Playing the Maestro (13 page)

Chapter Eighteen

Headlights

Melody stepped on the gas as she turned onto the ramp to I-90 East. Emotions raging, she reminded herself to concentrate on the road. She’d only driven to Laini’s beach house in the dark once before. After hitting a tree and totaling their parents’ car a few years back, she had no urge to repeat her reckless college days.

They’d argued about her future, insisting she choose a “useful” major, or a degree in something that helped people, like Laini and her work at Make-A-Dream. But Melody couldn’t imagine doing anything else with her life. She could just picture herself sitting behind a desk, always wondering if she could have made it as a flutist. She tried reassuring her parents she was choosing the right career, but they’d worried she’d struggle so much she’d have to live at home.

I’ve proven them wrong so far.

Melody winced as she sped toward the coast. If she quit the orchestra, she would have to move back in with them until she found another job, proving them
right
. Melody felt trapped either way: sitting in that orchestra with Blake and Wolf, or sitting at home with her I-told-you-so parents. She couldn’t decide what was worse.

Or I could move far away and forget everything that happened here.

She didn’t want that, even if she craved starting over from time to time. She wanted to be a part of Violet’s and Laini’s lives and she wanted her dream of being a professional flutist. All her contacts were in Boston and the surrounding area. It would take years to build up name recognition in another big city. Melody sickened with the thought of reestablishing herself student by student.

Two hours later, Melody’s thoughts still chased themselves in circles. Hoping the rhythmic tug of the Atlantic’s waves would bring some clarity to the situation, Melody took the exit for Laini’s beach house. Make-A-Dream had a big ice-cream social planned for some of its clients this week. Laini would be busy working until Sunday, so Melody knew the home lay vacant.

Her sister did say she was welcome anytime, even if Laini liked to keep everything in its place. Melody was surprised her sister had forgiven her after she had crashed the car into Laini’s front yard maple and the entire tree, dead roots and all, had to be exhumed from the ground. As she passed the familiar bend in the road, she spotted the bed of marigolds Laini had planted in place of the tree. The heads drooped under the heavy rains like sad little sentinels.

Melody tightened her fingers on the wheel.
I’m much more in control now than I was then.
Or was she? Since Wolf arrived, her life had spiraled out of whack, and all she could do was hold on by her teeth. Her work had suffered, her practicing had deteriorated, and the concerto competition loomed like judgment day.

Stupid. Stupid. Why did I ever think I could date another musician?

Frustrated with everything, she parked by the stone wall where Laini had left the spare key. The rain had passed, heading out to sea, and now only a light drizzle persisted. Waves crashed on the horizon and the smell of drying seaweed and brine brought back memories of happier times. This was the perfect refuge. No one except Laini could find her here.

Melody counted the rocks in the wall, then turned over a slate-gray stone looking no different than the rest. Underneath lay a small golden key.

The wooden steps of the porch creaked under her weight as she carried her flute bag, her music stand, and a stack of sheet music. She wouldn’t be able to practice that night, but she was determined to regain control over her life, and if playing long tones helped, then so be it.

Melody let herself in and threw her music bag on the leather sofa. The cottage smelled like old wood, dried salt, and lavender. Their mother had grown the herb in window baskets all their lives, and Laini had carried on that tradition, giving Melody bags of it during the summer months. Dried bunches of the purple-blue flower hung from the ceiling. Laini must have recently harvested a new crop. Melody always thought of home when she smelled the light fragrance, and right now the scent calmed her.

She slumped onto the sofa next to her flute bag.

Wolf.

The one person she tried to forget kept nagging her consciousness, followed by a question: what if he was telling the truth? Could an ex be so bold as to show up and announce a fake engagement? That didn’t sound like anyone she knew. But she didn’t know anyone who looked like Alda, either. The woman’s breasts practically burst out of her evening gown screaming
wardrobe malfunction please
! If someone was that confident, then maybe Alda thought she could pull off a lie like that.

No.

