Die to Your Own Tune
Chapter One
“Octavia, you’re here.” Mairi abandoned her polishing cloth on the glass display case and barreled through the octagonal shop toward me. “We expected you over a week ago.”
I know what you’re thinking, but I can’t even blame my late arrival on my questionable relationship with a clock. Or calendar, in the case where I’m several days late instead of just hours.
“We were worried,” Xavier added, clomping across the room to stash a box in the office, instead of moving with his typical sashay. When that was done, he turned a reproachful look my way. “Even if you didn’t want to call, you could have sent word.”
Ignoring the slight reprimand from my employees, I smiled. “It’s good to be back.”
“We’ve got everything unpacked and organized,” Mairi said, giving me a look that said I’d better not think about organizing the shop in a way that made sense to me. “I think we got the last of the orders today, but there’s a chance we might still have a package or two coming.”
“Thank you for taking care of things until I could get here.” I went around to the opening that let me into the center of the display cases so I was behind the counter. “How has business been?”
“You aren’t even going to tell us why you’re late?” Xavier pouted.
Mairi shot him a dirty look. “We’ve had typical sales for the first week of the season, but the music camps start this week, so things should pick up.”
They’d better pick up. I was determined to have a banner year.
“Has Piper been in?” I asked.
As if on cue, the glass doors flung open.
I turned to smile at my best friend and her regular I-know-I’m-a-diva grand entrance, but froze when I realized it wasn’t Piper. It wasn’t even her husband, or any of the members of the Aerie Peaks Symphony that I was friends with.
The stocky woman in the doorway raised her brows. Her brows were dyed as black as her hair, but when I’d known her she’d been a natural blonde. “Well. When I heard you ran a little shop here, I had to see for myself if it was true.”
“Tamsin Reed.” Even the taste of her name in my mouth made me want to gag. And her aura! It wasn’t even a color so much as it was a dirty smudge. Ugh.
“In the flesh.” She preened. “I’m sure you’ve heard I’m the guest soloist for the concert next week.”
“How on earth would I have known that?” If I’d known, I would have taken the scenic route to get here. “I have to be honest, Tamsin, I don’t pay any attention to your schedule. In fact, I never even bother to think about you.”
Mairi gasped.
Tamsin’s face darkened. “It must be hard to avoid all the reminders that you’re a nobody who’s been kicked out of anything decent you’ve been a part of. Especially when it means you’re stuck in this dark hole.”
My shop was anything but a dark hole. It had originally been a gazebo. It had been closed in with five glass walls and a large rectangular addition had been added to the back, creating a beautiful, bright space that felt almost like it was outside.
“I suppose it suits you,” she said. “Small, ugly, and unimportant.”
Ah. So she was here to insult me, was she? As if I wasn’t happier in my life than she was in hers. I adjusted my vintage cat-eye glasses. They were a bit big on me, so they didn’t stay in place very well, but they were worth the hassle. “Are you here to buy something?”
Tamsin laughed.
“Then I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
Her laugh hardened, then died. “You think you can order me around? Let me remind you that I’ve made something of myself. I’m more famous than you could possibly imagine. And you? You grovel at the feet of people like me.”
“As I said, I’m done with this conversation.” I hopped over the top of the display case and got in her space, causing her to back up. “You can leave willingly, or I can call security. I’m sure they can reach out to the right people to charge you with trespassing.”
Her eyes narrowed.
Not everyone was comfortable with the idea of being arrested. Normally I wouldn’t be so quick to exploit that, but Tamsin was a special case.
“You’re just as rude as ever.” Tamsin straightened her blouse, eyed the group of people hovering inside the door, then turned and stormed past them.
“Well, that wasn’t how I expected to start the summer.” I looked around, trying to remember what I’d been about to do. Being in the same room with Tamsin hadn’t been a good idea back in the day, and that kind of thing rarely changes when you get older.
Mairi was polishing my fingerprints off the glass, and Xavier was puttering with a display.
Neither of them looked at me, or at the waiting customers.
Quite the welcome I was getting. Ignoring the fact that they were so obviously ignoring me, I turned to the customers. “Come on in. What can I help you with?”
As I helped one of them buy a new mute, Mairi and Xavier, still not looking at me, moved to help the others.
I smiled as I thanked the customer and moved onto another, but I couldn’t help wondering what had gotten into my employees. Were they really that upset I was late? I do make it a priority to get to Aerie Pines on time, but sometimes fate throws obstacles at you.
They might have been a little off when I came in, but it was really only since Tamsin came in that they’d gotten so distant. Maybe they didn’t think I’d handled that very well.
I thought I’d kept my cool, but things don’t always look the same from outside yourself as they feel on the inside.
The shop was busy for quite a while, and as the last of the customers left a short woman with curves that would make a cartoon character’s eyes pop out waltzed through the doors.
Pushing her sunglasses up to nestle in her chestnut hair, she looked me up and down. “I see you’ve decided to grace us with your presence.”
Mairi and Xavier exchanged looks.
I was obviously missing something. “It’s nice to see you, too, Piper.”
Piper fluffed her modern Marilyn Monroe curls. “What took you so long?”
I fought a smile. “It couldn’t be helped. Betty was in the hospital.”
