Read Dance of Desire (1001 Dark Nights) for Free Online

certainly not doing that thing he usually does when he’s hurt and trying to hide it; he doesn’t cast his eyes to one side while he puckers his lips and looks for a task to distract himself with. Instead, he stares at her as if he’s waiting for her to explain, waiting for her to take them back to the night on the boat dock before everything changed.
    She can’t look into those blue eyes for very long without the world feeling like it doesn’t have an up or a down anymore. So she takes a sip of beer instead.
    “I already called the bank while you were in the bathroom,” he says. “No more automatic deposits into the operating fund. Not until we get this cleaned up. And I’m sorry to lay this on you this hard, Amber, but Joel won’t give two shits about this place if there’s nothing in that operating fund for him to spend on his band.”
    She doesn’t need him to say the rest, that Joel doesn’t care about her either . The only thing that makes this easier to accept is the dawning realization that Joel isn’t really capable of caring about anyone except himself.
    Good luck, Mary. Hope you used protection!
    “So that’s it?” she asks. “One call and the deposits stop?”
    “They’re not stopping. They’re going into my checking account. I’ll pay the bills myself until we kick Joel out of the LLC.”
    “You can do that? I mean, is that really how Dad set up the trust?”
    “Yep,” he answers.
    “So this whole time you could have raided that trust fund with a phone call and instead you were driving trucks and working oil fields?”
    “Not the whole time. A few years back I was a hand on a big spread outside Surrender, Montana. Didn’t you get my postcards?”
    Yeah, and who sends postcards anymore? she almost says. But she answers her own question instantly— people who are afraid of e-mail because it gives them too much space to talk about forbidden feelings.
    “Still,” she says.
    “Abel trusted me to make the right call. The right call was giving you and Joel a shot. And giving you and Joel a shot meant giving Joel a shot at running this place. Also, it seemed like you loved him.”
    “You think I’m an idiot, don’t you?” she says.
    “I’ve never thought anything of the kind, Amber.”
    “You, Dad. You both knew. That’s why you set up the trust like that. You both knew Joel was awful and you were just too afraid to say—”
    “That’s not true, Amber. We would’ve had doubts about anybody, anybody you were going to marry, especially someone who thought he was good enough to run the family business. If we’d had any idea what a shit Joel was going to turn out to be, we wouldn’t have let him within ten feet of the house. Or you.”
    “I still feel like an idiot,” she whispers.
    “Well, that’s a bunch of bull. You have to try for stuff, especially when it comes to marriage.”
    “Got a lot of experience in the marriage area, huh?”
    Now Caleb does look away quickly.
    When he turns his back to her and opens the nearest register, she realizes he’s not hurt. He’s hiding something.
    “Wait a minute,” she says. “Wait just a minute. You got married ?”
    She looks to the hands he’s suddenly counting bills with. No ring.
    “Did you really get married without telling us?” she asks.
    “It was a spur of the moment thing.”
    “Like a Vegas spur of the moment thing?”
    “No!”
    “Are you still married?”
    “No!”
    “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”
    He shakes his head at the register, but he doesn’t say anything.
    She remembers the way he acted at her own wedding, how uncomfortable he looked inside the suit her father had bought for him just a few weeks before. He’d never been a big drinker, probably because of what alcohol had done to his father, but he’d shotgunned so many Coronas during the first twenty minutes of the reception, she’d been afraid he was going to embarrass himself. Instead, he ended up silent and sullen and rooted to a