“Tonight was . . .” I stared at my lap, then back up at him, unable to be anything but honest. “It was like . . . a miracle.”

I half expected him to jump up and do a victory leap, but he didn’t move a muscle. “Do you know what I was thinking about when I was conducting?”

I watched him move closer.

“Nachos?” I whispered.

He closed his eyes and I closed mine and there were his lips, warm and parting, my arms sliding up around his neck to sink deeper into it. Relief surged over me like a warm bath. In the same moment, we both seemed to remember how polite we’d been all day, how very upbeat and chaste, and smiled against each other’s lips, then more kissing, more urgent, more greedy.

He pulled back a few inches. “How did you know I was thinking about nachos?”

I laughed.

Oscar peered at me—a question.

“So.” I shook my head. “Are we . . . ?”

“I don’t think we have a choice.” He looked almost exultant.

I beamed, catching the joy on his face. But then he frowned—and the litany of worries he’d recited earlier today ran through my head like a news-ticker.

His mouth dipped to my neck, and I blurted, “Nora thinks it’s great. You and me.”

He looked up. “Ms. Visser?”

“Yeah!” Why why why would you bring her up right now? “In case you were worried about how, um, Amberley people would react.” Sweat prickled my armpits. “She guessed this morning and she gave me a big . . . thumbs-up?” I demonstrated, scrambling to wind this conversation back to the point before I’d derailed it. “I didn’t tell her anything. Obviously. I didn’t know if there was anything to tell.”

“Wow.” He leaned away, thoughtful. “That’s good to hear, actually. I shouldn’t care, but . . . huh.”

My face burned. Oscar lapsed into silence and I suspected if I tried to fill it, I might say something even more wrong-headed.

There were dirty dishes piled up on the counter of his galley kitchen. I gave his shoulder a soft tap, and went to fill the sink.

“You know, we switched the piece tonight. They were supposed to be rehearsing L’Apres-Midi with Reinhardt, but I mentioned Mozart in the interview, so everything got shifted. They’d done Night Music already, last Thursday.” He kicked his legs up with a cocky grin. “But not like that.”

I looked back down at the soapy basin, the dishes I was scrubbing, my wet arm, all the purple notes running together.

“Ah. Ruby.” Oscar jumped up, crossing the room in three long strides. “You don’t need to do that.”

“I don’t mind.” I stacked clean plates to the side. “What did you say about Mozart? In the interview . . .”