An arm came around his shoulders from behind. “You want to get back up there?”
He watched her head to her seat, the tight sway of her in those jeans, the perfect compact hourglass of her figure. He could still feel the whisper of warm air across his cheek. An inch and she would have been kissing him.
“She your girlfriend?”
It was Devon, the house band’s leader. Mark turned and got blasted with beer breath and a way-too-up-close view of Devon’s scruffy beard. Well, that was a serious comedown.
“Nah,” Mark said.
“Too bad, huh?”
“Nah. Women like that—”
“More trouble than they’re worth?”
Mark nodded, thinking, I can’t afford what she’s worth.
5
SHE SET UP Mark’s first guitar lesson for Monday afternoon. It was absurdly easy. She emailed one of his former students, a high schooler who’d been playing guitar for a few years. She had to talk to his mom, too, since she was footing the bill. Haven had expected some pushback from the mother, maybe even some concern about whether Mark was a good influence on her son. Haven had prepared a speech about how Mark had turned his life around. But all the mother said was, “I’m only paying for these lessons if he practices.”
It was also surprisingly easy to convince Mark to let her attend the lessons, or at least the first one. “I told Jimmy Jeffers I’d stick to you like glue from this point on,” she’d said, and his response had simply been, “I guess there are worse fates.” After the night she’d spent watching him play, she wasn’t sure whether to take that as resignation or flirtation. She couldn’t point to anything that had crossed any line, and yet she had left the club in a state of agitation, her body fizzing, warm, needy. The soap scent of his skin had been bright in her sinuses, her mouth still dry from the charge that leapt between the two of them when she leaned in.
Mark had agreed to meet his student in the high school band room, and the two of them sat now on uncomfortable folding chairs, guitars in their laps. Haven had tried to stay quiet and watch, but her antsiness got the better of her, and she ended up pacing. To take her mind off Mark, she read the posters and brochures tacked up on the walls. But she couldn’t calm down or keep from half listening as Mark talked to his student.
Gavin Hecht looked a great deal like Mark had before the first stages of his makeover—long-haired, scruffy, badly dressed. He was also pimply and awkward and scrawny, but damn, for a kid he could play the guitar. And Mark was good with him. Low key, not demanding, man-to-man. Doing more listening than talking, but asking a lot of questions.
Haven pretended to thumb through a book about building a better color guard, but really she was hyperconscious of every move Mark made. He leaned back in his chair, watched Gavin patiently, both the kid’s fingers and his face, as if there was so much to learn from this guy that he couldn’t tear his eyes away. And yet, every so often his gaze fell on Haven like a touch—on her hair, on the hem of her skirt, on all the parts of her that were alert to him.
Which, for complicated reasons, made her think about her date on Saturday night—two nights after she’d watched Mark jam—with Jewelry Marketing Guy, whose name was Greg. It had been perfect, on paper. Greg had showed up in a thoroughly pressed blazer, taken her to an art opening, introduced her to people he knew and made smooth small talk with people she knew. He took her to dinner, held the door, removed her coat and turned it over to the hostess, pulled out her seat. He told her about his job and listened intently while she talked about hers. And there was something to be said for not feeling as though she had a whole Olympic luge team hurtling around in her stomach. She was way more relaxed with this guy than she’d been with Mark, and that seemed to bode well for compatibility. Compatibility, after all, was what she was after.