“Jesus, kid, would you put it back in your pants?” Hobbes griped.
“But I haven’t taken anything out of my pants yet.” Jax cast wide no-longer-bedroom eyes at Hobbes and straightened out of his seductive sprawl.
“We serve food here,” Murph said dryly. “If anything tries to escape your pants, I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
Startled, Jax threw back his head with a laugh. “I like you.”
Murph placed a bottle of microbrew IPA before him and said, “I’m thrilled, b’y.”
After a sip of his unfamiliar but delicious drink, Jax set it on the bar with a sigh. “The things I do for you, Hobbes. I could drown in that accentandhe knows good beer. I wanna taste.”
“I don’t think he fancies giving you a bite.”
Jax heaved another dramatic sigh. “I guess not.”
Murph looked between them with a raised eyebrow. “Hobbes?” he asked, and Hobbes groaned.
“Like the cartoon,” Jax explained, happy to elucidate. “Apparently his hockey team thought his outlook on humanity was a little too dim to go on with calling him Calvin. They decided Hobbes suits better.”
Murph barked a laugh, topping off Hobbes’s drink. “Think they got yer number, friend.” He gestured to Jax’s glass. “Ya done, b’y?”
“I’m done,” Jax said with a grin. “So how does a Newfie end up opening a bar in Ontario?”
Murph poured himself a beer. “Now that’s something of a chin-wag.”
An empty bottle later, Jax excused himself to the bathroom and, on the way back, stalled as he passed the piano. He hadn’t played it in years—not since he was a kid—but his fingers itched at the sight of the slightly battered instrument, and he settled himself on the bench.
Jax wiggled his fingers to stretch them and slowly, softly plucked out the familiar notes of “The Entertainer.” It seemed he remembered some of his childhood lessons after all. He paused as he considered. Then, with his eyes half shut, he let his fingers remember the melody to “Mad World.” He’d played it on the piano in his mother’s living room until she begged him to play something—anythingelse.
“What on earth are you playing?” Murph yelled across the bar. “This is a bar, not a funeral parlor. You’ll have any patrons leaving or weeping inta their beer. Play something else, b’y!”
Because Jax was a mature and responsible adult—he coparented a chronically ill cat—he stuck his tongue out at Murph before he turned back to the piano and ran through his mental catalog of songs he could once play. Then he smirked and cast a quick look in Murph’s direction—both Murph and Hobbes were watching him—and began to play the opening refrain to “Beautiful Life” by Ace of Base.
Apparently over a decade without practice couldn’t erase the chords or the lyrics from Jax’s brain. Well, he fudged a few of the lines, but he remembered most of them. And Murph didn’t seem to care—he didn’t shout at Jax once, even when patrons stumbled in midchorus.
Chapter One
“HE’S LATE.”Naomi tapped elegant fingers on the bar top. She was dressed to the nines tonight in a red dress that set off her dark complexion, with nails and lips to match.
“You know a lotta musicians who show up on time?” Jax asked from behind the bar. A keg needed changing out before they could open. “Relax. It’ll be fine.”
“You don’t know Ari.”
How would he? As far as Jax knew, he’d never even been in the city at the same time as Aria Darvish, the London-born pop-violin virtuoso who was coming down from on high to perform at the Rock tonight. Apparently it was the coda to his North America tour or something.
“No, but I knowyou. And you worry too much.” Jax finally got the keg connected and stood to start tapping off the foam. Then he wedged a plastic pitcher between taps to keep it open and poured her a shot of vodka. “Here. Take the edge off.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Unless you’d prefer—”
“I will throw this shot at you,” she threatened. Jax counted it as progress; three months ago she wouldn’t have given a warning.
“No wasting alcohol!” Murph yelled from the stage.
Jax shook his head. “I still don’t know how he does that.”
Naomi took the shot. “Amount of time he spent playing professionally, he should not be able to pick up a voice across the room like that.”
“Acoustics.” Murph heaved a plastic crate of patch cords onto the bar one-handed, the other still in one of those removable splints. The patch cords normally lived by the stage, but tonight everything was pared down—just two violins, the piano, and a drum kit. Practically culture. “Open a book sometime.” He elbowed her in the ribs.
Acoustics, Naomi mouthed at Jax.
