by Jackson Kane
I gathered my breath and all my courage, then took my first few steps up Dante’s walkway, towards my new life as an actress.
On the drive in, when I thought about where I’d be staying images of polished, contemporary monstrosities overlooking LA with those edgeless, infinity pools came to mind; like the LA mansions we passed on the way here. I dragged my fingertips along the interior curve of the chunky, battered archway that marked the beginning of the dusty, brick path to the front door. How wrong I was…
The house was large, but far from a mansion by any means. The blocky architecture with its stepped, segmented construction, massive window bays and irregular parapets was so different to the three-hundred year old, drafty, wooden, vinyl-sided colonials I had grown up seeing. Its stylish simplicity was so fascinating; the rounded corners and soft earthy tones reminded me of the sand castles I loved building when I was little.
I knocked, then tried the front door. It was locked. No one was here. I tore open the letter. “Zero four one five. Yours is the eastern most bedroom. Set your alarm for six A.M.”
Six in the morning? I groaned. Even with the three-hour time difference grace period I wasn’t an early bird by any means. This was going to suck!
Despite the code obviously working it still felt uncomfortable walking into a stranger’s house for the first time. Did Dante live with anyone? I really hoped I wasn’t about to startle a family member. As the door swung open a ridiculous scenario played out in my head where I had to explain what I was doing here to the cops. I wasn’t breaking in, I was invited! I swear.
“Hello?” I took a hesitant step inside. “If there’s anyone in here, promise I’m not breaking in. I mean, illegally breaking in!”
What if he did live all alone?
Before closing the door behind me I glanced out over the near-empty horizon and realized it’d take police forever to get here. That realization gripped me with a different fear.
What if I needed help?
Seeing how charming the inside of the house was put me a little more at ease that I wasn’t going to be murdered. The many floor-to-ceiling windows didn’t have any shutters or blinds so warm ambient light flowed in from every direction. It gave everything a welcoming, nostalgic feel.
The interior was an open floor plan, reminiscent of an uppercase L. My luggage noisily rolled through the dining room’s stone floor until it hit the cream carpet of a cozy living room at the house’s elbow. Looking around I could see most of the first floor from where I stood. I loved that.
I closed my eyes, breathed in deeply and imagined for a just a moment that I lived here. Because we never had much money growing up, the apartments we had were basically, claustrophobic little cubes. Exhaling, I opened my eyes and smiled.
I could get used to this.
Looking down I saw that the wheels of my luggage left dusty, brownish tracks on the carpet. “Crap.”
I carried my bags back onto the stone floor, and slipping off my shoes, I searched for some paper towels behind the room’s attached wet bar. After cleaning the mess I decided to explore a little. I called out a few more times just to be sure no one was here.
I drifted through the house like a slow breeze. There was a family room, an enormous marbled kitchen with an island large enough to land a small boat on, a quiet office nook, mud room and even a private library with so many books that it would sate even the most voracious readers. That was all to say nothing of the many expansive window views, half and full baths, walk-ins and fireplaces that were as common as smoke detectors. Each room cascaded seamlessly into the next and they were all gorgeous in a relaxed, uncluttered sort of way. The house felt lived in and comfortable.
The more I wandered the more curious I became. There were so many fully furnished rooms for just one person. This was definitely a family home, but where was that family? If I was staying in his house why weren’t there any family photos? That was another thing that struck me as kind of weird. There were no vacation pictures, or gray portraits of great grandparents, no awkward school photos, or newspaper clippings of the late great Crash Teller. Nothing.
This place felt more like a hotel and an IKEA showroom than a childhood home.
“Eastern most bedroom…” I said, scouting out the second floor. This was where most of the bedrooms were. Even thinking about bed came with a wave of jet-lagged exhaustion. Despite it still being light out that three hour time zone difference from the east coast was definitely catching up to me. I was quickly powering down.
