Chapter 3
Leah wanted to cryor scream or maybe throw something. But she couldn’t really do any of those things with a cop sitting right in front of her.
Instead, she was forced to do something that she did not want to do; tell the story of her dad and uncle. Again. She had felt like this was going to be her fresh start. That here, in Cedarville, she could live life and no one would know her past.
But now she was getting ready to tell a cop.
And sure, he was a hot-ass cop that she’d thought about all day long but a cop, nonetheless.
“Did Carly tell you my last name?” She felt like this was the easiest way to start. If he’d already heard of her, she could skip details.
He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“The name I am using is Leah Britton but that’s not my real name. My real name is Leah Gibson.” She waited to see if it registered with him. “Does that ring any bells?”
“No,” he said. “Should it?”
She guessed she was going to have to start at the beginning. “Almost two years ago my dad and my uncle were accused of fraudulent activity at their financial firm in New York City.” Not wanting to stop to let him speak, she kept going. “After an investigation, they were both arrested and eventually there was a trial. A trial that lasted months and where I had to testify against both my dad and my uncle.”
Brandon was motionless across from her. It was almost as if he wasn’t breathing.
“Long story short, my mom and I ended up with nothing. I got fired from my job and without money, I wouldn’t be able to keep my apartment for very long. So Carly invited me to stay here with her and Melanie and to help them out with their new studio. I told her it was a bad idea but she refused to listen.”
Again he sat and didn’t say anything.
“Did you hear all that? Don’t you have anything to say?”
His eyes, which had been strong and determined when he questioned her, were now soft and full of emotion. “I’m trying to come up with the right thing to say that won’t make me sound stupid.”
She gave a little laugh. “Most people ask if I knew.” She bit her bottom lip and waited.
“And here I was thinking I was going to sound stupid.” He rubbed the heel of his hand over his left eye. “I’ve known you all of five minutes and I already know that you were blindsided.”
The urge to cry came bubbling back up but she pushed it down. “How?”
“Something in your eyes and the anger in your voice when you said ‘dad’. A person who knew, that had any idea at all what was going on, couldn’t fake that emotion.”
She sat quietly, not sure what else she could say. She wanted this to be the last time that she ever told this story and not because she was sick to death of telling it but because of his response. The way he believed her before she even had a chance to say that she never knew was something she wanted to associate with this story always.
“I can get you those receipts now,” she said and stood.
“There’s no need.” He followed suit and stood too.
She understood what he was saying. He no longer thought of her as a suspect. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather you have them. Just in case.”
He visibly swallowed and nodded.
She went up to her room to grab the receipts and when she came back down she overheard Carly and Brandon talking.
“She’s the best person I know, Brandon. Thank you for believing her.”
“Where was I when she was here years ago?” Leah heard his deep voice ask.
“The first time you were at the academy and the second time we only ended up being here for a day before leaving. So you were probably working.”
She had been wondering the same thing since she’d met him last night. It was obvious that he and Carly were close but in all the years she had known Carly she did not remember her friend mentioning him. Deciding she should stop eavesdropping she took the last step and turned toward the kitchen.
“These are all of them.” She held them out for Brandon.
When he went to take them from her, their fingers touched and Leah could have sworn that a bolt of electricity went through her body. She tried to remain calm and not let it show on the outside but then she made the mistake of looking up and into Brandon’s eyes. They had gone dark, almost black with what felt to her like desire.
She pulled her hand back quickly, not sure if she was ready to have the hots for anyone let alone a cop.
“I better get back to my dinner before it burns,” she said and walked around him.
“I guess I’ll see you guys later,” he said.
“Brandon,” Carly said. “Why don’t you stay for dinner? I’m sure Leah is making plenty.”
Leah stood frozen in place waiting for his answer. Her back was facing him but somehow she could feel his eyes on her.
“Thanks for the offer but it’s been a long day and I already have plans for a hot shower and a cold beer.”
At his use of the phrase ‘hot shower’ she couldn’t stop her mind from conjuring up images of him naked and dripping wet. Since she’d already seen his chest last night, she knew at least that part of the image was a true projection of what he would look like.
