He kissed the back of my neck. “Or if you don’t get enough sleep….”
“You’re not helping.”
He kissed me again, right in my secret spot just behind my collarbone, and I went weak.
“Come to bed,” he told me.
“You go. I’ll just toss and turn and keep you awake.”
“Karen Montfort, get that sweet arse of yours in my bed this instant!”
I felt a sudden rush of heat push away my nerves…and just a hint of what Clarissa must feel, when Neil spoke to her like that.
“I don’t think I can sleep,” I told him.
His lips twisted into one of those filthy smiles. “I know a way to tire you out.”
Chapter 34
Backstage, with five minutes to go. I was perched on the edge of the same chaise-longue I’d been put on after I fainted, listening to the quartet who were on before us while I waited for Connor to change.
He’d gone out early that morning to pick up his outfit and had been very mysterious about it, hiding it in a suit carrier and insisting on only changing into it at the very last second. I’d gone for my normal, reliable black dress, the same thing I’d worn for every recital since I’d started at Fenbrook. Except this time I’d added the Killer Heels, and hold ups. It wasn’t a big change—I doubted anyone else would even notice. But it was important to me.
I stood there nervously fingering my cello, slowly turning it around and around in my hands. Then I almost dropped it and a hot flash of panic surged through me as I grabbed it to stop it crashing to the floor. Okay. No more playing with it.
Then Connor emerged from the toilets.
I’d had a vague idea in my head that he might have traded his usual jeans and t-shirt for a shirt and pants, but he was in a suit! A charcoal gray suit, just one shade off black, with a crisp white shirt left open at the collar to reveal tantalizing glimpses of his chest. I gaped. I mean, my mouth actually dropped open. Some men don’t clean up well—put them in a suit and they look imprisoned and uncomfortable. Connor looked like an Irish billionaire.
“Where on earth did you get that?” I asked, fingering the fabric.
“I stole it.”
My eyes went wide.
“No, not really—Jesus, woman! I left the tags in. I’ll take it back this afternoon.”
I relaxed—a little. “But you still had to buy it! How did you afford it?”
He looked nonchalant.
“Connor, did you spend every penny we had on that suit? Do we, in fact, have no money until you take it back?”
“Put it this way,” he said. “Don’t spill anything on the suit.”
And I couldn’t help but laugh, because it was so him. This is what life would be like with him, I knew—living on a wing and a prayer, one paycheck from disaster. And as long as we were together, that suited me just fine.
A nervous sophomore, who’d been landed with the job of floor-managing the event, put his head around the curtain. “Karen Montfort and Connor Locke?” he asked.
I liked the way that sounded. We nodded.
“You’re on.”
Just as we walked through the curtain, I grabbed Connor’s hand and we walked out like that, hand in hand. Maybe I wanted to make a statement; maybe I was just terrified. But either way, it felt good.
The hall was packed. Seniors who’d be performing later in the day, sitting there nervously fingering their instruments. Juniors who wanted to get a feel for the horror they’d be facing next year. Freshman and sophomores watching boredly, there only because they got the day off class to attend.
And parents. Row after row of proud moms and dads, watching and taking photos and applauding politely for everyone else and in a frenzy of hands for their darlings. And somewhere amongst them, my father, sitting silent and watchful, waiting to see whether his dreams for me would soar to the heavens, stand proudly or be crushed into the mud. Orchestra, graduate or fail.
Or more likely, he wasn’t there at all. He’d never returned my message.
As we approached, a couple of freshmen removed two of the chairs the quartet had used, leaving just the two we’d use in the spotlight. Everything was slick and professional…but then Fenbrook had been doing these recitals for fifty years.
The judging panel sat behind a desk at one end of the stage, out of the glare of the spotlight so that they didn’t distract the audience. It made them look like waiting monsters, ready to devour us.
Professor Harman was there, as he always was. They rotated the other music department representatives, and this year they were Doctor Geisler, who I knew well and Doctor Parks, a woman with frizzy blonde hair who taught some of the contemporary music classes and who couldn’t have been over 35—young, for Fenbrook’s staff.