Chapter 10 #2
enjoy the sensations, not until she reached Clint and convinced him to get rid of Roth and Bisa immediately.
His long, effortless stroke propelled him toward the center of the lake. A powerboat sped past, rocking the paddleboard, but
his graceful rhythm remained unaffected. He was Jesus walking on water.
He turned the board toward the north end of the lake. She dug deeper, moving against the current, but no matter how fast she
paddled, the distance between them barely changed. Just when she was certain she’d never catch him, he secured the paddle
at the back of the board and began to drift. As she watched, he lowered his hands to the front of the board, straightened
his legs, and shifted his weight into a perfect downward-facing dog.
Seriously? All that gym equipment wasn’t enough? He had to do yoga, too? And on a paddleboard in the middle of the lake!
He transitioned from down dog into a plank, undisturbed by the rocking of the paddleboard and looking as if he could hold the position forever. She moved closer as he began executing a series of sun salutations, each one so impeccably aligned it made her brain itch.
The sun beat down on her, and the closer she got to Clint the more she wished a powerboat’s wake would dump him into the lake.
Below his board shorts, every muscle and tendon in his legs was defined. Nothing jiggled. He was sickeningly gorgeous.
He was deep into the throes of a complicated pose whose name she’d forgotten when she finally drew up alongside him. “If you
flip a headstand,” she called out, “I’ll never speak to you again.”
He grabbed the outer edges of the board, planted the top of his head, and began walking his feet in. The next thing she knew,
he’d braced his knees on his upper arms to balance himself and slowly lifted his legs into a headstand.
“Bastard,” she hissed.
Providence delivered a miracle: a wave caught the board, sending just enough chop to unbalance him. One leg hit the water
while the rest of him grabbed for the board. “Damn it!” he cursed. “So close.”
She smiled to herself. He really was annoyingly magnificent.
“I came out here to be alone. Why are you here?” He transitioned to sitting cross-legged. The patch of white on his nose and
across his cheekbones indicated that, unlike her, he’d set out with sunscreen. “Before you start in on me,” he said, “what
else was I supposed to do and why aren’t you wearing a life jacket?”
“I forgot. And if you had any loyalty at all, you would have told Roth it was nice meeting him and shown him to his car. Which
is where, by the way?”
“In the garage. He rented a Ferrari 488.”
“Of course he did.” Clint had an authentic masculinity that her ex-husband, for all his workouts, lacked. Clint’s chest hadn’t
been manscaped. Instead, the light dusting of hair made him look real instead of Hollywood manufactured. Her eyes drifted
to the darker line of hair disappearing into his board shorts. She didn’t remember that from their teenage years. She pulled
herself back to reality. “I don’t understand why you let him stay. You hate having people around. Why is that, by the way?”
“Because it is. Go away.”
She wanted to know more, but she needed to stick to the problem at hand. “Why is Roth still here?”
“Why are you still here?”
“Because you invited me.”
“I did not invite you, and your ex-husband isn’t going to leave until he talks to you, something you should have taken care
of last night. If you’re too famous to check into a hotel, think about him, especially in a small town. Besides, he seems
like a nice guy.”
“That’s what people say who were never married to him.”
Instead of responding, Clint busied himself retrieving the paddle and making way too big a deal out of examining the blade.
She eyed him suspiciously until it hit her. “You’re starstruck! You, one of the greatest players in the NFL, are starstruck
by an actor!”
“Roth Hardy is hardly just any actor,” he said defensively. “He’s Cole Legend.”
“Ohmygod, you are so pitiful!”
“Hey, I’m not the one who ran away—into my house—last night because she was too chicken to talk to her ex.”
“I don’t have to talk to him! Not last night and not today. What kind of man brings his pregnant girlfriend along on an unexpected visit to his ex-wife?”
“You could eat Bisa for breakfast. She’s barely said a word since she got here.”
“It’s the dumb quiet ones you have to watch out for!” Dancy wasn’t done airing her grievances. “You and I are supposed to
be lovers. Did he figure out I wasn’t spending the night in your sacred bedroom last night?”
“Beats me.”
“Did you tell him the truth? You didn’t tell him the truth, did you? Did you tell him you hate me?”
“I don’t hate you, Dancy. You’re nothing to me.”
That hurt way more than it should have. Maybe he saw her flinch because he looked away and set the paddle over his thighs.
“I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I meant that your problems are yours. I have enough of my own.”
