Blue Notes: A Book Club Recommendation! - Softcover

Lofty, Carrie

 
9781476706894: Blue Notes: A Book Club Recommendation!
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1476706891 ISBN 13: 9781476706894
Verlag: Gallery Books, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

For fans of Jamie McGuire and S.C. Stephens, a sizzling new adult novel featuring the tumultuous relationship between a young piano prodigy and a reluctant billionaire playboy—set against the vibrant backdrop of a New Orleans college campus.

Carrie Lofty brings her “exciting, sensual” (RT Book Reviews ) romantic storytelling to a sizzling new adult novel of a gifted pianist with a troubled past, the enigmatic stranger who unlocks her secrets, and sultry nights of passion in the Big Easy.

A piano prodigy on a scholarship to a prestigious New Orleans university, Keeley Chambers is finally striking out on her own after a roving life dictated by her criminal parents. Her soulful, brilliant, fiery improvisations tear through her like a storm but are played for an audience of one: herself. However, sinfully handsome Jude Villars refuses to abandon Keeley to her private world and calls her out on her fear of performing in public. The irreverent, seductive billionaire playboy awakens Keeley to the blissful pleasures of letting go as he tempts her into the spotlight of the city’s hottest clubs. Yet Jude has secrets of his own and pain that no one but Keeley recognizes. Will revealing themselves as they really are be too great a risk? Or will the truth make their tumultuous connection hotter and more irresistible than ever?

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Carrie Lofty holds a Masters degree in history, which she has put to good use as an award-winning historical romance writer and lecturer on the craft of writing. An active member of the Chicago North and Wisconsin chapters of Romance Writers of America, she’s also a part-time movie buff, former belly dancer, and wannabe choral singer. She lives in Wisconsin her husband and two daughters.

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Blue Notes

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You’re going to be a star.

That’s what Clair, my foster mom, said whenever she stood on the stairs of our basement rec room, smiling, listening to me pounding and pounding. I’ve never told Clair how much I hated being surprised that way. How embarrassed I got. It’s like when I was sixteen and the bathroom door at the movie theater wouldn’t lock. I tried to keep it shut by putting one foot out. Not easy. Not dignified. I cringed the whole time. It definitely wasn’t something I wanted a stranger to see. Some absentminded woman barged in anyway.

Insert mortification.

My music is . . . private. It’s a hole in me where anyone can look inside. It’s a damn bathroom door that won’t lock. The keys aren’t my friends when I’m so pent up. It’s only afterward, when I write down what’s flowed through me, that I feel in control again. The music doesn’t own me then. I own it.

It’s not that I don’t think I’m good; it’s being watched that gets me all sick inside. That’s the real challenge. My profs at Tulane tell me I’ll have to get over it one day. “One day” is coming soon. The winter recital is just over three months away. If I can’t make myself heard there, I might as well call music my hobby and go home.

Not an option. I’m a junior now. This is me.

I never feel more secure than when I’m in a private rehearsal room, like the one in Dixon Hall. Living in New Orleans had been my dream for so long that I don’t remember when or how it started. I’d wanted to smell the Garden District and walk the French Quarter. In spring, I want to find a place high above the glittering, cocktail soaked chaos of Mardi Gras. It’s a city of mystery and romance, like a sultry smile that never fades.

New Orleans has secrets.

Maybe that’s what sparked my fascination. I have secrets too.

I strip off my lightweight sweater. The rehearsal room is intentionally chilly. Serious practice gets hot real fast.

But I shed more than layers of clothing. When sitting on a piano bench, I can shake off emotional burdens—memories of my long gone parents and our lives on the run, knocking off liquor stores, cooking meth in the woods of a shady, scary as hell West Virginia commune, and even defrauding a securities company.

My tank top is so old that I remember Mom shoving it in her purse at a Walmart. My girl needs clothes, she’d said. But we need to eat too. Eat. Drain fifths of Jack in an evening. Forge IDs to buy more pseudoephedrine. You know, the basics of a life well lived.

The yellowed tank top is stretched to hell, leaving me free to move. It’s probably another reason why I prefer privacy. No one wants to watch a maniac musician playing with the grace of someone tumbling down a flight of stairs.

