“I love this one,” she told him, resting a hand on her stomach, and she saw Max nod.
“I know. Beethoven. ‘Adagio un poco mosso’.This is the piece that got me where I am today.”
“How so?”
Max shrugged, the movement slight as he played. “I told you Geoffrey dumped me in boarding school after boarding school. One of them had a piano master. This was his favourite, and he taught it to me. Obviously, Geoffrey couldn’t take me home during holidays, so he left me in summer school too. All I did was practice piano, day after day after day. I had the whole concerto committed to memory by the time I was thirteen.”
“Muscle memory,” Bo said softly, and Max nodded.
“This was my first recording. They called me a prodigy and the greatest classical talent since Benjamin Britten.” Max laughed. “They didn’t know I was just a bored and lonely kid. Still, it got me jobs. Orchestras, the proms, even the Royal Variety Show. Private concerts followed, and more recordings. I’m a professional musician because of this piece. Pianists don’t often make money from their talent. I got lucky.”
“Do you ever write your own music?” Bo asked, and Max nodded.
“Not as much as I would like. I wish I had more time for it. I figure once I sell this place,” he gestured to the room around them, “I’ll spend more time writing. I’ve got a tour already got booked in but I want to take a year off.”
“Tour?”
Max shrugged. “I’ve booked to play a few concerts next year. It’s not my priority though. Writing is. It’ll be nice to do my own thing for once, instead of just playing the work of others. At least Geoffrey could do that for me. His house, which was nevermy home, will give me the time I need to write. How’s that for irony?”
Bo sighed. “I don’t think it’s irony. Geoffrey never did anything without purpose. He told me from the first day we met that his house would one day go to you. He wanted you to have it. Maybe it was his way of finding absolution.”
Max stopped playing, turning to look at her with a raised eyebrow. “Absolution?”
She blushed. “That’s four years of Catholic school talking.”
“You’re Catholic?”
“No.” She blushed even harder. “But my mother thought they had the best uniforms.”
Max grinned. “I can see you as a Catholic schoolgirl.”
She rolled her eyes. “Behave, won’t you?”
Max grinned again before going back to his piano. They didn’t speak again after that, and Bo must have drifted off, because when she woke Max was beside her, and a blanket had been pulled over them. One arm was flung over her body, holding her close, while his other arm pillowed her head.
He was asleep, and Bo felt a thrill run through her. They’d never slept together before, not like this. She felt it again then, that warmth in her chest, though it wasn’t just warmth this time. No, there was something quieter there too. With surprise, Bo realized it was contentment. Contentment, because Max Fitzroy, the man who confessed to barely sleeping, was asleep now. Asleep, next toher. If Max could sleep by her side, maybe itdidmean something. Maybe, with her in his arms, he felt safe.
Or maybe it meant nothing at all. Maybe he was just tired, and she’d just happened to be there. With a sigh, Bo nestled into Max and tried to put her hopes to one side.
They had an arrangement, and she needed to stick to it.
* * *
She felt it again one afternoon when she was in Geoffrey’s kitchen —no, Max’s kitchen,she reminded herself — making a snack after work. She was exhausted, having gone with Ida to New Covent Garden Market at 4 a.m. that morning to help choose flowers for the shop.
She’d only had an hour with Max before she’d had to leave, the time between him getting home and her getting up. Just sixty minutes of quiet, borrowed time where she made coffee and he’d leaned against her counter, watching her with a sleepy half-smile. He looked exhausted, his shirt unbuttoned and tie askew, and they hadn’t really talked — there hadn’t been time — but he’d made love to her with a gentleness that took her breath away. At one point he’d reached for her hand, stroking her fingers softly, and Bo had smiled at him, enjoying the time where their mismatched lives overlapped. It had taken all her effort to peel herself away from him, and she’d had to remind herself again and again that she loved New Covent Garden Market and working with Ida and couldn’t let her down.
She’d had a good if tiring day. She’d been like a child in a candy shop, wanting to take home all the summer roses and sweet-smelling lilies, and had insisted on buying armfuls of stunningly bright gerberas to weave into bouquets with eucalyptus leaves. Ida hadn’t been convinced at first, but eventually nodded when Bo produced the first bouquet, sighing as she touched one of the flowers.
“You’ve got such a natural talent for this,” Ida told her, not for the first time. “I meant it, Bo. You should go into floristry for good.”
Bo had shrugged in response, though once again, she’d been secretly delighted by Ida’s words. Just as she was secretly delighted when all her gerbera bouquets sold out by 5 p.m., people leaving the shop with arms full of colour. She’d made her way home then, exhausted in the best possible way, but too tiredto throw anything more than a quick sandwich together, which Max eyed critically.
“You’ve been working,” he argued. “You need something more substantial than that.”
He then brushed both her and her feeble arguments to one side as he busied himself about the kitchen, pulling out vegetables and bread, chopping and stirring.
Bo sat by the kitchen table, resting her head on her hands, watching him with a kind of stunned disbelief. “But you don’t cook,” she reminded him. “Remember? In fact, you nearly hired me to do it for you.”
