by Cindi Madsen
He tilted his head and studied me like I was an art exhibit instead of a person, two creases forming between his eyebrows. I couldn’t help but notice how good-looking he was, with messy dark blond hair that was longer on top than the sides, a strong nose that a girl could never pull off but suited him, and cheekbones usually found on male models.
I bet he’s getting married to a modelesque bride he won’t stand up at the altar. I hate her already.
“You’re not D.J.? I heard she owns this place, and you looked like you could be…”
No one had called me D.J. in years—not since high school. There was something familiar about this guy, like I’d seen his features before but not the exact way they were arranged.
“I’m D.J.—I usually go by Dakota these days—and this is my company. And you look very familiar, but I’m sorry, I can’t place you.”
He grinned, and something about it stirred memories that my mind couldn’t quite catch hold of. “It’s Brendan.”
“Brendan West?” I stood, looking him over in a new light, seeing a hint of the boy I used to know. “No. Way.”
His grin widened. “Yes way.”
“No freakin’ way!” I rounded my desk and hugged him, then felt a little awkward. Maybe a hug was too much? After all, it’d been about fifteen years.
But then he hugged me back, so tightly my feet left the ground. “I was almost sure it was you, even though”—he pulled away a few inches and peered at my face again—“you look so different. But the same.”
“I know exactly what you mean.” The thirteen-year-old boy I’d known hadn’t had all the height, muscles, or a five o’clock shadow on his chin.
He wiped a finger across my cheekbone, which made me freeze in place, not sure how to respond to that oddly intimate gesture. Then he held it up, a dark smudge now on his fingertip. “At first I thought you had a black eye, which wouldn’t have surprised me all that much, since I remember how rough you were when it came to sports.”
A black eye? I leaned back so I could see in the mirror hanging on the wall. There was a fabulous mixture of tear-streaked mascara and newsprint across my cheekbone. I wiped at it, but it just smeared more. “Hazards of taking a nap on a newspaper.” And crying, but I wasn’t going to mention that. “So, what are you doing in Vegas? Don’t tell me you’re getting married.”
“No,” he said in a way that made it seem like marriage would never cross his mind. “I moved back about a month ago, actually. My mom got in touch with your dad, and once I found out you were still here, I knew I had to look you up and see what became of the girl who used to be my best friend.”
I wished he’d chosen a different day, because I felt like a total mess. Not just felt like—I had black ink smudged on my face. I rubbed at it again. Before I could say anything, the office phone rang.
“Excuse me for just a minute,” I said, then answered the phone.
“Dakota,” Grant said, his voice stabbing me in my already-raw heart.
I gritted my teeth against the pain and the anger welling up in me. “How dare you call here.”
“You won’t answer on your cell, though, and we have to talk sometime. If you’ll just—”
“Don’t call here again, you hear me?” I slammed the phone down, holding it there as if that’d stop him from ever dialing me back.
Brendan raised an eyebrow, and I rubbed my fingers across my forehead. I knew Grant and I would have to talk eventually. I still needed to move the majority of my stuff out of his place, after all. But I wasn’t ready, and I needed to find a storage unit and—
“Is someone bothering you?” I was surprised at the concern in Brendan’s voice, and there was a bit of a protective vibe, too, if I wasn’t mistaken. He and I had been glued to each other’s sides from ages seven to thirteen, but that was a long time ago, and I didn’t want to drag him into my drama now.
I flopped into my chair. “It’s nothing I can’t handle.”
Brendan sat on the edge of my desk, facing me, and I couldn’t get over how…big he was. So tall and filled-out and oozing confidence—not that he’d ever been short on that. “Look, security’s my thing. I work at the new Aces Resort and Casino. I get to take people down all the time. It’s kind of like I never finished playing Fugitive, only now I have much cooler high-tech gadgets.”
