Vanishing Dreams: Vanishing Dreams (Devil's Bend #2)

by Nicole Edwards

  “I’ll be back,” Dalton interrupted, talking to the guys at the table as he pushed his chair back. He was ready for that next beer, but nature was calling his name and she was getting louder by the second.

  Keeping his hat tipped low, hoping no one would recognize him, Dalton wound his way through the scattered tables on his way to the restroom at the back of the place. It seemed to take a decade just to get there. Diamonds and Lace was probably the biggest strip club he’d ever been in. Hell, it was bigger than most of the bars he had played in when his career had just been getting started.

  Everything was bigger in Texas, wasn’t that how the saying went?

  He smiled at the thought, heading down the dimly lit hall that ended with a door labeled “Men.”

  Dalton did his business, washed his hands, and then headed back out, not wanting to hang out any longer than necessary. There were a couple of drunk cowboys chatting it up just outside the door as he slipped by, once again keeping his head tipped down, the rim of his Stetson shielding his face.

  Had he been looking where he was going, he might’ve been able to stop the collision course that he was unknowingly on. But since that wasn’t the case, Dalton didn’t notice the petite, dark-haired woman coming right for him until it was too late.

  Their bodies collided, his hands immediately coming up to grab her arms, trying to keep her from falling over from the impact. He managed to catch her, but not before she stumbled, her arms flying, a wad of cash fluttering to the floor as her arms went askew, knocking her mask clean off her head.

  That wasn’t the only thing that went askew.

  As Dalton looked into that face, his breath slammed to a halt while his brain scrambled. Thinking it might help, he shook his head, wondering if maybe he’d been knocked out cold and he was now seeing things. It was one thing for people to tell him that she was a stripper, or for him to suspect that had been her up on that stage. But it was something else entirely to see for himself.

  “Dalton,” Katie whispered, surprise etched across her face.

  Sonuvabitch.

  Nope, he didn’t have a concussion and he wasn’t seeing things. Although, for the first time in his life, he wished he were.

  There, standing before him, naked except for the tiny turquoise G-string covering not nearly enough of her was that sweet, innocent little angel who’d fogged his brain so many months ago. The one he dreamed about. The one he’d actually had stupid thoughts about for months on end.

  “Katie.”

  Dalton realized he was still holding her arms, his fingers gently surrounding her slender biceps. He released her and took a step back, then another until there he was a safe distance away.

  As he stared down into the prettiest gray eyes he’d ever seen, Dalton saw the last few months before him. All of the nights he’d fought to not think about her, all of the times he’d remembered holding her in his arms, fucking her senseless, all of the days he had hated himself for not confronting her… And as his startling realization turned into anger, then morphed into rage, he glared at Katie.

  “I can explain,” she said quickly.

  Not wanting her to give him any of the gory details as to why she was sexing it up in a strip club while her alternate persona catered to cowboys with the help of her sweet smile at The Rusty Nail, he stopped her before she could continue.

  “Yeah. Don’t bother.”

  And with that, Dalton pushed past her, ignoring her when she called his name.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Sunday night

  “How’re things goin’ with you?” Dalton asked Braydon Walker, who was sitting at Tessa and Cooper’s kitchen table, snatching a foil-wrapped potato and dropping it onto his plate.

  “It’s goin’,” Braydon replied in his usual standoffish way.

  “How’s the family?” Dalton asked, taking the plate of potatoes when Braydon handed them over.

  “Good. Talked to my ol’ man this mornin’,” Braydon offered, glancing over at Dalton. “Sounds like they’ve got it all runnin’ smooth in my absence.”

  Dalton could tell that Braydon wanted to talk about himself about as much as Dalton did. Although he’d tried to keep the questions impersonal, he still felt as though he’d hit a nerve. Rather than make Tessa’s cousin uncomfortable, Dalton opted to change the subject.

  “What about you?” Dalton asked Tessa, who was doctoring her own potato with butter and sour cream. “Everything in place for the weddin’?”

