Free Resisting the Musician (a Head Over Heels Novel) (Entangled Indulgence) by Ally Blake Page B

felt her tense. Which only ramped up the tension hurling about inside of him. “What you’re saying,” he said, his voice subterranean, “is that you’d like more…hands-on instruction.”
    Her pupils dilated as he neared, and his ‘default position’ threw its hands up in defeat.
    “I guess,” she said, her voice husky. Then after licking her lovely pink lips, added, “Because if I don’t leave here today with at least one perfect note under my belt, I will explode. I will blame you. And I will tell Callie it was your fault.”
    Callie. And Jake. Shit.
    Despite the reasons why the woman was his version of a walking natural disaster, there was only one reason she was sitting there. She was a means to make amends for past wrongs with Jake. His ‘change of life’—as Jake so kindly put it—had been about righting past mistakes, and putting measures in place whereby he’d not make new ones. And he was contemplating banging the guy’s future sister-in-law?
    Dash sat back, crossed his arms, pressing his fingers into his biceps hard enough to bruise. “Playing dirty, Miss Hanover.”
    “If that’s what it takes, Mr. Mills.”
    He smiled. Couldn’t help it. Even if her gaze did drop to his mouth making it frickin’ impossible to think, much less teach.
    “Ready?” he asked.
    “Bring it.”
    “Your middle finger’s too low.”
    “This better?” she asked, lifting said middle finger skyward.
    “Lower,” he growled.
    And with a flash of a smile so bright it made him see stars she got back to work. Shaking her hair off her shoulders, sitting up straighter, and doing as she was told. Or as much as it was possible for the woman to do so.
    For the next half an hour—or millennium, he couldn’t be certain which—he couldn’t think of anything he wanted to do more than slide her hair behind her ear, run a finger over her exposed shoulder, kiss her till she whimpered against his mouth. But he didn’t.
    In fact, he did a bang up job of keeping himself from doing anything of the sort. Until the moment she strummed gently and hit the right note—or as near as she ever had. Her lashes swept fast and frantic onto her cheeks in shock, before her face broke into a grin. Wide mouth, apples in her cheeks, stunning.
    And then she laughed, a great exultant laugh that threw her against the back of the couch while she smacked her bare feet against the floor in delight.
    A strange noise began to buzz in Dash’s head. Like a herd of bees. A flock? A whole hell of a lot. Like the more he told himself to stop thinking about her mouth it became all that mattered—
    “Right there, buddy?”
    Dash jumped and turned to find Reg’s bright red head poking around the hall door. Reg . He’d arrived a couple of hours before Lori and, head still pounding, Dash had sent him straight to the shed. And promptly forgotten he was there.
    “You off?”
    “I am,” said Reg. “And, honestly, I can’t stress strongly enough, you don’t need me to do a thing to her. With your pedigree it was a near certainty. But you are a total natural—”
    “Right,” Dash cut him off, rubbing a hand up the back of his head frantically as if it might shut Reg up quicker. That conversation was not for Lori’s ears.
    “Mornin’ sunshine,” Reg said.
    Following Reg’s sudden change of tone he found Lori luminous with a smile the likes of which she’d never landed on him. “Oh, hi!”
    “You two acquainted?” Dash asked.
    “Sure,” Reg said, cheeks pinking as he limped part ways into the room. “Your young lady let me in the other day.”
    “Lori,” she said, lifting to offer a hand, and not clearing up Reg’s mistake that she was Dash’s anything. “Lori Hanover.”
    Reg took her hand, and Dash saw the moment the older man spied Barbarella in Lori’s lap.
    “What’s going on here, then?” asked Reg.
    “Dash is teaching me how to play. Very badly.”
    Dash shook his head when Reg—not the greatest at concealing his innermost