Wishful Thinking by Kamy Wicoff Read Free Book Online Page B

Julien, who she was sure would immediately suspect something if he saw her there, she managed to attract Owen’s attention and beckoned him to a quiet corner of the room.
    Owen walked up to her and smiled. “What’s up?” he asked in his easygoing, not-from–New York manner. Where
was
he from? she wondered. She’d never asked.
    “I’m so sorry to do this,” she said quickly, “but I made some very difficult arrangements to be here, and I thought it was going to end right at five, you know, on the dot, and I told my colleagues I could be back in my office by then, or maybe even a little sooner, and so I was just wondering, is there any possible way that Julien could play a little bit earlier? Like, first?”
    Owen paused, knitting his brow a bit.
    “Jennifer, right?” he said.
Oh God
, she thought.
This is going to go badly. The obnoxious, absent working mom who thinks the world revolves around her and her schedule, barging in right before the recital starts and asking for favors.
    Hoping to impress her humble desperation upon him, she sought to meet his gaze, but he was distracted for a moment by some horseplay between a violinist and a portly kid with a trombone. Owen was tall—she had not processed just how tall until now, as she was forced to tip her head back slightly in order to look at him pleadingly. He also had long, straight, light brown bangs that fell into his eyes—bangs on a man in his mid-forties, and he could pull it off. She was staring at them stupidly when he returned his focus to her and placed one huge, callused hand on her shoulder. Their eyes locked for a minute. That was when she felt it.
Kapow!
The unmistakable pop of sexual attraction, like a string attached to her crotch that had just been given a delicious yank.
    Whoa!
she thought. She hadn’t felt that in a long time. So long that the feeling was as startling as it was pleasurable.
    “Please?” she repeated, as steadily as possible.
    “I’ll move him up on the program,” he said, giving her shoulder a gentle squeeze and then pulling his hand away. If he felt it, too, she thought, he showed no sign. “I’m not sure he’ll be first, but he’ll be close.”
    “Thank you!” she said brightly. “And I’ll come to his next lesson, really! It’s been too long!” Owen, taking it all in stride, shot her a smile that sent another shudder through her. She turned away, hoping he hadn’t seen her blush.
    I T TOOK ALL OF Jennifer’s willpower—and then some—to stay seated and silent when Julien did not go first. Or second.Or third. But after the third rendition of “Smoke on the Water” (which was interpreted, painfully slowly, by three first-graders in a row), and just as Jennifer was contemplating heading for the door, Owen loped up onto the stage, followed by Julien.
    “Slight change in the program, folks,” he said. (
Folks?
Really, where
was
this guy from?) “Julien Bideau will be playing next. He’s playing ‘Here Comes the Sun,’ and I think,” Owen continued, finding Jennifer in the audience and looking right at her, “this one is for Mom.” And then he winked. Norman didn’t notice the wink, of course. He was too busy training his Hubble space telescope–size camera on Julien. But Melissa turned her head toward Jennifer and raised her eyebrows questioningly. Jennifer threw her hands up—
Beats me
—but she couldn’t help smiling. She made eye contact with Owen and gave him a little wave. Ducking his head slightly, he made a gesture with his hand like a gentleman doffing his cap, as though to say,
It was nothing
.
    But it was not nothing. Julien looked so self-assured as he pushed his long hair out of his eyes—hair he had insisted on growing out the moment he’d hung his first John Lennon circa-1970 picture on his wall—and as he perched himself on the stool, his sneaker-clad feet swinging in midair, and started to play, she felt as giddy and important as a rock star’s girlfriend seated in the very