Playing for Love at Deep Haven (8 page)

Like you have a right to talk about anyone selling
out.

He closed the
front door and returned to the fire, plopping down on the couch where she’d
been sitting. The leather was still warm, which made him bristle about how
things had just panned out. He picked up her glass of Scotch, holding it up to
the light to find the imprint of her lips, then fitted his over the outline and
threw back the rest of her drink. She wouldn’t be coming down again tonight,
and it made him feel desperate to know she was so close and yet so far away.

Well, her eyes
may have said he wasn’t good enough for her, but her body wasn’t in agreement. When
she’d said “in your groin,” he knew she meant it as some sort of threat, but
all the blood in his head had raced south, and he’d lost all sense of propriety
and control, hauling her up against him like a caveman. And again, like earlier
in the evening, she hadn’t protested, hadn’t pushed him away for several
minutes, letting him pillage her mouth and touch her body. She’d liked it. On
some level, she must have liked having his tattooed, rocker hands all over her.

He reached
around to his ponytail and pulled out the black rubber band, flipping it around
his wrist, then ran his hands through his hair, staring at the fire. A D-flat
major chord filled the silence of his head. It was a meaningful sound for Zach.
It was the original key of Debussy’s “Clair de Lune,” which was the first piece
of music that had exploded into Zach’s five-year-old ears. It was the first
piece of music that had demanded his attention. It had changed his soul and the
course of his dreams.

He’d seen
Rowlf
the Dog play “Clair de Lune” on an old
Muppet Show
video, and even though
Fozzie
Bear was doing some slapstick bit with a candelabra
during the skit, Zach had rewound the tape over and over again, ignoring the
silliness, totally fixated on the music. He hummed the song to himself incessantly
over the following days, finally picking out the notes on the piano in the
parlor after church the following Sunday. When the choir director walked in to
see little Zach playing a passable version of
“Clair de Lune”
without sheet
music or any previous musical training, piano lessons quickly followed. As had
summers at Juilliard in New York City and, eventually, a full music scholarship
to Yale.

Reaching for his
guitar where he’d left it behind the couch, he hefted the hard case onto his
lap and unsnapping the lid. Inside sat his favorite acoustic guitar, the one
he’d bought for himself six years ago after he’d made his first ten thousand
dollars. A top-of-the-line José
Ramírez
Romantica
concert guitar in light wood that had a garland
of red and blue flowers encircling the sound hole and a bridge made of dark
German mahogany. It was his favorite of the three guitars he owned and the only
instrument that accompanied him wherever he went. He slid it out of the case
and tuned the strings by ear.

Zach closed his
eyes, clearing his mind, willing his fingers to remember the music he hadn’t
played in years: “Clair de Lune.” He started picking the notes in traditional
classical style, which had been his first introduction to guitar music, as
opposed to strumming. His fingers ran lightly along the strings, pressing the
frets and eliciting a slight squeak here and there from his relaxed
fingerwork
. His easy machinations coupled with the romantic
chords made the guitar sound like a mandolin, like something older and more
timeless, as the sorrowful tones of love and loss and longing took over the
quiet of the room.

As he played the
individual high notes at the end of the first section, the tones were so high
and clear, they might almost have passed for a harp’s, and he winced in pain
and pleasure at the sound, adjusting his confident fingers soundlessly for the
four distinct chords. He took a deep breath before starting the lilting,
heartbreaking arpeggios, his eyes burning under tightly closed lids as he
thought of Violet’s face after kissing her, at her familiar, yet matured face,
staring back at him with distrust, with anger. He poured his frustration into his
fingers, moving them stealthily, silently, wringing wistful yearning from the
strings, yearning bathed in regret, in the devastation of lost chances. And sad
though it was, it was also . . .
beautiful
.

How long had it
been since he had played something truly beautiful? Truly inspiring? His
fingers moved swiftly into the broken chords, his right hand moving faster to
keep up with the demands of the music, the desperation, the insistence, the
cascading, rolling, moving waves of melancholy. And then he paused again,
finding the original D-major tonic chord in an octave-higher repeat of the
beginning with a picking-strumming combination, a liberty his stuffy Juilliard
summer camp professor wouldn’t have approved of at all.