  Tessa smiled, her face lighting up as her eyes slipped over to Cooper. “We’re gettin’ there. Only a few more weeks to go.”

  Cooper grinned just as big as his fiancée, reaching for the basket of rolls. “Countin’ down the days, darlin’.”

  “You glad to be back?” Braydon asked, his question directed at Dalton.

  “Damn straight. Life on the road ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

  “I couldn’t imagine it is. But the tour went well?”

  “Better than well,” Dalton answered Braydon’s question. “Wish you could’ve made it to the last show. Probably the best one yet.”

  Braydon nodded, shoveling steak into his mouth while he spared Dalton a look every now and then. When he finished chewing, he shot off another question. “I heard Cheyenne Montgomery was there. How’d that work out?”

  “The woman can fucking entertain a crowd,” Dalton stated. “They loved her.”

  “We’re lookin’ at puttin’ together an official tour,” Cooper chimed in. “The three of us.”

  “Is that right?” Braydon asked, glancing back and forth between Dalton and Cooper.

  “That’s the plan. She seemed to be on board with the idea,” Dalton confirmed.

  Braydon’s cell phone rang as they sat there eating, and Dalton watched as the guy peered down at the screen before hitting a button to silence it. Dalton quirked an eyebrow at Braydon. “Everything okay?”

  “Yep,” Braydon answered gruffly. “My twin. I’m sure he’s just checking up on me.”

  “You talk to him lately?” Cooper asked.

  Dalton looked up from his food to see Tessa and Cooper watching Braydon intently. Looked like the guy was about ready to bolt from the table from the scrutiny in their gazes.

  “Nope. Don’t need to.”

  Cooper made eye contact with Dalton briefly, a signal that meant there was a story there. A story Dalton probably didn’t want to know. Whatever demons Braydon was running from, Dalton felt his pain. But he damn sure didn’t want to add to the guy’s stress, so he turned his attention on his food, hoping for his sake the topic would die.

  “Where’s Katie these days?” Tessa asked when the silence had hovered over the table for longer than a minute. The woman never did let dinner conversation dwindle.

  “No idea,” Dalton answered quickly, focusing his attention on prepping his baked potato and avoiding as much eye contact with Cooper and Tessa as possible. When it came to the subject of Katie, he had absolutely no intention of discussing her with anyone, including his closest friends.

  “I thought the two of you were datin’,” Cooper added, his hands stilling as he held his knife and fork over his steak.

  From the corner of his eye, he realized Cooper and Braydon had both turned their full attention on him, which was unsettling and disturbing. This was supposed to be dinner, not an interrogation, yet he felt oddly as though he were under the spotlight.

  Dalton knew he couldn’t get out of this quite as easily as he wanted to, so he shrugged. “Nothin’ serious. We just went out a coupla times.”

  “Sure looked like more than ‘nothin’ serious,’” Tessa offered, stressing the last two words.

  Dalton dared to look up, meeting her concerned gaze. “Really, we’re cool. We just decided to back off a little. What with the tour and all.”

  “Now I know you’re lyin’,” Cooper added, his fork and knife hitting the glass plate.

  Dalton closed his eyes briefly before sitting up straight a
nd looking directly into the eyes of his closest friend. He opted not to go on the defensive, waiting for Coop to follow up on his accusation. Dalton had learned a long time ago that jumping to conclusions only got him in a world of unnecessary hurt.

  “The two of you backed off long before the tour,” Cooper stated, reaching for his beer. “In fact, I’m pretty sure it was about the time you went to your folks’ place for Christmas.”

  “Not true,” Dalton lied. He had managed to be civil to Katie the few times he’d seen her at The Rusty Nail over the last few months. Granted, he had tried to avoid going there on the nights she worked, but there had been a handful of times he hadn’t been able to get out of it. He didn’t want to make anyone suspicious, although he had no real reason to keep her fucking secret for her in the first place.

