MoreThanWords Read Free Page A

Heaven
help her. Full of shit or not, Travis was officially her dream man. Even with
his hairy mole and third arm.
    Name one song you’ll be playing tonight. Then, if I hear
it, I’ll think of you and feel bad for your, um…preDICKament.
    I’m not feeling your sympathy, C. This place is a
straight-up rock-and-roll bar. November Rain is an old one, but it’s a
crowd fave. Know it?
    Honestly, was he reading her mind somehow? Did he have
visual access to her apartment—a hidden camera that had scoped out her old CD
collection on the shelf?
    She shook her head while typing. Of course I know it. I
deal in romance.
    I’ve never heard that song described as romantic.
    Then you’ve been hanging out with the wrong people.
    Right on that one. Time to narrow down your location,
Miss Ya-something.
    A little narrowing couldn’t be all that dangerous, right? Between
Toronto and London. And what makes you think I’m a miss, not a missus…or a
mister?
    I read your profile before I accepted the game.
    Head, meet desk. If she were at a desk.
    Another message from Travis popped up. Promise me we’ll
talk again. Soon.
    Could he be asking for more contact than an online Scrabble
chat window? No, that was a desperate and ridiculous wish, and one she’d never
be able to handle if it materialized in front of her, wrapped in pretty paper
with a bow on top. At least he wanted to do this again. That was all she
needed. Really.
    You know how to find me. She rubbed her palms against
her pajamas. Too desperate-sounding? Too indifferent? Ugh, this is why she
didn’t date. Well…one of the lesser reasons, but still. Too stressful.
    And I will. Have a great night, C. I’ll be thinking about
you when we play that song.
    Then he was gone. For tonight, at least. Tons of open games
waited on the site’s homepage, but she wasn’t into it anymore. Somewhere out
there was a brown-haired guitarist who, in ninety minutes and total anonymity,
had made her heart race. Travis might be that ordinary-looking guy nobody gives
a second glance. He might be the ugly guy everybody stares at because they
can’t look away. Whatever his appearance, she was into him. Totally,
anonymously into him.

Chapter Two
     
    Eight thirty. Shit, he was late. Travis tossed a handful of
kibble in the cat’s bowl, grabbed his guitar and jetted out of the apartment.
He should have been at The Cove already. The guys were going to have a heyday
with this one. Dependable Travis, last one to the gig for once. He could
practically hear them now.
    He needed something to shut them up. Not the truth. Hell no,
if they found out he was late because he met a girl online, and worse, during a
Scrabble game—he’d never live it down. Guys who played rock music didn’t behave
that way. They weren’t supposed to behave at all.
    The club’s parking lot was overflowing when he pulled up.
Excellent for his band, even though he had to park down a side street. Not only
was Black Box getting the standard flat fee for the gig, they were getting a
cut of the bar receipts during, and for an hour after, their set. Thanks to
him. The guys never mocked his business savvy. That alone should be enough to
keep his bandmates off his back. As if it would.
    Fabricating some story was easy enough. The question he
couldn’t shake was why some faceless female on a geeky game site had gotten to
him. Women threw themselves at him all the time—young ones, old ones, and an
incredible amount of smoking-hot ones. Even small-time musicians got laid a
lot, freely and without any expectation of commitment. A perk of the job, until
it grew old. Now he couldn’t stop thinking about C Ya, wondering exactly what
she looked like, where she lived, if she walked around wearing lingerie just
for the hell of being sexy. For all he knew, she wasn’t even a she. He
ought to give his fucking head a shake.
    “Cat puked on my clothes,” Travis said as he climbed
onstage, past a bunch of raised eyebrows. “Nothing worse