by Ally Blake
So much so she didn’t notice how quiet Dash was. How still.
Her voice was muffled as she said, “There has to be a point at which things tip so far into the negative that someone has to say enough. You know that?” she said, lifting her head to motion to his tattoo. “I have to fix this, Dash. Now. You have to help me.”
Dash laughed, though there was no humor in it. No warm spark in his melting brown eyes. Just cool. So much unearthly cool. And Lori’s fraught nerves twisted into knots. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” he muttered, taking a step back to lean a hip against the counter, to cross his arms over his chest, to look out into the middle of the distance.
“I’m not big on playing games, Dash,” Lori said. Or feeling like a piano is about to drop on my head. She swallowed against the sudden constriction in her throat. “Just spit it out.”
His gaze shifted to hers, that gentle brown gaze hot with emotion. Hard emotion. Fierce. “I forget, you know? The more time I spend with you the more I allow myself to forget. But you’re so like them.”
Lori reared back at the sharp tone. “Who?”
“Them.” He waved his arm as if encompassing an invisible army.
Lori crossed her arms over her chest, a direct mirror to Dash’s defensive stance. “What are you talking about?”
He stared at her, jaw hard, muscles in his arms twitching, “The execs who ran the band before I left. They only ever cared about the end game, never the players.”
Every word hit Lori like a needle thrown from point blank range. “You think I’m like that?”
A short sharp breath flared his nostrils and the entire space behind Lori’s ribs ached.
All she’d ever done was care. For Callie, for her Mom—buying her a house in Fairbanks before she’d bought her own apartment, and sending money home every month so that her mother could have choices, could be independent, could have a better life.
She cared for her urban family, for Tracey and Mack and her staff, to the point that she’d been slashing her own base pay the last six weeks so that they wouldn’t miss a cent of theirs.
She would slay dragons for those she loved—and, okay, for herself, too, but only because she’d never had anybody in her life ready to do it for her. And if that meant she embodied a certain coldness, a certain hardness, a certain intractability, then so be it.
It was a tough world out there, even tougher for those having to climb the ladder of success from below the bottom rung.
But Dash’s hesitation made her feel wobbly inside.
“No,” he said, his hand running up and down the back of his head.
“Took your sweet time to get there,” she said, her voice husky as she blindly slid from the stool and began to collect her things. “I honestly had no idea you thought so little of me. Which means the fact that you can’t keep your hands off me says more about you.”
He grabbed her wrist, stopping her getaway—not hard, but enough that she stilled.
“What?” she asked.
“Stop.”
“You started it.”
“I’d like…can we start this conversation again?”
“If it’s going to go anything like the first time, I think I’d rather not.”
“Sit,” he said, an edge still riding his voice. “Please. Hear me out.”
She knew she ought to leave. The fact that Dash had it in him to make her happier than she remembered feeling in a long time had a flip side that she found it easier and easier to ignore. If she was as smart as she thought she was, she’d be running by now, as fast as her heels would carry her.
But she was learning through all this that she wasn’t a runner, like her father. She stuck it out, through thick and thin. She was a survivor. Like her mom.
And for the first time in living memory, as she realized that she cared about this man enough to sit through whatever else he was about to throw at her, she wished that it was a little more the other way.
A twister of emotion inside of her, Lori listened as Dash told her about the events that had led to him leaving the band. “Surrounded by people who told me what it was easier to hear. That I, an orphaned nobody from the bottom of the world, mattered. That I was Teflon. Untouchable. And that the world could fall apart around me and I would be protected.”
And then about his uncle’s decline, and the woman who’d kept it from him. “She was protecting her own health benefits and access to limos and designer bags. At the expense of other people’s lives.”
About the anger that had led to him leaving in the middle of the night. The guilt that had wrecked him for a good year. About how much he owed Reg for dragging him out of the funk. About piecing his life back together in a better, healthier, clearer way since.
About a woman named Saffron, and how when he’d first seen Lori on his doorstep it had been like stepping back in time.
By that stage Lori was staring at a knot of wood in the floor. Because he wasn’t wrong. Not completely.
There had been times in her life she’d have sold her soul for fifty cents if that’s what it would have taken to ensure they had money, they had shelter, they had food. Maybe that’s what she had done, sold herself off in micro-increments; a promise to a lender here, a deal made to ensure her success in spite of another’s there…
Until here she stood asking the man she was sleeping with to help her ruin the wedding of his best friend and her little sister. She tried to breathe, but found she couldn’t. Her lungs compressed so tight she couldn’t move. Literally.
“Hell, Lori,” Dash muttered, shifting closer so he could bend her head between her knees. “Breathe, sweetheart. Just breathe.”
His fingers slid through her hair, once, twice, settling as a warm weight against the back of her neck. When all the while he thought her a monster.
“I’m not sure what you want me to do with that,” she said, her voice blurry.
“Understand…maybe. See things from another perspective.”
“I need you to understand that I am ambitious because I’ve had to be.” She took a breath and went on. “I was sixteen when my father left. When it became apparent that he’d charmed the whole town out of money. Family friends. Parents of the kids I went to school with. Clients at the café where Mom had waitressed since we started school.”
