by Ava Miles
“You really appreciate food,” he commented. “And wine.”
She raised her glass in a toast. “They go together. To new friends.”
“To new friends,” he repeated, his eyes meeting hers when their glasses tapped together, the crystal chiming.
It hadn’t always been that way between her and food. Growing up, they’d employed a chef. As part of her father’s business and political interests, she’d eaten several five-star meals in her own home, paired with the right wine for each course. Just not too much of anything. Her mother had instructed her on the proper portions, which wouldn’t have sustained a small bird, and made sure she was never given a large portion of anything. Not even her own birthday cake.
And then Rhett had taken her and Elizabeth to a hole-in-the-wall BBQ place outside Memphis when they’d played a poker tournament at Tunica. The dry rub ribs had been smoked to perfection with pecan wood, something she’d never heard of. The meat had literally fallen off the bones. The rest of the meal had been fried too: okra, mushrooms, French fries, and then fried blackberry pies. But it had finally awakened her taste buds.
The same had happened with champagne. When Rhett won the World Series of Poker, he’d bought the priciest bottle on the hotel’s wine list because that’s what he thought a man who’d just won seven million dollars should do. She’d hated champagne growing up since it had been associated with memories of her father’s pricy political fundraisers.
But drinking it with Rhett and Elizabeth as they laughed over the monumental win…well, that first hit of champagne on her tongue had been like fireworks. From then on, she’d made her peace with the past and ordered whatever bottle suited her fancy. Of course, the finer bottles suited her fancy the most, but since she was a millionaire herself, she could afford it.
“Okay, now that we’re safe from interruptions,” she said, “why don’t you tell me about how you came to own Henry?”
When he didn’t say anything for a long moment, she set aside her pizza and waited.
“He was the dog of my final client at the firm in Denver,” he finally said, but his reluctance to share more was clear.
When she gazed at him, his face had fallen, and he seemed lost in thought. She trusted her instincts and put her hand on his arm. “Tell me.”
He let out a massive sigh. “Well, I suppose I might as well tell you, since…” Those words hung between them for a moment, and then he continued. “I was representing a woman who was dying of pancreatic cancer. A nurse had blown the whistle on my client’s doctor. He was giving patients half a dose of their chemo at his cancer clinic and selling the other half on the side. The nurse ended up being discredited in court because her nursing license had been revoked when some drugs were stolen in a clinic where she’d worked ten years ago. There wasn’t enough additional evidence of the doctor’s malpractice, so we lost the case.”
Even she knew there was a heck of a lot more to it than that. Seeing this side of him, a door in her heart simply opened. This was a good man. One she could fall for. She left her hand on his arm.
“My client didn’t receive the full dosage of chemo soon enough to help her,” he said, looking down at his plate. “Before she passed away, she asked me to take care of her dog…to give him a good life. He was the only family she had. I couldn’t refuse her.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said quietly, remembering how he’d told her earlier that he’d lost faith in the system. God, she couldn’t imagine the emotional toll that case must have taken on him. No wonder he’d left Denver afterwards. “It broke your heart. This case.”
He pushed his pizza around, not bothering to pick it up. “It’s been broken before, but this time…well, it broke my faith in the system. I…just didn’t want to be part of cases like that anymore. Not if the wrong people were going to win.”
“What was her name?” she asked.
In response to her question, he finally turned his head and met her gaze. “Patricia.”
“We’ll take care of Henry for Patricia, Matt. I promise.” Now Henry’s behavior made sense. The dog was grieving.
“People keep saying I should just give him to another family, but I can’t. I can’t fail her in this too…”
The guilt clearly weighed on him like a stone. She didn’t question it, just rose and wrapped her arms around him from behind, resting her chin on his back.
He coughed. “Not exactly light dinner table conversation.”
“I grew up with that,” she told him. “I hate that. You told me earlier that you’d given him the name Henry.”
