In Harmony (Fenbrook Academy #2)(4)
Author: Helena Newbury

I didn’t have a lot of time to look down to Connor’s row over the next hour, but what I did see amazed me. First, he borrowed paper from the girl sitting next to him—because he hadn’t brought any of his own. Then a pen, because of course he hadn’t brought that either. I didn’t know why he bothered, because he proceeded to take no notes whatsoever, slouching back in his seat and gazing everywhere but at Geisler.

Once, I thought he was looking at me and immediately felt myself flush. He was probably remembering me almost falling down the stairs.

Unbidden, little details swam back to me. That outdoorsy scent, so cool and clean you wanted to fill your lungs with it. The way his jacket had hugged his shoulders, before flowing down to his tight, trim waist.

Oh, stop it! You sound like one of his groupies!

“So, can anyone tell me where the development section of the first movement begins? Karen?”

Oh God! Geisler was calling on me! I knew the answer: Bar 231. Maybe if I got it out quickly, before my body had a chance to react—

“Stand up, so we can hear you better.”

No, don’t make me stand! He thought he was being nice, giving me thinking time, but he was just giving the fear time to take hold. I got to my feet, my legs like wet paper. My brain’s gears jammed and froze.

“Now, where does Beethoven begin the development section?” Doctor Geisler asked, smiling kindly.

Bar 231. I knew it, I just couldn’t get the words out. What if I’m wrong? What if they laugh? I could feel my throat closing up, soft flesh locking tight as a nut.

“You did analyze this piece?” asked Doctor Geisler, looking a little annoyed now.

I nodded. Yes, of course I did! I’ve even done extra reading! I knew this stuff! I just couldn’t—

“Go on, then,” Geisler told me.

I could feel the panic rising inside me, leaving no strength in my legs and drawing all the blood from my face. I knew I was going to either burst into tears or bolt for the door—probably the second one. Then I’d have to lie and apologize and say I’d been ill. I couldn’t afford to fail another class!

“Bar 231,” said an Irish voice from the front, and everyone laughed.

“I was asking someone else,” Geisler told Connor, pointedly. “But yes.” And he launched into a long explanation, nodding at me to sit down almost as an afterthought.

I collapsed onto my seat and let my lungs slowly re-inflate. I’d been rescued, by the least likely person I could imagine. I risked a look at Connor, but he wasn’t looking at me—probably, he’d just been bored, and saving me hadn’t come into it. How had he known the answer, though? From what I’d just seen, he never even took notes!

That’s twice in one day he’s saved you, a little voice inside me said.

I looked down at Connor. The blonde oboist next to him was grinning and squeezing him around the shoulders in my hero sort of a way, with more body contact than was strictly necessary. That’s why he did it. To impress her.

I focused on Geisler. I couldn’t afford any more distractions.

Chapter 2

That evening, as I pushed through the main doors—carefully, this time—and plodded down the steps, I felt like my brain had been stretched out and twisted into a pretzel. Three hours of lectures and then a long afternoon of practice, working at the Brahms until I swore I could hear it playing in my head everywhere I went, had nearly broken me. My eyes were bloodshot and sore from staring at music and my spine was a knotted mass of pain.

I need a billionaire to give me a massage. Maybe Natasha will loan me Darrell.

Footsteps behind me. A clatter of heels and then, with a rush of perfume and a silken swish of long, auburn hair, Jasmine was snuggled up against me, an arm around my shoulders.

I stopped my trudging and looked back at the icy steps in disbelief. I’d had to be careful even in my sneakers; Jasmine had just bounded down them in three-inch heels. How did she do that? I could barely even walk in any heel over a couple of inches…which was a shame, because they would have helped my height.

“Can I get changed at your place?” Jasmine asked.

“Changed?” Then I remembered we were going out. I was exhausted. “Actually, I think I just want to go home and pull the covers over my head.”

“Nope. Not an option. We need to get you out, before you disappear into a practice room and we lose you forever.” She pulled me forward and I started walking.

I really didn’t want to go out, but I’m not good at saying “no” to people. Especially Jasmine. Out of all my friends, she’s the most like a sister—or how I imagine a sister should be, since I’m an only child. A junior year actress, she looks like she was born for the screen. I don’t just mean she’s beautiful—she is, but that isn’t it. It’s that she’s eye-catching. When she walks into a room, you can’t not look at her—men and women alike. For starters, she has thick red hair almost down to her waist that she either wears in big, pre-Raphaelite curls or in a super-sleek straight curtain down her back. Secondly, she has these huge green eyes that can be innocent and shocked or incredibly filthy, depending on what she’s saying. And finally she has the body. She’s curvy, and I don’t mean that as a euphemism. She has an honest-to-God hourglass figure and she makes the most of it. Guys in particular stop and stare.

