The Ultimate Romance Box (6 Bestselling Romance Novels)

by Eckhart, Lorhainne

Amber dug into her backpack and handed him two. “You know, Drew, it’s one thing for someone like me to play games to keep my parents happy. I’ve never bothered to take on a career, and frankly I don’t want one. I am who I am. I like being spoiled. I like having my generous allowance and all the gifts my father buys me. But you’ve worked your cute little booty off pushing your dad’s company to the top of the charts. You’re the one running the whole show now. No reason you should have to take a dive whenever your father tells you to.”

  “But I don’t like to stress him. He’s got a heart condition. And, well, you have your three older brothers, but for me and my dad it’s been just the two for us for so many years. The last time I heard from my mother was in a greeting card on my eleventh birthday. I’ve been trying now to develop some kind of bond with my son, but most of the time he seems like a stranger to me. I’m not too sure he even likes me.”

  “Maybe this woman you’re in love with can help you put it all together.”

  “Love? Me? No way. I don’t do that number.”

  ***

  Drew wandered through the white walled rooms of the National Museum of Dance. Thinking about Casey. Just his luck to run into a dance museum to make him feel even lousier.

  He’d already taken a mineral bath and had lunch, killing time so Amber could hook up with her jockey lover. And typical Amber, instead of being grateful for the favor she calls his cell to say she’ll be another hour or so. Thanks, Amber.

  Yesterday she lectured him about doing everything his father wanted, but here he was wasting his life away covering for her.

  The worst part was that he’d thought it would be Casey when his phone rang. He stopped at an old black-and-white photo of a dancer named Martha Graham. Drew made a note to remember some of these names so he could mention them to Casey when he saw her again. If he ever saw her again.

  He’d called her three times on Sunday, twice on Monday and Tuesday, and twice today. She didn’t answer. And didn’t return his calls. Why? Was it all to punish him for cancelling their plans to spend the night at the Plaza? He could see Amber reacting that way, but not Casey. What was going on?

  He marched outside to the front lawn, pulled out his mobile and pressed Casey’s number again. “Answer me, dammit!”

  “Hello.”

  Casey. Drew nearly fell over. He reined in his anger. “Hi, Casey. It’s Drew.”

  “I know.”

  His stomach knotted at the icy tone of her voice. “I, uh, I…I spoke with Karl. He said you hadn’t called him or looked at the two buildings yet.” Geez. How personal. You can’t think of anything better than that to say?

  “No, I haven’t called Karl. Don’t need to. I found a studio.”

  “You did? That’s great. Send me the specs, and I’ll get right to—”

  “It’s not for sale. It belongs to Taz Ravage. We’ve been seeing each other. And he has this barn on his property that’s just perfect.”

  “Taz Ravage?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’re putting me on.”

  “Listen, I gotta run.”

  “What’s with you, Casey?”

  “Gotta go. Bye.” She disconnected.

  Holy crap. I just got dumped. “Fuck you!” he shouted into his phone. But she was already gone.

  Good thing it had only been a phone call or Drew feared he might have completely lost it. He despised men who beat on women, but right now there was one bitch he sure felt like strangling.

  Drew shoved his phone into his pocket and strode across the grounds, burning with fury, his boiling blood ready to burst through his veins. Taz Ravage. The guy she’d supposedly never slept with. Well, you can bet that stupid, jerked off rock star wasn’t about to give her his barn without getting plenty of time in her bed.

  The same bed where Drew thought he’d finally found his own personal nirvana. In Casey.

  How could she dump him for Taz Ravage? The guy was such a phony. But apparently, so was Casey. Two of a friggen kind. Here he was obsessing on her like a sick cow and the whole time she’d just been using him to get her pain in the ass studio.

  Drew let out a string of obscenities, not giving a damn who was around to hear him. How could he let himself get all wrapped up in one woman like this?

  Might as well go back to dating mindless bimbos who wanted his money. At least with them he knew who they were and what to expect.

