The words were out before she could check them. She could have kicked herself, because now Jake would think she was fishing for a compliment—which was absurd when she did honestly believe she must resemble something the cat had dragged in.
But with a charismatic quirk at a corner of his lips Jake elected not to comment. Instead he walked to the door, opened it and gave her a brief salute. ‘I’ll see you tonight. Five-forty-five. Don’t be late.’
As he stepped out onto the pavement Caitlin had a distinct sense of being dismissed. More to the point, she felt bereft, as if he’d somehow taken a part of her with him. The bell jangled as the door swung back on its hinges and she released a long slow breath, as though she’d been holding on to it for nothing less than a lifetime.
* * *
The realisation that she was late, even though she had a perfectly legitimate reason, made Caitlin furious with herself. Parking her car on the gravel drive that led up to the sombre-looking Victorian church hall, she bit back a ripe curse, fumbling to organise her car keys and purse as she shut the car door behind her. To add insult to injury, a light rain had started to fall.
She glanced down at her watch and her anxious gaze once more registered the time. Six-fifteen… She wasn’t just late—she was very late. But how was she to have known that a customer would walk in the door at exactly a minute before five-thirty? She could hardly turn the girl away—especially when she’d tearfully told Caitlin that she’d just broken up with her boyfriend and someone had recommended she get some rose quartz to help her.
Lia had often teased her friend that she was a magnet for the heartsick, but Caitlin’s naturally compassionate nature wouldn’t allow her to stand back and do nothing when someone was hurting. When push came to shove, though, however she explained her tardiness to Jake Sorenson something told her it wasn’t going to cut any ice.
Summoning every scrap of courage she could muster, she pushed open the creaky wooden door that led into the porch, wrinkling her nose at the pall of mustiness and damp that clung to the air, her heart bumping against her ribs at the sound of instruments tuning up.
Behind the door that led into the cavernous hall Jake was testing the microphone in the familiar time-honoured way of performers the world over: ‘One two, one two…’
Murmuring a briefly fervent prayer, Caitlin pushed open the door. The overhead lights were dimmed, she noticed, and the three members of the band on stage continued to play as Rick Young melted out of the shadows to position himself in front of her. Despite his serious expression, at least his hazel eyes were twinkling, she saw.
‘You’re late, pretty lady. Not a good start, just thought I’d warn you.’
He jerked his chin towards Jake as Blue Sky’s enigmatic manager jumped off the stage, his long jeans-clad legs carrying him purposefully towards Caitlin. It didn’t take a genius to deduce that he wasn’t happy. Blast!
Her chilled fingers curled over the car keys in her pocket and held them tight. It wasn’t as if she was late deliberately. She honestly wanted to take this amazing opportunity they were offering her. But right now, judging by the fierce scowl on Jake’s handsome face, it might just be about to be taken away from her.
‘I’m sorry I’m late. I just—’
‘What was the last thing I said to you?’ he barked.
Startled, Caitlin glanced across at Rick. His expression conveyed that he’d witnessed similar scenarios too many times before to be at all perturbed.
‘Don’t be late?’ she ventured, her teeth anxiously clamping down on her lip.
‘And didn’t I also tell you to be here at five-forty-five? It’s now twenty past six. You’re thirty-five minutes late. That’s not acceptable, Miss Ryan. It’s not acceptable at all.’
Jake was shifting restlessly from one black-booted foot to the other, a muscle ominously flinching in the side of his lean, unshaven jaw. Caitlin didn’t dare quip that his watch must be fast, even though it clearly was. The fact that he was unshaven made him look edgy and dangerous—as if anything could happen and probably would.
‘A customer came into the shop just as I was getting ready to leave—’ the words came out in a heated rush as she gripped even more tightly onto her car keys.
‘Couldn’t you have turned whoever it was away and told them to come back tomorrow?’ he snapped.
Affronted, Caitlin widened her eyes.
‘I never turn customers away. People don’t just come into our shop to buy things, Mr Sorenson. Many of them come in for healing of one kind or another. The girl that I saw was distraught. She’d just broken up with her long-term boyfriend and was looking for something that might help ease her distress. I’m not so cold-hearted that I would tell her in her hour of need to come back tomorrow.’
Jake was so taken aback by this answer that the red mist of anger that had threatened when Caitlin had walked in late dissipated like ice beneath the sun. Sucking in his cheeks, he blew out a long, slow breath, shaking his head and taking a moment to compose himself. I must be losing my grip, he thought irritably.
Caitlin proffered a hesitant smile. Jake’s bemused glance collided with hers just as one corner of her pretty mouth nudged a very sexy dimple. Something hitched in his heart…not to mention below his navel.
‘Well, we’ve wasted enough time as it is,’ he growled. ‘Take off your coat and get yourself up on stage. We’ve got a hell of a lot to get through tonight and we may well be here until breakfast—so be warned.’
After making her apologies to the other band members, seeing that Jake’s attention had suddenly been claimed by Rick, Caitlin fell into animated conversation with them about music. Did they write all their own songs? Did they ever do any covers? And, finally, did they have a playlist for tonight’s rehearsals that she could look at?
The young men were only too pleased to answer her questions, interspersing their answers with jokes and anecdotes and generally going out of their way to help put her at ease. Mike Casey, the lead guitarist, with his tousled dark hair and rather serious brown eyes, explained that he added the harmonies to several of the songs and he and Caitlin would need to spend some time together working on them. Then he told her that he and the others had rented a house in the village for the duration of their stay and she’d be more than welcome to come over and work on them there.
‘Caitlin?’
She spun round at the sound of her name, folding her arms across the blue chambray man’s shirt that she’d thrown over the too-revealing red T-shirt she’d been wearing earlier. The long shirt-tails skimmed her bottom in her tight jeans and helped her feel a little less vulnerable than she had done in the shop, when Jake’s toe-curling glance had all but consumed her with its frank and hungry intensity.
She was staring into the same hauntingly blue depths now as he looked up at her from the foot of the stage. Her mouth dried. He handed her a sheet of paper with music and lyrics on. Accepting it without comment, she let her gaze fall eagerly on the title. It was another great rock standard that she knew by heart.
The lyrics were passionate and heart-rending, and she’d sung it with genuine feeling when she’d first learned it because she’d empathised with the sentiment of the song only too well. It was about a girl whose dreams had been cruelly shattered when the man she loved had used her and ill-treated her and had consequently robbed her of every bit of self-confidence she had…
But now… Her glance quickly perused the musical arrangement and her heart skipped a nervous beat, because the time had come for her to really prove to both the band and their enigmatic manager that she could deliver what they hoped she could. It was one thing to conquer her fear of an audition—quite another to front a band for the first time ever and do it well. This was where things started to get serious.
‘You