Vanishing Dreams: Vanishing Dreams (Devil's Bend #2) (17 page)

That’s Katie, you dumbass, and you’re done with her, remember?

Thank you, subconscious…
For
the not-so-subtle reminder that he was acting like an idiot.

The last thing he wanted was for them to realize that was Katie. That
wouldn’t go over well at all, so Dalton turned his attention to the others at
the table, trying to listen in on the conversation. Eric was telling a story
about something that’d happened at the bar the other night while Tessa’s
brothers, Jack and Adam, chimed in from time to time. Eric seemed about as
interested in being in the club as he probably was in going to the opera, and
the way he kept his eyes from wandering past the edge of the table was pretty
damned amusing.

Of all five of them, Tessa’s older brother, Adam, who was down here for
only two days, seemed the most comfortable. He’d already paid for a couple of
lap dances, bought some chick several drinks, but didn’t seem to be working too
hard to take her home. Every time a naked ass sashayed past, he’d take a hearty
swallow of his beer and allow his gaze to linger for a little while.

At least one of them was having some fun.

Jack, on the other hand, looked like he was ready to bolt at a moment’s
notice. If Dalton wasn’t mistaken, Jack hadn’t glanced once at any one of the
nearly nude women flaunting their God-given — albeit surgically enhanced —
gifts all around him. Dalton wasn’t surprised. Had this been a Chippendale’s,
Jack might’ve been a little more interested. Not that Jack would’ve admitted to
that, but Dalton knew. He might be the only other one at the table privy to
that information, but he knew Jack was firmly rooted in the closet and it was
only a matter of time before he came barreling through that door. The guy was
keeping his sexual preferences close to his chest, something that would
eventually tear him apart, but it wasn’t Dalton’s place to say anything.

“I’ll be back,” Dalton interrupted, talking to the guys at the table as
he pushed his chair back. He was ready for that next beer, but nature was
calling his name and she was getting louder by the second.

Keeping his hat tipped low, hoping no one would recognize him, Dalton
wound his way through the scattered tables on his way to the restroom at the
back of the place. It seemed to take a decade just to get there. Diamonds and
Lace was probably the biggest strip club he’d ever been in. Hell, it was bigger
than most of the bars he had played in when his career had just been getting
started.

Everything was bigger in Texas, wasn’t that how the saying went?

He smiled at the thought, heading down the dimly lit hall that ended
with a door labeled “Men.”

Dalton did his business, washed his hands, and then headed back out,
not wanting to hang out any longer than necessary. There were a couple of drunk
cowboys chatting it up just outside the door as he slipped by, once again
keeping his head tipped down, the rim of his Stetson shielding his face.

Had he been looking where he was going, he might’ve been able to stop
the collision course that he was unknowingly on. But since that wasn’t the
case, Dalton didn’t notice the petite, dark-haired woman coming right for him
until it was too late.

Their bodies collided, his hands immediately coming up to grab her
arms, trying to keep her from falling over from the impact. He managed to catch
her, but not before she stumbled, her arms flying, a wad of cash fluttering to
the floor as her arms went askew, knocking her mask clean off her head.

That wasn’t the only thing that went askew.

As Dalton looked into that face, his breath slammed to a halt while his
brain scrambled. Thinking it might help, he shook his head, wondering if maybe
he’d been knocked out cold and he was now seeing things. It was one thing for
people to tell him that she was a stripper, or for him to suspect that had been
her up on that stage. But it was something else entirely to see for himself.

“Dalton,” Katie whispered, surprise etched across her face.

Sonuvabitch.

Nope, he didn’t have a concussion and he wasn’t seeing things.
Although, for the first time in his life, he wished he were.

There, standing before him, naked except for the tiny turquoise
G-string covering not nearly enough of her was that sweet, innocent little
angel who’d fogged his brain so many months ago. The one he dreamed about. The
one he’d actually had stupid thoughts about for months on end.

“Katie.”

Dalton realized he was still holding her arms, his fingers gently
surrounding her slender biceps. He released her and took a step back, then
another until there he was a safe distance away.

