With His Kiss. Laurey Bright

cabinets, the shelves neatly stacked with file boxes, and the typing chair behind the desk, as if noting the contrast between this businesslike room and the chaos Magnus had worked in. He picked up the folders. “Do you mind if I use Magnus’s desk?”

      It was a reasonable request. There wasn’t much room in the annex to sort through papers, and the bigger office would be private and convenient. Triss had the feeling he was staking a claim, but without an excuse she’d look churlish and petty if she refused. At least he’d had the decency to ask.

      “If you like,” she said, as graciously as she could. “I may need to fetch some documents from time to time but I’ll try not to disturb you.”

      He nodded and seemed about to leave. She realized he was looking at the darkened bruise below her eye, that makeup had failed to disguise. Abruptly he asked, “Is that painful?”

      “Less so than yesterday. It’ll fade.”

      After he’d gone away with the files, she let her head fall into her hands and raked her fingers through her hair, wishing passionately that the world would just go away for at least a day or two. And take Steve with it.

      But there were bills to be paid and people to be contacted. The annual budget to be prepared. Tutors to be found for next year’s program, a task that had to be done way ahead of time. It was going to become a major problem without Magnus’s personal connection with an extensive network of people ranging from musicians and special educators to politicians, philanthropists and the heads of various educational and musical institutions and youth aid programs.

      Sighing, Triss switched on the computer. But her mind was still with the man in the room across the way.

      Steve had come far since Magnus had plucked him up from the street when he was a teenager, playing experimental music on a cheap secondhand keyboard that he’d repaired himself.

      Under Magnus’s wing he’d learned a lot about the technique and theory of music while pursuing his interest in electronically produced sound. Before he was out of his teens he had been building his own digital instruments, at first from cheap used parts, and selling them. By the time Triss arrived at Kurakaha he’d been tutoring part-time, maintaining the House’s electronic equipment and using an outbuilding for his own lucrative small business.

      Magnus had tolerated that as the price of having Steve within his little kingdom, but had never given up trying to persuade him to make music rather than its instruments.

      Then a visiting American businessman had been impressed enough to lure Steve to Los Angeles with the offer of a partnership that Steve accepted against Magnus’s determined opposition, and there had been raised voices before Steve packed and left. Within two years he had bought his partner out. Since then the firm had earned a reputation for cutting-edge technology and made him a rich man.