He grinned, but
his grin faded as he slowed down for the final bars, willing away the image of
Violet’s confused, crushed, shattered eyes all those years ago, as he pulled on
his jeans and left her alone in his dorm room. He savored the pain of the final
chords, the final build, the final perfect peak of sound before one last
arpeggio tease that killed the hope of more beauty, that offered a timid,
plaintive finale, a last glimpse at a lost opportunity, a forlorn farewell.

And then his hands
stilled, resting gently on the vibrating strings until they were peaceful and
silent.

Had she not
gasped softly, he’d never have seen her sitting on the bottom stair, arms
clasped around her
pajamaed
knees as she fought to
contain the tears that pooled behind her glasses.

He didn’t move,
but his eyes reached out to hers.

“You were
listening.”

She looked down,
nodded.

He laid the guitar
on the cushion beside him.

“Violet?”

“Do you know the
words?” she asked. “To the poem? Verlaine’s ‘Clair de Lune’?”

He did, of
course, but he shook his head no.

She spoke
quietly but clearly:

“It begins, ‘Your
soul is a chosen landscape . . .’”

“For what?”

“For ‘charming
masqueraders and
bergamaskers
.’”

“Who do what?”

She paused and
smiled, realizing he knew the poem by Verlaine every bit as well as she did.
“They play the lute and dance, ‘almost sad beneath their fanciful disguises.’”

“Why? Why are
they sad?” he asked, his questions leading her like a well-lit path, his eyes
filled with hope and regret, with tenderness.

“‘They do not
seem to believe in their happiness / And their song mingles with the moonlight.’”

“With the
moonlight?”

“
Mmm
. ‘With the still moonlight, sad and beautiful, / That
sets the birds dreaming in the trees / And the fountains sobbing in ecstasy.’” The
last word hung charged between them for a long moment until it faded like the
final notes of the song. She bit her upper lip, running a hand over her straight
hair. “That was so beautiful. You played that once for me. Once . . .”

He leaned
forward on the couch, resting his elbow on his knee to mirror her. Her
expression before, when she’d broken off their kiss, still bothered him—not because
she was judging him, but because he hated disappointing her.

“I look
different now than I looked then,” he said.

“Yes, you do.”

“It’s just a
costume. Inside I’m still me, Violet.”

“You.” She pushed
off from the step. “Maybe that’s exactly what worries me, Zach.”

He stood up,
suddenly feeling angry with her. “You think this is a coincidence? Both of us
showing up at the same house in the middle of nowhere? Both of us unattached?
Both of us wanting . . .”

“Wanting what?”

“Something real.
Something meaningful. Something . . . beautiful.”

“I never said I
wanted—”

“You didn’t have
to. I can see it in your eyes, that life hasn’t worked out like you wanted it
to.” He paused, rubbing the violet on his wrist. “This is the universe telling
us something, Vile. This is fate.”

“
Fate
? Fate! Which means what? I show up
here and you’re here, too, and . . . and you play ‘Clair de Lune’ and we recite
poetry and then what? We’ll be best friends again?”

His fingers
twitched and trembled as he indulged a sudden fantasy of crossing the room,
picking her up in his arms, and kissing her as he carried her into his bedroom.

 
“We were never just friends,” he said softly, repeating
her words from so long ago.

She scoffed, but
her eyes were furious, and underneath the fury, confusion and maybe even longing.

“Oh! I see. I’m
supposed to
fall
for you again? Or
just fall into bed with you? Is that the
fate
you’re talking about? Well, forget it. Either one. Both. I already know how
that story ended.”

He pursed his
lips and looked away from her, nodding. “I guess you do.”

“You broke my
heart,” she whispered.

“You moved on
pretty quick,” he said, sitting back on the couch and crossing his arms over
his chest as she was doing. He hated himself as soon as the words left his
mouth, and wished he could take them back.

“Oh! Oh, Zach!”
she gasped, her face contorting with surprise and anger. “Didn’t I grieve long
enough for you? After you rejected me? After you walked away from me? After I’d
practically begged you to want me? Didn’t I wait around long enough to see if
you’d change your mind?”

