A Sinful Encore (Brilliance Trilogy 3)

“And?”

“If it’s there, it’s not obvious.”

“But it could be there? I mean could you be the one true daisy in the wind because he gave you the formula? Or the means to figure it out.”

“If he gave me the formula or the means to figure it out, it won’t be easy.”

“Nothing you do is easy,” I say. “You just make it look easy.”

“You have a lot of confidence in me.”

“So did my father.” The doorbell rings. “That will be the food,” I say. “I’m going to get the sheet music so we can look at it while we eat.” I wrap my arms around him and kiss him. “We’re close, Kace. I feel in it my Stradivari bones.”

He cups my head and leans in to kiss me as my belly growls. He laughs, the last remnants of that edge of minutes before fading with it. “Go grab the music, baby, and hurry back. If I’m going to tackle this, I need a full stomach and your Stradivari bones by my side.”

I laugh and hurry for the stairs, all but running to the vault. Once the song is in my hands, the magic is there in my belly. We are close. We really are. And Gio’s right. Kace is the answer to us reclaiming our family legacy, but he’s so much more to me. He’s the answer to every question I’ve ever had in my life, and the reason I was never whole. He’s the other part of me, the other half of my heart and soul.

CHAPTER SIX

Kace and I stuff our faces with the most delicious pancakes I’ve ever eaten while studying the sheet music. By the time we’re done eating, and I’ve literally licked my plate in as ladylike a manner as possible, Kace is antsy to put his violin to work. And so, he does. For the next few hours, I sit on the piano bench while Kace alternates between playing his violin, talking to me, and scribbling down notes. By three in the morning, his hair is a rumpled, finger-spiked sexy mess, his eyes shadowed.

“It’s time to stop,” I say, standing up.

“Not yet,” he insists, but by the time he reaches for the violin again, I’m in front of him, wrapping my arms around him. “We need to sleep.”

“I feel like I’m onto something like I’m a note from finding the right answer.”

“And too tired to find the note.” I lace my fingers with his. “Bedtime. Now. With me.”

Reluctantly, he allows me to guide him toward the stairs.

A half-hour later, the room is dark and we lay in bed, him on his back, me snuggled close, under his arm, my head on his shoulder. “Maybe we’re wrong,” I say, the twinkle of starlight outside the window we’ve left open to allow sunlight to be our alarm clock in the morning. “Maybe the answer isn’t in the song.”

“We’re not wrong,” he replies, his finger gently stroking my shoulder, almost absently, sending little darts of heat through my body. “We’re not wrong,” he repeats, his murmur soft this time, a barely-there whisper.

Over the past few hours, there is no question that he’s grown more and more dogmatic about his certainty that the formula is somehow in the song. If Kace is right, then Gio was right. The answer lies in Kace. He also believed that perhaps it lies, at least partially, in me. Why? What does he know that we don’t know? Because Kace was right—it’s not logical to believe my father would just hand over a secret to a teenager. And I was younger than Kace when my father disappeared.

Whatever Gio knows, he has to tell us. Now. Okay, in the morning at the breakfast he’d better show up for.

My eyes are heavy and I allow my lashes to lower, the song my father and Kace created together singing its own song in my head and I swear, there are words that match the music. I can hear them in my head, almost taste them on my tongue. At some point, sleep is a heavy blanket that slides further and further up my body and consumes me. Soon, I am without another thought. I drift off to sleep, shocked when I wake to piercing sunlight and the sound of Kace’s violin. He’s already working, trying to find my family secret. I’m not sure what we’ll do if we really find it.

Sitting up, the memory of my sleep haze comes back to me. There are words to the song, I’d thought then, but as I listen to the music now, all I find is a faded memory of my mother singing to me daily and often. No words come to me. None.

Frustrated, and nervous about breakfast with my brother, I grab my phone and text him: Are you coming for breakfast? I watch my screen, waiting for a reply, seconds ticking by, but Gio remains silent. The way he’s been silent for weeks on end. The idea scratches at my mind and emotions. He was alive and well and allowed me to worry about him, about money, about the future. I was making decisions for him. He was just making decisions.