Despite my bad mood, I couldn’t help but smile. Fugitive. The game we used to play where there were two teams, the fugitives and the cops. It involved hiding and chasing, and sometimes—if you were lucky—tackling. When I was a kid, there was nothing like that adrenaline rush of taking someone down. Or getting away when someone tried to take me down. Brendan and I were always on the same team, and whether we were fugitives or cops, we always won. We were also always covered in dirt and scratches by the end of it, too, which was half the fun.
“You need cool gadgets to tackle people now?”
A boyish grin spread across his face. “Not need. Just like. Plus, I’ve got more so-called fugitives to watch out for.” He nudged me. “So, do you need to talk to the police? What about a restraining order?”
I waved off his words. “It’s nothing like that. It’s just my ex, and it’s complicated.”
Brendan frowned. “Complicated.”
I leaned back in my chair and sighed. “I take it you don’t read my column in the paper?”
“You’re a writer, too?”
“Not really. It’s just a tiny column with wedding tips. My last one was different from the norm because… Well, you see…” My mouth went dry and my lungs didn’t seem to be taking in air anymore. “I was supposed to get married a couple of weeks ago.”
“Supposed to?”
Heat filled my cheeks, and it was too humiliating to say while he was staring at me like that. So I dropped my head in my hands. “He stood me up. At the altar. Only the altar was a beach in Jamaica, and we were on a cruise ship, which was basically like being held captive after that, and I’m just not ready to talk to him. So no restraining order required. Just…space, I guess.”
“Sorry, D.J.,” Brendan said. “I didn’t know. If there’s anything I can do…”
I pushed my hands through my hair. The fact was, it was time to go see Grant and figure out a more permanent living situation than crashing on Jillian’s couch. Not to mention my dog was still at his house—yet another complication that made me angry and sad and too many emotions to pick one from the next.
“I’d love to catch up sometime,” I said. “Next week I’ll have this mess sorted out better, but honestly, I’ve got a lot going on right now.” Like fighting the impulse to burst into tears again, which pissed me off. I’d never been much of a crier, and it was like all the years of holding back I’d done were gushing out of me now. Grant so didn’t deserve to have so many tears shed over him.
Brendan nodded, pulled out a business card, and gave it to me. “Come by the casino or give me a call.” He walked to the door, but turned around instead of pushing out of it. “I know you throw a killer right hook…” He rubbed his jaw as if he could still feel its effect, and then flashed me a smile. “But if you decide you need someone, you know where to find me.”
“And if you decide you need my help at the casino, I could use an excuse to get rowdy. You’d be surprised how few weddings give me the chance to use my hook.”
He laughed, and I waved good-bye. Joking with him left me cheered enough to fight back the tears. Funny enough, the last time I’d cried so much was probably when he’d moved away. Losing my best friend in junior high had seemed like the end of the world, and it’d taken a long time for his absence to stop sucking.
Technically, Brendan was my first fiancé. I smiled at that, thinking of all our plans when we were young, which were usually more about where we were riding our bikes, whose house we’d eat dinner at, or which sport to play. I wondered if I’d see him often now that he was back in Vegas, or if we’d try to hang out and it’d be weird. Then again, he was already trying to take car
e of me, something I’d always told him he didn’t need to do, though that never stopped him.
But before I could even think about rekindling my friendship with Brendan, I needed to deal with the guy who’d broken my heart into a thousand little pieces.
Chapter Two
I pushed my way into Jillian’s and sighed when it was clear she wasn’t home yet. She was good at keeping my mind off the current mess that was my life, whether we were talking about the changes she was implementing in her catering business or just chilling watching movies. Without her there to distract me, I also noticed that my stuff was everywhere. There was the blanket-and-pillow stack off to the side of the couch for when it became my bed at night, and the two suitcases I’d taken on the cruise were crammed into one corner. I’d had to borrow an outfit for work today, and on the way home I’d bought a new one for tomorrow. Originally I thought I might try to face Grant tonight, but then I’d gotten an email about a sale at one of my favorite stores, and I’d needed new slacks anyway.
Okay, so I was delaying the inevitable. Putting off things wasn’t my usual style, but this wasn’t a to-do list item that could be easily crossed off with one of my bright-colored gel pens. It was my ex-fiancé and my life that was supposed to be.
