“Yes, you are.”
She raised her head, regarding him with fake condescension. “You know nothing about opera singers.”
“But I know a lot about athletes, and I want to hear one of those arias you’re so famous for. You get to choose which one.”
“There’s a big difference between warming up and singing a complicated aria in the freezing cold while—”
“No excuses.” He pushed his hands under the bottom of her jacket and set them on her waist, just under the hem of her top so he could feel a few inches of bare skin.
“What are you—?”
“Sing!”
She did. Launching into something that sounded like really, really pissed-off German. Her voice began to strain. He gave the bare skin under his right hand a tiny pinch.
“Stop that!”
Son of a bitch. She sang the words at him instead of speaking them.
She looked as shocked as he felt. But she kept going. Launching herself into the dark, foreboding aria.
The music began pouring from her, the notes big and furious enough to make his ears ring.
Her skin was warm under his palms, but he somehow kept his focus. If he sensed her struggling for a note, he slid his hands higher along the bumps of her spine. He forced himself to stay below her bra line, not getting nearly as personal as he wanted to because this wasn’t about his goddamn lust. It was about her.
The aria went on, and she sang and she sang and she sang. The wind picked up, the rain turned to sleet, and that glorious voice challenged the oncoming storm.
* * *
As they walked toward the 103rd Street subway stop, he kept quiet, giving her the time she needed to process what had happened, but the longer the silence stretched between them, the more he wanted to know what she was thinking.
“That was from Götterdämmerung,” she finally said. “The last of Wagner’s Ring cycle. It was Waltraute’s ‘Höre mit Sinn was ich dir sage.’”
“And you chose it because . . . ?”
“Waltraute is one of the Valkyries. I’m not a Wagnerian singer, but I figured I needed supernatural help.”
“It seems like you got it.”
“My vibrato still has a wobble, my lower passaggio isn’t close to where it should be, and I’m strangling my high notes.”
“You’re the expert.”
“But at least I was singing.” She gave a choked half laugh, half something else. “All I need to do now is perform on one leg with somebody feeling me up.”
“Happy to oblige.”
She squeezed his wrist through the sleeve of the rain jacket. Only for a moment before she withdrew. “Thanks.”
“You can pay me back in Las Vegas.”
* * *
Her hair was tangled, and she needed a shower before their client dinner. As she adjusted the water temperature, she saw that her hands were shaking. She understood the psychology of what Thad had done for her. Focusing on keeping her balance instead of thinking so much about the sound she was producing had helped her over one psychological hurdle. But she was still a mess.
She slicked the shampoo through her hair. Amneris’s aria in Aida, “Già i sacerdoti adunansi,” swelled in her head, but even in the protective womb of the shower, she was afraid to try singing it.
Eight more days until she started rehearsals. Two more days until they reached Las Vegas. One event filled her with panic, the other with a mixture of lust and panic.