Out of the Mist by JoAnn Ross

Author:JoAnn Ross
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 2003-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

19

Ian was taking a shortcut across a meadow when he heard the unmistakable sound of pipes. A moment later he came around a corner and there, in a wildflower-studded clearing, he saw the teenager who’d stormed into the gallery after that fight with her mother.

Today’s T-shirt read BAGPIPES —HOW SWEET THE SOUND, and she was playing with an almost otherworldly concentration that kept her from noticing him.

She was a long way from being the best piper he’d ever heard. Which wasn’t that surprising, since conventional wisdom said it took seven years and seven generations to master the instrument. She hit a particularly strident grace note, and broke into tears.

“Surely it’s not as bad as all that.”

She spun around, looking like a startled doe. “I didn’t know anyone was out here.”

“I was just getting the lay of the land for the film.”

“Then you heard how ghastly I am.”

“On the contrary, I thought you did rather well for a beginner.” More lies.

“I’ll never get that damn grace note right,” she muttered. “Do you know how pipes work?”

“Not really. Other than knowing that a piper has to have strong lungs.”

“You don’t force the air in by blowing hard. You inflate the bag, then keep the air in it by breathing normally and play by applying pressure to the bag while breathing.”

“Sounds a bit like walking and chewing gum.”

“You’re laughing at me.” Her eyes filled up again.

“I wouldn’t do that.” He might be on the brink of becoming a thief, not to mention breaking a very special woman’s heart, but even he had limits. “You still must have pretty good breathing control.”

“I take a breath about every two seconds. A really good piper can take nearly sixty a minute. After a while you kind of get the hang of it, but it’s the embellishments that are tricky.” She frowned down at the instrument. “One of the hardest things is that once you get the air flowing, there’s no way to stop it. It makes music even when all the chanter holes are closed, so you have to stick all these grace notes between the melody notes.”

“It sounds extremely difficult.”

“It is.” She heaved a huge sigh. “If you were a boy, would you like a girl who could pipe?”

“That’s never been a criterion in choosing a woman, and it probably wouldn’t be enough by itself, even if I was a huge bagpipe afficionado,” he answered honestly, suspecting she was hoping for a far different answer. “But admiration and liking go hand in hand, at least in my book, and I’ve always admired anyone who works hard to achieve something.”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way.” She sounded encouraged by that idea. “My mother doesn’t understand.”

“There’s probably always a difference in viewpoints between the generations, even more so, I’ve heard, between mothers and daughters. From what I could tell, she wants you to continue your family tradition, which is important to her.”

She stuck out her lower lip. “It’s not to me.”

Ian wasn’t about to put himself between a steel magnolia and an emotional teenage girl.

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