Playing for Love at Deep Haven (4 page)

“I’ll be here,”
he said, his dark, stormy-sky eyes searching hers, one hand clutching the
headrest of her seat, his elongated,
graffitied
arm
tense and hard by her cheek. It threw off heat, and she concealed a shudder by
shifting in her seat. “Offer to share the house stands, Vile.”

She hadn’t seen
anyone this sexy, this close up, in years. Her mouth went dry, and the muscles
between her legs clenched, begging her to reconsider.

“I won’t be
back,” she whispered, tearing her gaze from him.

“Whatever you
say,” he said. Then he turned away and sauntered into the house. She slammed the
door and turned the key, unable to keep her brain from processing the fact that
his ass in retreat was a thing of profound beauty in her headlights. She shook
her head and looked down at her hands, white-knuckled on the steering wheel,
and swallowed the lump in her throat.

I say . . . not again
.
Never again.

She pulled out of
Deep Haven’s driveway and drove back through the black woods toward town.

***

 
Violet Smith. Vile. Violet-like-the-flower.

The
girl. The
only
girl. Ever.

He clenched his
jaw until it ached as her taillights disappeared into the woods.

Damn it, Zach. You’re just going to let her drive
away? Idiot! Do something!

He stood
motionless on the front steps of the house, like his feet were planted in
cement. His brain, which told him to leave her alone and let her go, was at war
with his body, which had finally processed the shock of her appearance and
amped itself into highly aroused territory, hot and incredibly fucking bothered
to be near her again. His heart, just about numb from the shock of being face-to-face
with her after almost a decade, was finally calming down enough to recognize
that he’d let Violet Smith slip through his fingers. Again.

“Fuck!” he shouted,
running his hands through his hair so roughly, the black rubber band in the
back snapped and fell to the ground.

He’d barely
gotten over the shock of who she was before she was speeding back down the
driveway. How was he supposed to recognize her, anyway? Never mind that she
sounded
like a totally different person,
she also
looked
like a totally
different person. She’d probably lost about thirty pounds, and her hair was
straight and boring, dyed back to its natural dark brown. He probably should
have known her from her eyes, but without her glasses and wearing those
expensive, preppy clothes? She didn’t look a thing like the Violet he used to
know. She
looked
like a snobby, high-maintenance,
suburban
priss
—the kind of girl who crossed to the
other side of the street when Zach approached, the type of girl who would
barely give him a second glance unless she was slumming.

Until he’d
looked closer.

Her dark eyes
were as luminous as ever, and her long, black lashes still framed them so damn
beautifully, it took his breath away. Her lips were as red and bowed as he
remembered them, but College Violet wouldn’t have worn the glossy lip gunk Greenwich
Violet was wearing. Not that he minded, since it was sexy as hell. He swiped
his thumb over his lips thoughtfully, trying to find the imprint of her lips
beneath his. But he was too agitated to pull any meaningful memories from the
depths of his mind. Not to mention, a whole lot of anonymous lips had touched
his since hers.

When the red
lights of her car were finally out of sight, he turned and stalked into the
house. He felt around in the kitchen drawers until he found a flashlight, then
opened the door to the basement and reset the main circuit. One flip and the
house was powered up again.

Back upstairs,
he glanced out the front windows, hoping to see her car pulling back into the now-illuminated
driveway, but saw only his rented SUV.

Zach pulled out
a tumbler, poured himself a glass of Scotch, and headed into the living room to
make a fire. One thought kept him from chasing after her: he was pretty sure
there was nowhere to stay within a fifteen-mile radius.

If you luck out, you stupid bastard, she’ll be back.

He glanced out
the window again at the darkness, taking another sip of Scotch as he remembered
the day they met.

It was
mid-August, the first day of sophomore pre-orientation for a small group of
returning internship students, and Violet was moving into a dorm room down the
hall from him. Her dark brown eyes behind glasses had peeked into his dorm room
as she rapped lightly on the open door.

“Um . . . Hi.
I’m Violet,” she’d said, taking a step forward to lean against the doorway in
Birkenstocks, too-tight jeans over wide hips, and a low-cut peasant blouse that
showed off the swell of her ample breasts.

