She leashes him and takes him outside. I wander through the rooms Reggie has access to and examine the floors. One of the bedroom doors is open. A guitar case is propped in the corner, and a suitcase is on the bed. I guess this is where Reece is staying. When she finds me ten minutes later, I’m sitting on the bed, strumming a tune.
“I thought you said you play the drums,” she says from the doorway.
“You pick up a thing or two after playing in a band a while.”
“How long?”
“I’ve been with Cryptology for a year. Before that, there were four others.” I hold out the guitar. “Play something for me.”
“No.” Reggie appears at her side, and she leans over to pet him.
“If you’re going to be a star, you can’t be shy. You have a rock star name, you know. Reece Mancini. I like it.” I push the guitar at her.
“Fine.” She takes it from me and sits on the bed. Reggie lies on the floor and puts his head on his front paws.
She plays, and I’m entranced. To be honest, I’m fucking turned on. She’s that good. When she starts to sing, I have to keep my jaw from hitting the carpet. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a better voice. She looks like an angel and sings like the devil—a deadly combination. She’s right. She’s going to be famous.
After she finishes the song, she puts the guitar away. “It’s not polished yet.”
“Shit, Mancini. If that’s not polished, I’m afraid to hear one that is. You’re fantastic. You should definitely share your music with the world.”
“That’s the plan.” She goes to the door. “Someday.”
I hop off the bed, unable to get her tune out of my head. “I guess we should unload the car.”
After all the gifts have been moved into the den, I get on the floor with Reggie.
“You’re good with dogs,” Reece says.
“I’m good with humans, too.” I give her a wink. She blushes. Is she thinking about the kiss? About the night neither of us can remember? I’m stalling. I don’t want to leave. Then again, she hasn’t said she’s ready to drive me home. Maybe she doesn’t want me to leave either.
“Lunch?” she says. “It’s the least I can do after you helped me this morning.”
“I thought you said you had a million things to do today.”
“I may have been exaggerating.”
“Okay then. I could eat.”
I follow her to the kitchen. She looks in the fridge. “Sandwiches?”
“Sounds good.”
I sit on a barstool and watch her make lunch. The way she puts sandwiches together is almost as seductive as the way she strums her guitar.
She places a plate in front of me and joins me at the counter. “Where do you see yourself in five or ten years?”
“Are you asking me to tell you my hopes and dreams, Mancini?”
“You don’t have to.”
“That’s okay. They aren’t complicated. I want to go to Australia and study under one of the most prolific percussionists of all time. After that, bands will be fighting over me. Then I’ll be famous. Simple as that.”
She puts down her sandwich in disgust. “Must be nice to be able to buy your way to the top.”
“Hold on, I’m not buying my way anywhere. The truth is, I probably won’t go. The guy in Australia only accepts ten students per year. Thousands apply. I had to send him an audition tape, references, and a 3,000-word essay. The guy is rich as shit. He doesn’t charge much at all. Even let’s his students stay in his guesthouse. He does it to share his gift. He wouldn’t care how rich my parents are. In fact I didn’t mention it at all in my application. I thought it might dissuade him.”
“So you haven’t been accepted yet? When did you apply?”
“Last year. The application is good for two years, and then you can never apply again. If you don’t get into one of the two classes, that’s it. I didn’t get in last year, so I only have one more shot.”
“When will you find out?”
“Beats me. He’s a legend. He doesn’t live or work by any schedule. Last year, he didn’t send out acceptances until two weeks before class started.”
“That’s hardly fair. How can you pick up and move to Australia so quickly?”
“Don’t know, but you do. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
“Do you really think you have a chance?”
I finish my sandwich. “Probably not, but I had to go for it.”
She smiles.
“You’re smiling at my impending failure?”
“Maybe you’re not so cocky after all.” She wipes something off my lip. “You had a little mayo there.”
I’m instantly hard. “Don’t let all the tats fool you. I’m actually a nice guy. Sorry if that disappoints you.”
She moves the dirty plates to the sink and comes back to stand in front of me. “I’m happy you said that, because the last thing I need in my life is another bad boy. I grew up in the system. That’s all I’ve ever known.”
I latch on to her hips and pull her in. “I’m not saying I’m a momma’s boy either, Mancini, but I don’t have a record, I don’t do drugs, and I don’t make it a habit of having drunken one-night stands.”
She exhales a deep sigh. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying we already did it twice. What’s the big deal if we do it again? This time we’ll remember it.”
Her expression sours. “This was all a ploy to get me into bed?”
“Don’t you find me attractive when you’re sober?”
She studies my face, then my right arm. All the while I’m growing painfully harder. “I didn’t say you weren’t hot. I’m just not looking for a fling.”
“Reece, I’m nineteen years old, almost twenty, and I’ve been with four girls—uh, women. I’m not a love ’em and leave ’em kind of guy. Last night was atypical. I’d gotten into a fight with the old man at the reception and two drinks turned to four and then eight and so on.”
“What did you fight about?”
“Him wanting me to go to college. He’s bought my way into three of them. Every six months or so since I graduated from high school, he’s tried to get me to go to some Ivy League school, even though he knows I’m not interested. Last night he was bribing me. Said he’d double my trust fund if I agreed—triple it even, if I went to law school.”
She swallows. “You have a trust fund?”
I roll my eyes. “Don’t all Richie Rich’s?”
“And you turned him down?”
“I told you, school’s not my thing. Music is.”
She shimmies into me. “I think I like you more now, Garrett Young, but I’m not going to sleep with you.”
I frown. “Why not?”
“Because I feel a connection with you.”
“So you aren’t going to sleep with me?”
“I know it sounds twisted. You’ve been with four girls. I’m younger than you, and I’ve been with a lot of men. I’m not proud of it. I was emancipated on my seventeenth birthday. I had a minimum wage job at the diner and a trash bag full of secondhand clothes. Sheila helped me find a cheap apartment. When you’re someone like me, growing up like I did, you attract a certain kind of person. And that kind of person is not someone who would give up a triple trust fund.” She rubs her jaw as if she’d just been punched. “It’s the kind of person who—”