Amanda looked at Claire, who was clearly not living her life to the fullest. But neither was she, she supposed. She’d given up in some respects, too. And once again, that made them allies.
Chapter Eleven
Dani
Dani remained a little shaken by how close Shannon had come to stumbling across the fact that they were almost broke. It was news to her that their credit cards had been shut down, but it wasn’t surprising. She’d certainly never anticipated that Shannon would be publicly humiliated, and for that she was sorry. It was wrong not to have come clean with her. It was the only thing of such magnitude she’d ever kept from her partner, and the secret was slowly suffocating her like invisible but deadly toxic fumes.
Why, she thought bleakly as she trudged along with the group down The Strip, should she be the one to ruin their wedding with her news? Why did she have to be the Grinch and Scrooge and the Grim Reaper all rolled into one? Hadn’t her life been hard enough for the past few weeks, pretending everything was fine, pretending to go off to work as usual when, in fact, she was spending her days at the library or with the employment headhunter looking for work? Hadn’t she had enough guilt and responsibility on her shoulders without having to cancel the wedding they’d been planning for a year? Why did it have to fall on her to throw away the life they’d come to expect? It wasn’t her fault she’d lost her job. In fact, the day they let her go, they’d told her she did great work. It’s just that she was one of the last managers hired, and it was the economy, and blah, blah, blah. Nothing they said had made her feel better or changed the outcome.
Here she was now, deeper and deeper in this morass of lies. Of course it was wrong, but she would not disappoint Shannon or ruin the week for everyone. She’d hold it together a little longer, take care of everyone the way she usually did, make everything okay, or at least kill herself trying. She couldn’t see doing it any other way.
“Hey, buddy.” Jordan slowed and waited for her to catch up. “You look like you got the weight of the world on your shoulders.” She grinned. “Not suddenly worried about being tied down for the rest of your life now, are you?”
“Hell, are you kidding me? I’m worried Shannon might finally get some sense and make a run for it.” It was meant as a joke but there was more than a kernel of truth to it.
Jordan looked at her worriedly, but only for an instant. “You’re right, you better hope she remains blindly in love with you for at least a few more days!”
Dani laughed along with her friend, but it wasn’t funny. Her biggest nightmare was that Shannon would wake up one day and realize she was just plain ol’ Danielle Berringer from a small town in Nebraska, daughter of a tractor salesman and stay-at-home mother, from a hick family that could have stepped out of a 1950s black-and-white movie. Growing up, she’d been nothing special—just another kid who chose to claw her way out of humble beginnings with no encouragement or expectations from her parents. She’d put herself through college, got lucky with some great jobs, got even luckier with her salary the last few years. But now it had all come tumbling down, and soon Shannon would know the truth. That was what scared the shit out of her—that Shannon might deem her unworthy of her love, unworthy of building a future together, and pull the plug on their relationship before she could make things right. For Dani it was a constant battle to keep her world on its axis. She couldn’t give up now.
The group paused in front of the Bellagio’s massive fountain display, a quiet anticipation rippling through the small clusters of people gathered to wait for the next show. Dani had seen the show on a previous visit, but newbies Claire and Amanda had not. Shannon excitedly explained to them how the show was synchronized to music and lights every half hour, how the hundreds of submerged spigots came to life like underwater creatures. Bored, Dani glanced around. There were a handful of others who looked equally bored, like they’d seen it a million times before, but most looked eager and interested. It was pretty spectacular, yet she couldn’t get in the mood, not when she was so preoccupied. She wondered how many others around her were just barely hanging on like she was—hanging on to a dream or a hope, or to some shred of normalcy. Things in her life had always worked out for her, she told herself, and they would again. Somehow. They had to.
She watched Shannon’s expressive hands move as she talked, her eyes bright with the excitement of describing the show. Innocent, was the thought that came to Dani’s mind. Innocent and beautiful—almost exactly as she was when they’d first met seven years ago. So many times Dani had silently and verbally thanked Shannon for choosing her, but now she wanted to scream that she should have picked Claire instead. Claire was a good woman. Claire was a successful doctor. She could provide a future for Shannon—the kind of future Shannon deserved. And yet . . . Shannon hadn’t picked Claire. She’d picked her.
