Clearly she’d made way too much of that moment. Sometimes afternoon just meant, afternoon and pretty lady was what a guy called you when he was trying to look cool.
Or so she’d thought earlier that day. Before he took her up on her offer and woke her up in the middle of the night so they could look at the moon together.
Which they do.
Because it’s beautiful.
When he lowers his right hand, the same hand with which he was just pointing to the night sky, her breath catches. Every muscle in her body tenses in anticipation.
Where will it land?
Her shoulder, it seems.
She forces herself to breathe.
Gently he turns her around. The tips of their noses are inches apart, breaths mingling in the moonlit darkness, his as rapid and shallow as her own. The knowledge that he’s as nervous as she is comforts her.
“Need to kiss you,” he says.
“Need to or want to?” she whispers.
“No difference when I’m lookin’ in your eyes,” he says.
When her mouth opens to say his name, he pulls her to him.
At first it’s awkward and tentative. She’s only ever kissed one boy, and now she has a terrible moment of wondering if this is really what everyone else has been talking about, this fumbling of lips and tongue tips and trying not to breathe right at the wrong time.
Then Caleb takes her chin in one hand, cups the side of her face in the other, centering them both.
His tongue slips between her lips. She relaxes, invites him in. Heat spreads from her scalp to the tips of her toes. Heat and a sense of having been suddenly connected to a man for the first time. Not just any man. Caleb. Strong, handsome, sure-to-be-a-giant-someday Caleb.
A phone rings in the distance.
They both ignore it
More rings. They stop.
Her father’s high, barking cry pierces the night.
She wants to yank back from Caleb’s kiss, but her mind fights with her desire. If Caleb is experiencing a similar struggle, she can’t sense it. His kisses intensify, his arms around her now, gathering her T-shirt into his fists.
The house’s sliding door squeals in its track. Her father’s boots pound the cedar steps. Have they been caught?
“Caleb?” her father shouts. “Caleb? You out there, boy?”
She hears not anger but fear and sadness in her father’s voice. He can’t see them through the shadows.
“Yes, Mister Abel! I’m here.”
“Come on up, son,” her father says. “Something’s happened…”
His face is hidden in the shadows, but his voice cracks with emotion.
“Sir?”
“It’s your parents, Caleb. Something’s happened to your parents.”
1
Now
Even though she’s spent the past few days crying at work, Amber Watson Claire has managed to avoid shedding a single tear in front of her boss. So far her breakdowns have all started the same way. She loses herself in some menial task for about fifteen minutes, then she suddenly, violently remembers it’s been less than a week since she opened the door to the storeroom at Watson’s, the bar her father built, and found her husband plowing one of his bartenders with the abandon of a porn star.
The tangle of their sweaty, clawing limbs amidst cases of beer and piles of flattened cardboard boxes is like a frame of film she can’t excise from the reel no mater how many times she pulls it from the projector and goes after it with a pair of scissors.
She sees them screwing when she’s sorting her boss’s mail into three neat piles—bills, junk, and personal.
She sees them screwing when she’s printing out the seating chart for the Women of Industry breakfast at the Prestonwood Country Club her boss is scheduled to host later that month.
Everywhere Amber looks she sees the crazed rutting of her husband and that vile home wrecker in those last few seconds before the woman saw her standing in the doorway and let out a small scream.
She’s not sure why, but she’s convinced that after one week from that horrible, life-changing moment, things will get better. Or at least easier, if not altogether easy.
One week! That’s all she needs.
One week between the present and those horrible twenty minutes it took her husband to empty his side of the closet into some suitcases, shouting excuses for his cheating while she sobbed in the other room.
Couldn’t she see it was all her fault? She was the one who was always riding his ass. About what exactly he didn’t say; maybe she’d said Please don’t break our marriage vows one too many times for his liking? She was the cold fish in bed. She was the one who never wanted to be touched. The first accusation had been a steaming crock of bullshit, the second and third, outrages on par with his cheating.
For months she’d quizzed her girlfriends on how to liven things up between the sheets. And she hadn’t just come up with new ideas. She’d bought toys, ordered costumes, printed dirty stories off the Internet she thought he would like and offered to read them to him. But every time she’d made an attempt to warm the chill that had gripped their bedroom for a year, he’d dismissed her like she was some sex freak. The only problem, Amber, is that you keep saying there’s a problem, he’d told her again and again and again.
And yet, the one who couldn’t connect was him, it turned out, and he couldn’t connect because he was plugging himself into another socket every day at work.
“Amber?”
Her boss’s confident baritone ripping out of the house’s intercom system never fails to make her jump. But a few weeks into the job, she had trained herself not to scream whenever it happened. When she cries out this time, it leaves her red-faced and ashamed.
A short silence follows. Her boss heard her little outburst. Great.
“Darling, can I see you in my office upstairs?” Belinda Baxter says. Her East Texas twang makes everything she says sound vaguely accusatory, even when she throws in a darling, a honey, or a sweetheart.
“Be right there,” Amber croaks, clearing her throat.
