The Maestro

By C.J. Miller

Maestro Kieran Gallagher is a symphony brought to life. 

 

Hauntingly beautiful. 
Filled with breathtaking talent. 
And tragically untouchable. 
 
Rae Davis considers it the opportunity of a lifetime to work as the assistant to the virtuoso, until her feelings for him swell into an unrequited love. Unfortunately, the Maestro lives for his music, leaving him oblivious to all else. Pained by his clueless rejection, Rae throws away her dream and walks away.

Only then does Kieran realize the passion to compose left with her. Without Rae, both his music and his life are barren and empty. Can he orchestrate a way to win her back? Or will the melody in his heart be silenced forever?

• Language: English
• Publisher: C.J. Miller
• Release date: Aug 16, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393320555

C.J. Miller

***Start reading C.J. Miller's Ocean Sands Series today with Starlit Sand. You can also sign up for C.J.'s newsletter at cj-miller.com.*** C.J. Miller is the author of more than 15 contemporary romances, including the Ocean Sands Series.  She lives in Maryland with her husband and their three children. She can often be found with a book in her hand or writing one at her computer. Join C.J.’s mailing list on her website at cj-miller.com for news about her upcoming books. Follow her on Facebook at Facebook.com/cjmillerromance/ or on Twitter @cjmillerwrites . Contact C.J. at cj-miller.com

Book preview

Falling for her hot Irish boss was never her plan...

Rae Davis moved to New York City for the opportunity of a lifetime, the chance to work as an assistant to the virtuoso music conductor Kieran Gallagher. But Rae's dream job becomes a nightmare when she falls hopelessly in love with the Maestro. 

Having eyes and ears only for his music, he’s oblivious to her feelings. 

Unable to stand being so close to someone so untouchable, Rae throws away her dream and walks away.

When Rae leaves, Kieran first considers it merely a nuisance to find a new assistant. But he soon realizes that he’s lost more than just a person to fetch him coffee and manage his paperwork. He’s lost the very muse for his music, the soul of his composition. Without Rae in his life, the Maestro's music is barren and empty, lacking the beauty and wonder that brought it to life.

Will the Maestro risk his own heart to win Rae back, or will his music go silent forever?

1

T his is my last day as your assistant. I spoke with Glory two weeks ago. She’s accepted my resignation.

Kieran played several chords in quick succession on his grand piano, but they gave away no reaction to my announcement. A dark sound, I supposed. But he was often moody while he practiced, arranged, and composed.

Kieran made a note on his sheet music with his green pencil. His fingers stretched and flexed. You’re not her employee. I hired you. I selected you. She can’t accept your resignation.

Kieran liked to argue to get his way, stating facts calmly again and again. He could be persistent to the point of irritating, but never actually annoying, just incredibly persuasive. People found themselves agreeing to his demands, a good quality for him to have with the constant fundraising the orchestra required and the need to get many temperamental artists on the same page. I’m an employee of the symphony hall. But getting into an argument with Kieran led nowhere. He was impossibly bullheaded. Glory is interviewing new assistants for you.

His shoulders tightened and his sweater pulled across his broad shoulders. I’ll double your salary.

This isn’t about the money. That he thought it was hit me in the stomach, a sharp pain like a serrated blade. I wouldn’t let him see me rattled, no matter how much quitting, or his response, tore me up inside. I’ve made my decision. There. Firm and assertive.

Now he stopped playing. He turned on the piano bench and stared at me, his dark-eyed gaze piercing me. I do not accept. I need you, Rae.

Needed me. Oh, how that made my heart ache. I needed him too, but in an all-consuming way that would swallow me whole, as if my heart would open up like a black hole and pull my entire being into it. No. It was harder for him to argue with one word.

The sunlight angled through the semisheer curtains over the two walls of windows through his jungle of plants, dispersing the light around him, painting him into the part of the wild musician. He wore tailored gray slacks, a black T-shirt, and a cardigan that was open in the front. I’d given him the sweater that morning, or else he’d keep turning up the thermostat, making it unbearably hot in the house.

