Page 19 of My One Week Husband
I imagine I am playing for them.
To the untrained ear, I do a fine job. I could entertain a drawing room. I could play at a tea party. I could amuse friends lounging in the living room on a winter weekend as the snow fell outside the window.
But that’s not what I once did with the violin. Party tricks were not my specialty.
I was capable of moving worlds.
I could make the instrument weep.
I could bring audiences to their knees.
I can still play.
But not like that.
More like a shadow.
My fingers, my muscles, my mind—they can all play the notes, and I hear the flaws in between the notes I play.
I know, too, how to repair them. How to make this instrument play magnificently in the kind of way that earned me a solo chair at the opera house.
Only, I can’t do that anymore.
My hands don’t work in that fashion any longer.
They can no longer make world-renowned music.
They haven’t been able to for more than fifteen years, since I was eighteen years old and consumed with an anger I never expected, courtesy of a decision that blindsided me.
A decision that failed to deliver the justice my family deserved.
At the time, righteous rage jet-propelled me to do the stupidest thing of all—punch a wall.
With my right hand. My prized possession. My greatest gift.
I damaged my ability to do what I loved most: making music.
It was a crime of passion. I was the perpetrator. I was the victim. I was the fool.
Now I’m left with memories of a once-great talent and a long, jagged scar on my hand.
It’s a reminder of how dangerous emotions are. Emotions lead to consequences. To families torn asunder. To talent squandered because of a matchstick choice.
I’m the sole architect of the destruction of my once-upon-a-time career as a violin prodigy, playing on the world’s greatest concert stages before I was even eighteen.
I ended the greatest love affair of my life with an emotional choice—a choice that ended the violin and me.
Now, it’s best to keep my heart sanitized of emotions.
Closing my eyes, I finish the Brahms piece, the slightly above average, merely good enough music that I now make doing its part to numb my heart once again.
I lower the bow, then run my fingers gently along the body of the instrument, treating the violin with the tenderness it deserves.
I tuck it away in its case where it’s safe from harm.
Safe from me.
7
Scarlett
“What does one pack for a weeklong trip with her business partner?”
I pose that question to my friend Nadia a few days after the dinner with Cole and Daniel.
She furrows her brow as we walk through Le Marais following a lunch with some of her advertisers. Nadia is mostly fluent in French, but I was there to help her translate, since she’s in Paris meeting with advertising executives as part of her plans for marketing pro football here in Europe.
“That is the dilemma,” she says with a thoughtful hum as we pass Amelie’s, the delectable scent of raspberry tarts and chocolate croissants tempting me from the bakery. I lift my nose in the direction of the open door, like a dog shamelessly stealing a whiff. “Add in the caveat that one is actively trying to deny an attraction to said business partner,” Nadia continues with a wink.
My jaw drops, and I fling a hand to my chest. “Moi? Never.”
She points at me. “You.”
I shrug in admission. “Fine. Fine. No denials.”
“It’s always good to be honest with oneself and one’s friends. Men? That’s another story,” she says with a laugh as we round the corner, passing a boutique peddling shoe after decadent shoe. Her eyes swing to the display of fuchsia, garnet, and cranberry-red heels. She holds up a finger. “Hold on. We must discuss all the things, but first, I have to ogle these beauties.” She stops to practically undress the footwear with her eyes.
“Would you like to go in there and rub up against that lovely pair of sapphire-blue pumps?” I ask, pointing to a shiny four-inch set in the display. “Perhaps mate with them? Take them home and pet them all night?”
“As a matter of fact, I think I will,” she says, then tips her forehead to the store. “Let’s indulge in shoes as we discuss hot, broody, complicated men.”
“So, just like any other time we’re together?”
Flipping her dark-brown hair off her shoulder, she laughs. “You know me so well. Shoes make my lack of a love life so much better.”
I shoot her a sympathetic look. “I thought you were mostly content with your lack of a love life?”
She shrugs, then sighs heavily. “Mostly. But at other times, I wonder—what does it take to get a date as a twenty-five-year-old who owns a football team? I’m anthrax to men.”
I pat her shoulder. “The dilemmas of the young female billionaire.”
