Dance of Desire (1001 Dark Nights) (15 page)

“Is that a trick question?” he asks.

“Nope. Did I seem distracted?”

“You did not. You did not seem distracted.”

“Well, there’s your answer then.”

“Still, I don’t want to feel like I shamed you out of doing something you needed to do just ’cause the thought of you with other men made me want to break the door down.”

“Well, if we’re being honest here, the thought of you breaking the door down to keep me from being with another man kinda makes me want to do a repeat of this morning right here in your truck.”

“Well, we can certainly add that to the list,” he says.

“Good.”

“You’re asking me if you’re enough, aren’t you?” Amber says.

Caleb tilts his head from side to side as if he’s considering her question, then he says, “Yeah. I kinda am, I guess.”

“Well, I think that’s sweet.”

“Sweet?” he asks, grimacing.

“Yes. I think it’s sweet that the most beautiful man I’ve ever met in my entire life, probably the only man I’ve ever really loved, just a few hours after giving me the best orgasm of my entire existence, is asking me if he’s enough. It speaks well of your character. I don’t want your head to get so big your Stetson won’t fit.”

“Sassy,” he says, and gives her left thigh a hard, loud slap. “Sassy girl, Amber Watson.”

“That’s me!”

“But you’re not answering my question.”

“Well, the funny thing was, about five seconds before you pulled into my driveway last night I was about to throw in the towel on the whole idea.”

“Why’s that?”

“Well, for starters, Belinda wouldn’t tell me anything about it. Honestly, I still don’t know anything about it. I know it has a name, The Desire Exchange. I know that they were going to try to give me some kinda drug to relax while I was there, which I had
no
intention of taking. And I know we were supposed to be gone for two days. But that’s it.”

“But you said yes?”

“I said yes at first ’cause when Belinda talked about the place, she got this look in her eyes, like… I don’t even know how to describe it. But I thought, here’s one of the richest women I know, who could have pretty much anything she wants, and when she talks about this place, I don’t know, it was almost religious.”

“Huh,” Caleb grunts.

“But she’s the one who said I shouldn’t go. And she said it after she saw the way we looked at each other. She said I didn’t need the place or what they had to offer. She said what I needed was right there in front of me and his name was Caleb.”

“Caleb Eckhart,” he says quietly.

“Yep,” she answers.

He smiles, brings her hand to his mouth and gives her fingers a gentle kiss.

They’ve passed through Austin. The rolling green landscape of the Texas Hill Country spreads out before them now, painted with oranges and deep reds by the westward leaning sun.

“There was one other thing,” Amber says.

“What?”

“There was an application process and for part of it, I was going to have to write down my deepest sexual fantasy. Those were Belinda’s words.
Deepest
sexual fantasy. The one I was afraid to tell anyone.”

“You just have one?” Caleb asks.

“Dirty boy.”

“Dirty girl,” he answers.

They both stare at the beautiful countryside in silence for a few minutes.

“You can tell me, you know,” he finally says. “Your fantasy, I mean. Doesn’t matter how deep or how dark.”

“Yeah? And then what?”

“I’ll do my best to make it real. That’s what.”

He takes his eyes off the road just long enough to give her a devilish wink. Between this simple gesture and the promise he just made, her breath catches and her cheeks flame and her heart skips a beat. Maybe a few beats, she can’t really be sure.

Why the hell not?
she thinks. But as soon as she goes to speak, a cold weight settles down over her chest. A day before the fantasy would have seemed fairly tame, as sex fantasies go. Now, not so much. Caleb might not consider it so tame considering it involves being lost in the woods.

“Amber?”

“I’m working on it,” she says.

“No rush,” he says. “Maybe writing it down’ll be easier, when you’re ready.”

“Maybe so.”

Her heart’s racing. If she doesn’t tell him now, she’ll feel like she’s withholding something of value. But will the fantasy still work for her now, given the awful story she just learned of what her dad did to Caleb the night his parents died? The thought of Caleb forcing himself to act out some sort of sex scene that might stir such a painful memory, just because he’s desperate to make it work with her, fills her with anxiety. For so long now, she’s felt like little more than the victim of her husband’s betrayals. She never felt like she was even capable of hurting Joel; that’s how little the man seemed to care for her. But now, all of a sudden, she’s responsible for someone else’s heart.