“Violet, I didn’t
mean that. That was a shit thing to say.”

“That’s for
sure.” She turned to walk up the stairs, then whipped around to face him with
glimmering, furious eyes. “You walked away from me when I opened my heart to
you, when I took a chance on you. I told you I was falling in love with you and
you—”

“I can’t change
that. If I could go back in time and change my reaction, I swear to you—”

“You can’t!” She
swiped at her eyes, pushing her hair behind her ears. He could see her forcing
herself to calm down, to be a grown-up, to be sensible, Greenwich Violet whose
perfect hair was never out of place. When she spoke again, she employed that bullshit,
cultivated accent he hated. “Anyway. That was a lifetime ago. I don’t know you
anymore, Zach.”

“You can be as
mad and hurt as you want, but that’s not true. You knew me then. You know me
now.”

“Maybe,” she conceded
softly, glancing at his guitar. “But I wish I didn’t.”

“Violet—”

Her eyes were
clear and sure when they seized his, her voice low and serious when she said, “No
more. I need you to leave me alone.”

Then, for the
third time in as many hours, she turned and walked away from him.

Chapter
7

Zach was
honoring her request.

Aside from the occasional
sound of the water turning on or off, there was no other indication that he was
sharing the house with her. From her cozy nest on the deck in the sunshine, she
could see his SUV still parked in the driveway, so she assumed he was at work in
the basement recording room. He hadn’t resurfaced. Not once in two days. The
only evidence of his actual presence was a neatly washed glass beside the
kitchen sink on Sunday morning, drying in the sunlight on a piece of paper
towel. It wouldn’t have been hard to believe she was entirely alone . . . if
she wasn’t totally distracted by the fact that she wasn’t.

Honestly, it was
killing her. Knowing he was somewhere in that big house with her, but not
actually seeing him, was making it impossible to think about anything else but
him. All day yesterday and now today, while she was supposed to be working on
Us After We
, she thought about Zach
instead. She remembered details of their friendship at Yale and of their
passionate weekend together. She touched her lips with her fingers, sinking
into the fire his kisses had ignited in her. She turned his words over and over
again in her head:

Where we left off is the biggest regret of my life .
. . This is fate . . . We were never just friends . . .
And of course,
the words that made her whole body quiver which she coupled with the
toe-curling sensation of his toned body lying on top of hers…
Violet-like-the-flower, I want you so bad.

Even now, that
last bit made her breath hitch. Oh, yeah. Even though it should be totally
ridiculous to contemplate after an absence of nine years, she wanted him just
as badly as she had back at Yale. After two scorching kisses that were
unequaled in her life, even with him, she was so turned-on, she’d tossed and
turned in bed for the last two nights, waking up hot and bothered and immensely
frustrated. Her body throbbed for him, wired and taut, jumping at every noise,
hoping he’d suddenly appear before her.
Want
him?
Want
seemed like a hopelessly
weak word for the way her body was reacting—it had essentially been woken up
after almost a decade-long hibernation.

Hearing a noise from
inside, she glanced up at the kitchen window, disappointed that it was a branch
tapping against the glass, not Zach trying to get her attention. She huffed
quietly as her body tried unsuccessfully to relax, the muscles deep inside
unclenching as she took a ragged breath. Her laptop sat waiting in her lap,
cursor blinking accusingly, but she snapped it shut for a moment and leaned
back in the easy chair she’d dragged out from the porch. Closing her eyes, she
listened to the light lapping of waves in the harbor, wishing she could get a
handle on her thoughts and feelings.

As a child and
teenager, Violet had been an impetuous, free-spirited girl. The sort of person
who would kiss when she felt love and cry when she felt sorrow, rage when she felt
anger and celebrate when she felt joy. Her mother had encouraged and validated
all of her emotions, declaring that Violet—that
all
human beings—couldn’t help the way they felt and shouldn’t be
ashamed of their feelings. So she hadn’t been. She had been passionate, brave,
and present—until the day Zach Aubrey turned his back on her, disregarding her
feelings and rejecting her emotions. The depths of her despair and humiliation
had hurtled her headlong into safer territory, into the arms of someone who
cared for her but who would never love her passionately nor incite passion in
her heart.
Shep
made her laugh politely but never
made her cry with laughter. He never made her cry at all. In fact, he made her
feel very little, barely grazing her injured heart, which, ultimately, felt . .
. safe. Zach Aubrey, on the other hand, had always made her feel alive, feel
vibrant, but she knew full well the dangers he offered her heart.

