“What’s this? You’re giving mehomework?”
Talk about anticlimactic.
“We passed these around while you were playing, told people to look up your Facebook page and write down their e-mail addresses. They’re yours to keep.”
She flipped through them. She had maybe a couple hundred names here. For a musician, it was almost as good as currency.
She looked up at him mistily.
It was such a lovely thing to do and in all the excitement she hadn’t thought to do it.
“Boy, you must really want to get rid of me, Glenn.”
“The sooner the better, sweetheart,” he said, but he smiled. “One last thing.” He pushed something else into her hand. It was actual currency.
“It’s two hundred bucks, in fives and tens and ones. Don’t spend it all it once place.” He patted her and bustled off, waving away her drop-jawed gratitude.
Two hundred bucks! That was officially the most she’d ever made playing music.
She’d give Monroe and Giorgio some of it, for sure.
She rolled it tightly and jammed it deep into the pocket of her jeans.
She looked up sharply, suddenly, as alert as if someone had flicked her in the back of her head.
Eli was moving steadily through the crowd, making his way toward her at an unnervingly purposeful, stalking gunslinger pace.
He stopped finally.
So, briefly, did her heart.
His face was extraordinary. Tense and brilliant with some emotion that was hard to identify, but which wasn’t the least bit mild, and was probably a little dangerous.
Her heart jabbed hard in her chest. She’d never anticipated a verdict more.
“Subtle,” he said finally.
The most dryly ironic single word she’d ever heard.
She just held his hard gaze with a little faint smile.
As though she’d won a round of a duel.
“Glory, you wereamazing! Wasn’t she amazing, Eli?” Bethany had apparently ducked into the bathroom, and now she bounced up behind him and looped her arm through his. “I was dying to see The Baby Owls, but you felt so much like the real thing I didn’t miss them atall.”
The real thing.
Those words sort of vibrated in the air.
Glory couldn’t face Eli’s hard, questioning look, or his taut jaw anymore. The line of tension between them was charged, and the air was full of lightning, and if that line snapped, dangerous sparks could fly everywhere.
She dropped her gaze and gathered her hair in her fist and used it to fan the back of her neck.
“You need me to blow on it back there?”
Her head shot up. Franco Francone had bounded up next to her on the stage.
Eli turned on his heel and walked straight for the door, pushed it open, and was gone.
