Dance of Desire (1001 Dark Nights) Read online

  “Like a spa day?”

  Belinda cackles. “Oh, honey. It’s a lot more than a spa day.”

  “Rehab for divorced people?”

  “Nope. You got any plans in the next few weeks?”

  “You mean aside from making sure my hu—Joel doesn’t get the bar?”

  “Two days. That’s how much you’ll need. Two days to get away. I’ll give you the time off soon as we get your…appointment set up.” Belinda hesitates over these last three words, as if everyday business terms don’t apply to whatever she’s talking about without really talking about it.

  “No offense, Belinda, but I’m not really a seminar person.”

  “It’s not a seminar. It changed my life for the better, but it’s not a seminar.”

  “Well…what is it?”

  Amber’s startled by the seriousness in Belinda’s expression.

  “It’s an experience,” she whispers. “And by the time it’s over, you’ll have a much better grasp on who you really are. On who you really want.”

  “This experience…does it have a name?”

  “The Desire Exchange,” her boss answers.

  “A sex club?” she cries before she can measure her tone. “You’re sending me to a sex club?”

  “It’s far more than that.”

  “How much more?”

  “A million flat. That’s the price of admission. Which I’m gonna cover for you along with any other expenses related to the trip.”

  “I don’t understand,” she says because thank you seems premature.

  Sure, it’s a lot of money, but what the hell is it for?

  “And you won’t until you’re there. But I promise you, I swear on every penny I have, no one will hurt you and you won’t be forced to do anything you don’t want to do.”

  “And you can’t tell me anything else?”

  “Except for this. When you leave The Desire Exchange, you’ll leave behind a version of yourself that’s caused you nothing but confusion and pain. The same version of yourself that thought Joel Claire was a great catch.”

  Belinda’s one of the chattiest and most gossipy people Amber has ever met. But on the subject of this Desire Exchange place, her typical wisecracks have been replaced by the kind of proclamations Amber would expect to hear out of a lawyer or a judge. Maybe it’s the hefty price tag involved. If there’s one thing her boss takes seriously, it’s money. And maybe for that reason alone, Amber should just get over it and say yes, despite the fact that she’d have absolutely no idea what she was agreeing to.

  But she drank the martini when Belinda asked her, why not just—

  Because it’s a sex club! a voice that sounds like her mother’s cries. There’s a big difference between a sex club and a martini! Especially when the price of admission is four times the cost of her house.

  “I can tell you this, sweetheart,” Belinda says, sounding nothing like Amber’s mother. “This isn’t about letting off steam or making up for lost time or getting your inner wild child out of your system. It’s more than that. So much more than that.”

  The expression on her boss’s face does it. The satisfied, glassy-eyed smile. Whatever this Desire Exchange is, it took a woman like Belinda, a woman who’s been given every blessing one could ask for, and gave her something more, something better.

  Why not give it a try?

  Amber’s been a good little girl most of her life. Barely any hookups in college; none sober, anyway. Always waiting for date three before she gave anything away. And what did she get for all that? Manipulated, lied to, and cheated on.

  “Fine,” she hears herself whisper.

  Just one word, but it feels like total surrender.

  “Excellent!” Belinda cries, back to her chipper, hands-clapping self. “Now I’ll just—”

  The first text tone startles them both. It’s Amber’s phone. She waves her hand in the air to keep Belinda talking. But then there’s another and another and another, and by the time Amber stands up and slides her phone from her pocket, she’s got four messages in all. Two from Julio, the manager at Watson’s, and two from Annabelle, who oversees the kitchen.

  They all say the same thing.

  “What is it?” Belinda asks.

  “It’s my hus—Joel,” she says. “It’s Joel. He’s trying to change the locks at the bar.”

  “Go,” Belinda cries. “Go now!”

  Amber’s already flying down the stairs by the time Belinda shouts, “Call me if you need help!”

