Dancing Barefoot

by Amber Lea Easton

  “I’m sorry, you just missed him.” The employee didn’t look up from the stack of books she arranged on a table.

  Missed him. She nodded without truly understanding how she could have undermined herself like this. Again. “He’s really gone then?”

  The girl worked as if she hadn’t spoken, head down, oblivious.

  Her gaze connected with the cover of Jacques’s book. Legs heavy and unsteady, she maneuvered toward the display until she touched the cover with her fingertips.

  Rome.

  Closing her eyes, she smelled the overpowering scent of the roses, felt the early morning breeze against bare skin, sensed him moving behind her, tasted him on her lips, heard the low sound of his voice saying her name.

  “Excuse me, do you know if Mr. Sinclair is staying in Boston tonight?” she asked.

  The woman looked at her as if she were a stalker. “He probably went back to New York. His gallery exhibit isn't until next weekend.”

  “Back to New York?” Information overload crashed her system. So close. The same side of the Atlantic. She braced herself against the counter.

  “He lives in New York,” she answered as if speaking to a small, slow child.

  “Right. He has an exhibit next Saturday. I saw that in the article...what gallery?” She handed over her credit card and blinked at the cover again.

  "The Bliss Institute."

  Breathing ceased again and she silently cursed Fate. Her friend Miranda owned the Bliss Institute. What was happening? Did Jacques know that? Of course not, how could he? She felt like an insane woman on the precipice of a major nervous breakdown.

  “Are you all right?” The woman grabbed the book and slipped it into a bag.

  “Perfect, never better.” She needed a martini…she’d give her life for a martini. Oblivion sounded like heaven right now.

  The girl handed her the receipt before stepping away as if afraid of catching the insanity bug.

  Six weeks. Jacques planned on being in Boston for six weeks.

  Laughter from upstairs halted her retreat. As if dragging her legs through mud, she walked toward the stairs. With every step, memories overpowered her. Laughing in bed with rain falling outside open windows, whispered secrets in the dark, sharing wine directly from the bottle, feeding each other bread with their fingertips.

  Him asking her to marry him, her saying yes.

  Her throwing it all away for reasons that now seemed meaningless.

  “We should go, Jacques. We’re running late. Miranda's already at the restaurant.” A stick-like man with shaggy brown hair and black-framed eye glasses appeared at the top of the stairs.

  She stood on the bottom step, one foot poised to ascend, her hand on the railing and blocking the way. She clutched the bag to her side and turned to flee.

  “Jess?” The quiet question stopped her descent. “Jessica Moriarty?”

  She gripped the railing and looked up at him.

  Jacques stood at the top of the stairs, blond hair falling across his forehead and skimming his ears, different from the picture on display, more like it had been when they'd known one another, shaggy and disheveled. Emerald eyes snapped with fire as his gaze raked over her from head to foot. A cobalt blue shirt had been stuffed into black jeans, half in the waistband and half out as if he simply didn’t give a damn. He’d rolled the sleeves to his elbows, exposing tanned forearms, and a leather bracelet twisted around his left wrist. He walked toward her like a predator who’d cornered his prey. Slowly...surely. Sexuality oozed from his pores with every step he took.

  She stepped back and swallowed the rush of saliva that flooded her mouth.

  He stopped two stairs above her. “Running away from me again?”

  * * *

  Chapter Two

  He gripped the railing tighter than necessary. There she stood, the living embodiment of a recurring dream, Jessica Moriarty. Oversized blue eyes looked up at him like a deer looking straight into a shotgun, short black hair emphasized her long neck and sharp chin, although familiar, she looked like a perfect stranger. Too put together, too thin, too hard.

  He missed her all over again.

  “You were going to run again, weren’t you? Even after all this time?” His heart did a back flip.

  She took another step backward without taking her eyes from his face.

  “We’re going to be late for dinner with Miranda Jenkins to go over arrangements for the gallery exhibit,” Kevin said. “We’re already behind schedule.” His assistant looked between the two of them, confusion obvious in his eyes. "Jacques, seriously. We need to go."

