In these books she saw a far different reality and knew it was something she had to experience for herself. Before she agreed to marry one of the boys who wanted her only as a wife and mother. Before she agreed to spend the rest of her days playing piano in accompaniment for little girls as they sang their hymns.
Bravely she told her parents and the nuns that she was going to spend some time in the city. She told them she was going to work with a local church there—which in fact she was, part time—and they were all so proud of her. Her parents found her an apartment and paid for six months’ rent and didn’t worry about their precious daughter. Why would they, when she had never given them even the slightest bit of trouble?
Jolene Mackenzie was a good girl.
* * *
Zane stood behind the bar and wiped another glass dry, sliding it beneath the counter in preparation for opening the bar. His bar.
He still couldn’t believe “Piano Man” was his. Every time he pulled up underneath the neon sign on his Harley, he got a rush. But as he wiped down the brass counter one more time, he frowned at his reflection. If he didn’t find a great piano player, and fast, “Piano Man” would be a laughingstock among piano bars. Unfortunately, the last five guys he had auditioned stunk.
Hell, he could play better than them, and he could barely read a note.
Someone from outside pushed the door open slightly and a shaft of blinding light hit Zane across the forehead.
“Excuse me,” he heard a timid little voice say.
“We’re closed,” he said gruffly. “Come back at five.”
But the girl disobeyed him and walked through the door.
Zane looked at her in disbelief. The last time he’d seen someone as prim and proper as the young girl standing before him, he was in church looking at a nun. And lord knew he hadn’t set foot in a church for well over a decade. Maybe two.
On second thought, no nun ever had such gorgeous blue eyes and a mouth he could imagine wrapped around his dick.
“I said we’re closed,” he said, glaring at her. It was pissing him off the way his dick was perking up just because some meek, blond girl, barely out of pigtails, was walking across the floor toward him.
“Are you the owner?” she asked him, as if she hadn’t heard him tell her to leave twice already.
He glared at her, trying to scare her away, but when she kept staring at him with her huge, blue eyes, and held her ground, he nodded.
“What’s it to you?”
She held up the want ads. “I’m here to apply for the piano job.”
He snorted. “You?” He threw his head back and laughed in her face to drive the point home. “Honey, this ain’t no church, and you certainly ain’t no piano man.”
Her face set in a mulish expression. She turned away from him, but instead of walking back out the door, she walked towards the small stage and sat down at the piano.
“I’m auditioning,” she said, and he knew she was trying to be brave, but even in the dim light of the bar he could see her hands shaking.
He looked down at his jeans and cursed the huge bulge in the front of his pants before taking several menacing steps towards her. But before he could forcibly grab her by her skinny little shoulders and throw her out onto the sidewalk, she opened the Blue Book of Jazz and Pop standards and began to play.
He stopped in his tracks. She played thirty seconds of one song and then flipped the page and played thirty seconds of the next. Zane sank down into the nearest chair.
The little choir girl was incredible. The piano player of his dreams. Shit! He couldn’t have her in the bar. Every man in the place was going to start having dreams about laying her sweet little body over the front of his thighs, pulling up her pleated skirt and...
“Stop!” Zane said loudly, almost more to himself than to her, but this time she obeyed him.
“I want the job, sir,” she said in a calm but firm voice.
“No. The bar is called Piano Man, not Piano Woman.”
“That’s sexual discrimination,” she pointed out.
He rolled his eyes. “You’re not good enough.”
Her eyes shot fire at him. “Yes I am!”
Suddenly Zane had a thought. “How badly do you want this job?”
She lowered her long eyelashes and then looked back up at him. “I want it.”
Slowly, Zane got up from the chair and sauntered over to her. Sitting down next to her on the piano bench, he said, “I’m willing to make you a deal.” He saw her swallow and then she licked her lips.
“I’m listening,” she said as she removed her slender fingers from the keyboard and clasped them primly in her lap.
He bent his head over hers until their lips were touching and then he slipped his tongue into her mouth, dying to taste her.
“This is what I want. Are you willing to give it to me?”
Her eyes grew even wider, but she nodded.
“Whenever I want?”
She nodded again.
“However I want?”
This time she smiled at him and reached out her hand to shake on the agreement. “I’m Jolene,” she said in a voice as sweet as honey. “What’s your name?”
* * *
That first night, Jolene played the piano like she had never played it before. She knew she was still on shaky ground. Besides, she was so excited and nervous about the terms of her contract with Zane, she needed to blow off her energy at the keyboard or she’d go crazy.
All night she had watched him out of the corner of her eye. In her fantasies, she had never created any man as incredible as this one. Six feet tall, and all muscle beneath his worn jeans and tight black t-shirt, his teeth gleamed white against the dark tan of his skin. Stubble covered his jaw line and his shoulder-length dark brown hair and piercing green eyes made him look so much like a pirate that Jolene felt as if he was living in the wrong century, on the wrong continent even.
At the end of the evening as the last customer walked out, he locked the door and then joined her on the stage again.
“Stand up,” he said as he sat down on the piano bench.
She did as he asked and tried to get her knees to stop shaking. Pulling her so that she was standing between his knees, he reached around the back of her skirt and popped open the top button, then slid the zipper down until her skirt fell into a heap at her heels.
She looked around the bar at the hundred tea-light candles glowing, at the fireplace roaring, and knew that all of her fantasies were about to be made real.