Page 25 of Dangerous Lover

Her chest was so tight it was hard to breath. The thoughtof playing the piano made her slightly ill, but how could she say no? He couldn’t possibly understand what he’d asked of her. Saying no would sound as if she were insane. Or maybe even worse for a landlady—rude.

She glanced up at Jack. He was watching her quietly, his gaze dark and penetrating. She met his eyes for a moment, then looked down at her hands, hands that itched to touch the keys for comfort, hands that at the same time never wanted to play the piano again.

This was so scary.

Caroline felt she was poised on the edge of some deep, deep precipice from which there would be no return. She could either step forward and fall into the abyss of perpetual grief, a ghost of a woman with only ghosts to keep her company, forever mourning the past. Or she could step back and somehow reclaim her life and have something resembling a future.

She had to stop living in the past. She had to stop grieving. She had to stop thinking incessantly of Toby and her parents. She had to stopnow.

This was so hard. But it had to be done. She could do it. Over the past six years, she’d learned how to do the hard things. Over and over again.

She drummed up a smile, upturned lips and a flash of teeth, hoping he wouldn’t notice how false it was. “All right,” she said, her throat tight. “Of course I’ll play for you.”

Resolutely, she got up and went to the piano. There was an off chance that the piano had gone out of tune. God knows there’d been enough changes in temperature with her temperamental boiler towarp the wood. If the piano wasn’t in tune, well then, that would be a perfect excuse not to play and it wouldn’t be her fault at all.

She stopped by the big black upright and pressed middle C. The note rang out true and clear in the big room. The piano was perfectly in tune.

This was something she was simply going to have to face.

Clenching her teeth, she twirled the stool until it was the right height and sat down. She turned, surprised, when Jack lit the candles in the brass holders on either side of the upright with one of the long matches kept by the hearth.

“Looks so pretty like this,” he said and blew the match out.

Caroline sighed. Yes, it was very pretty.

She looked up at him. “What would you like for me to play? Do you have a favorite Christmas carol? I have a pretty good repertoire of carols.”

“No, no carols, please. I’ve been listening to way too much muzak in airports lately.” He tapped the score in front of her. “How about this? It must have been the last thing you played.”

Caroline froze. ‘This’ was the score to the Phantom of the Opera. She’d played it incessantly for Toby the last two weeks of his life. Please God, not this.

A Christmas carol would have been easy. She could choose one with no particular memories attached. Silent Night, maybe. Or Hark the Herald Angels Sing. The only thing they reminded her of was school.

But the Phantom of the Opera…

Oh dear sweet God. Anything but that.

This was going to be sohard. Caroline touched the keys, stroking them, familiarizing herself with the touch of the ivory and wood all over again. Music had always been her refuge, her place of peace. It was a sign of how deep her grief had been that she’d stayed away from music for so long.

She looked up uncertainly and met his gaze. Dark and steady and penetrating, as if he could reach inside her mind and read all the painful emotions swirling around inside, including her panic and fear. This was a man who’d faced gun-fire. How could someone like that possibly understand a fear of a key-board?

He couldn’t.

Do itnow.

Taking a deep breath, Caroline slowly started playing a few, halting notes with her right hand. The notes were discordant, too slow, but the song was recognizable.

The opening bars of ‘Think of Me’—the haunting melody Christine sang to the Phantom—came out. The song was forever branded in her heart as a hymn to pain and loss.

Her hand faltered, and she kept her index finger down on F for a long moment, wondering if she could go on.

She had to. She had to not only out of courtesy to her boarder, but for herself. And for her own sanity.

You must do this, Caroline ordered herself, her spine stiffening.

Her right hand picked out the notes of the opening again, faster, smoother, more melodic. The left hand came up, reluctantly, to provide the counterpoint to the lush melody. Muscle memory took over. The notes started flowing as herhands moved lightly over the keys, the song as familiar to her as her own name.

Think of me…

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