“Ok. So… Where the hell is east?” I checked the app store for a compass I could download, but it wouldn’t load. “Great. No data reception out here. Perfect.”
Eastern most? C'mon... What was he a wizard? Nobody describes anything like that. Dante had to be messing with me.
The WiFi was locked too. But Why? There couldn't have been enough traffic way out here for that to be a concern. I hoped Dante had a land line because Mom was going to kill me if I didn’t let her know I made it alright.
Quickly scanning each open room as I walked by, an errant sunbeam through the skylight caught my eye; it bathed a simple wooden stool by the hallway's one closed door in bright, yellow warmth. On that stool was a tiny, glass vase big enough for only the one fresh desert flower it held.
The delicate, lilac-colored bulb was unlike any flower I’d ever seen before. The open, yet slightly curved-in petals revealed a white-bottomed cup with five, burning crimson spots rounding a ring of pink stigmas.
The golden sunlight filled up the fragile bulb like water in a cup, giving the flower an ethereal glow. It was the most beautiful flower I’d ever seen. I leaned forward and breathed in its subtle sweetness. A warming, smile crept across my heart.
Did Dante set this flower out for me to mark the room I'd be staying in? That was much sweeter than a post-it note.
There were no other room markings so I guessed this had to be it. I went back downstairs and grabbed my things. The shining flower seemed to light my way back to the closed door, giving me more and more confidence that this was the right room.
When I opened it I was greeted by what had to be the master suite. The room was huge! It had both his and her bathroom sides, a walk-in closet the size of my bedroom back home, a fireplace, and a plush king-size bed set beneath an angled half-wall of windows. There were also a few odd decorating choices which proved to me that at one point someone did actually live here. One of the shelves held a mean-looking, yet jovially dressed stuffed gecko wearing a tiny sombrero.
I shrugged. Who was I to judge?
“Ok. This is officially my dream house!” I said, collapsing onto the most comfortable bed in the world. A sudden, giddy burst of laughter erupted within me, as I thrashed around like little girl. I wished Mom were here to see this, she’d be freaking out as much as I was! The excitement was soon strangled by jet-lagged drowsiness, which smothered me like a warm blanket.
I woke up an hour later. The relentless sun was dying, but it was still too bright to get back to sleep. I sat on the heated toilet seat in the her side of the bathroom until the daze of just waking up from a nap subsided. It was impossible to keep myself from imagining what a domesticated life with Dante would be like.
After washing my face and brushing my teeth, I found a phone and called Mom. Despite her well-meaning lies, the grogginess in her voice told me I’d just woken her up, so I kept the call brief. I wanted to tell her about this amazing house, but settled with letting her know I was alive and telling her that I’d call her tomorrow.
Time zones, stupid! I scolded myself, hanging up the phone. I needed to remember that we were three hours ahead here. It was nearly midnight back home!
I laid back down, but after awhile I realized that sleep had abandoned me. Instead of staring at the still bright ceiling I decided to try out the balcony and clear my head.
It was still deceptively comfortable when I stepped outside; the cool stone felt nice on my bare feet. Spaciously-set wooden beams jutte
d out over the door as if they were the skeleton of some bulky, forever unfinished awning; the sunset made their shadows into long, grasping fingers lazily clutching the balcony’s solid adobo railing.
I placed a hand on a cushioned, wicker lounge chair and looked out over the wild, untamed landscape that didn’t seem like it could ever end. Sunset stabbed across the impossibly vast blue sky bleeding it a shade of mustard yellow, possible only at the onset of summer’s death.
Overlooking the estate made me feel a bit like a queen surveying her kingdom. I breathed in deep, letting the dry air lick at my lungs. The earthy breeze tasted like buttery sunlight. Every window, skylight, patio and even the swimming pool in the back yard seemed designed to steal as much of the view as possible, but none more so than the master bedroom's balcony; that was positively drenched in it.
I could see everything from here.
