Diamond in the Rough Read online

  Her parents invested in her musical education and were supremely interested in her feelings. My father only agreed to let me play in the London concert because the queen herself would be in attendance. He spent most of the concert on the phone in the lobby, coming up for air only to glad hand during the reception.

  On the surface it seemed like we had very little in common, but Beatrix and I had something in common—we were both children with unusual talent in a world ruled by fierce, egotistical adults.

  Somewhere between practice and performance we became fast friends.

  Maybe it was fate, which knew we were both on the same dark path. The death of her parents changed the course of her life. I gave her what support I could over e-mail as I followed my father from desert to jungle to tundra, only to begin all over again.

  And then my father died, giving us one more thing in common.

  Orphans, both of us.

  I’m excited about the tour, her text says with a string of green-faced emojis, each of them about to throw up. She’s always had a dry sense of humor and a weak stomach.

  You’re going to be amazing, I text back.

  Her anxiety goes beyond stage fright. For many years after her parents’ deaths she didn’t even leave the penthouse in the hotel where she lived. Only recently did she begin to venture out, but it’s still difficult for her to deal with crowds.

  I only agreed to it because you’re coming, she says. When do you get here, anyway? Can it be now?

  Words appear on the screen even though I don’t feel myself typing them—I’m afraid to leave. I don’t want to. What if I never see Liam again? What if he never forgives me for lying to him? The thoughts are too private to be read, even by me.

  I hold down the Backspace button until they’re gone.

  Soon. I punctuate the word with a string of sobbing emojis. Three months, to be exact. It’s the closest I can come to revealing my true feelings, the same way the green-faced emojis revealed hers.

  How is Liam doing?

  Oh you know. The same. Stoic and strong and serious.

  So he’s being an asshole?

  No, of course not. I blush, trying to think of how to word this, how to describe what happened in the back office of the club. I’m not even sure I know the words. Not kiss or touch. Something more meaningful—and more fleeting. Actually, something happened.

  Uh oh.

  It’s hard to explain. We sort of… we almost kissed.

  Oh my God. Samantha. SAMANTHA. Did he take advantage of you? I’m going to fly to Kingston right now and punch him in the face.

  What? Don’t be silly, I say, typing quickly because she might actually do it despite her extreme fear of public transportation and the baby girl she has at home. She’s only doing the opening show in Tanglewood, which is where she lives. I wouldn’t be surprised if the label planted the opening show there just for her.

  Beatrix Cartwright is maybe the most famous musician on the tour, besides Harry March himself. She has a massive internet following from playing covers of popular songs and posting the videos online. It’s a different direction than the old-world classical music that consumes me, but I admire her skill—as well as her poise in the face of notoriety.

  He didn’t take advantage of anything, I tell her. If anything I took advantage of him.

  I’m giving you such a look right now. A look of disbelief.

  Really. I’m the one who wants him to see me as more than a child.

  But you ARE a child.

  I make a rude gesture using an emoticon in response. She’s only a few years older than me, and she’s already married with a baby. It’s actually common for people in our position—strange and rare though it is. We grow up fast and either settle down or burn out.

  Well, she says. I’m sure he turned you down. Liam North doesn’t know how to have fun, which has never seemed like more of a virtue than right now.

  Fun? The idea makes me smile. He knows how to fight and work and struggle. The idea of fun is as foreign to him as it is to me. We’re well suited that way. Yes, I admit. He turned me down.

  What aren’t you telling me?

  That makes me sigh. He really did turn me down. After he kissed me. It wasn’t almost anything. We did actually kiss.

  OMG.

  Don’t freak out. I know it’s probably inappropriate.

  Probably???

  God, how to explain the exhilaration of knowing he had chased after me, bursting into a nightclub, breaking through muscled bouncers to make sure that I was safe. And then the way his large hand had cupped my jaw, making me feel delicate.

  I want him to do it again. The cursor blinks at the end of the sentence, waiting with an accusatory rhythm. When I press the Send button, I feel only a sense of rightness. It’s honest, at least.

  A long time passes with the three little dots hovering where her response will go. She’s writing a long lecture about all the ways it’s wrong for me to lust after Liam, I’m guessing.

  But her text is very short. What happens when you leave?

  I know what she means. Both of us know what it is to be alone. To be left behind. It doesn’t matter that I’m the one walking away this time. Being adrift at sea is no better than being stranded on an island.

  Then it’s over, I say, knowing there won’t be any civic responsibility after that.

  LIAM

  Leaning back in my office chair, I close my eyes. The strains of the violin wash over me, soothing the rough edges inside me. I’m in agony thinking of the day when the room next door will be silent. What will happen to every jagged, violent thought inside me?

  And even still I look forward to the day that she’s gone. Because she shouldn’t be near me, shouldn’t have to soothe the devil that pants and snorts inside me. A goddamn bull, that’s what I am—and her innocence is the red I run toward.

  Well, I won’t be able to ignore her today. We need to talk about the e-mail from Kimberly Cox. Good news, the subject line says. She goes on to explain that Samantha was given a short mention in the digital edition today to raise publicity for the tour, in advance of her deeper profile in the print magazine.

