Pursued by the Rogue (The Fairy Tales of New York Book 1) (7 page)

The walls were covered in wood paneling, the seamless Swedish kind. Put there to focus attention on the view from the floor to ceiling French windows or doors or some combination thereof that seemed to run the length of the apartment. There were no doors to her bedroom, just walls that ended well before that bank of glass. Some architect must have thought a lack of privacy in the bedroom a good thing.

Clearly they’d never grown up with siblings.

There was another space where a door should have been on the other side of Dawn’s bedroom. Presumably it led through to some other room. Finn pushed the soft white bedding aside and eased to his feet. “Dawn?”

Not a sound, and that next room was set up as a study with bookshelves and a desk and more of that smooth Swedish wood on the walls. Not even a huge bunch of yellow-eyed daisies could make an impact on the room’s minimalist aesthetics. For all of its wood, the room had no warmth other than what people walking into it brought with them.

Which gave him a thought.

He found his clothes in the living room, slung over the back of the sofa. He put his jeans on and got his violin out. With the high ceilings and all the wood on the walls the acoustics would be good.
That
was how he could fill this place with warmth.

He stood in the middle of that wide open living space, closed his eyes and started with the third movement of the concerto he’d been playing yesterday, and it fit this space the way he knew it would. Letting the music dominate and soar, feeding it back to him off those smooth wooden walls.

He felt her rather than saw her. As he finished the third movement and swung back to the first, he opened his eyes and there she stood, leaning against the wall that shielded the bathroom from prying eyes, her hair a glossy fall and her skirt, jacket and top strictly corporate.

He immediately wanted to mess her up all over again. Play music for the woman whose bed he’d shared last night rather than this regal and untouchable solemn-eyed swan.

He stopped playing on the first discordant note he’d played by mistake in years, and lowered the violin to his side. “I thought you’d gone.”

“No. I have meetings this morning. Had to do the hair.”

“The hair looks good.”

She aimed for a smile and fell significantly short. “I need to go. My cab’s probably waiting.”

He nodded. “They do that.”

“Stay awhile if you want. Play. The door will lock behind you on your way out.”

She had such beautiful eyes, but there were shadows in them today. Maybe it was tiredness. Maybe he’d put them there for some other reason. “Those tickets to a musical for your mother and aunt … you want me to organize them for you?”

“If it’s not any trouble.”

It’d take him one phone call. “What date?”

“Evening of the twenty-seventh?”

“Consider it done. Do I get a kiss?”

“For the tickets?”

“No. That sounds far too much like a clinical exchange of favors. You would kiss me because we spent the night together, and you’re still here and because it’s morning.”

“Oh, I see.” She didn’t move.

“It’s expected,” he prompted.

“You have your hands full, and I need to go,” she countered with a rueful smile. “If I kiss you again now, I might want to stay and that wouldn’t be good.”

A lot to think about in those few words. He sent her a shrug and let her get to the door before opening his mouth again. He’d needed that amount of time to figure out what he wanted to say next. He needed simple words. Ones that wouldn’t scare her with his need for more.

“Dawn—”

She turned to look back over her shoulder at him and he’d never seen anything more beautiful.

“We gonna do this again?”

“Sure,” she said as she opened the door and stepped through to the outside world.

And then the door closed with a muffled click behind her.

‡

F
inn waited all
of three days before calling her. Enough time to lose the scent of her. Not nearly enough time to dim the memory of the heaven he’d found in her arms. He met her for coffee on Wednesday afternoon. On Friday night he came to her place after rehearsal again and this time she didn’t flee the next morning. Instead, she pulled bacon and eggs from the refrigerator and together they made breakfast before heading back to bed, whereupon she showed him the remote controlled projector screen that descended from the ceiling and the state-of-the-art projector hidden behind a wall panel.

That took care of Saturday afternoon.

He rang her on Monday afternoon in his rehearsal break simply because he wanted to hear the sound of her voice and because it made him happy.

And that gave him pause because that right there?

That didn’t sound like just sex at all.

*

Tuesday and Wednesday
were the longest two days of Dawn’s life. She was twitchy at work, curt with her sales staff, scathing of her research department and generally a boss on the warpath.

All because a certain musician hadn’t called.

On Thursday, a delivery came for her. Finn had made good on his promise of show tickets for her aunt and mother and had included a ticket for Dawn also. They’d arrived half an hour ago and were for tomorrow night’s show. Dress circle seating.

The bouquet of Australian wildflowers that had arrived along with them had also been a thoughtful touch.

Dawn put them in a vase by the water cooler and silently dared anyone to comment.

Finally James, her chief research officer, cornered her in her office and with a pointed glance at the flowers asked her whether she was doing anything interesting this weekend.