The four-car garage directly below me was full of toys that little boys dreamed off: Dirt bikes, three and four-wheelers, trailers of various sizes, a corvette, and of course a beefy-looking pickup truck to lug everything around. A paved trail splintered off from the garage and led to a few smaller buildings and the long oval of a race track. The prop jet was housed in a large storage tent at the center of the oval. Peeling off the track in a straight line was a full length airstrip.
Just past all that was one last building. It was an L-shaped structure made of stained, wood. Some kind of barn, maybe? Attached to it was some sort of wood working area and an empty bay long enough to house a trailer. Above all that was a landing for an office or some other small room.
That was the one building the studio told me was off limits.
Dante struck me as such a brutally efficient man in many ways. The utility throughout the rest of the property made sense to me, but seeing the aesthetic flourishes in the house didn't. They didn’t serve any practical purpose. But the fact that he kept them all, down to the sort-of-creepy, festive gecko, made me smile for some reason. It was like getting a peak behind the curtain of the great and powerful Oz.
Was there more than just a stuntman behind those scars and sexy, brown eyes?
“Guess I’m going to find out,” I barely got the words out before movement in the distance stole my breath away. A dozen nearly-silhouetted forms cut streams of rolling dust across the plains. I gasped, covering my mouth.
Real life wild horses chased one another across the horizon!
It was the most incredible thing I’d ever seen.
Maybe this whole thing wasn’t going to be as bad as I thought.
Chapter 11
Autumn
“Wake up, Autumn.”
“Ahh!” I startled awake to find Dante’s hulking form towering over my bed. Panicked, I crawled backward bumping my head on the wooden headboard. “What? What’s going on?”
“Your breakfast is downstairs.” In the weak predawn light Dante was more of shadow than a man, something ripped from a nightmare. He watched me squirm for a few moments, before continuing to speak, “Get dressed and meet me on back patio in twenty minutes. Your training is about to begin.” And then he was gone.
What the hell was that all about?
He left my heart racing so hard that I was on the verge of hyper ventilating. I needed an extra minute just staring at the ceiling to remember what I was doing here, let alone where the patio was. Anxious—and a little excited—, I glanced over at the alarm clock on the bedside stand then grabbed my camera to the left of it.
Time to capture the authentic experience.
“First day of training,” I said to the camera with one still mostly closed, my hair a mess and partially covering my face. My voice was road salt and loose gravel. “Six-O-five in the morning.” I lowered the camera, yawned for what felt like a year, then raised it back up. “Fuck my life right now.”
Being that I wasn’t going to have time to do any of my regular videos I’d decided to document my training instead. The good, the bad, all of it. I cleared the concept with Sarah, my Lionhouse social media manager.
I forced myself out of bed and stumbled into the bathroom for a super-fast version of my morning ritual. After one of the quickest showers in human history I briefly debated putting on makeup, but decided against it. Training, I reminded myself, pulling on my sports bra, tank top and gym pants. Hellish physical training.
I closed the bedroom door and noticed the petals of the pretty flower on the stand in the hall had closed up, almost completely. That's odd. It was open yesterday. Was the flower already dying? I hoped not! That had to be some kind of a bad omen. I walked away a little more uneasy, but I couldn't quite explain why.
Fortunately, the odd feeling of emptiness was short lived. The aroma of cooked bacon met my grumbling stomach in the hallway and dragged me down the stairs. That savory smell invaded my senses. I could practically taste it already. When was the last time I ate? On the plane out here maybe? I wasn’t the kind of person that got hungry first thing in the morning, but today I was starved!
I noticed the pile of food on the lowered, marble-topped bar that separated the kitchen from the informal dining room. It was still steaming. He must’ve heated this up for me after he woke me up. When I got closer I realized how much was there, easily twice what I normally eat. This couldn’t all be for me, could it?