“Like what? You’re the toast of Chicago. Everybody loves you. Everybody wants to be you!” She was drifting away from him, and she dug the paddle into the water to stay where she was. “You’re perfect.”
“I’m not.” The tick at the corner of his jaw as he fixed his gaze on the nose of the paddleboard made her wish she hadn’t said that.
A shadow lurked around him that hadn’t been there when he was a kid, although considering how much time had passed, that wasn’t exactly surprising.
Once again, she was struck by the differences in the two men.
Roth’s sculpted features had no irregular edges, while Clint’s jaw was a little too square, his mouth the tiniest bit crooked, and his left eyebrow a fraction higher than the other.
All those small irregularities gave Clint an air of command that Roth could only pretend at.
“I just mean it can all get to be too much sometimes,” he said.
She caught a glimpse of something unsettling—a sadness maybe?—before he rearranged his features into his stern leader-of-men
face. “You need to talk to him, Dance.”
She wanted to probe, but he wouldn’t appreciate it, so she returned to the problem at hand. “If I talk to him, will you let
him think we’re a couple? You don’t have to get all cozy with me. Just don’t deny it.”
“You want another favor from me?”
“I’d offer you my body as a thank-you, but if you didn’t want it when I was seventeen, you sure don’t want it now.”
His eyebrows slammed together. “What I wanted or didn’t want then doesn’t have anything to do with what I want now.”
She stopped paddling, temporarily at a loss for words. If he meant what she thought he meant, she needed to set him straight.
“Clint, I wasn’t being serious. I don’t exchange sex for favors.”
He stared at her and shook his head. “You must have started drinking again if you think that’s what I meant.”
“It’s the way you said it.” She jabbed the paddle in the water. “I have a history.”
His gaze seemed to pierce through her. “Meaning what?”
“You can’t imagine how much work I lost because some pervert producer or director said he wouldn’t cast me until he’d seen
my naked body, and, no, a leotard wasn’t good enough. And the predators I refused to meet alone in their hotel rooms to discuss
a ‘breakthrough’ role. I guess I didn’t want it bad enough.”
“Good for you.”
She felt herself relax, grateful he understood, only to see him stiffen. “If I was after your body, you’d damn well know it.”
A momentary dizziness claimed her, an awareness of her body as more than a burden. She shifted uneasily on the seat of the
kayak.
He got angry with her all over again. “You need to stop talking crap about yourself. It’s unacceptable. Do you know the biggest
challenge quarterbacks face?”
She mustered a wisecrack. “Groupies with herpes?”
He wasn’t amused. “Taking the hits. That’s the challenge. You have to be able to take the hits and learn from your mistakes.
Figure out where you went wrong, make the correction, and get your head right back in the game again.”
“Yes, well, you’ve never been divorced by the so-called Nicest Guy in Hollywood. And you haven’t fallen apart in front of
a crowd of high rollers, then tried to crawl away only to have your outfit light up like a Christmas tree.”
“So what?” he shot back. “Try fumbling the snap on fourth and inches with two seconds on the clock and tell me how you feel.
Try missing a wide-open receiver and having thousands of people call you a piece of shit. I’ve made every mistake in the book,
and you know what I do?”
“Smile and wave to the crowd?”
“I shake it off, go out there, and make it right,” he said fiercely. “I train harder. Dig deeper. Put my back foot down and
make damn sure I don’t miss again. That’s what I do.”
“Exactly. That’s what you do.” Turning the kayak, she headed back to the boathouse, feeling worse about herself than ever. She wasn’t like him. She’d never gone top ten in the NFL Draft or hoisted the Lombardi Trophy over her head. He’d been born to play football. She’d been born to look pretty.
She returned to the dock, retrieved Watch from the gym, and took him back to the caboose, where she pulled her shorter ponytail
through the back of her ball cap. With another apology, she left Watch in the caboose and biked into town. Before she entered
the grocery store, she slipped on a mask.
Last night’s dinner had reminded her how much she missed fruits and vegetables. In the produce section, she picked up carrots,
a few apples, and some oranges. The only person who paid attention to her was a misguided teenage girl staring enviously at
her too-thin legs.
She was wheeling her cart toward the dairy case when the sound of a familiar female voice made her stop. “Logan was doing
so much better by the end of the year. I hope you’re encouraging him to read over the summer.”
A woman with a smoker’s rasp replied, “You know how it is, Ms. Gates. He’d rather play video games.”