Kate Hewitt - Weddings - the Brides - The Shy Bride / Bride in a Gilded Cage / The Bride's Awakening

Heat suffused her neck and cheeks. “Yes, well, I can guarantee you I won’t be asking those sorts of questions.”

“No, your curiosity is much more innocent.” Which seemed to please him. Odd.

She certainly didn’t find her own innocence all that pleasing.

“To answer it, a man does not amass great wealth in a single lifetime by spending his money frivolously. My clothing is necessary to present a certain façade for our investors and buyers. My watch is rated as technically accurate and as sound as a Rolex, but only cost a few hundred rather than several thousand. My car is expensive enough to impress, but not ridiculously so for something that amounts to nothing more than a piece of equipment to get me from Point A to Point B.”

“Unlike many men, your car is not one of your toys.”

“I stopped playing with toys years before I left the orphanage I never called home.”

She’d read that he had lived in an orphanage before leaving Athens. For all that his publicity people allowed the world to know, there was a cloak of mystery around his growing-up years.

Which was something she could understand. While her official biography for publicity purposes revealed that both her parents were dead, it said nothing about her mother’s protracted illness. Nor did it mention years spent in a house shrouded in silence and steeped in fear of losing the person both she and her father had loved above all others.

Her father’s death as the result of an unexpected, massive heart attack had made the headlines at the time. Mostly because it had heralded the end of rising star Cassandra Baker’s public performances. Her withdrawal into seclusion had garnered more press than a good, if sometimes misguided, man’s death.

“Some men try to make up for losing their childhood by having a second one.”

“I am too busy.”

“Yes, you are.”

“You did not have a childhood, either.” He said it so matter-of-factly.

Like it didn’t really matter. And hadn’t she decided a long time ago, that it didn’t? The past could not be changed.

“Why piano lessons?” she asked Neo, wanting to talk about anything but her dismal formative years.

“I lost a bet.”

“To your business partner?” That made more sense than anything she had been able to come up with on her own.

His brows quirked at her description of Zephyr Nikos. “Yes.”

“If what you say is true, I wonder how he is rated as being as wealthy as you?”

“Meaning?”

“He spent one hundred thousand dollars on piano lessons you don’t want. That sounds very frivolous to me.”

“I do want the lessons.” Neo looked as if he’d shocked himself with the assertion.

“That’s surprising.”

“When I was a youth, I wanted to learn piano. There was no chance then. Now, my time is in even shorter supply than money was to my younger self.”

“And yet you make the time for these lessons.” She could not imagine her own childhood without her piano to take away some of the pain.

“Zephyr does not consider the investment frivolous. He believes I need something besides work to occupy my time.”

“For at least one hour a week.” Though sixty out of the ten thousand and eighty minutes found in a week didn’t sound like much of a relaxing distraction to Cass.

“Precisely.”

“Still, he could have gotten you lessons with someone who teaches for a living at a much reduced rate.”

“Zephyr and I believe in hiring the best people for the job. You are a master pianist.”

“So I have been told.” Many, many times since she was discovered as a child musical prodigy at the age of three.

“It is your turn to answer a question for me.”

“If you like.” And if she could. She braced herself for the question most people asked, and the one for which she did not have an answer anyone had found satisfying thus far.

“Why do you give lessons to the charity auction every year when you are a career composer and pianist, not actually a teacher?”

For a moment, she was so stunned he had not asked what everyone else did—why she had stopped performing publicly—that she was stumped for an answer. Finally, her brain caught up with his curiosity and she said, “Many up-and-coming pianists want to study with me. This is the one chance they have to do so.”

“Why present the opportunity at all?”

“Because as much as I prefer a quiet life, one without any new people in it at all can get lonely. And I don’t want to be that person. The woman who lives her life as a hermit.” Even though in many ways that was exactly what she did.

“Were you disappointed to discover your lessons had been bought by a novice?”

“No, more nervous. Terrified really.” She gave him a self-deprecating smile. “I was so dismayed, I begged my manager to get me out of it.”

“He did not approach Zephyr, or myself to cancel the lessons.”

“No.”

Neo’s eyes narrowed, but she wasn’t sure what was making him look less than pleased. “Why were you so frightened? Even with your condition, you had done this before.”

“Not for a successful billionaire.”

“I am just like any other man.”

It was her turn to frown, unhappy with his false assertion. “For a man who appreciates a lack of deception in others, that lie slid off your tongue rather easily. No way do you believe you are like every other man.”

That almost smile touched his features again. “You are more observant than even I gave you credit for being.”

“You aren’t self-delusional and you aren’t like any other man, therefore you could not believe it.”

He shrugged. “Few men have the single-minded determination to achieve what Zephyr and I have done.”

“And now Zephyr is worried you’re too single-minded?”

“I made the mistake of sharing some concerns my doctor voiced on my last physical. Gregor, who is Zephyr’s friend as well as my doctor, reiterated those concerns to him.”

“The concerns shocked you, didn’t they?” she asked, certain she knew the answer and a little surprised at herself for being willing to banter like this.

“How do you know that?”

“You strike me as a man who keeps himself in optimum physical condition as part of maintaining your position at the zenith of personal success. It would astound you that there was some element you had not accounted for.”

“I thought you were a pianist, not a psychiatrist.”

This, at least, she could explain. “It is easier to watch other people than to interact with them. It naturally follows that someone with my curiosity would try to figure out what makes them tick.”

“You are uncannily accurate.”

“Thank you for admitting it. I like honesty, too.”

“That is something important we have in common.”

She shifted beside him on the piano bench, trying to ignore the instant and growing reaction she’d had to his nearness since the first lesson.

“Yes. The other thing is that we both want you to learn piano. Let’s get back to it.”

Cass had no frame of reference for her response to Neo.

Which was probably why, at twenty-nine she had absolutely no experience in the bedroom. She’d had no time for dating when she was doing concert tours and she’d been doing them since childhood. After stopping public performance, she did not put herself in situations she might meet potential dates. All of which left her in the unenviable situation of being twenty-nine years old and never having been kissed with romantic intent.

And certainly she had never—not once before meeting Neo Stamos—felt this constriction deep in her belly. She’d read about arousal, but never experienced it. Which she knew made her a freak in the eyes of most of the world. But she wasn’t just a virgin, she was wholly innocent and unsure how or if she ever wanted to risk changing that state.