Page 47 of The Maverick
The smile came first. Then something warmer underneath it, quieter, in the eyes.
"Hey," he said.
I stood in the doorway with my coat on and my tip money in my pocket and my heart doing the thing it had no business doing.
"That's my guitar," I said.
"I know." He looked down at it. Played one more measure of the melody, soft and unhurried, and let it resolve. "Tasha said you wouldn't mind."
I looked at Tasha. Tasha took a very focused sip of her chai.
"How did you—" I started.
"I knocked," Tommy said simply. "Tasha answered. We got to talking." He glanced at Devon. "Devon let me try the guitar."
"I said he seemed trustworthy," Devon said. "Jury's still out."
"Smart man." Tommy carefully lifted the Gibson and held it out to me the way he'd handed it back at the restaurant—with both hands, the way you returned something you knew the value of.
I crossed the room and took it. Our hands met around the neck. All the way, this time. His fingers warm against mine, not letting go immediately.
"You didn't come in tonight," I said, low enough that it was mostly for him.
"I got tied up." His eyes were on my face. "I'm here now."
Something in the way he said it—simple, certain, like here now was the only tense that mattered—made the breath move differently in my chest.
Behind me, Tasha said something about being tired. Devon said something about the same. There was a small, orchestrated exodus, then the sounds of bedroom doors closing, and then the apartment was quiet. It was just me standing in the middle of the living room with my guitar and Tommy unfolding himself from the floor and standing up.
He was very tall in the small space.
He was very close.
He reached out and took the guitar from my hands with the ease of a man removing an obstacle, set it carefully against the sofa, and when he turned back, the expression on his face was serious—the focused, still one he'd worn at the end of my set, before anything else had happened.
"Rebecca Lynn," he said.
"Yeah."
He stepped forward.
I didn't step back.
His hand came up and found my face the way it had in the donut shop, except this time there was no table between us and no public room around us and no reason to be careful or quiet or brief about any of it. When he tilted my chin up, I went, because I had been going toward him since he'd crouched on the restaurant floor and held out his hand for my guitar like he already knew I'd give it to him.
"I've been thinking about you all day," he said. Low. Close.
"That makes two of us," I said, which was the most honest thing I'd said since I'd told him the world was bigger than I'd known.
He smiled. Then he kissed me.
And this one was nothing like the donut shop.
14
TOMMY
The kiss in the donut shop had been a question.