She took another breath, felt it fill the tight spots and stretch them out till she made room for more air.
“Mom couldn’t cope. So it was up to me to source a roof over our heads after our house was taken by the bank. I negotiated with the management of the local trailer park to clean the amenities in order to pay the rent. I took on two other jobs so that Callie didn’t have to. So she could be a normal kid.
“My ambition got us out. And here we are, my little sister and I. Successful beyond anything I’d ever imagined. Or at least we were, till Jake swept Callie off her feet and our customer base turned on us and things began to crumble. And now the wedding… And the thought of going back there, to that place, those people—”
Dash ran his thumbs down her cheeks, and breathed out hard.
And Lori felt a burn of tears at the back of her eyes. She never cried. Ever. What a waste of energy and motivation—what was the point? But around Dash her feelings felt more raw, closer to the surface, like they wanted to be let out, as if he—with his patience and ease—could magically make things all better.
She extricated herself from his touch before she made the final step into crazy town.
“Let’s say the whole Montana wedding was a bit of a shock.”
“You think?” he murmured.
And she actually laughed.
“I’ll give you something I’ve learned for free,” he said. “You might like to think you can control everything, but you can’t. And you shouldn’t. Callie is a grown woman. Jake a…nearly grown man. And just as you expect people to let you make the right choices for yourself, you have to trust others to do the same themselves. Even if it’s n
ot the one you’d make if given the chance.”
Lori breathed out hard, knowing—even as it butted against everything that had led to her success—that Dash wasn’t entirely wrong. Callie already made her own mistakes and learned her own lessons. But it was the letting go she found hardest of all.
Without Callie what did she have? What motivation? What drive? If not the protector of her little sister, who was she? It seemed she might soon find out.
Feeling like she’d been turned inside out, her secrets, fears, and innermost insecurities out there for the world to see, Lori huddled over the kitchen counter, swiping at a few stray crumbs with her thumb. “Callie is so over the moon she can barely speak. And she’s right, we can make this thing so beautiful even my stone cold heart will turn to goo.”
Dash turned her on the stool and slid into the curve of her body, filling it with his warmth, unleashing the loose, rampaging feelings she was trying to stamp down. The urge to lean her head on his shoulder, to let him take some of the burden was so strong she pinched her thigh through her skirt to keep herself still.
He reached out to tuck her hair behind her ear, his gaze touching her cheek, her neck, pausing only briefly on her mouth before settling on her eyes. “Your heart is anything but cold,” he said.
“You’re right,” she said. “You called it way back when. It’s black, like my coffee.”
Dash sniffed out a laugh, before breathing deep, as if he’d found himself a pocket of rarefied air. “Your heart is warm, Lori. Deep and warm and true. Despite your mixed up worry about Jake and Callie and your business, what I see is a woman trying to do the right thing. It was my problem that I ever thought otherwise, not yours. And I promise, my espresso machine as my witness, I’ll never make that mistake again.”
It was so corny, Lori coughed out a laugh. Followed by a sniff. Then a deep breath that pulsed with the kinds of vulnerabilities and insecurities she’d kept locked down for millennia.
He held out a hand. She stared at it.
“Come,” he said.
“Where?”
“I want to show you something.”
Her gaze skidded back to his. “Said the spider to the fly.”
He laughed, the rough rumble skittering through her like ice into a glass. Like she’d held herself so strong, so brittle for so long, it would take nothing for this warm, kind man to fracture her into a thousand pieces.
She put her hand in his—the calluses rubbing against her, his warmth infusing her, his closeness making her ache with desire and wonder and anticipation. And fear. Bone-deep terror that she was setting herself up for a fall so big it could break her. More like her mother than she’d ever known.
Screw it.
If her life fell apart, and she lost her business and her apartment and was forced to sell off her lovely things and burn her beautiful shoes for warmth, and had no choice but to move back home with her mom and get a job at the local Five and Dime, at least she’d have this brief, crazy, wonderful, consuming affair with Dash Mills to keep her warm at night.
“I’ll bite,” she said moving to walk alongside him. “Show me.”
…
Dash led Lori across the backyard to the door of the shed, wondering how he’d thought her a simple freight train. She was a tornado, shaking up his quiet life till he was starting to find it unrecognizable.
And yet, as always happened when he stepped inside the shed, the years shifted and melded. The woodsy scent so familiar and comforting. The pieces he’d made creating a kind of map leading from where he’d been to how far he’d come.
Unlike the first time she’d stumbled upon his shed, when he’d been holed up in the dark of the place like some cave dweller, he flipped the switch which turned on the lamps, creating a golden glow over the part of the shed she’d missed. And he watched as her gaze left his attempts at home furnishings to flicker over the assorted paraphernalia of a backyard luthier.
Sheets of soft spruce and denser rosewood with curves traced into their surfaces ready to cut for his next project. Sanding boards, clamps, glues, purfling strips, and planes of various lengths. And his earlier attempts at putting it all together hanging on the nearby wall.
