Improvisation Page 8

  “Jesus, what a way to greet someone. I’m still waiting to see the legendary charm Brooke warned me about.”

  Tina pulled out a chair and waved Jan into it. “Really, what’s wrong? Is it your dad?”

  Jan’s eyes widened slightly as if in surprise. “Well, yes. He’s having some complications after his surgery. The doctor was worried it was a blood clot forming, so he’s back in the hospital for a few days. I think he was in a lot of pain before he finally told me, but I should have figured it out. He looked feverish this weekend, but he never complained.” Jan rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have come. I don’t think I’m up for a night out.”

  Tina reached across the table and eased Jan’s hand away from her eyes. “Do not feel guilty,” she said in a stern voice. “You’ve been a wonderful daughter. Besides, I found some military papers in the box of pictures,” she continued, lightening her tone to try to coax a smile from Jan, “commendations and things about your dad, and he sounds like one tough dude. He probably could have a stake through his heart and say it’s just a splinter.”

  “An exaggeration, but you’re right—he isn’t a complainer. And he is stubborn.”

  Tina squeezed Jan’s hand before she let it go. “Next time, call me if you need any help,” she said before she remembered the vow she had made not to answer any of Jan’s calls over the weekend. “So, I’m surprised to see an old schoolmarm like yourself out on a Tuesday night. Don’t you have class tomorrow?”

  “She’s such an old fuddy-duddy, she gets her lesson plans written by the first of every month,” Chloe said as she joined them. She handed a beer to Jan and set her own on the table. “Unless she has assignments to grade, she has every evening free. Too bad she wastes them by staying in and getting to bed by ten.”

  “Is she serious?” Tina asked Jan.

  “Partially,” Jan said, with a scowl in Chloe’s direction. “But she doesn’t need to make it sound like a character flaw to be prepared.”

  Chloe ignored her comment. “Peter just showed me his mandolin. It’s so beautiful and it feels like satin. I can’t wait to hear him play.”

  “Oh, Peter, your instrument is so big!” Jan said before she took a sip of her beer. Her voice mimicked Chloe’s gushing tones exactly.

  “May I touch it? Oh, please, may I?” Tina added in a breathy voice.

  Jan choked as she struggled to swallow her beer, and then she joined Tina’s sexy, throaty laughter. “Oh, don’t go, Chloe,” Jan said when her friend stood up with a frown.

  “There is something seriously wrong with you two,” she said before she walked away from the table.

  “Do you think we went too far?” Jan asked. This was exactly what she needed tonight. Laughter and teasing. The company of someone light and frivolous. Tina was certainly not a permanent solution to any problem Jan might have, but she was a good source of temporary stress relief. As long as Jan kept herself in check and didn’t let things go further than friendly banter. Otherwise, she might end up wanting more.

  “I’m sure she’ll be fine. I’m just shocked my cousin inspires so much adoration and lust in anyone.”

  “Really? Don’t you realize he looks enough like you to be your twin?” Jan spoke without thinking. Tina stared at her, her bottle raised halfway to her mouth, and Jan was relieved when the evening’s session leader stepped up to the mic.

  Chloe and Peter, carrying his inlaid and burnished mandolin, returned to the table. She was looking somewhat less angry, but she stuck her tongue out at Jan when she sat down. Jan smiled back and then turned her attention to the stage, trying to ignore the sight of Tina shrugging out of her sweatshirt and straightening the black tank she wore underneath.

  “I see some unfamiliar faces in the audience, so let me begin by explaining how we run a session here at O’Boyle’s,” the gray-haired man said, in a heavy Irish accent. “As evening’s host, I’ll start us off with some of my favorite tunes. As we go on, feel free to call out requests. And if you don’t have an instrument, you’re welcome to sing along or keep the rhythm with your hands or feet. Now, I remember when I was a wee lad in Dublin—”

  “Try Cincinnati,” Peter called out.

