Intermezzo (4 page)

Then she saw Aidan’s face peering over her shoulder, every
bit as mussed and twice as sensual. He was looking at her, not into the mirror.

He leaned in, almost whispering in her ear, “No regrets.”

Something tickled at the back of Lily’s mind, and she
reached for it until it surfaced. “What were you going to say earlier tonight,
when I asked you if you had regrets the last time?”

“No regrets, that’s all I said,” he reminded her. “I don’t
have any about this time either.”

“No, you were going to say something else and stopped
yourself. Don’t lie.”

“Okay, okay. I was going to say my only regret was leaving
it like we did. I really liked you. I know—”

“We were about to go live in different states. There was no
way we could’ve—”

“It would have only led to a stupid attempt at a
long-distance relationship, and then a breakup. I know. As I’ve since
discovered, I suck at long-distance relationships and that’s why I’m divorced.
So I didn’t say that was a regret because it wasn’t, not exactly.” Aidan sighed
and pulled her back against his chest, securing his arms around her waist. “I’m
sorry we didn’t keep in touch, but I’m glad we didn’t try it, only to fail. I’m
glad that when I learned that lesson, it wasn’t at your expense.”

Lily thought about that for a moment, putting the brush back
down on the dresser and folding her hands over Aidan’s arms. “I’m glad too, but
I guess that makes me a little sorry for your ex-wife since you
did
learn it at her expense.”

“My own expense too. I didn’t
want
to tell you this,”
he pointed out, “because I knew it would come out all wrong.”

“I really liked you too.”

“I didn’t just mean the sex,” he added.

“Neither did I. But nothing’s changed, Aidan. We still live
on opposite coasts. We can’t even date. Which puts us right back where we were
seven years ago, when we agreed it could only be a one-time deal.”

Aidan stepped away and Lily’s heart started to break, but he
was only pulling her toward the bed. “We were both wrong about that, weren’t
we?” he mused. “It wasn’t a one-time deal, because here we are. Who knows what
else we were wrong about? We’re both too tired to think rationally about any of
this right now though. Let’s sleep on it.”

She let him undress her for the second time that night, then
they crawled into bed and fell asleep holding each other, finding comfort where
they could in the face of an uncertain future.

Aidan took Lily’s advice, much to her surprise. He started
the next day’s rehearsal with a sincere apology to the orchestra, his honest
assessment of the problem, and an admission that he probably felt too much
entitlement about the source material.

This speech disarmed the musicians and charmed the dancers,
setting most of them to angling for his attention. Lily had to dash the hopes
of several girls and at least one boy, all the while restraining her impulse to
hiss at them all and cry, “No! Mine!”

Not mine
, she insisted to herself, averting her eyes
from the high, tight butt she’d wrapped her hands around so enthusiastically
the night before. Aidan was a very athletic conductor, a joy to watch,
especially in jeans that showed off some of his finest assets to perfection.

Not mine
, Lily’s conscience sang, when she saw Aidan
grin at the first violinist and she wanted to tear the poor woman’s hair out.

Not mine, not mine, not mine
.
Even if he kept
catching her eye throughout the rehearsal and doing insanely arousing things
like smiling at her, or biting his lower lip, or raising his eyebrows as if
they were sharing a naughty secret. Even at lunchtime, when she saw him talking
with David and then he scanned the theater to find her, calling out, “Lily,
where do you want to go for lunch?”

Right in front of David, right in front of everyone. Lily’s
heart soared.

During lunch, Aidan checked his email on his phone and,
shortly thereafter, Lily’s heart crash-landed into her steak
au poivre
.

“Anything serious?” David asked at Aidan’s grim expression
when he put the phone down.

Aidan glanced briefly at Lily then away, almost guiltily.
“Just a scheduling change. My symphony’s director needs to book our next
recording session a little sooner than planned because one of the principals,
who’s pregnant, is apparently expecting twins and having some complications. He
wants to shoot for a date two weeks from now if I can get back to New York in
time to rehearse for it.”

Lily’s mouth was too dry to respond, but David jumped right
in. “This works out perfectly. That’s what I wanted to tell you, I found a
long-term replacement. We still need to hammer out the contract, but I’m hoping
to have him here by tomorrow.”

“Anybody I know?”

For all Lily registered the information, the replacement
conductor could have been the Abominable Snowman. She pushed her steak around
for the rest of the meal, forcing her lips into a bone-dry smile and making
faint noises of interest whenever David or Aidan looked her way.

When they returned to the rehearsal hall, Lily lost herself
in the performances and took brutally honest notes. For the most part, however,
the new rapport between conductor and orchestra made all the difference. The
show looked like a ballet again, and David was tentatively optimistic by the
end of the rehearsal.

