Chapter 22
“It’s now or never,” thought Henry. “I’ve got to know!”
—Gertrude Chandler Warner, The Boxcar Children
Dancy froze as Clint climbed out of a Cadillac Escalade. That whole cliché about how somebody’s heart can feel like it’s leaping
out of their chest . . . it was true. It had only been six days since she’d last seen him, but it felt like months.
He stood by his car, a pair of aviators shading his eyes, arms loose at his sides. Watch started to bark as he spotted his
second-favorite person. Dancy parked her car in the driveway and told herself to calm down. Watch jumped over her, demanding
to get out of the car. She opened the door and he raced across the driveway.
Clint shouldn’t be here. This was her territory. Her very own Clint-free zone. He was supposed to have taken the sensible
way out and let this all fade into the sunset. Instead, he was making it harder.
She picked up the day pack she’d taken on the trail and closed the car door. Clint hunched down to greet Watch. “Hey, fella. I’ve missed you.”
Focusing on Watch gave Clint a chance to pull himself together. Training camp started tomorrow in Illinois, yet here he was
in LA. He shoved his key fob into his pocket.
The drunken, ex–Bond Girl who’d stumbled out of the limo in her ball gown three weeks ago was now strong, mutinous, and deadly
sober. Wearing jeans and a T-shirt instead of designer clothes, she’d left her glamorous image behind. No stilettos, hair
extensions, dramatic eyeliner, or fake eyelashes. She looked beautiful, but he wished her hair was still caught up in a Lake
Isabella ponytail, and he’d never admit it, but he missed those ugly Packers slides she’d lost in the lake.
Her white stucco house had a red barrel-tile roof and arched front doorway. She didn’t invite him in, but she didn’t lock
him out, so he followed her into a foyer with a terra-cotta floor. A big niche in the stucco wall held a tin angel, a painted
ceramic candleholder, a colorful fabric bird, and a vivid folk-art painting of an orange house with purple shutters and a
giant cactus. The staircase had a black wrought-iron railing and rows of colorful, hand-painted Mexican tiles fronting each
step riser all the way to the second floor.
Watch took a couple of zoomies around the hallway before dashing off. Clint closed the front door. “This house isn’t what
I expected. I guess I imagined you in something bigger.”
She set down the day pack she’d been carrying. “Not in my budget.”
“Why didn’t we ever talk about how you gave away your divorce settlement?” Which, now that he thought about it, should have told him a lot about the adult Dancy.
“Boring conversation.” She pulled a water bottle from the pack. “Aren’t you supposed to be in training camp?”
“Doesn’t start until tomorrow.” Ahead of him, through the living room, a set of French doors opened onto a leafy courtyard.
“Where’s the bathroom?”
She tilted her head toward a door at the end of the foyer.
He didn’t need the bathroom, but seeing her again had shaken him. Explaining why he’d come here wasn’t simple, and he needed
a minute to think. He ran water in the copper sink for something to do and glanced at himself in the mirror. Unlike Dancy,
he looked tired, but how the hell was he supposed to sleep at night when, for all he knew, she was already pregnant with his
kid?
It’d be ironic if the kid was ugly. How would Dancy, one of the most beautiful women in the world, deal with an ugly kid?
Who was he kidding? She’d see any child she had—even an ugly one—as perfect. Look at how she was with Watch. That dog had
a ton of personality, but he’d never make it into a beauty contest.
Clint splashed water on his face, trying to clear his brain. When he finally left the bathroom, he found her barefoot in the
kitchen, taking a filtered water pitcher from the top shelf of the refrigerator. “I can make coffee if you want.”
She was so polite. So cool. A blond ice princess instead of the warm, sexy woman he’d held in his arms. He touched the edge
of the counter. “I don’t like the way you ran away.”
She headed for the coffee maker. “What was the point in staying?”
He was getting riled, and he told himself to chill. “We could have had breakfast together. Eaten some pancakes.”
“Is that what you came all the way across the country to tell me? That I should have stayed for pancakes?”
“I make damn good pancakes!” he exclaimed way too aggressively.
“I’m sure. You do everything well.”
He was screwing this up, and he tried again, more laid-back this time. “We could have gone kayaking. Taken a hike. Or thrown
a ball around in the driveway.”
She raised her eyebrow at him. “Playing catch with an NFL quarterback sounds like heaps of fun.”
“I’d throw right to you!” What was wrong with him? He always kept a cool head, never broke under pressure. Yet here he was
babbling like a fool.