  “I forgot to mention,” the host said, all traces of his brogue gone, “any disruptive elements will be removed at the discretion of the session leader. Now, where was I? Ah yes. When I was a wee lad…”

  Jan half listened to his clearly fabricated tale of childhood while she watched Tina rosin her bow in long sweeping strikes. She looked so at home, her pose casual and her hands moving deftly over her instrument as she prepared to play. She was in her element in this place, where musical rules were discarded and identities were created to suit the occasion. Jan knew she shouldn’t stare, shouldn’t give in to her desire to watch only Tina in the room full of musicians, but she couldn’t stop. And once the group started playing a rousing jig, Tina seemed so engrossed in the music, bending her notes around the basic melody, that Jan assumed she was unaware of the attention.

  Fortunately. Because Jan didn’t want to look anywhere else. She had watched Tina play the refined and elegant quartet music on her acoustic violin at Brooke’s rehearsal, but this was something else entirely. Jan was surprised by the sheer physicality of Tina’s playing. Caught in the wave of improvisation, Tina’s whole body seemed to resonate with her fiery fiddle. The tendons in her neck and the muscles in her arms were taut, but her fingertip touch on the bow was light and flexible. Her right foot and upper body kept time to the music, but her expression was unruffled and serene.

  After a few songs, the session leader beckoned at Tina. “Hey, newbie,” he said, raising the mic a few inches. “Why don’t you turn up the volume and show us what your pretty red beast can do.”

  Tina stepped up to the stage without hesitating. “Do any of you know ‘Mountain Spring’?” A few hands went up. “Great. Join in whenever you want.”

  Jan watched her take a deep breath before she raised the fiddle. Her eyes drifted closed as she played the first long down-bow of the Celtic tune. After a few measures, other instruments in the group picked up the melody, and at the first sound of other voices joining her own, Tina opened her eyes and smiled. At first, the other players merely echoed the simple phrasing of the song, but gradually, individuals broke off and added their own embellishments. Jan saw a helix in her mind, a curved line spiraling up, adding layers and depth but always twisting around the axis of Tina and her violin. Tina looked at her, as if she felt the weight of Jan’s stare, and the rest of the room receded, leaving only Tina as the center of the song.

  When the last notes of the song faded away, Tina broke their eye contact and returned to her seat. Jan felt hot, wet. She took a drink of her beer, but it was too warm to do any good.

  The host returned to the mic and cleared his throat loudly. “Damn,” he said. “I think I need a cigarette after watching you play like that.”

  “Stop,” Tina said with a grin, running her fingers over the violin. “You’re making her blush.”

  Jan joined in the group’s laughter, but the sound she made sounded rough and false. She had felt the song as if it was meant only for her, but the man’s words helped her return to common sense. Tina oozed sexuality. Her charisma was natural and affected everyone around her. The intimate way she had played hadn’t been intended for Jan. She couldn’t let herself be fooled into thinking it had.

  *

  Tina numbly played a few more tunes with the group before she excused herself and went into the bathroom. She splashed cold water on her face and leaned against the counter, staring at the mirror. Her high ponytail, meant to keep her hair out of her face while she played, revealed her flushed neck and chest. The small red mark made by her shoulder rest, usually prominent on her pale skin, was barely discernible against the color of her arousal. She still wasn’t sure what had happened while she was on the stage. She was accustomed to using music to attract women, to seduce them, but never before had
she herself been seduced. Her mind had fabricated a story with Jan in the lead role, and she had simply poured the images into the music she played.

  A mountain spring, a lush green meadow, sun heating her back as she braced her arms on either side of Jan’s face. Kissing her lips, nuzzling her hair, nipping at her neck and collarbone. The feel of Jan’s hands sliding up her back and into her hair. Pushing her lower.

  “Oh my God,” she said to her reflection. “You need to stop.”

  She paced back and forth in the small space. Okay, she was obviously attracted to Jan. And, just as obviously, they were not suited to each other in any way except physically. Tina would easily be able to have a few nights of fun before she moved on, went home. But would Jan be able to just have sex without figuring the affair—and Tina—into her life plan? No. She was too serious and alone. Maybe she had been watching Tina as if she was about to pounce on her, but she wouldn’t be satisfied with a brief fling. And brief was all Tina was about.