Clearly unaware of what she was seeing, “You do have a computer!” was the first thing that came out of her mouth as she pointed at the varnish-flecked beast with the twenty-inch screen poking out from under its dust cover.
He laughed, despite himself. “Guilty. Though it’s not online. It has the software I need for working out the critical dimensions for these guys.”
She followed the sweep of his arm to the wall behind the door. “Oh.” Then her eyes widened as she finally put two and two together and said, “Ohhh. Are these Reg’s?”
Dash shook his head as he reached into the glass cabinet in the near corner to pull out his latest lady love—she had no neck as yet, though the body was bolted to a length of wood for handling as the final coats of lacquer dried, hardened, and shrunk. “You’re not the only one who’s been getting lessons.”
Her gaze roved hungrily over the guitar’s rosy finish. “You? You made that? You, who flat out refuse to show me how to play? You, who nearly flinch every time you accidentally touch Barbarella?”
Dash nodded. “Nobody in the whole world knows about this bar Reg. Not Jake, not the other guys in the band. Not even my therapist.”
“You’re in therapy?” she asked, surprise lighting her eyes till they sparkled.
Much better, he thought, knowing he’d made the right decision in bringing her here. Much better like this than wounded and confused and shamed as they’d been before. She presented so tough, but he was only beginning to understand how fragile she really was. How decidedly unlike those he’d once thought she resembled.
Now that he knew it, he knew he’d go a long way to prove it to her.
“I was in the entertainment industry,” he said, jutting a hip against the edge of a bench, smiling down at the sparkles. “We had one on retainer. That and a Reiki healer for stress reduction. An osteopath for Jake’s back. A feng shui expert helped set up the tour bus. A Catholic priest blessed it. We had a session pianist who was so damn funny, such an ice breaker for those times we got so sick of the sight of one another we wanted to wring one another’s necks, we hired him for a whole tour in which he only had to play one song.”
He rapped out a ba-dum-bum on the body of the guitar.
He realized it had been some time since Lori had even blinked, when she said, “You know, this is the first time I’ve ever seen you actually hold a guitar, even if it is only half a one.”
His fingers waved over the sound hole, right where the strings would be soon be. A ghost of sensation vibrated through his arm. A chord. Dissonant, delicious. Spicy, hot, satisfaction. Lori…in song.
Dash lifted the guitar to rest her base against a thigh. “So what do you think? She’s pretty, huh?”
“I…I’m so shocked to see you cradling the thing, I honestly don’t know what I think. Who’s it for?”
“Not sure yet.”
She rolled her eyes. “You slay me, Dash, you really do.” But—unlike Reg who badgered him about selling her, telling him he had it in him to be a much sought after master craftsman—she left it at that, and moved closer to the wall housing the others. The mistakes. The lessons learned. “How long does it take?”
“This one,” he said, “about seven months so far.”
“Seriously?”
“Although it’s really been a couple of years if you consider the ones I’ve screwed up along the way.”
“Like these?” she asked, looking his way for confirmation. He gave it to her with a smile. She traced the rise and fall of the inner back wall of a guitar with carved rosewood braces glued and clamped into place. “This is what Barbarella’s like on the inside?”
“More or less. Every bespoke guitar is different. From every piece of wood to the size of the waist to the depth of the lacquer, every choice results in a differe
nt sound.”
“So one slip of a chisel and—” She made a slicing move across her neck.
“Not quite so dire, but yeah, it can mean the difference between the sweetest sound and a dead spot.”
“The pressure,” she said, clearly in awe. And clearly in her element. The hardest metals are forged in the hottest fires, he thought. And Lori was as hard and as hot a woman as he’d ever known.
“Pull up a stool,” he said after clearing his suddenly dry throat.
“Why?”
“Just do it, woman.”
“The king of his castle,” she muttered, though she seemed kind of gleeful about it as she wriggled herself onto a stool.
In her shimmery top and neat skirt, her hair a tidy swirl over one shoulder, she was far too pretty to mess up. But then wasn’t that the point? To prove to her that mess wasn’t always a bad thing. Sometimes from mess magic could come.
He held out the guitar by the makeshift neck, waiting for her to take it. She did so with reverence.
“What do you want me to do with this?”
He gave her a piece of sandpaper. “Varnish is dry. Time for the polish.”
“No no no,” she said, making to give the guitar back. “I’ll screw it up.”
“Not possible.”
She glanced at the unfinished guitars on his wall. “There’s an entire wall of proof at how possible that is.”
“And yet…”
“Dash… I’m not the most gentle person on the planet.”
No, she wasn’t that. She was stubborn and fragile all at once. Which was why she needed this.
He moved the guitar body to a clean bench, spun her stool so that she was facing it, and curled the sand paper into her palm. “I did the hard sand yesterday. This is the finest grade paper I have. Once this is done, it gets a final polish on a buffing wheel which will bring it up to such a shine you’ll be able to see your face in it. Now sand,” he insisted. “Follow the grain. Slow flat strokes. Keep it soft. Keep it even. You’ll do great.”
