Dark Rhapsody Page 3

  The rowboat scraped against the stony beach. Now it was the only sound disturbing the quiet, the song of the geese only a memory. Shiloh lurched out, then stopped and waited for Beckett. The colonel gripped a heavy wooden cane and grunted with pain as he climbed slowly over the bow.

  In the blue dusk, his eyes searched for the wooden steps that climbed the steep hillside through the pines up to the cabin. How the devil was he supposed to protect her when he still couldn’t even run up a bloody flight of stairs?

  He’d built those steps! And now … His three-legged dog climbed them faster than he did.

  A storm of piano chords broke the stillness.

  He stopped and raised his chin to listen. “Beethoven,” he said to the Golden. “Damn if I’m not learning to recognize those crazy long-hairs.”

  Shiloh’s intelligent eyes turned to Beckett and he gave a long, low woof.

  “You’re right,” said the colonel. “She only plays Beethoven when she’s troubled.” Or afraid …

  He felt suddenly hollow inside, sensing, somehow, that she’d be leaving him soon, that their time together here in the cabin was coming to an end. He wanted her to stay. But he knew deep in his bones he would have to let her go.

  His cell phone buzzed in his pocket and he stiffened. Another text from Dane? He checked the number, squinting in the fading light. Not Dane. “The third call today from DC,” he said. “Not good.”

  As if he knew what was coming, Shiloh’s ears laid back and he growled low in his throat.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE BLUE RIDGE MOUNTAINS

  OCTOBER 15

  THE ONLY SOUND in the cabin was the music pulsing from the old Baldwin.

  Beckett moved to stand behind her, setting his big hands on her shoulders. Her bones felt like sharp wings under his fingers. “Jazz? I’ve never heard you play jazz before. What is this piece?”

  She kept playing, filling the room with a tumble of heartbreaking chords.

  “I know you’re hurting, darlin.’” His hands tightened on her shoulders. “What’s going on in that beautiful mind of yours?”

  Maggie’s fingers stilled. The notes hung in the air, unfinished. She spoke into the sudden silence. “It’s Duke Ellington’s ‘Mood Indigo.’ He played it every single night for years, always improvising, until he died.”

  The low resonant voice stirred him, as it always did. He raised a finger to her chin, gently turned her face toward him. “Talk to me.”

  A soft sigh escaped her lips as she raised her eyes to his. “For so long my life was ordered, logical. Like the notes of classical music. But since last year … it’s all about improvising.”

  “Like ‘Mood Indigo.’”

  “I’m not good at improvising, Michael.” She reached for the envelope she’d set on the edge of the piano and held it out. “This came with my forwarded mail.”

  He glanced at the address, felt himself go still. “It’s addressed to your husband.”

  “It’s been almost a year, and I still get ambushed. I don’t know what I’m feeling …”

  “Looks like grief to me.”

  She turned rain-filled eyes on him. “Maybe it’s too soon to be happy again.”

  “No. We lose people, we find new ones. Your husband died, Maggie, but you didn’t. I know you still love him, but if you keep loving a ghost, you can end up being a ghost yourself.”

  A flash, deep within the green eyes.

  “Christ, Maggie, I didn’t mean—”

  “Yes, you did. And you’re right.” Very carefully, she set the envelope back on the piano. “I still get mail for my dead husband, my best friend was knifed in a chapel, my godson vanished, my music left me, I spent months talking to a ghost. You were shot, I almost drowned, and—oh, yes—I almost killed a man. Just an average day in the life of the woman you have fallen for. Why on earth would you want to be with me, Michael?”

  “Because I’ve done worse, darlin’.” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Grief doesn’t make us noble, Maggie, just crazy. We’ve both lost people we love, lost our way. We’ve both been broken. But that’s how the light gets in, right? In spite of everything, you make me feel optimistic about my life for the first time ever. I know this last year has been hell for you, Maggie, I see the chaos in your eyes. But Winston Churchill said, ‘When you’re going through hell, keep going.’”

  Finally, she smiled. “The question is, go where?”

