Free After the Music by Diana Palmer

Al's girl."
    His nose nuzzled hers and his mouth threatened to come down and take possession of her lips. She could almost feel its texture, exciting, hungry. "Then why," he whispered, "are you begging me to kiss you?"
    "Damn you!" she whimpered, swatting at him.
    He stood up with a mocking smile on his dark face, his eyes sparkling as they met hers. "You fascinate me, Miss Cane," he said after a minute, fingering his whiskey glass idly as he studied her flushed face. "All that delicious innocence, waiting to be taken. Why hasn't Al had you? Are you afraid of sex?"
    She was hardly able to catch her breath. Why did he affect her this way? "You have...a dirty mouth," she muttered, hating that faint amusement in his eyes.
    "Yours is incredibly tempting, rock star," he replied, lifting his glass to his lips. "I'd like nothing more than to seduce you, right where you're sitting."
    She started to jump at him, out of sheer frustrated fury, when another voice broke the silence.
    "Where is everybody?" Al called from the hall. He sauntered in, oblivious of the tense undercurrents in the room. He was wearing a casual denim suit with a patterned blue shirt. It suited his fairness. But he wasn't any match for Thorn.
    "You two look so different," Sabina observed quietly, glancing from one to the other.
    "Our father was dark-headed and blue-eyed," Al explained. "And our mother was brunette and green-eyed. I guess we got the best of them both."
    Thorn's face hardened. "Let's go in," he said, gulping down the rest of his drink. He set the glass down roughly on the desk and strode out ahead of them.
    "Ouch," Al muttered, hanging behind. "I never know which way he's going to jump. He and Mother must have really had it out over the phone the other night."
    "Don't they get along at all?" Sabina asked.
    "Once or twice a year." He led her into the dining room. "Let's eat. I'm famished!"
    It didn't help that Thorn kept watching her at the dinner table. He had a predatory look in his eyes, and a rigid cast to his features that was disturbing.
    "How did you become a rock star, Miss Cane?" he asked over dessert.
    She flinched at the unexpected question. "Well," she faltered, fork poised over the delicious cake Juan had just served them, "I sort of fell into it, I suppose."
    His straight nose lifted. "How?"
    "I was told that I had a voice with potential," she said. "I tried out in an amateur competition, where the prize was a one-night appearance at a downtown club. I won." She shook her head and smiled wistfully. "I was delirious. I'd been waiting on tables up until then, because it was the only work I could find. I did the one-nighter, and the club management liked me enough to keep me on. From there, I got other engagements. Then I met up with The Bricks and Sand Band."
    "Jessie told me about that," Al added. "It wasn't so much a meeting as a head-on collision."
    "Ricky Turner and the boys were hired to play for me the first night at a rather sleazy little joint off Bourbon Street," she said, her eyes twinkling. "Somehow, they'd gotten the idea that I was a stripper instead of a singer, and the drummer made a remark that set me off the wrong way." She shrugged and took a deep breath. "Well, to make a long story short, I knocked him into his base drum five minutes before the performance."
    Thorn's mouth curled up reluctantly. "But you still teamed up?"
    "We didn't have a choice that night." She shook her head. "Ricky laughed himself sick. The drummer had quite a reputation. We did several numbers, and we seemed to score big with the audience. The manager suggested that we stay on for a few more nights. His business boomed. So Ricky and the guys and I decided to team up." She smothered a laugh. "To this day the drummer still avoids me, but now we've got more offers than we can accept."
    She didn't tell him that she was trained to sing opera, or that she'd gone hungry a time or two to afford the lessons. Or that all the doors to the Met were closed by