  2

  For its first three years of operation, Abel Watson’s struggling country music bar occupied a single storefront between an ice cream parlor and a yarn store in a lonely strip mall. Amber was just a toddler then. Later, her dad would tell stories about how his bacon was saved when a nearby subdivision announced a massive expansion, and shortly thereafter, he found himself the owner of an upscale alternative to the Ft. Worth Stockyards, a place for wealthy Dallasites to line dance and listen to authentic country music without first spending forty minutes in the car.

  Today, Watson’s takes up three storefronts instead of one. The once dreary strip small is now a bustling shopping center studded with elegant restaurants, a ladies only gym, and a condo high-rise. The mall’s wealthy patrons clearly aren’t used to seeing physical confrontations outside of places like The Big Bend Bread Factory and Muriel’s French Kitchen. That must be why several of them are frozen in place, a few paces from their parked cars, gawking at the standoff between Watson’s entire lunchtime staff and Amber’s husband.

  The van for some locksmith company is parked a few yards away, right next to Joel’s dusty pickup.

  Dressed for work in his Western duds, Julio, Watson’s manager of ten years, stands right in front of the entry door. He’s about half the size of Amber’s soon-to-be ex-husband, but his arms are splayed across the door behind him, his body tense and taut, as if he’s prepared to launch himself at Joel the second the man gestures for the locksmith to step out of his van.

  Annabelle, the kitchen manager who used to babysit Amber when she was a little girl, is right next to him, still in her apron, her back pressed to one quarter of the entrance, arms crossed tightly over her boat’s prow of a chest. She’s wearing her apron which means she was in the middle of work when Joel started whatever this nonsense is.

  “Profanity’s not going to be your best choice, here, alright Julio?” Joel is saying when she walks up. “Now if you’d all just step aside, we can avoid involving law enforcement. And that, my folks, means we can also avoid checking on the immigration status of any—”

  “We’re all legal!” Julio shouts. “And you’d know that if you weren’t a lousy manager.”

  “Why’s that, Julio?” Joel asks.

  Annabelle says, “You have our papers on file, asshole!”

  “Alright, so apparently the cursing just isn’t going to stop which means I’m gonna have to put in a call to our friends at the Dallas Po—” He’s in mid-dial when he sees her charging toward him down the sidewalk. “Goddammit to hell!” he shouts at the crowd. “Now who called Amber? That is just not appropriate! That is not appropriate at all.”

  “What are you doing?” she asks.

  It’s the closest they’ve been in days. Everyone on the curb seems to know it. They’re being stared at like strippers outside a church on a Sunday.

  “We’re gonna need to have a pause while we work all this out,” Joel says quietly. “That’s all.”

  “A pause. What the hell does that mean?”

  “He’s not just changing the locks, Amber,” Julio shouts. “He’s shutting the place down.”

  Annabelle says, “He came in ’bout a half hour ago and told us all to go home. Locksmith pulled up about five minutes after that and he got all pissed because the guy was early. He wanted us all gone so we wouldn’t know he was try—”

  “For the last time! I am not shutting the place down,” Joel barks. “I am stopping business temporarily while we so
rt everything out. That’s all.”

  “That’s all? You’ve got four acts booked this week alone,” she says. “What are you going to tell their managers?”

  “That the club’s working out some issues related to ownership and we’ll rebook as soon as they’ve been sorted out.”

  “Related to ownership?” she screams.

  “It’s just a business term, Amber.”

  “Ownership? Of my father’s bar?”

  “We’re gonna figure this out. Would you just relax already?”

  “Three of those shows you’re canceling are sold out, Joel! That doesn’t sound like good ownership to me.”

  “Yeah, well, I changed our refund policy.”

  “You can’t—Watson’s has been in business for twenty-five years. You don’t have the right to shut this place down on a whim.”

  “A whim, huh? Is that what you call the end of our marriage?”

  Discussing the end of her marriage right now in front of everyone would be an indignity worse than what he put her through a few days before.

  “This club isn’t about us, Joel. It’s about the people who work here. It’s about the music. It’s about my father. He trusted you to—”

  “To run it, exactly. And this is me running it. I own Watson’s so I’ll—”

  “An LLC owns Watson’s!”