He rose to his feet, and with powerful strides, he crossed the room to where I stood. I’d taken a position near the doorway leading from his main-level music room to the rest of the house. He reached out and touched my cheek with his thumb, a gentle caress, and I tried not to lean into the touch and sigh.

Have I done something to upset you? I don’t want to lose you over a misunderstanding. The thick Irish brogue fell over my ears like a caress.

Having him this close, I’d give something away in my reaction, something he’d use to persuade me to stay. If he knew my real reasons for leaving, it’d be cruel for him to force me to remain on as his assistant. But he didn’t know.

I’d hidden it from him masterfully.

That was perhaps the only thing I’d truly mastered: hiding my unending and abiding love for Kieran from him.

I didn’t want to answer his question. He’d done plenty to upset me and had remained blissfully unaware of it. Glory will hire a cook and a housekeeper too.

Fire snapped in his dark eyes. That wasn’t what I asked you.

You don’t get to demand answers from me.

I’d come to think of myself like a shadow, and lately, I needed to be more than a shadow to him. I needed to be a person he acknowledged and saw. I wanted him to see my love of my music, my humor, my desires, my strengths, who I was as a woman. A tall order for a boss, and one he wouldn’t be able to meet. I knew him too well and had seen him in too many relationships.

What he gave me was all he could give, was all he was willing to give.

He searched my face as if the answer would be written on it. After our years together, I don’t get an answer as to why you want to leave me?

Leave him? It wasn’t like I’d ever had him. Putting distance between us was my only option to have a sane and happy life. I’d never get under him in bed, and I’d never get inside his head. This was my way out.

Why are you shaking? In his soulful eyes, softness and warmth shone, and I wanted to tell him the whole story. The whole entire lovesick story.

The emotions ricocheting inside me were impossible to separate, but among them boiled anger and frustration at the wretched unfairness of it.

He plowed a hand through his thick black hair, leaving it mussed. Is someone in your family sick? Are you sick? Has something happened?

No one is sick. Nothing has happened except I’ve found another job.

Working for who? The whisper of possessiveness in his voice sent a shiver down my spine.

A school. I’d job-hunted and found that, ironically, my connection to Kieran opened doors easily and quickly. I hadn’t been able to use him as a reference, but Glory had been willing to provide one. My new job excited me and was the kind of position I’d dreamt of in college and prior to getting an internship, and eventually an assistantship, with the orchestra.

I’d rock the new job. I had to.

I thought about Kieran and our situation too often, my heart impossibly conflicted to be near him and yet not have his love, not in any real sense. Music was his great love, one that had lasted a lifetime, and I could accept that, but I couldn’t be his heart’s desire. No woman would be for any significant length of time.

He didn’t know that every night he went to a hotel room (he didn’t usually bring women to his house) with another beautiful, diamond-sparkling woman, I returned to my apartment, my heart broken all over again.

Tall and darkly good-looking with an athletic build, he had women falling at his feet. His unbearable handsomeness aside, women were drawn to the fame, the mystique, and unabashedly threw themselves at him.

Three weeks ago, when I’d walked in on him in the midst of a tryst with a blonde heiress, her arms wrapped around him, his face intense with passion, the muscles of his neck straining, I’d fled. Something inside me had snapped. Seeing that blonde hair swinging over the slender, naked back, Kieran’s strong arms banded around her, holding her to him… Never again. I’d built a wall around my heart, refusing to be hurt by him again.

I couldn’t continue working this way, keeping up my defenses, an exhausting feat.

For months, I’d tried to convince myself I simply admired him. Enjoyed him. Found him funny and exciting and everything that I wanted in a man. But this wasn’t admiration or professional reverence. I loved him, and he was too deep into his work and himself to see it.

He stared at me, hands clasped behind his back. Is it the travel? I know I keep you away from your life here.

Cold sweat matted my shirt to my back. Tempted to agree to end this questioning, I reached for an answer. The travel was some of the best parts of the job and of being with him. With him as his assistant, not with him in any of the ways that mattered to my heart.