Zach knew
exactly who she was, and his hormonal, adolescent body had trembled lightly to
see her so close, suddenly standing at the threshold of his room like a present.
He’d sought her out at a poetry reading last year after he’d read her poems in
The Yale Literary Magazine
. Wait,
read
them? Nah. He’d memorized them.
They were like nothing he’d ever read before, pieces of lyric truth,
unstyled
and wrenching. One had even inspired a song, not
that he’d ever played it for anyone—not that he had anyone to play it to.

“Hey. I’m Zach,”
he answered, looking up from the keyboard he was trying to plug in behind the
built-in desk.

“Zach, my, um,
my trunk is stuck and I don’t think there’s an RA here yet. Do you have pliers
by any chance? Or, um, scissors?”

While she spoke,
his hands sweated and he lost the battle of keeping his eyes focused on her
face. They dropped to the shadow of cleavage between her breasts, visible just
above her low-cut blouse.

When he looked
up, she grinned at him playfully, looking down at her breasts, then back up at
him. “See any scissors in there?”

He’d flushed,
fumbling in his pocket for his Swiss Army knife, and gestured for her to lead
the way. He cracked open the lock, and she insisted he share half of the pizza
she’d just ordered. Mostly she did the talking as they ate, telling Zach about
her summer and asking about his. He’d spent most of his cooped up in student
housing at Juilliard or playing guitar or piano in one of the many windowless
practice rooms and studios. She’d spent hers running barefoot on the beaches of
Maine where she lived with her mother, reading Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg
and embracing her hippie soul. They talked until dawn, until Violet, who had
curled up on his floor with a borrowed blanket, nodded off midsentence.

It turned out they’d
both returned to Yale two weeks early for special programs: she, for a poetry
seminar, and he, for an orchestral internship. Further, they were the only
students living in the massive Gothic Revival dorm, which Violet declared was
creepy, and the next night, without asking, she slept on his floor again. When
he woke up, she was there, the shape of her body, under her sleeping bag,
curled toward his bed. When she showed up with her sleeping bag the following
night, too, he was surprised to realize how glad he was to see her, and a
pattern started.

Violet more or
less lived with him in his single dorm room throughout August and September,
into October. They ate every meal together, met up before every campus event, found
each other after classes, went to parties, got drunk, watched movies, shared
their work, and inspired each other. She’d lie on his bed writing poetry as he
sat at his desk writing music in companionable silence every night until dawn.
Sometimes she’d let him write music for one of her poems, and those nights,
surrounded by his music and her words, were the most ground-shifting of his
life. Suddenly all those hours spent practically chained to the piano in his
parents’ home and in solitary confinement at Juilliard meant something: he had
every musical tool he needed to make her words come to life. Not that they
needed his help.

It wasn’t like
he
had anything emotionally meaningful
to offer anyone at that point in his life. From a young age, he’d been treated
like musical veal, forced to practice, compose, or perform every available minute,
his parents eschewing affection for expectations, encouragement for demands,
support for a single-minded insistence on success. If he veered from the
course, he was met with the heel of his father’s shoe on the side of his head,
so he didn’t veer. He knuckled down and worked. For most of his life, his
feelings were trapped and buried so deep down, he’d barely ever considered
them.

So it made a
certain amount of sense that he was drawn to Violet. He’d never known anyone
like her. Raised by a loving, if busy, single mother, she was his polar
opposite. She had her arms wide open to the world, her heart practically
beating outside of her chest. Her emotions were so remarkably
unbottled
, she could zero in on a feeling with startling
precision, translating it into a visceral, throbbing, breathing string of words
that felt alive. And deep inside him, where his feelings had been ignored for
so long, he felt a stirring. More and more every day.

Many times, Zach
had looked over at her lying on his bed, as she chewed the hell out of a pen top,
and imagined what it would be like to kiss her. Would her red lips be soft or
firm? What would her mouth taste like? Would she push her chest into his or
push him away? His body would harden eagerly, but he’d turn back to his
composition notebook, adjusting his headphones and forcing himself to move
beyond his aroused curiosity for two reasons.

