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plumber.  If anybody else had uttered them, she would have
laughed.  But there was an intensity about Danny Fiore that refused to be
denied.  A shiver skittered down her spine.  “I’m flattered,” she said. 
“Really, I am, but—”
     “You’re tremendously talented.  Are you going to just throw it
away?  Give it all up for love, like your mother did?”
    The man was a steamroller.  She should have been angry, but she
wasn’t, maybe because in some hidden part of her, she knew he was right.  She
studied those blue eyes, so straightforward and determined.  “I’ve written
more,” she said.
    The gleam in his eyes intensified.  “Can I see them?”
    “You could, if there was anything to see.  But there’s nothing on
paper that would mean anything to you.”  She shrugged in apology.  “I don’t
read music.”
    He raised both eyebrows.  “Your mother was a concert pianist, and
you never learned to read music?”
    “I had a natural ear and perfect pitch,” she said.  “I took the
easy way out.”
    He tapped his fingertips against the tabletop as he considered the
situation.  “It doesn’t have to be a problem,” he said.  “Rob’s brilliant at
transcription.”
    “Who’s Rob?”
    “Rob MacKenzie.  He’s a bloody genius, that’s who he is.  He
composes, he arranges, and he plays guitar like he was born with it in his
hands.  Here’s what I’m thinking.  We can sit you down at a piano with
MacKenzie and a stack of manuscript paper.  You play, he transcribes it onto
paper.  The end result would be the same.”
    “I’m flattered,” she said.  “Really.  But I’m getting married in
four weeks.”
    “Come to Boston with us.  Just for a few days.  I’ll introduce you
to Rob, see if the two of you can work together.”  He smiled, and something
happened deep inside her, something sudden and unexpected and startlingly
beautiful.  Her heart began a slow thudding as she thought about Jesse.   About
missed chances.  About her wedding, just four weeks away.
    And about her father, who would heartily disapprove of her taking
off for parts unknown with this blue-eyed stranger.  In all her eighteen years,
she’d never done anything Dad would disapprove of.
    But Danny Fiore believed in her, believed in her talent, when
nobody else had ever given it a second thought.  She was eighteen years old. 
Old enough to decide for herself what she wanted to do with her life, instead
of what Dad or Jesse wanted her to do.  And what she wanted was to follow this
ride as far as it would take her.
    “Mr. Fiore,” she said, “you’ve got yourself a deal.”
     

chapter three
     
    Ziggy’s was a dark, dank cellar hole near Boston’s Kenmore Square,
marked by a chartreuse neon sign and a heavy wooden door that belched waves of
music onto the sidewalk every time it opened.  Danny Fiore whisked her past the
bouncer and into the turmoil within.  She’d never seen so many people crammed
into so little space.  Squeezing between bodies, she put her trust in Danny’s
navigational skills and followed those broad shoulders toward an unseen
destination.
    “The place is packed,” he said over the steady boom-boom of a
Doobie Brothers recording.  “Do you mind standing?”
    Casey looked out over a sea of occupied tables.  “I guess I don’t
have a choice,” she said.  “Is it always this crowded?”
    “It is,” he said, raising one corner of his mouth in a wry grin,
“when we play here.”
    He left her leaning against a splintered wooden support beam
carved with graffiti.  Lizzie loves Jeff.  TE & PF 4-ever.  Impeach
Nixon.    She flagged down a waitress and ordered a Coke, then studied the
people around her.  They were for the most part college kids, dressed in jeans
and an abundance of hair, and they congregated in noisy groups whose boundaries
were continually shifting.
    The Doobies wailed their finale.  Into the ensuing silence rushed
the clink of glasses and the