Wintergreen

Lorna simply sat back, listened and inhaled. The shabby room faded into something else; the group of mismatched individuals blended into appreciative aficionados under the spell of her music.

She wasn’t aware how intently Matthew was watching her until the waitress served them drinks between the second and third sets. “I can tell you’re having a rotten time,” he murmured.

“Matthew…” She just looked at him, not knowing where to find the words to tell him how much the evening meant to her. She’d been afraid of a candlelit dinner, afraid they would suddenly be groping for conversation, afraid they would seem like strangers, afraid that special rapport she’d felt with him would disappear and that unhappy memories would poison the atmosphere, prevent any real communication between them. Now all that apprehension seemed unreal. How could she possibly feel uncomfortable when she knew Matthew shared her love of music, when the evening had started out with hastily eaten sandwiches and there had been laughter from the start?

“You’re so beautiful, Misha,” he whispered. “When you’re happy, you glow like a candle in a dark world. So easy to make happy, so easy to make sad. You touch your world, Misha-you make an impression on everyone who knows you. Did you know that?”

The place was dark and smoky, and the single candle on their table cast shadows on the planes of his face, adding a flicker of flame to his dark eyes when he looked at her. The music started again, yet this time Lorna felt drawn by a more potent magic than the subtle piano chords. Matthew’s thigh rested against hers while they listened. His arm went around the back of the booth, his fingers absently resting on her shoulders, occasionally fondling her hair. His touch talked to her, whispering of the cocoon he wanted to spin around the two of them. When the trio started a low, haunting love song, there wasn’t a sound in the place, and Lorna could feel the ache of old longings fill her as if she were a well that had been empty and hollow and cold and was now brimming with feelings so strong…

They left after midnight. The Ann Arbor streets were emptied of cars and totally silent. The glistening dark pavement and pure velvet covering of snow on the trees and grass made Lorna forget the frigid air that chilled her bones. She felt exhausted, exhilarated, high on music and recklessly exuberant as she hadn’t been in months.

Matthew was laughing at something she said as he settled his rangy frame next to her in the Morgan. He dropped a swift, soft kiss on her mouth, so naturally that she was still smiling when he drew away to start the car. “Do you have to be home to accommodate a babysitter, or do you have time for a drink first?” he asked easily.

“Johnny’s with Freda for the night, so I don’t have to…” Her lighthearted smile faltered just a little, as reality came back with a little bump. Explaining that Johnny was off her hands for the night might sound like an open invitation, and she didn’t need it spelled out to know Matthew was asking her to his place.

“Good, Misha. I had a feeling you weren’t tired. I always have insomnia after a night of music,” he drawled, looking straight ahead as he drove.

She looked at him. The sight of his strong profile under a street lamp sent a mental shiver down her spine. She swallowed. “I do, too, Matthew, but actually tomorrow I have to…”

“Work? So do I. But I want to talk to you, Misha. You don’t really want to go home yet, do you?”

He had stopped for a red light, and turned to look at her. Stop melting, Lorna told herself sternly. You can’t go into this just because you’re in an insane mood and you’re high on life for these few hours. But the look in Matthew’s dark eyes seemed to touch her physically, to caress the silken strands of her hair, her soft lower lip, to rest on the vulnerable skin of her throat.

“Misha? I just want to talk,” he assured her softly.

She settled back, staring straight ahead. “For one drink then,” she agreed cautiously, but she thought, Talk? Matthew, you never used to be a liar.

Chapter 5

“Your old place was so small next to this,” Lorna said quietly, glancing around Matthew’s condominium as he took her coat and she found a place for her purse on the hall table. She descended two thickly carpeted steps into the sunken living room, the decor a stark white and black, the lighting hidden and the chrome gleaming. The interior decorator-obviously a professional had been at work here-had had an eye for luxury and elegance. The rich black carpeting and stark white couches were dramatic and masculine, with scarlet accents in the lacquered Chinese bar and a single high-backed chair.

“You don’t like it,” Matthew said from behind her.

“Of course I do.”

“Misha.”

“It’s perfectly dreadful. Where on earth do you read the Sunday paper?”

He chuckled and motioned her to follow him with a crook of his little finger. “Come on and I’ll show you where you can kick off your shoes. The room does work for entertaining…”

Entertaining women, she thought wryly. The couch was half the size of a bed. He led her down the hall, his palm in the hollow of her back, the only spot in her entire body that was warm after walking through the crisp snow from the car.

“More comfortable here?”

Slowly, she walked in ahead of him, deciding. She saw floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and his desk piled high with papers. Two long couches bordered the fireplace, both old and upholstered in brown tufted corduroy, faded a little and well worn. Wood was stacked in the hearth, which still held a bed of ash, and above the fieldstone fireplace was an oil portrait of a flutist.

The painting instantly captured all of her attention. A black man in rags held a gilded flute in his hands. His eyes were closed as he played, suggesting that he could block out the loneliness and poverty and other insurmountable problems in the richness of his music. Lorna stared, mesmerized, and could have suddenly sworn she heard the same music she had listened to all evening. Until her eyes caught the flicker of flame. Matthew was lighting the fire.

“Will you pour us both a glass of wine, Misha? It’s behind the desk there, in the credenza. I’m dying of thirst. I don’t know how the two of us could have sat in a nightclub for more than three hours without finishing a single drink.”

Obligingly, she moved behind the desk, glad to have something to do with her hands. “Who painted the portrait, Matthew?”

He glanced up at the oil painting. “An artist I met at a sidewalk sale at the art fair last summer. He was going to throw it away, said he didn’t know how to finish it.” He poked at a log, which tumbled over and sent a shower of orange sparks up the chimney. “I should have paid him a ton of money for it. I wanted to. But I was terrified that he would use it to go through art school and learn how to finish things.” He stood up, pulling a wrought-iron screen in front of the fire. “You like it?”

“I covet it,” she corrected wryly, as she poured wine from a decanter into two crystal glasses. “I feel I could walk down a crowded street and recognize the man in the portrait. Rich or poor, crook or saint, it wouldn’t make any difference,” she said whimsically, with just a trace of seriousness. “We all get desperate, day by day. Music helps me survive. At least, jazz does. Lets me forget absolutely everything else for a few minutes. Makes me feel free and in another world.”

Matthew stripped off his tie as he took the wine from her and leaned back lazily against the mantel. “A few other things work just as well,” he suggested, his dark eyes glinting on hers. She smiled softly as she settled in a corner of the couch.

“A good book?” she suggested, and watched that slash of a smile take over his face. She knew he’d meant making love, just as she knew he was about to make his first move. Wait, Matthew, she felt like saying. I know I came here of my own free will, but I really don’t know; I haven’t known anything since I walked into this house.

She needed a daisy, to peel off the petals and play the game. He was a stranger; he wasn’t a stranger. She’d felt so easy with him all evening; she could almost believe they’d just met, that there were no unhappy memories of other people intruding on how they felt about each other. Every tiny physical contact was like a spark tempting love to flare up, threatening to explode…at least for her.

But this was not the man she’d known nine years ago. The silvery sideburns added an air of distinction to his