Her cottage came into view as she rounded the corner, and she stopped short.
Her driveway had been shoveled. Not just the driveway—the path to her front door, the walkway leading to the street, even the little flagstone path that wound around to her back garden. All of it cleared of snow and salted against ice. The task had been on her mental list of things to do, but someone had beaten her to it. Could it have been Ben?
His house was dark, with no lights in the windows and no smoke from the chimney. His truck was gone from the driveway. No doubt he was at work.
Don’t read anything into it,she told herself firmly.He’s just being neighborly. It’s a small town. People help each other.
But she couldn’t quite shake the warm feeling that settled in her stomach as she walked up her freshly cleared path and let herself into her cozy little cottage.
After the excitement of her first day, she expected to fall asleep easily but sleep wouldn’t come.
She tried counting sheep, counting backwards from a hundred, and reading the most boring book she owned, but nothing worked. Her mind kept spinning, replaying the day’s events in an endless loop. The children’s faces. Tricia’s kind words. Posy’s stories.
Ben’s scowl.
She groaned and kicked off her covers, giving up the pretense of rest. The clock on her nightstand read 1:47 AM. The house was quiet except for the settling of old wood and the distant sound of wind.
A glass of warm milk,she decided.
She padded into the kitchen in her pajamas but before she could open the refrigerator door, she heard music. A guitar, and a low, rich voice. The kind of voice that crawled inside your chest and made itself at home.
She crossed over to the window before she could second guess herself and saw Ben sitting in his living room, a battered acoustic guitar cradled in his lap. His eyes were closed, his head tilted back as his fingers moved across the strings, and he was singing an old song about the loneliness of being on the road. The words washed over her like water, and unexpected tears pricked her eyes.
He played like someone who’d forgotten anyone might be listening, like the music was a private conversation between him and the instrument in his hands. There was no performance in it, just raw, honest emotion pouring out into the quiet night.
She stood at her kitchen window and listened, completely mesmerized, until the final chord faded into silence.
He sat motionless for a moment, head still tilted back, eyes still closed.
Then he opened his eyes and looked directly at her.
CHAPTER 5
She’s watching me.
Even with his eyes closed, Ben knew that Sara was watching him. Something in the shift of the air, the faint whisper of sugar and vanilla, the subtle tension of being observed. His ears swiveled, tracking the soft sound of her footsteps before he could stop them, tracking her movement through her kitchen with an accuracy that should have embarrassed him.
But he didn’t stop playing.
He should have. The whole point of only playing at night, alone, in the dark, was to avoid audiences. But his fingers kept moving across the strings, and his voice kept pouring out into the quiet night, and somewhere in the back of his mind, he acknowledged what he was doing.Breaking another vow. For her.
Even though he’d left the band behind—no more touring, no more stages, no more crowds screaming his name while he felt nothing but hollow—he’d never stopped playing for himself. The guitar was an extension of his soul, the one language he trusted.The language he’d learned as a child, waiting for a mother who left and never returned. Waiting for a father who channeled his grief into his business, with no time for a child who reminded him of what he’d lost.
He hadn’t meant to play tonight; he’d come home from the tavern, restless and unsatisfied, and the guitar had been sitting there, a familiar comfort. He’d told himself he was just tuning it, but then the song had spilled out, a familiar ballad about lonely highways and brief encounters and the ache of being surrounded by people and utterly alone.
He could feel her watching him. The weight of her gaze left an almost palpable warmth on his skin despite the winter chill, every nerve ending suddenly, painfully alive.
The guitar had been his first love, long before the fame and the women and the crushing disappointment of realizing that success didn’t fill the hole inside him. He’d almost forgotten the simpler pleasure of playing with no expectations to meet.
The knowledge that she was listening only made it sweeter.
He let the final chord ring out, sustaining it longer than necessary, reluctant to let the moment end. His head stayed tilted back, his eyes closed, as the last notes faded into silence. His heart was pounding harder than it should have been, his breath coming faster.
Don’t look at her.
He looked.
She was standing at her kitchen window, bathed in the soft glow of moonlight, her hair loose around her shoulders and the thinfabric of her pajamas clinging to her luscious curves. A single tear glistened on her cheek, a tribute to the power of the music.