Melody refused to go down that path. If Wolf were telling the truth, she’d have to care about him all over again, and she knew what that was doing to her career. It was best this way. As much as he’d broken her heart, now she could focus on the most important thing in her life: her flute.

Yes.

Tomorrow she’d dive into etudes and scales before running through that Mozart concerto fifty million times. She’d always drowned her sorrows in practicing, and this would be no different. Melody turned on the television. A scene of two lovers kissing in the night stabbed her in the heart and she changed the channel to a monster movie. Watching the shadows in the rafters of the ceiling, she decided that wouldn’t work, either. She’d had enough drama and horror for one night.

Melody found a channel of infomercials and settled into the sofa, propping her head on an embroidered pillow. Infomercials were safe. She watched for over an hour as vacuums, jewelry, and garden hoses that shrunk when the water was turned off came on the screen. She was starting to think she needed all that junk for herself and for presents for her family. Looking for her cell phone to order that ingenious shrinking garden hose, she noticed two golden lights twinkling in the distance.

Impossible.

That driveway only led to Laini’s beach house. Unless someone had taken a wrong turn? It was unfathomable Laini would leave her house this late on a weeknight, even if she’d had a rare fight with Derek.

Melody crouched by the window, watching the meandering light as the car took the dips and turns on the muddied dirt road. Panic rose inside her as she thought of the sound of a leather jacket crinkling and the callous dark eyes of her attacker. She grabbed the fire poker, the metal cooling her sweaty palms, and waited.

A black Ford Mustang broke through the foliage and parked next to her Fiat, making her car look like an old lady’s toy. The driver’s side opened and Melody dropped the poker to the ground. It clanged by her feet, but she heard the clamor only as an afterthought.

Blinking her eyes in disbelief, she wondered what Wolf was doing at Laini’s beach house and if she was dreaming. But when she glanced back out the window again, Wolf looked all too real. He still wore the tux from the fund-raiser, and he carried a stack of papers in his hands. A determined look crossed his face as he climbed the steps of the porch.

She retreated into the shadows. Although her heart beat with excitement, she didn’t know if she could face him. Why was he here? Would he come all this way if he had been lying?

There was only one way to find out.

A gentle knock sounded and Melody turned the knob, whipping the door open. Wolf stood with the gentle rain tinkling behind him, his dark chestnut hair slicked back, except for a single, wild strand that hung in front of his eyes. His gaze was desperate with intensity.

“Mel. I had to see you.”

Melody shook her head. As much as she reveled in his presence, this was all wrong if he had a fiancée back in Germany. “What are you doing here? How did you know where to find me?”

“Laini told me where you were.” He stepped toward her, and the air between them sizzled. Melody could almost feel the rain misting up from the heat. “Please, just give me five minutes to explain.”

Melody held her ground. Did she really want to let this fickle man into Laini’s beach house?

His blue eyes beckoned. “Five minutes, nothing more.”

“All right.” Melody stepped back and Wolf came in, slipping off his shoes before his feet touched the wood floor. He handed her a stack of papers. “You need to see this.”

As she took the papers, he looked the other way, as if he couldn’t stand what was on them. Melody’s curiosity heightened. Lists of purchases filled the pages. It was a bill for his Visa.

“What’s Parfumuree and Kos…me…tik?” Melody struggled with the German. He’d spent nine hundred and eighty seven euros on one trip alone.

“Parfümerie and Kosmetik. It’s a fancy perfume and makeup store in the Alexa shopping center.”

“Good God. Five hundred euros spent at Swarovski crystal?” Was he trying to tell her he was a shopaholic?

Wolf winced. “Unfortunately, yes.”

She read down the list, but nothing made sense. What would Wolf want with perfumes, jewelry, and women’s clothing? She thought back to the expensive bottle of wine he’d ordered on their date. Had he bought all of those things to impress Alda?

“Who’s Andreas Murkudis?”

“He’s the brother of fashion designer Kostas Murkudis. That’s his store in Berlin.”

She swallowed a current of disbelief. “Did you buy the whole store?”

Wolf shrugged. “I might have.”

