Dance of Desire (1001 Dark Nights) (18 page)

“Good,” she answers. “That’s an easy costume.”

14

The Haven Creek Inn only serves breakfast and dinner, so when Amber and Caleb walk into the dining hall at half past noon, they’ve got the place all to themselves. Except for her mom, who’s setting one of the corner tables just for them.

The chandeliers are made out of antlers, a long painting on one wall replicates the view outside, and there’s a wall of glass doors looking out over a stone patio and the steps leading down to the swimming pool. All told, the building’s big enough to accommodate a wedding party of around one hundred people, more if you open all the doors.

When her mother sees them, she sets down her water pitcher and gives them a warm smile.

“And how are we today this
very
late morning, Mister Watson and Miss…” She remembers they already have the same last name and coughs to hide her embarrassment.

“Don’t worry, Momma. He’s getting a lawyer when we get back to Dallas so he can change his last name back to Eckhart.”

“Oh,” her mother says. “Okay.”

A strange blend of emotions, most of them dark, it looks like, passes through her mother’s stare.

Caught, her mom looks away and gestures for them to sit.

“I’ll go see if your pancakes are ready.”

“What was that about?” Amber asks.

“The name thing’s kinda weird for now. Don’t worry. I’ll fix it.”

A few minutes later, her mother’s back, a plate in each hand. Lemon ricotta pancakes, served on the inn’s signature blue toile china, pads of butter sliding off them like skiers in melting snow. Too bad her mother’s refusing to look either one of them in the eye.

“Momma, what?”

“Nothing. Y’all enjoy your pancakes.”

She turns to leave.

“Momma!”

Amber points to the empty chair. Her mother flounces down into it. It’s Caleb to whom she suddenly gives her full attention.

“I want this trip to be special for you both, I really do. And I hate to mention anything that touches upon that
jerk
. But what you said just now, Caleb, about changing your name?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he answers.

“I don’t have a problem with it. I really don’t. But…these things with the trust and the bar…”

Amber’s heart drops. Her cheeks flame.

Why didn’t she think of this before?

“You and Abel,” her mother continues, “y’all made all these arrangements that Amber and I didn’t know anything about. And according to what she told me the other day on the phone, they’re our first line of defense against Joel if he tries to make trouble in the LLC. So tell me, if you go changing your name right now, I mean, before we get this all sorted out. Is that gonna cause problems for Watson’s? For everyone who works there?”

“Oh my God,” Amber whispers.

“Oh, honey, don’t get upset. It’s just a technicality. But maybe for a little while, until we get Joel out of the picture, nobody changes their names, okay? And I hate to say it, but that also means nobody nullifies any adoptions either.”

“It’s fine,” Amber finally manages. But her performance is a lousy one, so she tries again. “We’ll figure it out. It’s fine. Let’s just eat.”
Second verse, wore than the first
, she thinks. Because it’s more than a name, and it’s more than a piece of paper and they all know it, and that’s why the three of them just sit for a while.

“It’s not fine,” Caleb says.

When she looks up at him, he doesn’t seem angry, just calm and resolute.

“And it’s not a problem,” he says.

“What do you mean?” her mother asks.

“The trust documents don’t list me as his heir. Yeah, I’m the trustee, but as an individual, not a family member. A simple name change won’t affect that as long as it’s properly filed. And nothing about the documents we drew up stipulates that a family member has to be the trustee.”

“Really?” her mother says, stunned. “Abel agreed to that?”

“Not at first. But I managed to sell him on it.”

“How?” her mother asks.

“I told him if this was really going to be a fail-safe in case Joel turned out to make a mess of Watson’s, he should keep it as separate from family as possible. He thought I was worrying about a technicality and I pointed out that putting language in there about me being his son was just about emotions, not the law. As long as I was named as the trustee, I’d be able to keep tabs on Joel and shut down his promotions budget if I so chose. Didn’t matter whether I was Abel’s son or some guy he just met on the street. Unless I went and nullified the adoption, what did it matter whether or not the documents listed me as an heir?”

