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food-impaired Scotsman than be stuck with The Locker That Time Forgot , she thought.
    Moments later, she was back at Alec’s pristine locker, returning her books to their shelves. She hoped he didn’t mind sharing. He did break her locker, after all.
    She was headed for the stairs nearby when she heard the music. Someone down below was playing the guitar. The melody was gentle. Haunting. And beautiful.
    For as long as Claire could remember, she’d always been drawn to guitar music, although she couldn’t quite explain why. She especially loved anything acoustic. She followed the sound to an enclosed space at the bottom of the stairwell, just outside the rear entrance to the theater, where she was stunned to find the music’s source—Alec. He sat on one of the small wooden boxes left over from former stage productions, strumming a guitar with his eyes closed. His dirty-blond hair was brushed back off his forehead in smooth waves, framing his handsome face. Claire couldn’t help but notice his muscular arms as his long fingers moved along the guitar’s strings. She stopped and leaned against the wall, closing her own eyes. For a long while, she stood there listening in wonder, transported to another time and place.
    The music stopped. Ripped back to the present, she opened her eyes to find Alec looking at her.
    “Please don’t stop,” Claire said quickly. “You’re amazing.”
    He shrugged modestly. “What would you like to hear?”
    “Anything. What was that?”
    “A flamenco lament.”
    “Then more of the same! Or—whatever you feel like playing.” She grabbed a wooden box and sat down across from him.
    “Ladies’ choice.”
    “I don’t know the names of anything classical like that. Can you … do something by the Beatles?”
    Without missing a beat, he began playing “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away”—one of Claire’s favorites. As Alec began to sing, Claire’s heart leapt. He had the voice of an angel, far more beautiful than Neil’s, which she had thought impossible.
    After the first verse, the singing stopped, but Alec went on playing.
    “Keep singing,” she prodded.
    “Only if you sing with me.”
    A knot formed in Claire’s stomach. “No. I don’t—”
    “—sing, aye, so you said. But how about if we both try something new today?”
    Claire shook her head, horrified. “Trust me. You don’t want to go there.”
    “Come on. There’s no one else around. What have you got to lose?”
    “My dignity?”
    “Dignity’s overrated.”
    There he went, rolling those R s again. It was charming but so distracting. Alec began strumming again, his eyes holding hers as he launched into the second verse.
    As Claire listened to him sing, she felt mortified by the notion of mingling her sorry excuse for a voice with his. It was akin to Rembrandt inviting a kindergartner to paint on the same canvas. But embarrassed as she was, she couldn’t ignore the playful challenge in his eyes. She inhaled deeply and tentatively forced herself to join in.
    Claire sang a line, then froze in astonishment. Was that really her voice?
    Alec smiled with his eyes and kept going, silently urging her on. Claire continued singing, amazed to find that—for the first time in her life—she was not only perfectly in tune, but she actually sounded good. Great, in fact. How was that possible?
    They finished the duet. Claire couldn’t stop grinning. “Wow. Wow. Wow .”
    “You’re right,” Alec teased. “You’re terrible. Like fingernails on a chalkboard.”
    “I don’t get it. I’ve never been able to sing like that before.”
    “Maybe you never really gave yourself a chance. Or maybe your voice is like a fine wine: It just needed time to mature.”
    “Maybe.” She smiled, still overwhelmed by what had just happened. Glancing at his guitar, she said, “Where do you keep that all day? It wouldn’t fit in our locker.”
    “ Our locker?” he asked with a grin.
    “Yeah. I hope you don’t mind. The one