AllFreeNovel
Share Us
For the next couple of hours, I drove the kids into town to Tune Up, a real music store, complete with drum sets, guitars, violins, and cellos. There was only one rule. Whatever instrument they wanted to learn how to play, had to be portable for each of them. Meaning no drum sets or cellos.
Hank was so excited, he handed me his blanket to hold for him while he looked around the store.
Of course, they each wanted to know what everything sounded like first, and I did my best to accommodate them, even trying a few chords on a guitar for Emily.
“That’s too big,” she said after she watched me strap it on. “Do they have a small guitar?”
A perky sales woman, Jackie, according to her nametag, with short, dark hair and a winsome smile, said, “I think I have just the thing.”
Ten minutes later, the woman had not only won Emily over with the perfect instrument, but she had me considering a new violin or rather a fiddle, as she liked to call it.
There was no difference in the two. It was all in the way you played the instrument. I’d never played any country music on my violin, but she had me itching to try.
“It’s all in the attitude,” she said. “You play a fiddle when you’re trying to make folks want to dance and kick up their heels. You play a violin when you want folks to sit in their expensive heels and listen. Both worthwhile. Just depends on what you want to accomplish.”
“Thanks,” I told her. “I never thought about it that way before.”
“Well, darling, I hope you’ll come back and let me know what you decided.”
“I um…” I started to tell her that I wouldn’t be around long enough to return, but then I changed my mind. “Will do.”
Jackie and I chatted a bit more while I paid for everything with the credit card Loraine had given me and drove back home with our new instruments and some new violin strings for me.
Once we arrived, I knew the guys would be breaking for lunch soon, so I figured it was now or never, or at least now or wait until tomorrow.
I swung open the door to their music studio and marched right in, kids in tow, with each of them carrying their musical instrument of choice.
As soon as the door swung open, the music they were playing abruptly stopped, and they darted their eyes our way. I led the parade, with the kids following right behind me in a little line, with Lucy bringing up the rear. She carried the flute Hank had given her when he couldn’t make up his mind on his instrument of choice.
“What the…?” Austin asked, as he sat with his guitar obviously going over a song he was trying to write with Kasey, who sat next to him holding his own guitar. They sat in front of a small table that contained handwritten sheet music. Austin didn’t appear to like the interruption.
“I thought we made it clear, the kids aren’t allowed in here when we’re working?” Boone said. He sat at an elaborate keyboard.
“Is that what you want to do?” I asked.
“I want to work, too, Daddy,” Hank said.
“Me too,” both Emily and Annie said at the same time.
Hank held onto a harmonica that was almost as big as he was, while Annie held her fifteen-inch “fiddle” and bow, and Emily had a black ukulele strapped around her neck. She’d insisted that it should be black like her daddy’s guitar.
My first violin had been the same size I’d bought for Annie, and it had fit me perfectly. The one I played now was twenty-two inches long, which was also perfect for me.
“I don’t know…” Kasey said, his voice fading as he shook his head.
All three of the guys wore jeans and different-colored t-shirts, some with buttons, and others were plain. The t-shirts clung to their ripped chests, outlining every muscle. They also wore cowboy boots, and Austin even wore his black hat.
The entire room wreaked of beautiful male testosterone, and I drank it in like a glass of water on a hot day. These three men had such an effect on me that just being around all three of them at one time took my breath away. I couldn’t seem to get enough of them. Even at night, when I had those hours to myself, I found that I liked hanging around the house with them instead, sharing a bottle of wine or watching something on Netflix. I was getting to know them, and so far, I liked what I was learning… liked it a lot.
Kasey and I had somehow managed to keep our distance. We never spoke about what happened that morning while everyone was gone, and that was fine with me. I knew if we started talking about it, we’d be back in his bedroom again… or mine… and I couldn’t afford that. It would screw up all my plans. I avoided being alone with him at all costs and so far, I’d kept my distance.
At least until now. The way he looked over at me told me he wasn’t ready to let me keep on avoiding him.
Still, now was certainly not the time.
I stood in the middle of the kids, thinking of how I would make their case, when Lucy broke the ice by trotting over to Austin and Boone and dropping her large flute between them, dropping to her haunches, and letting out a little whine that almost sounded as if it had come from her flute.
“See, Daddy? Even Lucy wants to work,” Emily said.
