The Protector (Lone Wolf, Book 1) (7 page)

I finished the piece, raising the
bow off the strings with a small flourish, grinning a little like an
idiot.
 
The violin vibrated against my
shoulder as I opened my eyes, like the instrument was something alive, and
still singing.
 

I took a deep breath and glanced up
at Layne.

Her mouth was slightly open, her
lips parted.
 
Her chest rose and fell a
little too quickly, and her eyes were wide and shocked, like she’d just seen
something she would never be able to describe or explain.
 
She looked in awe.
 
Suddenly self-conscious, I set the violin down on the counter,
clearing my throat.
 

“It’s superb, Verity.
 
I’ll take it, thank you.
 
Do you want to send me the bill?”

“It’d be my pleasure,” said Verity,
practically glowing herself.
 
“You made
it sing, Elizabeth…I can’t imagine anyone I’d want it to go to more.”

I breathed out, still
grinning.
 
“Well, I’m a very lucky lady
to have it.
 
Thank you so much for
finding it for me,” I said, setting it gently back in its case and affixing the
bow into the lid.
 
I shut the case and
clicked it closed, taking a deep breath as my fingers pressed against the lid’s
rickety old plastic.
 
I have a nice
wooden case I could put it into, I thought.
 
Something classy enough for it…

When I gazed up at Layne again, her
expression had shifted—it’d gone back to being more normal, more guarded.
 
But when our eyes connected, there was
something that flickered across them, behind her gaze:

Wonder.

“You never disappoint, Verity—thank
you, seriously,” I said, hugging the woman across the counter as I smiled
widely.
 
She returned the embrace,
smoothing a wisp of white hair behind her ear as she nodded at me with a slight
shrug.

“It was my pleasure, truly.
 
And I’m really looking forward to seeing
that Mendelssohn concert tomorrow—when is Mikagi Tasuki flying in?”

At hearing the famous violin
soloist’s name, I shuddered uncomfortably and glanced at my watch.
 
“Oh, you know…in half an hour,” I groaned,
placing the crutches beneath my arms and taking a tentative step back from the
counter, leaning on the crutches and my good leg.
 
“We’ve really got to get going if I’m going to make the rehearsal
in time.
 
Verity, you’re amazing, thank
you so much—I’ll see you Friday?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,”
she said with a bright smile.
 

I waved at her over my shoulder and
began to hobble toward the front door that Layne, graciously, held open for me,
the violin case dangling from her fingertips.
 
For half a moment, I considered asking her to be careful with the
instrument, but then I realized that would be ridiculous—she had to know how
much it was worth, and at the very least, she knew it was important to me.
 
She wasn’t a careless person.
 
And she did sling it gently under her arm
once we were out on the sidewalk again, clasping the case close and tight to
her leather jacket as she slid her hands easily into her pockets.
 

Layne glanced up, far up, and I
followed her gaze, past the skyscrapers surrounding us, to the deep blue sky,
the setting sun to the west making the sky dive to a deep, breathtaking shade
of indigo.
 
And farther still above us,
a slim crescent of moon made its pale thumbnail imprint on the sky.

Layne shuddered a little, flipping
up the collar of her leather jacket as if the day had suddenly gotten colder.

We walked to the parking garage in
unexpected silence.

Chapter 4:
 
Audience

I winced as I heard the dulcet
tones of Amelia yelling at the top of her lungs.
 
Her angry words and several expletives were magnified immensely
by the empty balcony seating in the concert hall, making the tiny woman sound
like she was an ogre intent on destroying a village with a very large club…and
not
a diminutive orchestra conductor.

We weren’t even in the building,
but her mood was projecting, loud and clear.
 
It was going to be one of “those” rehearsals.

“Hey, Liz!” said Bob, our principal
flutist, as he stubbed out his cigarette in the brick side of the building and
held the back door open for me with a grin.
 
His graying hair was combed back and to the side under a fedora that had
a red carnation sticking out of it.
 
He
whistled in a low tone and gazed down at my crutches as he tossed his lighter
into his suit jacket pocket.
 
“I didn’t
know the accident was quite that serious—are you okay?”

“Hey, I’ve still got all my fingers
and toes, so I guess I’m doing pretty well,” I joked as Bob continued to hold
the door open for Layne, his eyes growing a little wider as he gazed up at
her.
 
Bob isn’t exactly the tallest guy,
but Layne seemed to tower over him in the entryway with all her big-shouldered,
leather-jacket-wearing charisma that seemed to fill the relatively small
space.
 
“Bob, this is Layne…my dad hired
her to…um.”
 
I bit my lip, searching for
the right words and failing to find them.
 
“She’s helping me out with some stuff,” I said, finishing up lamely.

Layne practically flexed her
muscles as she took off her leather jacket and draped it smoothly over her
forearm, holding my violin case in her other hand.
 
Her red t-shirt was snug around her biceps, and I tried very hard
not to stare at the pronounced curves of her chest or her impeccably chiseled
abs that the t-shirt accentuated.
 
“Pleased to meet you,” she said, offering a hand to shake.

Bob shut the door behind him and
came into the hallway with us, shaking her hand quickly.
 
He winced—obviously, she had a firmer grip
with him than she’d had with me.
 
“Charmed,” he groaned a little, then chuckled as he jerked his thumb
down the corridor and toward the concert hall as more of the angry yelling
ricocheted down to us.
 
Amelia wasn’t
just in rare form today: she was on
fire.
 
“Amelia’s been impossible to live with all this week because
Tasuki’s flying in,” said Bob with another wince as he shook his head at
me.
 
“Seriously, Elizabeth, you should
have taken a couple of sick days or something.
 
Look at you!
 
