LITMIR.BIZ

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Vangie didn’t let go. She just clung to Neely’s hands. “Please.”

      “I’ll tell him you came by.” Neely relented at last. “I’ll tell him what you wanted. I can’t promise any more than that.”

      Vangie looked at her with her heart in her eyes. Then, she pressed her lips together and her eyes shut. She squeezed Neely’s hands between hers, and Neely got the worrisome sense that there was some praying going on and she was somehow involved in it.

      Then Vangie opened her eyes again and smiled a beatific smile. “Thank you! You’re a dear!” And she lunged forward to give Neely a fierce hug. Then almost before Neely could get a breath, Sebastian’s sister bounced off the window seat, bent to give Harm a hug, too, then started for the door.

      It opened just seconds before she reached it.

      “Seb!” And she launched herself into his unsuspecting arms.

      “What the—!” Sebastian dropped his suitcase and caught his sister with what were clearly the reflexes of long practice, hugging her to him with an obvious fierce affection at the same time glaring over her head at Neely.

      “What’s she doing here?” he demanded as if she had orchestrated the whole thing.

      “You’re asking me?”

      He eased Vangie away from him to look down into her eyes. “What’s going on?” he said, and Neely was once more caught by the mixture of love and exasperation in his voice.

      “I need you to talk to Daddy,” Vangie said plaintively. “Please!”

      Sebastian’s face hardened. He opened his mouth, but then his gaze went to Neely and grimly he shut it again.

      “I think I’ll just take Harm for a run,” she said briskly, grabbing the leash. “You two have things to discuss.”

      “Oh, but you can stay and—” Vangie began.

      But Neely was already brushing past them. “Lovely to meet you,” she said to Sebastian’s sister and, giving both Vangie and Sebastian a bright smile, she chivvied Harm out the door.

      He was back.

      Right when she least expected him, of course.

      And maybe she was “running scared” as Max had accused her, because the very sight of him in the doorway sent her heart kicking over double time. And seeing him with his sister didn’t help.

      It was far easier to think of Sebastian as a coldhearted, cold-blooded iceman. And far harder to resist him when she knew how very hot-blooded he was—and how warmhearted his sister, at least, considered him.

      “Which does not make him a good man to get involved with,” she reminded herself more than once as she and Harm walked mile after mile, determined to stay away as long as possible. He was kind to his sister, yes. He was—though he might deny it—a family man.

      But he didn’t want a relationship. He was adamant about that.

      And Neely didn’t want anything less.

      “Remember that,” she said out loud, making Harm look back at her quizzically as if it were a command he didn’t quite understand.

      It was. But not for him.

      She felt relieved, then, to open the front door and find the houseboat completely quiet. The only light was the one above the stove that she could see down the hall. Sebastian must have left again. Probably with his sister.

      Despite the tears, Neely was sure that the two of them would have come to an agreement. And she had no doubt that Vangie had convinced him to contact their father.

      Neely unclipped Harm’s leash and shrugged out of her windbreaker, then padded out to the darkened living area. It was one big room, really, just carved into a living room space over by the deck, an office space, where she stood now, and a kitchen, where she should go feed her grumbling stomach.

      But she wasn’t hungry—or not for food. Her soul seemed restless still for something more sustaining. And so, almost automatically, she clambered up onto the cabinet where she could reach onto the top shelf of the bookcase. She’d done it so often now that she could take the violin and bow down in the dark.

      The truth was, she’d played it a lot this week. The music soothed her restlessness, calmed her and focused her. And if Sebastian was going to come back tonight, she’d need to be calm and focused.

      She resined the bow, tuned the violin and began to play.

      She played her Mozart etudes and her Bach minuets. Harm never started to howl until she got to the Vivaldi. And she told herself he wasn’t really protesting, he was moved and was singing along.

      She could see him silhouetted against the lights from Queen Anne Hill that shone across the water, his head lifted as he warbled while she played, when all of a sudden a voice said, “Cut that out!”

      The bow screeched across the strings and stopped abruptly. Harm’s accompaniment lasted a couple of seconds longer.

      Then another silhouette rose, this one from the far side of the sofa where he’d obviously been lying in the shadows. And Sebastian turned her way and said, “Not you. The dog.”

      Horrified, Neely stared at him, her fingers strangling the bow. They suddenly felt so clammy she was afraid she might drop it or, worse, the violin. “I thought you were gone!”

      “Think again.” Sebastian came around the sofa and crossed the room toward her. Neely set the violin down on the cabinet top as carefully as she could and backed toward the kitchen. A stupid move, if she’d thought about it, as there was only one way out.

      “I’m sorry,” she said quickly.

      “Why?”

      “I shouldn’t have played it. I—”

      “It was meant to be played. That’s what it’s for.” He was much closer now. Practically looming over her, and there was nowhere to go.

      “Yes, but you don’t play it,” she protested.

      “Because I can’t,” he said simply.

      “What?” She stared at him, astonished.

      He shrugged. “I never learned. It’s my grandfather’s violin. He played it. Almost as well as you,” he added after a moment, a corner of his mouth tipping up, his tone reflective.

      Neely swallowed, still wary, but beginning to realize he wasn’t angry. “Thank you. But I still…should have asked.”

      “When? You were never here when I was.” He was sort of smiling now, teasing a little.

      She didn’t want to be teased, didn’t want to smile back. Wanted to hang on to her sanity. Definitely needed to resist.

      But Sebastian said, “You can play it whenever you want. However much you want. You’re very good.”

      “Not very,” Neely said. “You have low standards.”

      He shook his head. “I don’t, you know.” He was quite firm about it. And he was barely a foot from her now, definitely looming. Also smiling.

      Neely, feeling the force of the smile, sensing the electricity that always seemed in danger of sizzling between them, felt herself melting. She raised her palms, then discovered that the only place to put them was on his shirtfront.

      Quickly she let them fall to her sides again, cleared her throat, tried to look for a way to duck around him.

      “If you think you ought to give me some recompense, though, I’d understand,” Sebastian went on, his voice almost a soft purr.

      “You mean pay for the privilege? I could do that,” Neely said. “It’s a terrific violin. I’ve never played one that good. How much do you want?”

      “How about a kiss?”

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