A Billion Reasons Why by Kristin Billerbeck

Author:Kristin Billerbeck
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Thomas Nelson Inc.
Published: 2010-12-17T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

AIN'T THAT A KICK IN THE HEAD

“Are we gonna practice or not?” It was Scully, a tall, skinny black man who barely registered from behind his clarinet, which was the same shape as he was.

The band mumbled, but all of them moved toward the stage, and Katie instinctively joined them. Luc watched her go, his mind filled with plans.

Katie . . . her red dress swinging gently back and forth, embodied everything a man wanted in a wife: the girl next door, nurturing with just enough fight to keep it interesting, intellectual, generous to a fault, and of course . . . that heavenly figure. He’d made a tactical error. Revealed too much up front, lost himself in the emotion of his desire. One has to be able to walk away from the table. He laughed aloud. That might be an option in business mergers. In mergers of the heart, he wasn’t so rational. Not when it came to Katie. He’d protected her from a truth she wasn’t ready for, taken the high road, if you will—only to feel the full impact of his decision until this day. The question remained. Was Katie ready for the truth now?

He’d been so ignorant. Thought he’d make his money and come back and show her the security she craved. He’d missed that train. Security to Katie came in the form of a boring engineer who would be home for dinner when he said he would, who would protect her from the emotional pain she’d already endured—the pain Luc helped afflict in his youthful exuberance.

Katie glanced back at him from the stage, and he spoke to her heart. “What you don’t realize,” he murmured under his breath, “is that kind of life will ultimately kill who you are.” A life without music, without her soul touched by the natural rhythm within her—was that a life at all? She was born for deeper things, the way music touched her. God had created the music within her.

Up on the stage, Katie embraced the microphone with all the ease and grace of the experienced musicians who surrounded her. In that moment, time disappeared. Not a moment had passed since he’d first laid eyes upon her. It still bothered him that Ryan knew her first. Ryan had brought him down to the club, where he’d gotten a job singing. His artsy flighty brother never did anything that was expected of him but somehow always managed to get away with being the chosen son.

The stage was filled to capacity that night with a full big band, backup singers, and a bandleader, but all eyes went directly to Katie. Including his own. She owned the stage and the audience. Ryan had met her in theater class, and her family had come upon hard times. Naturally, his bleeding-heart brother took it upon himself to get her work and recommended her for the Barrelhouse Club, an old drinking establishment meant to provide an alternative “safer” experience to the more wild Bourbon Street bars.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.