Olivia Cunning: Tie Me

“Stay there,” she said. “I’ll grab a towel.”

“I don’t usually make such an ass of myself,” he said, and then chuckled. “I leave that to Owen.”

“Owen?” she called as she hurried toward the hall closet, which held a stock of beach towels.

“Friend of mine.”

“Is he a god too?”

“A god?”

“You’re Neptune, right?” she asked. “Lord of the sea who washed up on the beach during the storm? Do you perform miracles? Because I could use a couple of them tonight.”

He laughed again and took a towel from her to dry his straight, black hair. It was a bit longer than shoulder length and dripping water down the hard contours of his chest and belly. Dawn dropped a second towel on the floor to collect his puddle and forced herself not to gawk at his body.

“Sorry to disappoint you—I’m not a god. Just a man who sometimes loses his way.”

“I’m trying to get you to reveal your name without asking directly,” she said to his thighs as she squatted to collect more water.

“I seem to have misplaced my manners,” he said, drying his chest and arms. “I’m Kellen Jamison. And you are?”

“Dawn O’Reilly.” She slowly rose to stand straight and found that even though at almost six feet she towered over many guys, Kellen still had a couple inches on her.

“Your name sounds familiar.” Gnawing on his fingertip, he examined her face thoroughly.

“I’m sure there are plenty of people who share my name.”

His eyes lit up and he snapped his fingers. “But not any other Grammy-winning composers. You wrote the music that won for best movie theme song last year. Am I right?”

She flushed. He knew who she was? No one knew who she was. Well, a few people knew who she was, but composers didn’t have fans. Pop stars had fans.

“It was actually the award for Best Instrumental Composition, but yeah, one of my works happens to accompany the rolling credits of a certain blockbuster movie. How do you know who I am?” Her suspicions were coming to a head again. Maybe he was one of those creepy stalkers who saw someone on TV and trailed them to the ends of the earth. Except no one knew she was here but her family, closest friends, and her agent. It wasn’t public knowledge that she’d rented this beach house for a couple of months, hoping to spark her creativity. After her Grammy, several producers had contacted her to write music for them and like the star-struck novice that she was, she’d accepted every job that had come her way. Big mistake. Huge! Apparently her creativity was completely quashed by any sort of pressure or expectation.

“I saw you accept your award,” Kellen said. “I don’t remember your speech, but I remember your beautiful hair.”

She touched a hand to her waist-length red curls. They were all sorts of frizzy due to the humidity in the air, but on Grammy night, the hairdresser had managed to make the loose curls smooth and elegant. “You saw me on TV?” She was pretty sure everyone in America had taken a bathroom break when she’d started thanking every person she’d ever met and even a few she hadn’t.

He laughed. “I was in the audience.”

She took a step backward. This was too freaky. “Are you stalking me?”

He paused and draped the towel around his shoulders, dropping his arms to his sides in a non-threatening stance. “Am I frightening you again? Dawn, you really don’t have anything to worry about from me. I was there because my band was nominated for Best New Artist.”

His band? Well, with all those tattoos and the leather cuff on his right wrist, he did look the part. “Did you win?”

“Nope. Some rapper won—Jizzy Wizzy Def Jam Grill Face.” He made a fake gang sign and grinned wide to show off his grill—a set of straight, white teeth. “Or something like that.”

She laughed, her defenses dropping again. “Wow, small world. What a bizarre coincidence to meet like this.”

“I don’t believe in coincidences,” he said.

His intensity caused her heart to falter and butterflies to flitter through her stomach. “What do you believe in, Kellen?”

His dark brown gaze held hers for several poignant seconds. “Destiny.”

The charge in the air between them had nothing to do with the electrical storm raging outside. She covered her pounding heart with her fist, wondering why she felt suddenly awake. She’d tossed open a window for air so she didn’t fall asleep as she prepared for another unproductive all-nighter. When that hadn’t perked her up enough to get the music flowing, she’d stepped out on the deck. Then she’d seen Kellen looking all wet and wild, and there was no way she’d be nodding off over the keys for the rest of the night. In his presence, she felt that she could run marathons and wrestle sharks. And maybe write a song.

“Can I hear your composition?” he asked. “Well, what you have written so far.”

She glanced at the baby grand piano in the family room to her right. Sheets of score paper littered the floor and the piano bench. Unfortunately, most of the paper was blank or had only a few music notes scattered across the top few staffs. Crumpled wads of paper overflowed from her wastepaper basket. False start after false start. It frustrated her that music didn’t come easily to her these days. Before her Grammy, piano compositions poured from her like the rain gushing from the angry clouds outside the window. Now? Writing music was like trying to wring water from a dry sponge.

She was so afraid to fail that it suffocated her.

“I…” She licked her lips, suddenly nervous. It was one thing for a complete novice to want to hear her unpublished work and a completely different animal that a Grammy-nominated musician wanted to hear it. It was true that as soon as she created a piece of music, it was copyrighted by law, but ownership was hard to prove.

“Let’s have a cup of coffee first,” she said. “I need a little break.”

His features tightened with disappointment, but he nodded.

“Decaf?” she asked and turned toward the kitchen, which was beyond the large family room. The house’s open floor plan made it easy for the piano to mock her if she let it sit silent too long. Maybe that’s why she spent so much time walking the beaches. “It’s pretty late for caffeine.”

“I probably won’t sleep tonight anyway,” he said.

“Is that why you were standing out on the beach when the storm hit? Insomnia?”

“Something like that,” he said.

She wondered if he was being mysterious on purpose or if it came naturally to him. She opened a cabinet and pulled out a canister of coffee. “If I’m up all night on a caffeine high, you have to stay and keep me company.”

He shoulders sagged with relief. “I can do that.”

“And since you’re a musician, maybe you can help me with my writer’s block.”

He smiled, and the temperature in the room must have increased twenty degrees because even though she kept the thermostat at a cool seventy-two, Dawn was suddenly sweltering.

“I’d be happy to help,” he said in that low, smooth voice that did distracting things to her girly bits. “Or try to. Were you B.O.I?”

“B-O-I?”

“Born on Island? I guess not, if you don’t know the meaning.”

She shook her head. “Just renting for the summer. I came here to get away from the chaos of the city and to seek inspiration.” Or hide. She was totally trying to hide from impending failure. Unfortunately, it had followed her to Galveston.

“You find inspiration on the shore?”

“The voice of the sea speaks to the soul,” she said, trying not to be obvious about checking out his flexing biceps as he dried his face and she filled the coffee carafe in the sink. “Chopin said that.” When he didn’t respond, she added, “The wildly talented nineteenth-century Polish composer and pianist.”