“Great. But first, honey, can you go to the wet bar in the living room and fix a vodka martini? I think Henry moved all the liquor in from the pool house after the Neighborhood Council meeting.”
“How many olives?” Amber asks.
“However many you’d like, sweetheart. The drink’s for you, not for me. See you in a bit.”
So much for hiding my tears, she thinks.
She doesn’t even like vodka, but when your wealthy boss offers you a top-shelf cocktail in the middle of a workday, you don’t say no. That’s just a given, she’s sure of it. Maybe it’s even written somewhere in the handbook of personal assistants. If there is a handbook for personal assistants. So far she’s learned everything about working for Belinda on the fly, and she’s only made a few missteps here and there. That’s to be expected when you get hired to organize the personal details of a multimillionaire’s life not on the basis of your actual resume, but because you made a moving speech about your late father’s efforts to combat PTSD at a fundraiser organized by said multimillionaire.
The job comes with plenty of stress, but she can’t think of a more comforting work environment, a sprawling, contemporary mansion in one of the best neighborhoods in Dallas. Indeed, Belinda’s home is so thoroughly covered in cream-colored carpet and upholstery, so thoroughly dotted with fragrant room diffusers, sometimes she feels like she works inside of a really expensive breath mint no one can bring themselves to take a bite out of.
And Belinda’s office would put Oprah’s to shame. A fifteen-foot ceiling complete with a chandelier that would barely fit in Amber’s living room. Soaring bookshelves in between gold- framed maps of all the oil fields her family has managed in the sixty years since her great grandfather struck black gold on his cattle ranch outside Fort Worth.
As usual, Belinda sits amidst this splendor dressed like she just stumbled out of a spin class. A pink workout visor
sits on her tight cap of steel gray curls. Her yoga pants slide down her legs as she rests her sandaled feet on the edge of her antique black and gold Louis XIV desk.
Belinda doesn’t look up when she enters, just keeps flipping through a copy of Texas Monthly so fast it looks like she’s afraid all the pages will stick together if she pauses to read any of them. She loves her boss’s mix of big money and no bullshit. Hell, she even invented her own term for it—brash casual. When Belinda took a liking to the phrase the minute she heard it, Amber knew they’d have a good relationship. Maybe even a kind of friendship.
“How’s that drink, honey?” Belinda asks without looking up from her magazine.
“Haven’t tried it yet. I’m no bartender.”
“Have a seat and take a sip.” She drops her feet to the floor and sets the magazine to one side.
Seated, Amber says, “I’ve got the seating chart for the Women of Industry breakfast all printed out if you—”
“Yeah, yeah, later. Sip, honey. That’s an order.”
As she feels the burn, she fights the urge to take in a deep, gasping breath and loses.
“Good stuff, huh?” Belinda asks.
“I’m not much of a drinker.”
“I can tell.”
“Am I getting fired?”
“You think I waste good vodka on people I’m about to fire?”
“It doesn’t seem like your style, no.”
“I figured if you had a drink in you, you’d be more likely to tell me the truth when I asked you what was really going on at home.”
“I’ve told you the truth. We’re having problems.”
“Like he left dirty dishes in the sink problems or her name’s Tiffany and she makes him feel like a real man ’cause she’s too young and stupid to know what a real man is problems.”
“Her name’s Mary and she’s twenty-four.”
“Son of a bitch!” Belinda hurls the copy of Texas Monthly to the floor. “Scum! I knew he was scum. You gonna get offended if I tell you I knew your husband was scum? Knew it since he walked through the front door at my damn Christmas party.”
“Just please don’t tell me he hit on one of your nieces.”
“Oh, hell, no. He didn’t need to. I just had to look at him. That’s all.”
“Look at him?”
“I know his type. Five years ago he was God’s gift to women. Now he’s over thirty and the chicken fried steak’s leaving its mark and the music career ain’t happening, so he’s expecting the world to make him feel as good as it did when no one was judging him on the content of his character. That’s all Little Miss Mary’s about.”
Amber downs half the martini. This time it doesn’t burn so much.
“There you go, sweetie,” Belinda says.
“Wait…his music career? When did Joel tell you about his music career?”
“Wouldn’t shut up about it at my Christmas party, soon as you were out of earshot. Forgive me for saying so but it didn’t take a detective to figure out that the main reason he talked your daddy into leaving him that bar is so he’d have a stage for him and his band to play on. What the hell are they called again? The Junky Toadstools?”
“The Blinking Jailbirds.” Just saying the name of her husband’s band now feels like coughing up a razorblade.
Hell, just saying the name of her husband feels like coughing up a razorblade.
“God, that’s worse. They any good?”
“No,” Amber answers truthfully for the first time in her entire life.
“Well, there’s one small blessing in all of this. You won’t have to listen to them murder cats anymore.”
“It’s not that easy. The situation with the bar is…complicated.”
“Yeah. How’s he been at actually running the bar?”
“Not so great.”
