Tie Me

“Would that be composing or playing piano?”

“Both,” she said.

“And does it make you happy to pursue perfection?”

Her gaze darted upward to find his.

He hid a grin. Another of her buttons found and pressed.

“That’s a very personal question,” she said, her voice a bit louder than necessary. “And how did we end up talking about me? I asked you about your band.”

“We’re talking about you because you’re more interesting than I am,” he said.

“I guarantee that I’m not.”

“We’ll see.” He chuckled. “I started playing guitar when my grandfather caught me fooling around with the vintage Les Paul that he’d won in a bet. I snapped one of the strings and thought he was going to skin me alive, but instead he punished me by forcing me to take lessons from a friend of his who played in a local band. I was thirteen. That’s the same year I met Sole Regret’s bassist, Owen. He wasn’t into music much. He liked to follow me to my lessons and watch, but he didn’t want to learn to play himself. Not until a couple years later when the girls started hanging around me because I was cool. So Owen learned to play in an attempt to attract girls. He’s very shallow that way.” Kellen winked at her.

“So you didn’t learn to play in order to attract girls?”

“Music is my escape,” he said. “I quickly became addicted to producing sound. It’s like a drug I can’t get enough of.”

He met her eyes and they gazed at each other. “I feel the same way about the piano,” she said. “I just would have called it a compulsion instead of an addiction.”

Sara had never understood this part of him. She’d thought of music as something that took him away from her. She seemed to think she was competing against music for his affection, not that it helped make him the man she loved. It was nice to meet a woman who understood how vital music could be to a person.

Dawn flipped a second piece of French toast onto a plate before adding a third to the pan. While it cooked, she set a tub of butter, a bottle of maple syrup, and his plate before him. He inhaled deeply.

“This smells heavenly.”

“My grandmother’s recipe.”

Kellen’s first bite had his eyes rolling into the back of his head in delight. “This is amazing. What’s the secret?”

“Vanilla,” she said. “And day-old, fresh-baked bread.”

“Lucky I happened along the day after your trip to the bakery.”

Her cheeks went pink, and she paid extra close attention to the toast sizzling in the pan.

Had he discovered another button? He wasn’t sure where to push. “Is there a bakery nearby?”

She shook her head. “I baked it,” she said. “Baking is a huge stress reliever for me.”

“Lucky me,” he said. “What are you stressed out about?”

She hesitated for a long moment and then let out a sigh. “Can you keep a secret?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m supposed to turn in a completed composition tomorrow,” she said. “I was commissioned for a piece to be used as the main theme in some feel-good summer blockbuster. I’ve been working on it for months and no matter how hard I try, I can’t get it right.”

“Maybe that’s your problem,” he said, trying to remember his manners and not talk with his mouth full, but the French toast was so delicious that he couldn’t stop shoveling it in.

“My problem?”

Oh, another button? Poke. Poke. Poke.

“One of many, I’m sure,” he said.

She leveled him with a heated glare, and he warmed from the inside out. He hadn’t even realized he’d been cold.

“Maybe you’re just trying too hard,” he said. “Sometimes the best inspiration hits when you aren’t paying attention. Let your subconscious write the music. It’s purer that way.”

“And what would you know about writing music?” she said, flipping her piece of French toast to an empty plate. She turned off the burner and reached for the tub of butter. He couldn’t resist moving it out of her reach.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Why did he get the impression that she was counting backward from a hundred so she didn’t slap the shit out of him with her spatula?

“I’ve written a few songs,” he said. “The band’s lead guitarist, Adam, is our main composer, but he allows the rest of us to come up with a note or two.”

“What do you know about writing piano music?”

“Absolutely nothing,” he admitted.

She collected her plate and moved around the counter to sit beside him.

“I’m sorry I’m so testy tonight,” she said. “I’m under a lot of pressure. I just… I don’t want to fail at my own dream.”

“You’re not failing,” he said. “You’re just a little stuck. It happens to everyone.”

She shook her head as she slathered butter on her French toast. “It doesn’t happen to me. I can’t permit it to happen to me.”

“Reality check, Dawn. It already has.”

“I can still finish the composition tonight,” she said.

“And if you can’t?”

Her lower lip trembled and she refused to meet his eyes, even though he was staring her down like a panther watching a tender young deer wander unknowingly beneath his tree.

“I’m not allowed to fail,” she said. “Absolutely not allowed.”

Allowed? Why would she say it that way? He placed a comforting hand at the base of her spine and she jerked so hard, she nearly launched herself straight off the stool.

“I can’t promise you anything, but I will help, if I can,” he said. “Relax, okay?”

“Easy for you to say,” she mumbled under her breath.

He removed his hand from her back, cursing himself for touching her as he could still feel the tension in her muscles against his palm. She picked at her French toast and after a moment of appearing defeated, straightened her shoulders and turned slightly to look at him.

“So you and your friend Owen became guitarists to seduce naive young women. What about the rest of your band? Did they also suffer from an inability to pick up girls based on their looks and personality alone?”

He sighed at her obvious subject change. “Owen didn’t really like guitar, so he switched to bass, which is the rock-band position least likely to get you laid.” Owen, however, had stopped having that problem soon after they graduated high school. “We’re not as shallow as I make us out to be.”