Overture (North Security 1)

God, I want that to be true. I’m not sure who that is anymore. The obedient girl who practices her violin for hours every afternoon? Not exactly. No matter how much he wants that to be true. Something is going to happen tonight. I’m not sure whether I’ll become more myself—or less.

His scent suffuses my lungs, my mouth. There’s hard, sterile soap and something earthy from working outside and the elusive musk that is Liam North. My lips part, as if to draw in more of him. His eyes darken to deep sage, though I’m not sure what it means.

My heart pounds in my chest, and I skip around him in a frantic bid for safety, a rabbit scampering away from a fox. The only reason I reach the door is because he lets me.

I race up the stairs even though no one’s following.

Inside my room I lean against the door, eyes closed, panting like I ran a million miles to get here. I need to fix whatever’s happening inside me. No more stopping in the middle of practice. No more imagining Liam losing control.

Whatever I do for the rest of the afternoon, it has to be the end.

CHAPTER FIVE

Bach and Handel were both blinded by the same ocular surgeon.

LIAM

I watch Samantha flee up the stairs, looking scared enough to make me uncomfortable, lithe enough to make me ache. What the hell’s going on with her today? You’ll be yourself again tomorrow. I know that’s not true. She won’t ever be the timid little prodigy who landed on my doorstep, eyes wide behind her glasses, fingers impossibly nimble across the violin strings. She’s still a genius with the instrument, but it’s no longer a little girl who plays. It’s a young woman, and I’m the one who can’t go back to the way things were. I can’t unsee the flush of arousal on her cheeks. Fucking hell.

I return to my desk and try to focus on the field reports from my agent.

After reading the same sentence five times, I have to push the reports aside.

Footsteps approach the office, and I tense, fighting the impulse to stand up and close the door. Josh is second-in-command for North Security. He also happens to be my brother. He’s whistling and stomping and generally being a pain in my ass. The man can cross a South American jungle without disturbing a single tree frog, but he makes enough noise now to wake the dead. It’s a harsh contrast to the sweet violin that usually fills the air.

“Problem?” I ask, raising a brow.

He pauses with an exaggerated tilt of his head. “Why is it so quiet?”

I glare at him, but it doesn’t shut him up. “You’re fired.”

A hand to his heart, the dramatic bastard. “Where’s our beautiful Disney princess making music and drawing all the little woodland creatures to the window?”

“It was one squirrel.” One squirrel who pressed its little hands against the window every day for almost two months, listening to the music as if he could soak in its beauty.

Strange, feeling a kinship with a rodent, but there it was.

It’s not an accident that Samantha’s music room is right next to my study. The house has thirty thousand square feet. I could have put her anywhere, but I wanted her near me. I’m soaking up every goddamn second until she leaves for good.

Josh leans against the bookshelf and crosses one ankle over the other, the very picture of casual disinterest. I know my brother well enough to see right through his exterior. Unfortunately he also knows me well enough to see through mine. “What’s up?”

“Maybe we shouldn’t go out tonight.”

“And skip Hassan’s bachelor party? He would never forgive us. I would never forgive us either. We haven’t had a break in weeks.”

“She said she wasn’t feeling well.”

He frowns. “Samantha?”

“No fever. No cough. I could call Dr. Foster.”

“Is it the tour?”

I make a growl. “Maybe. It’s a hell of a lot of pressure. She wants us to think she’s all grown-up, but an eighteen-year-old has a lot of growing up to do.”

“We enlisted when we were eighteen,” he says.

“And I’d take a battle zone over Carnegie Hall any day.”