His hands covered hers. “I…decided to change it. I felt like we both needed a clean break…when I took him on.”
Another missing piece of the puzzle.
“Did I do the wrong thing, changing it?” he asked, sighing. “I’ve tried so hard to do the right thing.”
She pressed a kiss to the back of his neck. “I know you have. You’ve both been through a lot.” Henry wasn’t the only one who was grieving. “They didn’t know Rufus’ name when I chose him at the pound. And we’ve done fine.”
“Thank God,” he murmured. “Some days I feel like he’s punishing me for failing Patricia.”
Oh, you poor man. She squeezed him tight. “I expect he’s hurting, is all. There’s always an adjustment period. Have faith.”
He nodded and then edged his chair back so he could pull her onto his lap. His finger stroked her cheek. “Thank you, Jane.”
“Thanks for sharing with me.”
His hand cupped her face. “Jane,” he said. Just once.
And she flowed into him, the kiss as much a comfort as confirmation of this new, fragile connection between them. When they broke apart, his eyes bored deeply into hers, as dark as twilight now.
“You’ll have to tell me about yourself now. The good, the bad, the ugly.”
“Another time.” She made herself smile and slid off his lap.
That was shaky ground, and while his revelation showed what a good man he was, she couldn’t tell him all her secrets. Her silence protected the two people she loved most in the world: Elizabeth and Rhett. There were too many good reasons for keeping quiet. This connection with Matt was too new for her to know if it was sturdy enough to entrust him with her dear ones’ lives. Or her own.
“You’re a good man, Matt Hale,” she said.
His mouth quirked up, and some of the sadness weighing down his shoulders seemed to lift. “I’m trying.”
They resumed eating, but there was a new quiet between them, as though neither needed to fill the silence. They kept sneaking glances at each other, which made her chest feel tight. For once, it wasn’t easy to chow down on pizza. When they finished eating, she insisted on carrying her own plate to the kitchen, but he wouldn’t let her load the dishwasher.
Wrapping his arms around her waist, he pulled her close. That spicy aftershave he wore smelled heavenly as she rested her head against his chest. He just held her and then leaned back to caress her cheek.
There were banked fires in his eyes, as though he were giving her the chance to decide if she wanted to stay. But it was too soon for her, and because this new bond with him was special, she didn’t want to rush it. Since he wasn’t insistent, she figured he was feeling the same way.
She rose on her tiptoes and kissed him on the side of the mouth, not yet bold enough to claim a full kiss. “We should probably go,” she said when she was fully back on the ground again.
“Let’s get the dogs.”
When they entered the mudroom, the dogs were all dozing, but they perked up when she and Matt entered the room. Annie trotted over to them, her tail wagging madly. Rufus only yawned. Jane was extra sweet with Henry now that she knew what he’d been through.
“If you can, leave him in the crate tonight. Let’s see if this structure will help. If he puts up a fit when we leave and doesn’t settle down, go ahead and take him outside. Where does he usually sleep?”
“With me.”
Her face started to flush as she asked, “In his own bed or yours?”
He took a beat longer to answer, and the awareness crackled between them. “My bed. He wouldn’t stop barking when I tried to…”
“Okay,” she said quickly, trying to keep her cool, but her mind pumped out horrible visions of her and Matt trying to make love with Henry rudely interrupting them.
As if reading her mind, he murmured, “I’ll try the crate tonight,” in that same husky voice he’d used before kissing her.
“Good idea. Discipline. Structure.” She was so full of shit.
After she dressed for the elements, he insisted on walking her to the car.
“But your coat,” she protested.
“I’m a native. Thick blood.”
The indigo sky was dotted with stars, and she made out the Big Dipper as she put the dogs in the back.
“Hey,” Matt said, placing a hand on her arm when she opened her door. “How about an evening without the dogs? No crazy interruptions from Henry. Just you and me. Dinner? Maybe a movie?”
If her heart could glow, it would have chosen hot pink.