“Hey, sexy,” Dani whispered into Shannon’s ear, bending to kiss the back of her neck.
Shannon smiled and reached for her hand. “I always get emotional at these silly fountain shows.”
“I know.” Dani squeezed her hand as the first strains of Celine Dion’s “My Heart Goes On” played over hidden speakers. Jets of water shot up suddenly from the small cannons poking above the placid surface. Wands of water waved back and forth in time to the music, the spray twinkling and shimmering in the twilight. Even Claire was smiling at the water pulsing in time to the music. It really was a romantic sight.
Shannon leaned against her and spoke quietly. “It’s so beautiful. I never get tired of this. And it makes me remember how much I love you.” She turned to Dani, her eyes moist with unshed tears. “That’s how I feel about us, you know, that song, the words, and how the water and music are so perfectly in tune with each other. I don’t ever want anything to happen to us, Dani. Ever.”
“Oh, baby, nothing’s going to happen to us.” She pulled Shannon into her chest and hugged her.
“How can you say that? You don’t know. Nobody knows what’s going to happen. For all we know, our lives could change in an instant. Nothing goes on forever.”
“That’s true, but I know my love for you is never going to change. And that’s the one constant I can count on.”
Shannon responded by kissing her softly. “You’re right, and that’s all that really matters. Sometimes I get so scared, that’s all.”
“Of what, my love?”
“That things can’t stay this good, this wonderful, forever.”
“Well then, if that’s true, we’ll just have to get through the bad stuff together. As a team.” And they would find a way to get through this financial nightmare together. Just not right now!
“You’re right. Of course we will.”
Dani sucked in her breath to steel herself for the next lie. She hated this, but the need to keep a few more days of peace won out. “I’m sorry about that credit card mixup. I’ll check with the bank tomorrow and make sure they fix whatever they’ve screwed up. I don’t want you to worry about it, okay? Everything’s fine.”
“I’m not worried, honest. Besides, there’s nothing else I need to buy this week anyway. I do want to check on all the flower arrangements tomorrow. In fact, I want to double check everything now, make sure we’re not being followed around by some little black cloud of screw-ups all of the sudden.”
Claire drew closer. “Did you say something about tomorrow? Aren’t we all driving out to the desert after breakfast?”
“Oh crap, Claire. I forgot to tell you, Dani’s sister Heather is supposed to fly in tomorrow afternoon and we should be here to meet her. And I want to check on some of the wedding arrangements. How about Wednesday? Or Thursday?”
“Oh, no,” Jordan interjected. “Thursday night is the big bachelor party and I don’t want anyone late for it or stranded out in the desert.” There was a wicked gleam in her eye. “Besides, I can promise you it’s not something you all want to miss anyway.”
“Wednesday’s my big wedding assignment,” Amanda added, “so that won’t
work.”
Shannon stepped between Claire and Amanda and placed her arms around their shoulders. “You two go tomorrow. It’ll be fun, and besides, Dani and I have been out to Red Rock Canyon before. It’s beautiful, but I don’t mind skipping it if we need to.”
There was no mistaking the look of panic on Claire’s face, and Dani did a double take. Claire was always so calm and in control.
“What about you, Jordan?” Claire asked with a note of desperation.
Jordan winked slyly like an evil big sister. “Maybe I will, if you don’t mind me tagging along. Or maybe I won’t, if you’d rather I didn’t.”
“Of course you should come,” Amanda answered casually. “Why would you consider yourself to be tagging along?”
“Oh, no reason,” Jordan said innocently. She was being such a brat that it made Dani smile.
As they watched the rest of the fountain show in silence, Dani kept glancing at Jordan as though she might be able to find in Jordan’s face the reason behind that little exchange. She finally decided it would take more mental energy than she had right now. There was plenty on her plate without trying to decipher secret codes or unravel some kind of childish drama. There was always something going on with Jordan; Dani rarely concerned herself with whatever it was.
