“Borrowed?” He gives me this sweet forgive-me look.
Blake tears his eyes away from Sarah to add, “So he can spy on you.”
“Shut up.” Derek elbows Blake in the ribs. “I’ve always loved that piece. We did it in chamber. And the way you do it—so much feeling. That needs to go on Bliss’s next CD.”
“CD?” I am so lost. Meadow and her mom forgot one thing when they remade me. I’d give anything for a personality transplant right now. I am so out of my depth.
Derek tips his head, talks low, like it’s just the two of us. “Our conductor makes us listen to our numbers at night when we go to bed. Some flighty hypnosis trash. Sometimes I cheat—slip in something soothing.” His deep brown eyes capture mine. “You sing me to sleep.”
Blushing, sweating—what a mess. At least I keep my lunch down. Who could possibly answer that? He must be doing this on purpose, take perverse delight in reducing tall, awkward girls to puddles.
Meadow comes to my rescue. “Now you’ve met Beth.” She maneuvers me to the side. “Here’s Sarah, Leah, and I’m—” She pauses and smiles at him like he’s won the lottery. “Meadow.”
Blake and Derek mumble polite stuff.
Meadow keeps after Derek. “I’ve got your CD.”
Blake says, “The new one or the old one?”
Sarah laughs at his elbow, catches his eye again. “All three. I even got the new Primus recording.” Primus is the name of their special group for the older guys.
Meadow picks up a postcard. “We all do.”
Derek turns to where I’m pretending to look at fuzzy gloves with “Top of Europe” and mountain peaks embroidered on them. “How about you, Beth. Do you listen to us?”
I nod. “I have all the AYS CDs, too.” My tongue seems to function better if I don’t look at him. “They, um, set the standard.”
He shrugs. “None of them has your voice.”
Meadow maneuvers to a spot on Derek’s other side. “Are you guys singing up here?”
Blake puts a postcard with a guy blowing an alphorn back in the rack. “Uh-huh. We just checked the schedule.” He pronounces “schedule” as “shedule.” Sarah smiles at that. Blake raises his eyebrows at her. “Thirty minutes.”
Sarah picks out a card I can’t see and shows it to him. “You must be right after us.”
“Cool.” Blake looks around the rack at all of us. “We should do a piece together—in the name of international harmony.”
Derek turns back to me, picks up a black velour beanie. “Are you singing your solo? I’d love to hear it live.”
“No.” I croak, swallow, manage to find a voice that doesn’t wobble too much. “That’s our competition piece. We’re saving it.”
“Secret weapon?” That grin again.
Dang. I’m going to die right here and now. And then they’ll win for sure. A guy with his cuteness factor blended with little-boy sweet shouldn’t be allowed to roam free and unprotected. He’s infectious. Crap. He’s an epidemic.
I can’t help smiling back at him. “Maybe not as secret as we thought.”
“Do you girls want to get a drink with us?” He says “girls” but he looks at me. “They’ve got this hot apple stuff that really clears out your throat. Great for the pipes.”
Leah looks at her watch. “I don’t think we have time. We’re supposed to warm up in five minutes.”
Blake leans over Sarah and whispers, “Your loss,” in her ear—loud enough so we all hear. She keeps her cool, does this almost imperceptible cat-wriggle response.
Meadow tugs at the beanie in Derek’s hand. “How about after.”
Derek drops the beanie and turns back to me. “Only if you promise to sing the test piece with us.”
Sing with them? Oh . . . my . . . gosh. “But we sing the treble arrangement.” I’m gross sweaty again. I can even feel perspiration breaking out in the small of my back.
Derek doesn’t seem to notice. “The bass piece is in the same key. It works. We sing it in our chamber choir with the AYS all the time.”
Meadow shakes her sexy straight hair back out of her face. That gets Derek’s attention. Blake’s, too. She purses her glossy red lips. “Won’t the AYS get upset if you guys sing with us?” I need to memorize what she does with her body. Head tilt, hip out, weight shift, chest movement. It all looks perfectly natural. I feel like a board standing next to her.
Blake’s eyes are all over Meadow now. “They are in China.”
Sarah frowns behind him.
Derek picks up the gloves I looked at. “I’ll make it happen.” His arm brushes mine. Not Meadow’s?
The guy must be magic because five minutes later when we meet for warm up, Terri’s bubbling over. “The Amabile Young Men’s Ensemble performs after us. Their conductor just invited us to sing the test piece with them.”
When our choirs sing together, the sound fills up the entire non-acoustical glass, chrome, and cement installation. There are eighty of us and fifty of them. I’m standing in the center in the front. I’m too tall for the risers. Derek is right behind me, singing in my ear. That means he’s only a couple inches shorter than me. He shows off and sings the soprano part. I’d like to hear his tenor. I bet that would melt the glaciers out the window. Shoot, he could melt the stone underneath. I’m grateful he’s goofing around. His tenor would be way more than I can handle.
Maybe I have heard it. There’s this one piece on their latest CD with an aching, tenor solo. That’s got to be Derek. Meadow manages to stand beside him. She sings better than usual. Guess all she needs is a little inspiration. What is she doing in an all-girls choir?
After the performance, the guys take us through the main sights, starting with the ice palace full of goofy sculptures. Meadow slips on the ice right into Derek. He catches her arm. “Take it easy, eh?”
She clutches onto him. “Thanks.”
He drops her arm, gets ahead of all of us. “Watch.” He runs across the ice floor and slides all the way down a narrow hall that leads to the exit, his authentic Canadianness oozing out. Maybe he plays that weird game with the stones. I can’t see him in hockey gear.
Then Blake has to do it. Sarah tries and almost falls, but Blake catches her. Meadow knows she’ll end up on her butt, so she just watches. I go for it and do end up on my butt.
Derek’s there, helping me to my feet, touching me again. “Are you okay? I should have warned you. It’s slippery.”
“Slippery ice? I’ll have to remember that.” I stare at him. Can’t help it. Is he really this nice? Really this different from any guy I’ve ever known? That’s impossible. Best behavior. Good impression. International harmony. That’s all this is. Underneath, he’s a guy. They all are—except Scott. Poor Scott. He seems so far away.
We take the elevator to the very top of the peak and go out on a wild, wind-whipped viewing platform. Even with all my layers, I’m frozen in seconds. Feels kind of good. Banks my interior fires pumping up all this heat.
“We better not get chilled,” Leah calls.
We all agree she’s right and duck quick back through the doors.
The guys lead us to the cafeteria-style restaurant where they ate lunch with their choir while we were hogging up the nice place.
Leah glances around with the corners of her mouth drooping. “What were you guys doing up at the other restaurant?”
Blake looks at me and then Derek. “Derek heard a rumor you girls would be here. He was looking for Beth.”
Derek elbows him hard. “Shut up, you jerk.”
Sarah turns to me. “Oooh, Beth. You’ve got a stalker.”
I’m embarrassed into a scarlet neck again, but Derek doesn’t flush at all. He coughs like he’s got something stuck in his throat and then laughs. “She figured that out the first time we chatted.”
I try to compose myself while he and Blake push two tables together.
Sarah points at the table next to ours. “Look at that.” Big cups of hot cocoa overflowing with whipped cream. Swiss cocoa. Banned. We can’t have chocolate, either. No cream. No cheese until after we perform. That’s torture in Switzerland.