“There you are.” Michael stepped outside, and the door shut behind him, silencing the music. His gaze jumped from her to Quan and back again. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”

“I needed some fresh air.”

Quan’s brow furrowed like he wanted to speak, and Stella held her breath.

Don’t tell him. Don’t tell him. Don’t tell him.

He’d change. Everything would change. And she didn’t want that to happen yet.

“She was trying to borrow cab fare from me. She saw you and that blonde necking and wanted to run,” Quan said.

Her stomach didn’t know if it should relax or knot tighter at his words. He made her sound emotional and possessive. She wished it weren’t true.

“You were going to leave? Just like that?” Michael asked, his voice tinged with disbelief.

She stared down at the pavement. “I thought you and her—that you—”

“No. With you right there? Give me some credit, will you? God, Stella.”

He gripped her waist and pulled her against him. His smell, his arms tight around her, his solid presence. Heaven. She shut her eyes and sagged against him.

“Do you want to go back in?” he asked.

“No.” Adrenaline shot through her body, tightening every muscle that had relaxed in his embrace. As an afterthought, she added, “Please.”

“Let’s go home, then.”

11

Stella was reserved as they walked the few blocks back to her white Model S. Several times, Michael caught her massaging her temples, but when he asked if she had a headache, her response was an unintelligible mumble. He would have thought she was doing the silent martyr act in retribution for his supposed cheating, but that didn’t seem her style.

No, her style was leaving him without a single word. When Quan had told him she wanted to abandon him at the club, it’d sucker-punched Michael in the gut. The last person to leave him had been his dad. But where Michael’s dad had left him with an enormous mess to clean up, Stella had planned to leave him with her car and her credit card. Who did that?

Even worse, he hadn’t deserved it. Either time.

Tonight, he’d been busy preventing his crazy ex-client from making an enormous scene in front of Stella. Aliza was a true diva and loved drama in all forms. Now that she’d finally succeeded in divorcing her millionaire husband—and taking half of his net worth—she wanted Michael back. She was willing to pay whatever it took.

She refused to accept that Michael would rather fuck his way through splintered driftwood than return to her bed. She’d detained him for long minutes, tossing extravagant numbers at him before plastering her mouth to his.

He would forever associate the taste of cinnamon gum, cigarettes, and whiskey with Aliza.

So different from Stella, who tasted like . . . mint chocolate chip ice cream.

They piled into her car, and she activated the seat warmer, sank against the backrest, and stared out the window, absently tapping her fingers on her knees. He turned the radio on to break the silence, but she promptly turned it back off. Her fingers resumed their tapping. It was hypnotic but a little annoying.

He sent her a pointed look, but she didn’t notice.

After he took them out of the city and merged into the light traffic on 101S, he broke down and said, “When you do that finger tapping, are you playing a song? Like on the piano?”

She stopped tapping her fingers and sat on her hands. “It’s Debussy’s Arabesque. I really like the combination of triplets and eighth notes.”

“So you play?” When he’d picked her up from her downtown Palo Alto house, it had been impossible to miss the black grand piano dominating her otherwise empty living room. If she was artistically talented on top of being smart, successful, and gorgeous, she was officially his dream woman in the flesh. And so far out of his league as to be laughable.

Even if he didn’t have all the shit associated with his dad dangling between them, he had almost nothing a girl like her could want. There was his face and his body, but anyone could have that if they paid enough. Maybe she would have been attracted to the old him, the man who had been free to pursue his passions. There’d been a lot going for that guy. Michael barely knew him anymore.

“I do,” Stella said. “I started playing before I could speak.”

He arched his eyebrows. Apparently, in addition to being his dream woman, she was also Mozart.

“That’s not as impressive as it sounds,” she said with a wry lift of her lips. “I was a late speaker.”

“I have a hard time picturing that. You seem so perfect to me.”

She bowed her head and released a heavy breath, but when he began to ask her what was wrong, the slow minivan in front of him caught his attention. He switched lanes and accelerated soundlessly past it. Smooth as buttah. He loved fast cars.

