Dance of Desire (1001 Dark Nights)

  Amber’s not sure where she is at first. She rolls over and recognizes the motel room’s corded phone, the same one she used to call her mother. But it’s not ringing. That would be her cell phone, which is on the opposite nightstand.

  She rolls in the other direction, grabs her cell, glimpsing the clock on the display as she brings it to her ear.

  It’s three thirty. Again. It’s the afternoon version of three thirty this time, and she’s not sure if this should make her feel guilty or not.

  For nine hours she slept. That’s probably a good thing. But she’s alone. And that’s not good at all.

  She sits up, panic tensing her limbs.

  “Hello?” she croaks.

  “I take it you’ve changed your mind about my imminent murder,” her mother says.

  Just then, Amber sees the spread of items on the dresser next to the T.V. At first she assumes the cowboy hat is Caleb’s, but it’s way too small, and it’s not the same color as the one he wore that morning. As the daughter of a man who ran a country music bar, she knows her Stetsons. This one’s a royal Western, flesh-colored with a slender black band. Caleb’s partial to a black skyline, where the band blends in to the dark fabric and the upturn along the brim is more severe.

  The reason this hat is different, she realizes, with a skip in her chest, is because it’s mine. He bought it for me!

  “You’re not answering so I assume that means you still plan to murder me?”

  “I am not,” she says, rushing to the bathroom mirror so she can see how she looks in her new duds.

  Wow. Huge mistake. She still hasn’t washed off her freak show makeup.

  “Oh my God,” she whispers. “Did we really have sex with me looking like this?”

  “That was more than I needed to hear.”

  “Oh, cut it out. You were the instigator of this whole thing! Don’t get all high and mighty now that you got your way!”

  “I see,” her mother says. “So crazy’s getting replaced by sassy this afternoon. You are aware it’s the afternoon, right?”

  “I needed sleep.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Some motel somewhere.”

  She returns to the dresser. Caleb’s also left out a just purchased, folded pair of blue jeans—almost the right size, but not quite—and a T-shirt which, for a second or two, she’s afraid has some dirty saying about riding cowboys written on it, but which turns out to be printed with the spare but lovely silhouette of a cowboy on horseback before a giant, setting sun.

  Sweet.

  There’s also clean underwear and a fresh pair of socks and bottles of her favorite shampoo and body wash.

  “Is Caleb with you?”

  “I think so,” she says. “I hope so.”

  She draws back the curtain, and there he is, sitting by the motel’s woebegone swimming pool, a postcard of cowboy perfection with his hat tilting forward on his head while he—

  “Caleb plays the guitar?” Amber asks.

  “Lord, I hope not. All that strummin’ and whining. Makes me want to drown myself in a creek.”

  “Momma. That’s no way to talk about the guitar.”

  “Really, Amber? After your track record with musicians?”

  “Is there a reason for this phone call other than to give me an apology you haven’t given me yet?”

  “Yes. Where are you?”

  “I don’t know. Some motel. We’re about an hour outside of Dallas. I was on my way to you.”

  “To murder me. Yes, I remember.”

  “I’m still considering it.”

  “Yes, well, that’s very interesting, baby girl. In the meantime, I’d like you to drive another two hours south because the pleasure of your company is being requested at The Haven Creek Inn.”

  “By who?”

  “By your mother, thank you very much.”

  “And whose company is that exactly?”

  “You and Caleb. Now I’m gonna get off the phone before you slip and tell me how big it is.”

  “Momma!”

  “See you in a few hours, sweetheart.”

  She wants to join Caleb by the pool, but she also doesn’t want to go out in public looking like a psychotic cowgirl who just survived the running of the bulls. She showers quickly with the products he just bought for her, each squirt of shampoo and body wash feeling like a kiss from the man who took the time to buy them for her.

  Only once she’s standing at the motel room door, clean and dressed, the cowboy hat he bought for her perched on her head, does the fear hit. Maybe he’s sitting by himself outside because he’s having second thoughts. The gifts could have been compensation prizes, not tokens of affection, and he could already be planning his next escape. He hasn’t looked in her direction once. Is he rehearsing a little speech about how last night was a giant mistake?

  Start walking, she tells herself.

  By the time she’s a few steps from the chain link gate, Caleb looks up from the guitar on his lap. As soon as his eyes meet hers, the fear vanishes. Everything about him seems relaxed and unguarded. Seeing her so close seems to brighten everything about him, from his smile to his eyes.

  The storm’s passed over completely, leaving behind towers of puffy clouds against a dome of blue. In broad daylight, the motel actually seems a little charming. The room numbers are all the same antique-style brass, the parking lot lines freshly painted. And the water in the pool looks clean, even if the pool itself is just a plain concrete rectangle fenced in by chain link.

  “Thanks for the care package, sir,” she says.

  “You’re welcome,” he answers. “Hope you didn’t think I was trying to brand you with all the cowboy paraphernalia. Nearest place I could find was a country western emporium, this being Texas and all. Although, I must say, you do look mighty cute in that hat.”

  “Thank you,” she says. “So, guitar, huh?”