  “Wait for me in the car.” He clenched his fists at his side, unsure whether he wanted to throttle her or hold her tight and ask all the questions he'd had for so long. He did neither, afraid to move or to express too much emotion.

  “But—”

  “Go away, Kevin.” He stepped down without looking away from those eyes of hers.

  “I’m surprised you recognized me,” she said.

  “No, you’re not.” He would know her anywhere.

  “I thought you had gone… the lady said…so you live in New York now?”

  “You bought my book.”

  “The cover caught my attention.” A quiver of uncertainty rippled beneath her voice.

  “Rome.” The word—the place—carried more meaning than he wanted to admit.

  History brewed between them with the intensity of a summer storm.

  “I guess I can now say I knew you when.” Tension pulsated off her like a force field.

  “Yes, I suppose you can.” Eloquence eluded him. Seeing her here hadn’t been a part of his plan. Not that he had made a plan exactly…but he had had an idea... a pitiful fantasy.

  “I wondered if I would see you,” he said.

  “You did?”

  “Being in Boston, I wondered.”

  “Um… I was walking by and—”

  “Why come inside?”

  “I wanted…” Her words tapered off as her gaze roamed over his face.

  “What did you want?”

  “Your book. I…you did this, you did what you set out to do, I wanted to…see it.”

  “Is that all you wanted to see? A book of photographs?”

  “Well, yes. I mean, no.”

  Chemistry had a way of existing despite the conscious mind’s wishes. The air between them moved and shimmered like heat rising from pavement.

  “Do you want me to sign it?” He moved from the last stair separating them.

  “No, that’s not it. I wanted to see you.”

  “Why?” His gaze skimmed over the straight hair that skimmed her chin in perfect symmetry. Always a beautiful woman, she now looked fragile. Skin too pale, probably from that stable job she had always wanted in her secure little world hidden away from sunlight and reckless men like him. “Why did you come inside, Jess?”

  “Curiosity.”

  “About how I turned out? How I survived? Is that what you’re curious about?” He clenched and unclenched his hands at his sides, determined to remain immune to those eyes of hers. He had rehearsed this scenario a million times since Italy.

  Cool and aloof, he coached himself, must remain emotionless.

  “You’re not making this easy.” Her back straightened while her chin lifted.

  “Easy? What do you expect? A hug? A happy reunion?” He noticed the fighting stance and grinned. Feisty. Maybe she hadn’t changed that much after all.

  She shifted her weight from foot to foot. “You’ve changed.”

  “For the better, right? Do you smell the success on me now? Is that what lured you inside? Am I suddenly more acceptable to you? Don't be too hopeful. I'm still a gypsy, this is just a detour, kind of like Italy was for you.”

  She flinched. Her hands shook when she shoved them through her hair.

  Deep inside his chest, his heart stirred with protectiveness. He didn’t want to hurt her. If he had had his way, she would be his wife. But he hadn
’t had his way. She had deceived him, manipulated him into falling in love with her, treated him as a summer plaything, and disappeared one day without saying good-bye. But, regardless of how she had felt about him, he had loved her. That’s why her leaving had hurt so badly, why it still hurt. Five years wasn’t that long ago, only a heartbeat in time.

  “Jacques, we really need to leave. We have dinner with Jenkins then our flight back to New York. We can’t—” Kevin ended his statement with a broad gesture of frustration.

  He nodded and shoved his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. If ever he needed an escape, it was now. “Bring the car around. I’ll meet you outside.”

  “Well, if you’ve got to go, I'll get out of your way," she said.

  “People are waiting for me.” He winced at the verbal acknowledgment of his compromises.

  A tentative smile curved her lips. “I always knew you’d have your day to shine. It was inevitable.”

  His gaze drifted over her again. “Corporate America treating you well? Let me guess…you always work late, are committed only to your career, have given up art, have a stable boyfriend who wears suits and talks about the stock market, are still trying to please a mother who never understood you, have compromised to the point of losing yourself completely…am I close to the truth?”