  There are a hundred amazing things about Samantha Brooks. The mention could have shared any number of those things. The way she plays like a goddamn angel. The way she mastered violin beyond what most grown men can do at the tender age of six. The way she infuses new life into the classics, drawing the interest of maestros and luthiers from around the world.

  Of course the mention doesn’t say any of that.

  That would make too much sense.

  Instead it laments the mark of grief that Samantha still bears from losing her father at a young age. She used to hide under the desk in his office in Saint Petersburg.

  In fact she was there the fateful day that he died.

  The sentence makes my blood run cold. I never should have let the damned reporter speak to Samantha alone. Except that she’ll be alone on the tour. I can’t stand next to her for the rest of her life, putting limits on how much she says.

  I stand and follow the music like she’s the goddamn pied piper. I want to follow her anywhere, everywhere, want to drown if that’s where she leads me—and I suppose I’m halfway there.

  It’s my habit to wait until she finishes a piece. The last note sails through the air, sweet and melancholy. There are only four fucking strings on the instrument. She imbues each and every touch of the bow with some new emotion. It reaches into the hard core of me, deadly, devastating.

  “Did you read it?” I ask, my voice a harsh echo in the chamber.

  She blinks at me as if coming out of a deep sleep. That’s what music is for her, a kind of trance. Her cheeks are flushed with awareness. “Read what?”

  “The e-mail from Kimberly Cox, the reporter from Classical Notes.”

  “Oh, about the digital feature? Yeah, that’s cool.”

  Cool. Not the word I would have used to describe it, but then I know that her father
didn’t die of a heart attack. “They printed the story about your father.”

  “Right. Well. It would have been more interesting if it were about music, but I guess they figure it was more of a public interest story that way.”

  “She had no right to share that.”

  Samantha gives me a strange look. “Are you worried that I’ll remember it?”

  Yes, but not because of the fear and anxiety the moment would give her. I’m worried that she’ll remember it because then she’ll know I was there that day. A blessing. That’s what the psychologist said about her memory loss. And I couldn’t disagree.

  I crouch down in front of her, the same way I did when she was twelve years old. Even then she would clutch her violin for comfort. She does it now without even realizing. “Samantha, I told you that your father had enemies. If they think you know something—”

  “I was just a child.”

  Children can be dangerous. This one had always terrified me. “A child who might remember something from when she was hiding under her father’s desk. Not only from the day he died. From before that. A phone call. A conversation.”

  She stares at me, bewildered. “What could I have heard that’s dangerous?”

  Because her father was a diplomat between politicians who aren’t in power anymore. That’s what she means. But what she doesn’t know is that he was a traitor to his country. That his actions disrupted governments—this country’s government—with repercussions that continued past his death.

  Yes, people would kill to keep those kinds of secrets quiet.

  “I’m going to ask you to do something, Samantha. When you do the press for the tour, when the reporters ask you about this, say you don’t remember anything.”

  She blinks. “They’re only going to ask about the music.”

  “Kimberly Cox didn’t only ask about the music.”

  Her brown eyes turn dark. “Are you sorry she came here?”

  She isn’t asking about the damn questions. She wants to know about the kiss. I should say yes. I should be sorry that the woman kissed me, that I kissed her back for even a split second, wanting her to be someone else. But that led to me walking in on Samantha. As wrong as it was, it was the single most erotic experience of my life. It was more than I dreamed I’d ever have of her.

  To my shame I’ve jerked off to the image of her in my head every single night. Every morning. My cock throbs in my slacks right now, eager to push through the fabric. To shove aside her skirt and press itself into her warm, welcoming body. She’d let me. She’d beg me to keep going.

  “No,” I say, my voice rough. “I’m not sorry.”

  Hurt flashes through her eyes, but I can’t begin to explain the complexity of my feelings for her. The way I shouldn’t want her. The way I want her anyway. My father always said I had the devil inside me. Part of me never really believed him—at least until I saw her masturbating. It took every last, torn shred of decency I have left inside me to walk away.

  Her chin rises, because she’s always been so damn strong. She’s always deserved better than me. “I’ll agree to your rule if you answer one question. Honestly.”

  My insides tighten. I don’t want this bargain, but her safety is worth it. It’s worth anything. “What’s the question?”

  I expect her to ask something about her father, to finally back me into a corner and demand the truth. She deserves that much. Why did you get custody of me? What happened to my father? I would have to tell her.

  “Did you ever want me?” she asks. “Really want me.”

  I swallow hard. “That’s what you want to know?”

  The milestones are coming at me fast, and they’re coming hard. Soon she’ll graduate from high school. She’ll turn eighteen. Those milestones are taking her away from me, bit by bit. None of them compare to what happens when her tour begins. Then she moves to Tanglewood for two months of practice for the tour and the opening show. She’ll travel the whole world.

  “Yes, I want you,” I say, my voice hard. “No, that doesn’t even begin to describe… I need you. I crave you. I dream about that kiss in the club.”

  “Then why won’t you—”

  “Because you’re not eighteen, for one thing. Almost doesn’t count.”