“We’re two days away from opening. Tomorrow we’ll do tech
all day in the performance venue, and day after tomorrow the orchestra will
work out their thing with the new conductor before the dress rehearsal.
Everybody’s done a fantastic job!”

Lily gave notes, dismissed the dancers and had gathered her
things to leave when Aidan strode up the aisle.

“Dinner?”

When she shook her head, he narrowed his eyes.

“
Dinner
. Lily, you need to eat, you barely touched
your lunch. We don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to. Come out
with me, please?”

“We shouldn’t. It’s not that I don’t want to.” She also
didn’t want to cry in front of people, but she felt in imminent danger of doing
exactly that.

Aidan frowned. “It can be just dinner, Lily. I don’t want to
leave things like this.” He stepped in closer, one hand grazing her upper arm
in a tender gesture.

She swallowed down the hard, painful lump in her throat.
“Whether we have dinner or not, this is how we’ll be leaving things. Whether we
have sex again or not, this is how things are. So can we please not—”

Her voice broke and she pressed her fingers to her lips,
grabbed her bag and fled before Aidan could say another word.

* * * * *

The ice cream’s container was an unfamiliar size, and Lily
couldn’t pronounce the brand name, but it was delicious. Even in her current
state, she could appreciate that much. She had stopped at a corner store on the
way to the hotel, knowing that ice cream from room service would be all wrong.
Too expensive and served in a bowl, not what she needed at all. The situation
called for a carton, a spoon and a series of cheesy movies.

After realizing the tiny television in her hotel room would
be no help—her French was good only for ordering things in restaurants and
getting herself around town, not for following plot lines—Lily popped for the
hotel’s exorbitant nightly wireless fee and started a movie night on her
laptop.

Five minutes into her first selection,
Gigi
, she
thought how ridiculous it was to sit in a hotel room
in
Paris, eating
ice cream from a carton and watching movies
about
Paris.

Dmitri never even got to see Orly Airport
.

The pain in her throat swelled and finally burst, all the
bottled-up grief pushing to the surface in a pitiful flood of gasping sobs.
Tears streamed down Lily’s face, threatening to drip into her ice cream, and
she put the carton on the nightstand while she reached blindly for the box of
tissues she remembered seeing there.

If she hadn’t been so distraught, she would have ignored the
knock on the door. In her sudden, stabbing misery, however, she didn’t think
about who it might be. One of the dancers, probably, looking for a needle and
thread or a spare cold pack.

Scrubbing her face dry with a tissue, she scrambled for the
latch as she called out, “Who is it?”

“Lily, it’s me. Aidan.”

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck…

He already knew she was in there. She couldn’t pretend to be
out and keep silent until he went away. It was too late.

Just like Dmitri. All too late
.

A spate of fresh sobs claimed her, and she clutched the
now-sodden wad of tissues to her nose as she opened the door and let him in.

“Lily, what—oh my god, I’m so sorry. I had no idea—”

“No, no, it’s not you,” she reassured him, doing a terrible
job of it as her eyes were still leaking at a mad pace. At the moment, however,
she was telling the truth, as she wasn’t exactly crying over Aidan. “It’s
Dmitri. It really hit me for the first time. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be silly. Here, come here.” Aidan sat on the bed and
reached for her, tugging her down to his knee and wrapping his arms around her.
After a moment’s hesitation, Lily bent her head to his shoulder while the tears
ran their course. When the sobs and sniffling hitched to a stop at last, she
let him pull her down to lie on the bed, where he seemed content to stroke her
hair and let her relax in the aftermath of her crying jag.

“I ended up going to dinner with the string section,” Aidan
said quietly after what seemed like hours of silence. “I think the first
violin, Amy, did this same thing last night, but she felt better today. She said
what helped was thinking about how excited Dmitri was before the trip. He’d
been to so many places all over the world and it was kind of a standing joke
with him that he’d never been to Paris. She said after she thought about it,
she figured he probably died exactly the way he would have wanted to. Right at
the beginning of yet another adventure. That was his favorite thing.”

“That’s true,” Lily whispered.

Aidan reached for the tissue box and offered her a new
handful of them. She tried to be circumspect, then gave up and did the serious
nose blowing that needed to be done. He was nice enough to pretend to ignore
it.

“I wish I’d known him,” Aidan said after she was finished.
“They all had such great stories about him. Is that ice cream?”

Lily looked up at the ceiling. “Maybe.”

“You were eating ice cream straight out of the container for
Dmitri?”

“No.” She sat up and reached for the carton, pulling the
laden spoon out and taking a bite.

A single creamy drop escaped, and before Lily could catch
it, Aidan rose and pressed his lips to her chin, swiping at the spot with his
tongue. Lily froze, spoon in hand, as he proceeded to her cheek, then her
forehead, then her nose and finally down to her mouth, where he stole some of
the ice cream she had yet to swallow.