“Hey,” Caleb says, “did I push a little too hard there?”

“No,” she answers.

“Prove it,” he says, curving his arm around her shoulders, pulling her body into his as he drives confidently with one hand.

A few minutes later, the gates to The Haven Creek Inn come into view.

12

The Haven Creek Inn sits on a large hill that dominates the property’s eighty acres of live oaks, sloping green lawns, and winding hiking trails. The main building, a two-story L-shaped structure of roughhewn stone, is perched on the hill’s crown, the rocking-chair studded porches on its first and second floors commanding gorgeous views of the expansive landscape to the west.

Her mom asked them to meet her at the newest guest cottage, so Caleb drives past the inn’s main building, past the half-circle of smaller guest cottages that dot the hill’s gentle slope, past even the large, rectangular swimming pool framed by a smoother version of the roughhewn stone used in the main building.

In the early evening dark, Amber can see flickering candles lining the serpentine front walkway of the newest guest cottage. Each glowing candle bag is cut with the inn’s logo, a half-moon partially shaded by tree branches. None of the cottages they pass on the way had string lights laced through the gutters of their shiny metal roofs as this one does. Her mother must have added this glittering touch just for her as well.

Just for
them,
she realizes.

And there’s her mother, standing on the front porch, dressed in a white polo shirt bearing the inn’s logo, the same shirt she always wears when she’s on the job. She’s flanked by two of her closet friends in the world.

Because she’s only four foot nine, most people mistake Nora Donner for a small child from a distance. She’s pushing sixty, but she has a child’s energy level combined with a desperate desire to please. Some call her codependent, others simply call her kind. Amber’s in the latter camp, and her mother goes back and forth between the two, which is probably why she and Nora have been close friends for years.

To her mom’s left stands Amanda Crawford, the woman who had made The Haven Creek Inn a reality. She’s Nora’s polar opposite; a tall, slender gazelle to Nora’s energetic pixie. The multimillionaire is also possessed of a classic beauty she maintains through an unassailable combination of good genes, good nutrition and, when necessary, the scalpel of a talented Austin surgeon with whom she sometimes spends romantic weekends she refuses to discuss.

Caleb kills the truck’s engine. For a minute, the two of them just sit there, staring at the beautiful scene before them.

“Wow,” Caleb finally says.

The hill country to the west spreads out before the cabin’s decks like a vast, green sea. In the absence of city lights, a riot of stars is unveiling itself throughout the night sky. Now that they’ve parked, Amber can see more string lights wrapped around the trunks of the live oaks that watch over the cottage like sentries.

And that’s when the tears start.

“Hey,” Caleb says quietly, drawing her close with one arm. “Hey, you alright?”

“Yeah,” she manages, wiping quickly at tears with the back of her hand. “It’s just really beautiful, is all.”

“I guess she really wanted us to visit,” he says.

“Together. She really wanted us to visit together. That’s the thing.”

And then Caleb seems to get it. That every candle, and each string light, and the cottage itself, are all her mother’s way of trying to make up for twelve years of misunderstanding and confusion and thwarted desire.

“Y’all going to get out of that truck?” her mother finally calls. “Amanda’s gotta get home before her manicure melts.”

“Tina,” Amanda says, voice smooth as silk, “I do wish you would stop using my beauty against me.”

“We better get out of the truck,” Caleb says.

“Sounds like a plan.”

Amber’s halfway up the front walk when her mother says, “I don’t see a gun so it looks like I’m going to be okay, ladies.”

“Hug your daughter, Tina,” Nora cries.

And so she does. And when Amber tightens her embrace, her mother tightens hers as well. They’ve been about the same height ever since Amber graduated high school. But her mother’s got a lean, wiry frame from the laps she swims every morning. Her mane of salt and pepper hair is healthy and thick, but it’s also threatening to come loose from its ponytail, so Amber adjusts her mom’s scrunchee even as they hug. By the time they’ve parted, her mom’s hair is back together again.

