Dance of Desire (1001 Dark Nights)

  When his phone rings, it gives him the crazy sense that he’s been caught.

  It’s the woman the State of Texas considers his mother.

  “Miss Tina?”

  “We’re not having this conversation,” she says immediately.

  “Okay. You want me to hang up?”

  “No, no. I just… What I’m about to tell you, you need to act like you heard it from someone else.”

  “When?” he asks.

  “What?”

  “When do I need to act like I heard it from someone else? Right now or later?”

  “When you do something about it, that’s when.”

  “I’m real confused right now, Miss Tina”

  “Okay, well, let me unconfuse you. Amber’s about to do something crazy and I need you to stop her.”

  6

  “Heroin?” Belinda asks.

  “What? No!” Amber answers.

  “Okay. What about cocaine?”

  “Oh my God. Never.”

  Brow furrowed, Belinda stares at Amber like she’s a cop and Amber’s a suspect who will crack at any second. But they’re not in an interrogation room. They’re in the dining room of Amber’s house and Belinda’s holding a wine glass, not a notepad.

  Next to them the wall is studded with bright spots where they just took down every picture featuring Joel. Or even a tiny piece of Joel. Amber tried to contest the removal of a big sky sunset over Chapel Springs on the grounds she wasn’t 100% sure the elbow in the bottom right corner actually belonged to her ex, but Belinda insisted.

  “Are you sure you went to college?” Belinda asks.

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “Not even one little bump at an office party?” Belinda asks.

  “I didn’t even know they were called bumps. And the only office parties I’ve been to are yours.”

  “That’s not an answer, honey.”

  “Belinda, I do not sniff cocaine!”

  “Alright, there’s my answer. No one calls it sniffing cocaine.”

  “I thought you came over to talk about The Desire Exchange.”

  “I did, and to erase all evidence that Joel Claire ever set foot in this house.”

  “And I appreciate that, but why are you asking me about my drug history?”

  “I just need to know if you have any allergies.”

  “To cocaine?”

  “They’re just gonna give you a little something to relax you while you’re there.”

  “Belinda, I do not do drugs!”

  “Oh, come on. You never smoked a joint?”

  “Not one I liked. No.”

  “Well, as long as you keep an open mind, I guess.”

  “Why would I need to keep an open mind if they’re gonna drug me?”

  “You’ll have to have an open mind to take the drug, sweetie.”

  “I have a headache,” Amber groans.

  “Want a Percocet?”

  “No. I’ve had too much to drink today, thank you.”

  Amber can’t remember the last time she’s heard tires squealing on her quiet residential street. But that’s exactly what she hears now. Tires squealing.

  “So has someone else apparently,” Belinda mutters.

  Headlights swing across the front windows of her house, headlights belonging to a large pickup truck which pulls into her driveway so fast, the front bumper knocks over one of her trash cans.

  “Is that him?” Belinda asks. “Is that Joel? If it is, get my purse.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause my gun’s in it.”

  The shadow that strides past the front windows is over six feet tall. But it’s missing its familiar cowboy hat.

  “It’s not Joel,” Amber says quietly.

  “Who is it?” Belinda calls after her as she heads for the front door.

  She opens it. Caleb lowers his hand. It’s curled into a tight fist and he had the side of it aimed at the door, not his knuckles. A polite knock wasn’t his plan. His sandy blond hair is mussed. His broad chest is heaving with big, fearful breaths. If she hadn’t just witnessed his hijinks with the truck, she would have assumed he ran clear across Dallas to get to her house.

  Gone is the confident guy who struck down Joel that afternoon. He’s forgotten whatever words he was practicing on the ride over, that much is clear. He looks fearful and boyish, and together, they make him look innocent. Over six-foot-four, chorded with muscle and somehow innocent. Dangerously innocent.

  “Oh, my,” Belinda says. “You weren’t cheating too, were you?”

  “Belinda, this is my brother. Caleb, this is my boss, Belinda Baxter.”

  There’s a second or two of shocked silence before Belinda says, “You have a brother?”

  “On paper,” Amber says.

  Caleb flinches. It sounded terrible, the way she said it. But she couldn’t think of another way to make the obvious chemistry between them seem less dirty and wrong.

  “I was afraid I wouldn’t catch you before you left,” Caleb says.

  “Oh my God. Momma told you?”

  “You told your mother?” Belinda cries.

  “Please don’t go,” Caleb says.

  The quiet authority of his request shoots through her bones. This isn’t the sauntering Caleb who can deliver a precise punch powerful enough to knock a man off his feet. This is the Caleb of fifteen years ago—needy, hungry.

  “Why not?” she asks before she can stop herself.

  He stares into her eyes. His lips part but nothing comes out.

  For a few seconds, the only two things in Amber’s world are the two of them and the years of unspoken feelings between them.

  “Miss Baxter, I don’t mean to be rude, but do you think I can have a moment alone with Amber?”

  “Of course,” Belinda says, grabbing her Gucci purse off the foyer table. “I’ll just, you know, take a walk into the middle of the nearest freeway now that Amber’s mother thinks I’m a freak.”