I begin by touching Middle C. The key is sleek. Cool to the touch. Ready for me.

I shiver.

The only way to banish the cold is to light a match. I start an ivory bonfire.

What emerges is always a mystery, dictated by my mood. Today I’m nervous about meeting the freshman pianist I’ve been assigned to mentor. But my nerves melt away as I begin to play and play. Verbs chase the chords—verbs like flutter, dance, seduce, fling. Murder. I abuse the instrument. I abuse my ears, my hands, my upper back. I smash the rules of harmonics.

When I finish, I’m breathless and limp. My forehead falls forward and thunks on heated stripes of black and white. The bite of pain snaps me out of my trance. The keys become my friends again. I turn my head to the side and pet Middle C. No wonder I’ve developed this weird habit of apologizing to pianos.

Clair thinks I’ll be a star. I think I’ll be something like an art house curiosity. A cult following, perhaps? Or a hermit holed up in a closet-sized studio, freeing the knots in my guts, writing pretty music for other people to play. Let them be the stars. I can deal with that. Most people like music to be pretty, but I’m not the lullaby kind. Knowing that fits hand in glove with my shyness on stage. I don’t want to perform in front of other people, and even if I did, they wouldn’t want to listen.

God, I need a shower. Thumping out an original composition is as hard as a Piloxing class. No one thinks twice about taking a change of clothes to the gym. To the fine arts building, though? Yeah, right. I’m a wad of wet cotton balls held together by jeans and the light sweater I button over my morning-after tank top.

Not that I have personal experience with mornings after.

A tingle of fear rushes in at the idea, followed by my distrust of being impulsive. After all, Mom got pregnant at sixteen. Really bad choices followed. I could use all eighty-eight piano keys to count reasons why waiting is a bright idea. Plus . . . well, I’m not very good at trusting people. It took years for me to relax around Clair and John.

A boyfriend would be nice, though. Someone to talk and laugh with. Touch. Explore. Kinda . . . I don’t know. Practice? I’m not the type to start without knowing where to put my hands. I’m used to knowing what to do with my hands.

The trek to my dorm awaits. I’ve done it only eight times since transferring from a Baton Rouge community college to Tulane. I don’t know this campus well enough to get back the shortest way. I’m useless with maps. Even poking at my iPhone is useless. What seems so clear on a straight grid gets fuzzed out by the actual shapes of buildings and trees. I’m Dorothy trying to get to the Emerald City. Only, someone forgot to paint the sidewalks yellow.

I’ll get faster. Or I’ll get over the silly reflex that other students give a crap about how I look. They hurry past. A split second is all. If they’re anywhere near as self-conscious as me, they’re sure as hell not paying attention to me.

I load up my purple—I love purple—messenger bag with sheaves of notes. Then I pull out my iPod and adjust my earbuds. Forget classical when I’m “off duty.” I search out Florence + the Machine. I like the songs of hers that no one wants to sing at kar­aoke. The good stuff. The stuff with soul so deep that I’ve developed a really unnatural relationship with her. She’s simply Florence. “Goddess divine” works too.

Maybe I’m too into the music—mine and Florence and a bit of Zoltán Kodály, because I can never truly escape the classics. They overlap in some weird mash-up. Or maybe I’m too busy reading the hieroglyphics of my phone’s tiny screen.

Or maybe it’s nothing but a dumb thing the universe throws at me, just to be mean . . .

Because there’s a man waiting outside the door.

First thing: chocolate. That’s all I can think. I catch a glimpse of chocolate brown hair that’s long enough to curl at his collar, but really neatly styled. The sunlight from a window at the end of the hallway makes the tips of those curls shine.

Second thing: an honest to goodness three piece suit. He sure isn’t a student. He isn’t one of the music profs either. They only dress up for performances. Normally they resemble me, half possessed and raggedy. This stranger looks like a full blown executive, but young...

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Verlag
Gallery Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2014
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1476706891
ISBN 13 
9781476706894
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
352
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV
info@simonandschuster.nl

Herculesplein 96
Utrecht
3584 AA
Niederlande