Sweet Talk. Сьюзен Мэллери

of fire.

      Goddamn sonofabitch, he thought grimly, jerking back his hand and stuffing it in his jacket pocket. No way. Not her. Dear God, anyone but her.

      Claire was babbling on, probably thanking him. He wasn’t listening. Instead he was wondering why, of all the women in all the world, he’d had to feel that hot, bright, sexual heat with her.

      THE CALM-VOICED WOMAN in the GPS system led Claire to the house where she’d spent the first six years of her life. She found a parking space on the narrow street in front. It was by a driveway, so all she had to do was pull forward to claim it. There was no way she would ever be able to parallel park.

      She turned off the engine, got out of the car and locked it, using the fob. Feeling foolishly proud of herself, she walked around to the back of the house and found the spare key where Jesse had said it would be. She unlocked the rear door and stepped into the house.

      She hadn’t been inside it for years. Nearly twelve, she thought, remembering the single night spent under this roof after her mother had died. one night with Jesse staring at her as though she was a stranger and Nicole glaring with obvious loathing. Not that Nicole had settled on communicating silently. At sixteen she’d been very comfortable speaking her mind.

      “You killed her,” she screamed. “You took her away and then you killed her. I’ll never forgive you. I hate you. I hate you.”

      Lisa, Claire’s manager, had taken her away then. They’d checked into a suite at the Four Seasons where they’d stayed until after the funeral. From there they’d gone to Paris. Springtime in Paris, Lisa had said. The beauty of the city would heal her.

      It hadn’t. Only time had closed the wounds, but the scars were still there. Springtime in Paris. The words always made her think of the song and whenever she heard the song, she thought about her mother’s death and Nicole screaming that she hated her.

      Claire shook off the memories and moved into the kitchen. It looked different, more modern and bigger somehow. Apparently Nicole had renovated the place, or at least parts of it. She continued through the downstairs and found several small rooms had been opened up into a larger space. There was a big living room with comfortable furniture, warm colors and a cabinet against one wall that concealed a flat-screen TV and other electronics. The dining room looked the same. The small bedroom on this floor had been converted into a study or den.

      The place was dark and cool. She found the thermostat and turned up the heat. A few lamps helped add light, but didn’t make the house any more welcoming. Maybe because the problem wasn’t the house. It was her and the memories that wouldn’t go away.

      The last time she’d come to Seattle had been for their father’s funeral. She’d received a terse phone call from a man, probably Wyatt, Claire thought as she sat on the edge of the sofa, saying her father had died. He’d given the date, time and place of the funeral, then had hung up.

      Claire had been in shock. She hadn’t even known he was sick. No one had told her.

      She knew what they thought—that she couldn’t be bothered with her own family. That she didn’t care. What she’d tried to explain so many times was that she was the one who had been sent away. They’d been allowed to stay here, where it was safe, where they were loved. But Nicole had never seen it that way. She’d always been so angry.

      Claire rubbed her hands against the soft fabric on the couch. None of this was familiar. Wyatt had been right—she didn’t belong here. Not that she was leaving. Nicole and Jesse were the only family she had left. They might have ignored her phone calls and letters over the years, but she was here now and she wasn’t leaving until she somehow got through to them. Until they made peace.

      Claire stood and went up the stairs. There were three bedrooms on the top floor. She paused by the master suite. Based on the color scheme and items scattered across the dresser, she would guess that Nicole slept there now. At the other end of the hall were the two remaining bedrooms and the bathroom they shared.

      One looked like a typical guest room with a too-tidy bed and neutral colors, while the last was done in purple, with posters on the walls and a computer on a desk filling one corner.

      Claire walked into that room and looked around. The space smelled of vanilla.

      “What have you done?” she asked aloud. “Jesse, did you set me up? Is Nicole really ready to forgive me?”

      She desperately wanted to believe her sister, but found herself doubting. Wyatt had been very convincing in his dislike of her.

      The unfairness of it, a stranger judging her, made her chest hurt, but she ignored the sensation. Somehow she would get this all fixed.

      She returned downstairs and walked toward the front door. On the way, she saw a narrow staircase leading to the basement. She knew what was down there.

      Every cell in her body screamed at her not to do it—not to go look—yet she found herself walking toward the opening, then slowly, so slowly, moving down.

      The stairs opened into a basement. But what should have been an open space was closed off with a wall and a single door. Nicole hadn’t destroyed it, Claire thought, not sure what to make of that. Did it mean there was hope, or had the project simply been too much trouble?

      Claire hesitated, her hand on the doorknob. Did she really want to go in?

      When she and Nicole had been three, their parents had taken them to a friend’s house. It was a place neither girl had been before. At first the visit had been unremarkable. A rainy Seattle day with two toddlers trapped inside a house full of adults.

      One of the guests had tried to entertain the girls by playing the piano. Nicole had grown bored and wandered away, but Claire had sat on the hard bench, entranced by the keys and the sound they made. After lunch, she’d gone back on her own. She’d been too short to see the white and black keys, but she’d known they were there and she’d carefully reached above her head and started to play one of the songs.

      Despite how young she’d been, Claire remembered everything about that afternoon. How her mother had come looking for her and stared at her for the longest time. How she’d been put on her mother’s lap in front of the piano, where she could make the pretty music more easily.

      She had never been able to explain how she knew which key produced which sound, how the music had seemed to begin inside of her, bubbling up until it spilled out. It was just one of those things, a quirk of an, until then, unremarkable gene pool.

      Nicole had also sat on her mother’s lap, but she’d shown no interest in the piano and when she put her tiny hands down, there was only noise.

      That moment had changed everything. Within two days, Claire started lessons. Then the work on the basement began and a soundproof studio was built. For the first time in their lives, the twins weren’t doing exactly the same thing at exactly the same time. Music, and Claire’s gift, had come between them.

      She pushed the door open. She could see the piano that had seemed so beautiful and perfect when she’d been a child. She would guess the cost of it had decimated her parents’ savings account and then some. Claire had played on many of the most famous pianos in the world, but this was the one she remembered most.

      She stared at it now, at the dust on the cover. It probably hadn’t been touched in years. It would need tuning.

      She had no desire to play. Just the thought of sitting down on the bench made her chest tighten. She forced herself to keep breathing. She didn’t have to play if she didn’t want to. Everything was fine. She didn’t even have to make up excuses to avoid her masters classes. She was a whole continent away from that world.

      Panic haunted the edges of her conscious mind. She pushed it away. When it stayed stubbornly in place, she retreated upstairs, to safer ground. Once on the main floor, she could breathe more easily.

      She would ignore the piano, she told herself. Pretend it wasn’t here at all. Except for getting it tuned. A lifetime of training wouldn’t allow her to let it sit