  Caleb steps aside to let Belinda pass, gives the woman a polite nod. Once she’s behind him, she gives Amber a look full of wide-eyed confusion. Then Caleb gently shuts the door with one hand. Now it’s just the two of them, alone together for the first time in years.

  “It’s a terrible idea,” he says.

  “Why did she tell you?”

  “Because she wants me to stop you.”

  “That’s not true. I talked to her this afternoon and she told me she wanted me to go.”

  “Well, she must have changed her mind,” he says.

  “Well, I haven’t changed mine.”

  “A sex club?” he bellows. “What are you? Crazy?”

  “Since when are you so full of judgment? I’ve never seen you in church!”

  “And I’ve never seen you in a sex club!”

  “Have you been to that many? Who knows? I could have a whole secret life you don’t even know about.”

  “I know who you are, Amber. I know how you are.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “Amber, you stayed a virgin until you were nineteen. That puts you in the, like, one percentile of girls in our high school.”

  “How do you know that? I never told you that!”

  “I had my sources.”

  “You were keeping tabs on my virginity? That’s rich. I thought you were too busy starting fistfights outside Valley View Mall so you didn’t have to feel anything.”

  “And you were too busy tending to my wounds ’cause it gave you an excuse to look at my chest.”

  “Get out of my house!”

  “Amber—”

  “Get out!”

  He bows his head. A lesser man would ignore her request, but he knows he’s bound by it.

  “I shouldn’t have said that,” Caleb whispers. “I’m sorry.”

  He turns to leave.

  “You know, I forgave you a lot because you lost a lot. But don’t you pretend for one second that you joined our family with a smile and a thank you and that wa
s that. Those first few years, it was like living with a tornado. You were impossible! And you were nothing like the guy I’d...”

  He turns away from the front door. “The guy you’d what?”

  “All I’m saying is that even if I’d wanted to…”

  “Wanted to what?”

  He’s closing the distance between them. Her head wants to run from him. Her soul wants to run to him. Her body’s forced to split the difference. She’s got no choice but to stand there while he advances on her, nostrils flaring, blue eyes blazing.

  “Tell me why you really don’t want me to go,” she hears herself whisper. “Tell me why you—”

  He takes her in his arms and rocks them into the wall, so suddenly she expects her head to knock against the wood, but one of his powerful hands cushions the back of her skull just in time.

  His lips meet the nape of her neck, grazing, testing. It’s hesitant, the kiss he gives her there, as if he’s afraid she’s an apparition that will vanish if he tries to take a real taste.

  He gathers the hem of her shirt into his fist, knuckles grazing the skin of her stomach. She’s trying to speak but the only things coming out of her are stuttering gasps. She’s been rendered wordless by the feel of the forbidden, by the weight of the forbidden, by the power of the forbidden.

  It’s the first time they’ve touched since that night on the boat dock, if you don’t include the light dabs of hydrogen peroxide she’d apply to the wounds he got fighting, usually while they sat together in the kitchen, her parents watching over them nervously. So many years living under the same roof and they never shared so much as a hug after that night, nothing that might risk the feel of his skin against her own.

  And now this.

  Now the intoxicating blend of the cologne he wore as a teenager mingling with the musky aroma of his belt and boots. Now the knowledge that he’d asked after her virginity years before, that the thought of her lying with another man had filled him with protective, jealous rage then just as it does now.

  She feels boneless and moist. One of those feelings isn’t an illusion.

  If this is what it feels like to be bad, she thinks, no wonder so many people get addicted.

  “Tell me,” she whispers. “Tell me why you really don’t want me to go.”

  “I am,” he growls.

  He presses their foreheads together, takes the sides of her face in both of his large, powerful hands. It’s torture, this position. It’s deliberate, she’s sure. It keeps her from lifting her mouth to his. Keeps her from looking straight into his eyes. He’s fighting it, still. Just as she’s fought it for years.

  She parts her lips, inviting him to kiss her.

  “Please,” he groans. “Just, please don’t go.”

  “Caleb…” She reaches for his face.

  She’s reaching into open air.

  The door slams.

  He’s gone.

  By the time she realizes what’s happened, the truck’s engine has already started. His headlights swing across the front of the house.

  “You son of a bitch,” she whispers to no one. “Coward, bastard son of a bitch!”

  But real anger, the kind of anger she feels toward Joel, can’t make it to the surface through all the other emotions she’s feeling.

  She wasn’t nuts. She wasn’t some deluded freak who’d made too much out of one kiss twelve years before. He’d wanted her as badly as she’d wanted him, and he’d been just as tortured by it. They’d had all of the anger and fighting of siblings, but with none of the loyalty and companionship. To try for either of those things would have awakened desires her father had declared off limits. Still, every argument they’d had, every time they’d forced themselves to look away from each other, every frustrated attempt they’d made to connect since the night his parents died, had just been another step in one long dance of desire leading up to this very moment.

  But what was this moment?

  Where the hell are they now?

  Would he disappear again? Maybe for ten years this time. Or twenty!

