Page 42 of The Last Dance You Saved
He wasn’t relaxed. He was full of wound-up energy. A cougar waiting to pounce.
He scanned me in the same way I’d scanned him, top to bottom and back. When our gaze finally met, his brow was raised, and I heard the unspoken question in my head,Am I going to show up at his cabin tonight or not?I rolled my eyes, and his lip twitched as if he found it amusing.
“Fallon says you want me to take her out on the boat,” Rafe said, turning away from me to Lauren with his half-smile still in place.
She didn’t even look up. “She was angry I wouldn’t let her go on her own, but I told her she’d have to earn our trust back after flying the Cessna by herself.”
Shock had the words gasping out of me. “She flew a plane all alone?”
Lauren grimaced at my question, and Rafe’s face turned into a scowl.
“It won’t happen again,” he snarled. “I locked the plane down in my hangar after she arrived in Vegas.”
No wonder he’d been pissed the night she’d shown up. No wonder he’d tossed me from the suite. It had been more than just him not wanting his daughter to see me. He’d been reeling from the discovery that she’d flown a plane there. A plane! Holy crap.
Lauren hadn’t stopped working once while we talked. She was like a robot. Iron one napkin, pass it off, iron a tablecloth, hang it on the rack so it wouldn’t get creased, move on to the next one.
“Thanks for taking her,” Lauren said, but it was listless. Tired.
He pulled himself straight and crossed over to us. He put his hand on Lauren’s, stilling the movement of the iron. “We’re all going. We’ll take the food and a cooler and spend some time relaxing before the sun goes down.”
She jerked away from him, stepping aside. “I’m tired. And I have a lot to do before I head to bed. I appreciate you taking her so she doesn’t stay cooped up in the house one more night.”
Rafe slowly took in her dazed expression and slow movements. He started to say something and then stopped, looking at me.
“You got a swimsuit?” he asked me.
I did, only because I hadn’t thought I’d make it to the final round of the dart tournament, and I’d planned on spending some of my downtime at the pool. But now I wasn’t sure I wanted to wear it. Not here. Not with Rafe’s eyes on me. In Las Vegas, I wouldn’t have cared who saw me in my bikini. I didn’t know them and wouldn’t see them again, and it was highly unlikely anyone would have asked me about my scars. But Rafe wouldn’t miss them, and he’d remember I hadn’t really answered him on Sunday night when he'd asked about them.
But I also realized Rafe was only asking me about my swimsuit as a polite way of getting me to leave so he could talk to Lauren in private. I finished the napkin I was folding, placed it on the pile, and then rose.
“I’ll go change.”
I stepped out of the room, but my feet stalled as I heard his voice, low and dark, asking, “What did you take? You said you were stopping.”
“It was just a painkiller. I stepped off the tractor wrong after parking it and tweaked my back.”
“Damn it, Lauren. It wasn’t just an ibuprofen, was it? You can barely stand. You shouldn’t be ironing. You’ll burn yourself or the whole fucking house down.”
“Stop swearing at me.”
“Is this what it’s been like since Spence died? You working yourself to the bone and barely breathing when you’re not? Who’s been looking after Fallon? Who’s been making sure she’s okay?”
“Not you!” she hissed back. “Don’t you dare judge me when you could hardly wait to leave after the funeral. You haven’t bothered to show up for over a decade. Not once since your dad died have you come to see howwewere doing.”
“We…” It was a snarl. “I was supposed to care how any of you were? You made your choice, Lauren. You chose Spencer.”
“Oh, please. Like you didn’t know I’d always choose him. We both got what we wanted out of it. We got Spencer’s attention. He came running just like we knew he would.”
“That might have been what you wanted, Lauren, but it wasn’t what I wanted.”
She scoffed.
I heard him move toward the door, and I set my feet in motion, not wanting to be caught spying. But I still heard his response.
“I truly thought I was in love with you. I didn’t realize I was just a card in your hand until it was too late.”
I didn’t hear her response, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to. It made me feel sorry all over again for them when neither of them would want my sympathy. Rafe wasn’t a man to tolerate pity. And Lauren was proud, even though she was a pogo stick of emotions, bouncing between determined and dejected.
