Page 4 of The Last Dance You Saved
RY: You were right when you called me out on not living, Sads. I had closed myself off. Thanks to you, I not only have my daughter but Gia in my life and a new baby on the way. I have a family I never thought I’d have again because you knew when to push. Consider this me pushing. I want you to find your way back to your dreams too.
ME: I’m here, aren’t I? I threw again. Won again.
RY: How’d it feel?
If I told him the truth—that it felt hollow, like I’d stepped into a mirage from the past and not quite been able to pull the full joy of it around me—he’d never ease up.
ME: Amazing. I knew before the last dart landed that I’d won.
RY: Go celebrate. But be safe. And regardless of how much we tease Gemma and Mads, I don’t want to hear about it when you end up in bed with some one-night jerk-off.
I smiled, suddenly resolved to do just what my family had suggested. I’d buy a dress, get a drink, find somewhere I could line dance, and enjoy the moment of being in the city that never slept. I doubted I’d bring someone back to my hotel room, but I’d let someone buy me a beer with a twist-off cap.
And maybe, somewhere along the way, I’d find the Sadie who’d once wanted to study international law, win the Triple Crown of Darts, and travel the world, righting wrongs. Maybe I’d turn back into that wild child who’d caused my siblings and parents to lose sleep rather than the one they counted on to help fill in for missing employees at the ranch and spent her nights pouring pints at a bar that had been in the family for over a century.
Maybe I’d figure out if the bar-owner, business-minded Sadie I’d become was really the new version of me, or if there was something else waiting around the corner I hadn’t quite discovered yet.
Chapter Two
Rafe
YOU, ME, AND WHISKEY
Performed by Justin Moore and Priscilla Block
It was nearing eleven o’clock atnight by the time I made my way to the piano bar tucked in the back corner of the hotel. It was always my final stop of the night after making the rounds. My routine started with The Marquis Club, with its loud music and packed dance floor, before moving on to the casino, with its jangling slots, spinning roulette wheels, shouts of customers, and clinking of glasses. I hit the registration desk and restaurants in varying order, based on the needs of the staff, but I always ended my workday in the quiet of the piano bar. I’d grab a single shot of bourbon, sip it while I reviewed the daily numbers, and then head to the penthouse suite I called home before starting it all over again the next day.
Of all the businesses I’d built from the ground up in the last twelve years, this one hit all the marks I’d wanted. I was prouder of it—prouder of calling it mine—than anything I’d accomplished yet. Watching The Fortress glow in the rising and setting sun almost gave me the same feeling of peace and satisfaction I’d once had staring at a rushing waterfall and acres of rolling hills.
For a fleeting few months, it had filled the hole that had taken over my life for nearly a decade and a half. But now, as the days grew long and routine grew cold, I felt the black hole creeping back over me, along with an antsy need to shovel it full of something new.
Maybe it wasn’t the tedium wearing on me as much as it was my brother’s death five months ago. Maybe being forced to step onto the hills of my childhood for his funeral had triggered this new wave of restlessness. Whichever was true, every time I watched the sun hit the spires of The Fortress now, it was the sun reflecting off the rivers on our family’s land that haunted me.
My jaw clenched, and my shoulders tightened as I reminded myself the ranch would be gone for good by the end of the year. It would no longer have the power to attack my heart and tear through my soul. I’d have this instead—a hotel-casino brimming with life versus a ranch overflowing with nature’s solitude.
A twinge of guilt hit me at the thought of selling the land. It wasn’t at the idea of giving up a century-old legacy but because Fallon would hate me even more than she already did when it happened. My daughter would get over it though. Marquesses were resilient. We sucked it up and did what we had to do to survive. I’d learned that at the hand of my mother, who’d fought the devil called cancer twice before she’d succumbed to it when I was eight. Survival took many forms.
My daughter would learn it just as I had.
And Lauren?Did I care what happened to my brother’s wife now that Spencer was gone?
I ignored the ache that tried to jump from behind the walls I’d built, quickening my stride along the mirrored hallway toward the back of the hotel, focusing on every minute detail to keep me present. The arrangements on gold-gilded side tables were wilting and needed to be replaced. It was the fourth time it had happened this month. Maybe the florist needed to be tossed out along with the dying blooms. Or maybe my operations manager should be exchanged for a new one if he couldn’t keep tabs on something as basic as dead flowers.
As I neared the bar, instead of the soothing lull of piano keys I’d expected, a raucous and loud beat filled the air, causing my back to stiffen in disapproval.
Stepping inside, it wasn’t the carefully crafted old-world charm of the bar I saw. My vision funneled, the leather furniture, brass fixtures, and bar built into mahogany bookshelves all but disappearing as I focused on a singular moving object—a woman. She was twisting and twirling through a little two-step dance, accompanied on either side by two burly men.
Annoyance and attraction leaped through my veins in equal measure.
Someone had shoved aside the custom-made piano and replaced the soft sounds of its keys with country music that blared from hidden speakers. The trio on the stage stomped their cowboy boots on my smooth marble floors to a snappy rhythm full of banjo and twang.
The black-haired vixen at their center shot a lopsided smile at the man to her right, and I was overcome with the urge to toss him from the bar simply for having had the audacity to be on the receiving end of it. The little shimmy she did was almost the same one she’d performed after winning the dart tournament earlier. The movement sent the fringed layer of her sequined dress in a million different directions while the lavender silk underlayer hugged her frame. Full hips that begged to have fingers dig into them moved gracefully, while delightfully curved breasts bounced to the beat.
She was a vision. A tasty, tantalizing dream. But it wasn’t her curves that had my breath evaporating. No, it was a pair of blue eyes the same color as the California bluebells that raced over the hills of the ranch in the spring. Those eyes had mesmerized me this afternoon as I’d watched Sadie Hatley toss darts with an ease that whispered of otherworldly powers.
My stomach and groin tightened uncomfortably, just as they had when I’d had her hand in mine. Walking away from her this afternoon had almost cost me a layer of skin and bone.
But she was only twenty-three. Practically an innocent babe.
