Staking His Claim (Line of Duty #5)(17)

She’d made him a fool. Again.

Lucy gave a barely perceptible head shake, and what he interpreted as an apology with her eyes, but he was beyond caring. Still, he couldn’t quite bring himself to walk away yet. Worse, far worse, he still wanted her, dammit. That burned most of all.

“Who told you I had a boyfriend?” she asked Brent, still watching him closely.

“Your chauffer, Matt, ratted you out.”

She laughed, a hint of humor making her green eyes twinkle. It was such a Brent-like characteristic, Matt wanted to kick himself for not seeing it before. You were too focused on the rest of her, though, weren’t you? “You know Matt. Joke a minute. Halfway here yesterday, I started calling him Chuckles.”

“Damn, I should have thought of that.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Matt noticed Hayden scrutinizing him and realized he hadn’t even attempted to hide his reaction to seeing Lucy. Brent seemed a little too high on life to notice, but his shocked silence hadn’t escaped Hayden, obviously. Right now, he had a decision to make. The right thing would be to come clean, tell his best friend what went down, leaving out all of the graphic details. Yet everything inside him rebelled at the notion. He couldn’t look his best friend in the eye and tell him he screwed his little sister on the floor of a cheap motel room.

A wave of dizziness swept through Matt as the magnitude of that hit home. He’d done more than screw her brains out, he’d laid his hands on her. Hard. Left marks.

No, he couldn’t do it. How would he ever look Brent in the face ever again?

“Oh hey, Luce.” Brent nudged his sister, who continued to look pale. “You know what I found in the basement last week?”

“Not a clue.”

“Your accordion.”

She choked on a sip of her drink. “Please tell me you burned it.”

“Ever better.” He winked. “I brought it with me tonight.”

“Can’t imagine why,” Lucy snorted.

“Oh, I think you know why. You’re playing it.”

“When hell freezes over.”

Brent shivered. “Is it getting cold in here?”

…

You have got to be f*cking kidding me.

When the crowd had parted and she’d seen Matt, looking gorgeous and uncomfortable all at the same time, she’d thought this is going to be the worst night of my life.

She’d had no idea.

How her brother had managed to convince her to play an accordion in front of these coolly sophisticated Manhattanites, she would never fully understand. At first, he’d made the request by calling her performance an engagement gift. When she’d still balked, he’d led every guest in the vicinity in chanting her name until she’d had no choice but to take the offered instrument and give in. And maybe, just maybe, a tiny part of her wanted to escape Matt’s blazing stare.

She couldn’t afford to think about it now. Or the hurt she’d glimpsed just before he put his mask back in place. A hundred pairs of eyes were trained on her. Palms sweating, knees shaking. It was like she’d been transported back to her fourth-grade talent show. She’d practiced for weeks only to be beaten by Becky Kessler’s dance routine, performed to Hanson’s “MmmBop.” When she felt a surge of annoyance over the memory, she realized she’d never really let the defeat go.

Repressed talent show angst. We’ve reached a new low.

Everyone was waiting for her to say something, but she could only look at Matt. He’d gotten past the hurt and confusion. He was angry now. Good. Better to have him angry. At least she could handle that emotion from him. She was well used to people being angry with her.

She cleared her throat into the silence. “Um…something in French?”

A couple guys in suits gave her a golf clap. Brent whooped from the back of the crowd, but when Hayden punched him in the arm it ended in a yelp. Eyes closed, Lucy played a few notes on the piano side of the accordion, hoping like hell she remembered the song she had in mind start to finish.

She didn’t. Halfway through the lively song about a young French maid losing her virtue in a field, the lyrics completely fled her brain. People were smiling and bobbing their heads at her, though. That was a good sign, right? If she could just make it through the end of the song, she might escape this without requiring ten years’ worth of therapy. What were those stupid lyrics? Not a single word came to mind. Praying no one in the room knew French, Lucy started singing about another tragedy, possibly worse than the French maid losing her V-card.

J’ai rencontré un bel homme

Nous sommes allés à l’h?tel

Il a fessé mon cul, notre pizza partit

Et je suis en enfer maintenant.

Which roughly translated to:

I met a lovely fellow

We went to a motel

He spanked my ass

Our pizza left

And now I am in hell.

Lucy winced when a bald man to her left spit out his champagne. Apparently, there was at least one French speaker in the house. Finally, finally the song ended and the room broke out into polite applause. As quickly as possible, she set her accordion down on the nearest table, relieved when everyone went back to their conversations fairly quickly. Her eyes immediately sought Matt where he stood near the door. He was stillness in a room full of movement, gray gaze cutting through the vibrant crowd.