“I had no idea you liked clothes so much, and shopping…” Melody didn’t know where this was going, but it didn’t look good. His salary for the Easthampton Civic Symphony couldn’t possibly support this type of spending.

“I don’t. Alda does.”

Jealousy barreled through her. “You bought all this for her?”

Wolf crossed his arms. “More like she helped herself without my knowledge.”

Bingo.
Just like that, the pieces fit together. Melody’s gaze shot up as anger ripped through her. Only this time, the anger wasn’t directed at him. “She spent all your money?”

Wolf nodded. “Alda stole my Visa and maxed it out, ruining my credit. The modeling industry had turned her into someone I couldn’t live with. We broke up exactly three months ago tomorrow, if you look at the last purchase date. I thought it was over, but she must have found a new use for me, because she followed her father here and crashed the party. She used my own money to donate to the orchestra, all to get me back so I could fuel her latest pursuits.”

Melody dropped the papers on the end table, unable to look any further. “I’m so sorry.”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry you have to see it. But it’s the only way to prove I’m telling the truth. I should have told you about Alda a long time ago. She uses people to get ahead, and I was just another stepping stone along the way, a stone she wasn’t done with.”

Melody’s heart reopened. Wolf was so much more than that. “You’re not a stepping stone to me.”

He leaned toward her and placed his hand on her arm, rubbing his thumb over her bare skin, making her body tingle. “I know. That’s why I had to come see you and explain. I’m falling for you, Mel. And it’s not because you look like Alda. In fact, I stayed away from you for that very reason. Until our first date, when I realized you were much more beautiful than Alda, inside and out. You’re the best thing that’s happened to me since I got to the States. I don’t want to lose you.”

Melody stepped into his arms, resting her head on his chest. She nuzzled against him, her heart melting with this new, open, vulnerable side of Wolf, a side with no secrets. “You won’t. I’m right here.”

His arms wrapped around her, pulling her even closer to him with a need she felt in his tense, wound-up muscles. He buried his face in her hair, inhaling her scent like a diver breaking the surface for oxygen.

He kissed the top of her head, then placed small nibbles along her neck and the line of her jaw. Melody couldn’t stand it any longer. She turned her head and met his lips with her own, kissing him with an unrestrained passion that had built since last night.

“Stay,” she whispered in between gasps for air. She could barely stop to speak, she was so hungry for more. He tasted of rain and spice and man. She wanted to press against every inch of him. Only moments ago, she’d thought he was someone else’s, and now he was singularly hers.

In response to her plea, Wolf kissed her back more forcefully, and his hands moved under her shirt and up her back, lighting her skin on fire. Never had anything felt so right.

Melody pulled him to the guest bedroom, where the pattering of rain rushed in like soft music through a carelessly open window, and the scent of the sea drifted across the beach. They tumbled onto the down comforter in a tangle of limbs.

If they made a mess, Laini would just have to forgive her.

Chapter Nineteen

Evidence

The ride back to Easthampton from Laini Thomas’s beach house was pure bliss. Wolf cranked down the windows and blasted rock music from his speakers, tapping his fingers in rhythm to the beat. The air currents whipped his hair around him, but something else raised the hairs on the back of his neck.

Wolf was in love.

Too bad she couldn’t have come with him.

Melody had wanted to stay and practice for the concerto competition tomorrow. Besides, she couldn’t leave her car at Cape Cod, and they really shouldn’t be seen driving together.

Wolf had kissed her good-bye with a wish of good luck. He could still taste her sweetness on his lips. He’d do anything for her, which was why he was going right to the orchestral archives in Wallsworth Hall.

Blake had to be stopped, and he needed proof against him.

Wolf turned onto Main Street and parked his car the next block down. He didn’t want orchestra members wondering why he was in his office on a Sunday. A chill ran across his shoulders as he took the alley where Melody had been attacked. His shoes clicked on the irregular pavement, announcing his presence. He tightened his fists and continued, stepping over puddles and trash. Although he didn’t enjoy walking down the alley, he couldn’t let the memory of those two thugs intrude on his overall sense of safety. He unlocked the back door and slipped in.