“And that’s what you really wanted, wasn’t it?” her mother asks. “The option to nullify the adoption at some point.”

Caleb tightens his grip on Amber’s hand. “Guess so. I’ve never been big on hope before these past few days. But I guess I had a shred of it in me back then.”

“And what did he say?” Amber asks. “What did he say when you asked him to just list you by name and not as his son?”

“Not much. He was pretty sick by then and we were rushing to put the documents together while we still had time. I remember he just shook his head and kinda laughed and said some old saying that I’d never heard him say before.”

“What old saying?” her mother asks, sitting forward suddenly, her voice tight as a drawstring.

“I think he said… Sometimes the road rises up to meet you instead of beat you.”

Her mother’s hands fly to her mouth.

Amber hears herself suck in a breath, and then suddenly she’s blinking back tears.

“He knew,” her mother whispers. “He knew what you really wanted.”

“What do you mean?” he asks.

“It wasn’t just an old saying,” Amber manages. “He used to say it all the time but he stopped the night your parents died ’cause he thought it would be insensitive given how they’d died. He always said it when he didn’t get his way.”

“No,” her mother says, shaking her head. “It was more than that. He first heard it in the Marines. He didn’t just say it when he didn’t get his way. He said it when he’d lost a battle of some sort. Something big. Something he’d been working on for years. Something like keeping you two apart.”

“Oh, Momma,” Amber says.

“He knew,” her mother says through tears. “He knew why you wanted the trust written that way and he didn’t stop you.”

As she rises to her feet, her mother holds out one hand as if her tears are something outside of herself she can literally hold at bay. But the best she can manage is to turn herself toward the glass doors, her back to them as she cries into her hands.

Once she catches her breath, she finally says, “Goddamn, but that man could be a stubborn son of a gun. But every now and then he knew how to lose with grace.”

Amber rises, takes her mother in her arms. They stare out at the sunlit treetops and the piled high clouds blowing across the blue sky.

“But I miss that bullheaded bastard, I really do,” her mother finally says.

“Me too,” Amber answers.

Clearing her throat, her mother turns quickly and kisses Amber on the forehead.

As she stands over Caleb, one hand resting on his shoulder as if she were anointing him with a new title, her mother says. “Promise me you’ll change your name back as soon as you get to Dallas, Caleb. Promise me you’ll walk right through the door Abel left open for you. Then we’ll be the family we were truly meant to be.”

She bends down and kisses him on the forehead too.

“Now eat your pancakes before they get cold.”

Amber watches her mother hurry from the room.

“Should I follow her?” she asks Caleb. “I feel like I should follow her.”

“I think when your mother wants your attention she knows how to get it.”

“That’s right, I guess.”

He pats her empty chair with his hand. But it’s his mouthful of delicious, molten pancake that really convinces her to take a seat. Once she does, and once he’s managed to swallow, he raises his water glass.

“Bad luck to toast with water,” she says.

“Fine,” he says and picks up one of the tiny flower vases studded with sprigs of lavender. He clears his throat until she picks up one of the other ones in kind. “A toast.”

“To who?”

“To
those birds
! Who do you think?”

“Alright, easy, cowboy. It’s been an emotional morning.”

“Fine,” he says, then he clears his throat, lowers and then raises the lavender again as if he’s rebooting. “A toast.”

“A toast,” she says. “With lavender.”

“And sass, as is to be expected with the two of us.”

“Indeed. What are we toasting?”

“Well, I can only speak for myself. I’m saying good-bye to the sister I never wanted and hello to the woman I’ve always loved.”

“And I’m saying, I love you too. But you knew that already.”

“It’s nice to be reminded.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll never let you forget it.”

Epilogue

“Given that I’m losing my favorite assistant, I’m not really sure why I should consider this a celebration,” Belinda Baxter says, then she scoops a handful of beer nuts into her mouth and chews angrily while surveying the crowd inside Watson’s.

The bar’s as packed as Amber’s ever seen it, the kind of turnout they usually see for a concert or a record release party for some band that’s gone gold. But this is a private event. For the most part, the guests are employees, both present and former, their friends and family, and pretty much every living relative Amber has in the states of Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana.