“I’d love that.”
“Are you free Saturday night?” he asked.
Elizabeth would cheer the fact that she was finally the one to break up their regular plans with a date. “Great.”
“I’ll pick you up at seven. Brasserie Dare, okay?”
“I love that place.”
“Good,” he grinned. “I like to support the family.”
“Of course.” Suddenly it fully dawned on her. He was related to one of the most powerful and respected families in Dare. He was truly a native here, while she was…not.
“You’ll have to tell me about growing up here,” she said.
“There are tall tales, but it was great. And Denver was awesome in its own way when we moved there. Different. Bigger. Lots of people. No one cared you were a Hale or expected you to act a certain way because of it.”
Yes, she knew how that had felt. Being a Wilcox had been a heavy weight to carry. She’d only broken free of it by becoming Raven.
“Thanks for tonight, Matt. It was…I had a great time.”
“Me too.”
Was he going to kiss her? He stood there in the cold night with the stars twinkling above them. Then his mouth quirked up, as though he were enjoying something, and he leaned down to brush his lips over hers. It was a slow, gentle kiss—the perfect goodnight kiss, she decided.
“I’ll see you soon, Jane. Drive safe.”
As she drove off, she touched her fingers to her still tingly lips.
Dialing Elizabeth on the way home, she started to tell her friend about their whole evening. When she finally finished forty-five minutes later, she and the dogs were sitting in front of the fire in her house.
“I’m falling for him, Elizabeth, and it’s only been a few days.” Even saying it out loud sounded strange, but her body felt that way. It was like she was floating on the clouds she’d seen earlier.
“I know you are,” her friend simply replied.
Jane fell back onto the rug and stared up at the ceiling, letting the fire warm her. That was why Elizabeth was her best friend ever. She knew Jane well enough to know she was serious even if some people might think it was crazy to fall this fast, this hard. But it had happened all the same. Matt Hale had stolen her heart over pizza and wine as he told her about defending a cancer patient and then taking in her dog. He was one of the good guys. And he liked her. Part of her still couldn’t take that in. He liked the real her. The one with the scrawny body. The one with the smart brain.
“I’ve never felt this way.”
“I know.”
Chapter 9
Zumba, the hot Latin dance class, had arrived in small town Dare Valley, and Elizabeth couldn’t have been more delighted. If there was one thing she missed about being Vixen and living in Vegas, it was dancing in the nightclubs.
Granted, a dance class like this didn’t boast any men in it save one retired man in his seventies who came with his wife.
Most of the women were married with kids. So far they’d been friendly. Of course, the really uncoordinated ones who stumbled through the steps and couldn’t shake their hips if someone was pointing a gun to their head eyed her with envy. But she was used to other women being jealous of her.
Then there were the ones whose mouths dropped open when she did a few of her favorite moves, like bending over and shaking her backside. And when that happened, Elizabeth had to bite her lip to keep from laughing.
Exercising this way wasn’t a bad way to burn the calories she had to watch more carefully than Jane. Not that she still had any insecurities when it came to her body. Of course, when she’d met Jane at Harvard, she’d stuck out like a sore thumb at the preppie school. Her long curly blond hair with bangs had been too untamed, her clothing too provocative. When someone had called her trailer park trash, she’d been spurned into action. She and Jane had cut her hair to a one length boring bob and dyed it a serious dark brown. Then they’d bought her a swathe of dull, curve-concealing clothes. Finally she was taken seriously, but she never felt comfortable in her own skin in those days.
As the spicy Latin beat started, she followed the teacher like the rest of the class into a salsa routine, one that involved shaking her bosom like there was no tomorrow. An hour later, she wiped sweat from her brow and chugged water from her green bottle labeled Have Fun. She smiled at the other women as they were leaving. The teacher snagged her by the arm before she could follow them.
“Hey,” she said, her sleek body clad in a hot pink workout top and short black leggings. “We haven’t officially met. I’m Carol.”