  The pep talk worked, and Tina returned to the table with more composure. She needed to avoid Jan until she could find some more appropriate female companionship. Get this out of her system, whatever it was.

  The musicians were taking a short break, and Peter and Chloe were settled cozily in a conversation. Tina looked around for something safe to occupy her and Jan.

  “Want to play some pool?” she asked. A nice, unromantic game of pool, she added silently.

  “Sure,” Jan said, following Tina to an empty table at the back of the room. She sorted through the cue sticks, putting more attention on the task than seemed necessary, while Tina expertly racked the balls. “Why don’t you break,” Jan said.

  “Okay.” Tina hefted a couple of cues before she found a comfortable one. “But I should warn you, I’m good at any game you can practice in a bar.”

  “Cocky. Care to back your bragging with a bet?”

  Tina’s mind ran through several wagering possibilities. Trouble was, she wouldn’t care if she won or lost with any of them. “Do you mean money?”

  Jan hesitated long enough for Tina to suspect that her thoughts had been roaming in the same direction. “Of course I mean money. Twenty?”

  “You’re on,” Tina said, striking the cue ball with a loud crack. She watched an orange ball drop into a pocket. “Solids.”

  She sank the seven but missed the next shot. Jan stepped up to the table. “And I should warn you,” she said.

  “Yeah?” Tina asked, focused more on Jan’s ass than her words.

  “I doubt I spend nearly as much time as you do in bars, but I happen to know a thing or two about geometry. And pool is all about angles and lines.”

  She knocked the thirteen ball into the side pocket with a confident whack, followed by a tricky bank shot to drop the fourteen. Tina’s attention returned to the game as two more stripes fell in succession.

  “And a little physics,” Jan added as she put some backspin on the cue ball so it snapped to a halt on the edge of a pocket instead of dropping after the nine. Lining her up for an easy shot on the ten, and then the eleven.

  “Eight, corner pocket,” she said, pointing with her cue. “Might want to get that twenty out.”

  Tina stared at her, openmouthed, as she made the shot. Jan was sexy. Jan leaning over a pool table was incredibly sexy. Jan handily winning the game took Tina’s breath away.

  Peter and Chloe walked over just in time to witness Tina’s disgrace as she gave Jan a twenty. “Looks like she trounced you, Cousin,” Peter said. He looked at the table with most of the solid balls still scattered on it. “Did you sink anything?”

  “Shut up, Cousin,” Tina said, jabbing him in the ribs with her stick.

  “You played a good game,” Jan said. “I thought the strategy of leaving all your balls on the table so they got in my way was brilliant.”

  Tina was tempted to chase Jan around the table, but she wasn’t sure she’d be able to control herself once she caught her. “Is the music starting again?” she asked instead.

  “In a minute,” Peter said. “Some people are going to Coeur d’Alene this Saturday to see a local Irish band play. The Boise Banshees. Chloe and I thought the four of us could go.”

  Tina stayed quiet, expecting Jan to be the first to back out of anything resembling a double date. “I’m in,” Jan said instead. “I’m teaching a seminar for some grad students at U of I in the morning, but I can hang around town until you get there.” She shrugged at Tina as if to apologize for accepting the invitation. “Dad won’t be home until Monday at the earliest, so I’d rather be out than sitting at home.”

  “We’re leaving after I’m through with work in the afternoon,” Peter said. “So we can take you with us, Tina.”

  “Oh, our first road trip,” Chloe said, in the same cooing voice Tina and Jan had mimicked earlier. Tina groaned. She was starting to like her cousin. But her cousin in love was a bit much to take.

  “Or you can drive with me,” Jan suggested. “We could get lunch or something after my seminar.”

  “Thank you,” Tina said with relief. A few hours with Jan—in the safety of a public place and broad daylight—plus a chance to hear a new band sounded oddly appealing. Only because her previous weekend had been so boring, and she was anxious for a chance to get out of Spokane, even if only for one day. Jan’s company was a minor inconvenience, and certainly not the reason Tina said yes.