First, even
Zach, who was relatively inexperienced, knew that getting physical could make
things dicey between them, and dicey wasn’t an option. Violet was his best
friend. She made music exciting and fun for the first time in years. She made
Yale home for him. Being around her made him feel alive and aware—awake—for the
first time in his life. Like he belonged somewhere, with someone.

Second, he feared
his feelings for Violet. Their full force and depth, were he to examine them, were
so uncharted, so intense, so absolute and enormous, that acknowledging them
would be fucking terrifying.

***

Still standing
by the window, Zach threw back the rest of the Scotch, an ice cube biting his
upper lip as the amber liquid funneled down his throat like lava. He wasn’t
that overwhelmed nineteen-year-old kid anymore and losing Violet once had been
enough. If he ever got another chance with her, he’d never hurt her again. Damn
if his heart didn’t drum painfully, hoping for a chance to prove it.

Chapter 4

“Isn’t there
anything
you can do?”

The lady at the
White Swan Inn regarded Violet from over her glasses with pursed lips. “Not a
thing. We’re all filled up. Leaf
peepahs
, don’t
ya
know.”

“And this is …”

“Ay-
yuh
. The only place in town.” She tapped a finger against
her chin. “You want that I call over to the
Pineview
Inn south of Hancock? See if they’ve got a room?”

“Oh, would you? Thank
you!” Then she remembered the long, dark, twenty-minute drive just to find the
White Swan Inn. As the woman reached for the phone, Violet touched her wrist to
stop her. “
Er
, how far away is it?”

“’
Less’n
an hour during daylight. Little more, maybe, in the dark,
you
bein
’ new to these parts.”

An hour! It was
almost eight o’clock now. She imagined herself lost in the woods, still driving
around at midnight. She’d already driven seven hours today. Her eyes were
burning, and her body was exhausted. She wiped her sweaty palms on her lime-green
corduroy pants. “Nothing closer?”

“Bar Harbor’s
across the way.” She gestured vaguely at the window, her long vowels and
dropped
r
’s
making it sound like
Bah
Hahbah
. “You got a boat?”

Violet shook her
head no, turning away from the reception desk in a daze. As she got to the
front door, she turned around, remembering her manners. “Thanks for trying.”

“You come back
on Tuesday, now. I’ll have a nice room
waitin
’ for
ya
.”

Violet nodded,
opening the door and letting herself out onto the porch of the old inn. To her
left was a crisply painted white rocking chair that afforded a nice view of Frenchman
Bay. She plopped down in the chair, hugging her thin pink cardigan to her body,
and shivered as an autumn breeze blew in from the water, making her exposed skin
rise with goose bumps. Her shoulders slumped in defeat. She had no other
choice. Short of sleeping in her car, she was going to have to return to Deep
Haven and share the rental house with Zach—at least for tonight.

Zach Aubrey.

For goodness’
sake, what were the chances of him showing up at the same house she’d rented in
some obscure town in Maine? One in a million, that’s how many. She shook her
head in disbelief. Of all the crappy luck.

She sat back,
rocking, trying to ignore the chill and put off the inevitable.

Damn, he looked
good. So edgy and hard, foreign and forbidden, with his tattoos and jewelry,
ripped jeans and heavy metal T-shirt. He’d taken that quiet, brooding thing
he’d had going on in college and amped up the heat level to scorching.

He’d changed a
lot over the years, for sure. His arms were covered in tattoos, and he had that
small silver stud in his nose and two in his eyebrow, which she didn’t like a
bit. (Did she? No! Of course she didn’t!) His face had been shuttered and wary
in college, and even though it was more open and less apprehensive now, it was
harder and cockier too. And his body. She sighed, and a small moan-like sound
surprised her. His body looked solid and toned under his T-shirt, and his ass .
. .

She forced
herself not to think about what he looked like walking away from her as he went
back into the house. But she could probably bounce a quarter off that ass. Her
belly fluttered as she remembered the feeling of his hands on her shoulders.
She hated how much she liked it when he touched her. It made her feel something
she hadn’t felt in a long time. If she was honest, something she hadn’t felt
since . . .