As he stared down into the prettiest gray eyes he’d ever seen, Dalton
saw the last few months before him. All of the nights he’d fought to not think
about her, all of the times he’d remembered holding her in his arms, fucking
her senseless, all of the days he had hated himself for not confronting her…
And as his startling realization turned into anger, then morphed into rage, he
glared at Katie.

“I can explain,” she said quickly.

Not wanting her to give him any of the gory details as to why she was
sexing it up in a strip club while her alternate persona catered to cowboys
with the help of her sweet smile at The Rusty Nail, he stopped her before she
could continue.

“Yeah. Don’t bother.”

And with that, Dalton pushed past her, ignoring her when she called his
name.

Sunday
night

“How’re things goin’ with you?” Dalton asked Braydon Walker, who was
sitting at Tessa and Cooper’s kitchen table, snatching a foil-wrapped potato
and dropping it onto his plate.

“It’s goin’,” Braydon replied in his usual standoffish way.

“How’s the family?” Dalton asked, taking the plate of potatoes when
Braydon handed them over.

“Good. Talked to my ol’ man this mornin’,” Braydon offered, glancing
over at Dalton. “Sounds like they’ve got it all runnin’ smooth in my absence.”

Dalton could tell that Braydon wanted to talk about himself about as
much as Dalton did. Although he’d tried to keep the questions impersonal, he
still felt as though he’d hit a nerve. Rather than make Tessa’s cousin
uncomfortable, Dalton opted to change the subject.

“What about you?” Dalton asked Tessa, who was doctoring her own potato
with butter and sour cream. “Everything in place for the weddin’?”

Tessa smiled, her face lighting up as her eyes slipped over to Cooper.
“We’re gettin’ there. Only a few more weeks to go.”

Cooper grinned just as big as his fiancée, reaching for the basket of
rolls. “Countin’ down the days, darlin’.”

“You glad to be back?” Braydon asked, his question directed at Dalton.

“Damn straight. Life on the road ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

“I couldn’t imagine it is. But the tour went well?”

“Better than well,” Dalton answered Braydon’s question. “Wish you could’ve
made it to the last show. Probably the best one yet.”

Braydon nodded, shoveling steak into his mouth while he spared Dalton a
look every now and then. When he finished chewing, he shot off another
question. “I heard Cheyenne Montgomery was there. How’d that work out?”

“The woman can fucking entertain a crowd,” Dalton stated. “They loved
her.”

“We’re lookin’ at puttin’ together an official tour,” Cooper chimed in.
“The three of us.”

“Is that right?” Braydon asked, glancing back and forth between Dalton
and Cooper.

“That’s the plan. She seemed to be on board with the idea,” Dalton
confirmed.

Braydon’s cell phone rang as they sat there eating, and Dalton watched
as the guy peered down at the screen before hitting a button to silence it.
Dalton quirked an eyebrow at Braydon. “Everything okay?”

“Yep,” Braydon answered gruffly. “My twin. I’m sure he’s just checking
up on me.”

“You talk to him lately?” Cooper asked.

Dalton looked up from his food to see Tessa and Cooper watching Braydon
intently. Looked like the guy was about ready to bolt from the table from the
scrutiny in their gazes.

“Nope. Don’t need to.”

Cooper made eye contact with Dalton briefly, a signal that meant there
was a story there. A story Dalton probably didn’t want to know. Whatever demons
Braydon was running from, Dalton felt his pain. But he damn sure didn’t want to
add to the guy’s stress, so he turned his attention on his food, hoping for his
sake the topic would die.

“Where’s Katie these days?” Tessa asked when the silence had hovered
over the table for longer than a minute. The woman never did let dinner
conversation dwindle.

“No idea,” Dalton answered quickly, focusing his attention on prepping
his baked potato and avoiding as much eye contact with Cooper and Tessa as
possible. When it came to the subject of Katie, he had absolutely no intention
of discussing her with anyone, including his closest friends.

“I thought the two of you were datin’,” Cooper added, his hands
stilling as he held his knife and fork over his steak.