She opened her
eyes and her laptop, shifting in her seat to sit up straighter.

With Zach
crowding her head, Violet was getting nothing done. Her book, contracted for
100,000 words, was only 11,000 words long, and none of them were very good. As
follow-up novels went, she was pretty sure this one would be critically panned,
and she’d be
outed
as a one-hit wonder. A one-
quasi
-hit wonder, depending on whether thirty-sixth
on the USA Today Bestseller List even counted as a hit.

If she had to
return her advance and pay a penalty for defaulting on her contract, she’d have
to dip into the savings she’d been living on since
Shep
died. She’d definitely have to give up the apartment she and
Shep
had shared in Greenwich and move into something smaller
and more affordable, maybe in Stamford, the adjoining town. If she had to move
to Stamford, she may as well consider Brooklyn, where so many authors lived,
although she wasn’t even sure she wanted to continue writing chick lit. What
would she do instead? Write something in a totally new genre? Give up writing
entirely and teach? Edit? She gazed out at the harbor, wishing any of the alternatives
sounded as good as, or better, than finishing the book before her.

She was relieved
by the distraction of her phone buzzing in her pocket. She wiggled forward to
pull it out from under the blanket and smiled. It was Sophie.

Sophie was not
only Violet’s best friend, but her most treasured writing partner and beta
reader, the person who’d been, at least partially, responsible for helping her
shape
Me and Then You
into its final,
critically-acclaimed version.

“
Soph
?”

“Vi! How’s
Maine? I didn’t know if you’d have a signal! How’s the house? How was the
drive? What’s the weather like up there?”

Violet laughed.
Sophie always asked a hundred questions at once. “Okay. I do right now, it
comes and goes. Huge and gorgeous. Long but worth it. And sunny.”

“So? You getting
a lot done? Is the book chugging along?”

Violet glanced
at the screen. “No. It’s not. I have the worst writer’s block of my life. I
just . . .
Soph
, how much do you remember about my
inspiration for
Me and Then You
?”

“Are we talking
about Nash in your book? The jerk you went to college with who took your
virginity and promptly dumped you? The guy who broke your heart? The asshole
musician? Um, a fair amount.”

“He’s here.”

“What the—
what
?”

“Zach Aubrey.
The guy. The jerk. He’s here.”

“I’m sorry. I
can’t be understanding you correctly. You cried on my couch for months as you
wrote that book, reliving memories, remembering the tiniest details about your
time with him. It practically ripped your heart out of your chest to tell that
story. For God’s sake, Violet, when did you get back in touch with him? And why
the hell would you go away with him?”

“No! Oh, Sophie!
No, it wasn’t planned. I mean, this woman I knew in the Junior League said I
could use the house, but it turns out it really belongs to her ex-husband,
who’s a business associate of Zach’s, and he was told he could use it too.”

“Well, that’s a
freakish coincidence.”

“Tell me about
it.”

“So which one of
you is staying in a hotel?”

Violet cringed,
staring out at the harbor, trying to figure out how to respond.

“Violet! Are you
at a hotel, or is he?”

“Um. Neither of
us?”

“
Ahhh
,” Sophie sighed until her voice was just breath at the
end. “Whoa. So, you’re—”

“No! No, we’re
not . . . we’re not doing anything. I haven’t seen him all day. I haven’t seen
him since Friday. We’re just . . . I mean, we’re not doing . . .”

“Violet. Open your
eyes and smell the lust, sister. There’s only
one
reason you stayed.”

“That is not
true, Sophie. I had nowhere else to stay.”

“Your mom’s only
a couple of hours away!”

“Try three.”

“Well, three
then. Three isn’t much when you’re trying to get away from the guy who broke
your heart and totally humiliated you. Unless getting away isn’t the plan.”

Violet took a
deep breath. “I don’t know what the plan is.”