“Only you would equate taking your car to the mechanic as putting her in the hospital.” Piper was talking to me, but her eyes were on my employees, and not in her normal Xavier-is-my-tall-dark-and-swoony-eye-candy kind of way. “What happened?”
In case you’re new here, Betty is my old hippie van. I adore her, and she treats me well. We’ve traveled the country and beyond together. “Her brakes gave out, and it took a while to find someone comfortable working on her. Everyone wants to work with the vehicles that are half computer these days.”
Piper was staring at Mairi, almost like they were having a silent conversation.
“Okay, what’s going on? You’re all acting weird. What did I miss?”
Xavier made a sound like a choking hyena. When no one else reacted, he sighed. “Piper told us we had to tell you about that woman being here the minute you walked in the door.”
“Which you obviously didn’t do.” Piper sniffed.
“She didn’t give us a chance,” Mairi argued. She waved her arm at me, which felt very un-Mairi-like. “She came in wanting updates, and Ms. Reed was practically on her heels.”
“You know what this week is,” Piper said through clenched teeth.
First I get an annoying blast from the past in the form of Tamsin Reed, then bickering from my best friend and my employees. What was wrong with the universe?
The shop door opened again, and prickles of awareness danced at the base of my neck. I was already smiling when I turned my back on the squabbling that was suddenly petering out.
Most people would probably notice the perfectly tailored suit first. Or the broad shoulders and sandy hair.
Me? I zeroed in on the man’s piercing blue eyes that crinkled at the corners when he saw me. A ghost of a smile quirked his lips.
I knew the quarreling trio were saying things, but I didn’t care what.
Jack crossed the distance in broad steps, until his fingertips found my face. “You’re here.”
“I’m here.” I tried to tell my heart it didn’t need to feel all warm and squishy, but even I knew it was a lost cause.
Detective Jack Price and I may not have spent a crazy amount of time together, but we both knew there was something between us that was worth exploring.
We just maybe shouldn’t explore it in front of so many eyes when we hadn’t seen each other in ten months.
Either he read my mind or he had the same thought, because he lowered his hand.
I recognized Xavier’s sigh behind me. Glancing over my shoulder, I could see both employees had the swoony eyes they saved just for Jack.
Piper snapped her fingers in front of their noses and narrowed her eyes.
Jack cleared his throat. “Can I take you to dinner tonight? Or I can bring something and we can eat at your place. I can help you set up the tiny house for the summer.”
“That would be nice. I haven’t even unhitched the house from Betty yet.”
“I’ll be here when you close.” If I was reading his eyes correctly, they were promising all sorts of things that had me breathing a little faster.
A chime sounded, and Piper made a show of pulling out her phone, elbowing me in the process. Which was quite a feat, since she’d been standing too far away to reach me when she started. She made an exasperated noise. “I have to go.”
“But you just got here,” I said. I hadn’t seen Piper in months, and two minutes after I get here, she has to run away—after spending the first minute acting weird.
“I should let you work, too.” Jack, at least, looked sorry about the idea.
“Maybe you should come back early,” Piper suggested. “You can bring Octavia to hear the symphony’s rehearsal before dinner.”
“I don’t want to go to the rehearsal.” Don’t read anything into that. It’s not because I was kicked out of the symphony for being late to—or missing—too many rehearsals. I went to all the concerts, and some of the chamber music performances, too. But I wanted time to settle in.
“Of course you want to be there.” Piper glanced at my employees, and together, they fell back a step. “These two obviously didn’t tell you Tamsin Reed was here, otherwise she wouldn’t be going around campus spreading rumors that she came to see you and you lashed out at her.”
“I didn’t lash out, I just told her I was done with the conversation and asked her to leave.” I shot Jack an exasperated look, and he grinned back at me.
Oh, sweet Brahms, I’d forgotten how his grin could melt me.
“Tamsin’s playing Bartók,” Piper said.
As if that changed anything. “Then I really don’t want to be there. She’s a terrible human being, and a worse musician. She’ll murder it.”
“There’s something else these two were supposed to tell you.” Piper reached out and tapped my arm with one finger. “It’s the other reason you need to be there. You don’t want anyone to think you’re hiding.”
Why couldn’t she just come out and say it?
Now Piper was giving Jack the kind of look that said it was his turn.
And, surprisingly, he nodded.
Since when did Jack take instructions from Piper? It was supposed to be the other way around. Jack, as a lead detective, gave the orders. He didn’t take them, especially not from my best friend.
Jack twined his fingers in mine. “I’d asked Piper to give me your first night back before she sprung this on you, but she’s right. If someone’s already turning eyes on you, you should know.”
I focused on the way Jack’s thumb was brushing over my knuckles. “Who cares if Tamsin was talking about me?”
Nobody, that’s who.
Xavier huffed. “I still think Piper’s the one who should be telling you, but she wants you to be annoyed with anyone but her.”
Piper made a delicate choking sound.
“Tell me what?”
Xavier raised a finger, then hurried into the office. He came back with a vase overflowing with roses. He shot Piper a dirty look before setting the vase down on the glass counter nearest me.
Drat. I didn’t have to look for a card to know who’d sent them. “What does he want now?”
Everyone looked at Piper.
She flipped her hair. “Fine. Morton’s conducting the Tamsin concert.”
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