Playing With Her Heart (Caught Up In Love #4)(26)
Author: Lauren Blakely

He watches me the entire time. Lets my words, my story, my tale become a part of him. He takes what I have to give. He absorbs all my music, all my passion, all my pain. He is the reason I’m singing, and I give it all to him because he knows what to do with all I have.

Because he accepts me for who I am, and because he makes me feel again.

And as I sing, something deep inside of me loosens. It’s like a brittle piece of my make-believe heart that I’ve been gripping so hard for so long rattles free, and tumbles away. I don’t even try to grab it, to glue it back on. I let it go, because I’m ready for it. For a fleeting moment, I feel buoyant, unencumbered from my past, and it’s an unfamiliar feeling, but such a welcome one. It’s like a reprieve, and my voice hitches on one note, hitting it wrong and raw, but that’s when his eyes light up the most. Then I finish the last note of the song, and take one step closer to him. “I need you, Paolo,” I say, shifting from sung words to the spoken ones in the script that cap off this song. Shifting too from calling him Professor to calling him by his name. “I need you to make me whole again.”

“I will, Ava,” he says, in the softest whisper, but one that carries, reverberating throughout the whole rehearsal studio as he delivers lines that start to bring this hard-edged, mercurial man closer to falling for this woman. “I promise.”

* * *

After several more rounds, I’m sweating. I’ve shed my sweater and I’m wearing only a tank top with my jeans. It’s a workout singing for Davis, and I’m not even dancing. I’m merely standing, and singing. But the way he directs, insisting, and requiring everything I have feels like a workout. I pull at my navy blue shirt so it doesn’t stick to my chest.

“Ready to go again?”

“Any time you want.”

He laughs once, shakes his head. “I was only teasing. I think we can call it a night.”

“Oh, I can keep going,” I say. “But if you need to stop…” then I trail off.

Davis rises from the piano, closes it, and grabs his jacket. “I don’t really think there’s any question about whether I can keep going. And I don’t need to stop. Ever.” Then his eyes rake over me, as if he’s memorizing me for later. “I’m choosing to call it a night.”

Okay, so now my chest is hot again, and I’m ready to take the sheet music and turn it into an accordion to fan myself. How is it that everything that comes out of his mouth is a double entendre? Does he even intend to talk this way? Sometimes, I think I have him figured out, but then he looks at me with those bedroom eyes, or says something that’s so sexy, and I’m back to putting the puzzle pieces together. I revert to humor to find my way out of the innuendo because I’m not quite sure what to do with all this double-speak, especially when he made it clear I’m not his type. Not to mention that teensy tiny little detail about me being crazy for someone else.

I point to his coat. “So you do own a jacket.”

“I’m not entirely impervious to the elements.”

“Aha! He is human. I’ve learned the truth,” I say, and I’m glad to be back to teasing, to toying. It’s familiar footing, and I can handle it so much better than the wobbliness I’ve felt most of the night. Besides, there’s a part of me that’s bordering on punch drunk from singing my freaking heart out. I feel spent in the way that a good, hard run can wring you dry, but leave you surging with adrenaline too.

“Don’t tell anyone though. Wouldn’t want to ruin my badass reputation,” he says, stopping to sketch air quotes, and I like that he lets me tease him. That he doesn’t seem to mind at all that I’ve figured out he likes the image he’s created for himself—take no prisoners, hard as hell, impossible to get to know. Sure, he is tough, but there’s more to him, too, and I don’t think he lets many people see his other sides. Maybe that’s why he seems to enjoy it when I see through him. Almost as if he wants me to. Maybe that’s why he talks to me this way. Because we can be friendly enough. We can move past the weirdness.

“Oh, you’re still badass in my book,” I say, as I pull my sweater back on. For a moment, I wrestle with the neckline, so I can’t see him as I’m stuck under my clothes.

When I emerge, he’s stepped closer, and he’s all serious and smoldering again. The whole dark and broody look is back in full force, and I can’t take my eyes off of him when he’s like that. It scares me how my whole body feels like it’s waking up when he looks at me. “Am I? Badass in your book?” He asks in a voice that’s low and smoky, and makes me want to say yes to him over and over, and to anything he’d ask.

That’s precisely why I can’t answer his question. Because my body’s going one way, but the rest of me is my usual messed-up, mixed-up, f**ked-up self, and I have no idea what to do with these veiled questions that feel a lot like foreplay.

Besides, I have Patrick this weekend. I have the chance to finally get to know him for real, like I’ve always wanted. I take a steady breath and jam my arms into my jacket, then cinch it closed. I need to shift gears and focus only on my job. “So how did I do tonight?”

Davis seems to sense the change. To respect it. “You were everything I wanted you to be,” he says, returning to his crisp, professional voice. He stops to lock the door, then we head down the carpeted hallway to the elevator. Once inside, he pushes the button for the ground floor. I glance at his hand, noticing his scar again. I point to it, my finger mere inches from his hand, so close I could touch him, could trace the raised line of the mark on his body. “How’d you get that scar?”

He doesn’t answer right away, and I wonder if I’ve crossed some line. I hold my breath, as I wait for an answer or an admonishment. The gears whir as the car begins its descent. This might be the tiniest elevator ever made because I feel as if I could crash into him if it stops suddenly. I can picture it. Being jolted, being caught. His arms around me. Our bodies so close. That moment when everything can change, when time freezes, and you’re either colliding or you’re not. Maybe I do want more of his innuendo. Maybe I do want the elevator to slam me into him, so my body can take what it wants right now.

But the ride is smooth, and we both stay in our places.

Then, he holds up his hand, regards it as if he hasn’t seen it in ages. “This? Punched the glass window of my front door when I was seventeen.”