“The senior bingo crowd is coming. Meet me later this week for coffee?” Emily stood, giving Sarah a questioning look.
Sarah watched as the chairs in the room filled up. There were several rows available, and they were rapidly being occupied. Playing before the weekly senior bingo session had become a habit, and she didn’t mind playing for anyone who loved music. She’d studied music since she was a child and had done more piano recitals than she could count. The ritual had started months ago by accident, when she had been playing for pleasure after her volunteer lesson for the kids. The seniors who had arrived early for bingo had started wandering in to listen before the bingo session started. After that, it happened every single week, seniors showing up in the music room a half hour before bingo to listen to her play before they went to the gymnasium where the bingo session was held.
“Brew Magic on Friday?” Sarah suggested. “After work?” She loved her girl chats with Emily, but she had a feeling this week she might be squirming. Emily could be as bad as Elsie when she wanted information.
“I’ll be there. I want to hear the whole story,” Emily warned her with a wink before she left the room to attend to her duties as director of the youth center.
“There’s no story to tell,” Sarah whispered softly to herself. It had all been a terrible mistake, an incident that should never have happened. She felt guilty, knowing she should have sent Dante home the moment he’d arrived, but she didn’t. It wasn’t just the lobster rolls or his attempt to say he was sorry. It was the man himself. Something about Dante Sinclair fascinated her, and she wanted to unravel him piece by piece to figure out exactly how his mind worked. Maybe it would give her some clue as to why she was so unnaturally drawn to him.
Needing a distraction, Sarah started to play. She didn’t need to see sheet music. She could play almost anything by heart, having played most classical piano pieces hundreds of times.
She started with Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in G Minor. It was one of her favorite classical pieces, the composer leaving so much of the arrangement open to the interpretation of the player. Losing herself in the melodic bass lines, she allowed herself to express her passion in the music, her fingers flying over the keyboard as she poured every emotion she’d been feeling throughout the week into her playing. This was her emotional outlet, the one activity where she felt safe letting go of intellect and reasoning to just . . . feel. Every emotion was woven into the music: sorrow, joy, confusion, disappointment, guilt, and pain. Finally finishing the piece to a round of applause from her small audience, Sarah started right in on another, Franz Liszt’s “La Campanella.” It was a livelier composition, and one that had never failed to make her heart a little lighter after performing it. She finished with gusto, panting as she struck the last chord. Standing to thank her elderly audience, she startled as she saw Dante and Jared Sinclair sitting in the crowd.
The two Sinclair brothers were hard to miss. They were the youngest listeners, their darker hair standing out among a sea of mostly silver-haired ladies. Her gaze locked with Dante’s, his expression fierce and his eyes so hungry that he looked like a predator that had finally found some desirable prey. Dante’s stare was so intense that Sarah couldn’t pull her gaze away. She wasn’t even entirely certain how long she stayed like that, frozen, her eyes captured by his, before the others in the room started making musical requests. Finally, Sarah jerked away from the fixed stare and nodded hesitantly when someone asked her to play a particular tune. She sat back down again and played for the next fifteen minutes, waiting for the next request before she started to play again, keeping her focus on the gleaming wood in front of her.
I can feel his eyes on me and the tension between us from here.
Sarah’s hands were shaking when the last song was finally complete and the bingo crowd started filing out of the room, all of them smiling and telling her how beautifully she played before they left.
“You’re incredible. I’ve never heard Rachmaninoff interpreted quite that way. It was very beautiful and incredibly eloquent,” Jared Sinclair commented as he approached her. “That was the most pleasurable half hour I’ve spent anywhere in a long time.”
Sarah smiled at him despite the fact that he’d spilled her secret. His tone was genuine and the praise obviously sincere. There was nothing more satisfying than knowing she’d made someone’s day a little brighter with music. “Thanks. You like classical?”
“I do,” Jared admitted. “I’ve heard some of the best pianists in the world, but your playing is outstanding. I’m surprised you never pursued a musical career.”