  “For you, it’s music. Just so long as you go with me. I know I’m not the best-looking tomato in the bunch, but …”

  “But looking like Chopin is a good thing!”

  “All these scars …”

  “Just show where you’ve been. You’re the best man I know, Michael.” She gripped the edge of the piano. “Everything is swirling in my head. I just feel as if I’ve lost control of my life.”

  “For a while. But you’re taking your life back, one note at a time. You’re stronger than you realize. I’ve seen you fight the devil himself for a child you barely knew! What’s really going on, Maggie?”

  She shook her head mutely.

  “I’m not married anymore, darlin’. Don’t push me away.”

  Locking eyes with his, she took a deep breath and said, “I’m not the only one with secrets.”

  “My whole life is about things I can’t say, Maggie. I told you that when we met.”

  “I found your gun. You’re going after Dane again, aren’t you?”

  “I can’t change who I am, dammit. Is that what you really want?”

  “What I want is for you to not be in danger. Every intelligence agency in the world has been searching for Dane. It’s been months, with no word. Dane is done with me. He’s gone, Michael.”

  I am coming for her.

  The words clicked into Beckett’s brain, and he rubbed a hand across his jaw. “You don’t know that, Maggie.”

  “I know you, Michael. I know that look. You have the same look on your face that you had the day I met you. You are off to fight the good fight once more and protect me. But I don’t need protecting!”

  “I’ve got to make some very tough calls in my work. I can’t be worrying about how my choices make other people feel. I just need for you to be safe.”

  “But why would Dane go after me now? He would be crazy to come back, when everyone is looking for him.”

  “He is crazy, Maggie. He’s a destroyer, a vicious sociopath with no conscience. You exposed him, you sent him into hiding, you’ve denied him all that stolen art. Hurt people hurt people. He wants vengeance. I’m not gonna let him get anywhere near you.”

  “Honorable but bone-headed,” she murmured. “After everything he’s done to me and the people I love, don’t you think I want him to pay?”

  “He will, Maggie, count on it.”

  “But not by your hands! I’m forty-eight, Michael. I’ve loved three men in my life. They all ended up in harm’s way. You were shot. You almost died because of me. I will not lose you.”

  “You’re not going to lose me, Maggie. Especially now.” He smiled down at the Golden. “You heard her use the L-word, right?”

  Maggie cupped his face in her hands. “After I lost Johnny, I thought I could never love again. Then I met you. My gruff, silver-eyed soldier.” Her thumb rubbed across his lips. “All this—the cabin, the fire, the dog, the piano. The sound of your voice, these lips against my shoulder in our bed …”

  “If only you could cook, ma’am, it would be perfect.”

  “Doesn’t making toast count?” She boxed his arm gently. “I’m so damned happy when I’m with you. And that terrifies me. Because every time I’ve felt real love, it was the start of losing that person.” Her breath caught. “Don’t go after Dane,” she whispered. “I don’t want you to die for me, Michael. I want you to live for me.”

  “I will. Count on it.”

  “How did everything get so complicated?”

  “You make boiling water look complicated,” he said, tak
ing her hands in his. “And it’s okay. I’m scared, too. A man gets scared when he loves something enough to fear losing it. And the truth is, it’s harder to love someone than to walk away from them.” It was the closest he’d come to speaking his feelings in a very long time. “So we’re different. I’m a distancer and you’re a creator, that’s just how life works. And maybe we’ll blow it, but I want to try, Maggie.”

  He took a deep breath. Just tell her. “I know I’m not the first person you’ve loved,” he said softly. “But I’d surely like to be the last.”

  She looked at him for a long moment. Finally, leaning closer, she touched her forehead to his. “Works for me. So what do we do now?”

  “I just want to be with you. Watch the way you talk to the geese, the way your eyes shine in the morning light. Listen to your music. Take each day as it comes.”

  “I can’t do that now,” she whispered.

  “You’ve got that bad-news look, ma’am.”

  “I’m going to have to leave you for a while, Michael.”

  He grew still. “You’re going home to Boston?”

  “New York. Carnegie Hall called.”