With its heavy curtains and single dangling chandelier, Wallsworth auditorium looked like the ghost theater in
Phantom of the Opera
. Wolf shuffled down the front aisle and entered the back of the stage. He passed by his office and tiptoed straight to the library.

Using his key, he opened the creaky door and stepped in. Dust, and the scent of old, moldy papers tickled his nose. Boxes of unused programs were stacked along the left wall. A picture of the original orchestra, with Mr. Wallsworth in his early thirties conducting from the podium, hung on the adjacent wall, framed in silver and signed by all the orchestra members at the time.

Wolf didn’t know where to start, so he methodically opened each screechy cabinet and rummaged through the old, yellowed papers. Hours had passed, and he’d only searched half the cabinets. The Easthampton Civic Symphony had enough newspaper clippings, old programs, and copied parts from every symphony imaginable for three orchestras, never mind one. Taking a break, Wolf leaned against the cabinet he’d just searched and slid to the floor.

Maybe Melody, as much as he loved her, was being paranoid about Blake losing her music. The thought weighed him down with disappointment. With nothing to peg on Blake, he could possibly be working with the slippery devil for the next ten or fifteen years of his life.

If this orchestra succeeds.

He still hadn’t heard the numbers from the fund-raiser, and with the conductor walking out halfway through the night, that certainly did not bode well.

No. If Melody believed him, then he had to believe her, as well. Burying his head in his hands, Wolf rubbed his face and thought about where he’d hide the first flute part if he were Blake. Movement from the corner of the room drew his attention, and he snapped up, heart racing as if he’d been caught. A mouse scurried through a pile of old baskets holding fake ivy that draped all the way to the floor.

Wolf laughed at his own jumpiness and stopped abruptly as the corner of a white piece of paper winked back at him. He hurried over, digging through the ivy and pulling out a flute one part—the original—to the Hiefinger.

Hiefinger had been his old teacher back in Germany, and the composer only had one set of originals printed of his work. Of course, only Wolf knew this, because he was the one who’d recommended the piece for the orchestra.

Underneath it was a violin two part to Beethoven’s fifth, a clarinet part to a Strauss waltz, and a cello part to a Mozart symphony. Had Blake been doing this all along? Signaling out the members of the orchestra he wanted to replace by having them sight-read their music?

Shock rattled him to the core, followed by a vicious urge to protect his new girlfriend. Melody was right. Blake had hidden the music from her that night. How else would it have gotten shoved into an old set design way in the back of the archives?

Fury roiled deep inside him as he took the music and slipped it under his coat. How would he prove such a thing to the board? And would they care?

Wolf could bring it up at the concerto competition tomorrow, but he didn’t want to take away from Melody’s performance. No, it was best he bide his time and wait for an opportune moment, or when he had more evidence.

Wolf opened his phone and pressed Melody’s number. He’d memorized it last night, just as he’d memorized the line of her chin and the pattern of freckles across her nose as she slept.

“Hello, Wolf?” Melody’s voice was charged with excitement, which made him want to reach through the phone and hold her.

“Hello, beautiful.”

She laughed coyly on the other end, then her voice grew serious. “Did you find it?”

“Stashed away in the back of the archives.”

“I knew it!” she whispered. “That bastard had set me up from the beginning.”

“I know. I’m angry, too.” He tried to remain calm. “We can beat him together if we do it right.”

“I’m up against his sister in the concerto competition tomorrow. If she wins…”

“I’m not a judge, but I know she won’t. You’re an excellent player. You can win this, Mel.”

“Thanks.”

“How’s the planning on your end?”

Melody sighed and it sounded like she took a sip of water or coffee. “I talked to Laini, and she has a meeting tomorrow with the expense committee. She thinks we can pull it off, giving Blake nothing to go on against keeping you and the rest of the orchestra.”

“That’s wonderful news.”

“
If
we can pull it off.”

“We’ll get through this, Mel.”

Wolf hung up and slipped out of the library, making sure to replace everything how Blake had left it. The pieces were in place, and the stakes were high. The battle of power with Blake had begun.