You’re in crutches,
and you
willingly
come to submit yourself to this abuse!”
 
He shook his head and sighed, palming his
lighter in and out of his pocket nervously, as if he needed something to do
with his hands.
 
“You’re such a
masochist,” he pronounced.

“Not so much a masochist, I
promise—I just wouldn’t miss playing with Mikagi Tasuki for the entire
world.
 
And a little bit of yelling has
never scared me off, remember?”
 
I chuckled
and continued to hobble down the corridor.
 

“This is the woman,” said Bob, his
voice dropping to a stage whisper as he leaned his head toward Layne, who
raised her eyebrows at him, “who auditioned when Amelia had
just
gone
through
four hours
of traffic.
 
It’s legendary, how angry she was that day.
 
And Liz won the audition anyway!”

“It’s really not legendary,” I
snorted and shook my head at Layne, who was grinning.
 
“I just really,
really
wanted to be in this orchestra.”

“Anyway,” said Bob, stopping off at
the men’s room, “I’ll see you out there!”
 
He ducked inside, and I could hear him humming the melody from one of
our harder pieces as the door swung shut behind him.

“Nice guy,” said Layne with a small
smile.
 

“They all are—really, everyone in
the orchestra is.
 
They’re very good
people here,” I said, pausing for a breather, my hands gripping my crutch
handles.
 
“Okay.
 
So, sometimes family members of musicians in
the orchestra come in and watch rehearsal, so having you here isn’t really that
unheard of—just take any seat you like out in the audience, once I’m set up,” I
told Layne as we continued along the corridor.
 

“I’ll be quiet as a mouse,” she
promised with a wink.
 
And then we were
down the corridor and rounding the corner.

The concert hall was extra cold
today I realized, as I hobbled across the stage toward the first row of violin
chairs in the violin section.
 

Or maybe it was just Amelia’s
personality making the hall just that much chillier.

Amelia Booth stood an impressive
four feet five inches, but not a single person had ever looked at that woman
and thought she was small.
 
There was
just something about her that towered over you.
 
Maybe it was her out-of-fashion beehive hairdo that spiraled ever
upward in a tall cone of brassy red hair, or her shoulder pads under signature
blazers that continuously made her look like she was not, in fact, an orchestra
conductor, but a football quarterback.
 

But it wasn’t her hair or wardrobe
or anything that superficial that made Amelia Booth so intimidating.
 

It was her personality.

“Ah, Elizabeth, I see that despite
my hopes, your near-death experience has not made you realize the important
things in life—like punctuality,” said Amelia, one penciled-in eyebrow up over
her thick, coke-bottle glasses.
 
She was
tapping one of her ridiculously high patent leather heels on the wood floor of
the stage, and her arms inside of their black and white checked blazer were
crossed so tightly in front of her, she looked exactly like a caricature of an
impatient person.
 

Layne glanced at me with both of
her brows raised, but I was grinning and shaking my head.

“It wasn’t one of
those
near
death experiences, Amelia—since when have you ever been that lucky?” I teased
as I turned around, hopping on one foot as I hooked the crutches out from under
my arm.
 
Layne handed me my violin case,
and I nodded my thanks as she shoved her hands in her pockets, nodded to Amelia
and trotted toward the far staircase that led down to the seating.

My second in the first string
violin section, Tracy, looked me up and down and shook her head, her gray eyes
wide as she plucked at her strings and began tuning them.
 
Her long, blonde curls were swept up in a
messy up-do, and her pretty face wasn’t wearing a stitch of makeup, not that
she needed any.
 
Tracy would have been
gorgeous in a burlap sack half-full of potatoes.
 
“I’ve been so worried about you!” she hissed under her breath,
resting the violin over her knees as she set up the sheet music in front of her
on the stand, clipping it into place.
 
“Seriously, what happened to you?” she muttered out of the side of her
mouth.

“I’m all right, don’t worry,” I
promised her quietly, fishing my sheet music out of my shoulder bag.
 
“When is Tasuki supposed to arrive?”

“Frederic went to pick her up from the
airport,” she said.
 
Frederic was our
sound and lighting guy, and pretty much everyone in the orchestra agreed that
he didn’t get paid enough to put up with all of Amelia’s requests, demands and
idiosyncrasies.
 
But then, we all agreed
that
none
of us got paid enough to put up with Amelia—a fact that she
herself happily backed up.
 
“So they
should be getting here soon,” she added, adjusting one of her music stand
clips.
 
Everyone in the orchestra was
supposed to use the standardized binder clips to hold their music to the metal
frame—but for rehearsals, Tracy used clothespins that she’d painted flowers
onto.
 
She was kind of crafty.

“I’m a little nervous,” I admitted,
beginning to tune my violin, fiddling with the pegs as I thumbed across the
strings and listened to the notes emanating softly from the body of the
instrument.
 
“I mean first the accident,
and then my violin got
creamed
in the accident—so I just came from
Verity’s with this new baby.”

“I was gonna say—that’s a sexy new
fiddle if I ever heard one,” said Tracy in hushed tones as she listened to the
notes reverberating in the violin.
 
She
wrinkled her nose and shook her head, stray curls flying.
 
“You’re brave, though, bringing a new
instrument to rehearsal—especially
this
rehearsal.
 
Amelia’s been on fire today, she’s so
nervous about Tasuki playing with us,” she said, grinning lopsidedly at me.

“I think I got knocked in the head
in the accident,” I muttered dryly.
 
“So
it’s not so much
bravery
as
stupidity.
”
 
Any musician knows that you have to learn the ins and outs of an
instrument before you even
think
about publicly performing with it.
 

Ah, well.
 
Trial by fire.