  Anger surged through his insides, obliterating his appetite. He tried to hide it, not wanting to upset the meal, especially with Braydon sitting there, watching quietly.

  “What’s really going on?” Tessa questioned, returning her focus to her food as though she was just making casual conversation. “Did the two of you break up?”

  “We weren’t together,” Dalton barked, squeezing the neck of his beer bottle as he took a deep breath to calm himself. “Sorry. No, we didn’t break up. We weren’t together in the first place.” Not that he hadn’t wanted to be, but Katie … well, Katie clearly had other ways of spending her time. Time she insisted she didn’t have. The woman had claimed that her schoolwork was getting in the way, but from what he’d seen last night, it damn sure wasn’t homework that was keeping her up late at night.

  A bold-faced lie.

  But he couldn’t very well tell Tessa that. From what he knew, Tessa and Katie were close, which surprised the shit out of him considering the double life that Katie was living. Whatever her reasons, the woman had done a fantastic job of snowing everyone, including her close friends.

  Sure, it would’ve been easy to blurt out that she was a stripper and that he couldn’t stand the sight of her because she had lied to him, but that wouldn’t solve anything. And it wasn’t exactly true. The bigger problem was that Dalton did want to see Katie. He wanted to figure out why she’d felt it was necessary to lie to him in the first place.

  The urge to do exactly that grew stronger and stronger every day, and now that he was back in Devil’s Bend for the foreseeable future, he had the feeling he was going to confront her. He just hoped he could do it without losing his shit. Why it bothered him so damned much in the first place confused the hell out of him, and Dalton was tired of the mixed feelings as much as he was tired of thinking about her all the fucking time.

  “I was thinkin’ about invitin’ her to dinner,” Tessa admitted, drawing Dalton’s attention.

  “Don’t,” he growled. “Damn it. Ignore me.” He was going to have to ignore himself. This anger wasn’t who he was, and he was getting overwhelmed by the emotion, so much so that he was barking at his friends. He was supposed to be having a good time, living the high life, enjoying his new outlook on life.

  Instead, he was being a dickhead.

  “Sorry. Again,” he mumbled. “Invite whoever you want.” Just tell me when so I can make other plans, he thought to himself. “Can we talk about somethin’ else?” he asked, desperately needing to change the subject. As it was, he knew Tessa and Cooper were on to him, and the last thing he wanted was for them to get in the middle of something they knew nothing about.

  Forcing himself to eat, Dalton shrugged them off when they asked a few more questions, grateful when they started talking about the bar and about what Braydon would be doing for the next week. While they went back and forth regarding an upcoming act on Saturday night and taking care of horses, Dalton’s thoughts drifted to that first date with Katie.

  “Tell me about you,” he encouraged as they sat across from one another at the small booth.

  When Dalton had asked Katie out, he truly hadn’t expected her to say yes, so when she had, he’d made the suggestion that they get breakfast after her shift ended. Another agreement from her and Dalton had been walking on a cloud ever since.

  And here they were, sharing a meal.

  Katie was surprisingly easy to talk to, and Dalton assumed that was because she didn’t look at him as though he might break out in song and serenade her. Not that he hadn’t thought about it.

  The idea made him smile.

  “What are you grinnin’ about?” Katie asked, taking a sip of her orange juice.

  “Nothin’,” he said with a smirk. “So, I hear you’re in school.”

  “Yeah. I’m workin’ on my bachelor’s degree. In accounting.”

  “Accounting?” Dalton laughed. “Sorry. I’m sure that’s a very noble profession, but it doesn’t sound all that much fun.”

  “I like numbers,” she said with a grin. “Although, I’m questioning my sanity these days. I’m takin’ online courses and they’re kickin’ my butt.”

  “So you’re working at The Rusty Nail in the evenings and taking online courses during the day?”

  “Something like that,” Katie answered, her smile faltering just slightly.

  Dalton studied her, curious as to what she wasn’t telling him.

  “How long have you worked at The Rusty Nail?”