  “Yeah, I’ve been taking lessons. Didn’t want to come right out and say it, you know, given your history with a certain songbird.”

  “That’s sweet. Thank you.”

  “You want to hear something?”

  Uh oh.

  “Sure, I guess.”

  “You guess? Well, that doesn’t sound very enthusiastic.”

  “I am. I’m very enthusiastic. Play me a song, Caleb Eckhart.”

  With a big grin at the sound of his newly modified name, he gestures for her to take a seat on the lounger next to his. She does, wondering, Is this going to be like one of those moments in a Nicholas Sparks movie?

  Caleb sucks in a deep breath. He grips the guitar’s arm carefully, his chest rising and falling. He strums.

  Something doesn’t sound right.

  He strums again and it sounds worse.

  Oh, shit, Amber thinks, trying to freeze a plastic smile on her face.

  “Aaaaamber,” he says.

  “Hello, Caleb!”

  “Shhh. That’s part of the song. It’s about you.”

  “Oh. Okay. Sorry.”

  Caleb nods, takes another deep breath, and starts again.

  This time, the strumming sounds even worse.

  “Amber,” he sings. “A-uhm-ber. She’s like the mooooon.”

  Oh, shit, Amber thinks again.

  He strums wildly, and if there’s a connection between the notes he’s singing and whatever he’s doing to the guitar, only he can hear it. And she would like to stop hearing it. Very soon.

  “She’s like the moon, if the moon was hot and had breeeeeeeeasts.”

  “Put that thing down!”

  Caleb cracks up laughing as he sets the guitar to one side. “I’ve never had one lesson in my life. Some guy left this out here and asked me to watch it while he went inside to take a call from his wife.”

  “Good, ’cause that was God-awful.”

  “But you really are like the moon if the moon had bre—”

  “Shut up,” she says.

  He pats one thigh. “First have a seat right here
, sis!”

  A bolt of heat shoots up her spine. As she settles onto his lap, the hard muscles in his thighs flex. He curves an arm around her back. They’re an hour’s drive from anything she’d call home, but still, to be this intimate with him right out in the open makes her feel flushed and light-headed and a little giggly. In its own way, it’s more intoxicating than much of what he did to her body earlier that morning.

  “Now you really do need to stop calling me that,” she whispers with a sly grin.

  “You didn’t seem to have a problem with the whole forbidden passion routine last night,” he says.

  “This morning, you mean.”

  “Details,” he says.

  “That’s ’cause I was doing away with it.”

  “Us being brother and sister, you mean?”

  “Yep.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Well, you know. By turning it into a little role-play game, it stops being a real label. I mean, people can role-play pretty much anything they want. Cops. Fireman. Cowboys. It usually means they’re not actually any of those things.”

  “I am a cowboy,” he says.

  “That’s true. But for the most part.”

  “I see. So role-play. Was that something they were going do out at Belinda’s sex club?”

  “If you call it that to anybody else, you’ll probably get me fired.”

  “Sorry. Lips are sealed. Promise. I will, however, be willing to consider opening them for other more important activities.” He gives her a gentle bite just above her collarbone, more like a light pinch of his teeth. She grips the back of his head, fights the urge to drive his mouth further down where it can nibble on her breast.

  “The point is that’s not what we are anymore, right?” she asks.

  “That’s right,” he says. “That’s very, very right. We did away with all kinds of things last night. Things that weren’t working for either of us.”

  He rests his head against her chest. She’s breathing deeply for the first time in days. Or weeks. Or months. Years, even.

  “And today, at almost four o’clock in the afternoon, we’re starting something altogether new,” he says.

  “Exactly,” she answers. “New.”

  They hold each other for a while as the trucks blow past them on the highway.

  “Can we start it by getting out of this motel?” Amber finally says. “I’ve kinda had enough of this place.”

  “Ah, really. I’m always gonna have a special feeling for it, you know, considering.” He sits up suddenly. “What’s it even called?”

  “Something shameful, I’m sure.”

  Caleb spots the sign. “The Showtime Inn. Ha!”

  “A shameful name for a shameful place,” she says.

  “Nothing shameful about what we did,” he says, looking up at her.

  He reaches up and smoothes her bangs back from her forehead.

  “I was only kidding,” she says.

  “I wasn’t.”

  “Kidding about the motel, I mean.”

  “And not last night?”

  “This morning, you mean.”

  “Details, details,” he says with a grin.

  She bends forward. He closes the remaining distance so they can kiss. “The details were important,” she says. “I liked the details. Very much.”

  Footsteps slap the pavement nearby. A guy’s heading toward the pool clad in swim trunks and a tank top, probably the owner of the guitar Caleb just used to fool her. He smiles at them both, a smile Caleb returns. Then Caleb grabs the back of her neck quickly and brings her ear to his lips. In a hoarse whisper, he says, “My favorite detail was when I found the spot right below your clit that made you whimper like a little kitten, and I sucked on it till you clawed the bed on either side of you like you thought I was going to tongue fuck you into outer space. What was your favorite detail, my little cowgirl?”

