LITMIR.BIZ

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but somehow, that didn’t seem to change her feelings.

      “Walking it is,” she declared dramatically, then lowered her voice as if she were part of a stage performance. “Although I should warn you, I didn’t exactly park close.”

      Elizabeth led the way out of the soundstage, taking a side door marked Exit.

      The darkness enveloped them the moment they came out.

      “As a matter of fact,” she went on to say, “if you didn’t have time to get in your morning run today, this will probably make up for it—and then some.”

      Her comment bemused him. “What makes you think I run?”

      She looked at him as if the question didn’t even really require an answer. “This is Southern California. Everyone always claims to be into all kinds of exercise out here. Running was the first thing that came to mind.”

      Also, a body like yours doesn’t come from a mail-order catalog, she added silently. He made her think of Michelangelo’s David—except more so.

      “Do you?” she asked out loud. When he looked at her somewhat quizzically, she added, “Run?”

      “Only when I’m late getting somewhere and the car doesn’t work,” he quipped. He had no idea what made him share the next piece of information with her. “I’ve got an elliptical trainer in the garage that guilts me out every night when I park my car inside.”

      “That’s simple enough to avoid,” she told him, then suggested, “You could try parking your car in the driveway instead.”

      He saw the twinkle in her eyes, and laughed. He liked her sense of humor. “Sounds like a plan,” he murmured.

      As the sound of his laugh wrapped itself around her, Elizabeth caught herself returning his smile.

       Chapter Three

      “So,” Jared said once they stepped outside Paragon Studios, “where’s your car?”

      “You can’t see it from here, but it’s that way,” Elizabeth told him, pointing in the general direction. “We’re going to have to walk a little bit before you can see it.”

      Jared shook his head. He’d thought she was exaggerating before. Obviously not. “You weren’t kidding about your car being parked far away.”

      She stopped and looked at him. Taking the man on a forced march was not the way to win over a potential employer. “If it’s too far for you, you really don’t have to walk me to my car.”

      He laughed and waved away her words. “Just an observation, Ms. Stephens, not a complaint. The way I look at it, the exercise will do me good.” They resumed walking, stopping only to get out of the way of a car that was pulling out. “But seriously, why did you park so far away from the actual soundstage?”

      Most of the people he knew tried to find a space that was close to their destination, not park in the next county.

      “The first time I came here, I found that the parking spaces that were near the building were either reserved, or already taken. I didn’t want to waste time driving up and down the aisles, looking for someplace that was relatively close, so I just took the first space I saw when I pulled in.”

      Megan could stand to learn a lot from this woman. “I bet you get a lot more Christmas shopping done with that philosophy,” Jared speculated. His sister spent half her time cruising the lots, looking for that one perfect spot that just happened to be right in front of the mall entrance.

      “I don’t know about my philosophy having anything to do with it, but I’m usually done with Christmas shopping in November.” Glancing over at him, she noted that Jared looked as stunned as if she’d just told him she had superpowers.

      “You’re kidding,” he said incredulously. “November? Really?”

      She nodded. “That’s right,” she confirmed, then decided that maybe an explanation was in order. “That way, I can take my time, and then enjoy the season instead of dashing madly about, looking for some picked-over last-minute gifts that people may or may not like.” But there was also a more practical reason for her spreading out her shopping season. “Besides, December is one of my busiest months. People seem to like violin music more when there’s a Christmas tree involved.”

      Her phraseology amused him, but he pretended to take her comment seriously. “Must be the smell of pine,” he quipped.

      Elizabeth nodded, mimicking his overall tone. “Must be.”

      He liked the way her mouth curved ever so slightly as she was trying to keep a straight face. Liked the smile in her brilliant blue eyes. Since they had a ways to go before they reached her car, Jared decided to use that time to find out a few things about this attractive blonde.

      He started with an easy question. “How long have you been playing the violin?” he asked her.

      She knew the exact moment she had started playing in earnest, but for simplicity—and because the story wasn’t one she shared with someone she’d just met—she said flippantly, “Sometimes it feels as if I were born clutching a violin in my hands.”

      “Must have been a really rough delivery for your poor mother,” he deadpanned.

      The mention of her mother—even in jest the way this obviously was intended—always brought a sliver of pain piercing her heart.

      Though her mother was gone by the time she had entered kindergarten, Elizabeth had a handful of memories that she treasured and hung on to for dear life. One of those memories involved listening to her mother playing the violin for her father.

      It was shortly after her mother’s death, in an effort to try to cheer her father up, that she picked up her mother’s violin and began to play it. She managed to miraculously recall the way her mother had stroked the bow over the strings while fingering them. What resulted might not have been ready to be heard in any concert hall, but at least it didn’t sound as if she was scraping her nails against a chalkboard.

      Immensely touched and even more impressed, her father signed her up for violin lessons the very next day. To that end, he also gave her mother’s violin to her to use during her lessons.

      Elizabeth could remember regarding the violin nervously. To attempt to play it once in order to cheer up her father was one thing, to suddenly become the keeper of this precious instrument was quite another. And quite a responsibility.

      She recalled looking up at her father and asking, “Daddy, are you sure?”

      “Very sure,” he’d told her firmly, then added the words that completely won her over. “Your mother would have wanted you to have it.”

      Entrusted with this sacred duty, Elizabeth had taken loving care of it, taking great pains to keep the violin in top playing condition. When it finally had to be restrung, she retained the original strings, putting them carefully into an envelope and tucking the envelope away in her jewelry box, something else that she’d inherited from her mother.

      Jared noticed the serious expression that had crossed her face. Noticed, too, that she had suddenly become very quiet.

      “I’m sorry,” he apologized, thinking this sudden change in her attitude was his fault. “Did I say something wrong?”

      Elizabeth shook her head. He had nothing to do with the thoughts that were going through her head. Her mother had been gone for twenty-one years, but there were times that it felt like only yesterday.

      “No,” she told him softly. “I was just thinking.” That was an open-ended sentence, begging for more of an explanation, and she knew it. But for the moment, she didn’t feel like going into it. She had no desire to either unload, or to make him feel uncomfortable and guilty for raising the subject of her mother, however innocently, since she had passed on.

      “About…?”

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