Page 13 of Share with Me

“Call me Brinley. Your brother is dating my sister. Let’s not use titles.”

“Okay. Brinley.” For a year they had not been on a first name basis. Did he have Quincy to thank for this?

“Your brother is tall,” Brinley said.

“Yeah. Well, he lords over all of us.” Ivan laughed.

“You’re pretty tall, so don’t sell yourself short.”

“Haha.”

“Thank you forAir. It was beautiful.” Brinley’s eyes were faraway all of a sudden. “I wonder how it’d sound on the—never mind.”

“Get it back and I’ll play it for you.” Ivan had no idea how those words formed themselves and tumbled out of his mouth.

“You will?”

“It’ll be our song—oops! I don’t mean—uh—”

“Our song,” Brinley said. That faraway look again. “Grandpa Brooks spent a lifetime looking for it. Now it shows up. A blip.”

“A blip of hope.”

“And you will play our song.”

Our song.

Ivan caught a movement at the corner of his eye. Conductor Petrocelli was waving to him. “Back to work. Good to talk with you.”

Ivan’s patent black leather shoes developed a bit of a bounce on his way back to the platform. Not sure what that meant. Must be the thick padding on the carpet.

Brinley was easy on his eyes, but they were in two different worlds with little in common between them. He’d always be the hired court musician, nothing more, and she, the noble lady, nothing less.

Sure, he’d just promised to playAiron the grand old Strad for her. If she ever recovered it. Some stolen Stradivarius violins were never found. He prayed she didn’t get her hopes up too high.

Still…

Our song.

It had a nice ring to it.

How sweet it was that the pair of violins had belonged to a married couple. He hoped they did get the Damaris Strad back. Ivan wondered how much the violins were worth. He had heard about the search but hadn’t bothered to dig up more information. Tonight he was more curious than ever, perhaps because Brinley was interested in it.

He made a mental note to google later.Well, here.His iPad was on the music stand in front of him. Every SISO member had an iPad so that they could play impromptu requests. He sat down and logged into his iPad. He googled both violins. There were people out there who had no life outside cataloging Strads.

His eyes widened when he saw that the stolen 1698 Damaris Brooks was listed at twenty-two million dollars.

Are they kidding?That had to be the priciest violin in the world, more expensive than the 1721 Lady Blount auctioned off at sixteen big ones several years before. He wondered what the 1714 Lord Sterling would fetch.

A whopping seven point nine million dollars.

Didn’t Brinley say she had it still? Why wasn’t it played? Maybe it was on loan to a music museum? How sad. Violins were meant to be played, not kept somewhere “safe.” What was the point of music if it were never heard?

Is that what rich people do? Buy things that never get much use?

Ivan’s eyes scanned the room. Such opulence. From the chandelier to the plush carpet, from the painted walls to the big French doors. All felt foreign to him though he’d played in many concert halls and private parties before. Back in his Juilliard days, he had dreamed of touring the world as a concert violinist and playing in rich settings the rest of his life.

Unfortunately, after two years of trying, everything had ended abruptly. So much for earning enough income to own his own Strad. Maybe not the Damaris Brooks or the Lord Sterling, but something he could pay cash for.

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