Dirty Dancing at Devil's Leap

by Julie Anne Long

  Damn. Ironic, that sentence. Ironic, heading toward bitter.

  “Sometimes it’s less about what you want and more about what another person might need, Mac.”

  That was ironic heading toward bitter, too. She did not like the sound of it in her voice.

  Suddenly this wasn’t just about his brother or the ties.

  “It’s just . . . maybe he doesn’t know how else to connect with you. How are you ever going to know if you don’t talk to him?”

  He drew in a long breath and sighed it out. “Avalon . . . I don’t think you understand what it was like after all of that went down. Everywhere I turned there was swirling chaos, like a tornado. And . . . let’s say you captured that tornado that would otherwise destroy you and keep on destroying everything else in its path and stuffed it into a garbage can and clapped on the lid. You have one option after that. You keep the lid on all the way and never open it. Because if you ever open it even a little bit it’ll escape and it’s destruction all over again.”

  “But was it really that easy to just cut everyone out?”

  “Is anything easy? I learned a long time ago certain kinds of ties can turn into a noose.”

  Her stomach went peculiarly cold. “Boy. Talk about a pickup line.”

  He didn’t laugh.

  Which was fine, because she didn’t think it was funny, either.

  And now she was closing up, too, and she only half realized it. She shifted her arms against her body protectively.

  Moved away from him.

  “I just wish you—”

  “Avalon.” The word was startling. Flat and cold. A warning. “Enough.”

  She did not like that one bit.

  He looked into her eyes then.

  And she hated the fact that she was carefully holding her expression still. She didn’t want him to know what she was thinking, or, God help her, feeling.

  But when their eyes met it was still almost a physical thing. Every time she could not believe how lovely his eyes were, but she was smart enough to know that the true impact came from the person looking out of them. And his went softer, and his chest went up, came down in a sigh.

  She couldn’t smack down that little jolt.

  His smile was kind of wistful. But his eyes were darker. Not sad, but thoughtful.

  “I remember counting your freckles that day at Whiskey Creek because in that second before you opened your eyes I thought . . . what if I never see her again? I never wanted to forget. She had eyes the color of mahogany and big as lakes, I would have said. And thirteen freckles.”

  Her heart gave a huge thump. As if it were turning belly-up in supplication, like Chick Pea.

  There was a suspicious burning sensation behind her eyes.

  It might have been the most romantic thing anyone had said to her. From a man who was studiedly not romantic.

  And yet she wondered . . . that it might actually be his way of saying good-bye. Memorizing her yet again.

  She couldn’t keep slamming her entire being up against the metaphorical wall that was Mac Coltrane. Didn’t he understand that cutting everything out that could potentially hurt or inconvenience him meant essentially cutting out his heart?

  Because what is a heart if not inconvenient? A potential source of grave pain, right?

  Maybe he knew. And didn’t care.

  He did care about things—his goats, his cat. She was positive he cared about her. But she knew in her soul that she wouldn’t be immune from the kind of ruthless exile to which Mac consigned people who hurt him. He’d do it before she had a chance to hurt him, if he thought there was a possibility of that.

  And just like that her heart suddenly started beating swiftly as if it knew it was once again in actual and present danger.

  She sat up suddenly.

  “I should get going. Eden’s going to be here in a few minutes and I wanted to get a few things done before she gets here.”

  Her tone was bright and friendly. It was her presentation voice. Her put-her-best-foot-forward-everything-is-dandy voice. It had always glossed over what she was thinking or feeling and it had always been persuasive.

  Mac noticed. He frowned faintly at her. Puzzled. But probably uncertain as to what question he should ask.

  “Yeah,” he said finally. “Okay. I’ll meet you all later out by the goats.”

  Avalon got dressed.

  And she left.

  And in the five minutes in between those two events neither of them said a word.

  Chapter 21

  Something had happened in there, Mac knew. And not just spectacular sex.

  It felt very like some kind of decision had been reached that neither of them had voiced.