  “What about when I turn eighteen? Isn’t there a chance that you and I—”

  I would fall to my knees if I thought she should. “I don’t see why you’d want to,” I say, keeping my voice bland. “You’ll have a career then, a record deal, a string of performances under your belt. There will be any number of men.”

  She reaches out, her hand cupping my face. God, she’s innocent. She can’t know what she does to my body, the soft touch of her palm, the warmth of her. Or maybe she does know. Maybe she enjoys torturing me. “At the club you said you don’t think of me like a daughter.”

  Slowly I shake my head, my gaze locked on hers. “I don’t.”

  “Then how do you think of me?”

  My greatest pride and my deepest regret. And I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I kept her tied here in the middle of nowhere. If I trapped her in the closet with me while I watched her slowly starve. “You saved me,” I say simply, unable to lie about this.

  Surprise flashes through those pretty brown eyes. “It was the other way around.”

  “Ah, no, Samantha. I was nothing when you came to me. A man with a death wish. A business that kept me from drinking myself into a stupor every night. When you came to me, it gave me something to live for. Something to believe in.”

  Enemy fire. Missiles. Ambush. There are things I could handle on the fly, but only one thing could strike fear into my heart—and that’s the hope in her eyes. “Then you love me?”

  I squeeze her knee and stand up, removing myself from her gaze. “Samantha. I’m sorry. You deserve a family who loves you, but that’s not me. I’m not capable of the emotion.”

  Her eyes glisten with tears before she looks down. “You’re wrong.”

  “And you have unbearably low standards. I only look like a good father because your own was such a bastard. When you go out into the world, you’ll understand. You want to come back after the tour? Fine. I’ll leave your room the way it is. What do I need it for, anyway? It will keep its pink walls and its white ruffles. And if you tour the world for a year and a half and still want the emptiness that’s waiting here for you, you’re welcome to have it.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Composer Franz Liszt received so many requests for locks of his hair that he bought a dog and sent fur clippings instead.

  SAMANTHA

  I give Liam the silent treatment the rest of the week. It makes me feel like a child, but I can’t help it. He has all the power in this relationship. All the secrets. Beatrix wasn’t completely wrong. He’s really a bastard sometimes.

  He’s also the closest thing I have to family.

  It wasn’t only him. All three of the North brothers took me in.

  Josh taught me how to throw knives even though Liam nearly killed him for it. I’m weirdly good at them. Turns out the upper body strength and nimble fingers you cultivate playing violin translates well to six inches of stainless steel.

  I can hit the painted targets almost as well as a soldier.

  It was the youngest North brother who drove to the convenience store to buy maxi pads because I started bleeding when Liam was on an overnight trip. It was my first period. Even if Daddy had been alive, I don’t know how he would have handled that. Probably one of his aides would have taught me. Instead Elijah knocked at the bathroom door, grim-faced as he answered my questions—how long would it last and why did it happen.

  Probably I should be grateful to have them. So grateful that I don’t ask any more questions, but I can’t let go of my past. I can’t forget the guarded look in Liam’s eyes when I asked him about my father. What’s he hiding?

  It’s easy to keep up the silent treatment, because everyone’s busy with the wedding. Rows of white c
hairs replace tractor tires. Flowers overflow rustic wood containers. The entire lawn transforms from a high-impact obstacle course to a romantic lawn in a matter of days. These are soldiers. They perform their mission with precision and fearlessness, even if it involves canapes instead of sniper rifles.

  Of course, there probably are sniper rifles hidden around the property. I’ve played the violin in the room beside Liam’s office every day for the past six years. I can hear him even when he thinks I’m focused on the strings. He would see the wedding as an opening, something that an enemy could exploit. There would be even more defenses in place today.

  Liam is the best man, looking austere and remote in his tuxedo, standing with Hassan at the makeshift altar. There are faint shadows under his green eyes, the only hint that he did anything other than sleep. They’re interesting, those shadows, because of how rare they are.

  This is a man who doesn’t show signs of weakness.

  It might be daunting to some brides, the preponderance of stern, muscled men filling the white folding chairs. Jane teaches kindergarten at the local elementary school. Nothing scares her. That’s what she told me the first time we met, and it looks like it’s true. She’s beaming in her white dress with lace that cups her bodice and flares out to a wide skirt.

  Hassan swallows hard as she steps out of the tent, his eyes glittering.

  Play whatever you want, she told me. I’m sure it will be beautiful.

  So I play the song I would want if I were to get married, the one I’ve imagined walking down the aisle to, even though I’d never admit it out loud. Pachelbel composed “Canon in D” to play with three violins and a bass continuo, but I love it even more with a single lilting strain. My Nicolo Amati violin is small and proud. It prefers to play solo. That’s where it really sings.

  My troubled gaze finds Liam. He’s watching me, those green eyes sharp in the sunlight. He owns the land we’re standing on, acres and acres of it. He owns the company that employs almost everyone here. He’s a leader and a soldier and a confidant to the men beside him.

  And he’s my guardian. He wouldn’t hurt me. I have to believe in that, because without that I don’t know what I’d think. I don’t know who I could trust.