The Gold Collection: Taming The Argentinian: A Taste of the Untamed / The Untamed Argentinian / Taming the Last Acosta

Grace could only hope Maria was right.

She sat for a long time without doing anything after Maria left. Putting off the moment, she guessed. The hall felt very quiet, very still, very empty. It was easy to imagine ghosts were listening. ‘I don’t want to let you down,’ she murmured, reminding herself that all piano keys were set out in a logical sequence, so it should be no big deal that she couldn’t see. The notes weren’t going anywhere, and she could hear what she was playing just as well as she ever had. She just had to remember what Clark, the pianist at the club had told her. ‘Close your eyes, Grace, and let the music flow …’

What if it didn’t flow?

It would flow, Grace told herself firmly. Nothing had changed since those nights at the club.

Everything had changed. Her fingers fumbled over the keys as if she was a toddler let loose on a piano. It didn’t help that the instrument was so badly out of tune. She couldn’t hear what she should be playing. She couldn’t find her way into the tune—any tune. She couldn’t trust her own judgement. Even the simplest nursery rhyme was beyond her reach.

This was ridiculous. She had to calm down and get over the fear. Dashing the tears away, she thought back to what they’d told her at the rehabilitation centre: she must always give herself time to think. Taking a deep breath, she tried again—first a scale, and then an arpeggio, and now a simple Chopin waltz, one of the slower ones she had always been able to play from memory. She started hesitantly, but her courage quickly grew. Clark Mayhew had been right. The music hadn’t left her. It was still here in her head and in her fingers.

The hall was a natural amphitheatre, and even the suspect tuning seemed to add a poignant, haunting strain to the melody. The keys that had been sticking to begin with were working now, as if the piano was glad to be played again. Her heart began to soar as she played on. But then a door banged open and she jumped with alarm.

‘Nacho?’ She spun round on the stool.

Angry footsteps pounded across the hall towards her, and she yelped with fright when Nacho slammed the piano lid down, narrowly missing her fingers.

‘What are you doing?’ she exclaimed, hugging herself defensively. His rage was buzzing around her like a swarm of angry bees.

‘What am I doing?’ he demanded hoarsely. ‘Get away from the piano!’ he roared as she ran her fingers along the edge of the lid with concern, feeling for damage. ‘Get away from the piano, Grace.’

She was incapable of moving anywhere, and could only sit, stunned, wondering what had happened to her gentle lover from last night.

He couldn’t believe Grace was still seated at the piano when he had insisted she must move away. His rational brain warned him that he was half mad with anger, grief, guilt, and that all of these were compounded by his concern for Grace, but the other part of him—the dark side that had once driven him to desert those he loved when he should have stayed to save them—said she must go. Just as Grace had made him forget the past last night, and the evil of which he was capable, she had brought it back to him today.