  Or maybe it was an ultimatum.

  He did not like being pushed. Or maneuvered.

  His mood was rather dark and his temper was on a low simmer. His mind traced the confines of the issue but it did not want to dive into the dark heart of it, which might have been a failure of nerve, and the idea that there was something left in the world that scared him, pissed him off, too.

  He lost himself in work instead. One of the final tasks remaining on the project spreadsheet was the hideously stuck window frame on the lower level. He absorbed himself in the brutal yet delicate scraping and scraping of old paint to free it into motion, the meticulous sanding, the solvents, the paint.

  For the first time in about a decade, hours later, the damn thing moved freely.

  And that afternoon, as arranged, Avalon and Eden had brought a dozen little Hummingbirds to meet his goats.

  He and Avalon managed to play off each other like a well-rehearsed comedy team, effortlessly. They even did the goat voices, which practically crippled the Hummingbirds with laughter. He explained about how scientists thought goats’ funny pupils helped them maintain a wider field of vision so they could stay aware of predators. He told them how it was good for the environment to let goats help keep the grass short. He told them about goat fur and goat cheese; he let them hand out snacks.

  He’d learned every damn thing about goats when he acquired those goats, because he wanted to know them from the ground up. And there was something satisfying in imparting the knowledge he’d so carefully gathered, which was, in its way, teaching someone else from the ground up.

  But when all the Hummingbirds had gone home, Avalon went back up to the house without saying good night to him.

  And if he’d only surmised that something had actually happened in his cottage this morning . . . well, he damn well knew for certain.

  He was impatient with ambiguity; too often it felt like dread. Or manipulation. He’d always done what he could to transmute it into manageable parts as fast as he could.

  He was tempted to stalk over there to get a conversation going.

  It was the prospect of not liking what he learned when he stalked over there that kept him from doing that.

  He read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance instead, in the hopes that it would put him to sleep. Because he did, in fact, have it on his Kindle, and he’d never read it.

  But that night, his huge bed, once perfect for him, suddenly felt like a sea that wanted to drown him. Much too vast.

  The pillow next to his smelled a little like coconut. And he knew this was because Avalon had rested her hair there. He spent a moment being nonspecifically angry about this.

  And then he leaned over, dragged it across his chest and gently folded his arms around it. As if it were both life raft and lover. As if he could smother that uncertain ache in his chest with it.

  Then he finally got up to get a drink of water around quarter after two in the morning.

  He stood at the sink, thinking of Avalon in her freshly painted turret. Wondering if she’d disappeared all those years ago because even if he was the equivalent of a wounded squirrel, he was bound to destroy her heart one of these days. Even if she couldn’t articulate that in so many words.

  Suddenly a stray beam from what he was cer
tain was a headlight swiped across his window.

  He was instantly on alert. They were in the middle of nowhere, even for Hellcat Canyon. Cars just did not accidentally make that turn into Devil’s Leap.

  He flung open the door and craned his head. A car was turning up the long drive to the house. This wasn’t New York. It’s not like she could get any kind of food delivered at this time of night. But if someone wanted to attempt a home invasion, well . . . it was a long way off for the sheriff.

  Good thing Avalon had a half-deaf fluff-ball of a dog to protect her.

  He didn’t bother getting dressed. He shoved his feet into his shoes, grabbed his shotgun off the rack and jogged up the road, swiftly, on the balls of his feet, matching his breathing to the fall of his feet, heedless of being bare-chested and boxer-shorted.

  He ducked low and crept around the side of the house from the back, flattening against the wall, inching toward the front.

  He froze when heard the unmistakable sound: a twig cracked.

  Crunched with the kind of force only a human foot could apply.

  His hackles rose.

  Seconds later he saw the man creeping up the flagstone path.

  Or . . . maybe not creeping. Striding, actually, as purposefully as any pizza delivery boy. Really tall guy. He was wearing dark skinny jeans and a grayish hoodie pulled up over his head. All of that looked like a burglar costume, or worse.