If he’d listened, if he saw what my life was, he’d have known that I had no life without him, and that was the very reason I had to make this change. My life was split in two pieces. One piece: the time before I’d met him, relationships with people whom I’d drifted apart from, my high school friends, and my family. The other: the life I’d had since working for him. He was the center of it, and the people in his world, had come to be the best in mine.

I’d walked away from dates, ignored perfectly suitable, handsome men, and I’d refused to give my phone number to hot guys in bars simply because I was Kieran’s and he could call at any time, and I’d come running. We didn’t have a formal on-call arrangement. It had happened over time. He wanted me, and I came. I wanted him, and he was totally oblivious to it. The lie wouldn’t form on my tongue. It’s not the travel.

He rubbed a finger over his firm bottom lip. This is not like you. Is this a power play?

A power play? I have no power here. I don’t have anything left to give you. Nearing a complete and total meltdown, I fled the room and left the door cracked behind me.

I stood at the door for a full five seconds. I wanted him to call my name.

Silence filled the house.

Then I started walking, my shoes loud on the hardwood floors. Before I’d reached the front hall, the piano music started again. I paused and listened, closing my eyes, taking in the melody from one of the greatest musical geniuses of our time. There wasn’t a vicious bone in Kieran’s body. Much of his brain and his heart was the music. I often wondered if the inability to understand human emotion was why the music spoke loudly to him. To him, music was another language, as clear and concise as words. The notes sounded angrier. He’d have to get over it. This move was about self-preservation.

I took the steps to my tiny office, where I’d hardly spent any time. Kieran had told me I could use the space for whatever I needed. It struck me now that I’d had a place of my own in his home. It’d made sense since I was there often, but in a weird way, I was the first woman to live with him in this house.

I was always with him. In his house. In his office. In his music room. At the symphony hall. My bag of personal items was packed on the desk. I lifted the handle, slung it over my shoulder and left the room, shutting the door hard.

As I fled his house, the music drifted after me, a familiar tune. He’d been working on that section of his new symphony for months but couldn’t finish it, mostly because he worried how it’d be received, and the more time that passed, the greater the expectations. Even the parts I thought were perfect, he thought needed work.

It was too depressing on a Friday evening to return to my apartment when I’d normally be getting ready for a performance or for hanging out with Kieran at a social event.

The symphony wasn’t playing tonight.

I walked around the city for hours, listening to the noises of the traffic and the people passing. A couple was fighting on the sidewalk with such passion, I knew they were in love. Fight aside, jealousy stole the breath from my lungs.

I passed a mother with her three children, one in a red stroller in front of her, the others on either side of it. Two of the children had balloons tied to their wrists, a red and a blue, and the latex spheres whipped in the October gusts. The mother was about my age and, judging from the giant wedding ring, had a husband at home. Despite the wind’s best effort, her flaxen hair fell around her head in a stylish blunt bob. My dark blonde hair fell past my shoulders, neglected by lack of time and money to go to a proper salon, and needed a cut and style.

Envy twisted around inside me, competing with misery and leaving me moody.

When I turned the corner into my block, I wanted to see Kieran sitting on the front steps of my apartment building. He’d have had time to think, to put the pieces together and realize why I’d quit, and come to make it right.

A long Hail Mary pass. Like ten football fields long.

Not that Kieran knew where I lived. I mean, he’d been to my place twice before, but my address wasn’t a relevant piece of information to him and therefore, he wouldn’t remember it. He preferred his house and, in truth, I did too. It was bigger, nicer, cleaner, and quieter. At least, quieter in the sense that he didn’t hear neighbors slamming doors, roller-skating above him, or taking their barking dogs out to use the bathroom all night long.

No Kieran on the steps. My heart sagged in my chest, and I took a deep breath, trying to shake off some of the weight.

Inside the complex, I took the flight of stairs to my apartment, unlocking the door and then closing and relocking it behind me. The snug studio apartment had barely any walking room, between my futon-slash-couch, my double bed shoved in a corner, my desk-slash-table and the world’s smallest bathroom and teensiest kitchen. The best feature was the huge bay window that faced south. The view wasn’t great, but I found the sun slanting inside uplifting.