“Elizabeth.”
“You’re really good, which I expect you know already. I was wondering if you’d be interested in teaching a class. We have more interest in Zumba than I expected, and since I’m capping the class at twenty, I need help. I’m teaching two classes on Thursday and Friday already. What do you think?”
Elizabeth scanned the room in the community center. It didn’t have any mirrors like her posh gym in Vegas, but the platform in front helped people see the teacher better, especially from the back. This might be fun.
“Maybe. Tell me more.”
Twenty minutes later, she had Carol’s cell number and a few papers outlining the steps she’d need to take to become certified. Her car was parked on Main Street, so she walked the two blocks over. With her winter gear on, the cold was doable even though her hair was a little damp from her workout. When she reached Main Street, she heard someone call her name. Turning, she made out Ryan James, a guy she’d gone out with a few times.
“Hey,” he said when he caught up to her. “You didn’t return my calls. I expect you’ve been busy.”
She hadn’t been. There wasn’t any spark between them, and since she hadn’t agreed to make plans for another outing on their last date, she’d hoped he would get the message. “Hi, Ryan. No, everything’s been pretty normal on my end.”
The words hovered between them, and he frowned.
She prayed he wouldn’t force her to be blunter. “Look, it’s cold, and I need to get home,” she finally said. “Have a good night.”
As she turned to walk away, he grabbed her arm, and she instantly went on alert. “Hey!”
“Sorry, but…Elizabeth, I’d really like to go out with you again. I thought you and I had a real connection.”
Struggling to stay calm, she removed her arm. He didn’t fight her, which made her want to heave a sigh of relief. “Ryan, listen, I’m sorry, but I didn’t feel that way. I’m sure you’ll find someone special, but I’m not the one, okay?”
He stepped closer, making her want to edge back. “But I thought—”
“Ryan, I’m heading to my car now. Goodbye.” Any further conversation with this guy wasn’t going to do much good for either of them.
Fortunately, he didn’t follow her, and when she reached her
car, she immediately locked her doors. Suffocating fear threatened to pull her under, and her hands shook as she tried to start the engine.
She might feel mostly safe in Dare, but old habits died hard. Being un-costumed only made her feel more vulnerable, as though there were nothing to hide behind. On the way home she checked her rearview mirror constantly to make sure he wasn’t following her, totally paranoid now.
The freedom and joy she’d felt while dancing was a distant memory.
Chapter 10
A couple of mornings later, Matt headed over to The Grand Mountain Hotel to see his cousin, Jill. Between owning Don’t Soy with Me, serving as the hotel’s creative director, and taking care of her baby twins, she barely had a spare minute, so Matt thought it was best to grab her during the work day. Jill was extremely well connected in the community and would have some useful advice for him on his run for mayor.
He and Andy had come to the hotel for a boys’ night out after they first arrived in Dare. They’d both lost at poker to some pros staying at the hotel, but it had been a fun time anyway.
When he wasn’t out in the elements running or skiing, Matt used the hotel’s state-of-the-art health club to work out, like he planned to do today. He loved the weight room and had become pampered enough at his Denver gym to still want to hit the steam room or sauna occasionally, especially when it was freezing outside.
As he drove down the driveway, the majesty of the restored hotel rose up before him. A few people were skiing on the slopes of the mountain, and they looked like small ants sliding down an enormous hill. The stone work of the two-story structure held the gravitas of another age while the windows sparkled in the sunlight. Unlike most of the casinos Matt had visited for bachelor parties, this one was full of light. There were no dank, dark gambling rooms here. The hotel was warm and inviting. He and Andy needed another night out, he decided as he parked in the underground garage, grabbed his gym bag, and went to find his cousin.
Jill’s office was on the second floor in an alcove housing hotel management. He nodded to Casey, Mac’s receptionist, whom he knew from his visits to the hotel to meet Jill for an occasional lunch.
