Page 44 of The Beat Match

His gaze skipped to the other two books on the floor. “That habit of yours is maddening.”

“Answer the question, Herbert.”

He smirked. “The creatively brilliant Anthea Ward is carefree and happy in all things in life and never gets frustrated. She’d rather quit when puzzles get hard, than hurt her brain.”

“You’re a real comedian.” She fanned her hand at his travel-inspired scrapbook page, which was as atrocious as he thought. “Stop thinking about the outcome. Just create.”

His amusement swirled down some invisible drain. “You make carefree look easy.”

“It’s not easy. Not always, at least. I’ve started teaching piano and it’s—”

“When did you start?”

She listened for annoyance in his abrupt question. Irritation that she hadn’t shared her newest job/hobby. All she heard was curiosity. “A couple months ago, and it’s hard. As much as I practice, I worry I’ll never be good enough to teach beyond the beginner level. I’ve thought about giving up—which is shocking, I know.” She nudged his calf with her foot under the table. A sad smile, too sad for a scrapbooking night, tilted his lips. “But someone in my life is always on me to stick with the tough stuff. You might know the guy. He irons his underwear and his socks.”

Wes didn’t laugh at her joke. He stared over her shoulder at her bookcase. The wood shelves were filled with more unfinished puzzle books, romance novels, mystery novels, historical novels. No rhyme or rhythm to her taste. “I don’t think I’m fine,” Wes murmured, as though to himself. Then louder, “When you asked about how I’m coping…I think I’m drowning a bit.”

She closed her book, whisper-soft, worried too much noise would send Wes back into martyr mode. “At work?”

“Work, the merger, my music—biting off more than I can chew.”

“Can you cut back on any of it?”

He brushed excess sparkles off his page, an absentminded movement. “There’s too much on the line at work right now. And I’m on the cusp of something with the shows. A way to engage the crowd in social issues.”

“The video feeds?”

His eyes snapped to hers, questioning. “I haven’t put my finger on it yet, but yeah. I have this unique access to people. They’re already in a space they love, attuned to me, listening to music that lifts them up. It’s the perfect medium to say something meaningful, but it has to be the right message, and it has to be done right. I need more time to figure it out.”

He hadn’t mentioned the video recordings while she’d been around. With his no-questions rule, she hadn’t asked him about his plans with the project, but the gimmick had so much potential. Leo would have loved it. He’d be ten steps ahead of them, thinking of ways to broaden their appeal, make them more than background beauty. Maybe the images could be a tribute to him, a way to remind people lax gun laws had consequences.

“I could help with that aspect,” she offered. “Play with footage that might work.” She wasn’t sure Wes would like the gun-control angle. They’d only started talking about Leo. She could work on it before telling him, make sure it had merit before spilling the idea.

But the control freak said, “No.” Didn’t even blink.

“You don’t think I’m good enough to help?”

He made a weird face and grunted, then pulled himself up onto the couch. “You have enough on your plate. I won’t add to your stress.”

“You already are.”

A rough laugh rushed out. “Now I feel worse. I should probably go, let you get some sleep.”

He didn’t move to leave, and he didn’t understand what she was getting at, all stuck in his head as usual. “I’m glad you came, and I don’t want you to go. But, yeah, seeing you stressed upsets me.” That wasn’t quite it, though. Seeing him struggling affected her on a visceral level. She took a breath and said quietly, “When you hurt, I hurt.”

He closed his eyes, his elbows falling heavily on his knees. A familiar pose. Her lungs felt like shriveled husks. She had no clue where that admission had come from. It hadn’t even been a thought in her lovesick head. Those hadn’t been head words, though. Those had been heart words.

He didn’t reply or accept her help or acknowledge the depths of what she’d admitted. He stretched out his fingers and picked at the glue stuck to his hand.

Glue she could focus on. Scrapbooking. Her late brother’s best friend zapping her heart with static-electric bursts? Hard pass.

She fetched a warm washcloth from her bathroom, returned, and crawled between Wes and the edge of her coffee table. She knelt on the floor in the middle of his spread thighs. Probably a bad idea. “If you let me touch your manly hands, I’ll rescue you from glue prison.”

His hard jaw sharpened further, his cheeks becoming dark craters. An intimidating look from any other man. Not on Wes. She knew he slept with a nightlight on in his en-suite bathroom and drank warm milk when he couldn’t sleep. Under his granite exterior and piles of money, he was just a man trying to get by.

After an awkward few seconds—her on her knees between his heavy thighs, him looking all Mike Tyson about to go ten rounds in the ring—he offered her his hand.

The second she touched his skin, she flinched. Or he did. Maybe they’d both flinched as their fingers softly brushed. That galloping heart was definitely hers, though. She should drop the cloth, let him de-glue himself on his own. Not risk him seeing how deeply he affected her.