A Love Song for Ricki Wilde (37)

“I told you, I’m a private person with reclusive tendencies.”

“Are you in the CIA?”

“How you figure I’m in the CIA?” asked Ezra, slipping into the country cadence she’d noticed in the garden. “If I were a spy, I couldn’t tell you.”

“Are you married?”

“No sane woman would marry me.”

She sucked her teeth, because they both knew that was ridiculous. His towering frame and intense, blazing eyes could turn the coldest stoic to mush.

Ezra’s physicality was lodged permanently in her brain.

“And why aren’t you marriage material?” she asked, lifting her chin imperiously.

“I’m. Reclusive.” He emphasized each word. “And when I’m not at home, I’m on the road, gigging. Not marketable on the dating apps.”

She let out a frustrated huff. “Look, I’m staying away from you to avoid trouble. But you? You look actually… frightened when you see me. Why is that?”

He chewed the inside of his mouth, looking irresistibly casual in good jeans, Vans, and a wrinkled, high-quality flannel, the kind of shirt you wished a guy would forget in your bedroom. Ricki struggled mightily not to stare, and then she zeroed in on his big, beautiful, long-fingered hands. He clenched his fists over the piano keys, and she tried to ignore the faint outline of muscle under his shirt. Absentmindedly, he began to play a tune. The melody was hauntingly stirring. Ricki wanted to hear more. But as suddenly as he started, he stopped.

“You ever seen a tornado?”

Ricki shook her head. “No, not outside of Twister. Have you?”

“No, but… folks say that if you’re in the presence of a tornado and it looks still, that means it’s heading right towards you.”

“I have no idea what that means.” She paused a bit. “Though the trivia connoisseur in me finds this information compelling.”

“You’re the tornado, ma’am.”

“And you’re speaking in riddles, sir.”

“When I first saw you, everything went still.” He met her gaze. And what she saw in his eyes was pure, raw yearning. It knocked the wind out of her, and it was completely at odds with what he was saying.

“Still and calm,” he continued in his deep, rolling drawl, not breaking eye contact. “Like a tornado, before it completely decimates you.”

Ricki’s mouth dropped open. “But… but I’m not a natural disaster! I’m a poised, respectable woman! I’m from Buckhead, for fuck’s sake!”

The corner of his mouth curled upward. “Mm-hmm. You’re the picture of poise.”

She glowered with frustration.

“I’m not scared of you,” he said. “I’m scared of us.”

Ricki’s confusion was growing by the second. “But there is no us.”

“Right. And let’s keep it that way.”

“More riddles.” Ricki rolled her eyes. “Listen, don’t flatter yourself. What makes you think that I even want there to be an us? Do you really think I find you that irresistible?”

Ezra’s expression didn’t change, but his eyes flashed with heat and mischief. Wordlessly, his gaze slowly went from her eyes to her mouth and farther down to the deep plunge of her scandalously clingy crimson gown. Her body, as if absorbing the electric charge of their conversation, was practically draped on the piano, the soft swell of her breasts overflowing, the curve of her hip popped in lusty flirtation. She oozed sex. Blatant, lascivious, fuck-me sex.

“Your thoughts are loud,” he noted wryly.

She felt searing mortification. This is the second time tonight I’ve heard that my emotions are transparent, she thought. Quickly, she stepped back from the piano, smoothing her hair and adjusting her dress. Her cheeks were on fire. She didn’t remember the last time a man had so utterly thrown her off her game. Actually—had a man ever thrown her off her game?

“God,” she muttered through clenched teeth.

Ezra couldn’t have hidden the smirk if he’d tried (and he hadn’t tried). “You a believer?”

“In God?” Disarmed and flustered by the abrupt conversation shift, she said, “Oh. I… I don’t know. I was raised in fire-and-brimstone Catholicism, which doesn’t appeal to me at all. I don’t believe in the traditional, male-ego-centered God. But there’s a force larger than us out there. I don’t know what to call it. It’s just… an Energy. With a capital E.”

“So when extraordinary things happen to you, you don’t thank God, you thank Energy?”

She huffed out a small laugh. Just like in the garden, Ricki noticed that she and Ezra got deep, fast. This was unexplored terrain: sharing philosophical musings with a man.

“When I’m in nature, especially the woods, I feel protected by something ‘other.’ Something old, before humans, before religion. One time, I wandered a bit too deep into the forest behind my parents’ home, and there were no people anywhere. Just trees, flowers, endless sky. It could’ve been that day or a thousand years ago. And I felt a presence so weighty, I panicked. I wanted to run. It’s a natural human response, you know, the panic you feel when you’re alone in overwhelming nature. The word comes from Pan, the Greek god of the wild.”