  He’d known she’d be leaving. But still the fear for her hit him like a punch in the chest. He wanted to say nothing, to let her go. “Call your Mr. Hall back,” he said. “Tell him you’re busy.”

  “If I can move on with my music, Michael, I can move on with my life.”

  “Dammit, woman, you’ll be all alone in New York, and Dane is still out there.” He exchanged a look with the Golden. “She’s running in traffic again. With scissors!”

  Refusing to smile, she turned to face him. “Look at these words. You bought this t-shirt for me, in France. Je ne peux pas vivre sans musique. I cannot live without music.”

  He frowned at the Golden, who sat protectively by Maggie’s leg. “Life lesson, Shiloh. No good deed shall go unpunished.” Then, with a slight smile, he turned his eyes on her. “The only thing I know about Carnegie Hall is that old Jack Benny joke—‘How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice.’”

  This time her smile was real. “Apparently one of the conductors said it after a very bad day.”

  Maggie walked away from him, out onto the balcony to stare across the darkening lake. He came up behind her and dropped a heavy woven blanket over her shoulders. Overhead, he heard the wings of the geese whispering against the purple sky.

  She turned to look up at him. “Do you remember, Michael, one night in France? You told me, ‘Sometimes we just have to do the right thing, like it or not.’”

  “Why do I get the feelin’, ma’am, that this is the part where I get hoisted on my own petard?”

  “I happen to like your petard. And it won’t be for long. Trust me, musician’s honor.”

  “This trust business is new to me. Disorienting.” He grinned. “But Shiloh and I will find a way to keep busy while you’re gone, right, fella?” I’ve got a bad feelin’ we’re going to DC.

  She touched his cheek. “I didn’t know it would be so hard to leave you.”

  There was something in her voice, like the sound of rain on the lake.

  He held her eyes for a long moment. Got lost in them. “Okay,” he said gently. “No more talk of Dane. He’s our past.” He reached out, touched a finger to her mouth. “So let’s concentrate on this moment. You said you don’t have to leave until tomorrow morning?” He began to hum Bob Seger’s song “We’ve Got Tonight.”

  She raised a feathery eyebrow, pulled the bright woven blanket closer around her, and smiled up at him.

  “There is a Shenandoah Indian legend,” he told her. “If a woman opens her blanket to a man, she wants to be with him.”

  Maggie kept her eyes locked on his as she opened the blanket like wings.

  He stepped against her, and she wrapped her arms, and the blanket, around them both.

  “Have you ever made love under the stars, Maggie O’Shea?”

  “No,” she told him. “Never outside, never like this.”

  “Come here, then.” He led her to the double chaise and pulled her against him, kissing the inside of her wrist very slowly. Then, reaching for his phone, he pressed a button and suddenly the music of John Legend filled the night.

  He eased her down onto the chaise. And then he was next to her, his hard mouth on hers, his hand slipping under her sweater to caress her rib cage.

  He was falling into her. “Love your curves and edges …” he whispered against her skin.

  Her eyes flew open. “You think I have edges?”

  “Edges are good, Maggie. Being edgy makes you even more interesting …”

  Somehow her sweater was gone. “I have only one question,” he said against her bare shoulder. “How does a guy like me get to Carnegie Hall?”

  She smiled into his eyes as she put her palm against his lips. Then she was lying on top of him, so that her hair fell like a dark curtain over his face.

  His arms closed around her. He felt his blood singing. “You feel like home to me,” he whispered.

  And under the old blanket and the cold dark night, as the moon arced across the sky, he made love to her beneath the bare branches of ancient mountain oaks.

  One last leaf fluttered down, until it was lost in the indigo shadows.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  NEW YORK CITY

  FOUR DAYS LATER—SUNDAY, OCTOBER 19

  MAGGIE O’SHEA RAN up the glass-walled staircase at Gansevoort Street, her Nikes hitting the steel steps with the quick steady beat of a metronome.

  One step at a time. Just keep breathing.