  Her smile faded. “Five years is a long time to hold a grudge.”

  “It isn’t long enough.” He wished this rendezvous could go differently, but bitterness tainted his words. He reminded himself of his immunity to her. Cool. Aloof. “I never said I had a grudge against you. Why would I? That would mean I think about you and I haven’t in years.”

  “I can see that you haven’t given me a thought at all. You must have forgotten who this was, then?” She held his book up to his face.

  Brains and beauty, a combination he now avoided.

  “Perhaps I did forget it was you. Hundreds of women and even more photographs…” He ripped his gaze from the cover of his book. He had used that photograph hoping she would see it some day and be hurt by the memory.

  The cover photo had been taken the morning after their night in Rome after he had proposed to her and foolishly believed her when she had said yes. Questions pummeled him aching for release—and, oh, he had fantasized about seeing her again and letting them fly without restraint—but he hadn't expected to be blindsided with heartache.

  “Why are you lying? We both know damn well—”

  “Of the two of us, you are the expert liar.” He thrust the book back into her hands. “What do you want?”

  She slid the book into her messenger bag. Unshed tears glistened in her eyes. When she looked away, he could almost see the fight for control within her. When she looked back, eyes were dry. Scary control. When had she learned that disturbing skill? Not that he should care, he didn't. Her life. Her choices.

  “You’re good at that, aren’t you?” he asked despite himself.

  “Good at what?” Her gaze slid to his chest.

  “Hiding what you’re really feeling. What an actress you are.”

  Her blue eyes hardened like a frozen glacial lake. She stood tall. “I almost didn’t come inside, but now I’m glad I did. You’ve turned into a real ass. Fame must have warped your brain. It’ll be much easier to forget you now.”

  “You’ve had years to forget me,” he said.

  “I failed.” Her chin trembled. She shrugged in defeat. “I failed, okay? Is that what you need to hear? I haven’t forgotten Florence, Rome, our apartment, you...any of it. I think about it all daily.”

  "Do you ever stop lying?"

  Their gaze connected and held.

  Irritated by her presence, his lack of control and life in general, he strode toward the door. Time to leave.

  He stopped in the doorway and turned, unable to simply leave her behind even though he knew he should. “You were going to run away from me again when you realized I was still here, weren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  Guilt for his behavior settled in his heart and sickened him. She'd mattered to him, had been the center of his world...once upon a time not too far in the past. “I’m sorry for treating you badly. You took me by surprise."

  She walked toward him, a hesitant grin on her trembling lips. She looked foreign to him in her crisp white blouse, red skirt and high heels.

  “I wish we had more time, we could talk, get a drink, catch up. That wouldn't be so terrible, would it? I have so much I want to say to you, to explain—"

  “I need to go before Kevin has a nervous breakdown.” Irritation snapped through his nervous system. He wanted to take her to dinner and force her to eat pasta, mess her hair up, make her laugh and see...well, see what had happened to the woman he had loved, find out the real reason she had given up on their future together. But getting involved in her life again—even in a small way—would be detrimental to his heart health. So why did he want it so badly? “Kevin’s like you, always worried about being late.”

  “How do you stand him?” Her tentative grin became a smile.

  “I fire him daily but he refuses to go away.” He would not meet her eyes again as they walked together onto the street. Awkwardness stretched between them in the warm June evening.

  “You don’t have a few minutes? Just to talk? Catch up? We could have coffee or a drink? After your dinner?” She kept his pace, stood too close, looked at him with those big blue eyes. Damn her.

  He wanted more than a drink. He wanted hours. He wanted an explanation.

  When she rubbed the back of her neck, he noticed the ring on her finger. Hurt and anger took their rightful place in his heart. Resolve restored, he looked down the block for any sign of Kevin and the get away car.

  “We have said all there is to say,” he said.

