*****140:

It was hours later. Austin had not shown up. He'd not called either. Hurt, but not surprised, she'd not realized he wasn't showing till well into the jam session, which had turned out to be so fun, she hadn't noticed that he wasn't there.

Greg and Jimmy were in rare form, really hamming it up. Blaze was good, really good, and he heard her music. He wasn't afraid to touch her either. He wasn't a ground, like Richard or Austin, but he wasn't the least bit put off by her backwards electromagnetic current, and she was having enough fun not to be on any kind of build at all.

Michael was there, in the background, his hefty size and booming voice omnipresent always. At breaks they'd discussed agents, and the lack of them, the pros and cons. Blaze had one and several assistants who helped keep him organized. He was all for them. Greg had an agent, Jimmy had Greg's agent when he wanted one.

Three a.m. they'd been going at it for hours. She called her mom to see if anyone had woken up, and no one had. Including her mother who was asleep on Tracy's bed.

Greg and Jimmy decided that three a.m. for a purely jamming session, was fun, but not necessarily productive, and so declined further invitations to go surfing. Michael retired quietly back to his Huntington Beach house promising to call on Tracy the following day to firm up plans and schedules.

That left Blaze, and Tracy still had presence of mind to know that hanging out with Blaze at three a.m. wasn't her best choice. She started to pack up her guitar, when his hands slid around her waist from behind. Bing, she thought, exactly what you knew would happen.

"Hey there, pretty lady." He said, and his voice was low and sexy, in fact very familiar now after hours of singing their hearts out together, and laughing. She had really enjoyed the laughing.

"That's a line, if I ever heard one." She answered, clipping the clasps on her case.

His chuckle reached her ears as she turned, finding herself in his arms, but loosely, as if he gave her an out if she wanted it. "We going surfing?"

"It's definitely a possibility. Do you surf?" she asked, pushing away from him and going to fold up the laptop she'd been carrying and had done a little writing on earlier.

"A few times." He admitted. "Do you have a board?"

"Actually I have two boards here. I have Austin's and mine." She snapped the case closed and slung the lap-top over her shoulder, deciding that if surfing were the game she could handle that much with him, and perhaps she'd make him breakfast, but then he'd have to go.

"Are you up to it?" he asked, leaning against the piano, a sexy sugestive look on his enigmatic features.

She finally finished her puttering and faced him. She was hit by the deep dark fathoms of shadowed eyes, drawing her in. This man was so charismatic she could feel the machismo oozing off him. Did it affect her? Yes. Of course, it did. She knew attraction when she encountered it, but there was a choice here as well. She shrugged. He would never be more than her friend, a guy to jam with, perhaps act with, he'd brought that up tonight, even showed her a script, talked about a part.

Those eyes were knowing, and she knew very well what he wanted. He wanted to pursue the attraction. He pushed off, coming toward her slowly.

Tracy didn't flinch or look away and for that she was grateful, knowing it hadn't been that many years since she'd have been running in embarrassment. Like she almost had with Raine, almost passed out in the pool with Raine....

Crushing.... That thought was crushing.

He pulled stray hair behind her ear letting his fingers trail against her neck and then drop to his side. His smile was amused.

"Catch your breath." He said softly.

"It's just.... I mean, I had a weird thought..."

He cocked his head, waiting, and she felt compelled to tell him. "I used to be very afraid of... guys, and come-ons, and relationships... Casey did that to me.... intimidated me, kept me inhibited, so I would respond only to him. When I met Raine, my—my late husband, " she swallowed at the thought, Raine's dark hair falling over his forehead, his compassionate blue eyes fringed with impossibly long dark lashes, Megan and Melia's lashes..... "We were swimming; it was at college..... I was doing laps, he kind of stopped and I didn't know he was there and he caught me and I had this weird, breathless kind of reaction to being cornered like that."

"And me cornering you reminded you of Raine?"

She closed her eyes to shut out the violent memory and emotion. She nodded simply.

He didn't touch her. "And hot on the heels of the memory of Raine you realized once again that he is gone?"

"It's only been a year."

"And you are sad that maybe it's time to move on?" his voice remained very soft, and his eyes, when she glanced back up at them, very compassionate, and very knowing. She felt a thrill of unexpected reaction.

And then came the guilt.

*****