THE DEVILS DIME (8 page)

Addie groaned. What’s done is done. She dragged her violin case across the bed and retreated to the safety of her musical chores. At least here she knew all the answers. Why hadn’t she been content to stay in that world she knew so well? The one with her violin tucked under her chin and the music wrapping its safe buffer all around her.

Addie opened the well-worn case and smiled at the new German strings she’d strung just the night before. They were the best in the world, the very first thing she’d bought with her payment from the hotel job.

She switched the violin to her right hand, allowing her healthy left arm and shoulder to do the hard work of tuning the instrument rather than straining her injured side further. It was a shame she couldn’t play that way, and give her inflamed right shoulder a rest for a few days. Because it definitely was inflamed. The rolling burn that had taken up residence there told her so.

Addie twisted the tuning pegs until the new strings were tuned several pitches too high, forcing them to stretch further than they needed to now so they’d cooperate sooner, hold an accurate pitch longer. Today she’d forced herself to stretch, too, perhaps tried to reach a little too high. To take a chance on the father she hoped to find. And it had gone sour.

Addie rolled her shoulder, searching for a comfortable position. When there was none, she knew it was going to get worse before it got better. She was simply going to have to be more careful if she ever hoped to leave the bank and make her living with her violin.

From now on, she’d stay with things she could be sure of, things that wouldn’t let her down. Or, for that matter, knock her down. She’d stay with things she understood.

Judging from today’s experience, perhaps that ought not to include men.

. . .

Ford Magee smashed his palms into his forehead and kicked the book he’d been reading across the room. His heart thumped brutally in his chest as alarming screeches in his eardrum signaled the blood rushing to his head.

She had been right there at his very door! His daughter. Addie. There was no doubt it was her.

His mind kept whipping back to the moment he’d opened the door and thought he’d gone crazy, thought he was seeing a younger, taller Julia standing before him. But it wasn’t Julia. It was Julia’s daughter.

His daughter.

Addie.

Ford’s hands shook as he drew a glass of water from the cool crock he kept on the dry sink. It was her. The same hair. Same accusing hazel-green eyes. The same stricken expression he’d seen when Julia told him she was going away. And taking Addie with her. To her aunt’s place outside Chicago. Where stalkers didn’t lie in wait for brown-haired females on the street.

In his mind’s eye Ford saw that day, saw Julia flinch, retreat, as he’d come toward her to reassure her again that she was safe. That the stalker would never hurt her.

“How do you know that, Ford?” she’d whispered. “How do
you
know
that?” He’d heard the fear rising in her, dulling the musical lilt that normally lived in her voice. Her suspicion had nearly buckled his knees. Who was she really afraid of? The stalker? Or him.

His heart had bled, threatened to stop, each time he closed his mouth on the words that would explain it all to her. But the shame of it would have been too much. She’d never have survived it. The last thing he’d wanted to do was make his wife and daughter fearful. The last thing on his mind was to let the world encroach on his blissful home. And in keeping them safe, in keeping them ignorant of the truth, free of the shame, he’d lost them altogether.

Now it felt as if he’d lost them all over again, and it was a stab to the gut.

“I’ve moved to New York, Father.” Such an innocent statement. So simple.
I’m here.
He’d waited years to hear it. But Ford had stood silent, watching his daughter play with the brooch at her neck, his eyes fixed on the oversized amethyst ring, his gift to this girl’s mother the day Adelaide was born.

Did she know what her mother had meant to him?

She couldn’t possibly, or she’d have suspected what the sight of her might do to him. Instead, she’d just arrived at his door. Unannounced. Unexpected. And all grown up. His tongue that had guarded his words so carefully for so long simply couldn’t loose itself in her unexpected presence.

Ford slumped into the overstuffed chair he kept near the window.

“Damn fool.”

In one breath he voiced the shocked realization that there was no little girl any more. That his four-year-old daughter was gone. He’d longed to see the child. But the woman she’d come to be was another thing entirely.

So like Julia.

His beautiful wife, Julia.

He hadn’t even asked if the girl’s mother was still alive.

Chapter Five

The rest of the orchestra was just disappearing through the secluded offstage door when Addie heard her name spoken behind her. The deep, warm voice identified its owner even before she turned around, and Addie wondered at the little leap her pulse had taken upon simply hearing it.

“Why, Miss Magee. Darned if playing like that doesn’t make me want a dish of ice cream.”

She surreptitiously mopped the perspiration from her forehead with the back of her hand and turned toward the familiar voice. She’d seen him there in the dining room, wanted more than anything to just plunk herself down and get acquainted. But after playing for an hour and a half with a bad shoulder she was dripping wet and faint with hunger. Utterly unpresentable and bent on slipping away.

But he’d found her.

“That is,” he continued with a slight bow, “if you’d care to join me.”

“Well, Mr. Pepper—”

“Jess.”

“—Jess.” Addie looked squarely into the eyes of the man who’d just asked her to step out for ice cream. His informal approach sent a conflicting bevy of alerts. What did his familiarity mean? Did he just assume she was available? Or was he really interested in spending time with her?

