Reckless Abandon (9 page)

“You are beautiful...I just ...”

“No, I get it. I was teasing. Thanks for not making things weird with my parents and Monica. Have a safe drive home.” I lift myself onto my toes and kiss his cheek.

Without a moment’s hesitation, his hand cradles the back of my neck and he pulls me into his mouth. This is a real-deal Adrian Turner kiss. I dig the pads of my fingers into his shoulders as my tongue is granted entry into his mouth. His hands work down my sides, igniting the goosebumps I thought may have gone away for good. Pressing my hips into his, I force his back against the door of his car. He can’t hide his want with my body pressing into him like this; his throaty groan echoes his need. I suddenly love knowing I do this to him.
You’ve still got it
. I don’t want to stop—he’s a delicious escape—but I know we have to. As my hands beg access to his belt, I pull away.

“See you Friday?” My lips feel drunk as I speak.

Adrian squeezes my hips as he rests his forehead on mine. “See you Friday.”

My wobbly legs carry me back into Finnegan’s, where Monica flags me down at the bar. The place is still crowded and once my ears clear themselves of Adrian’s lust-filled air, they tune into a fiddle on stage. She hands me my beer, and I try to keep the grin off my face as I evaluate the tall drink of water swaying on stage.

“What the hell? Is he playing “Smooth Criminal?” On his fiddle?” The well-over-six-foot beauty on stage has his brassy-red hair pulled back in a short, messy ponytail. Typically I hate when guys have long hair, but this dude is hot.

“Yeah, isn’t he amazing? That’s C.J.’s cousin,” Monica whispers.

The crowd is completely mesmerized by the rock music floating from his strings. I’ve heard people play rock music on classical instruments before, but hearing it live is intense. His body moves slowly side-to-side as the bow races across the strings with passion.

“
That’s
Regan? Holy shit.”

“Right? He’ll do in a pinch.” Monica giggles, making her chocolate ponytail swing side to side. Josh elbows her.

“Take it easy, Mon,” he teases.

When Regan finishes, the crowd hoots and hollers wildly, then filters out the various exits to enjoy the warm June night. C.J. and Regan approach the bar, and C.J. introduces us.

“November, this is my cousin, Regan Kane.” C.J. steps aside and Regan shakes my hand with a sexy smile overtaking his face, promptly heating mine.

“Nice to meet you, November. I’ve heard great things about you.”

“From who? C.J.? Don’t believe a word of it.” I laugh. “You don’t really have an accent.”

Regan smiles as he stretches his arms over his
head. “I’m not
from
Ireland, I just live there. The accent is easy for me to turn on and off.” He shrugs and thanks Josh, who hands him a beer. “You were great up there tonight.”

My face ignites. “You were here?”

“Yeah, your voice is full, it has depth. You’ve been singing a long time.” He says this with authority.

“I guess.” I shrug. “Listen, I’m exhausted, and I have a long week of work coming up. Are we still playing here every other week?” I question Josh. I want to make sure I can hang out with Adrian this weekend.

“Yeah. Let’s rehearse Tuesday, since you’ll be in Concord Wednesday through Friday. Sound good, Regan?” Josh nods in Regan’s direction, whose studious eyes never leave mine.

“See you Tuesday.” Regan smiles through his words as I walk away.

Monica follows me to the parking lot, but I don’t notice until I’m almost at my car.

“Ember.”

I turn around to find her standing cross-armed. “Yeah?”

“What’s going on with Adrian?”

“What do you mean?” I walk back toward her.

“Don’t treat me like I’m dumb—I’m your best friend. I see what’s going on, but I don’t know why you’re not telling me.” Her face twists in hurt.

“Monica,” I sigh, “I’m not intentionally
keeping
anything from you. I just don’t know what’s going on yet, so there’s not really anything to talk about.”

“Can we talk about the fact that his car was in front of your apartment this morning?”

Damn.