And if her imagination was even halfway accurate on his bottom half, women all over the world would be swooning.
She heard, rather than saw, him walk away since she refused to turn around for fear that there would be drool on her chin.
“Are you okay?” Carly asked. “I know you didn’t want anyone in town to know but Brandon isn’t going to tell anyone.”
She turned to her friend. “I knew deep down that it was going to be inevitable to keep it a secret. I’m just glad I’m no longer a suspect in the break-in.”
“I don’t think you ever really were, to tell you the truth. I think he just had to follow up on a lead.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty much what he said.” She turned her attention back to the counter so she could chop peppers for her fajita casserole. “How come I never knew you had a hot male cousin?”
As soon as the words left her mouth she realized her mistake.
“Oh so you think he’s hot, do you?”
She put the knife down so she didn’t accidentally cut herself. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“So you don’t think he’s hot?” Carly asked with a sly smile on her face.
God it had been so long since she’d had a girlfriend to goad and joke with that she almost forgot what it was like. “Shut up,” she said and threw a piece of pepper at her.
“Since he’s my cousin and one of my best friends, I”m just going to say eww to you thinking he’s hot. But as my friend who I know has been through a lot of shit the last few years and hasn’t had any time to think about hot guys, I’m going to say you go girl.”
“Is it bad that I totally understood that?” Leah laughed and started chopping peppers again. “You’d think that after years apart I would have lost the ability to grasp your crazy sentences.”
It had taken Leah over a month her freshman year in college to follow along with Carly’s thoughts. She rarely said just one thought in a sentence and half the time the thoughts didn’t even go together.
Carly called it her best and yet most annoying quality.
“Once you know the way of Carly Graham, it never leaves you.”
“It’s a good thing or else when I’m ninety I’ll never know what the hell you are talking about.” She finished chopping the peppers and threw them into the dish with the already cooked chicken.
“Back to you thinking Brandon is hot,” Carly said. “Are you looking in that direction?” She raised her eyebrows.
Leah added cheese to the dish and slipped it into the already warm oven. “No,” she said, turning to face her friend. “I just –” she didn’t know what she just, and couldn’t finish the statement.
“You just what?”
She sighed and got a wine glass down from the cabinet. “I don’t know, Carls. I think I just think he’s hot because it’s been so long since I’ve even looked at a guy. That being said, if I don’t have sex soon, I might actually forget how it’s done. And it’s not like I’ve had experts along the way. So my information is already outdated.”
“I can’t be sure about this because, you know cousin, but from the way women throw themselves at Brandon, I”m assuming he has a very new manual with all the updates.”
Leah stared at her friend and giggled. “I know I started it but can we please stop talking in technical terms?”
“Pour me a glass of that wine, will ya? Seriously though, I think you need to get back on the horse or in your case the chicken.”
“Chicken?” Leah asked, confused.
“Yeah, you know...a cock.”
Her laugh came out of nowhere and from deep inside her. She laughed so hard that she had to sit down on the floor right there in the kitchen. When she was finally able to gain some control, Carly sat down next to her.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” her friend said. “Life hasn’t been the same without you.” Carly laid her head on Leah’s shoulder.
“Thank you for forcing me to come.”
“I think this place is going to be good for you. Fresh air, people who are genuinely nice, and me.”
“You would have been enough but the other two are nice bonuses.”
They stood up and Leah poured herself a little more wine. “Where has Melanie been all day?” Leah had only seen her for like thirty minutes that morning before she’d left again. She’d met her dozens of times over the years when Melanie had visited them at NYU. She had gone to school at Juilliard which meant that their schools had been close.
Carly waved her hand in the air. “Who knows. She is so OCD and afraid that we aren’t going to be ready to open the studio, that she is running herself ragged.”
“Well I’m ready to start working. So tell me what you need and I’m in.”
“Tomorrow. Tonight we drink and catch up.”
“Sounds good to me.” They toasted and their glasses clinked.
––––––––
After a long nightof girl talk and way too much wine, Leah awoke surprisingly refreshed. When she entered the kitchen to make her morning coffee, she found Melanie already up and making breakfast.