From the corner of his eye, he realized Cooper and Braydon had both
turned their full attention on him, which was unsettling and disturbing. This
was supposed to be dinner, not an interrogation, yet he felt oddly as though he
were under the spotlight.

Dalton knew he couldn’t get out of this quite as easily as he wanted
to, so he shrugged. “Nothin’ serious. We just went out a coupla times.”

“Sure looked like more than ‘nothin’ serious,’” Tessa offered,
stressing the last two words.

Dalton dared to look up, meeting her concerned gaze. “Really, we’re
cool. We just decided to back off a little. What with the tour and all.”

“Now I know you’re lyin’,” Cooper added, his fork and knife hitting the
glass plate.

Dalton closed his eyes briefly before sitting up straight and looking
directly into the eyes of his closest friend. He opted not to go on the
defensive, waiting for Coop to follow up on his accusation. Dalton had learned
a long time ago that jumping to conclusions only got him in a world of
unnecessary hurt.

“The two of you backed off long before the tour,” Cooper stated,
reaching for his beer. “In fact, I’m pretty sure it was about the time you went
to your folks’ place for Christmas.”

“Not true,” Dalton lied. He had managed to be civil to Katie the few
times he’d seen her at The Rusty Nail over the last few months. Granted, he had
tried to avoid going there on the nights she worked, but there had been a
handful of times he hadn’t been able to get out of it. He didn’t want to make
anyone suspicious, although he had no real reason to keep her fucking secret
for her in the first place.

Anger surged through his insides, obliterating his appetite. He tried
to hide it, not wanting to upset the meal, especially with Braydon sitting
there, watching quietly.

“What’s really going on?” Tessa questioned, returning her focus to her
food as though she was just making casual conversation. “Did the two of you
break up?”

“We weren’t
together
,” Dalton barked, squeezing the neck of his
beer bottle as he took a deep breath to calm himself. “Sorry. No, we didn’t
break up. We weren’t together in the first place.” Not that he hadn’t wanted to
be, but Katie … well, Katie clearly had other ways of spending her time. Time
she insisted she didn’t have. The woman had claimed that her schoolwork was getting
in the way, but from what he’d seen last night, it damn sure wasn’t homework
that was keeping her up late at night.

A bold-faced lie.

But he couldn’t very well tell Tessa that. From what he knew, Tessa and
Katie were close, which surprised the shit out of him considering the double
life that Katie was living. Whatever her reasons, the woman had done a
fantastic job of snowing everyone, including her close friends.

Sure, it would’ve been easy to blurt out that she was a stripper and
that he couldn’t stand the sight of her because she had lied to him, but that
wouldn’t solve anything. And it wasn’t exactly true. The bigger problem was
that Dalton did want to see Katie. He wanted to figure out why she’d felt it
was necessary to lie to him in the first place.

The urge to do exactly that grew stronger and stronger every day, and
now that he was back in Devil’s Bend for the foreseeable future, he had the
feeling he was going to confront her. He just hoped he could do it without
losing his shit. Why it bothered him so damned much in the first place confused
the hell out of him, and Dalton was tired of the mixed feelings as much as he
was tired of thinking about her all the fucking time.

“I was thinkin’ about invitin’ her to dinner,” Tessa admitted, drawing
Dalton’s attention.

“Don’t,” he growled. “Damn it. Ignore me.” He was going to have to
ignore himself. This anger wasn’t who he was, and he was getting overwhelmed by
the emotion, so much so that he was barking at his friends. He was supposed to
be having a good time, living the high life, enjoying his new outlook on life.

Instead, he was being a dickhead.

“Sorry. Again,” he mumbled. “Invite whoever you want.”
Just tell me
when so I can make other plans
, he thought to himself. “Can we talk about
somethin’ else?” he asked, desperately needing to change the subject. As it
was, he knew Tessa and Cooper were on to him, and the last thing he wanted was
for them to get in the middle of something they knew nothing about.