And they’re all celebrating one simple fact. Just that afternoon, Joel Claire sold his majority stake in the LLC that owns Watson’s back to Amber and her mother, and in turn, she and her mother signed over a majority share to the bar’s new owner, Caleb Eckhart.

Belinda, on the other hand, has decided to turn tonight’s festivities into a wake for her favorite personal assistant.

“I’m sorry you’re choosing to see only the darkness, Belinda,” Amber says. “But if I remember correctly, when I first told you I was going to take over the books for this place, you had a much different reaction.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, miss.”

“I believe you said something along the lines of, ‘If I had a boyfriend that hot, I’d be riding him everyday at work too.’”

“That may be true, but you should still allow me my feelings. It’s only fair. You know I had to hire two women and a gay guy to replace you. And the gay guy didn’t even look twice at my shoe collection. He wants to work with my
cars
. I swear, I never should have encouraged you to look out for your best interests.”

Her former employer’s glass of Merlot looks distinctly out of place amidst the beer bottles and rock glasses scattered along the rest of the bar. But at least Belinda’s made an attempt to dress for the venue. She’s wearing a shiny jacket with Western tassels. Puffy and shiny and not exactly cowgirl material and…are those entwined C’s on the lapel, almost hidden by a jeweled broach shaped like a horseshoe?

“I didn’t know Chanel made anything with Western fringe,” Amber says.

“They don’t. I had one of my new girls add it this morning.”

Just then, Belinda’s face falls. She fortifies herself with a quick slug of wine.

 Amber follows the direction of Belinda’s gaze to…her
mother
? Really? What on earth does Belinda have against her mother? Is she still embarrassed by all that Desire Exchange silliness? It’s not possible. The two women have been in the same room several times since then and neither has said a word about it.

Is it Nora? She’s walking right next to her mom, wearing one of those thousand-watt smiles, and maybe, Amber wonders, trying to scope out any alien/human hybrid children who might be hiding among the attendees?

It’s Amanda Crawford!

The woman’s dressed in a flowy cocktail dress that screams,
I’m too rich to be here!
She’s also wearing a stony, furious expression that matches Belinda’s. The closer they get, the more Amanda raises her Louis Vuitton purse in front of her as if it were a shield meant to withstand both bullets, knives, and the furious glares of women like Belinda. So far, her mom and Nora are oblivious to the currents of icy tension passing between the two overdressed multimillionaires.

Nora gives Amber a huge hug. But her mother just gives her a perfunctory kiss on the cheek. The two of them spent most of the day together in lawyer’s offices finalizing the paperwork of her ex-husband’s departure from the business. And that’s good. Because Amber doesn’t want to be bothered with a lot of greetings right now. She wants to know why Belinda and Amanda are staring at each other like cornered rattlers.

“So I take it you two know each other?” Amber finally says.

“We do,” Belinda says.

“Indeed,” Amanda says. “We do.”

“It’s nice to see you standing up, Amanda,” Belinda says.

“Oh. Don’t be silly. You’re just enjoying one of those rare moments of seeing someone other than yourself.”

“Oh, dear,” Nora says under her breath.

“Uhm,” her mother says. “Should we, maybe, clear the air here? Is something going on that we don’t know about?”

“All the ceiling fans in the world couldn’t clear the air when
this
one’s in the room,” Belinda snarls, then she takes her wine glass and departs into the crowd.

“Whoa,” Amber says.

“I’m sorry,” Amanda says. “Was some creature just speaking or did one of you have Mexican for lunch?”

And then Amanda’s gone too.

“What on Earth was
that
?” her mother cries.

“I have no idea,” Amber says.

“Well, I think they’re upset with each other for some reason and they don’t want to say why,” Nora says.

“You think, Nora?” her mother answers. “Get yourself a beer. I’m driving.”

Amber’s mother takes Belinda’s suddenly empty barstool.

Nora heads off to get the attention of one of the overworked bartenders.

“If I never talk to another lawyer again, it’ll be too soon,” her mother says.