“My mother’s flying in from upstate this afternoon, and tomorrow we’re going to see a show. Hence the need for flowers,” she said.

“Is that why the card says,
The dead Finnish guy’s a demanding bastard but recording finishes this afternoon. Want to do something?”
James asked, deadpan.

“There’s a card?”

“Little square one about this big. It had fallen down between the leaves. It’s signed Finn.” James nodded, clearly enjoying himself. “Marcel repositioned it for you, front and center.”

“Good of him.” Dawn drummed her fingers on the desk. “Can that be a firing offence?”

“I wouldn’t recommend it.”

No. Guess not.

“Lucky for you there was no phone number to call. Half your staff would have texted either the dead Finn or the live one to come and get you. Mainly as a way of getting their miserable hardass boss out of the office.” James’s face softened. “Go home, Dawn. You’re pushing too hard. You dropped files all over the floor this morning, you’re slow to make decisions and you’re snapping at people who try to help. That’s not you.”

Not yet.

Dawn closed her eyes and ran a hand around her neck. “You’re right. I’m going to get out of here. I can be home by the time my mother gets in. There can be food for them. I can call a hardworking musician and tell him to drop by sometime this weekend.”

“Good plan.”

“Are you making an okay sign behind your back?”

“Of course not. I was scratching an itch.”

“There are worm tablets for that.”

“Oh,
now
you start getting your smart on.”

Dawn failed to stifle a smile. Hardworking, ambitious and a key member of her executive team, if James had come in here to tell her she was riding her people too hard then she was. “All right, I’ll be out of here by lunchtime. You and everyone else can have a two hour early mark.”

“Early mark?”

“It’s an Australian term. It means you get let out of somewhere earlier than you expected to be let out.”

“Like parole.”

“No.” Well, maybe. Hopefully her employees didn’t regard this place as a prison. “You’re going to tell me that people aren’t necessarily going to
want
to be gone from work two hours earlier than usual, aren’t you?”

“Dorothy, you’re not in Australia. Let them choose when they want the two hours off. That or add an extra two hours to their timesheets.”

Dawn sighed hard, suddenly weary and irritable all over again. She’d been at the top of this company pyramid long enough to know all this. Although … that’s what human resources departments were for. “I’ll call HR.”

“I’ll do it for you,” he said, and Dawn nodded.

“Early marks used to be so much simpler when I was a kid. The teacher would open the door, out we’d go and she wouldn’t see us for fine red dust.”

James glanced over her shoulder towards the window that framed a New York City skyline.

“So why’d you trade all that red dust for New York smog?”

“I didn’t.” She might have still been there if her parents hadn’t decreed otherwise. She’d
wanted
to be there with them. “I was pushed.”

*

Two hours later,
Dawn set the bag of groceries and Finn’s flowers on her kitchen bench and dug her phone from her satchel. She should thank Finn for the tickets and the flowers. Arrange to see him at some point.

He was probably still in his recording session.

She really shouldn’t bother him.

She could send him a congratulations text though. And the
thank yous
. As a friend who occasionally had sex with him, she could do that.

“Keep it casual, Dawn,” she muttered, and sent the text and put the phone down and then picked it up and sent another missive. “My mother and aunt arrive this afternoon. You’ll have to celebrate without me.”

A minute later her phone rang.

Finn.

“Thank you for the tickets and the flowers,” she said by way of hello. “Thanks to you, everyone in the office now thinks I’m having a torrid affair.”

“Dawn?” Only that thread of laughter in his voice kept her on the call. “Dawn Turner, is that you?”

“Don’t make me hang up on you. Because I will.”

“It
is
you,” he said next.

“How’s the recording going?”

“It’s done. I’m happy, the sound guys are happy, the conductor’s happy. I played until my brain bled. I think I broke the orchestra though.”

“There’s a lot of that going round.”

Finn sighed. “Want to play hooky with me this afternoon?”

“No. I have a schedule to stick to. World domination of affordable gene sequencing techniques to plan. Mothers to feed. Busy busy.”

“Ever get tired?”

“Yes. Usually I work through it.”

“Where do you get your drive from?”

“That’s not an easy question to answer.” Not for her. Possibly not for anyone. “Where do you get yours?”

“I think maybe I was born with it.”

“Me too.”

“And at thirty you’re just going to toss it all in?”

“I’m just factoring in some burnout time.” And the possibility of an ugly gene sequence that spelled a slow and agonizing demise.

“You could factor in more rest time now. Avoid burnout altogether. What are you doing tomorrow night?”

“You got me a ticket for a musical, remember?”

“After that. Or during it. I know the Chicago score. I spent six months in the pit of that show. I could play for you. With you. Feed you.”

“Can you cook?”

“I can cook Irish stew, French mussels in white wine, and barbecue baby back pork ribs to perfection. Everything else is debatable.”