For a long, taut moment neither of them spoke, they simply looked. The look went on far longer than it should have, than was appropriate for two strangers staring at each other in a bar. Still Abby could not look away. She felt as if she were suspended in time, in air, motionless and yet waiting.
‘You’re even lovelier in person.’ He spoke in English with a faint French accent, his low voice carrying across the empty room. Shock rippled through her at the realization that he knew who she was; he recognized her. Of course, plenty of people recognized her. She was the Piano Prodigy, after all. Yet under the quiet heat of his gaze Abby knew he wasn’t looking at her as a prodigy, or even a pianist. He was looking at her as a woman, and that felt wonderful.
‘You remember me,’ she whispered. Her voice trembled and she blushed at the realization, as well as the revealing nature of the statement. She couldn’t dissemble. She didn’t know how to, and she wasn’t even sure she wanted to.
He arched one eyebrow, with the flicker of a smile around his mouth and in his eyes. ‘Of course I remember you,’ he said, a gentle, teasing lilt to his voice—although Abby saw an intensity in his fierce blue eyes, the same intensity she’d seen in the concert hall and had responded to. ‘And now I know you remember me.’
Her blush deepened and she looked away. The bartender had delivered her martini, complete with an olive pierced by a swizzle-stick, and she seized the drink as a distraction, taking far too large a sip.
She choked, gasping as the pure alcohol burned its way to her belly, and she returned the glass to the bar with an unsteady clatter.
She felt rather than saw the man move from his stool to the one next to hers, felt the heat emanating from his lean form, inhaled the woodsy musk of his cologne. And choked a bit more.
‘Are you all right?’ he murmured, all solicitude, although Abby thought she heard a hint of laughter lacing the words. She wiped her eyes and took a deep, cleansing breath.
‘Yes. It…went down the wrong way.’
‘That happens,’ he murmured, and Abby knew he wasn’t fooled. She decided she might as well be candid.
‘Actually, I’ve never had a martini before,’ she said, turning to look at him. ‘I had no idea it would taste so…strong.’ Now that he was here, just a few feet away from her, she took the opportunity to let her gaze sweep over him. He was tall, well over six feet, dwarfing her own five-eight frame. His hair was dark with a few streaks of grey near the temples, and long enough to raggedly reach his collar. His face held an austere beauty; the chiselled cheekbones, fiercely blue eyes and strong jaw all worked together to create an impression of strength, yet also, strangely, of suffering. He looked and walked like a man apart, a man marked by life’s experience. By tragedy, perhaps.
Abby knew she should dismiss such impressions as fanciful, yet she could not. They were too strong, too real, just as the connection she’d felt between them at the concert and now in the bar felt real.
‘Why did you order a martini?’ he asked.
‘I wanted to order what I thought was a sophisticated drink,’ she admitted baldly. ‘Isn’t that ridiculous?’
He tilted his head, his smile deepening to reveal a devastating dimple in one cheek. His gaze swept over her worn coat, the black silk of her gown gathered around her ankles, one high-heeled sandal dangling from her foot. ‘It surely is,’ he agreed, ‘considering how sophisticated you already are.’
Abby choked again, this time in laughter. ‘You are quite the flatterer, Monsieur…?’
‘Luc.’
‘Monsieur Luc?’
‘Just Luc.’ There was a flat finality to his words that made Abby realize just how anonymous this conversation really was. She had no idea who he was beyond his first name. ‘And I know who you are,’ he continued. ‘Abigail.’
‘Abby.’
He smiled, a gesture that was strangely intimate, making warmth spread through Abby’s body. A warmth she’d never experienced before but knew she liked trickled through her limbs like warm honey, making her feel languorous, almost sleepy, even though her heart still beat fast. It was a warmth that drew her to him even though she didn’t move, made her believe in the fairy tale. This really was happening. This was real. She’d found him, here in this bar, and he’d found her. ‘Abby,’ he murmured. ‘Of course.’
Of course. As if they knew each other, had known each other long before this moment, as if they’d been waiting for this moment. Abby felt she had been.
‘So.’ Again he smiled, no more than a flicker as he gestured towards the martini. ‘What do you think?’
Abby made a face. ‘I think I prefer champagne.’
‘Then champagne you shall have.’ With a simple flick of his wrist, Luc had the bartender hurrying over. A quick command in rapid French soon had him producing a dusty bottle of what Abby knew must be an outrageously expensive champagne and two fragile flutes. ‘Will you share a glass with me?’ Luc asked, and Abby barely resisted the impulse to laugh wildly.
In all her years playing in concert halls she’d never had an encounter like this. She’d never had any encounters at all, save the few carefully orchestrated conversations or programsignings her father arranged. They’d always made Abby feel like she was an exotic creature in a zoo to be watched, petted, admired and then left.
Caged, she realized. I’ve felt caged all my life. Until now.
This moment felt free.
‘Yes,’ she said, surprised at how simple the decision was. ‘I will.’
Luc led her to a cozy table for two in the corner of the deserted bar, and Abby sank onto the plush seat, watching as the waiter popped the cork and poured two glasses of champagne, the bubbles zinging wildly.
‘To unexpected surprises,’ Luc said, raising his glass.
Abby couldn’t resist asking, ‘Aren’t all surprises unexpected?’
His smile curved his mobile mouth and glimmered in his eyes. ‘So they are,’ he agreed, and drank.
Abby drank too, letting the champagne slip down her throat and through her body. The bubbles seemed to race through every vein and artery. She stared at the bubbles in her glass and watched them pop against the side of the flute as she desperately thought of something to say.
She’d played in the concert halls of nearly every European capital, she could navigate airports, taxis and foreign hotels, yet in the presence of this man she felt tongue-tied, and even gauche, uncertain, unable to fully believe that this was even happening.
Yet it was.
She slid a sideways glance at him and saw that there was a particularly hard set to his jaw, a determined resoluteness that seemed at odds with his light tone, the glimmer of his smile. He possessed a hardness, Abby thought suddenly, a darkness that she didn’t understand and wasn’t sure she wanted to.
He downed the rest of his champagne, turning to smile at her, the darkness retreating to his eyes alone. ‘I didn’t expect to see you again. It is providence, is it not, that you came here?’
Providence.