  “Yeah, and I’m the majority partner. Because that’s how your father wanted it. Because he knew you and your mother didn’t know a damn thing about how to run a business.”

  “My father gave you this place because you bullied him into it on his deathbed!”

  It’s the first time she’s ever spoken this truth out loud. And she expects it to knock her soon-to-be ex-husband off his feet.

  But Joel Claire, it turns out, is nothing if not resourceful.

  “There!” he cries. “Did everyone hear my wife’s acknowledgment that her father gave me this bar?”

  “I heard her!”

  The shrill cry has come from the direction of Joel’s truck. Mary, the same woman she caught her husband fucking a few days ago, throws herself halfway out of the passenger side window of his pickup truck, wearing a big smile on her rosy-cheeked face.

  In a low voice, Annabelle says, “Dogs should keep their heads inside cars. They might get hurt.”

  “I heard that too,” Mary cries.

  “Oh, yeah? Bowwow, puta!” Annabelle shouts back.

  “You’re fired!” Joel shouts at Annabelle.

  “Uh huh, sure,” Annabelle responds without moving an inch.

  “Stop it, Joel,” Amber says. “Whatever you’re doing, just stop it!”

  “I am, Amber,” Joel whispers. “I’m putting a stop to everything until we figure out what we’re gonna do.”

  “We’re getting divorced,” she whispers back. “That’s what we’re gonna do.”

  “I’m aware of that, sweetheart. I’m talking about the next verse of my song, not yours.”

  No thought to the years they’ve spent together. No thought for the plans they’d made for kids, for a life. Just a few days out from being caught red-handed with another woman and already her husband’s thinking of the business, of money, of himself. She’d always made allowances for his ambition, had figured ambition was part of any exceptional man. But her husband, she can see now, isn’t just ambitious; he’s self-obsessed and greedy. The sight of him now, plotting his next career move with her father’s life’s work gripped in one fist, is a harder slap in the face than the sight of him fucking another woman.

  “Jesus, Amber,” Joel whispers at the sight of her tears. “Don’t cry in front of them.”

  “Howdy, songbirds!” a familiar voice says from several feet behind her.

  Amber hasn’t laid eyes on him in four years, and even though she wouldn’t have thought it possible, during that time Caleb has somehow grown taller and broader. He still walks with a casual, confident gait she’d be able to spot across a crowded arena, like he knows his sheer size is a better indication of his strength than any menacing pose could ever be. His Stetson’s the right size now, unlike the ones he used to wear as a kid, and the brim shades the hard, etched features of a fully grown man, a man with a voice so deep it sounds like it’s coming from some otherworldly place where he rules as king. His eyes are still so sparkling and blue she can’t look into them without blushing. His jeans are scuffed and tattered, but his cowboy boots are brand new; so is his red and black plaid shirt. Not just new, spotless and freshly ironed.

  Did he dress up a little for this surprise visit? Did he dress up for her?

  “What are you doing here, Caleb?” Joel asks, his tone suddenly tense.

  “Just got back in town last night. Thought I’d stop by the family business and have some lunch. But it doesn’t look like lunch is being served.”

  “Who called him?” Joel shouts over one shoulder with real fear in his voice. No one answers. “Who called him?”

  “Nobody called me, songbird,” Caleb says. “Quiet down. You don’t want to damage your signing voice there. Hey. You alright, Amber?”

  “I…”

  Her throat closes up. Maybe it’s the shock of seeing Caleb for the first time in years. Maybe she just can’t bring herself to spill her guts right there on the sidewalk, to paint the full picture of how awful Joel is being to her, to all of them.

  “You know, well, uhm…” Joel says, with the nervous stutter of an elementary school student giving his first presentation in front of his classmates. “I’m sorry to say I’ve got to close the place for a week or two.” Joel's voice seems to get a little shakier with each step Caleb takes toward him. “I’m not sure if you’ve heard but Amber and I…Well, we’ve decided to end our marriage.”