She drilled a look right through him. “If I’d stayed around, we wouldn’t have been eating pancakes. We’d have jumped right
back in bed and picked up where we left off.”
“And what’s wrong with that?”
She began wiping the countertop, moving the sponge in slow parallel lines, taking her time. “All I wanted was a friend,” she
finally said.
That nearly broke him. She sounded so fucking sad. He took a deep breath. “You know that’ll never change.”
“Sex changes everything.” She dropped the sponge in the sink.
“It doesn’t have to.” But even as he said it, he was thinking about pulling that T-shirt over her head. She made him crazy.
The way she’d moved under him. On top of him. He reminded himself that she’d been as enthusiastic in that bed as he had been.
He had nothing to feel guilty about, but he wasn’t so sure about her.
He leaned against the counter, trying to appear relaxed. “Was there something going on that night? Other than the storm?”
“What do you mean?”
“When you first came into the house. You looked like you had something on your mind. Maybe something important that we needed
to talk about?” Not exactly subtle, but he had to get this straight.
She pulled a mug and a glass tumbler from the cupboard, set them on the counter, and filled them from the water pitcher. Only
after she’d returned the pitcher to the refrigerator did she look at him. “Roth lied to me about Everything I’ve Got.”
This wasn’t what he’d expected to hear.
“He’d already cast Lucinda with a young pop star before he came to see me.”
“I don’t get it.”
“I’ve been his go-to acting coach for years—behind the scenes, of course. Everything I’ve Got is a stretch for him, he’s nervous about it, and he knew I’d tell him to go to hell if he’d asked me to coach him. So he lied.
Let me believe I had the part. And I, like some naive kid, didn’t ask for a contract first. I can’t believe I was so stupid.
I fell right into his trap.”
Knowing one more man had used her made him want to hit something. He’d liked Roth Hardy when they first met, which proved
his character judgment had been wrong again. “I wish you’d told me.”
“My problem, not yours.”
What was it about parasites like Roth and Mick Watkins that made them think they could use Dancy? He wanted to show up on Hardy’s doorstep the same way he’d shown up at Mick’s and extract a little frontier justice. His anger wouldn’t help her, and he swallowed it. “What are you going to do?”
She shrugged. “What can I do?”
Come back to the lake with me. “Call him out in the press.”
“He’d deny it.”
“I was there. I watched it happen. I’ll back you up.”
“Thanks, but this is my fight.”
An awkward silence fell between them. “Mind if I take a look in back?” he finally said.
“It’s overgrown, and I haven’t gotten around to doing anything about it.” She picked up her water glass and led him across
the living room and through the French doors into a small courtyard.
Crepe myrtle draped the stucco walls, and a tangle of overgrown greenery surrounded the idle stone fountain in the center.
Clay pots held neglected plants, some too far gone to be saved, and vines were taking over the pergola. Beneath it, a painted
wooden side table stood between a pair of chairs with bright orange cushions. As Watch found a place near her, Dancy took
one of the chairs and he took the other. They had so much to talk about, but he felt oddly formal. “It’s nice back here. Cool
and shady.”
“It’ll be nicer when it’s cleaned up.”
As she crossed her legs, he studied her ankles. They were slender with delicate bones. He remembered catching the arch of
her foot in his hand and moving it to bend her knee. He swallowed hard, shifted in his chair, and cleared his throat. “On
my way here . . . I saw something about your loser of an ex donating his Fighter. I remember him telling me it was his favorite
ride.”
For the first time, she smiled. “He didn’t donate it voluntarily.”
He looked at her more closely. “Dance, what did you do? And whatever it was, I hope it hurt like hell.”
“It did.” She seemed almost like her old self as she took him through everything: her contact with the museum, the document
she’d created and forged, the guy she’d hired to do the physical work. Best of all, Roth’s reaction. She cradled her water
glass. “It felt good.”
“I’ve never been prouder of you. Or more frightened.”
She pushed her hair behind her ear. “I’ve ruined any chance of relaunching my career—Roth will make sure of that—but it was
ruined anyway, and I had to do something.”
He wanted to fix this for her. Give her everything wonderful she deserved. But all he could do was encourage her. “Don’t underestimate
yourself. You’ll figure out how to get back in the game.”
“He’s too powerful. Nobody is going to risk offending him by offering me a job.”
“Have a little faith in yourself. You’re talented, and you’re not afraid of hard work. If you could pull off the Great Motorcycle
Heist, you’ll figure this out. I don’t know exactly how, but then I’m not as smart as you.”