“We
can
, but nothing happened. I swear. Look, Mon. It’s comfortable with him. There aren’t any surprises and we’ve got history.” I leave out the part about our hot make-out session in my living room.

“Fine. Now, I get that you’re all guarded now because of what happened with Bo, but you can’t keep stuff from me. That’s not what best friends do.”

She’s right.

“You’re right, Mon. I’m sorry. As soon as there’s something to tell, I’ll tell you.”

Monica stares at me, picking through my brain with her eyes before releasing a frustrated sigh. “Just be careful, OK? Oh! Josh and I are going away Friday to my parents’ house, so I have to drive separately to Concord on Wednesday.”

“That’s fine.” I shrug nonchalantly while silently thanking whatever powers arranged that. Now I won’t have to tell her about going to Adrian’s on Friday.

“Night.” Monica turns back to Finnegan’s.

“Night.”

Chapter Nine

The first part of this week has been a total bitch. Carrie placed interns with Monica and me in our offices, and handed them the rest of our workloads so we can focus “one hundred percent” on the DROP collaboration. This means that yesterday and today I’ve had to put up with oh-so-many questions from college seniors that I know for a
fact
I wasn’t annoying enough to ask when I was in their shoes.

“Don’t friend potential contacts on Facebook. In fact, you need to make yourself as private as possible on that damn site,” I huff as I walk over to the computer to adjust the intern’s privacy settings.

“Or you could not have an account at all, like Ember,” Monica chirps as she walks in.

The intern contorts her face in a mix of horror and disgust. “You don
’t have a Facebook account
at all
?” 

Monica and I laugh and shake our heads as I try to offer an explanation.

“Believe it or not, when we were in college it was only available for college students. Period. Now that they let any old cat in, I’ve lost interest.” I finish adjusting her settings before letting her go for the day. “Oh, Zoe? One more thing.” I tap the screen at one of her photo albums. “Regardless of your privacy settings, just, please,
never
take pictures like these again. If you don’t put them on the internet, someone else will, OK? If you wouldn’t show your grandmother, don’t show the world. And, if you
would
show your grandmother...I need to meet her for drinks.” I chuckle.

She turns white and crimson at the same time. “OK. Goodnight.” She leaves quickly.

“
You
are such an asshole.” Monica slaps the back of my head.

“Oh, am I? We need to see some girl using Zoe’s belly button as a shot glass?”

We burst into a laughter that’s eluded us over the last couple of weeks. Monica’s seemed a little distant since I started back at work. Things with her and Josh are going well and I want her to talk about it, but she seems hesitant to brag about her bliss. Also, while she’s not thrilled with Adrian’s reappearance in my life, she’s upset that I won’t talk about him with her just the same. It’s made things a little tense, and I don’t really see the tension dying down any time soon since we’re going to be in Concord for the rest of the week.

Within an hour after leaving work, I’m at Finnegan’s for our weekly rehearsal. I’m the last one here since, apparently, I’m the only one with a day job.

“What took you so long?” C.J. grumbles behind his set.

“Some of us work, Ceej.” I toss my backpack on the closest table and hop up on stage. “You’ll have to forgive him,” I turn to Regan while pointing to C.J., “he’s an asshole. But I guess you knew that since you’re his cousin and all.” Regan hoots as C.J. flips me off and sticks out his tongue, exposing his tongue ring.

“C.J., it’s not 1999, lose the barbell.” He flips me off again.

Regan draws his bow slowly across his fiddle once before speaking. “OK, Ember, the guys and I were talking about bringing some Irish rock into the mix. Are you OK with that?” I lose myself in the movements of his lips with his muffled accent. “Hello?” He snaps me out of it.

“Hm? Sorry. That sounds great, I guess, but I don’t really have a rock kind of voice ...”

“Oh, I think you’ll do just fine.” He ignores my concern and resumes stroking the strings with his bow.

“What’s the difference between a fiddle and a violin?” I ask, studying the instrument that looks like a violin to me.