“You were starting to give me a complex,” Leah said and grabbed a mug.
At Melanie’s confused look she expanded. “I come into town and all of a sudden you are AWOL.”
Leah and Carly hadn’t gone to bed until after midnight and Melanie still hadn’t been home yet.
“Yeah, sorry about that. My OCD won’t let me just wait till the last minute to do things.”
Leah knew exactly what she meant because for years that was how she had been. But something had happened when her life had turned upside down. It was like her brain decided it could finally rest.
“I’ve been there,” was all she said.
Melanie looked basically the same as she had when Leah had met her at eighteen. Tall, slender with legs for days. It made sense considering she had been a ballerina but damn if the girl hadn’t aged even a day.
“How the hell do you still look amazing at twenty-eight?”
Melanie laughed. “My outside may look good but my insides are like a hundred. Everything on me hurts all the time.”
“From dancing?” she asked.
“Yep. The price I pay I guess for all those years of putting my body through hell.”
Silence passed between them as Leah sipped her coffee and Melanie finished cooking her eggs.
“I didn”t get a chance yesterday to really ask how you are doing?” Melanie said.
“Is shitty a good answer?”
Melanie laughed. “Damn straight it is.”
“Well then shitty with a side of getting better every day.”
“I admire how strong you are. I think I would crumble into pieces and just let the rain wash those pieces away.”
“I kinda felt like that at first.” She moved around the counter and took a seat on one of the stools. “But then I remembered that I didn’t do anything. None of it was my fault. So I had to force myself to get up every day and try and live my life.”
Melanie leaned her hip against the counter and started to eat her eggs. “I’m happy you are choosing to live it here. Carly and I really need your business expertise to get the studio up and running. Dancers do not make good business owners.”
“I think you guys would have been fine without me but I am so grateful for the job and the place to live.”
––––––––
After breakfast andonce Carly finally woke up, they headed into town where Leah got her first look at the new dance studio, Dragonfly Dance. It was located right off the main strip but was still within walking distance for anyone who lived right in town.
“This is a great location,” she said as she walked around the outside of the building taking it all in. “What was this building before?”
“A plumbing company owned it about five years ago but it has been sitting empty since then,” Carly said.
“Wanna see the inside?” Melanie asked.
“Lead the way.”
Inside Leah looked around at the huge space and all that had already been done to it. It was blocked off into four separate areas and a hallway dividing them down the middle. At the start of the hallway was what looked like it was going to be an office.
“Wow you guys, this is awesome.”
“There are two studios on each side,” Melanie pointed out, “with one large one and one small one on each side.”
“And this is the office,” Carly said, pointing to what she had seen.
“It’s pretty big,” she said.
“Yeah, well we thought you’d need a lot of room and plus we each want a desk.”
“Not a bad idea,” she said. She noticed the stacks and stacks of paperwork sitting on one of the desks. “Is this all for me?”
“You’re gonna leave aren’t you?” Carly said. “We’ve scared her away, Mel. I told you we should have tried to do some of the paperwork.”
“Will you shut up,” Melanie shushed her friend. “She’s no pushover, our girl here. A little pile of paper isn’t gonna scare her away.”
Leah shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Did you guys have this little skit planned? You,” she pointed to Carly, “acting like I’m afraid and you,” she directed her attention to Melanie, “building me up so that there is no way I could leave.”
“I told you she’d catch on.” Melanie looked at Carly and tilted her head.
“I hate you both.” She tried to look angry but her lips curved into a smile and soon they were all laughing.
When the laughter died down she said, “Why don’t you two go do whatever it is you need to do and leave me to the giant mess of an office?”
“Does this mean you’re staying?” Carly asked.
“I have nowhere else to go so I guess you’re stuck with me.”
“Yay!” Carly said and grabbed her in a fierce hug. “We are going to have so much fun.”
“And hopefully make a little money,” she heard Melanie say behind her.
Leah liked the sound of that. While it was true that money was the root of all evil and had already ruined her life once, it was also true that in order to survive in this world, you needed at least a little bit of it.