  ***

  Casey set her phone down on the coffee table and broke into sobs. She was supposed to feel great now. She’d given Drew a taste of his own medicine. Rid herself of a womanizing liar who’d toyed with her heart.

  But he’d captured it so completely and thoroughly that she didn’t know how she was going to make it through the two classes she had to teach now.

  Luckily she hadn’t scheduled a rehearsal with her Cove Corps group today. The strain of fighting tears was bad enough without seeing Josh, who thankfully was not in the Ballet IV or Beginner Modern scheduled for this evening. She thought about the boy’s angry resentment for his father, remembering his bitter words: “He’ll do it to you, too. You’ll see.”

  You were right, Josh.

  For the next three hours Casey put on her professional face and focused on the dance technique and her students. By eight o’clock every dance and piano student had left. She said goodnight to Jiao, locked the front door and climbed the stairs to her lonely apartment.

  And Drew hadn’t called back. Which only proved his indifference about losing her.

  Casey fed her cats, but had no appetite herself. Taz had invited her to join him and a group of friends going into Manhattan tonight, but she’d declined. She didn’t want to encourage him. In fact, after the dinner at his place where she spent the night fending him off, she’d already decided not to use his barn for her studio.

  It wasn’t just that she knew Taz would expect her to eventually give in to his advances. It was also knowing the parents of her students wouldn’t be too keen on a dance academy associated with a rock star known for his sex-and-drugs lifestyle. And now that Drew was out of her life forever she no longer had to prove she didn’t need him. She could just close up shop at the end of the month and disappear.

  Except she felt rotten about abandoning her students. Especially Josh, when she could see how dance had begun to build his self-confidence. Maybe there was another way.

  A phone rang. Casey ran for her cell that was still on the kitchen table. But then she realized hers didn’t ring like that. Madame Lumina’s did.

  She raced for the living room and answered, “Madame Lumina.”

  “Who? I’m trying to reach Natalie D’Alessio?”

  Casey sank onto her loveseat, realizing how desperately she’d hoped it was Drew. She took a message for Natalie, but after the call she found herself in tears again. Having cried a zillion times a day since discovering the truth about Drew, she thought slamming him with news of Taz and the studio would cure her. But hearing Drew’s voice again only made it worse.

  He’d sounded almost vulnerable. Like he actually cared. Did he?

  What about the things he’d said to Madame Lumina? About feeling like he had a teenage crush on Casey.

  A crush is not love, girl. So, he was hot on you for a while. Now it’s over.

  But something in Casey refused to believe all those gloriously wonderful moments with him meant nothing. Just because he was a guy who was used to having a lot of women didn’t mean he couldn’t fall in love with one of them. Casey was fairly good at reading behavior, and over the past several weeks she could have sworn their feelings for each other were on the same page.

  Or was Drew so skillful she didn’t even know she was being played? Was he just that good at his game?

  As the night wore on, those questions haunted her. Casey grew desperate to find out if he ever really did care for her. Or if the whole thing between them was merely a sham. Twice she actually picked up her phone determined to call him back and ask him outrig
ht, demanding an answer.

  But she stopped herself, knowing that anything short of him saying he loved her would be devastating.

  And she’d only be making a fool of herself. Negating the triumphant revenge she’d fought so hard to construct this week by not answering Drew’s calls and finally giving him the boot with Taz Ravage as icing on the cake.

  She picked up Madame Lumina’s phone to put it away. She could give it back to Natalie now that the free readings were over. Except they weren’t. Drew had never called for his third reading.

  Which gave her an idea. She scrolled through the incoming calls. Yes. There was Drew’s cell number. She tapped the key and heard it ring.

  “Hello?”

  “This is Madame Lumina and I—”

  “Madame Lumina?”

  His annoyed tone made Casey speak fast, running her sentences together, praying he wouldn’t hang up on her. “Oh, I’m sorry, I was returning a client’s call, must have hit the wrong reply number, this is Dionysus, isn’t it, I recognize your voice, you know you still have a third free session, I could talk with you right now if you like.”

