Black Jack

3

"Hey, you wanna go to the audition today?" Sebastian asked Jack the next morning.

His jaw ground. There was no way in hell he was going to go to that audition, not after the way she'd run out on him at lunch. "No," he snapped.

"What's your problem?"

Jack slammed his hand down on his desk and bellowed the whole thing at Sebastian, who listened stonily without interrupting. Good man, that Sebastian. Then he was finished and Sebastian was still staring at him stonily. "What."

"Soooooo you referenced your girlfriends—plural—on a date with a woman who thinks you're amusing and is better educated than you and understands what comes out of your mouth and might not have minded spending the weekend in bed with you. And oh, that's after your current girlfriend trashed her audition, which was why you had to call in a marker owed to your dad to get her another one."

Jack stilled, gaping at Sebastian. "Ummmm ... "

"Mmm hm. You know, at some point, you're going to have to admit that your endless stream of stupid women is making you stupid, too. I'm shocked she didn't hand you your ass on a platter, but, unlike you, she does care about social niceties and isn't the type to make a scene. Or else she knows you got her another chance at—"

Jack growled low in his chest and turned away. "She knew as soon as she got the call-back," he muttered, pissed. At her—didn't she know she was different? At Sebastian—for not—for, for, for pointing it out. At himself for being that rusty with smart, nice women.

Definitely time to be more discriminating about his choices in women.

He stood at the floor-to-ceiling wall-to-wall window overlooking Hudson River, one hand propped on his hip and his head down, the other hand rubbing the back of his neck. "Fuck," he whispered. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."

It was only then he realized how much that mattered to him. She wasn't anything he preferred in women. She was short, chubby, wild-haired, leather-clad, fresh-faced, curvy, bold, funny, smart, nice, interested in what he enjoyed and analytically minded enough to follow about half of it ... Right up to the point he reminded her she wasn't special.

Except she was.

"So," Sebastian said smugly, "you want to come to the audition with me? She might have cooled off a little, you never know."

"Yes," he muttered.

Which was how he found himself sitting in the shadows at Juilliard again, slouched down this time, watching her cross the stage in a red bullfighter outfit this time—

"How much does that thing cost?" he asked.

"Right around seven grand."

—her calf muscles cut in high relief from her black stilettos, her expression blank and her voice colorless.

That wasn't her, the gold flashes and stilettos. That wasn't her, trying to perform for a discerning audience. That wasn't her, with the expressionless face and voice announcing what she was going to play, which was different from before but, so Sebastian whispered to him, no less impressive.

He didn't care.

He knew how she laughed and smiled, how she spoke, her voice delicately throaty, full of color, and dripping sex, and her laugh like silk, her gray eyes— Just gray. She seemed to like that he found nothing remarkable about her eyes, which, after her explanation, he supposed he could understand. If he believed that bullshit.

That fatal moment in their conversation looped in his mind like a fly at a picnic that wouldn't leave him alone. Ramona—hell, any of the women he'd dated for however long they interested him—would've ignored it, missed it, faked a laugh at it, or tolerated it so as to keep him in her sphere whether she liked it or not.

Why did this little piano teacher from Kansas matter so much? She was going home in a week or so, whenever she felt like it, apparently. Sebastian had made it clear he felt Lydia was too good for Jack, and really wanted her to hand Jack his ass. On a platter. She was shit on a stage and she—

Started playing. Not as badly as she had the day before, certainly. She was a little more relaxed, still hesitant through the first thirty seconds or so, but picked up steam and confidence as she went along. If she hit a wrong note, he wouldn't know it, so he couldn't judge that part.

He sat and listened. Bored. He hated this stuff, but here he was, hearing her, but not listening. Watching her. It was dark everywhere but on stage where she was spotlit, the gold embroidery glinting with every movement.

She was gaining speed, gaining confidence, visibly starting to forget the jury. She was building to that point where she'd hit her stride like she had two days before when she'd filled the darkness with noise, passionate noise: her body invested in the keys; her fingers flying and pounding; her feet strategically pressing and stomping on the pedals; her curls were bobbing and—

He jumped halfway out of his seat when his cell phone squawked into the darkness.

So did everyone else.

CRASH

Again.

He scrambled for his phone, hearing Sebastian start swearing at him, getting it out of his coat pocket, fumbling it, dropping it with a loud clatter. It squawked again before he got it turned off, but it was too late. He looked up to see her hands hit the keyboard again so hard the lid dropped on her knuckles. Her shriek of pain shot through him like a bullet.

She jerked her hands out from under the wood and cradled them to her breast, her head bowed, her body rocking slowly, her back and chest heaving.

Sebastian shot out of his seat and ran down the aisle while Jack sat motionless, horrified, watching his best—only—friend vault himself up onto the stage and pull her up gently, turning her, guiding her off the stage, hiding her from the audience of a dozen discerning musicians and one uncultured swine.

He dropped his head into his palm.

"Good job, Fourth," Bobby Helah called back to him. "Always count on you to come through in a clutch. Tell your dad hi for me."

He was going to put that motherfucker in the poorhouse before the month was out.