“Maybe that’ll work in your favor. One thing’s for sure. I’ll work in your favor if you need it.”
“Thank you, Belinda,” Amber whispers. She’s afraid if she answers in a full voice, her gratitude over this offer of assistance will cause her to break down again.
“Finish your drink, darlin’.”
She complies, then gulps much needed air. “Listen, Belinda, if I’ve been falling down on the job, I apologize. I just need a week to—”
“You haven’t been falling down on the job. Don’t be so damn hard on yourself. I just got sick of listening to you cry. That’s all.”
“Wait. When did… Oh my God, were you listening to me cry on the intercom?”
“Honestly, I was hoping to overhear a phone conversation, but you’re really good about not doing cell phone calls at work.”
It’s called texting, Amber thinks.
“I’m a bigger fan of Cowboys games, to be frank, but I had to know what was troubling my precious personal assistant on whom I rely for pretty much everything in the world now… Oh, don’t get all sad faced on me. I only did it about five or six times.”
“It’s your house.”
“Answer a question for me,” Belinda says.
“Okay.”
“Are you sad or are you just angry?”
“Can’t I be both?”
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
“You’re one more than you are the other. That’s always how it goes when marriages end. Pick one. Just for the sake of this discussion.”
“Well, I cry all day at work, so what do you think?”
“What do you do when you’re home?” Belinda asks, sinking back in her chair, hands clasped against her stomach.
“Not much.”
“Liar,” Belinda says with a smile.
“I’ve got a dartboard. I put his picture on it. It sounds stupid, but it makes me feel better.”
“You any good at darts?”
“I’ve gotten better.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thanks, but there are easier ways to become a better darts player.”
“I’m sure,” Belinda says with a grunt. She leans forward suddenly. The chair rolls forward a few inches, the ends of its arms thudding against the edge of the desk. But Belinda’s a small enough woman that she’s still got plenty of room in which to make dramatic hand gestures. “You’re not crying over what you’ve lost, Amber. You’re crying because you don’t know what lies ahead. That’s a big difference.”
“I take it you have some experience with this?”
“Three experiences to be exact. The first one cheated. The second one drank until I threw him out. The third once starved me in the bedroom ’cause he was hoping I’d cheat and then he could try to get some of my money.”
“I see,” she says.
“I didn’t cheat, by the way.”
“I didn’t ask,” Amber says. “None of my business.”
“Oh, enough of that now. We’re gonna get all up in each other’s business today, girl.”
Amber flushes.
“Oh, no! Not like that, Amber. I haven’t swum in the lady pond since college. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve got plenty of friends who do, but… We’re having a heart to heart. That’s all I’m saying.”
“So this is your heart that you’re showing me today?”
“You thought otherwise?”
Amber just stares at her.
“Fine!” Belinda cries, shooting up from the chair. “I’m telling you how you feel! And I’m doing it because I’m older and wiser and more experienced than you are. There. You happy?”
“Happy isn’t really a word I’d apply to my situation just now.”
“Well, waste as much time on tears as you want, Amber. But I saw y’all together. There was about as much love between you two as a rattler and my front tires.”
“Which one am I? The snake or your Bentley?”
Belinda laughs.
She leans against a bookshelf, studying Amber with an expression Amber can only describe as serious. In another moment, the arch grin is gone and replaced by a look that seems both i
ntent and faraway. Belinda’s mind had traveled to another place. She’s wondering if she should take Amber there with her.
“I know it hurts like hell,” her boss finally says. “You married that man because he was handsome and charming and full of big promises. But when it came down to it, he wasn’t very much at all.”
“I didn’t need him to become some big country music star.”
“Of course not. You needed him to be a good husband, and he couldn’t even do that before he cheated. It’s hard to say, so I’ll say it for you. Nod if you know it’s true. You’ll have to admit it someday.”
Amber nods.
It makes her head feel heavy and her neck feel like it’s got a spike in it, but she nods because it’s the truth and Belinda’s right; nodding is easier than saying it out loud. And now, for the first time since her marriage ended, she’s crying in front of her boss. There’s no denying it. Joel has been a man of broken promises for their entire marriage, he was just good at distracting her from the last broken promise by making a new and even bigger promise over the pricey champagne he’d bought her as an amends. This time, however, champagne's not going to fix a damn thing.
“It may not seem like it, but this is your moment, Amber.” Her hands come to rest on Amber’s shoulders. “This is your moment to decide what you really want, who you really are. The thing about you, girl, is you give all of yourself to people. It’s just your nature. Personally I love it because it makes you a great assistant, but it’s not about me right now. It’s about you. And this is about the fact that whether you believe it or not, you’re in a much better place than you think you are.”
“How’s that?” Amber croaks.
“You thought Joel was just second-rate and he ended up being last place. So it’s not like you tried for the brass ring and fell flat on your face. Hell, you don’t even know what kind of ring you want yet. Gold, silver, brass? It’s up to you, babe. They’re all yours to try for. Yours to discover. And I am gonna send you someplace that will make the whole discovery process easier.”