Page 19 of The Wanderer

Starting now.

Chapter Ten

Hope had nowhere to run this time.

The guitarist at the pub had been a good distraction after the alley sex to fend off any possible awkwardness, but this time she couldn't flee considering this was her place and his crew would be arriving in half an hour to start work on her dream.

And he had this look in his eyes as she redressed and he took care of business, like he wanted to ask her questions she had no intention of answering. So she deflected as usual, using a mechanism honed from years of practice when avoiding any kind of deeper connection with a guy.

"Want to hear a song I wrote over the weekend?"

He hesitated, before nodding. "Sure."

She padded into the music room and sat at the piano. Immediately, her muscles relaxed and her shoulders unkinked, the tension of their post-sex interlude draining away to leave a welcome calm in its wake. When she rested her fingers on the keys, she entered her happy place, the smoothness of the ivory lulling her. It had always been like this, from the first moment she sat at her parents' Steinway, like magic had enveloped her and swept her away to a better world.

Her parents hadn't understood when she tried to explain it. They'd labelled her imaginative and dismissed her feelings as fanciful. It made it all the more special somehow, that only she could experience this kind of euphoria.

Her fingers drifted over the keys, plucking at middle C, B, D, setting the tone for her voice. She knew he wouldn't understand the meaning behind the words, just like her parents hadn't understood all those years ago, but she needed to sing, needed to get grounded in a world frighteningly topsy-turvy.

Thanks to Logan.

She'd never been so captivated by a man before.

Since the moment they'd met last week he'd filled her every waking thought, and her sleepless ones too. She hadn’t been this hung-up over a guy since Willem and that thought alone should’ve sent her running, doing her usual sabotaging trick before anything could develop.

That’s what the frantic alley sex had really been about: showing him she was bold, in-control, and good for a quickie only. That kind of overt come-on turned some guys off; she should know, she’d done it before. But with Logan, her deep-seated desire to push him away hadn’t worked. If anything it had intensified her fascination for him so to distract herself over the weekend she'd composed this song.

The notes filled her and burst out of her mouth, pure and melodic. Lyrics filled with wonder and excitement and the newness of hedonistic pleasure. She sang without pause, without fault, and when her hands struck the final chords before drifting into silence, she let the calmness wrap her.

Her eyes had drifted shut at some point and when she opened them, Logan stood before her, leaning against the piano, looking like a model in that slick suit. He stared at her in open-mouthed shock and she crashed back to earth in a big way.

Embarrassment flooded her; her skin prickled, making her want to itch. What had she been thinking, revealing so much of herself to him? If she'd been uncomfortable standing naked in front of him in that room before, it had nothing on the mortification sweeping over her now.

"That was…incredible." He gave a little shake of his head, as if trying to wake up. "You're better than half the pop stars on the charts today."

"Thanks." She resisted the urge to press her palms to her flushed cheeks. "Music is my go-to place."

He nodded, as if he understood, but she could tell by his dazed expression he didn't. "The pub's mine."

She laughed, interlocked her fingers and stretched her arms overhead. "We all have our different escape mechanisms."

When she lowered her arms, he was studying her with a quizzical slash between his brows. "Is that what you needed to do over the weekend? Escape?"

Crap. She'd left herself wide open for that one. He was far too intuitive. She needed to distance herself, pronto.

"It's what I do most weekends. Song-write. Tinker." Feigning indifference, she stood and busied herself dusting off the keys. "I'm really living it up, in case you didn't notice."

"Hey, you're more adventurous than you think." He touched her arm and just like that her synapses short-circuited again and she imagined him touching her all over. "Are we going to talk about the sex?"

Hell no. She squeezed her thighs together to guard against the instant throb elicited by him even saying the damn word.

"What's there to talk about?"

The corners of his kissable mouth quirked. "The fact we like doing it? The fact we're explosive together? The fact I want to keep doing it for however long I'm in Melbourne?"

Of course Logan was transient. She’d found a guy to give her the mind-blowing pleasure she craved and he'd be moving on. Figured.

She should be glad, as any kind of relationship wasn’t part of her grand plans. Short-term, sizzling sex with a hot guy was doable. So why the tiny zing of disappointment?

---