
“How about a kiss?”
She jerked back so hard she hit her elbow against the countertop edge behind her and winced. “Ow!”
“Or I could kiss it and make it better,” Sebastian said, reaching for her arm and lifting it, then pressing his lips to her elbow before she even had time to think.
The tingle of the touch of his mouth against her skin sent a shiver all the way up her arm and her spine to the back of her neck.
“For heaven’s sake!” she protested, trying—and failing—to tug her arm away.
But Seb hung on, bending his head over it, giving her more tiny kisses, making her tremble as he worked his way up her arm to her shoulder, her neck, her ear, her jaw.
She made a helpless noise somewhere in the back of her throat—telling herself that she didn’t want this. But every part of her, body and mind was telling her she wanted it very very much indeed. She just didn’t want to pay the price. The price of having her heart broken.
Her body sank back against the line of cupboards below the countertop. And instinctively she braced her other elbow on it while trying to keep her knees from buckling from the effect he was having on her.
The kisses nibbled their way along her jawline as soft strands of his hair brushed against her cheeks, her lips. She breathed in the scent of him—woodsy shampoo with a hint of the sea mixing with something simply Sebastian. If she lived to be a hundred, Neely knew she would never forget it.
And then his lips reached her chin, touched her mouth. His tongue teased its way over her lips, parting them, tasting them—tasting her.
She sighed, reached for him. Clung. And kissed him back, because she was powerless not to. She kept remembering Vangie’s desperation, her words of praise for her brother, her steadfast belief that no matter what the problem, Sebastian would make it right.
And she saw how much he cared for his family.
If he were, through and through, the blackguard she’d first imagined, if he were as icy and indifferent as he’d tried to be, she thought she might have been able to hold out.
But she couldn’t. He even let her play his grandfather’s violin.
She opened her lips to his and hung on and, for the moment at least, let herself enjoy the ride.
One thing Sebastian Savas was extremely good at, one thing at which he positively excelled, was kissing.
Neely couldn’t imagine why she’d ever thought he was cold. Certainly there was nothing cold in the feel of his mouth on hers, nothing icy in the touch of his hands as they slid around her waist and lifted her onto the countertop so he could step up between her knees. And there was absolutely nothing frigid about the way he made her feel.
It was a long kiss, a hungry desperate kiss, and it wreaked havoc with all her earlier determination to resist him.
He wasn’t good for her. He didn’t want what she wanted. But even knowing it, she couldn’t seem to pull away. She could only hang on and savor what was happening between them.
It wasn’t until his fingers slid up beneath her shirt and began to work on the clasp to her bra that she realized
