There were so many memories of happy Christmas Eves in this room. Mom and Dad and Toby, music and laughter and firelight. She remembered a Christmas Eve with Sanders, before the accident. Toby’d been, what? Seven? She’d started dating Sanders—the first of their many stop-and-go affairs—and she’d invited him over for Christmas Eve. Her parents had been charmed by Sanders’s good manners and adult conversation. That was before they got to know him. Later, her father had grown to despise him. But that first evening they were all smiles.

She—well, she’d been blindly infatuated. So blind that she lost her virginity to him a couple of months later.

That evening, Mom had filled the living room with candlelight. Her mother had loved candles. She lit them on every possible occasion and sometimes just because she felt like it.

The memory of that evening could warm her still. She could even remember the sharp smells of that evening melding together—Mom’s Diorissimo, hot candle wax, woodsmoke, the cook’s cakes and scones, Earl Grey tea and Dad’s bourbon. A heady scent of joy and celebration.

She’d played the piano and they’d sung Christmas carols. She’d played—

“…play?”

With a wrench, Caroline brought her mind back to the present. Her boarder was sitting next to her. Not so close it made her uncomfortable, but close enough so that she could feel his body heat and feel the air move and the sofa dip as he leaned forward to put his cup on the coffee table. Seeing him this close, she felt slightly overwhelmed by the sheer size of him. It seemed his shoulders took up half the sofa.

Her perfectly normal-sized coffee cup looked tiny in his hands. His hands were compelling, unlike any other male hands she’d ever seen. Though they were huge, the skin visibly rough, as if he worked with them a lot outdoors, they were also naturally well shaped, long-fingered, elegant and strong, with a light dusting of black hairs on the backs. The nails were clean but clearly unmanicured, so very unlike Sanders’s hands, which were pale and soft, with perfect, buffed nails.

Oh my God. She was doing it again—drifting with her thoughts. He’d said something. “I beg your pardon?”

Jack inclined his head toward the piano. His voice was patient. He was a strong guy—a soldier. Presumably that gave him extra patience not to roll his eyes and shout at the crazy lady who drifted away in her head at the drop of a hat. “I see you have a piano. I imagine you play. I’d love to hear you play something.”

No, absolutely not was her first instinct, and she had to clench her jaws tightly closed to keep from saying the words.

No way could she play. She hadn’t played since before Toby died. Not enough time had passed. Her feelings were too close to the surface, the memories too bright, the pain still razor-sharp…

“Please,” he said and waited, watching her patiently.

Her chest was so tight it was hard to breathe. The thought of playing the piano made her slightly ill, but how could she say no? He couldn’t possibly understand what he’d asked of her. Saying no would sound as if she were insane. Or maybe even worse for a landlady—rude.

She glanced up at Jack. He was watching her quietly, his gaze dark and penetrating. She met his eyes for a moment, then looked down at her hands, hands that itched to touch the keys for comfort, hands that at the same time never wanted to play the piano again.

This was so scary.

Caroline felt she was poised on the edge of some deep, deep precipice from which there would be no return. She could either step forward and fall into the abyss of perpetual grief, a ghost of a woman with only ghosts to keep her company, forever mourning the past. Or she could step back and somehow reclaim her life and have something resembling a future.

She had to stop living in the past. She had to stop grieving. She had to stop thinking incessantly of Toby and her parents. She had to stop now.

This was so hard. But it had to be done. She could do it. Over the past six years, she’d learned how to do the hard things. Over and over again.

She drummed up a smile, upturned lips and a flash of teeth, hoping he wouldn’t notice how false it was. “All right,” she said, her throat tight. “Of course I’ll play for you.”

Resolutely, she got up and went to the piano. There was an off chance that over the past two months the piano had gone out of tune. God knows there’d been enough changes in temperature with her temperamental boiler to warp the wood. If the piano wasn’t in tune, well then, that would be a perfect excuse not to play, and it wouldn’t be her fault at all.

She stopped by the big black upright and played a quick scale. The notes rang out true and clear in the big room. The piano was perfectly in tune.

This was something she was simply going to have to face.

Clenching her teeth, she sat down. She turned, surprised, when Jack lit the candles in the brass holders on either side of the upright with one of the long matches kept by the hearth.

“Looks so pretty like this,” he said, and blew the match out.

Caroline sighed. Yes, it was very pretty.

She looked up at him. “What would you like for me to play? Do you have a favorite Christmas carol? I have a pretty good repertoire of carols.”

“No, no carols, please. I’ve been listening to way too much Muzak in airports lately.” He tapped the score in front of her. “How about this? It must have been the last thing you played.”

Caroline froze. “This” was the score to Phantom of the Opera. She’d played it incessantly for Toby the last two weeks of his life. Please God, not this.

A Christmas carol would have been easy. She could choose one with no particular memories attached. “Silent Night,” maybe. Or “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” The only thing they reminded her of was school.

But the Phantom of the Opera…

Oh dear sweet God. Anything but that.

This was going to be so hard. Caroline touched the keys, stroking them, familiarizing herself with the touch of the ivory and wood all over again. Music had always been her refuge, her place of peace. It was a sign of how deep her grief had been that she’d stayed away from music for so long.

She looked up uncertainly and met his gaze. Dark and steady and penetrating, as if he could reach inside her mind and read all the painful emotions swirling around inside, including her panic and fear. This was a man who’d faced gunfire. How could someone like that possibly understand a fear of a keyboard?

He couldn’t.

Do it now.

Taking a deep breath, Caroline slowly started playing a few, halting notes with her right hand. The notes were discordant, too slow, but the song was recognizable.

The opening bars of “Think of Me”—the haunting melody Christine sang to the Phantom—came out. The song was forever branded in her heart as a hymn to pain and loss.

Her hand faltered, and she kept her index finger down on F for a long moment, wondering if she could go on.

She had to. She had to not only out of courtesy to her boarder but for herself. And for her own sanity.

You must do this, Caroline ordered herself, her spine stiffening.

Her right hand picked out the notes of the opening again, faster, smoother, more melodic. The left hand came up, reluctantly, to provide the counterpoint to the lush melody. Muscle memory took over. The notes started flowing as her hands moved lightly over the keys, the song as familiar to her as her own name.

Think of me…

Mom and Dad and Toby had flown from Seattle to meet with her in New York for Thanksgiving. She’d taken the Amtrak down from Boston, where she was studying music and men, having a great time with both. Dad had booked a two-room suite at the Waldorf. The Lake family had four magical days together, taking in the sights by day and going to plays and musicals by night. Their last night in New York they’d all gone to see Phantom at the Majestic Theater. She’d been just old enough to sigh at the romanticism of the love triangle. The doomed, scarred lover banished forever to the shadows, the handsome young viscount and the beautiful young woman loved by both men.