Forcing himself to eat, Dalton shrugged them off when they asked a few
more questions, grateful when they started talking about the bar and about what
Braydon would be doing for the next week. While they went back and forth
regarding an upcoming act on Saturday night and taking care of horses, Dalton’s
thoughts drifted to that first date with Katie.

“Tell me about you,” he encouraged as they sat across from one another
at the small booth.

When Dalton had asked Katie out, he truly hadn’t expected her to say
yes, so when she had, he’d made the suggestion that they get breakfast after
her shift ended. Another agreement from her and Dalton had been walking on a
cloud ever since.

And here they were, sharing a meal.

Katie was surprisingly easy to talk to, and Dalton assumed that was
because she didn’t look at him as though he might break out in song and
serenade her. Not that he hadn’t thought about it.

The idea made him smile.

“What are you grinnin’ about?” Katie asked, taking a sip of her orange
juice.

“Nothin’,” he said with a smirk. “So, I hear you’re in school.”

“Yeah. I’m workin’ on my bachelor’s degree. In accounting.”

“Accounting?” Dalton laughed. “Sorry. I’m sure that’s a very noble
profession, but it doesn’t sound all that much fun.”

“I like numbers,” she said with a grin. “Although, I’m questioning my
sanity these days. I’m takin’ online courses and they’re kickin’ my butt.”

“So you’re working at The Rusty Nail in the evenings and taking online
courses during the day?”

“Something like that,” Katie answered, her smile faltering just
slightly.

Dalton studied her, curious as to what she wasn’t telling him.

“How long have you worked at The Rusty Nail?”

“Two years. Since I was twenty-one.”

“Where’d you work before that?”

Another fading smile and Katie was studying her plate. “I … uh… I
worked at a grocery store once.”

“Didn’t work out, huh?” He laughed, hoping to get her to smile again.
He hadn’t meant to bring her down.

“Nope, it didn’t.” This time Katie looked up at him, pasting a smile on
her face. It looked incredibly forced, but Dalton didn’t call her on it.

“Do you live at home with your parents?” he asked.

“No.”

Dalton had expected her to elaborate, but when she didn’t, he searched
his brain for another question. Before he could ask, she popped off one of her
own.

“Tell me about you. I know you’re a singer, and I love your music, by
the way. Did you always want to be a singer?”

“Not so much, no,” he said truthfully. “I had other big dreams when I
was younger, but some things got in the way. So here I am.”

Thinking back on that first night they’d spent talking, he could
clearly see where things had started going wrong. Katie had been elusive, not
wanting to talk much about herself. And then when she’d turned the questions on
him, he’d answered with as little detail as possible.

What a couple they were. Now that he thought about it, he doubted
they’d ever stood a chance in the first place. That didn’t stop him from
thinking about what might’ve been.

Because when it came down to it, Dalton knew that he still loved her.
And no amount of anger was helping him get past that, either.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Her day off couldn’t have come at a better time. Not because she had
anything planned, though. No, Katie had absolutely nothing to do on a Sunday
night except spend a few quality hours with her sister and her best friend,
Sarah, both of whom Katie felt like she didn’t get to spend nearly enough time
with these days.

It’d been a while since they’d done anything more than their usual
routine, but that was Katie’s fault. Shaking up Lexi’s life, even with the smallest
change in schedule, was a gamble. Tonight she was up for the challenge because
she wanted to take the two most important people in her life out to dinner.

She had spent the better part of the day dropping hints to Lexi,
letting her know that they were going to have dinner at Charlie’s, one of
Lexi’s favorite places to go when she was actually in the mood to leave the
house.

The moment had arrived for them to go, and Katie was rushing around,
trying to make sure that she had everything in order. Lexi would expect the
house to be a certain way before they left and when they returned. What had
brought about that compulsion, Katie wasn’t exactly sure, but she didn’t try to
rationalize Lexi’s behavior anymore.

“Sarah? You ready?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sarah replied with a huge smile as she stopped just
outside of Lexi’s bedroom. “How ’bout you, kiddo? Can we have a girls’ night?”

Lexi nodded, her smile tipping her little lips.