  Her father—their father—was gone, so why is this still so hard?

  Dazed, she walks in circles around the living room while these questions assail her. She’s holding her phone in one hand, waiting for anything. A text. A call. An e-mail. Something from Caleb that proves she didn’t just imagine what happened.

  Part of her wants to cry, but every time she starts, the smell of him, the feel of him, the sounds of desire and struggle that came from him turn her sadness into something more like exhilaration. Even the speed with which he left is proof that everything just changed. And maybe it will keep changing. And maybe changing means no more running and no more avoiding and no more shame.

  Maybe.

  But he still fucking left.

  No text. No missed call.

  What did he expect her to do? Chase him down the front walk, screaming his name?

  The front door creaks. The truck hasn’t come back so it can only be one person.

  “Girl,” Belinda says quietly.

  Amber had completely forgotten her boss was lingering outside.

  “When do we leave?” Amber asks.

  “Uhm. Never.”

  “What?”

  “You’re not going, honey.”

  “Why? Because I told my mother?”

  “Nope.”

  “Because Caleb doesn’t want me to?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then why, Belinda?”

  “Because you don’t need to find out what you want. You already know. He just stormed out of this house.”

  “He’s my brother.”

  “On paper, you said. So what’s that mean? Adopted?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Well, is he adopted or isn’t he?”

  “Yes. My parents adopted him when we were fifteen.”

  “I see… Well, people will talk, but they always talk, so who cares? And if you ever want to get married, you just dissolve the adoption before you—”

  “Belinda, it’s not that simple!”

  “It is if you want it to be, Amber.”

  “Belinda. Come on, now. You promised me and I want to go. Seriously!”

  “No, you don’t, Amber. You want to avoid what you’re feeling for this man again. And forgive me for saying it, but it’s starting to look like the last time you avoided it, you wound up jumping into marriage with a cheating, lying bastard.”

  “Oh, come on! That is way too simplistic. You don’t—”

  “Honey, if you’ve got something that good knocking on your door here at home and you won’t let him in, nothing they’re going to show you at The Exchange is going to help you either.”

  “You don’t even know him.”

  “I know how you two look at each other. And trust me, if there was someone in my life who looked at me like that, I’d never turn my back on him. Unless, you know, we were about to try a little—”

  “He’s the one who left.”

  “You told him to!”

  When Amber shoots her an angry look, Belinda throws her hands in the air and says, “Oh, come on. You know I’m an eavesdropper. Stop acting all surprised every time I do it.”

  “I told him to tell me why. Why he didn’t want me to go.”

  “And he did. Don’t worry. I only watched part of it.”

  She sinks to the sofa, fully intending to sit, but she goes over backward the second her butt meets the cushions. Suddenly she’s sprawled out just like she was when she arrived home earlier that day, her breaths feeling more like ideas than actual grabs for air.

  “Shit!” Belinda says. “We missed one!”

  Belinda takes a framed photo of Joel, in full fishing regalia, off the wall just above the mini-bar. She looks for a place to put it, doesn’t find one that meets her needs and shoves it in her purse.

  “I’ll toss it out the window on the ride home,” she says.

  “Am I fired?” Belinda asks.

  ?
??No. Why do you always go to that place? Do you want to be fired?”

  “No. I just want things to…change.”

  “Oh, honey. That’s not your problem. They’re changing all around you. What you want is for them to change on your own schedule, and trust me, that’s never gonna happen. I got all the money in the damn world and even I can’t slow time down. I mean, I can fill it with spa treatments, but that’s not the same thing.”

  “What are we talking about?” she asks.

  “Nothing. We’re stalling. Like you’ve been stalling for, well, a good decade, it looks like.”

  “Fine. I’m not going to The Desire Exchange.”

  “Because you don’t need to.”

  “I’ll have to take your word for it, considering I still don’t know what the place even is.”

  “And you never will. Because you, Amber Watson, already know good and well what you want. You’re just afraid of it. And you’re going to have to get over that fear all on your own. However, I’m happy to give you some time off to do it.”

  “No,” Amber says. “I need to focus on something.”

  “Yes. And that something is you.” Belinda starts for the front hallway. “I don’t want to see you for five days. Take a drive down to Chapel Springs and see your momma. Maybe ask her why she thought it was a good idea to squeal on you to your alleged brother.”

  “What does that mean?” she asks, sitting up.

  “Five days, Amber. Show up at my house before then, I’ll take a shot at you. I swear to God.”

  “Wait. What did you mean about my mother?”

  By the time she makes it to the front hallway, Belinda’s already out the door.

  “Does anyone else want to storm out of my house tonight?” Amber calls out. “Maybe one of the neighbors?”

  A barking dog answers from next door.

  She dials her mother’s number.

  Voicemail.

  Fifteen minutes later, she dials it again.

  Voicemail again.

  She can’t remember the last time her mother let her go to voicemail. Her mom hates going to the movies, maybe because the nearest theater is forty-five minutes away. She also covers so many positions at The Haven Creek Inn, she never turns off her ringer.

  Amber would love to be worried about her mother; she really would.