  The guy’s two feet away by the time Caleb finishes this filthy declaration. Her breath lodged in her throat, Amber straightens and gives the guy a broad smile. She sat up so quickly her cowboy hat almost came off, but she rights it just in time. Caleb’s whispers have sent shivers of pleasure throughout her body.

  “Thanks, partner,” the stranger says as he picks up his guitar. “Hope you fooled her like you wanted to.”

  “I see,” Amber says.

  “Y’all make a cute couple,” their visitor says with a smile, then he heads off back in the direction of his room, guitar in hand.

  Because they’ve never heard these words before, said with such innocence and so free of drama, the two of them just sit for a while, soaking them in.

  “So,” Caleb finally says. “Where to?”

  “Our presence has been requested at The Haven Creek Inn in Chapel Springs.”

  “Cool. I’ve never been.”

  “Really?” she asks.

  “Nope.”

  “Well, it’s certainly a day for firsts, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” he says with a boyish grin. “When’s seconds?”

  “Bad boy,” she says, then plants a kiss on his lips.

  “So we heading out now?”

  “I guess, yeah.”

  “You guess? What’s troubling you?”

  “I think we should head straight there. She sounded pretty eager. Maybe ’cause I threatened to murder her last night.”

  “Forgive me if I seem confused, but when someone threatens to murder me, I’m usually not in a rush to have them over to the house.”

  “You know what I mean. Last night we had words. I think she wants to make up for it.”

  “This morning, you mean.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Alright, well, still doesn’t explain the long face.”

  “I just don’t want to take separate cars, that’s all,” she says. “You and me, we’ve been taking separate cars our whole lives practically because I was so afraid to be alone with you. And now all I want is to be alone with you. So I don’t know where we’ll leave my car, but fact is, I want to ride with you and I’m not going if I can’t.”

  Her pouty expression earns her a belly laugh from Caleb.

  “Well, that’s a lucky coincidence, miss, ’cause I don’t feel like going if you don’t ride with me either. And while we’re speaking the truth, I don’t feel much like letting go of you once we get there neither.”

  “Unless,” she says.

  “Unless what?” he asks, expression falling.

  “Unless you try playing the guitar again, in which case I might run for the hills and never come back.”

  “Well, I’ll just have to catch you then!”

  She’s not quite sure how he does it, but in an instant, he’s standing and he’s got her in both arms and she’s got no choice but to wrap her legs around him to keep from falling. And just like that, he’s carrying her across the parking lot and back to their room.

  “Or you could just never let me go,” she whispers into his ear as he walks. “That way, you don’t have to risk me running in the first place.”

  “Sounds good to me, darlin’.”

  11

  It’s amazing what you can learn about someone after two hours alone together in the car, Amber realizes.

  Like the fact Caleb’s actually a smooth and focused driver, his antics in her driveway the night before not withstanding. Or that he likes country music way more than she realized, and when he sings along with it, he sounds a heck of a lot better than he did during his little comedy routine by the motel’s pool.

  She also feels blessed he’s such a country fan because for the first time in her life, the love songs they’re listening to seem written just for her. She doesn’t find herself thinking things like, “Well, that’s just lovely Miss Hill! But let’s hear about a real marriage!” And when Chase Rice asks her to climb to the top of the water tower so they can kick it with the stars for an hour, it sounds like the invitation is sincere.

  The troubles and pain of the last few d
ays don’t just feel miles away. Rather, with Caleb’s free arm draped across her shoulders and a blazing big sky sunset off to the west, anything seems possible.

  Do you have to have love to feel this way, she wonders, or is this how most people feel when they finally walk through the fires of a fear that’s lain in their path for most of their lives? Love certainly helps, that’s for sure.

  Once it was clear her marriage was in a nosedive, she’d had fantasies of getting in the car and just driving and driving until she wound up in her own version of Chapel Springs, some suitable, peaceful refuge from a life defined by fear and hasty choices. But the trip she and Caleb were on now was of a different nature. They weren’t driving away from something; they were driving toward her mother and The Haven Creek Inn, and the very real fact that people who cared about them both had wanted the two of them to get together long before they were willing to take the leap.

  Some of those people, anyway.

  Rather than stew over what her father might think of this new development, Amber slides out from under Caleb’s arm so she can take his free hand in her own and hold it to her chest. He returns her grip, but his expression seems distant, more distant than someone watching the road.

  “Listen,” he says suddenly.

  Uh oh.

  “What?” she answers.

  “This place Belinda was going to send you to,” he says.

  “Yeah?”

  “Did you really want to go? I mean, I’m asking because you told me about what things were like with Joel, how he went cold on you in the bedroom, and then I kinda barged in and did my thing and… I just don’t want to feel like I took something away from you. Something you needed before…”

  “Are you asking if I needed to sow my wild oats?”

  “Kinda. Yeah.”

  “So did it seem like there was something missing this morning? Did it seem like I was distracted while you—how did you put it? Tongue fucked me into outer space?”

  He grins at the road and bites his lower lip and tightens his grip on her hand. He likes it when she talks dirty. She makes a note of that. Good thing the feeling’s mutual.

  “Is that a trick question?” he asks.

  “Nope. Did I seem distracted?”

  “You did not. You did not seem distracted.”