“What?!
What
? I’m about to have a heart attack.
Say that again. You don’t know what the
plan
is? Am I talking to Violet Smith? Military-style-punctuality, no-hair-out-of-place,
life-planned-to-the-minute Violet Smith?”

“Give me a
break. I’m winging it.”

“Since when do
you
wing
things?”

Since Zach Aubrey showed up at my house rental making
me feel things I haven’t felt in a hundred years.

“I have a
reservation at a local inn. For Tuesday.”

“Huh,” Sophie said.
“It’s only Sunday.”

“I’m well
aware.”

“You could do a
lot of damage to each other’s bodies by Tuesday.”

Violet rolled
her eyes. Sophie was a romance writer, and she lived for writing the sex
scenes. Then again, Violet thought of how it felt when Zach had fallen on top
of her and she rubbed her thighs together feeling hot. Damage. Bodies.

Damage. Heart.

“That’s
not
going to happen,” said Violet.

“I wouldn’t be
so sure. This guy was the one, Vi. Your words, not mine. Over a bottle of wine.
Most of which you consumed single-handedly. And I quote”—Sophie’s voice took on
a low, drunken, wobbly quality, and Violet rolled her eyes—“‘I’d do anything to
love
Shep
like I loved
him
.’ Ring a bell, Vi?”

“A vague, soused
bell,” Violet answered, as a wave of guilt broke over her.

“That was a year
and a half ago. You were still in love with him then.”

“I wasn’t
in love
with him,” Violet said, pulling
the blanket over her chest as a cool breeze blew in off the harbor.

“Really.”

“Really! For
heaven’s sake. I was with
Shep
.” She paused, the lie
leaving a bad taste in her mouth, even as she soldiered on. “I just . . . I
have strong memories of our time together.”

“Strong
mem
— Okay. Truth, Vi?”

Violet wished
she had a shot of that Scotch. “Okay.”

“You’ve got
unfinished business with Nash—
er
, Zach. Lots and lots
of delicious, unfinished business. And I think this is fate’s way of giving you
closure with him. Tie up those loose ends so they don’t haunt you. Give things
a chance or say good-bye to him in a way you can live with.”

Only, saying
good-bye to Zach sounded awful to Violet. Not just plain awful. Desperate-and-horrible
awful.

“What if I don’t
want to say good-bye to him?” Violet cringed as she said the words, covering
her eyes with her fingers.

“I knew it!”
said Sophie in a passionate hiss, then clearly into the phone, playing devil’s
advocate, “But he hurt you.”

“He said he
regretted it. He said it’s the biggest regret of his life.”

“Right before he
kissed you, right?”

Violet heard the
sarcastic edge in Sophie’s voice, but she was so surprised by the words, she
didn’t scoff at the suggestion. She just sat there dumbfounded, recent memories
of their kisses making her cheeks hot.

“Oh, Violet! You
didn’t!”

“I didn’t mean
to. And then the second time, I said that he’d have a reaction in his groin,
and he took it the wrong way, and suddenly he was kissing me again.”

Silence.

“
Soph
? You still there? Can you hear me?”

“I heard
groin
. And you’ve got two more days
before you go to the inn.” The way Sophie said
inn
, Violet knew she’d used air quotes around it. “You’ve got it
bad, Vi. You’ve always had it bad for this guy. You know that, right?”

Violet shook her
head back and forth at the mess her life had become in record time. Three days
into her writer’s retreat and not a word to show for it. A thousand dollars
buying Lena Lewis margaritas in
Cabo
. About to
default on her contract. About to lose her home. And, of course, the sudden
reappearance of Zach Aubrey.

“I can’t help
it,” she whispered. “Sophie, it’s like I’m crashing into him all over again.”

“Listen, you
know I liked
Shep
. He was a good man, but I always
teased you that Veronica belonged with Nash, not Shane. If for no other reason,
because she loved Nash more. The problem with Nash, however, was that he didn’t
love Veronica enough. Nowhere near enough. So, you tell me: has that changed?”

“He read my
book,” she said softly.

“That’s sort of
sweet, but it’s not enough,” said Sophie. “Where’s he been for nine years?”

“He said that
the way we left things was the biggest regret of his life.”

“So he wants
absolution?”