  “You just said you were calling another client.”

  “Only returning a request to schedule an appointment. No urgency there. Is there something you’d like advice on?”

  “No.”

  “What about that woman you met? The dancer? You said there was something special about her.”

  “I was wrong.”

  Her chest tightened. “I see another woman in your love life. Maybe she’s the special one.” Casey wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer to this.

  Drew gave a cynical snort. “There’s always another woman in my love life. And they all get to be tiring after a while.”

  Tiring. He found me tiring. Parker was right. I never should’ve gotten near Drew.

  “Well, Ms. Lumina, thanks for the readings. Can’t say I’ll be calling you. I’m really not—”

  “Wait! How about advice on your son, or your business, or your health? Or even your golf game?” She couldn’t bear the thought of him hanging up. And the reason was so pathetic. She knew it would probably be the last time she ever heard his voice.

  “Okay, how about picking a horse for me to bet on at the track?”

  Casey remembered what Natalie said about the Von Alston’s having a horse farm. “You’re at…Saratoga?”

  “You nailed that one.”

  So, he was with Amber. His real girlfriend. Casey reached for the tarot deck she’d left on the bookshelf, but she was so distraught her jittery hands spilled them all over the floor. Tears streamed down her face.

  “Sounds like a summer cold you got there, Ms. Lumina.”

  “Yeah.” She cleared her throat and turned over a card. The Nine of Pentacles. “Um, no horses, but lots of grapes.”

  “Grapes? Huh. I was thinking of buying a vineyard.” His voice shifted to a sober tone when he added, “But I changed my mind.”

  Did he sound sad? Did the vineyard remind him of her? Or was she just imagining it because of her own misery? A new rush of tears poured out.

  “You okay, Lumina?”

  Casey grabbed a card and steadied her voice. “Uh. The Magician.”

  Before she had a chance to look up its meaning on Natalie’s notes, Drew said, “Magician’s Trick! That’s one of the thoroughbreds slotted for tomorrow’s race.”

  At this point Casey was crying so hard she couldn’t speak at all. What is wrong with me? I hardly know this guy.

  “Lumina? You looking at more cards or something?”

  Choking with tears, she coughed and blew her nose.

  “You better have some hot tea with lemon.”

  “Right.”

  “Well, good luck with your business. Maybe I’ll call you some time.”

  “Good-bye,” she murmured.

  The phone went silent. She pressed END. Sobbing out her heartache, Casey packed the phone into a paper bag with the cards and notes. Time to return them to Natalie.

  Her stint as Madame Lumina was finished.

  Her relationship with Drew Byrne was finished.

  And in three weeks the North Cove Dance Academy would also be finished.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “I can’t believe you bet against my Storm Chaser. And came up with a win.”

  Drew patted Harry Von Alston on the back. “Don’t take it personally. I got a hot tip yesterday on Magician’s Trick.”

  Julia’s nostrils flared. “From a jockey?” She and Drew both glanced at Amber, who made a bad attempt at looking like she didn’t notice.

  “Nope. A tarot reader. I don’t know any jockeys,” Drew said, even though Amber’s compact, bow-legged lover did in fact offer him inside advice. But testing out Madame Lumina was more fun.

  Andrew Sr. zeroed in. “Tarot reader? Like a gypsy? Where’s her shop?” He snickered and elbowed Harry. “With that pile of cash he just raked in maybe we ought to go see her.”

  “Sorry. She’s not local.”

  Julia gave him a searching look. “I didn’t know you went in for that sort of thing.”

  Drew’s phone rang, and he checked it quickly, a part of him still hoping for Casey to come crying back to him when Taz acted like the asshole he was. He saw the phone number of his ex-wife’s house. “Excuse me. It’s my son.”

  He walked off to a quiet area as he answered the call. “Hey, Josh. What’s up?”

  “It’s not Josh,” Heather said. “I was hoping he might be at your place.”