Regan stops and considers his fiddle, twisting it in the space between us. “Fiddle’s just a nickname.” He winks and places his chin back on his “nickname.” He’s intriguing. He’s cool, confident, but seems safe. I need to figure him out.

As he vacillates between fast and slow rhythms, I find myself watching his hands and swaying along with him. I’m transported back to my childhood, once again watching my dad play for my mom while I peeked from my bedroom. Monica sneaks up behind me and hooks her arm through mine, swaying in time.

“He’s a goddamn dream, isn’t he?” Monica bats her eyelashes.

“I’ll say. What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to watch this fiddle-playing god.”

Regan chuckles but keeps playing, as Monica gushes.

“Jesus, Mon, Josh is right there!” I point to Josh, who sits and shakes his head.

“Not for me, smartass, for
you
.”

What?

“What?” I unlink my arm from hers.

Monica places her hands on her hips. “Come on. You’re a free woman. You’ve taken the dive back on stage here, you’re having fun—you’re over it. Let’s move on.”

Monica is clearly trying to divert my attention from Adrian, and that irritates me, but I don’t want to get into it.

“I met Regan nine seconds ago. Plus, he might have a girlfriend ...”

“I don’t.” Regan stops playing and turns to face us with a crooked grin.

Whispering fail.

“All right, lovers, can we play now?” C.J. thumps the bass drum, and we fall into place as I kick Monica off stage.

Thankfully, I don’t embarrass easily, or rehearsal would be a total waste of time. Regan’s taste is even folksier than Josh’s, and I fall into an easy rhythm with him. He plays songs that are familiar and beautiful, and Josh and C.J. are able to catch on quickly. When he’s not playing, Regan sings with a tone that has me envisioning a gorgeous emerald mountain. I realize that while the stage at Finnegan’s will always be backlit by Bo Cavanaugh, I’m more than capable of crafting new memories here. I want to.

Josh sets his guitar on its stand as we finish. “Great job, guys. Let’s definitely do those last two songs next week.”

“Sounds good. Who’s playing here Saturday?” Thankful that Finnegan’s closed on Tuesdays, I walk behind the bar and pour myself a beer.

Josh and C.J. share an uncomfortable glance before Josh shrugs. “It was supposed to be Bo ...”

Oh.

“What do you mean supposed to be? Did he cancel?” I walk back to Monica, who looks as confused as I do.

Josh hops off the stage and meets Monica and me at our table. C.J. and Regan talk in hushed tones by the drum set. “We kind of didn’t know how to handle it. I texted him last week to see if he was still interested, and he said he didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

“Who’s Bo?” Regan helps himself to a beer and joins us.

Everyone stares everywhere but at me.

“You guys can quit it with the awkward silence.” I cast disapproving eyes to my friends, and then turn to Regan. “Bo’s an ex-boyfriend. Well, boyfriend might be a loose term since we dated for less than two weeks, but we cared a lot ...you know what, he’s an ex-boyfriend as of almost two weeks ago. That’s all.”

I feel my throat twitch slightly, but I remind it that those yoga tears were the last. Regan’s eyes ask for more. One of his eyebrows pulls inward as he takes a breath, but he seems to decide against pressing for information. He’s not getting it tonight, anyway.

“Well, Regan will be here, you should come watch Bo with him since Josh and I will be out of town.” Monica toasts the air, and I mentally punch her in the face.

“Oh sure, why not?” I play along with Monica’s version of revenge. Truth is, I’m not sure if I’ll be in town Saturday or not. And, I don’t know if any amount of intended revenge could make me feel comfortable enough to watch Bo play at Finnegan’s. “I’ll see you here Saturday, Regan.”

Before things get any weirder, I head home to pack for Concord. And Boston.

* * *

The last two days in Concord have gone off without a hitch. As promised by his email weeks ago, Bo is largely office and meeting bound. Monica and I have been left to work with Rae and David for a majority of the day. Our conversation at the diner isn’t choking the air between Bo and me. He’s pleasant when we see each other—perfectly business.