Scanning the rest of the room I saw the fully stocked coffee station with a freshly brewed pot of something that smelled caffeinated. About twenty mugs were suspended over the coffee supplies, they hung like heavy porcelain leaves along the branches of an elaborate metal tree. Slipping off one of the mugs I filled myself a steaming, dark drink
“So do I just go through the fridge then?” I asked the empty room, then just went for it. What kind of heathen drinks black coffee?
I lightened my mug with ample amounts of cream and sugar and saw four, faded Ninja Turtle mugs that definitely belonged to children a long time ago. Looking at the radically varied mug designs, and considering some of the other aesthetic choices I’d seen so far, made it hard to believe that Dante owned everything in the house. None of it seemed in-line with the whole sexy, confident, badass image he had going on. So why did he leave all this stuff here?
There was more to Dante than he let on.
Sitting down at the bar I made it through almost three quarters of the food pile, because that’s totally what it was. Not to say that it was bad, on the contrary, the crisp veggies, eggs, bacon and slice of steak was perfectly prepared and incredibly delicious. Whoever made this was quite the chef!
While I ate I realized I hadn’t actually seen Dante since Jason kissed me.
What did Dante think about that? Did he know that it was as much of a surprise to me as it was to him? I scolded myself for wondering if it mattered to Dante. I doubted he cared at all.
“You’re fifteen minutes late,” Dante said, when I finally made it outside. He was in the middle of stretches. The loose, gray tank top he wore now didn't cover his strong arms, but it at least hid his sculpted chest and abs, and all those tattoos... That was until the occasional bursts of wind wiping across the plains billowed his sleeveless shirt.
Somehow that was even worse! It didn't matter that I'd already seen him topless. The glimpses through the wide arm holes and floating bottom hem were scandalous. I had to fight the urge to grab my earring and bite my lip whenever I felt a gust of wind roll through. It was going to be extremely difficult to concentrate.
“Twenty minutes wasn’t nearly enough time.” I protested. “I just woke up!”
“The note said six A.M.” Dante stopped, then eyed me with an incredulous look. “Are you wearing yoga pants?”
“They're all I had.” I looked down at my tank and pants. What was wrong with them? They looked adult-enough. It wasn't like I came out wearing Kim Possible sweatpants. I deliberately left those at home. “The email was vague. All it said was to bring workout clothes.”
Dante's smirk flashed for a second before vanishing; this time it was th
e knowing look of someone who'd already finished the juicy book that you just started and knew the ending. Oh, you have no idea what's coming. “You'll have new clothes by morning. I hope you're not too attached to those. Follow me.”
Dante started a light jog along the paved road down toward the race track, begrudgingly I followed. It didn’t take my legs and lower back long to start complaining and for a stitch to run up my side. My body was so useless in the morning. In my defense our jog n’ bitch sessions were always late in the afternoon. I was already sweating and breathing heavy when we finally came to a stop. Not a great sign to be winded on your way to training…
My jaw dropped at the sight of his personal gym when he opened the big glass doors for me to walk through.
“This place is incredible!” A giddy rush of energy coursed through me at how freaking cool this place was! I walked across the flat stone tiles toward the center of the beautifully renovated barn. It had massive windows, vaulted ceiling with exposed beams and stained wood arches that stretched the width of what could’ve held three large trucks side-by-side no problem.
“Careful of the pool,” Dante warned, pinning the wall-sized door in place at full open, letting the gorgeous view spill into the gym.
I stepped to the side and gazed into the cool blue water of the Olympic-sized pool. Off to the side was a raised, step up into a stone encased hot tub. One of the walls was pitched forward, curved and had multicolored rock wall grips all over it with thick black pads at the base.
“Holy crap, Dante! Seriously though.” Holding up my camera and slowly sweeping across the interior of the building, I recorded everything. “This place is amazeballs!”
He caught my camera hand and lowered it when it was just about to reach and record him. He hard eyes narrowed slightly. It was easy to see that he was not a fan of what I was doing.