Admittedly, it was getting to the ridiculous point. A suitcase filled with a barely worn wedding dress and another with shorts, tank tops, flip-flops, and bikinis wasn’t quite meeting my needs anymore. I missed my clothes, and especially my shoe collection. Not to mention I was usually neat to the point of OCD-ness, and the lack of places to put my meager belongings and the fact that I might be driving Jillian insane with my mess dug at me. I needed to find a better solution, and soon.
Dad’s place would be a hell of a commute, not to mention moving back in with him felt like a total fail on top of my other fails, and I wasn’t sure I could do it. I also wasn’t sure I’d have a choice before long. I headed to the kitchen and pulled the carton of rocky road ice cream out of the fridge. It’d always been my favorite flavor, but I’d never quite gotten the name before. Now I knew that when the road got rocky, it was always there for you. Of course it wasn’t so nice in the added-poundage aspect.
Note to self: Start going to the gym again. Maybe join a volleyball or softball league. Something to keep me motivated.
I grabbed a spoon and headed to the couch, kicking aside the pair of shoes I’d left next to the coffee table yesterday. Apparently the lid to my ice cream hadn’t completely sealed, and now the chocolaty goodness had a layer of ice crystals and was rock solid. I stabbed at it, trying to chip off a bite.
“Come”—another stab—“on.” Were a couple bites of ice cream really so much to ask on a day like today? So much for it being there for me.
My phone rang, and I groaned when I saw it was my mom. I licked off the minuscule amount of ice cream that’d gotten onto my spoon and then answered.
“How are you doing?” she asked. I’d give her credit, she had the sympathetic tone down, but I didn’t quite trust it. After all, last time we’d spoken she asked why I was even bothering to get married. Conversations with her were always tricky as it was, and I hadn’t had the energy to attempt one since I’d texted to let her know the wedding hadn’t happened.
I hugged the ice cream carton to me, hoping a tighter grip would help me dig a bite loose. “I’ve been better, but I’m hanging in there.”
“I can only imagine, knowing how much you wrapped your entire life up in that guy. I said you needed to be careful. That a wedding wasn’t a guarantee.” Here went the I Told You So speech. The divorce from Dad had left her with the opinion that marriage was something best avoided, and she liked to remind me of her stance on a regular basis. Not seeing eye to eye with Mom was nothing new, though. What little time we did spend together during my childhood, she’d filled with encouraging me to act more ladylike, and when I’d gone into wedding planning—which I thought was pretty freaking ladylike—she’d asked why I didn’t want to put my brains to better use. Still, she was my mom, and it was nice of her to check on me, even if her words often came out barbed.
“I loved him. I wasn’t just marrying him for the fairy-tale wedding, you know.”
“That was pretty obvious when you chose to do it during a cruise,” Mom said. See? Definitely had a problem with saying things the nice way. Up until five years ago, we hadn’t really had a relationship—I felt she’d worked hard to forget about me, so I tried to do the same. But when she’d come to me saying she regretted that we didn’t know each other better, I’d decided I’d deal with some of the verbal jabs so we could be in each other’s lives. How exactly I felt about that decision depended on the day. “You could come visit. Get away for a while.”
Mom and her current boyfriend, Frank, lived on the outskirts of L.A. and were in the middle of a remodel project on the house they’d recently bought. For the first time in her life, she was setting down roots, which meant she actually cared about Frank—not that she’d admit it.
“I’ve got nonstop jobs lined up right now,” I said. “And I need to find an apartment on top of everything else, so now’s not really a good time.”
Mom sighed. “Well, I offered earlier, when you did have time off, but you didn’t return my calls. I hope you’re not just sitting around alone, moping and eating chocolate.”
I stared into my ice cream, which was not softening at all and starting to freeze my arms, so cold it burned. “Of course not.” Because I can’t get the chocolate out, damn it!
“Trust me, the best thing to do is move on and forget the past.”
