What would she do? Take a taxi back to the hotel, perhaps have a glass of hot milk while she went over the evening’s events with her father, and then to bed like the good little girl she was. Her fingers fumbled on the buttons of her coat.
She didn’t want to play out the staid script her life had become, didn’t want the role her father had given her years ago. Seeing that man, whoever he was, had awakened in her a need to experience more, be and know more. To actually live life.
Even if just for a night.
She sighed, trying to dismiss the feelings, for what could she do? She was twenty-four years old, alone in Paris, the evening ahead of her, and she had no idea what to do, how to slake this thirst for life, for experience.
Monsieur Dupres knocked on her dressing-room door once more. ‘Shall I have the night porter summon a taxi?’
Abby opened her mouth to accept, then found herself shaking her head. ‘No, thank you, Monsieur Dupres. It’s a lovely evening out. I’ll walk.’
The manager’s heavy brows drew together in an ominous frown. ‘Mademoiselle, it is raining.’
Abby refused to back down. This was a tiny, insignificant act of defiance, yet it was hers. ‘Still.’ She smiled. ‘I’ll walk.’
With a shrug Monsieur Dupres turned away. With her fingers clenched around her handbag, Abby left the dressing room and the concert hall behind her, stepping out into the cool, damp night alone.
Alone; she was completely alone on the deserted Rue du Faubourg St Honoré. The pavement was slick with rain, the lights of the speeding taxis washing the road in pale yellow.
Abby looked around, wondering what to do. Her hotel, a modest little establishment, was half a mile away. She could walk, she supposed, as she’d told Monsieur Dupres she would do. A little stab of disappointment needled her. She wanted to experience life, so she was walking home alone in the rain—how ridiculous.
Her heels clicked on the pavement as she started down the street. A man in a trenchcoat hurried by, his collar turned up, and Abby glimpsed a pair of lovers entwined in the shelter of a doorway; the woman’s upturned face was misted and glowing with rain.
Abby walked, conscious more than ever of how alone she was. A woman dripping with furs and jewels stepped out of the bright lobby of an elegant hotel, her haughty, made-up face glowering with disdain at the world around her.
Abby slowed to a stop, the light from the lobby pooling, golden, around her feet. Through the ornate glass doors she could see a marble foyer and a huge crystal chandelier. As the door swooshed shut she caught the sound of clinking crystal, the trill of feminine laughter.
Without thinking about what she was doing—or why—Abby caught the closing door and thrust it open once more, even as the night porter leapt to attention a second too late. She dismissed him with a wave of her hand and slipped inside, the warmth and light of the hotel enveloping her with a strange new, electric excitement as she stood uncertainly in the doorway.
She’d been to hotels before all over the world. She was utterly familiar in foyers such as these, could issue commands to a bellboy or concierge in many different languages. Yet now as she stood there alone, uncertain, everything felt new. Different. For this time she was alone, no one knew who or where she was, and she could do as she pleased.
The question was, do what?
‘Mademoiselle…?’ A bellboy started forward, eyebrows raised in query. Abby lifted her chin.
‘I’m looking for the bar.’
The man nodded and gestured to a room off to the right panelled in dark wood. Abby nodded her thanks and started towards the long, mahogany bar, still with no idea what she was doing…or why.
She slid onto a leather stool, her hands clasped in front of her. The bartender, dressed in a tuxedo, was slowly polishing a tumbler. He glanced at her, taking in her worn coat and the diamanté straps of her evening gown visible from the open collar. Expressionless, he raised an eyebrow.
‘Would you like a drink?’
‘Yes.’ Abby swallowed. She’d ordered wine, she’d drunk champagne; on occasion she’d had a nameless cocktail at one function or another. Now she wanted something different.
‘I’ll have…’ She swallowed, her mouth dry. ‘A martini.’
‘Straight or on the rocks?’
Oh, great. Did she want it with ice? What was even in a martini? And why had she ordered one? She had a feeling she wasn’t going to like it. ‘Straight,’ she said firmly. ‘With an…olive.’ She had a vague collection that it came with olives. If she didn’t like the drink, at least she’d have something to eat.
The bartender turned away, and Abby’s gaze roved over the bar. Only one other person was sitting there, all the way at the other end, and before he even looked up or acknowledged her presence—with a shock that felt like an icy finger trailing down her spine and diving into her belly—she knew.
Him.
CHAPTER TWO
SHE knew it was him; she felt it in that tremor of electric awareness that rippled through her body; every nerve and muscle was on high alert as her heart began to beat with slow, heavy, deliberate thuds. He sat on the last stool, a tumbler of whisky in front of him, his head bent.
Then he raised his head and Abby’s breath caught in her throat, the sheer emotion of the moment turning her breathless and dizzy as he turned so that his gaze met and held hers, just as it had once before. For a long, taut moment neither of them spoke, they simply looked. The look went on far longer than it should have, than was appropriate for two strangers staring at each other in a bar. Still Abby could not look away. She felt as if she were suspended in time, in air, motionless and yet waiting.
‘You’re even lovelier in person.’ He spoke in English with a faint French accent, his low voice carrying across the empty room. Shock rippled through her at the realization that he knew who she was; he recognized her. Of course, plenty of people recognized her. She was the Piano Prodigy, after all. Yet under the quiet heat of his gaze Abby knew he wasn’t looking at her as a prodigy, or even a pianist. He was looking at her as a woman, and that felt wonderful.
‘You remember me,’ she whispered. Her voice trembled and she blushed at the realization, as well as the revealing nature of the statement. She couldn’t dissemble. She didn’t know how to, and she wasn’t even sure she wanted to.
He arched one eyebrow, with the flicker of a smile around his mouth and in his eyes. ‘Of course I remember you,’ he said, a gentle, teasing lilt to his voice—although Abby saw an intensity in his fierce blue eyes, the same intensity she’d seen in the concert hall and had responded to. ‘And now I know you remember me.’
Her blush deepened and she looked away. The bartender had delivered her martini, complete with an olive pierced by a swizzle-stick, and she seized the drink as a distraction, taking far too large a sip.
She choked, gasping as the pure alcohol burned its way to her belly, and she returned the glass to the bar with an unsteady clatter.
She felt rather than saw the man move from his stool to the one next to hers, felt the heat emanating from his lean form, inhaled the woodsy musk of his cologne. And choked a bit more.
‘Are you all right?’ he murmured, all solicitude, although Abby thought she heard a hint of laughter lacing the words. She wiped her eyes and took a deep, cleansing breath.
‘Yes. It…went down the wrong way.’
‘That happens,’ he murmured,