Tina stares into her daughter’s eyes with newfound seriousness. “See,” she says. “There are some things your mother’s big mouth is good for.”

“Thank you,” Amber whispers.

“Don’t mention it,” she says, smoothing hair from Amber’s face. “Just stay a while.”

Caleb’s introducing himself politely to Amanda and Nora, both of whom have moved so close to the guy it looks like they’re about to manhandle him. When Amber steps up onto the porch, Amanda works to pull her stare from the towering hulk of a man in front of her. Then she places one hand on his shoulder gently as she steps past him. As soon as she makes eye contact with Amber, she wags her hand in the air as if the man were literally hot to the touch.

“Darling,” Amanda says once she has Amber in her arms. “How you went twelve years without laying a hand on that hunk of burning love is simply beyond my ability to comprehend.”

“Well, it was pretty weird, Amanda. I can tell you that.”

“Uh huh. Whatever. Notice we gave you the cabin furthest from the inn. So have at him, sweetheart. Only ones eavesdropping are the birds. And the bees!” She gives Amber a light peck on the cheek. “Lord. I need to go book myself a massage. Y’all have fun now, ya hear.”

Nora waits for Amber on the top step of the cottage’s front porch, which makes her and Amber almost the same height. Almost. The tiny woman throws her arms out in front of her, shifting her weight back and forth between both feet. As always, Nora Donner’s happiness is a force that cannot be contained.

“Oh, what do you say kiddo?” Nora cries as they hug. “
What
do you
say
?”

“Oh, you know, just getting divorced and hooking up with the man who used to be my brother. That’s all.”

Nora cackles.

“Well, we’re so happy for you,” Nora says, pulling away but holding Amber’s hands in hers. “We are. We are. We really are. I mean, you know, Joel was just…” Nora pauses as if she’s considering whether or not to add mint or rosemary to a glass of lemonade. “Well, he was just such a piece of shit, that’s all. I wish there was a nicer way to say it. But there really isn’t now, is there?”

“No. There isn’t. He really was a piece of shit. In fact, I was just with him yesterday, and he still is.”

“I’m so sorry, honey.” Nora takes her hand and leads her to the far side of the porch. “Now listen…”

“Nora!” her mother calls out when she sees the two of them alone together. By then the tiny woman’s already reached under her polo shirt and removed a glossy trade paperback she’s been hiding inside the waistband of her jeans for Amber doesn’t know how long. “Now if there’s something about Joel that didn’t seem quite right, something that seemed off in a way that was perhaps, nonhuman, I want you to read this book and tell me if any of it makes sense to you. You know, on a personal level.”

The cover art features a tiny black silhouette of a man surrounded by swirls of star-filled cosmos that partially conceal a giant pair of black inverted teardrop eyes. The book’s title is
The Stars Are Upon Us
.

“Now don’t read it late at night because it might frighten you. But what it makes clear, darling, is that the infestation is already underway. They’re already at the highest levels of government. There’s evidence they’re crossbreeding us. It’s got pictures, see, in the insert in the middle. Pictures of the hybrid children. And honestly, I was thinking about Joel’s facial structure and comparing it to some of these drawings and I think it’s very possible he could be a hyb—”

“Nora, get that alien nonsense away from my daughter!
She’s on vacation!”

“Now your mother thinks this is nonsense,” Nora explains gently. “But what I’m trying to say is don’t blame yourself if you end up being taken advantage of by one of them. They’re everywhere, you see. And they don’t think and feel the way we do. It’s not about Republican versus Democrat, sweetheart. This is about us versus the stars!” Nora points an index finger skyward and nods solemnly.

“That’s really sweet of you, Nora, but I don’t think Joel was an alien. I just think he was an asshole.”

“Even so, read the book. It’s very important.”

“Nora Donner, men in white coats will be the least of your problems if you don’t stop with that this instant!”

“Your mother likes to threaten me because she can’t bear the truth,” Nora says gently.

“I understand. Thanks for the book.”

Nora gives her a peck on the cheek and more of that big smile, that smile Amber can never get enough of. Then, like a chastised dog, she walks into her best friend’s outstretched arms, which curl vise-like around her upper back and begin guiding her away from the cottage.