I sometimes busked for charity as part of a string quartet in Central Park. One Saturday the previous summer, we were having an okay day with maybe fifty dollars in the hat. Jasmine showed up in a green summer dress that showed quite a bit of cl**vage and did nothing more than sit on the grass listening to us. We made three hundred dollars in the next hour, the crowd swelling by the second.

She was the anti-me, beautiful and confident. Maybe that’s why we got on so well.

“Fine,” I told her. “One drink at Flicker.”

A particularly cruel gust of wind lashed at us and I pulled my coat around me. I realized that Jasmine was in a light autumn jacket that stopped at her waist. She wasn’t just snuggling up to me to be cute.

“What are you wearing?” I asked. “You’ll freeze!”

“Not if we hurry up and get to your place.” She towed me along.

I tried to hurry, but no one moves fast with a cello strapped to their back.

“Why can’t you just leave it at the academy?” she asked, for what must have been the hundredth time since I’d known her.

I looked at her blankly. “How would I practice at home?”

Jasmine shivered and gave me a very strange look. “Karen, in all seriousness, you need to get out more.”

***

When I asked to move to New York so I could attend Fenbrook, my dad argued and grumbled and moaned about how Boston was better and then, when he finally saw that it was the only option, he rented an apartment for me. He didn’t wire me the rent money or help me pick out a place, he just dropped off the keys and told me where I’d be living for four years.

I know, I know—poor little rich girl. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very grateful for it. But it did demonstrate how our relationship worked.

The place he’d picked was in a nice neighborhood, because he wanted me to be safe. But it was a one bedroom apartment, because he didn’t want me to be distracted by anyone, and it was several stops on the subway from any of the areas popular with students, because he wanted me well away from “the party scene” (as if I’d ever go to a party anyway).

It was great, and very generous of him, and not having to pay rent meant that I was one of the few students at Fenbrook who didn’t have to work a part-time job (another thing he’d never allow). But the place never felt like mine. He’d even furnished it himself, which meant that—just like at home—there was no television (I’d been the only kid at school with a music score on their lunch box instead of Elmo or Batman). In a tiny show of defiance, I was saving up to buy a TV, though I knew I’d have to find somewhere to hide it when he visited.

We trudged in out of the cold and Jasmine gasped as the warm air hit her. “You have your heating come on before you’re even home?” she asked in disbelief.

“Isn’t that the idea of a timer?”

She sank into the leather couch with a groan of pleasure, long auburn hair trailing languidly over the edge. You could have pointed a camera at the scene and you’d have had a furniture store commercial right there. “Sure. But no one actually does it. What if you’re late home or you go straight out? You’d have wasted all that money.”

“Good point.” I didn’t like to mention that all the bills went straight to my dad. I had no idea how much the power cost. I had no idea how much the apartment cost, for that matter. He’d given me everything I needed.

And he could take it away just as easily.

Something occurred to me, looking at Jasmine luxuriating on the sofa. “What are you going to change into?” I asked. She was in jeans and a sweater—not her usual going-out attire.

“Oh, it’s in here.” From her purse, she pulled out a wad of black fabric no bigger than my hand, then let it unroll. “Ta da! What do you think?”

“Where’s the rest of it?”

“It’s stretchy,” she told me defensively. “It looks bigger on.”

“Uh-huh. Well, I’m going to take a quick shower. Make yourself at home.”

In the shower, I turned the temperature up to almost scalding and the force up to the “Massage” setting, hoping that it would help unkink my back. I did that a lot, after a hard day playing. I liked to imagine that it was a big, blond guy with huge biceps massaging me. In my mind, his name was Sven and we sat in his cabin in Sweden looking out at the pine trees while he worked oil into my back.

It occurred to me that that was a lot of detail to get from a shower setting. Maybe I did need a boyfriend.

Connor swam up into my mind and I yelped in shock, turning and catching the spray right in my face. When I’d stopped spluttering and the jet was safely hammering away at my stomach, I carefully allowed myself to go back to the thought.

What was he doing in my brain? I wasn’t interested in Connor—in fact, he was the exact opposite of everything I was interested in. If I was going to date, they’d need to be reliable, and serious, and…safe.

Why did my list of requirements for a guy sound like a Volvo commercial?

Connor didn’t have any of that going for him. He didn’t have anything going for him, except for his looks.

If you’re into that sort of look, I told myself quickly. Which I’m not.

I realized the shower was turning into an epic, so I cranked off the water, toweled off and padded through to the bedroom to find something to wear. I knew Jasmine wasn’t going to let me out of the apartment in my jeans and sweatshirt, but my wardrobe was…limited. I finally found a dark red blouse and a black skirt, and pulled out the one pair of heels I dared to wear. They were only a couple of inches high, so I could walk in them. Just.

I found Jasmine in the kitchen, wearing the dress and making a sandwich. Only that doesn’t really describe the scene.