She was gripping
the rocker arms so
unforgivingly
that some of the
paint chipped off and lodged under her nails. She started rocking again with a
vengeance, trying to reason with herself
.
Badass metal rockers are hardly your type, Violet! Get a hold of yourself!

Preppy, solid,
and conservative was her type. (Wasn’t it? Of course it was!) She’d been with
Shep
since she was nineteen years old, and he was about as
preppy and old-school as a man could be. Since
Shep
had died, Violet hadn’t dated much at all. Twice she’d met
Shep’s
divorced golf buddy,
Garreth
, for drinks at the club,
but when he leaned in to kiss her, she whipped her head so far back from him,
she was lucky she hadn’t gotten whiplash. His cheeks reddened with
embarrassment, and he didn’t call her again. It wasn’t necessarily that Violet
intended to live like a nun for the rest of her life, but if she didn’t count
Zach, which she generally didn’t, she’d only ever been with
Shep
.

That one weekend
with Zach? She’d tried unsuccessfully to relegate it to dream status for almost
a decade. But it wasn’t a dream. It was a startling, unavoidable actuality that
was suddenly reasserting itself into her life with brutal precision and
clarity.

She thought of
the long nights she’d spent writing poetry on his dorm room bed as he played
the keyboard, wearing headphones, at his desk. When their schoolwork was done,
sometimes he’d set one of her poems to music.

“Vile, you got
verses for me?”

She’d look up
from her scribbling to find him grinning at her. His eyes, generally downcast
around others, met hers easily, even teasing her—dipping his glance to her
breasts and making her cheeks flush.

“You think I hid
the verses in there?”

“They’d fit.”

“You’re
fresh
.”

But she grinned
back at him from across the room. His music was so far under her skin, she
didn’t hear her own thoughts in quiet moments anymore. She heard Zach’s music,
all around her, all the time. It was all she could do to keep up with him,
chewing her favorite pen to a nub as she tried to write something beautiful
enough to match his music. She ripped the page away from the journal, handing
him the scribbled lyrics based loosely on the star-crossed love story of
Abelard and Heloise. That was just a guise, of course. She couldn’t have
written with that kind of passion unless she was writing about herself.

He scanned the
page, lifting his eyes to her, and her breath caught in her throat at his
expression. Wonder. Admiration. No, not admiration. More than that. Maybe even
. . .

“Damn, Violet.
This is good.”

Then he’d adjusted
his headphones back over his ears and turned back to the keyboard to set her
words to music.

Violet’s heart
pounded at the intensity of the memory. The rocking chair had stilled, and she
was staring out at the harbor blankly. She took a deep, bracing breath of salt
air and pushed off again, anxious for a few more minutes’ reprieve before
returning to Deep Haven. Maybe he’d be asleep by the time she returned and she
could just sneak in quietly and find an empty bedroom.

No matter what
else had happened between them, they
had
been
very good friends at one point in time. He wasn’t an axe murderer. His only
crime had been that he didn’t return her feelings. And awkward or not, she
certainly knew him well enough to share a house with him for a few days. She
couldn’t very well turn around and drive home seven hours to Connecticut, and
the thought of driving three hours to her mother’s one-bedroom apartment in
Portland made her groan. She wouldn’t be able to write a word at her mother’s
dumpy Formica kitchen table while she hovered over Violet’s shoulder for two
weeks.

The White Swan
had an open room on Tuesday. Three days. She only needed to share the house
with Zach for three days, then she could get a room at the White Swan and write
a strongly worded message to Lena Lewis asking for her money back.

She wasn’t a
child. She wasn’t a lovesick nineteen-year-old. She could certainly share a
house with an old friend for a few days, couldn’t she? Of course she could. In
fact, it was like the universe was giving her a chance to change the past, to
spend a weekend with Zach Aubrey and not end up at the beginning of a month-long
crying jag.

