Composing Love

Because Chris thinks that all I can do is compose stuff that sounds like everything else out there. “But—”

“No. Enough.” Gali held up a hand. “I didn’t just suck down and therefore waste the last bowl of pho so that you could blow me off. Let’s do this thing.”

Minh blinked. “Hey! You ate the last of it?”

Gali raised an eyebrow. “Do you want my help or not?”

“Yeah. Okay. Let’s do this thing, as you so eloquently put it.”

“Hey, I’m a musician, not a poet.”

Gali turned and headed toward the recording setup that they had in the living room, and Minh breathed out her pent-up nerves. She hoped Gali was right. She hoped that she wouldn’t have to take the job at Well Placed—provided she even got an offer. The woman who called had only said they wanted to talk to her further. But what if…

She shook her head. No. She couldn’t worry about that now. Now, she had a chance at something she’d been working toward for a long time. She couldn’t veer off track.

Except she couldn’t shake the feeling that veering off track might be the only way to stay on it.



“Minh’s here.”

Vinnie poked his head into the booth, where Chris was trying to puzzle out a bug in the code that he’d finished up yesterday. Friday afternoon had come too soon, which meant another week gone. Another week closer to their drop-dead date, when the money ran out and they had to be done with the film, or they’d be done for good.

But the music wasn’t working for him. What Minh had been giving them was good enough, sure. A little boring, but the guys seemed okay with it, and the high-quality, cutting edge animation plus his secret sauce in the animation software would carry even the weakest soundtrack. But this was his baby. His first movie, and he needed more than good enough.

He knew she was capable of that. That, and so much more.

Maybe it had something to do with the way his body tightened with arousal at the mere mention of her name.

Or maybe it had to do with what he knew she was hiding from him that could turn both her and his movie from something good into something great.

If only she would take the chance and move away from her weird rules.

“I’ll come down.” He stood and headed downstairs, where Minh was seated at one of the stools near the espresso machine. Luis was drinking a huge mug of the stuff, not surprisingly, and chattering a mile a minute at her.

She’d emailed him earlier to tell him she’d be by later today with the full pieces. He should have been prepared. But the sight of her was a shock to his system.

She was dressed casually today, which around here wasn’t a big deal. But he’d barely known her a week, and he knew that she was the kind of person who would dress up to go to the office, just because that’s how things should be. And yet, here she was in a T-shirt and shorts, long, smooth legs making his mouth go dry as he watched them swing off the edge of the stool.

What had happened to her?

“Hey.” He came up behind her and caught a whiff of her perfume. Her hair was up again today, but it looked a little looser—not that tight bun that she’d had going on the other day.

She swiveled and hopped off the stool. “Hey.” Despite her dressed-down outfit, her greeting was wary, and he hated it. He thought about the way she’d touched him last week, when they’d been strangers, and wondered how they could have gone from that to this skittish kind of dance.

He didn’t like it.

“Luis cued up the songs already. Do you want to hear?”

“Yeah, let’s do it.”

He couldn’t keep his eyes off of her as she walked past him to the closest workstation. Luis joined her at the computer and connected it to the speakers, then nodded at Minh, who clicked the play button.

Music filled the studio and, pretty soon, Luis, Shen, and Vinnie were nodding their heads in time to the beat. She’d done a great job of filling in the other instruments and adding harmony to the horizontal—the melody. It would sound fantastic with a full orchestra playing it.

And yet…he wanted to say, no, it’s not right. It’s not you.

You always choose the path of most resistance, even if it’s not the best choice or the smartest.

Again, Daria’s words echoed in his head. Was that was he was doing? Resisting Minh just because that was what he did?

He shook his head. No. No way. He’d broken out to do his own thing precisely because he saw an opportunity to change the theater-going experience. With his software, this debut film from Phantom Studios would be the defining standard for animated movies. He was making things more interesting. Better beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. Not conforming was the whole point.

And here he was, listening to perfect, textbook three-part harmony with the knowledge that she was so much more than that swimming around in his head.

They listened all the way through both songs, and then the studio went quiet. Minh turned to him first. “So?”

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