The Bellagio seemed like a good place for an evening drink and the five of them sauntered in, discussing at great length the right way to make an authentic Cuban mojito. Jordan was adamant that the lime juice had to be freshly squeezed. Amanda debated the merits of simple syrup versus powdered sugar. They all ordered one after carefully quizzing the waiter about how the bartender was going to make it. Shannon added that it wasn’t authentic without real Cuban rum.
“Where the hell did you ever taste real Cuban rum before?” Dani asked her.
Shannon shrugged and looked guilty of a misdemeanor, but not sorry. She playfully stuck out her tongue.
Dani rolled her eyes. “Oh, I forgot. That Canadian woman you dated a long time ago. The Cuban rum up there was part of your foreign experience, I suppose?”
Jordan waggled her eyebrows. “French kissing too, Shannon? And petting beavers?”
“All right, all right,” Dani growled, more for show than anything real. “It’s probably bad luck to talk about exes right before a wedding. Though you, my dear Jordie, could certainly write an entire book about exes.”
Jordan laughed with self-deprecation. “Unfortunately, every chapter would read the same.”
Their drinks arrived and they toasted to no more talk of exes.
“So what do you two think of Vegas so far?” Shannon said to Claire and Amanda.
Amanda hesitated as though she didn’t want to say anything negative. She was a sweet kid, always thoughtful before she spoke. “Now that I’m here, I think it’s someplace everyone should experience at least once. It’s . . . different, that’s for sure.”
“The hotels are spectacular,” Claire said. “Now I know what a couple of billion dollars looks like in 3-D. But what I’m really looking forward to is the drive out to the canyon tomorrow, seeing all those desert colors I saw from the air.”
“You should try a show one night this week,” Jordan suggested. “There’s every kind you can imagine. Concerts of every genre, all the Cirque de Soleil shows, dinner theater.” She hopped up and plucked a magazine from a nearby table. It contained a listing of all the shows for the week. She flipped through the pages quickly. “Kenny Chesney’s here, Taylor Swift . . . ugh, Barry Manilow!” They all roared with laughter as Jordan began singing “Copacabana.” She went back to the magazine. “Bette Midler, Lady Gaga, John Mayer—”
Dani seemed to be the only one who noticed Jordan’s face turn stone white. The others began chirping about Lady Gaga, but Jordan seemed frozen on the same page, unable to go further.
Dani leaned in and whispered to her, “What’s up?”
“N-nothing. I think Barry Manilow nearly made me toss my cookies.”
Dani peeked at the page she clutched tightly. There was a black-and-white photo of an African American woman with short hair, impossibly luscious lips and prominent cheekbones. She looked like an African princess sitting at a piano, long legs crossed. Deziree Adams, opening every night at the Monte Carlo for Smokey Robinson, it said in a breezy, italic script.
“That looks interesting. I love R&B,” Dani said, still unsure why Jordan was acting so weird. “Let me guess. You’ve already seen her perform and didn’t want to let us in on this hidden treasure?”
Before Jordan could answer, Shannon interrupted. “Ooh, did someone say R&B? I would love to go see some R&B acts! How about it, you guys?”
Amanda clutched her hand to her chest. “Oh my God, yes! Especially if it’s old R&B stuff. I love old soul music. The Spinners, Motown, Barry White, Gladys Knight!”
Claire gave Amanda a peculiar look and smiled widely. “I’ll go get tickets. Jordan, you in?”
Jordan sprinted from her seat like it was a race. Obviously she had recovered from her temporary paralysis. “Are you kidding? You couldn’t keep from it. C’mon Claire, I’ll go with you to get tickets.”
