Half an hour passed. An hour. Finally, he heard them laughing in the hallway. Fucking laughing!
The door opened. She was all rumpled. Her dress had a swirly skirt, her hair was down and tangled, and she was barefoot, carrying her heels. What mainly struck him about Garrett was how young the kid looked. The epitome of youthful manliness. No fine lines webbed his eyes, no brackets ridged his mouth, and he’d bet anything that Garrett’s knees didn’t creak when he got out of bed in the morning.
Thad kept his voice in control, but he still sounded like a reprimanding parent. “Where have you been?”
“At a club,” Olivia said brightly.
“A club?” He lost it, venting his anger on Garrett. “You took her to a club?”
The kid shrugged. “She’s a wild one.”
Thad turned on Olivia. “What about your voice? What kind of opera singer goes to a nightclub where the noise level is off the fucking decibel chart?”
Her smile was maddeningly serene. “I didn’t talk.”
“She’s a great dancer,” Garrett said quickly.
“You are, too.” She gave the kid all kinds of smiles.
Garrett glanced uneasily at Thad. “I guess it’s time I go.”
“Good guess,” Thad snarled.
One of Garrett’s eyebrows lifted ever so slightly, and then, out of nowhere, he called an audible. In the sneak play of the century, he kissed The Diva with pinpoint accuracy, right on the lips—a full-on, wide open, All Pro, forward pass . . .
. . . with an eligible receiver kissing him right back.
Thad leaped forward.
The Diva shot out her arm—toward him, not toward the quarterback sneak—keeping Thad at a distance while she also kept her lips glued to Garrett’s. Finally, she unglued and patted the asshole on the chest. “Good night, lover.”
Garrett smiled and headed into the hallway only to turn back and make a small, quick movement—so small and quick Thad doubted The Diva even noticed. The kid lifted his arms and pointed toward Thad, the gesture over almost as soon as it had begun.
Son of a bitch. Garrett had tossed Thad a game signal. The same signal referees used to indicate that the offense had just earned a first down.
The clueless Diva shut the door and smiled at Thad. “That was fun.”
He took a deep breath. Then another. He barely recognized himself. He was Thad Walker Bowman Owens! He’d never been jealous of another man in his life, yet here he was, fuming over a wet-behind-the-ears kid barely out of college. A kid who could run faster than Thad, throw farther . . .
The Diva smiled and gave him this soft, melty-eye, non-Diva look. “I adore you. I really do.”
And that was it. Before he could conjure up even a semblance of a response, she’d sauntered into her bedroom, that swirly black skirt spanking her thighs.
*
Olivia smiled around her electric toothbrush. She was crazy about Clint Garrett. He was the mischievous little brother she’d always wanted—although she definitely wouldn’t have kissed her little brother the same way she’d kissed Clint. But tonight, with Thad looking on, it had been too much fun to resist.
Fun. Something that hadn’t played a big part in her life until Thad Owens had appeared.
Being with Clint tonight—trying to follow his steps in the country line dances—had been a reprieve from the overwhelming sexual sizzle she experienced when she was with Thad. The sizzle, mixed in with foreboding—an ominous sense she was inching too close to the rim of an active volcano.
She rinsed her mouth and stowed her toothbrush in the charger. Even though Thad’s jealousy had only been a manifestation of his professional rivalry with Garrett, she’d enjoyed tweaking it.
As she slathered her face with her almond-scented cleanser, dabbed on her toner, then her retinol, she decided Thad Owens might be the most decent man she’d ever met. He’d assumed the role of her caretaker, whether she wanted him to or not. It was so odd. She’d been the caretaker in her relationship with Adam. The guardian of his career, the custodian of his feelings, the one who always accommodated. Having someone watch out for her was a new experience.
She hesitated, then turned the water on full force to mask the noise of her voice as she began singing her scales. Finally, she reached for a high C.
She didn’t make it.
11
Thad played it cool for the next two days, acting as if the incident with Clint hadn’t happened, but her attitude still bugged the hell out of him. Thad had been leading the offense since he was a kid. He was the play-caller, not The Diva. What kind of game was she running?
She gazed at him across the room service cart. They’d gotten in the habit of eating an early breakfast together in one suite or the other, and today she was deep into an egg white omelet.
He looked up from his phone. “I’ve got this urge to hear you do Cassandra Wilson’s version of ‘Time After Time.’”
Her nose went up. “Then call Cassandra Wilson. I’m sure she’d be more than happy to sing it for you.”
“Come on, Liv. Give a guy a break.”
“I can’t even do Cindy Lauper’s ‘Time After Time.’ And I don’t know what Cassandra’s version sounds like.”
“I’ll play it.”
And he did. She sat back in her chair, breakfast abandoned, and listened to Wilson’s wrenching, soulful version of the ancient Lauper hit. When it ended, she turned her head away and gazed out the window at the Manhattan skyline.
She began to sing. It wasn’t Lauper or Wilson; it was some beautiful hybrid only she could produce. But even he knew it wasn’t opera, and as her voice faded away, she looked so wistful that he couldn’t bear it.
He pushed back from his own breakfast. “We’ve got a couple of hours before we have to be at Tiffany, and I have an idea . . .”
*
The eleven crystal chandeliers in the lobby of the Metropolitan Opera House were still a spectacular sight in the morning light. This place couldn’t be more different from the basement jazz clubs where Thad usually hung out.
“There are twenty-one more chandeliers in the auditorium.” Liv looked her normal superstar self in one of those black pencil dresses she’d changed into for the day, along with some gold Spanish earrings, her wide Egyptian cuff, and the Cavatina3. A pair of nude stilettos made her thoroughbred legs look ready for the runway.
She rested her hand on the curved railing. “Right before the performance begins, twelve of the big chandeliers in the auditorium ascend above the audience. It’s a spectacular sight.”
“I’ll bet.” Outside the Metropolitan’s soaring windows, a swarm of tourists clustered by the Lincoln Center fountain for photos, and in the distance, traffic jostled for position on Columbus Avenue. Manhattan was crazy. The noise. The traffic. The city’s chaos bothered him in a way Chicago’s midwestern bustle never did. Or maybe his sour mood had more to do with the memory of Clint Garrett’s lips on The Diva’s mouth.
“The Met’s chandeliers were a gift to the United States from the Austrian government in the 1960s,” she said. “A very nice thank-you present for the Marshall Plan.”
She shot him a sideways look that suggested she doubted he knew what the Marshall Plan was. He hadn’t taken only finance classes in college, so he suspected he knew more about the billions of dollars the US had earmarked for Western Europe’s World War II recovery efforts than she did.
He decided to deadpan it. “Not all jocks are ignorant, Liv. If it hadn’t been for the Marshall Plan, small towns all across America wouldn’t have a sheriff.”
She blinked and laughed, but whatever retort she intended to make was cut off by the appearance of a short, rotund man with steel-wool hair and an elastic smile. “Olivia! My dear! Does Peter know you’re here? And Thomas? It’s been forever since we’ve seen you.”