I text Savage: Did Gio stay at his apartment last night?

Savage replies immediately: He went to McDonald’s at midnight and then home and stayed there where he did a lot of Google searches involving Kace.

Of course, he did, I think before I type: He’s supposed to come here for breakfast but I’m doubtful that he will show.

Savage’s reply is a little too honest, I swear. No respectful brother who hates his sister’s man will miss a chance to break them up, he replies. I’d bet a hundred on him showing up.

I could easily reason away his answer as wrong simply because Savage doesn’t know Gio well enough to make that general statement. But then, I’m not sure I really know Gio either. Have I ever?

With frustration bruising my mood, I throw on my workout clothes, brush my teeth, and by the time I’m exiting the bedroom, Kace is no longer playing. I head downstairs to find him missing in action, which means he’s likely making coffee. Sure enough, I find him in the kitchen nook eating area by the table, standing at a window overlooking the Hudson River—rain pattering on the glass, his bare shoulders knotted. I wonder if he slept and I suspect he did not.

I move toward him and if he knows I’m here, he doesn’t turn. And when I stop beside him and slide my arms around him, he seems to jolt back into the moment, as if he was somewhere else far, far away.

His arm slides around me, the shadows I find in his eyes, washed away as they light on me. “Morning, gorgeous,” he says, his dark hair a rumpled sexy mess.

He’s sexy, and his compliment heats my cheeks, but I am warmed not by it, but by the intimacy of sharing our coffee, our life each new morning. I sip and give him a probing stare. “Did you sleep?”

“I never sleep much when I’m writing.”

I set the coffee on the kitchen table next to us and run my hand over the rough stubble on his jaw, letting it tease my fingers. “Are you writing?”

He catches my hand in his and kisses it. “Rewriting the song I wrote with your father while trying to remember everything he said to me as we crafted it.”

“And?”

His lips press together. “Not a damn thing.” Obviously not eager to focus on his failure, he shifts the subject. “Anything from Gio?”

“Not a damn thing.” I dig my phone from my pocket and show him the text exchange with Savage.

W

e ease into chairs, angling toward each other and he reads the messages. When he’s done, he slides my phone back to me and does so without a direct comment on what he’s read. “Where is your head at on Gio, baby?”

“Confused. I’m not sure who he is anymore. I’m not sure if we should be worried or relieved that he’s back. And clearly, he believes Sofia is back, too. And I’m not as certain as Savage that he’ll show up.”

Kace considers me a moment, his expression unreadable and I’m not sure why. Well, not until he says, “I talked to Blake this morning.”

“And?” I prod, nervous about where this is heading, and how can I not be? I’m a skilled practitioner when it comes to assuming the worst and expecting a problem.

“And Blake believes there are too many unknown players to stay our course. You need to control the narrative about you and your family. Be you and tell Gio you’re doing so with or without him.”

Unease clings and clangs inside me. “Meaning what?”

“Stop hiding. Come out as you. Be you. Tell the world you are you. Blake can handle the proper way to do so. And that means going to Italy with your chin held high. We’ll do press. We’ll claim your legacy.”

“I don’t know, Kace.” I sip from the coffee because I need something to do with my hands right now. “Gio hasn’t told us everything.” I set the cup down. “That said, if I do as you suggest and just tell him I’m coming forward, maybe he’ll actually talk to me.”

“It would be easier if he did, but Walker will navigate our path and protect you.”

“Blake really thinks now is the time?”

“He does and so do I.” Kace reaches for the mug and adds, “but this is your decision.”

My decision.

When in my life has anything been my decision?

I respect and appreciate that Kace believes that it is, but the truth is that this isn’t my decision or even his or Blake’s. Like everything in my life, the actions of others long ago shaped a path for everything about my life, including now. I’m just riding that path and trying to navigate it to safety.