“Fantastic!”
“I’d need an assistant, though.” As soon as she said the words, Gwynne almost changed her mind, because it was her sister who had always been her assistant. Doing a birthday party magic show without her was going to be hard, emotionally.
“I’ll be your lovely assistant,” Dara said.
“You’ll be busy with your niece,” Abby interjected. “I’ll be Gwynne’s assistant.”
Was that jealousy in Abby’s voice? Hard to tell. Gwynne kind of wanted it to be, and that made it hard to be an accurate judge of what, exactly, Abby might be feeling. No, stop, she didn’t need this right now. She didn’t want to be interested in anyone romantically. There was no jealousy in Abby’s voice. She was offering to help, nothing more. Gwynne was reading something into it that wasn’t there.
“I always wanted to wear a top hat,” Abby said. “Do I get to wear a top hat?”
“If you want to.”
See? Maybe Abby was a fan of magic shows. Nothing to do with Gwynne at all.
“I can wear a top hat,” Dara said.
“Wouldn’t you rather spend the afternoon focusing on the kids?” Abby rose from the sofa and moved to a chair closer to Gwynne, which to Gwynne’s overactive imagination felt like she was staking a claim on her.
“Yeah, but…” Dara trailed off, looking conflicted.
“It’s up to you,” Abby said graciously, blowing Gwynne’s theory. “Or we could flip for it.”
“I guess I would rather sit with the girls,” Dara decided.
“Great,” Abby said. “I really want to do this.”
“Why?” Dara asked.
Good question. Gwynne was interested to know the answer to that herself. Was Abby attempting to protect her from having to spend time alone with Dara? Because the alternative explanation would be that Abby was fighting Dara over her. Politely, subtly, so subtly as to border on imperceptibility, but nevertheless…
“You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into,” Gwynne said, because if Abby thought a relationship with her was a good idea, she was not as smart as she looked.
Abby draped one arm over the back of the chair and swiveled to face her. Her eyes sparkled with curiosity. “You’re not going to saw me in half or anything, are you?”
And if she was really smart and could read her mind, she’d just made a deliberate choice to misunderstand her.
“Not in front of little girls, no.”
She was losing it if she thought Abby could read her mind.
“From what I hear, it’s more of a live animal show,” Dara said.
“Just rabbits,” Gwynne clarified.
Abby’s eyes widened, still twinkling. “So you’re saying I just volunteered for rabbit poop cleanup duty?”
“They’re litter trained,” Gwynne said. “And I will clean up.”
“So chivalrous,” Dara murmured.
Gwynne shrugged it off. “Your job is mostly to distract the audience,” she told Abby, as businesslike as possible. Her heart, though, was singing. “We can go over it the morning of the party.”
“No rehearsal?” Abby said.
“You’ll do fine.” It would be easy to insist on days and days of rehearsal just for a chance to be alone with her, but the show didn’t need days of rehearsal. Based on listening to her play the harp she knew Abby was comfortable improvising, so it was a good bet she wouldn’t need much of a run-through. “If we mess up, we wing it.”
She turned to Dara and winked, hoping Dara wasn’t worried the party would be a disaster. “Don’t tell Dara I said that.”
Chapter Six
Gwynne arrived early at Abby’s apartment Saturday afternoon to help her lug her harp to the beach wedding of someone named Penelope. Abby had said if she wasn’t dealing with sand she’d roll her harp on a hand truck, but in this case, she was going to have to hoist her instrument across the beach to the mini-platform that would be set up for her. Gwynne had volunteered to help because…uh…why
did
she volunteer? It just kind of happened. Well, why not? Nothing wrong with being helpful. There was also a stool and an amp to carry, but the main thing was the harp, which was apparently not the small one she used at the hospital nor the large one she played at the spa, but an even bigger, better one. “You have three harps?” she’d asked, and Abby had laughed and said, “Come to my apartment and I’ll show you.”
As soon as Gwynne walked through Abby’s front door, she understood. There were at least a dozen harps spread around the room, with several folding chairs and music stands littered among them, leaving no room for the overstuffed sofa which had been relegated to the corner.
