A Reckless Note (Brilliance Trilogy 1)

My lips curve. “You? Trouble?”

“I was a young boy teased and praised for the violin in my hand. I thought I needed to be tough to prove I was a man. I got in fights, excessively and frequently.”

“Obviously you shifted that energy and became the rock star of violins.”

His lips curve. “I stopped beating people up, yes. After I broke a bone in my left hand. Had it been my right, I wouldn’t be playing today. Some of us are hard damn learners. But yes, I matured and changed my point of view. And I changed as a person. Mostly. There are still a few people I wanted to beat, but I didn’t.”

I laugh, charmed by the easy conversation, and his ability to self-analyze.

His cellphone buzzes with a text and he snags his phone from his pocket, glancing at it. “That’s security telling me they sent our delivery person up.” He sets his phone on the coffee table. “I’ll be right back.”

“Where would I find a bathroom?” I ask.

He stands and takes me with him, and my God, this easy, casual touch, jolts me with awareness. I am so hypersensitive to this man that it’s insane. He knows it, too. I see it in the burn of his eyes, and the way his gaze lowers to my mouth and lifts. “Other side of the living room,” he says. “But hurry,” he murmurs, his eyes twinkling with mischief. “I’m suddenly starving.”

My cheeks heat and he laughs. “You were just naked on top of the piano but you still blush.”

“You were naked on top of the piano.”

“And you were naked on top of me.”

New heat rushes to my cheeks all over again and he laughs once more, turning me to face in the other direction, and leaning in close, his breath a hot fan on my neck as he says, “You, Aria Alard, are a contradiction I can’t get enough of. Go. Hurry. Before I make them leave the food at the door and take my T-shirt back.” He smacks my backside and I yelp, rushing away as I do, my backside warm, but then, so is my entire body. That smack of my butt was not aggressive or even painful. It was intimate, though. It was daring. He makes me daring.

I have never been daring in my life.

I reach the piano and that beautiful violin that reminds me of things I don’t want to think about right now—reasons I shouldn’t be here. Reasons I should not be daring. I ignore the instrument and its warning, grab my purse, and leave my dress, hurrying toward the bathroom. The living room is huge, the walk long, but I find the door and enter, quickly shutting myself inside the luxurious bathroom with a dark granite tub and counters. I quickly check my call log in the hopes of something from Gio, but there is nothing. I swallow hard and unbidden anger follows. He’s with Sofia, chasing our family heritage. He knows I don’t approve. And when he gets back, I will hurt him.

Anger is decidedly more comfortable than fear. I embrace it. I hold onto it. I shove my phone into my purse and set it on the sink. I do what I came in here to do, and wash up, only to groan at my image in the mirror. I’m with the most gorgeous man I’ve ever met and I have lipstick on my nose and my hair looks like I stuck a finger in an electrical socket. Worse, my purse is so small that I have nothing to fix the damage with me but a stick of concealer and a tiny comb. I put both to use and just in time. Kace knocks on the door.

I open it to find him, and like he was back at Riptide, he’s standing right in front of me, his dark hair rumpled, his blue eyes warm. His big body deliciously half-naked. “Just making sure you weren’t about to make a run for the door,” he says.

He’s worried I’m going to leave? Obviously, he is or he wouldn’t be standing here. I mean, he said as much, but I didn’t think he was this literal but clearly, he was. Kace August is really worried that I will leave. And he doesn’t want me to. I don’t quite know what to do with that, but stay. “I like your T-shirt,” I confess. “I was plotting a run for the door before you could take it back.”

He catches my hips and walks me to him. “You can keep the T-shirt if I can keep you.”

It’s teasing, I tell myself, but it doesn’t stop the flutter of my belly. “Do I get tacos in trade?”

His lips curve. “You most definitely get tacos.”

“Well then,” I say. “A T-shirt and tacos. I’m a keeper.”