“Sounds perfect. I’d like to watch another one, anyway. It’s the best show in town.”

“You want a beer?”

Maggie glanced up, brow lifted. “Aren’t I allowed?”

He shrugged and passed a man in overalls a dollar. “You just don’t look like the beer type.”

“You type too easily,” Maggie countered, watching as beer was tapped from a wooden keg into paper cups.

“Maybe,” he murmured as she sipped at the froth. “You’re having a good time?”

“Yes.” She laughed over the rim. The beer was lukewarm, but it was wet. Her foot was already tapping. They’d added a mandolin, she noticed. The sound was sweet and old-fashioned. “Didn’t you think I would?”

“I thought you’d enjoy the music.” He leaned against the wall so that he could see her with the dancers at her back. “I thought you needed to get out. But I didn’t expect you to take to all this as if you’d been born doing it.”

She lowered her half-empty cup and gave him a solemn smile. “When are you going to stop putting me in that shiny glass cage, Cliff? I’m not a delicate hothouse flower or a spoiled Hollywood bitch. I’m Maggie Fitzgerald, and I write music.”

The look held for a long time while the music pulsed around them. “I think I know who you are.” Lifting a hand, he ran the back of it down her cheek. “I think I know Maggie Fitzgerald. It might’ve been safer for both of us with you in that glass cage.”

She felt the heat rise. It only took a touch. “We’ll have to see, won’t we?” With one brow still lifted in question, she touched her cup to his. “To new understanding?”

“All right.” He cradled her chin in his hand before he kissed her. “We’ll give it a shot.”

“Miss Fitzgerald?”

Maggie turned to see a short man in his early twenties running a felt hat around and around in his hands. Until that moment, she’d been so intent on Cliff that she hadn’t noticed the music had stopped. “You’re the piano player.” Her eyes lit, and the smile that could stun so unexpectedly curved on her lips. “You’re wonderful.”

He’d been nervous before; now he was overwhelmed. “I just— Thank you,” he managed, staring at her with his soul in his eyes.

She doesn’t even know it, Cliff realized. She wasn’t aware that she could make a man want to grovel. Sipping his beer, he watched the piano player try to find his voice again.

“I couldn’t believe it when I heard you were here.”

“I live here,” she told him simply.