  Apart from the fact that he was apparently using his cellphone as a flashlight. You’d have to be a pretty stupid burglar to do that.

  Mac cocked the shotgun. That sound was about as primal as the growl of a wolf.

  The guy froze.

  “Yeah, whoever you are . . .” Mac all but hissed. “Don’t move a fucking hair.”

  The guy remained frozen. Really frozen. One arm bent at the elbow, the other thrust out mid-stride. It was a very adult version of Simon Says.

  “Holy fucking shit, dude . . .” The guy’s voice was an incredulous creak.

  “Put your hands up where I can see them.”

  “I swear to God I’m not a burglar. Are you . . . what the hell . . . does Avalon have an armed guard now?”

  “PUT. THEM. UP. Not going to ask again.”

  His arms shot up. So did the phone. Absurdly, the guy now looked like one of those idiots who aimed cell phones at concert stages in order to record them.

  “Now turn around to face me. Really slowly.”

  The guy turned around. Slowly.

  Two things happened at once.

  Mac could plainly read the word Dartmouth on the sweatshirt.

  And the lights of the balcony above and the floodlights below switched on, and he was bathed in light.

  Both he and the guy looked up at the balcony.

  Avalon was peering over the edge. Her hair was spilling down around her and her face looked kind of grayish and taut in the bright light. Worried.

  “Mac? Is that you? What’s happening out there? Are you okay? Should I call the cops?”

  “Call Eli, Ava. This pervert was creeping around your house.”

  The guy turned his face up to the balcony like a veritable Romeo, and plaintively said, “Avalon . . . for the love of God tell this guy who I am.”

  “Oh shit,” she sighed. “Mac, this is Corbin.”

  Silence.

  “Ah,” Mac said.

  And nothing else.

  Which was astonishingly, almost thrillingly rude.

  And he also didn’t put the gun down.

  “I’m coming down,” she said tersely. “Neither of you move.”

  She found she didn’t mind overmuch that Mac was aiming a gun at Corbin.

  And she hoped he took her literally and didn’t put that gun down.

  She grabbed her Peace and Love sweatshirt and threw it on over her head and shoved her feet in her spaniel slippers and bolted down the stairs.

  Crap crap crap. What the hell was Corbin doing here?

  In the dead of night?

  She emerged and truly got a good look at the tableau of Mac, spectacular in boxers, stubble, shoes and nothing else, aiming a gun at that asshole she’d lived with for four years.

  And for the first time, Ava saw something truly unnerving in Mac.

  Mac knew exactly what he was capable of in terms of strength and aggression, and that made him a universe different from Corbin.

  Corbin wasn’t easy to intimidate. But maybe he ought to be. He was charismatic. Not stop-you-in-your-tracks rakishly good-looking the way Mac was, but he was certainly used to getting his own way, which was in its way a form of confidence.

  She studied him as though he were a stranger.

  “Corbin, this is Mac. He’s the groundskeeper for Devil’s Leap and my . . . er . . . contractor.”

  Mac shot her a blackly incredulous look.

  Corbin assessed Mac.

  “Contractor, huh? You get guns like that from . . . what . . . carrying water from the well, swinging an axe?”

  “Bench pressing skinny tech nerds. Do you guys come in a cord, like firewood?”

  Corbin ignored this. “Your name is actually Mac? Like in a 1940s gangster movie?”

  “Mac, as in Maximilian.”

  Mac wasn’t blinking. His sense of humor had vacated and something very dark and palpable had replaced it.

  “Wait. Coltrane? As in . . . Dixon Coltrane?”

  “Yes.”

  “Didn’t your father practically invent yuppies? And Ponzi schemes?”

  “Corbin,” Ava said sharply.

  After all, Mac had the shotgun. And a temper.

  “Not precisely.” Mac’s voice was now a lazy drawl. “But from him I learned what a fraud and a cheat looks like. Hence the gun aimed at you.”

