She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Why did he get the impression that she was counting backward from a hundred so she didn’t slap the shit out of him with her spatula?

“I’ve written a few songs,” he said. “The band’s lead guitarist, Adam, is our main composer, but he allows the rest of us to come up with a note or two.”

“What do you know about writing piano music?”

“Absolutely nothing,” he admitted.

She collected her plate and moved around the counter to sit beside him.

“I’m sorry I’m so testy tonight,” she said. “I’m under a lot of pressure. I just… I don’t want to fail at my own dream.”

“You’re not failing,” he said. “You’re just a little stuck. It happens to everyone.”

She shook her head as she slathered butter on her French toast. “It doesn’t happen to me. I can’t permit it to happen to me.”

“Reality check, Dawn. It already has.”

“I can still finish the composition tonight,” she said.

“And if you can’t?”

Her lower lip trembled and she refused to meet his eyes, even though he was staring her down like a panther watching a tender young deer wander unknowingly beneath his tree.

“I’m not allowed to fail,” she said. “Absolutely not allowed.”

Allowed? Why would she say it that way? He placed a comforting hand at the base of her spine and she jerked so hard, she nearly launched herself straight off the stool.

“I can’t promise you anything, but I will help, if I can,” he said. “Relax, okay?”

“Easy for you to say,” she mumbled under her breath.

He removed his hand from her back, cursing himself for touching her as he could still feel the tension in her muscles against his palm. She picked at her French toast and after a moment of appearing defeated, straightened her shoulders and turned slightly to look at him.

“So you and your friend Owen became guitarists to seduce naive young women. What about the rest of your band? Did they also suffer from an inability to pick up girls based on their looks and personality alone?”

He sighed at her obvious subject change. “Owen didn’t really like guitar, so he switched to bass, which is the rock-band position least likely to get you laid.” Owen, however, had stopped having that problem soon after they graduated high school. “We’re not as shallow as I make us out to be.”

“Why didn’t Owen like guitar?”

“I’m not sure he was being completely truthful. I think he claimed that he didn’t like the guitar so he wouldn’t steal my thunder. He’s actually a good guitarist, but he has this way of putting everyone before himself. Especially me.”

“So he didn’t want to beat you at your own game.”

“Something like that.”

“How many are in your band?”

“Five. Jacob is the lead singer, and Adam plays lead guitar. They’ve been friends since they were young. They’re a couple years older than Owen and me. They’d started up a band with a drummer named Quint and were looking for a bassist to make up the fourth member of the group, which was called Desperation Normal. When Owen answered their ad on a bulletin board at a bar in Austin and agreed to join as their bassist, they had no intention of including me; they weren’t looking for a second guitarist. But Owen has a way of getting what he wants, and he refused to be a part of anything that didn’t include me, so they let me play along. Turns out two guitarists can be better than one. I couldn’t outplay Adam Taylor as a soloist, so I switched to rhythm guitar and let him have the limelight.”

“Are you satisfied playing rhythm guitar?”

“Yeah. I guess. I’m satisfied being a part of Sole Regret.” He never really thought much about why Adam played lead and he continued playing rhythm. It just worked best that way. “And then Quint met a girl, got married, and left the band. And Jacob recruited our current drummer, Gabe. Well, more like kidnapped him.” Kellen chuckled at those early weeks with Gabe and his constant whining about not having enough time to study for his quantum physics midterm. Perhaps the world had missed out on a fantastic engineer when Gabriel Banner had eventually dropped out of school after struggling to do everything for a semester—school, work, the band, and his girlfriend at the time. Missed out on an engineer, but gained one of the most skilled drummers to ever pound the skins. “We changed our name to Sole Regret a couple of weeks after the band was fully formed.”

“Why do you regret your souls?” she asked.

“Huh?” He looked up from his plate, which had somehow become empty while he’d been running off at the mouth.

“Your band’s name is Soul Regret. Why do you regret your soul?”

“Sole Regret. Sole meaning one or single.”

“Oh, one regret.” Dawn speared the final bite of her French toast. “You only have one?”

“Well, at the time. I was young.” He smiled sadly. He had dozens of regrets now, all centering around the things he should have done with Sara. He even regretted that he’d respected her too much to grope her early in their relationship. Maybe if he’d given in to those urges, he might have found the lump in her breast in time. Maybe her treatments would have been more effective. Maybe they could have saved her. Was it strange to regret not being after only one thing with the love of your life? Maybe, but he couldn’t help it.

“Kellen?” Dawn said after she’d swallowed her final bite.

“Yeah.”

“Why don’t you want to go home?”

He hesitated. How had she managed to pick up on that? “What do you mean?”

“Earlier when you said you would leave me alone and go home, you didn’t sound like you wanted to go.”

He shrugged. “There’s nothing there for me anymore.”

“But there’s something for you here?”

He dabbed his finger into a puddle of syrup and brought it to his tongue. “Yeah,” he said. “There’s you.”

Her eyes widened. “Oh.”

“And your song,” he added, before she got the wrong idea. “Are you going to play for me now? You’ve already spoiled my hungry belly with your fantastic French toast; why not treat my ears to something just as sweet?”

He winked at her and after a moment, she nodded.

“I think I’m ready,” she said. “Just don’t expect a miracle.”

“I won’t.” Kellen had given up on miracles five years ago.

Dawn placed her hands on the keys and closed her eyes. The first notes of the piece came easily, and her fingers found them in natural succession. Music poured from every particle of her being as she gave herself over to the melody.

As the first crescendo built, her muscles began to tense tighter and tighter until she reached the dam beyond which she could not create. She froze. Her hands stilled. Her eyelids clenched tight. Anxiety churned in the pit of her stomach.

The piano began to play of its own accord. The notes that sounded weren’t the correct ones—Dawn instinctively knew when the notes were right—but it wasn’t silence. Thank God, it wasn’t silence. Her eyes popped open, and she watched the long-fingered masculine hands move across the black and ivory keys. They went still suddenly, and she looked up at Kellen, wondering why he’d stopped.

“Well, that sounded better in my head than in reality,” he said with a wince. “Did I offend you by messing with your song?”

She supposed gawking at him like an idiot might make him think that she was offended, but she wasn’t. Surprised, yes. Grateful the sea had seen fit to wash him into her life, yes. Offended? Never.

“That wasn’t quite right,” she said.

“It was horrendous,” he said. “I follow your masterpiece with that load of crap? You must think I’m a talentless hack.”

She shook her head and touched the back of his hand with her fingertips. Sparks danced along her nerve endings, and her belly fluttered with nerves or excitement or just plain silliness. When he drew his hand away and rested it on his thigh beneath the keyboard, she could have cried.