She shifted her stance. “Tobin? Are you okay?”
“Nope. I’m completely and utterly blown away by you after listening to you play.”
She blushed.
“I don’t know anything about music, just what I do and don’t like. But that piece? I think I held my damn breath through half of it. And when you finished, I thought about patting my face to see if my cheeks were wet. It was just . . . wow.” Tobin shook his head. “How do you do that? Take those notes on a page and churn the emotion and the passion together.”
“Practice. Lots and lots of practice.” She closed her eyes for a moment and breathed deeply before she looked at him again. “That wasn’t meant to sound flip. I’ve been working on the subtle and blatant variations of that piece for half of my life.”
“Is it offensive to say it shows?”
“No.” She smiled softly. “It’s my go-to piece. The one I play beginning to end, without stopping, even if I screw up a section because even as many times as I’ve played it, and cried over it and rejoiced in it, and ripped the sheet music up and turned it into confetti . . . every new performance I hear or feel something different.”
“Well, I’d say in the aftermath of that I feel like I oughta smoke a cigarette.”
She snickered.
“But since I don’t smoke, I definitely need a drink.” He paused. “Care to join me? If you’re done playing.”
“Oh, I’m most definitely done. And a drink would be great just as long as it’s not beer.” She wrinkled her nose and he was completely charmed. “I never developed a taste for it. Especially not in college with warm kegs.”
“No problem. Miz G has a decent liquor selection. She’s gotta be ready to make the Mud Lilies’ signature drinks whenever they ask.”
“I’ll put this away and be right there.”
Tobin stopped in the entryway and used the bootjack to take his boots off. He shoved his socks inside and crossed the dining room to the liquor cabinet. He grabbed the bottle of Jameson and the Chambord. What the hell. He’d try his hand at a fancy cocktail. He poured a shot of Jameson in each champagne flute, a shot of Chambord and topped both glasses off with cold champagne.
“That looks great,” Jade said behind him.
“No guarantees ’cause I kinda winged it.” He handed her a glass, picked his up and paused to make a toast. “Thank you for sharing your music with me tonight.”
Jade touched her glass to his. “You’re welcome.”
They both drank and looked at each other and laughed.
“You’re not spitting it out.”
“It’s actually pretty good. The raspberry liqueur mellows the whiskey.”
“Can I ask you something? Why weren’t you a music performance major? Instead of just minoring in it?”
“I’m a great player, but I’m not a fantastic player. I know I don’t have that something extra that is obvious in every piece that Joshua Bell, Sarah Chang, Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman play.” She pointed her glass at him. “I know the life of a musician is ten percent performance, twenty percent practice and sixty percent politics, then the other ten percent . . . that’s the fun part. I love music, I love to play, but I realized being a professional paid musician in a city symphony or orchestra could suck the love and the joy out of it. So I play for fun. I was in a wedding quartet at one time. While playing Pachelbel’s Canon makes me want to barf—seriously—a wedding is the happiest occasion in the couple’s life up to that point and it rocks to be part of it.” She took a drink. “Now can I ask you something?”
He hoped he pulled off a nonchalant shrug.
“What part of that piece affected you the most?”
“The section where the loss occurs. There’s that steady drone, where I imagined that grief just drowns out everything else.”
Jade blinked at him. “That’s a very subtle nuance to pick up on, Mr. I Don’t Know Anything About Music.”
Tobin blushed.
“So did you pick up on it because you’ve suffered a loss like that?”
“My mom died about ten years ago and that was hard. Her death affected my dad like that. But recently . . .” He paused and swallowed a large mouthful of liquid courage. This wasn’t something he talked about. Or rather, this wasn’t something anyone in the community spoke of.
“I have two older brothers. I’m not close to either of them. They work with our dad running the ranch and there never was a place for me there. Which . . . doesn’t matter. My brother Streeter, he’s the closest in age to me. Married his high school sweetheart. They were one of those couples that everyone wanted to be because they were so freakin’ perfect? Well, they tried for years to get pregnant. Finally Danica got pregnant. The pregnancy went well. No complications. She gave birth to Olivia, this perfectly healthy darlin’ baby girl.” Even thinking about this now just tied him up in knots. He knocked back another drink. “Danica always wanted to be a mom so she quit her job to stay home with Olivia. About . . . six months ago, Streeter went home for lunch. He walked into their house, straight into the nursery since that’s where Danica always was, and he . . . found her. Danica had killed herself.”