It was a gooey, silly, sweet kiss, and Lily broke into a
smile when he released her mouth. Her eyes and cheeks ached from crying but the
smile felt good anyway. “I should be making you go.”

“I should be going on my own and not putting the
responsibility on you to make me,” Aidan contested. He kissed her again,
however, less gooey and less silly, stealing her breath and not a little of her
sense.

When her equilibrium returned, Lily took the ice-cream
carton into the bathroom, placing it carefully in the sink where it could do no
harm as it melted. She rinsed her sticky fingers and returned to close down the
laptop, moving it back to her suitcase. Then she stood at the foot of the bed
and watched Aidan’s reactions as she stripped down slowly, camisole and bra,
jeans and thong. By the time she stood before him, naked and already needy, he
was mostly undressed and fully hard himself. His jeans and boxer briefs hit the
floor with a jingle, the sound of keys and coins.

Without a word he reached out a hand and Lily took it,
closing the distance between them as Aidan sat back down on the edge of the
bed. His mouth found her nipple as his fingers found the slick heat of her
pussy, and Lily trembled as pleasure began to thread its way through her.

“Now.” She straddled him, ready to impale herself. She
didn’t want foreplay, didn’t want to play at all. She wanted him inside her,
raw and fast.

Aidan seemed to have other plans. He held her up by the
thighs when she would have fallen onto him, and let her down so slowly she wanted
to scream. The pressure of his hands, her efforts to work her way onto his
cock, spread her legs wider, arousing her even more.

Then, when he was finally filling her, Aidan pressed her
close at the waist and shoulders, allowing only pulses instead of the frantic
beat she sought.

“Lily,” he said softly, weaving his fingers into the thick
hair at the nape of her neck and tugging until she leaned back to look at him.

“
Faster
,” she pleaded, but Aidan’s arm was like an
iron band at her waist.

He shook his head. “You want to lose yourself,” he said with
effort, the strain of self-control clear in his voice, “but I’m not ready to
lose you.”

She didn’t know what to say to that. It made her want to cry
again, but the dark thrill his controlled thrusts sent through her was enough
to drive the tears back. Lily wanted something else, but she needed what he was
giving her, a measured dose of pleasure to sustain them through the worst of
the grief.

Last night was wildfire, an explosion, anything hot and
dangerous. Lily had no metaphor for the climax creeping up on her now, an agony
of anticipation paying off at last in a slow, sweet flush of ecstasy that
seemed to go on forever.

She was still quivering when Aidan groaned and drove up into
her so hard she exhaled with a startled huff. A second thrust, and then a
third, Lily saw his face transform as he emptied himself into her. Back arched,
neck taut, every muscle in his sharply defined jaw springing into prominence
from the force of his climax.

Beautiful
.
She longed to see it again, the
sophisticated expression devolving into sheer animal power. The knowledge that
she wouldn’t be seeing it again brought a pain no amount of ice cream could
numb.

Lily knew she wasn’t cut out for casual flings. She thought
maybe her destiny was to be reminded of that once every seven years by losing
her head, her body and her heart yet again to Aidan Byrne.

* * * * *

Their technical rehearsal lasted all the next day and well
into the night. The new conductor arrived in the middle of the process and was
still conferring with David and Aidan when Lily left the theater with the rest
of the company near midnight. Aidan saw her leaving and gave her an apologetic
shrug. She knew that was all he could spare.

If he knocked on her door later in the night, she was
sleeping too deeply to hear it.

The following morning, the troupe enjoyed a free day in
Paris. Lily went shopping and sightseeing with a few of the dancers. Aidan was
stuck at the theater working with the orchestra and his replacement—Lily had
finally learned his name was Paolo something, and he was young but apparently
highly recommended—so she didn’t see him until the dress rehearsal. It went
better than expected, but not stellar by any means; this was regarded as a good
sign, as a perfect dress rehearsal was widely agreed to predict a weak opening.

This time Lily was the one kept late afterward, helping the
wardrobe mistress with last-minute fixes and helping David with a hundred tiny
details that still needed seeing to. She was only able to give a wistful
half-wave to Aidan as he disappeared from the theater with Paolo and the
orchestra principals.

The next morning over coffee and croissant, Lily asked David
if Aidan planned to stay for the opening. He looked baffled and gave her a nod
that looked more like, “Well, duh.” She didn’t have time to question him
further, though, as there were still far too many things to see to before the
show.

There were bandages and tape and foul-smelling liniment to
stock, ready to apply to various knees, ankles and wrists before and during the
show. There were sequins to sew onto things, elastic to tighten, props and
costumes to check and double-check and triple-check. By the time Lily and the
rest of the crew felt ready for the show, she barely had time to shower and
change into the sleek black knit dress, black tights and flats she would wear
backstage during the performance.