Her words caused pricks of pain in my chest, duller than they used to be thanks to years of telling myself that it didn’t matter that she’d chosen to leave me behind for her career. Dad had done a good job of stepping up, even if my younger years were mostly a blur of high school football games, either the ones he coached or the games we’d travel to so we could scout out another team. And whenever it was Mom’s turn to spend a week with me, I’d fly to whichever city she was in at the time and try to settle into a temporary place.
I wanted to say that not all of us could leave people behind without a care, but it would only cause a fight, one I always lost, so I simply said, “Thanks for checking in on me, Mom. I’ve got an appointment, though, so I’d better go.”
She filled me in on a few remodeling details first, but eventually I managed to get off the phone. My appointment was with trashy TV, the kind that made me feel like I had my life together. Only I couldn’t stop thinking of how, after a taxing conversation with my mother, Grant used to be there to wrap his arms around me and say, “Call my mom. She thinks you’re amazing. In fact, I think she likes you more than me.”
It wasn’t true, but I’d been surprised at how well I got along with his mom. Evelyn was the motherly figure I told myself I didn’t need, since I was already grown, but liked having around anyway. I’d felt like part of his family after just a few months of our being together, and after we’d gotten engaged, Grant and I had even discussed having kids of our own someday. How’d they look, how we’d raise them. Our own little family, settled in one place. It was all I’d ever wanted, and then it was just gone, no warning. And now I was sitting alone, with not even my dog curled up next to me like he should be, begging for treats since I had mine.
“Ugh!” I jammed the spoon into the ice cream so hard that I actually made an inch of progress. But when I tried to scoop, the handle of the spoon wouldn’t budge, so not real progress. Kind of like what I’d accomplished since being stood up at the altar. I’d basically put my entire life on pause, but two full weeks of feeling sorry for myself was enough. Time to type up a game plan and do what I did best—take control of the situation. In fact, I was getting kind of excited thinking about entering it into my task list and highlighting the sections in different colors. One color for fitness goals, another for my housing situation—one that’d allow my dog to live with me—and eventually, one for a new dating plan. Th
at last goal would be long-term, of course. I wasn’t in a hurry to jump into another relationship. My heart was obviously a crappy judge of character. And just so I wouldn’t fail, I would even schedule in a couple of nights a month when I could watch sappy movies and allow myself to be a bit sad that my wedding hadn’t happened.
Yeah. I’ve totally got this.
But first things first; this ice cream was going down. I took it into the kitchen and dug around in a few drawers, looking for something to cut through the impenetrable arctic-frost layer.
“Ooh,” I said, pulling out a flambé thingy I’d seen Jillian use for a wedding that’d involved crème brûlée. I’d just fired it up, the flame blowing nice and hot, when Jillian walked in.
“Put the culinary torch down and no one gets hurt,” she said.
“My ice cream’s frozen.”
Jillian dropped her purse on the table and walked into the kitchen. Her curly dark hair was spilling out of the bun she kept it in when she was cooking, a breadth away from falling out completely, which meant it’d been a long, nonstop day. “That’ll turn it into soup.”
“Good, then I can forget about the stupid spoon and just drink it.”
Jillian pursed her lips and held out her hand.
I slowly handed over the torch. “I know this looks sad, but it’s okay. I realize I’ve reached the allotted amount of being heartbroken time, so tonight’s the last night I’m allowed to be pathetic. I’m going to create a supercool work sheet, and I’ll be back to normal in no time.”
Jillian tossed her torch back in the drawer and closed it with her hip. “You can’t plan how long it takes to heal from a heartbreak.”
“You know I’m goal oriented. If I write it down, I’ll make it happen, no matter what it takes.”
“You need closure, babe. That’s what it’s going to take to even start the healing.” Jillian took the ice cream carton to the sink, plugged the drain, and ran hot water into it until it was just to the brim. I probably should’ve thought of that, but the flame seemed faster and more destructive. Lately, that was more my style—yet another thing I needed to work on. “You’re going to have to face him sometime. Get some answers, say your official good-bye, and hear why he stood you up, even if it ends up being total shit.”