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nameless face from
his long list of conquests. It was the perfect scenario. Touching
the glass to my lips, I emptied it on one long draw, drowning out
any remaining apprehensions.

Chapter
3

    L ifting the bottle of wine from the floor, Tate
refilled my glass, pouring it generously. The bottle gurgled as it
spilled out, splashing against the rim as
I tried to pull my glass away. “Geez. Enough. Do I really look that
uptight?”
    “No. Nervous. I can tell you
don’t do this often.”
    “No. I don’t . ”
    He placed the wine back down,
keeping it close at hand. Working from the sole to the ball of my
foot, he pressed on. “Tell me about yourself.”
    “There’s not much to tell.”
    “That can’t possibly be true.
How did you get started singing?”
    “The shower. Yes, it’s true. I
used to sing in the shower.” I held up three fingers. Scouts honor.
“On occasion , I still do. Anyhow, I
didn’t think anyone could hear me, but I caught my mom humming a
tune one day that I had been singing, and the
truth came out. She confessed everything . When I entered junior high, she pushed
me to sign up for chorus. It progressed to musicals in high school,
and I did a year of music at Santa Fe.”
    “Only one year? What happened
there?”
    “I injured my eye. Came home
for surgery. The recovery took longer than expected.” I shrugged,
hoping to pass for blasé. “Then life happened.”
    “Car accident?”
    “No.” I stole another deep
drink of wine. My face grew warm and rosy, a mixture of the
alcohol, exhaustion, conversation , and
physical contact. The alcohol, exhaustion , and physical contact I could handle, but the
conversation had to go. My goal was to forget myself tonight.
    Forget Grant and his quick
fists.
    “…you go, Cooper?”
    I looked up from my glass.
Found Tate staring. “Hmm?”
    “ You
disappeared on me for a second there .” His gaze dropped to the foot resting in his hand. He ran
his thumb down the center , smiled when I
jerked my leg. “Tell me about your family.”
    “It’s just my mom and dad. They
live just outside Philly.”
    “Are you close?”
    “We don’t see each other
often , with work and all. You?”
    Grinning, only one side of his
mouth pulled up in a dry smile. “My life’s all over the internet.
You’re lying if you tell me you haven’t looked it up.”
    I did. Totally. Half the girls
at work were watching over my shoulder. The rest of them were
running their own queries. Most of it was rudimentary. He grew up
in Seattle. Parents divorced when he was fifteen . He turned to music to cope. Started the
band when he was sixteen. Signed by Angeles Records when he was
eighteen. Started his own label at twenty-five.
    He raced motorcycles when he
wasn’t on tour. Nothing pro, just amateur stuff from what I could
tell. He collected bikes. Had a garage full of them. Nice bikes.
Fast bikes. Crotch rockets. Ducati. Aprilia. Hayabusa. Ninja. A few
models I couldn’t remember because they were nothing but a chain of
letters and numbers. He would think my ignorance was a
travesty.
    On Wikipedia, I found their
band history and the origin of their name. The girls all thought it
was a sign. Hautboy was actually the name of a wild strawberry, and
because my hair was strawberry blond e and
I held an uncanny resemblance to the erotic illustration of the
woman—practically making love to a strawberry with her mouth—on the
cover of his first album, they deemed our meeting was fate. I
didn’t fool myself with such delusions.
    Strawberry Island was actually
the name of an Island in the waters of Deception Pass, which Ben
Ure made infamous due to his seedy occupation of human trafficking.
Ben Ure’s wife would camp out on Strawberry Island and signal her
husband with a fire, providing it was safe to bring his cargo
ashore. If not, he dumped his load of burlap bags overboard, along
with the Chinese immigrants inside them. Yeah, real romantic. At
any rate, the band originally wanted to