Chapter Twelve
Jordan
For the entire thirty-minute set, Jordan couldn’t take her eyes off Dez up on the stage, roaming it and commanding it like a big prowling cat. She sang with confidence in deep resonant tones, songs such as “Best of My Love,” “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” “Tell Me Something Good.” On a stool at center stage she later sat, her long legs crossed elegantly, her hands caressing the sleek microphone like a lover’s thigh for “Midnight Train to Georgia” and “You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine.” The audience lapped it up, mesmerized by her voice and her graceful beauty. Her sensuality too, which had an almost paralyzing effect on the audience, riveting and dazing them. Jordan’s attention was trance-like, and there were brief moments she could have sworn Dez was looking straight at her, singing the lines just for her. It was an illusion, of course. Dez wasn’t singing to her and probably wasn’t even looking at her, but rather on a fixed point on the wall behind her. But Jordan wanted to believe otherwise, no matter how silly the idea was. She wanted Dez to remember her, to mean something to her.
“She’s really something,” Dani whispered.
Jordan could only nod, not willing to remove her attention from Dez. She didn’t want to miss anything—not a note or a single movement. She wondered, though, why Dez hadn’t mentioned to her that she was a singer. But then again, they hadn’t gotten as far as careers in their discussion.
The half-hour set ended far too quickly, though the audience was rewarded with a duet between Dez and Smokey Robinson—a slick, sensual rendition of “Ooh, Baby Baby.” Jordan’s body always told the truth in its responses, and it was telling her plenty of things now. She wanted to be the microphone, stroked by Dez’s long fingers. She wanted to be held and coaxed to life as Dez had done with each song. Most of all, she wanted to be the inspiration behind Dez’s voice and the words she so expertly and emotionally sang. What would it be like, she wondered, to be the kind of lover, to have the kind of love that someone wrote or sang about? She had never experienced such a thing and wondered if it were even possible.
This is crazy, she chastised herself. She was attracted to Dez, wanted to sleep with her, spend a little more time chatting and listening to that lush southern voice. But that was it. There was no reason to think Dez was any different from her multitude of superficial conquests over the years, except for the one fact that she was at least Jordan’s age this time. Any deeper considerations than that were just some strange pull of the music along with the commanding and mesmerizing aura of Dez’s stage persona. Jordan was simply mixing up feelings of admiration for something more, she told herself.
At the ten-minute intermission, as they all stood and stretched their legs, Dani said she vaguely remembered reading an article about Dez some years ago in a magazine.
“She was supposed to be the next Anita
Baker,” Amanda supplied, saying she’d read about Dez too. “About twelve or fifteen years ago, she had a couple of number one hits and she was the talk of the R&B scene.”
Shannon patted her niece’s arm. “You’re so cute, knowing all this obscure music stuff from an era when you were just a kid.”
Jordan noticed the sympathetic look Claire gave Amanda, who was probably annoyed but calmly said to her aunt, “I happen to love R&B from any era, Aunt Shannon. The way someone can appreciate art, whether it was made yesterday or a hundred years ago.” She turned to the others, and Jordan thought, good for you. “Anyway, Dez Adams disappeared off the charts and off the radar shortly after those hits. I don’t really know what happened, except she quit performing and cutting records for a long time.”
Jordan wondered why. Maybe Dez preferred smaller audiences, like this. Or maybe something had happened to derail her skyrocketing career. She would love the chance to ask her.
The show resumed without Dez. It was Smokey’s show now and it was clear Dez’s part was over. Jordan whispered to the others that she was turning in early and made a hasty departure before Dani or the others could bug her about it. She didn’t want them guessing the depth of the impact Dez’s concert had had on her. She wanted to find Dez. Wanted to have a drink with her again and talk more, perhaps even try to seduce her and figure out if it was sexual attraction behind this need to be with Dez, or something much more mysterious and baffling. Dez had made it clear that she didn’t pick up women in bars anymore, but they kind of knew each other now, didn’t they? It would be okay on a second meeting if they ended up in bed together, wouldn’t it? Jesus, she’d never worried about this kind of thing before. Crap. Next thing you know, I’ll be trying to figure out what kind of flowers to buy her!
The Wedding Party Page 8