She headed back
to the car, programmed Deep Haven back into the GPS, and adjusted her glasses. The
past was in the past. A long, long time ago. She would set up her laptop on the
far corner of the deck this weekend and immerse herself in work. She would
knock out
Us After We
until her
fingers and wrists ached
and get the
goddamned thing e-mailed to her publisher by the October deadline. Zach would
do his thing, and she would do hers, and when they happened to cross paths, she
would be polite to an old friend and nothing more. Not that he had any interest
in her anyway, but she would show him her boundaries, and he would respect
them. Yes. She would make her boundaries clear. Boundaries. Good.

She pulled out
of the parking lot, ignoring the trembling of her hands every time she loosened
her grip on the steering wheel.

And no matter
what, there was no way that history would be repeating itself. She’d stay out
of his way. She’d protect herself far better this time. If Violet Smith knew
anything about Zach Aubrey and her heart, it was that having it broken once by
him was enough.

***

Zach made a fire
and opened the heavy drapes so he could see her headlights in the driveway if
she came back. He sat down with a crystal tumbler and the open bottle of Scotch,
waiting, hoping, unable to keep painful memories from flooding his head.

That goddamned October break weekend.

Zach had always
planned to spend the four-day break at school, but Violet was supposed to go
home to Maine. Except at the last minute, her mother had called to say she was
needed at the hospital for the weekend and Violet would be better off staying in
New Haven. So Violet had trudged back to the dorm from the bus station, finally
arriving at his room, her big brown eyes glistening with sorrow, grieving a
lost opportunity to spend time with her busy mother. She’d fallen into Zach’s
surprised arms the moment she saw him, and without thinking, he comforted her
by cupping her face between his palms and kissing her tears away.

Violet-like-the-flower
.

That’s what he
had called her that weekend. That crazy, confusing, awesome, best-weekend-of-his-life
as they held hands, as he kissed her lips whenever he wanted to, as she curled
her voluptuous, naked body up against him for three amazing nights. Three
nights that, despite a veritable parade of women since, he’d never been able to
forget.

He stalked
around the couch to look out the window again just as the house phone rang.
Zach briefly considered answering it, then decided against it. If whoever it
was
was
looking for John, he wasn’t a secretary, and
if they were looking for him, he didn’t want to be found. After the beep, he heard
his twin sister’s voice on the answering machine.

“Zach? Zach, are
you there?”

He sauntered
into the kitchen to pick up the closest cordless phone. “Cora?”

“Yeah. Hey. Why
aren’t you answering your cell phone?”

“Threw it out
the window.”

“Again?” He
could hear the dry amusement in his sister’s voice. She was pretty much his
rock, the most unfussy girl he’d ever known, and one of his favorite people in
the whole world. “Care to explain?”

“Not really,” he
said.

“I’m glad you
gave me the number up there. You would have been totally off the grid for two
weeks.”

“
Sorta
the point, Cor.”

“So, you’re
really going to do it, huh? The rock opera-musical thing?”

“That’s the
plan.”

She paused for a
second, then spoke with uncharacteristic feeling. “I’m glad, Zach. I’m really
glad. You haven’t been happy writing that crap for Cornerstone.”

He
could say his music was crap, but he
didn’t necessarily appreciate it when someone else did. Even if the someone
else was his straight-shooting, sometimes foulmouthed sister.

“You just
calling to bust my balls?”

“Nope. I’m
canceling our dinner in two weeks. I’m headed home.”

Zach stiffened, as
he always did when his parents came up in conversation. He forced himself to
relax. They were just a couple of old people, old and in poor health. He shifted
uncomfortably. He hadn’t visited them in over a year, not that they deserved a
visit.

“Folks okay?”

“Oh, yeah. Ma’s
got the diabetes—” she said this in their mother’s North Country accent, “—and Pop’s
arthritis acts up, but they’re okay.” She paused, and when she continued, her
voice wasn’t funny anymore. “I think they’re sorry, Zach. When they ask about
you, they sound a little bit . . . sorry.”

“They fucking
should be. They shouldn’t have been allowed to have kids.”

“They just
didn’t know how to be the parents of a prodigy.”

“Screw that,
Cor. I should have had a permanent concussion from the number of times Pop’s
shoe made contact with the side of my head.”