New York was an expensive city, and I’d needed to live close to Kieran and the music hall. Glory, the general manager of the music hall, had used her extensive connections to everyone who was anyone in New York to help me find a rent-controlled unit.

The cramped quarters didn’t bother me. Most of the last five years, I’d traveled the world and been with Kieran. If I could save extra money with my new job, I’d hunt for a nicer place, closer to the school, and farther from Kieran and temptation.

The outfit for my new job hung on a wall hook. The position would be a dramatic change. No being on call. No crazy demands. Little traveling. Just what I wanted. I’d start a life that wasn’t focused on Kieran.

Being a music teacher at the Monarch School brought something fresh and exciting to my life. The school had children on a waiting list from birth and most of the students came from wealthy neighborhoods. While I wasn’t musically talented the way Kieran was, I loved music. I was willing to do anything I needed to help music thrive in a busy modern world where almost no one had time to stop and enjoy it.

I was excited about my lesson plans and about meeting the students. Monday would be my fresh start, and I was ready.

2

Glory called me at six in the morning on Monday. The Maestro won’t speak to the woman I hired to replace you. Which is doubly a problem because she’s the daughter of an important donor to the symphony. I could find her another position and somehow smooth it all over with her father if you’d come back.

On the bus, en route to the Monarch School, I needed to focus on that, not on Kieran. In the last five years, he and I hadn’t gone more than five waking hours without speaking. He sometimes messaged me in the middle of the night with an idea. Sounds demanding, but I liked being part of his creative process.

Now, it’d been two days since Kieran and I had spoken. I’d survived, and now that I had my first-day nerves jangling under my skin, the pain of missing him receded. I’m sorry. I’m on my way to my new job.

You won’t reconsider? Glory asked, sugar lacing her voice. She’d asked the same question many times in the last two weeks. Kieran was a handful, and I’d handled him well. But it was someone else’s turn to help usher new music into the world by assisting the creative genius that was Kieran.

I can’t. I’m sorry. Then I disconnected.

Bumping along on the bus, I kept my eyes down. I’d been able to walk to the symphony hall, but Kieran’s house was either a long walk or a short cab ride. He didn’t like me walking, though, so he’d often asked his driver to take me places, especially at night. The job with him had been a mixed bag. Long hours, but huge perks, the biggest one being that I was with him.

I blotted out that emotion before I got rattled. My first day had me on edge already, and I couldn’t add more juice to my nervous energy. Plus, fidgeting on my first day made the wrong initial impression on my colleagues and new students.

As I stepped off the bus, I made a mental note to change my phone number. I wouldn’t be tempted to call Kieran if the number wasn’t programmed in, and I could try to forget the digits. He didn’t carry his cell phone often, so calls were routed through his assistant, who’d be given explicit instructions not to interrupt him for any reason whatsoever.

The setup had been confusing when I’d started working for him, but eventually, I’d figured out when I had to ignore that rule and when to enforce it. The new assistant wouldn’t allow my calls to go through, an ideal safety net in the event of a moment of weakness.

I was starting at the Monarch School eight weeks into the school year, teaching instrumental and band. From what the headmaster had said, the school had no musical geniuses (except in the eyes of their parents), although many of the students had talent that could be honed. My job was to bring out the best in each of them.

During my group interview, I’d sidestepped questions from the staff about how it’d been to work for Kieran. The music community was tight, so if asked today, I’d keep everything I said upbeat. Many of the people I’d work with were subscribers to the symphony, and I wanted them to keep attending.

I put my coat and bag in the closet in the music room. Right after the school intercom announcements, the first question came at me from my boss, Brendan.

He smoothed his receding gray hair. I hear the Maestro is planning to guest-conduct next summer. What do you think of that? He folded his hands over his tan sweater and rounded belly.

Despite my mental plans to play it cool and avoid talking about Kieran, the mention of him hit like a brick to the gut. Instead of wincing, I smiled. "He could be a guest conductor. The Maestro