Rock Wedding(3)

But even a pedestrian musician could learn fairly complex pieces over a year and a half of intensive study comprised of ten or more hours of lessons a week. It helped fill in the time when she was alone in the house except for the housekeeper and the chef who came in for a short period each day. During the weeks while Abe was on tour, she asked the piano teacher to come every day. And then there were all the days when Abe was recording or planning songs with the band.

Sarah had a lot of time on her hands.

Staring at the keys, she lifted her hands, put them immediately back down.

This was Tessie’s piano. She knew that without ever having been told. It was obvious from the way it stayed draped in covers all year except on the anniversary of her death. Though Abe never talked about Tessie with Sarah, she’d seen the photos he kept around the house, seen the joyous smile and dancing eyes of Abe’s much younger sister, her tightly curled black hair in adorable little pigtails.

Tessie had been a midlife surprise for her parents, born when Abe was thirteen. Rather than being resentful of the tiny interloper, Abe had adored her.

“He was such a good big brother,” Diane had told Sarah one day while they shared a coffee before a family dinner. “He used to call her from boarding school and tell her bedtime stories, always took her on ‘dates’ during his vacations home. And whenever she asked him to play the piano, he’d play, and Tessie would put on her little tutu and dance and dance.”

Sarah didn’t think a girl with such joy in music would’ve wanted this piano to sit forever silent.

“For you,” Sarah whispered and put her fingers to the keys.

The piano was in perfect tune.

As she played a haunting nocturne, she realized Abe must keep it that way even though he refused to play the instrument. Her entire chest hurt for him, for her beautiful man with his broken heart and scarred soul. If only he—

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”





CHAPTER 2



JERKING TO A STOP WITH A JANGLING OF THE KEYS, Sarah stood up so fast she knocked over the piano stool. “Abe!” Her pulse a racehorse, she stared at the man looming at her from only two feet away. “Where were you? Didn’t you hear me calling?”

“Get the fuck away from the piano.”

Even during the worst of the drugs, he’d never spoken to her with such dark anger. His eyes glittered in the moonlight, his black shirt and black jeans only increasing the sense of danger that clung to him, her husband with his skin the shade of rich mahogany and his wide shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, stepping away, then bending down to right the stool.

He didn’t help her, didn’t move, just stood there staring at her with those cold, hard eyes in a face that was all harsh good looks.

Her stomach twisted. “I just thought—”

“I didn’t marry you for your brains.”

His vicious words tore open her deepest vulnerability, stabbing right into her secret knowledge that she was a high school dropout from the wrong side of the tracks playing at being a sophisticated woman who belonged in this big north Santa Monica home with its shining floors and glittering chandeliers.

Sarah blinked past the stinging pain; she knew Abe was hurting. She wouldn’t take what he’d said to heart. After all, he didn’t know about her past. As far as he was aware, she had the same level of education as him and she’d been born in a normal, boring suburb, her equally normal parents killed in a car crash at the end of her high school years.

He couldn’t know how much the words he’d spoken in anger hurt her.

Holding on tight to that thought, she said, “You shouldn’t be alone tonight.” She moved to him, reaching out to lay a hand on the muscled heat of his forearm, his skin appearing exquisitely darker in this light. “Why don’t we talk about Tessie?” she said gently. “Think of all the good memories, the fun times you had with her. I’d like to know her too.”

Shrugging off her hand, Abe strode to stand just outside the open doors, his eyes on the landscape beyond. “Get out.”

“Abe—”

He turned, shoulders bunched and hands fisted. “You don’t get it, do you, Sarah?” Shoving aside the curtains so there was no barrier between them, he said, “You’re a hot piece of ass who managed to get into my head and into my pants while I was out of it. I married you because you told me you were pregnant—”

The sneer in his voice broke something inside her. “I was pregnant!” The miscarriage had devastated her. Abe had been so tender then, had held her as she cried. He’d even stayed home for an entire week, and she’d fallen asleep in his arms.