  “I’m not in Southampton.”

  “Where are you?” Instead of her usual snide, scolding or nagging tone, Drew heard a panicky quiver in her voice that put him instantly on alert.

  “Saratoga Springs. What’s wrong? What happened?”

  “I think Josh ran away. He went to the schoolyard to shoot baskets four hours ago and hasn’t come back. That isn’t like him.”

  Drew felt as if a giant hand squeezed his heart. “Did you go there to look for him?”

  “Of course. I’m not an idiot. I talked to the other kids. None of them even saw Josh today. He either didn’t go there or never made it.” Her voice broke. “I searched other places he might be, but there’s no sign of him.”

  A cold shiver rippled through Drew’s body. The worst case scenario immediately came to mind. An abduction. Why the hell did I let myself do that damn TV show telling the world who I was? Mr. Trucking Mogul. “Did you call the police?”

  “Filed a full report. Gave them three photos. They’re looking.”

  “What about tracking his GPS?”

  “He didn’t take his phone.”

  “That’s not like him.”

  “Needless to say, the police want to speak with you, too.”

  “I’ll get on a plane right away.”

  Drew jogged back to the Von Alstons. “Harry, can your pilot run me home?”

  “When?”

  “As soon as possible.”

  Amber stepped in. “What is it, Drew?”

  “My son’s in trouble.”

  She turned to her parents. “You guys relax. I’ll call Peter and get Drew to the Cessna.”

  Andrew Sr. pulled Drew aside asking what this was about. When he explained what Heather told him his dad said, “Hell, that’s no emergency. I used to run all over town when I was his age. Got myself into all kinds of trouble. You’re raising that kid to be a pansy.”

  Drew scowled at his father with a venom that made the old boy take a step back. Then he turned away and headed home to find his son. Praying he wasn’t too late.

  ***

  After talking with an officer at the Southold Police Department Drew hightailed it over to Heather’s place, fuming over something the cops told him.

  “Nate got transferred to Germany? You’re moving at the end of the month and you waited until now to tell Josh? And me?”

  It still amazed Drew that he’d actually married Heather. He couldn’t stand the woman or
the way she did things. Right now she perched on the edge of a leather club chair, her chin lifted, her eyes shooting annoyed glances at the kitchen doorway with every clinking sound her husband made. Poor guy must have been ordered not to interfere by this domineering shrew. Nate Wentoff was usually pretty good to Josh and no doubt would want to be involved.

  Heather puffed out a frustrated sigh. “If I had told Josh earlier, he would have told you. And you would’ve given me a lot of grief over it. I didn’t want to have to put up with your criticism any longer than necessary.”

  “Well, you gave him plenty of reason to run away.”

  She straightened her shoulders. “Let’s just hope it was that, rather than Josh being abducted by someone after your money.”

  “Agreed. But my gut tells me it’s about this little surprise you pulled on him. Really lousy.”

  “As if your child rearing skills are so great.”

  “You’re taking away his chance to dance on the TV show. That’s really important to him.”

  She gaped at his words. “You’ve changed your tune after trying to stop him from dancing at all. Well, in Berlin he’ll get training that’s way better than what’s out here in the rural North Fork.”

  “What he does or doesn’t get in Germany is irrelevant. Josh had his heart set on doing that Got Moves performance.”

  An eyebrow lifted. “I think it’s more than the tacky TV show that upset Josh. I doubt he was too pleased to find out something was going on between you and his dance teacher.”

  Drew snapped to attention, glaring at Heather, whose acid look made it clear she did not approve. “That’s ridiculous.”

  His son had seemed elated when Drew told him he was dating Casey and he made that plan for the three of them to go to the Shinnecock Powwow. Josh couldn’t possibly know that Casey had broken up with him. And Drew had never revealed to Josh about the studio being in jeopardy or that he’d been searching for a new one with her.

  “Really, Drew, I know you find it difficult to keep it in your pants, but couldn’t you at least have ruled women in your son’s environment off-limits?”