She loosened the frog of her violin bow and turned to clip it into the lid of the violin case. As she reached to snap the case shut, the pain in her right shoulder escalated to alarming new heights, and Addie knew the only place she should head was home for a medicinal poultice.

“But I really must get home,” she insisted, settling the case into the crook of her left elbow. If ice cream had any medicinal value, she’d have taken him up on it and slathered the numbing cold mixture over her burning shoulder.

But one look at the face of the man who’d injured it in the first place with his stairwell slam and she herself seemed bent on melting away. His riot of dark hair waved one direction and curled another and framed his face in the most endearing, roguish way. His lopsided grin tied her tongue in a knot and rooted her feet where she stood.

“I’d think you’d be starved after that performance, Miss Magee. I’m sure—“

“Addie.” How quickly she adapted to this casual state of being. Perhaps she could blame it on the shoulder.

“—Addie. I’m sure we can find a café between here and your home, now, can’t we?”

“Yes, of course, but—”

“Then it’s settled? Here, let me carry that.” Jess slipped Addie’s short cloak over her shoulders and in one move extracted the violin case from beneath her arm and steered her toward the door. There wasn’t much she could do but move along.

The first time she’d seen him, Addie had wondered about this moment, what it would feel like if the blue-eyed Jess Pepper asked her to step out with him. Then she’d made a fool of herself on Friday, flailing about on the staircase, and had been certain she’d not see him again. Or shouldn’t.

Not if he was looking for a loose woman, anyway.

But halfway through the opening
Serenade
, Addie had watched the maitre d’ escort the familiar broad shoulders to a table off to her left. Each time he dropped his gaze to attend to his food, she’d studied him.

He was a powerful man, the rare type who could carry off a thick, dark head of hair like that, swept back into handsome chaos. Without the sideburns dignifying his broad face and square chin he might have looked like a prize fighter. Though watching his large, agile hands, Addie had known instinctively he was not a fighter.

At least, not the sordid kind.

His manners were natural, never practiced. Respectful in their simplicity, not polished, yet never seeming to diminish himself...or her. While he rather obviously admired her, it wasn’t the music he seemed most appreciative of, but her expertise in making it. And never once had his expression been anything but attentive.

But what made her most comfortable with him was the simple fact that he was comfortable with himself. He was at ease in his skin, something Addie felt only with her violin tucked beneath her chin.

They moved through the large glass-paneled side door and onto the street, and Addie found herself falling into rhythm with his easy stride. It felt good, walking in the company of this man. Perhaps she could put up with her burning shoulder long enough to enjoy some quiet conversation.

At his quizzical look, she nodded her head to the right. Home was this way.

Addie held her right arm close to her ribs, her hand at her waist. It was the only position that was comfortable. She longed to support it with her left hand, take the weight off the joint. But her left was tucked properly into Jess’s elbow. And that felt entirely too good to abandon.

She fought for control of the small portion of her brain that was not focused on her shoulder and tried to carry on a conversation. He was witty and intelligent, ready with humor and unaware when he was being charming. To her horror, all she could manage were monosyllables.

“I actually think it was quite a piece of marketing genius,” Jess was saying.

“Genius?”

“Oh, absolutely. Ten women clad in the most boring grays known to man playing music more full of color than a gaggle of peacocks.” Jess shifted her violin for a better grip beneath his outside arm. “Sheer genius.”

“A gaggle of peacocks. That’s what we sound like to you?”

“No, no, no. You
sound
like a gaggle of peacocks
looks
. You know what I mean? A tumult of color.”

“Mmm. And we look like...?”

“Hmmm.” Jess walked a couple of paces in silence. “Well, let me put it this way. If you sounded like you look, we’d find you playing in funeral parlors.”

Addie chuckled. It was all too true. She’d told the girls to look like St. Agnes, after all. It was the best way she knew to achieve some sort of uniformity.

“But,” he continued, “if you looked like you sound, they’d sell you to the circus.”

Addie laughed and nearly choked on the pain it rendered in her shoulder. She was getting worse in a hurry. Dammit! Why now? Double damn. That was no mystery. She’d overdone it playing the Delibes
Divertissement
. It was a programming mistake she already regretted. She could easily have left it out and saved her bowing arm the added stress and toll the pizzicato passages always took. But she had to go and show off, for this very fellow who was treating her to iced cream.

“So there you have it. Like I said. Sheer marketing genius. Now, which of these bistros offers the kind of thing a starving virtuoso feeds upon?”

They were halfway down Second Avenue, and Addie had caught him eyeing the last couple of cafés they’d passed. She knew she had to beg off now before he got her into the café. Her grip on the pain seemed to be evaporating more with each step.

“Jess, on second thought, I’m not up to chatting. Or ice cream. I really must be getting home. Please understand.” She watched his face, hoping he wouldn’t think she was brushing him off. The disappointment that fell across his eyes was oddly comforting.

“Forgive me, Addie. I know you must be exhausted. Another time perhaps?”

“Yes!” She answered too quickly and didn’t even blush. A little pain and her feminine tact had fled. “Yes, I’d like that.”

“Is this your building?” Jess asked, and looked up at the gargoyles looming overhead.