“I used to have a room called a living room,” Abby said, smoothing the hem of a thigh-skimming crocheted sweater over her jeans and gesturing for her to come in. She laughed, seemingly not the least bit embarrassed to laugh at her own joke, and harp strings all around the room responded, resonating with her voice and filling the air with a burst of unexpected sound. For that one magical moment they sang on their own, without being touched, as if they were real, live beings.
“You have quite a collection.” Gwynne picked her way through the room, careful not to bump into anything. “I had no idea.”
“I know it’s a lot, but I figure when you really love something, it’s worth going overboard.”
“They’re beautiful.” The harps were all different sizes and made of different types of wood. Some were decorated with intricate carvings or mother-of-pearl inlay; others were unadorned, elegant in their simplicity.
“This monster is the one we’re dragging to the beach.” Abby ran her hand lovingly over the gleaming cherry and maple. It was not dramatically bigger than the harp she played at the spa, maybe between five and six feet tall, but it had a lot more decoration. Nearly every surface was covered in swirling Celtic knots accented with—aack—gold leaf. And the most striking thing about the harp was the carved dragon that emerged from the wood like a gargoyle, clutching the pillar at the front.
“I have never seen a harp like that.” She’d never even imagined a harp like that. It should have been the first thing she noticed when she walked in the room. She ran her hand over the dragon’s scales. The workmanship was amazingly detailed. “Where did you find this?”
“I met the luthier at a summer music festival.” Abby patted the dragon on the head. “Do you want to get going or can I introduce you to the others?”
“We have lots of time.” Anything Abby wanted to do was fine with her. It wasn’t like the wedding would start without the harpist…er, harper…what the heck, without the musician…and anyway, they really did have plenty of time. She had made a point of being early.
Abby turned to the harp closest to the door. “This is the one I use at the spa, of course. It has gorgeous resonance, which is perfect for meditative music, although the sound can get muddy when I play fast.” She ran her index finger up the strings and a blur of notes filled the air. “The one I’m playing tonight has a tighter feel.”
She went from harp to harp, pointing out differences in tone that Gwynne didn’t have the ear to appreciate, never mentioning anything she didn’t like about any particular harp. Despite the sheer number of harps she owned, it was clear she loved each one.
“Listen to this one.” Abby sat on a folding chair and rested a diminutive harp between her thighs. She played a lullaby that rung like crystal raindrops, clear and high-pitched. “It’s fun, even though it’s only twelve strings, which is useless. You can’t get any low notes when the strings are so short.” Reluctantly she set the harp on the floor and gazed at it longingly. “I rescued it from a client’s neighbor’s basement. Stringed instruments lose their tone if you abandon and ignore them. But the richness is starting to come back.” She reached down and plucked a few more notes. “I should get my stuff together so we can go.”
“No rush,” Gwynne said. She could listen to her play all day.
“I don’t want to be late. What time is it?” Abby checked her watch. “Oh, we have plenty of time. I could give you a tour of the rest of the apartment, if you want.”
She’d rather listen to her play, but she supposed she could do that at work. Resigned, she followed dutifully through the kitchen, the bathroom, and to the door of the one room she most didn’t need to see: the bedroom. While Abby waltzed in, Gwynne hesitated in the doorway. A polite glance revealed a sewing machine on a desk, a bed she averted her eyes from, and a wall lined with a series of framed charcoal drawings of angels.
“You collect angels,” she observed neutrally. Lots of people collected angels, she reminded herself. It didn’t mean anything.
“I know, a harper who collects angels. What a surprise, right?”
Gwynne didn’t want to enter any farther into the room, but she also didn’t want Abby to think she was uncomfortable coming in. She could act cool. It wasn’t like she’d never been in a woman’s bedroom before. She strolled over to the drawings to examine them more closely. The angels were all gossamer, their shapes suggested by a few areas of shading and smudged lines that made them disappear into the paper, barely there. They were simple, but they radiated raw emotion: Wistfulness. Compassion. Pure joy.
“Did you draw these?”
“Yeah. I took an art class in college. All except for that one on the other wall—my friend Penelope drew that one for me. She’s a lot better than I am.”
“No, you’re good. You really captured that feeling of unreality about them, the way you can see right through them.”