  Moments later, she emerged onto an aerial greenway, the High Line, a linear park elevated some thirty feet above Manhattan’s streets. Built over a weedy, abandoned rail bed, the almost two-mile park ran north for some twenty blocks above New York’s Tenth and Eleventh Avenues through Chelsea and the Meat-Packing District.

  The soaring violins of Vivaldi’s “Autumn,” from his Four Seasons Concerti, spilled from her earphones. The Number 3 was her favorite of the four—and so appropriate on such a glorious fall day. She turned up the volume and ran on.

  Only three more miles to 57th Street and Carnegie Hall. Or four? She smiled as she thought of Michael. How do you get to Carnegie Hall? She ran faster.

  Today the hip-hop dancers and musicians were out in force along the narrow juniper-lined mall, their slouch hats and bright jackets catching the gleaming afternoon sun. She dodged around a mother with a wide stroller and ran on, past Chelsea Market, perched grandstands overlooking Tenth Avenue, and sundecks crowded with young New Yorkers. The architecture was modern, fanciful—zigzagging facades, abstract steel panels, glistening cylinders with angled glass panes catching the sun. And her favorite, Frank Gehry’s curved glass schooner of a building near Eleventh Avenue.

  Of course, running is good for the body, her doctor had told her. But in your case, Maggie, it’s good for the soul. It will help with the PTSD, the anxiety. The sleeplessness, the headaches. The nightmares.

  She’d been having the headaches and dreams since her husband had died, and they’d only grown worse after she’d been to France. Running hadn’t stopped the recurring nightmares of a man with glittering wolf’s eyes, holding a dagger to her breast. But she was able to hear a car backfire now without cringing into a fetal ball. She was taking back control. So why did she feel as if she was always just one deep breath away from panic?

  As she ran, she squeezed the small pink rubber balls in her hands with rhythmic precision, keeping time with the beat of her Nikes. After so many months of disuse, her fingers were finally getting strong again. Inhaling deeply, Maggie filled her lungs with the sharp, clear scents of autumn. Focus, Maggie. Concentrate on the good in your life. Autumn in New York. Bright blue juniper berries crunching beneath her running shoes. Brilliant orange and gold leaves spinning in circles around her, as scattered and tossed as the images that swirled in her head.

  Just don’t think about today
’s date.

  Think about the curved glass building shining gold in the sunlight.

  Think about your son, his wife, and your sweet new baby grandson, enjoying the California sunshine.

  Think of your friend Luze, back home in Boston running your Piano Cat Music Shop. And taking care of your crazy, music-loving cat, Gracie.

  Think about your godson’s visit, in just a few months. She hadn’t seen TJ since France, and she missed him more than she could say.

  Think about your music.

  And Michael? Well, she hadn’t heard from him since she’d arrived in New York three days ago, had no idea where he was. God. She couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d gone after Dane.

  Damn. Don’t start thinking about Dane.

  And don’t think about today’s date.

  Just give yourself up to Vivaldi’s violins. She ran on.

  Breathe in. Breathe out.

  Less than a mile now and she’d be turning onto 57th Street, toward Carnegie Hall and the practice room that waited for her. Why had she ever agreed to play Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody? Whatever had possessed her to choose Rachmaninoff’s music for her comeback performance? At Carnegie Hall, no less. God, God. The twenty-fourth variation was so technically difficult that Rachmaninoff himself had broken his no-alcohol-before-a-performance rule and downed a full glass of crème de menthe to steady his hands.

  Rubenstein, Ashkenazy, Van Cliburn … they all had taken on the Rhapsody. All men who had a much larger hand span than she did. Musical geniuses. Who did she think she was? She could just see the Sunday Times review now. “Following a personal tragedy, classical pianist Magdalena O’Shea returned to the stage for her first concert in over a year, a performance of Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. But while wildly anticipated, her performance was vastly disappointing—a hollow and erratic hot mess of missed notes, chords, and phrases.”

  Would the Times ever dare to use the words “hot mess”? She grinned in spite of herself. Okay, so she wasn’t that bad. Not quite “hot mess” bad. But she wasn’t ready. Opening night was less than two months away. I need insight from a professional, she thought. I need a miracle.