But thinking about cars always reminded him of his current car, a shiny black BMW M3, and how he’d gotten it.

“She’s my crazy ex-client,” he said.

He felt the weight of Stella’s gaze on the side of his face. “The woman in the club.”

“Yes.”

She lifted a hand toward the bridge of her nose. When she couldn’t adjust her glasses, she clasped her neck instead. “Did you like kissing her?”

“I didn’t kiss her. She kissed me. But no, I didn’t like it.”

“Can you be very honest and answer one question for me?”

This was going to be interesting. “Yes.”

“Are you a different person when you’re with me?”

“You mean, if I bumped into you when you’re not my client anymore, would I be a dick around you?” If she was no longer his client, she’d probably be with another man. He twisted his lips as a bad taste filled his mouth. “No.”

“Are you lying just to make me feel better?”

“Stella, I’ve never lied to you. You’re going to have to decide if you believe me.”

They didn’t speak for the rest of the drive. He drove up the driveway to her smart, renovated cottage, complete with rosemary hedges and solar panels on the roof, and parked in the surgically sterile two-car garage. Once he turned off the car, her eyelids fluttered open.

“You’re home.”

She ran a hand over her sleep-matted hair. “I’m almost too tired to get out of the car.”

“I can carry you.”

She aimed a sleepy smile at him, clearly thinking he was joking.

“I’m serious.” The idea of carrying her to bed was highly appealing at the moment. He liked holding her, and as messed up as it was, he wanted to check boxes. He hadn’t gone this long without fucking in three years, and seeing Stella in that dress was giving him full-body blue balls.

“Don’t be silly.” She pawed her door open and stood up with movements that were clumsy even for her. When he locked the car and met her at the door to her house, however, her eyes were steady. “I don’t have energy for lessons tonight.”

“It doesn’t have to be lessons.” He trailed his fingertips down her arm, and her skin dotted with goose bumps. Her eyelids went heavy, her eyes sensual. Beautiful Stella. “I can just make you feel good.” He stroked over her palm, and her fingers unfurled, inviting him to touch. “You already paid for tonight, Stella.”

Her hand fisted shut, and she turned to face the door. “I wanted to talk to you about that. Please come in.”

• • •

After returning her shoes to their place in her coat closet, Stella padded past her beloved Steinway to her dining room, enjoying the feel of the cool hardwood on her aching feet. Michael followed behind her quietly, and she suspected he was noting how barren the space was.

No centerpiece adorned her dining room table. No artfully arranged place settings, either. There was nothing but . . . she didn’t know what kind of wood the table was made of, but it was soft. She ran her fingers over the satiny surface as she walked to the far end of the table where she usually sat. The chairs surrounding the dining table were the only ones in her entire house.

“Did you just move in?” he asked.

She pulled a chair out for him and rubbed her elbow awkwardly. “Not really.”

Instead of sitting down, he strode into the adjoining kitchen with his hands in his pockets, inspecting the gas range, the stainless-steel refrigerating units, and whatever else she had in the echoing space. Cold, gray, and cavernous, the kitchen was her least favorite room in her house. At least, it usually was.

It became a different place with Michael in it. The ambience turned intimate and inviting, and the low-hanging lights twinkled more like stars than energy-efficient LEDs. It no longer felt lonely.

“What does ‘not really’ mean? A month ago? Two?” He aimed a teasing grin at her as he asked, “A year?”

“Five years.”

His face went slack, and he stared at her house with new eyes. “So you like it empty like this?”

She shrugged. “I’m at the office most of the time, so it doesn’t bother me. Here, I have a bed, a nice TV, and really fast Internet.”

He shook his head and chuckled. “The essentials.”

“Is that too strange?” Like being a late talker or getting overstimulated at clubs?

“No, I think I like it,” he said with a smile. “You could use some art, though, and a couch or two. Maybe a coffee table. You don’t need much more than that.”

A knot formed in her throat. At that precise moment in time, when she had him standing in her kitchen, in her house, she felt like she didn’t need anything else in the whole world. And their time together was ending soon.