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  “In the mood for sweet and sexy?”

  (USA Today) Then discover the novels of

  Carrie Lofty

  and enjoy “romance with sizzle” (Coffee Time Romance) and “a sensual journey” (Australian Romance Readers Association) in book after book!

  Praise for Carrie Lofty and her award-winning fiction

  “Lofty shows us a world filled with courage, hope, and the limitless possibilities of love.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “Richly nuanced characters come together brilliantly.”

  —The Chicago Tribune

  “The fireworks are zingy hot, the dialogue deliciously cutting.”

  —Drey’s Library

  “Exquisite sensuality.”

  —The Romanceaholic

  “She paints a picture rich with emotion, struggle, and passion.”

  —Smexybooks

  “Lofty’s prose is exquisite, her characters are extremely likable and genuine. . . .”

  —The Romance Dish

  “Hot and passionate with sizzling chemistry. . . .”

  —Book Lovers Inc.

  “Watch Lofty’s star rise.”

  —RT Book Reviews

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  To Karen Hermanson Martin, for Cosmos, cleaning up my nasty Mac’n’Cheese, poetry readings, Mothra, midnight runs to the Galley, MK and DM joint coping sessions, and your enthusiasm for a poster of The Crow and an X-Men bedspread that helped launch one of the most important friendships of my life.

  I love you.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  “Please continue, Miss Nyman.”

  I cringe at the name, because it isn’t mine anymore. The judge keeps using it. I guess he has to. The foster parents I’ve been assigned by the State have agreed to become my permanent guardians if Dad is convicted. I’ve lived with them for seven months. It’s not exactly witness protection, but we’ve already discussed changing my name and moving out of state. Right now, they’re at a nearby hotel waiting for me.

  I haven’t been a nice kid in those seven months. In fact, I’ve been kind of a brat. Or depressed. Or screaming from nightmares. They’ve put up with a lot, including shuffling me back and forth to my shrink appointments. Three times a week is a lot, but I have lots to sort out. New guardians. Getting ready for a new life in Baton Rouge, where Clair’s family lives.

  Plus this trial.

  I have to be nicer to Clair and John Chambers. They deserve better.

  Sitting here on the witness stand, I make a promise to myself to be different from now on.

  That’s my future—the one I want to get to. Apparently Baton Rouge is hot and has a ton of bugs and some really nosy people, but it’s a nice place to live. The Chamberses have picked out a small, pretty home near her parents’. But I don’t care what the house is like. I’ll have a bed with fresh sheets, hot meals, and two people across the hall who actually care about me.

  And Clair’s piano. Oh God, a real piano in the house where I’m going to live.

  But first, Rosie Nyman, the girl I don’t want to be anymore, has some cleaning up to do.

  “I’m fifteen years old.” Thank God my voice is steady. “My father is Greg Peter Nyman, and my mother was Jessica Lynn Nyman. She was murdered.”

  I don’t look to where Dad is sitting with his defense guy. I can feel his glare, though. He’s been staring at me since I stepped into the courtroom. He stared at me the same way during all the prelim stuff. “You won’t go through with it, Rosie girl,” he said once, before the guards hauled him away in manacles and handcuffs. “I’ll find you if you do.”

  I’ll find you if you do.

  Those are words to keep a girl awake at night.

  “Miss Nyman?” This from the prosecuting attorney. She’s pretty and a total badass. Although nobody else would make the comparison, she reminds me of Clair. They’re both tigers ready to maul the bad guys. In this case, the bad guy is my father. “When you say she was murdered, can you be more specific? Tell us what you saw on the night of May twelfth last year.”

  “We were squatting in a trailer outside Stockton. We’d only been there a couple weeks since leaving Colorado. I didn’t like it there.”

  “In Colorado?”

  “Oh, sorry,” I say, trying not to get flustered. “I didn’t like it there either, but Stockton was worse. It was someone else’s house, you know? Creepy. They had a fight about it.”

  “Your mother and father?”

  I nod at the prosecutor. Her name is Ursula Lineski, which always makes me think of the Disney villain. It’s backward, though, because she’s on my side. “Yeah, they fought about how it was a shitty place to live. Oh, sorry.” I look up at the judge, expecting lightning bolts to shoot from his eyes because I cussed in court. “I didn’t mean to say that.”

  “Because it’s not true?” he asks, almost fatherly—if “fatherly” means nice and reassuring. He looks like he could be Morgan Freeman’s younger brother.

  “No, sir. I just have trouble with using words I shouldn’t. Sorry,” I say again.

  “I’d like to hear what you remember of the actual exchange.” Ursula stands between me and my dad. I think it’s on purpose, and I like her even more for it.

  “Then I’ll have to use those kind of words.”

  She smiles a little. “Just be as accurate as you can, Miss Nyman.”

  I inhale until I know my lungs are gonna pop. I want my fingers on ivory keys.

  I clear my throat while tapping out “Für Elise” on my thigh. “Mom said, You’re a goddamn motherfucker for dragging us to this shithole.” I’m telling the truth, and it’s how I grew up thinking everybody talks, but I still blush. I can’t look at Ursula or the judge. “Für Elise” is gone. I pick at a cuticle and watch the blood well under the ragged skin. “Dad said, And you’re an ungrateful bitch who won’t shut up. It kinda went on like that until Mom had had enough.”

  “How do you mean, had
enough?” Ursula asks. She knows the answer, but the jurors need to hear it. They need to hear it from me. Mom was no saint—more like a shrieking devil—but I’m the only one left to speak for her.

