I had to make my own way into the world, and along with expanding Lovechilde hotels, a luxury spa was a good start.
The spotlight over the small makeshift stage made her hair look like it was on fire.
The soothing harp-like sound of her guitar strums massaged the tension away from my spine. Bewitching and siren-like, her voice reminded me of Kate Bush’s haunting strains. In one of her rare moments of civility, Mirabel spoke of how that witchy chanteuse was her role model.
I leaned against the bar and let her song take me on a journey across the sea. The wind in her voice spoke of ebbs and flows and of meetings and separations. Of how the trees talk to her soul and how the wind dances through her veins. Lost in meditation, I found myself on that ship and landing in a foreign land, searching for that person who spoke to my spirit.
Yes, she was deep. Terrifyingly so at times. That’s why as a teenager, I gave up on trying to fuck her. She could read my bullshit a mile away.
The trouble was that when I visited her face, I found it hard to leave. Her deep green eyes held me captive. And despite, or because, of this mindfucking, I always ended up with a throbbing hard-on.
So I did what I do best. I acted like the shallow pillock she often called me.
Her voice hit a high note, and the words “He’s the father of my soul. His wisdom my home” pulled on a heartstring.
It became difficult to swallow, and everything became blurry. I wasn’t having a stroke. I was having an emotional breakdown.
My father was dead. Dead.
I wasn’t ready for that to happen yet.
I tried to block my ears. I even thought of leaving. Her song hit a raw nerve that travelled to my soul. Even from a distance, this woman had found her way into me again.
Mirabel Storm was making me fucking cry.
In public.
I grabbed a tissue from my pocket and wiped my nose, glad that the place was dimly lit.
This was a first. I’d never cried over a song in public before. Maybe alone to Radiohead. Who hadn’t? But not in a village pub with a local greenie singing about the wise old forest soothing her pain.
For half an hour or so, I remained transfixed. Sipping instead of guzzling as I’d intended. I fell into a spell, and it wasn’t until the applause that I snapped out of it. That was strange, but helpful in that I’d forgotten to think.
That one meditation class I’d attended, only because I wanted to get into the instructor’s yoga pants, never did that.
Possessing a regal bearing, Mirabel walked with her head held high and shoulders back.
That subtle sway of hips reminding me that beneath that crushed velvet lived a voluptuous vixen. Growing up, she’d broken many of the local farmhands’ hearts.
A mingling of admiration and determination took grip after learning of her man-eating ways. At the time, I wanted in. Only she just laughed at my purported shallowness and had me hobbling home with my dick in my hand instead of hers.
She joined me at the bar, and her eyes caught mine and nodded a greeting.
“You do your name justice. You sang up a storm,” I said.
She chuckled dryly. “You’re not the first person to say that. It is my real name, you know.”
“I know. And it suits you.” I fell into those big green eyes again and found myself in a forest with a sexy witch leading me to her private lair. “Can I buy you a drink? That was sensational, by the way. Very moving. Almost too much.”
“Too much?” Her brow furrowed.
“You made me want to cry.”
Her eyebrows lifted in surprise, like I’d confessed to becoming a militant environmentalist. “That’s unexpected.”
“I’m not always that shallow pillock you so eloquently described me as.” I pulled a tight half-smile. “As a token of my appreciation for your hauntingly mesmerising songs can I buy you a drink?”
A slow smile grew on her face. Without blinking, her bullshit-radar gaze penetrated deep, and my dick stirred. “Charming as always.”