3. Liv
Liv
This made no sense. I didn’t see my grandmother anywhere, nor anyone I could’ve mistaken for her. But how could that be? Atomic was crowded, but not that crowded. Plus, she’d just walked in a minute before I did.
Puzzled, I boosted myself onto a stool and snagged the bartender’s attention. While he got my Shiraz, I looked around: exposed brick walls, polished wood floors, reclaimed shipping pallet tables paired with mismatched chairs. But no Grandma.
The bartender slid my glass across the counter and I wrapped my fingers around it, searching the crowd and trying not to think about what my mother would have to say about the scene I’d made at the restaurant.
Being raised with money had its perks, but it also came with a set of expectations.
Among those were the obligation to exhibit impeccable taste at all times, in one’s behavior as well as one’s choices.
Carter-Brentwoods have a reputation to uphold, Mom was fond of saying.
Carter-Brentwoods need to protect ourselves, Olivia. I only want what’s best for you.
I shook my head, dismissing her voice with an effort.
Right now, mysterious Grandma sighting or no, I was free and single and unaccosted.
I wasn’t going to worry about what my mother would think about dousing Mustache Man in ice water, or whether Gray was throwing one of his famous parties on the river and had forgotten he was supposed to be responsible for an adventurous eight-year-old.
Whether Chloe was, right this moment, wandering through a cloud of pot smoke on the edge of the Cape Fear River.
The custody agreement said Gray got her two weekends a month.
She was smart. She was responsible, even if he wasn’t.
I’d warned her to look after herself, using the cautionary tale of Grandma Ella’s childhood kidnapping as an illustration of how danger could swoop down on anyone, no matter how well-protected.
In 1927, at age two, my grandmother had been kidnapped from inside a locked park, under the watchful eye of her nanny.
It wasn’t as big a deal as the Lindbergh kidnapping that had taken place five years later, but given our family’s high profile, it had been splattered all over the papers.
Fortunately, unlike the Lindberghs’, my grandma’s story had a happy ending…
sort of. A year after she’d disappeared, she’d been found in Chicago.
When her parents brought her home, there had been a massive scandal and a ton of drama.
The family responsible for that whole mess had been the Dresslers.
Whenever someone in my family spoke their name, even generations later, I half-expected them to spit on the floor.
I took a big gulp of my wine, looking around again for my grandma’s doppelganger.
As my gaze fell on the door to the back room, a man pushed it open.
He was tall and lithe, with ink-dark hair that brushed his collar and faded jeans that clung to his body like they’d been custom-made.
A hint of stubble darkened his face: not enough to make him look sloppy, just enough to give him a tantalizing edge.
He cut through the dance floor, fielding greetings as he went.
The crowd parted and I got a glimpse of the piano, polished to a sheen and pushed up against the far wall.
To my surprise, the hot guy set his whiskey on top of the lid and slid onto the bench.
He turned, scanning the crowd. His eyes caught on mine and he winked, dark lashes feathering over his cheekbones.
And then his fingers came down on the keyboard.
I wasn’t a musician, like Grandma Ella, who had played the piano since she was small.
But even I could tell this man was something special.
The song was soulful and raucous at once, the kind of music in which I could imagine my own story.
He put everything he had into it, his body arching over the piano and his hair falling in his eyes.
The piano growled as his hands hit the lower registers, a song of rage and protest, loss and grief. And then he began to sing.
My wine glass thudded to the bar, forgotten. I stared at him, not caring who might see.
He looked like that. He sounded like this. And from what I could tell, he didn’t wear a wedding ring.
The heck with my dreams of finding a man who was a true partner. After the night I’d had, I’d settle for a gorgeous, talented guy with a drop-dead sexy voice. I let myself sink into the music, imagining for an impossible instant that he was singing to me.
And then I froze.
There, on the dance floor, was my grandmother’s lookalike. She wove between a woman with her hair in a wild updo and a guy in a burgundy velvet blazer, eyes roving the room as if searching for someone. No one moved to make room for her.
You’d think people would react to seeing a nonagenarian on the dance floor of a downtown club, but apparently Atomic was the sort of place where anything went. Which could be entertaining under other circumstances, but tonight…
I shifted to the left, straining to see. That couldn’t really be Grandma Ella, could it? What if she lost her balance and fell? And where had she been since I’d walked into the bar?
Slipping off my stool, I made my way toward the dance floor. But between one beat and the next, I lost sight of her. And by the time I stepped onto the floor, she’d vanished again.
I stood, mouth open, trying to figure out whether I was imagining things. There wasn’t a tiny, elegant older woman anywhere to be seen…but she’d been there. I knew she had.
It came to me, in a horrible, stomach-clenching way, that perhaps my grandmother was dead, and I’d just seen her ghost. Which was ridiculous. But unless I’d developed a hallucinatory disorder in the past fifteen minutes, how else could I explain it?
I pulled my phone out of my purse and texted Grandma Ella. To my relief, I got an immediate reply: I’m fine, darling. How was your date? My body suffused with relief, I texted back, Fine, with a smiley-face. No need to burden her with the details.
Then I glanced around one last time. Nothing.
The music ebbed, and people drifted off the dance floor. Distracted by my search for the elusive woman, I only realized the piano player had come to stand by my side when he spoke.
“Are you okay?”
His voice was rich as dark chocolate, with the throaty rasp I’d noticed when he sang. Up close, his eyes were hazel, the irises a vivid green, a burst of brown radiating outward from the pupil. He arched a dark brow, waiting for my reply.
Color flooded my face. “Oh. Yes. It’s just that I thought…”
I scanned the crowd again, then gave up. Whoever she was and wherever she’d gone, the woman wasn’t Grandma Ella. I should stop worrying, no matter how weird the whole scenario seemed.
“I guess I was imagining things,” I said, trying to figure out why the guy was being so solicitous. Was he hitting on me? If so, he was a major step up from Mustache Man. “Maybe it’s my night for close encounters of the bizarre kind.”
He cleared his throat, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “You’re not the only one who thinks they might be seeing things. When I noticed you standing here, I thought you looked like a star straight out of an old movie. I had to say something to you, just to make sure you were real.”
If that was a line, it was a good one. I stared, at a loss for words.
“Anyway.” One side of his mouth quirked upward in a shy smile, as if he’d said more than he meant to. “Can I buy you a drink?”
I couldn’t help it; I smiled back. “I am kind of thirsty, now that you mention it. But don’t you have a job to do?”
“I’m on a break,” he said, eyes fixed on my face and not on the expanse of cleavage revealed by my plunging neckline. Two points for him. “By the way, I’m Theo.”
“Liv,” I said. “And in that case…yes.”
Setting his hand at the small of my back, he guided me through the crowd to the bar.