  “Two years. Since I was twenty-one.”

  “Where’d you work before that?”

  Another fading smile and Katie was studying her plate. “I … uh… I worked at a grocery store once.”

  “Didn’t work out, huh?” He laughed, hoping to get her to smile again. He hadn’t meant to bring her down.

  “Nope, it didn’t.” This time Katie looked up at him, pasting a smile on her face. It looked incredibly forced, but Dalton didn’t call her on it.

  “Do you live at home with your parents?” he asked.

  “No.”

  Dalton had expected her to elaborate, but when she didn’t, he searched his brain for another question. Before he could ask, she popped off one of her own.

  “Tell me about you. I know you’re a singer, and I love your music, by the way. Did you always want to be a singer?”

  “Not so much, no,” he said truthfully. “I had other big dreams when I was younger, but some things got in the way. So here I am.”

  Thinking back on that first night they’d spent talking, he could clearly see where things had started going wrong. Katie had been elusive, not wanting to talk much about herself. And then when she’d turned the questions on him, he’d answered with as little detail as possible.

  What a couple they were. Now that he thought about it, he doubted they’d ever stood a chance in the first place. That didn’t stop him from thinking about what might’ve been.

  Because when it came down to it, Dalton knew that he still loved her. And no amount of anger was helping him get past that, either.

  ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

  Her day off couldn’t have come at a better time. Not because she had anything planned, though. No, Katie had absolutely nothing to do on a Sunday night except spend a few quality hours with her sister and her best friend, Sarah, both of whom Katie felt like she didn’t get to spend nearly enough time with these days.

  It’d been a while since they’d done anything more than their usual routine, but that was Katie’s fault. Shaking up Lexi’s life, even with the smallest change in schedule, was a gamble. Tonight she was up for the challenge because she wanted to take the two most important people in her life out to dinner.

  She had spent the better part of the day dropping hints to Lexi, letting her know that they were going to have dinner at Charlie’s, one of Lexi’s favorite places to go when she was actually in the mood to leave the house.

  The moment had arrived for them to go, and Katie was rushing around, trying to make sure that she had everything in order. Lexi would expect the house to be a certain way before they left and when they returned. What had brought about that compulsion, Katie wasn’t exactly sure, but she didn�
��t try to rationalize Lexi’s behavior anymore.

  “Sarah? You ready?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Sarah replied with a huge smile as she stopped just outside of Lexi’s bedroom. “How ’bout you, kiddo? Can we have a girls’ night?”

  Lexi nodded, her smile tipping her little lips.

  “Awesome! Let’s go,” Sarah said with way too much enthusiasm.

  There were several reasons Sarah had opted to get her degree in psychology, and her interaction with Lexi was probably the biggest. Every time Katie watched the two of them together, she knew her best friend was destined for incredible things. She admired Sarah’s patience and everything else about her.

  The trip into town didn’t take long, with Sarah offering to drive. The woman might’ve had the patience of a saint when it came to Lexi and her frequently changing moods, but she had absolutely zilch when it came to driving. Considering the small population of Devil’s Bend and the way Sarah reacted to the minimal amount of traffic she encountered, Katie tried not to think about the way the woman drove in the neighboring cities.

  “What’re you gonna have for dinner, Lex?” Sarah asked as she helped the little girl from the backseat, Katie standing on the opposite side of the car, waiting for the pair to join her.

  “Can I have a milk shake?”

  “Of course you can,” Katie told her sister as Lexi reached for her hand, gripping her fingers tightly.

  “Can I have chicken strips?”

  “Definitely,” Katie replied.

  “What about mashed taters?”

  “If that’s what you want.”

  “Okay. Then that’s what I want.”

  Katie grinned as they stepped into the restaurant. As usual, the place was bustling, most of the booths filled and the tables, too. There was one empty spot in the back, and Sarah led them directly to it. Although it was packed, the service was always prompt, and tonight was no exception. They were able to order their drinks and their food within minutes of their arrival.