Abby was looking at her funny. Why would she look at her like…She knew Gwynne could see angels, right? Anyone who spent more than an hour with her at the spa would have picked up on that popular piece of gossip.
“You’re not even looking,” Abby said.
“At what?”
“At Penelope’s drawing.”
Abby swung her arm like a traffic cop in exaggerated circles and pointed at the far wall to another framed drawing, this one done in black ink. The angel had tattered butterfly wings and wore demon-kicking thigh-high boots with lots of buckles drawn in painstaking detail. More fairy than angel, to be honest. Her wings partially obscured her torso while simultaneously making it quite clear she was otherwise nude.
“She’s good,” Gwynne admitted despite herself. “Your friend’s got quite the imagination.”
“She said my angels didn’t have big enough boobs. I think it was a joke.”
“Or a come-on.” If someone drew Gwynne a picture like that, she’d definitely read into it. “Were you dating?”
“We were just friends.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. It’s not like I have so many ex-girlfriends I’d get confused and not remember sleeping with her.”
“I have a hard time believing you don’t have women falling all over you all the time.”
Abby’s face twitched as if she didn’t know what to make of her compliment. And who could blame her? It was the type of charming, insincere comment that anyone who detected that note of bitter bewilderment in Abby’s voice would feel compelled to make. But Gwynne wasn’t insincere—she meant it. There was something irresistible about the way Abby’s freckled, heart-shaped face glowed with innocence. Something desirable about the faint crinkles at the corners of her eyes. Why hadn’t she dated more? Or had Gwynne simply misunderstood her comment?
“Believe it.” Dismissing further debate, Abby walked to her closet and pulled out her performance dress and hung it on the back of the closet door. The dress had a navy blue satin lining with a gauzy lavender see-through overlay and navy sequins. Gwynne would not be caught dead wearing sequins, but she was positive Abby could pull it off.
Abby hunted through a chest of drawers, rummaging through a jumble of bras, underpants and tights. “If you were my navy blue bra, where would you be?”
Oh, dear God, she was definitely not answering that.
If I were your bra…
She attempted to search the room so Abby wouldn’t look at her face and see the whole list of inappropriate answers that crowded her brain.
“I thought musicians wore black,” she said stupidly. This wasn’t an orchestra gig and she’d never seen Abby wear black.
Abby tucked her hair behind her ear. “Black is boring. When I perform, I put on a show.”
She didn’t need to. People didn’t hire her because her dress was nice or because her harp looked like a dragon. They hired her because her skill was breathtaking and her music sang to the vulnerable places in her audience’s hearts.
“Besides,” Abby said, “that way if somebody hates my music, and they come up to me after the performance because their date dragged them along and they’re smiling nervously, trying to think of something to say while their date is going on and on about how great I was, they can always say
I love your dress
.”
“A pity gesture for your non-fans? That’s sad.” And Gwynne didn’t believe it for a minute. “What if they don’t love your dress?”
“What, you don’t love my dress? Everyone loves this dress.” Abby arranged the gown against the closet door to admire it. “If not, they’re welcome to lie.”
“Then I definitely love your dress.” She didn’t have much of an opinion either way. Pretty? Yes. Over-the-top? Also a yes. Lust-worthy? Not unless Abby was the one wearing it.
Abby fanned the skirt of her gown and fingered the hem. “It took forever to sew, but I love this old-fashioned glamour.”
“You made that yourself?” Gwynne didn’t sew, but it was obvious, even to her, that this was not a beginner’s project.
“I spend all my money collecting harps. I don’t have any left over for costumes.”
“I have to say the dress looks amazingly intricate.” It was the polite thing to say, and it was true too.
“And sexy?”
“Um…sure.”
“I know I said you were welcome to lie, but…you don’t have to lie. I’m aware that this dress scares women off.” Abby let the fabric slip through her fingers. “No one ever says
You look hot in that dress, can I ask you out?
Because women who date women would rather date someone who doesn’t wear sequins.”
“Then you haven’t found the right woman.” One who would be insane to care about her sequins when she could be looking at the way her hair fell across her face while she leaned over her harp, or the way she lit up when she smiled.