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woman who has yet to introduce herself.” He shakes his head in mock disappointment. “There’s rude, and then there’s rude .”
    “My lack of an introduction compares to what you just did?”
    “Yes.” He crosses his arms and settles into the metal seat, appearing way too content with the world. “When company calls, you offer sweet tea. When it’s raining, you share your umbrella. And when you’re pursued by an intriguing man, you make pains to introduce yourself.”
    “I didn’t get the handbook.”
    “I’d send you a copy, but exchanging email addresses looks like third base from here.” He shrugs. “I suppose I could keep calling you ‘Miss Fire Drill,’ but it’s such a mouthful.”
    “You can’t keep from drawing the attention back to yourself, can you?”
    “Busted. Now . . . your name.”
    “Keeley.” It pops out. Honest to God, I can’t help myself when he issues a command that strong. Maybe that’s why he’s sitting next to me and that jock will watch the show from the bar. “Can we be done now? I’m asking you. Please. You’re not the one center stage. Let me watch her in peace.”
    “Her? Adelaide?”
    I go still. There’s genuine affection in his voice, and pride, and all of that is backed up by his widest smile yet—one he has yet to shine at me. Big. Manic. Unabashed. It’s a laugh without sound. His smile is for Adelaide Deschamps.
    I’d actually looked forward to sparring with him. I only realize it when he turns that carefree smile toward the young woman at the piano. I’d been thinking him a sexy, astonishing pest who’d acted like a polite caveman to sit beside me.
    But he isn’t here for me at all. I just happen to be in the front row, right where he wants to be. For her.
    “She can hold her own,” he says. “How do you know her?”
    “I don’t.” I’m proud of the detachment I force into my voice, when all I want is to find the strength to be the first to pull my thigh away. “I’m supposed to mentor her this year. I’d like to know who I’m mentoring. What she can do.”
    Out of nowhere, Jude turns that ravishing smile on me. The floor drops out from beneath my chair. I’m in free fall. It’s more devastating than staring into the sun; it’s going blind and catching fire and being reborn. The only place I’m truly, securely grounded is where our thighs still press together—so obvious, so simple . . . and increasingly erotic.
    “What she can do is take center stage and shake it like a Doberman with a bone. No one holds a candle. Although . . .” He leans so close that I can smell his rich cologne. “Maybe this year she’ll meet her match.”

 Five 
    A delaide Deschamps is a prodigy. She’s the sort of performer who makes a girl doubt her own abilities—that girl being me, of course. I’m not used to that at all. Everyone is enraptured. And even though my welcome/unwelcome company is staring with obvious marvel and adoration, while his thigh is still confusingly pressed against mine, I’m enraptured too.
    She’s definitely classically trained. All those composers who bored me but inspired me to forge on with my own compositions—well, she probably knows each masterpiece forward and backward. But I’m surprised by how raw she is. It’s like she skipped a few hundred steps, from “Chopsticks” to Chopin.
    I don’t know where her musical theater stuff is supposed to come in. There’s none of the sorority don’t give a damn nutso I’d heard over the phone. Seriously, she should be wearing a long formal black evening gown, performing at the Met. This eclectic crowd should be decked out in suits and fancy dresses, the kind I saw when Clair and John had taken me to the orchestra in Baton Rouge. Once, we traveled all the way to Dallas when Joshua Bell was on tour. Sure, he isn’t a piano player, only one of the best violinists of this century, but I had a major crush on him and they gave me the tickets for my sixteenth