  “Mac!”

  She might as well have not been standing there. Testosterone was clearly making the two of them deaf to high-pitched voices.

  She swiveled toward Corbin, clearly the weaker of the two. “Corbin, why don’t you wait for me inside the house. I need to have a word with Mac.”

  “Yeah, why don’t you wait inside,” Mac concurred lazily. “You probably needed a change of underwear, anyway.”

  “Said the brave man with the gun,” Corbin muttered bitterly.

  “Corbin,” Ava repeated sharply. “I swear. To. God.”

  Mac locked the gun and, with a flourish, put it on the ground. “Go right ahead and say more things to me, Dartmouth.”

  “Mac,” Ava hissed. “Enough! For God’s sake. Both of you. Corbin, you can wait for me in the house. The front door is unlocked. Just follow the flagstone path around. And don’t let the dog out or I’ll let Mac shoot you.”

  Faintly, they could hear the squeaky, beeping barks of Chick Pea.

  A series of hard stares ricocheted among the three of them like a bullet in a closed closet.

  “Going.” Corbin flung up his arms and turned around and stalked toward the house.

  “Nice meeting you, Corncob,” Mac called after him.

  Corbin shot a middle finger up in the air without turning around.

  And suddenly Ava was alone with Mac.

  They stared at each other in silence that felt portentous, and not in a good way.

  “Mature,” she said finally.

  “But probably not wrong,” he said mildly. “About the underwear.”

  His mood felt dangerous. The little hairs were standing up on her neck, as if in anticipation of a lightning storm.

  “I hope Chick Pea bites him,” he added. And he wasn’t joking.

  “She doesn’t have enough teeth to do that.”

  He sighed. “Of course not.”

  Their faces in the floodlight from the balcony looked as stark as X-rays.

  It wasn’t a flattering light for anybody. Certainly not the be-stubbled.

  “So . . .” Mac began with a blitheness edged all around in razors. “I’m your”—he bobbed exaggerated air quotes—“‘er, contractor’?”

  “You pref
erred me to introduce you as the guy I’ve been banging in between coats of paint?”

  He considered this. “Yes.”

  She made a sound. Almost a laugh. Only much less amused.

  “Avalon?”

  “Yes?”

  “Why is Corncob here at two in the morning creeping around your house before I could install the motion-sensitive lighting?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t. Cross my heart, swear on Chick Pea. I sure as hell didn’t invite him.”

  “He knew where to find you?”

  “Well, yeah. I wasn’t trying to hide from him.”

  “So you’re not worried about . . .”

  Her voice softened a little. “I’m safe from him, Mac. I swear to you. He is mostly pretty harmless. In the physical sense.”

  “He looks like he’d bow like a twig if I handed him a barbell.”

  “But you should see him in limbo contests.”

  Mac was not in the mood to laugh. “So what am I in this scenario, Avalon? Am I like the gamekeeper from Lady Chatterley’s Lover?”

  She hesitated.“Isn’t that kind of hot?” she tried. Weakly.

  “That’s beside the point.”

  “Did you actually read Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Mac? Or just watch a porn version?”

  “Lady Chatterley’s Lover is the porn version of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Don’t change the subject.”

  “What is the subject, exactly?”

  Good question. Jealousy was not in and of itself a subject.

  “No guy comes three hours out of his way in the dead of night for business reasons. He wants you back.”

  She gestured weakly to her sweat-shirted, ponytailed, paint-splotched self. “Can you blame him?”

  Her insouciance just seemed to infuriate him.

  “He’s a dog,” he pointed out, slowly, blackly. “And not the fluffy kind needing rescuing.”

  Now she was really angry. “Thank you for the recap. You, on the other hand, are the . . . the Dalai Lama.”

  “I’m the what?”

  “Or someone else with a stainless soul and faultless motives who would never, ever hurt me.”

  The last few words were a trifle nasty and carried an implication that made Mac wary. “Avalon, I just . . .”