  “She threatened to call the cops. She’d done it before, so I didn’t think anything about it. But they kept at it.”

  “Where were you at the time?”

  “Behind this nasty recliner. I’d cleared away some old newspapers and used a blanket to make a—God, this sounds dumb. I made, like, a fort. You know, how little kids do?” I shrug. “Sometimes they’d fight and have sex. Or they’d get wasted. Or high—mostly high. Or Dad would hit her.”

  “Objection,” calls my dad’s attorney. “The defendant is not on trial for drug use or assault.”

  “The witness is establishing a pattern of behavior,” Ursula counters. “This was her world, as much as their itinerant lifestyle.”

  “I’ll allow it,” the judge says. “But, Miss Nyman, please limit your remarks from now on to the events in question.”

  “Okay. Sorry.”

  “It’s all right,” Ursula says, her voice sorta hypnotic. She can be a tiger and a snake charmer. “Go on?”

  “She kept at it, the threats. I never heard her make more than one or two—wait, that’s the past. That night, she said she’d tell them about the meth in the trunk, and what he’d done in Colorado. I don’t know what that was, but he got really mad. Now can I say he hit her?”

  Ursula nodded.

  “Yeah, I was watching from behind the recliner. He hit her in the stomach and punched her face. There was blood. She used a towel to wipe it off her nose. I know it’s horrible and I shouldn’t have thought it, but I hoped she’d fight back because then they’d take it out on each other.” My chest clenches. “Not me.”

  “Did she fight back, Miss Nyman?” Ursula asked.

  “No. She got all calm and quiet. I’m going to the police, you prick, she said. I knew she’d been popping oxy like candy. But she didn’t sound high. She sounded like a regular person.”

  My definition of a regular person has changed a lot since being taken into State custody. Nice people live in this world. I like them, but I don’t know how to relate to them.

  “Dad freaked me out too, because he got calm and quiet like her. It was so weird. They just stared at each other.” I exhale. “That’s when Dad left. He slammed the door. I didn’t see him again until he was arrested.”

  “What was he arrested for, Miss Nyman?” Ursula is pacing, but not in an agitated way. It’s almost lulling. She never leaves an open line of sight between me and Dad.

  “For killing her. It was the next day. There was so much blood. . . .”

  Next thing I know, I start . . . leaking. I just can’t hold it in. It’s not crying. That means being all blubbery and sobby. The bailiff hands me a box of tissues and pours me some water. He’s tall and stocky, like he could flip a semi. That’s probably a good trait for a bailiff.

  “I got off the school bus at the entrance to the trailer park, with the other kids.” I want to say, My folks were good at making sure I was legal and in school and not around to mess in their business, but I don’t. “Mom was dead on the kitchen floor.”

  I go on with the details, feeling swoony and out of body—kinda like I felt back then. It was almost eighteen months ago, but even on the stand, I know I won’t ever forget what I saw. I think I have a lot more I’d like to forget than most people.

  The cross examination is brutal. Ursula can’t protect me anymore. The defense prick keeps moving out of the way. I think it’s on purpose, to let Dad glare at me. I still don’t look at him, but I bet he’s smirking.

  “Isn’t it true, Miss Nyman, that in your statement to the police, you recalled signs of your mother having been under the influence of drugs?”

  I nod. I don’t say anything until he prods me. “Yes,” I finally answer. “Needles and track marks.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  I glare. “Heroin. I think she’d cooked some heroin.”

  “And she was armed?”

  “The police guys told everyone this stuff,” I say.

  “You’re here because you were the first witness on the scene, Miss Nyman. Please answer.” He has beady eyes and a mustache like something out of a ’70s porno.

  “A switchblade was on the floor near her right hand.”

  “Ah. So she fought back.”

  “I can’t be sure of that, can I? Speculation.”

  The mustache makes his smile creepy, kinda like a clown. “You’ve been coached well.” He stands with his hands behind his back and glances between me and my dad. “Miss Nyman, look at your father. Look at him.”

  I do. For the first time since I sat down, I really do. He’s wearing a suit, with his hair clean and slicked back. He’s had a shave. He’s gained a healthy amount of weight, and his skin has a healthy glow. He was probably forced into detox. I can’t remember seeing him seem so ordinary. Yet no amount of soap and scrubbing can change his face. I don’t know if there’s a hell, but his expression promises he’ll do his best to send me there.

  “As his only daughter, as his little girl, can you honestly say that you believe your father capable of murder? That he killed your mother?”

  “Yes, sir,” I say. “I can honestly say that.”

  His shoulders slump in resignation. Maybe he thought his last card was to appeal to me as a daughter. Or to let my dad’s sneering, vicious glare scare me into silence.

  Not a chance.

  “No further questions, Your Honor.”

  The case is over. Putting a fifteen-year-old on the stand probably counts as cruelty to some, in light of how much evidence the police had. Ursula said she had a really good shot at first degree if I testified. Which meant he’d be put away forever. No chance of parole.

  Instead, he’s convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to twenty-five years.

  There were mitigating circumstances—something about the switchblade and how Mom fought back. I don’t catch more than every fourth word. All I know is that when the cops finally drop me off at the hotel, I don’t flinch when Clair and John give me smothering hugs, something I’m still trying to get used to.

  Now, Rosie Nyman is as dead and gone as my mom.

  My name is Keeley Chambers.

  One

  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 Qu
arter. 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.