Flesh & Bone - a contemporary romance: The Minstrel Series #2 by Lee Strauss, Elle Strauss Page B

the kind of weariness that came from a lack of sleep. She was crashing from her three-day high, like a plane whose propellers suddenly quit, and it was a long, hard fall.
    Who was she to think she would ever be truly happy? And what did true happiness look like anyway? Eva huffed. It looked like Gabriele.
    She stretched and groaned and bemoaned the fact that she couldn’t lie in bed forever. Her papa would be knocking on the door if she wasn’t ready to head downstairs soon. She sighed long and hard again before rousing herself to dress for the day.
    Eva stared wistfully at her Duncan Africa, wishing she could carry it downstairs herself. She had a second guitar in the church, a community instrument left there for anyone to play. It was all right, but it didn’t resonate the same way. She always had to ask Gabriele or one of her parents to carry it up and down for her when she left for the Blue Note.
    She could already smell the soup her mama had prepared halfway down the circular cement stairwell. Even though Eva enjoyed cooking, she was too slow in the tight quarters of the soup kitchen. Mama had other volunteers from the church who helped. Providing music was Eva’s most useful contribution.
    Papa had raised the outdoor blinds and unlocked the front door, and the tables were already filled with the hungry. Papa welcomed them all with a sincere smile, and then opened with a prayer. Eva played a worship song and a few of the patrons lifted their hands. Her gaze wandered to the window and her heart stopped. Her hands plucked the strings of her guitar and her mouth moved, but her brain had disengaged. Sebastian Weiss stood across the street, one arm folded across his chest and the other on his chin.
    She remembered when he stood in that same spot over a year ago, waving his hands in the air, mocking. He wasn’t mocking now. His eyes seemed to lock on hers. Could he see her through the glass?
    Then his hand moved from his face, and he waved his fingers.
    He could see her! She quickly looked away.
    Papa cleared his voice. “Is something wrong?”
    Eva blushed. She’d stopped the song midstream without explanation. “No, I’m sorry.” She began again, cautiously glancing through the hair she allowed to fall in front of her face and out the window. Sebastian Weiss was gone and a strange disappointment wrapped around her collection of flustered emotions.
    Eva could barely concentrate during Papa’s short pre-meal message from the Bible. Her mind was fixated on Sebastian Weiss. She pictured him standing across the street, the way he leaned back slightly, with his weight on one leg. He stared at her through the window, stroking his chin beneath beautiful lips that had so recently whispered hotly in her ear. This time, in her imagination, he hooked a finger calling her outside to meet him. With perfect grace and without her cane she hurried to meet him.
    Then what?
    She ran her hand against the back of her neck as if she could sweep away the heat that her fantasy brought on.
    Oh God. She had a debilitating crush. An embarrassing infatuation. She really had to pull herself together. Her obsession with Sebastian Weiss and Hollow Fellows couldn’t be healthy. At best it was extremely immature.
    She engaged in light conversation with the patrons in an effort to clear her head.
    “Nice weather,” she said to one of the regulars.
    He huffed a gruff reply. “Too hot.”
    “Well, it’s July,” she said. “Not long ago we were complaining it was too cold.”
    When the lunch rush ended, Eva pushed the rolling tray full of dirty dishes to the kitchen and returned with a wet cloth to wipe the tables. Her back was to the door as she hobbled from table to table. That was why she didn’t see him enter.
    “I’m sorry young man,” she heard her papa say, “but lunch is over. I can get you a bun if you like.”
    “I’m not here for the food.”
    Eva stiffened, her spine like a cold copper pipe. Chills shot up to the base of her