  “We could—”

  “Could what? Talk about old times over a cold drink in a crowded bar?” He closed the space between them. “Do you know how many women want to have a drink with me, Jess?”

  “I’m not a stranger.” She stood her ground, straightened her spine and tilted her chin as if willing to go toe-to-toe with him. Maybe she hadn't changed so much after all.

  “What do you want from me?” His gaze pierced hers looking for a glimpse of truth beneath the facade.

  “I don’t want anything from you.”

  “What did you expect when you came here? You expected something. Deny it.” The temptation to yank the ring from her hand boiled beneath his skin. She had no right to wear it.

  “I don’t know what I expected.”

  “No? I think you expected me to be happy to see you.”

  “You’re wrong. I knew this would be hard. I—”

  “And you couldn’t come during scheduled hours, you waited to catch me off-guard, to…” he struggled for the right word. A native French speaker, sometimes English escaped him when he needed it most.

  “I worked late. I thought I'd missed you, hoped I had.” She stepped within inches of him. “I was scared, is that what you want to hear?”

  He silently cursed Kevin for taking so long with the car. “That was your problem in Italy, too. Scared little Jessica. Haven’t you grown up yet?”

  Her head jerked back as if he'd slapped her.

  “I shouldn’t have come.” She stepped backward.

  “No, you shouldn’t have. I’m better for not knowing you.” He shook his head. He had had enough. Of all the scenarios he had played out in his mind, this conversation was all wrong. He hated himself for the words he said.

  “So am I.” She faced him on the sidewalk, black hair tossing away from her face in the breeze and eyes snapping blue fire. “I don’t need to know an arrogant jerk who is so wrapped up in his bitterness that he can’t see when he’s wrong. I mean look at you.” She gestured widely at his chest. “You can’t even tuck in your shirt. You’re an overgrown boy.”

  He glanced down at the shirt that had come loose from his jeans. With a laugh, he met her gaze. “I usually
have a woman inspecting me before I go into public.”

  Jaw clenched, she watched the passing traffic. Profile to him, she nodded. “I know you hate me. Fine. I accept that. But because I’m here, because it’s obvious this is the last time I'll see you, I need to say something.”

  He patted his jeans for a cigarette. He had picked the wrong time to quit. “Say it then.”

  Her hand seized his wrist. The contact stopped his frantic search and ceased his breathing. He dragged his gaze to her face.

  “I’m sorry.” She squeezed. "You were the last person on earth that I ever wanted to hurt. I truly am sorry. It wasn’t a lie. I know you think that the entire summer together was a lie, but it wasn’t. I wish you'd give me a chance to explain. I can't stand the idea of you hating me.”

  He yanked his hand free from her touch. “I don’t hate you.”

  Eyebrows arched over eyes filled with doubt. “Now who’s lying?”

  A honking horn snapped his attention from her. Kevin waved from a double-parked sedan. Jacques, really, we can’t keep Ms. Jenkins waiting."

  "I heard you were showing at the Bliss Institute. I know Miranda. Do you remember Marc, the friend who visited me in Italy? She's his sister. We're all friends."

  "How is that possible?" he asked more to Fate than to her. He must have been a monster of a man in his past life, because Karma really liked fucking with him this time around.

  “You're exhibit is next week?” She followed him to the car.

  “That is the plan," he said through gritted teeth.

  “Are there more photographs of me on display? Shouldn't I have had to sign a release or something? Miranda's my friend, people I know will be here. I have a right to know.”

  “And we both know how important your reputation is, don't we, Jess? What will people say?” Coming to Boston had been a huge mistake. He opened the door to the rented car. “Sue me.”

  “Let me meet you later,” she said again, surprising him.

  "I thought I was an overgrown boy and an arrogant jerk that you're better for not knowing." He squinted at her, one foot in the car and one out. Why wouldn’t she go away? The idea that she wanted something from him needled at him. She still wore his ring. She looked gorgeous, yes, but hollow as if all the life had been sucked out of her somewhere along the way. Not his problem, though.