  Caleb freezes, expression hard as stone and impossible to read.

  “I hadn’t heard that, no.”

  There’s now about three feet of space between Joel and the man she cannot bring herself to call her brother despite what the adoption papers might say.

  “Well…” Joel says. “In light of that—I mean, given how much there’s going to be to deal with, we just need to stop operating for a short while and then we’ll be back—”

  “How long’s a while?” Caleb asks.

  “Just a few weeks ’til we gets things sorted out. Now, with all due respect, this is a family matter so if you could ju—”

  “I am family,” Caleb says.

  “On paper, maybe. But come on, now. We all know Abel was just—”

  “My father,” Caleb says. “Abel Watson was the only real father I ever had.”

  “Sure, sure. Of course. But if you’d ju—”

  “He cheated on her, Caleb!” Annabelle snaps. “She caught him in the back room last week with that girl over there in his truck. Now he’s trying to take the bar so he can use it to promote his crappy band.”

  “Shut up, Annabelle!” Joel cries.

  Caleb’s entire body goes rigid. Amber’s seen this change overtake him many times, mostly when they were teenagers and brawling became Caleb’s preferred method for dealing with his grief for his parents. She knows just where to look for the telltale sign of the anger knotting itself through his soul; it’s in the right corner of his powerful jaw. The tension there is suddenly so strong it sends that section of his jawbone into sharp relief. He has to tilt his head gently to one side to be rid of it, an oddly prim gesture for a guy on the verge of venting rage.

  “That true, Amber?” Caleb asks.

  “Yes. I caught ’em. It’s true.”

  Joel takes a step toward Caleb. “Look, I don’t mean to be blunt, cowboy, but this doesn’t concern you, alright? And Amber and I don’t need to litigate our marriage right here in front of—”

  The punch is so silent and swift Amber’s not sure where it landed. One minute Joel’s standing, the next he’s flat on his back. No blood comes from his nostrils. The hand Joel finally manages to bring to his face lands weakly on his jaw. As he wheezes, he blinks up a
t Caleb as if he’s in genuine fear for his life.

  “Try to get up,” Caleb says quietly. “Just fucking try it. I dare you.”

  Joel doesn’t get up.

  Caleb steps off the sidewalk and starts for Joel’s pickup truck.

  “Drive away!” he calls to the terrified woman in the passenger seat.

  “What?” Mary squeals. In her panic, she’s pulled off one of her shoes and she’s holding it beside her head like a makeshift baton.

  “Roll up the window and drive away,” Caleb says firmly.

  “It’s his truck!” Mary whines.

  “Don’t care,” Caleb answers.

  “Where am I supposed to go?” Mary asks.

  “Somewhere Amber doesn’t have to look at you. You got all of North Texas to choose from. Take your pick and get moving.”

  Mary crawls over the gearshift and into the driver’s seat. Without taking her eyes off Caleb, she starts rolling up the window like a swarm of killer bees are heading straight for Joel’s pickup. Caleb points at the parking lot’s nearest exit.

  The tires literally squeal as Joel’s mistress abandons him.

  As if he’s just completed a task as simple as removing a kink from a garden house, Caleb turns and walks back toward the spot where Joel is still flat on his back, rubbing his bruised jaw with one hand.

  “Got any brain damage there, songbird?” Caleb asks.

  Joel wheezes.

  “Okay. Good. ’Cause I’m gonna need you to take this all in, and it’s complicated, so pay attention. You know that trust fund Abel set up to provide you with a cushion while you got started? The one that’s got the proceeds of his retirement in it? The one you’ve been relying on for your marketing budget now for four years? Guess who’s the trustee?”

  Joel groans.

  “Yeah, see, he didn’t want to make me a partner in the LLC ’cause he didn’t want you to think he didn’t trust you. But just in case you did turn out to be a steaming stack of shit on a hot highway, he wanted a fail-safe in place. And that fail-safe’s me, asshole.”

  “Whu—what do you…?” Joel tries.