  *

  Jan let herself into the dark, empty house and leaned against the closed door. Her dad had only been with her for a week before he was back in the hospital, but already the place seemed lonelier than it had before he had come. She’d survive the loneliness, though. She always had. And once she had all the pieces of her life in place, she would start the search for someone to share it with. Not before. Not while everything was so topsy-turvy she could barely make it through a single day without a feeling of vertigo.

  Too many loose ends. The house was a great investment if she had the time to do the renovations on her long to-do list. If she had to sell in the near future, so she and her dad could move to a better city for his care? Then it was nothing more than a liability, a huge setback in her plan to build a real home. She moved through the house, turning on as few lights as possible while she prepared for bed. She didn’t want to see the harsh lines of reality tonight, when the memory of the dimly lit bar and Tina’s presence were so clear in her mind. A night or two with Tina would be a pleasant side trip, a break from her fruitless attempts to reach her goals, but how much more lonely would this place feel when Tina inevitably moved on? Tina wasn’t looking for anything permanent—and neither was Jan right now—but the thought of touching her and then watching her walk away was too much to bear.

  Jan slid between the sheets and let images from the evening replay in her head. It had taken monumental effort to focus on the pool game instead of on Tina, but it had been worth it to see the expression of stunned appreciation on Tina’s face after Jan won the game. She hoped she had made it appear effortless, but with Tina standing so close behind her, she’d been afraid she wouldn’t even be able to hit the cue ball, much less run the table. All Tina would have had to do was take one step forward while Jan was leaning over to take a shot, and their hips would have been pressed together. Jan felt warmth spread from the point of imagined contact through her whole body. Tina’s music drifted through her mind as she slid her hand over her tense stomach muscles. In real life, she couldn’t let Tina get any closer, certainly not close enough to touch. But in her fantasies? She could go all the way.

  Chapter Eight

  A quiet, boring street. Nothing to see. Tina tried to distract herself with work or television, but she kept returning to the window and twitching aside the curtain. She was anxious to get going because she needed a day trip, a chance to get out of Spokane. Jan’s company was just incidental. Tina left the apartment, locking the door behind her, as soon as she saw Jan’s Prius pull up to the curb. A whole day together. Brooke would
be thrilled, but Tina sure as hell wasn’t going to tell her about the outing. She felt safe assuming Jan wouldn’t, either.

  “Nice car,” she said when she sat down. Her car might be a Toyota as well, but the similarity ended there. Jan’s was only a year or two old, and clean inside and out. No trails of sticky dried Coke streaking down the dash, or piles of sheet music, art supplies, and fast-food bags littering the backseat. And probably no emergency stash of napkins from McDonald’s and cardboard cup sleeves from Starbucks in the glove compartment. There were, however, two large Starbucks coffees in the cup holders.

  “Thanks,” Jan said as she merged onto the street. She pointed at the coffee. “I hope you like sweet. Mocha on the left, vanilla latte on the right. You get your pick.”

  Tina took the mocha and moved the latte to the holder on Jan’s side. She settled back in her seat and took a sip of her drink. Drops of rain freckled the window as Jan turned toward I-90.

  “How far are we going?”

  “About a half hour,” Jan said. “Coeur d’Alene is just over the Idaho border. It’s an easy trip, and there are some beautiful places to hike and camp around the lake. I used to go there a lot with Dad, and with friends when I was in college, but I haven’t been for a couple years. How’s your PR work for Peter going?”

  “Not bad. The drapes for his home-and-garden show booth were the wrong color, so I had to spend a few hours begging and threatening before the company agreed to redo them. And I’ve been trying to convince Peter to set up a permanent booth at the farmers’ market, so he can sell herbs and vegetable starts there. And maybe some of the handcrafted things he loves so much.”

  “What a great way to connect with the community,” Jan said.

  “Exactly what I told him. How was your week at school?” Tina asked when it was her turn. She and Jan sounded like they had spent the evening before coming up with safe conversation starters. She hoped they wouldn’t be talking about the weather by the time the ride was over. It was supposed to be rainy all day, so the topic wouldn’t get them through many miles of drive time.