Dante had lost his mother when he’d been fifteen. While he hadn’t been the one to pull the trigger, a case could be made that he was responsible. They’d always been there for each other, and to this day, he would give anything to have her back. He couldn’t comprehend what it would be like to have family and not be close to them.
“She’s your sister,” he began.
“I know.” He sighed. “I was too busy being the man of the family. I figured the rest of them would worry about Evie. But that never happened. She was always an afterthought.” He shook his head. “There’s no excuse.”
Dante had known Rafe a lot of years and trusted him completely. From what he’d seen, May was a sweet, loving person. So how had everyone managed to ignore what was going on with Evie?
“She’s here now,” Rafe continued. “We want to make things up to her.”
“Good luck with that.”
“You think she’ll resist?”
“If you were her, how forgiving would you be?”
Rafe sighed. “Yeah, I see your point. I appreciate you looking out for her.” He stared at Dante. “That’s all it is, right? You’re not getting involved?”
Dante knew exactly what his friend was asking. Telling Rafe he thought Evie was sexy as hell, from the way she walked to her hard-won smile, wasn’t a smart move. Instead he settled on the truth.
“You know how I feel about relationships.” In his world, love had deadly consequences. He’d learned the lesson early and had never let it go.
* * *
THE FRIDAY AFTER Thanksgiving wasn’t a school day, so Evie had scheduled her dance classes early. She was done by three and showered, dressed and settled in front of her television by four. She pushed the play button on her remote, cuing up the DVD of the performance, then settled back on her sofa to watch it for the fortieth time.
The story was simple. The Winter King had dozens of daughters. The girls wanted to go free in the world, but he loved them too much to let them go. So his daughters danced to convince him they were ready to leave. At the end, the girls were revealed as beautiful snowflakes and he released them into the world as Christmas snow.
The girls danced in groups. They were mostly divided by age, with the younger performers having more simple choreography. Every student had a few seconds of a solo with the more advanced students having longer in the spotlight. Several styles of dance were represented. Modern, tap, clog and, of course, ballet.
The sets were simple, the lighting basic. The music was a collection of classic holiday songs, leaning heavily on Tchaikovsky. What would the world have done without his beautiful Nutcracker? The biggest problem in her mind was the transitions. They were awkward in some places, nonexistent in others. Sometimes the girls simply walked off the stage, and the next group walked on. Every time she watched that part of the performance, she winced.
Evie made a few notes, then rewound to the clog dancers who opened the show. Some of their steps were similar to tap, she thought. The sounds could echo each other. Slower, then faster. She stood and moved along with the girls on the recording. But as they turned to leave, she kept dancing, going a little more quickly, finding the rhythm of the tap dancers as they moved onto the stage.
She paused the frame and wrote some more, then made a couple of quick drawings to capture the exact poses she imagined. She moved on to the next transition and made changes there. She was just starting the third when someone rang her doorbell.
Her first thought was that it might be her mother. Dread coiled in her stomach. She wasn’t ready to face May, to deal with the family trauma again. Was hiding and ignoring the interruption too cowardly?
Whoever was at the door rang the bell again. Reluctantly, she walked over and opened it.
Relief was instant. Dante stood on her doorstep. He smiled at her.
“You’re home. I didn’t hear any pounding above my head, so I thought maybe you’d finished early. Get your coat.”
He looked good, she thought, studying his amused expression. He wore a leather jacket over jeans and a scarf. He had on boots. She could feel the cold of the rapidly darkening late afternoon.
She put her hands on her hips. “Get my coat? Was that an order? Newsflash. I don’t work for you.”
“Good. Because I don’t take anyone on my staff out.” He sighed. “Seriously, you’re going to be difficult?”
“No. I’m going to ask where we’re going.”
“Didn’t I say ‘out’? I would swear I did.”
She laughed. “Out where?”
“To the center of town. They’re decorating. Neither of us particularly likes the holiday season, so we need to be with people who are less corrupt. It will be good for us.”
“Will it?” She stepped back to allow him inside. “When did you make this discovery?”
“Earlier. So are you coming or what?”
“Give me a second.”
She turned off her TV and the laptop she’d hooked up for the DVDs, then stepped into boots and pulled them on. After shoving her house keys and a few dollars into her jeans pockets, she shrugged on her coat.
“I’m ready.”
Dante stared at her. “Impressive. Less than two minutes.”
“You’ve never had to change costumes during a performance of Swan Lake.”
“That’s true. How perceptive of you.”
They walked outside. She locked the door, then followed him to the sidewalk.
The couple across the street was putting up Christmas lights. Several other townhouses had wreathes on doors and lights twinkling from doors and rooftops.
“We’re really going into town?” she asked.
“Yes. The whole place has transformed.”
“I noticed a few Christmas decorations being put up this morning,” she admitted, “but nothing that earth-shattering.”
He took her hand in his. “You walked home the back way, didn’t you? Through the residential part of town.”
“Uh-huh.”
His fingers were warm and strong next to hers. His skin smooth without being too soft. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d held hands with a guy. This was nice, she told herself. She and Dante weren’t dating—she wasn’t that stupid. She knew better than to fall for her brother’s business partner. But some gentle flirting, a little handsome male company, wasn’t going to hurt anyone.
“You’d be amazed what this town can do in a day,” he told her.
“You sound impressed.”
“You will be, too. How’s the dance prep coming? I heard the clog dancers earlier.”
She laughed. “Sorry about that. I don’t know how to make it quiet.”
“I’m getting used to the noise and they’re getting better.”
“How can you tell?”
“They’re more rhythmic.”
“That’s true. At least most of the students are studying ballet. It’s quieter.”
“Unless they fall.”
She winced, remembering the mass tumble during her two o’clock class. “You heard that?”
“It registered as a minor earthquake. The local seismology office called to see if we were okay.”She shoved him in the arm. “It wasn’t that bad.”
“They didn’t do it on your head.”
“Smug lawyer type,” she grumbled. “They’re learning. It doesn’t always go well.”
“I didn’t say it had to stop. I’m looking forward to seeing the performance.”
“You’ll be intimately familiar with the music.” She glanced at him. “Will you really come see the show? Won’t you be off visiting family?”
“There’s just me.”
“What about your dad?”
“I never knew him.”
“I didn’t know mine, either. But you probably guessed that from the slight altercation you witnessed yesterday.”
He drew her close and kissed her cheek. “It sucks.”
The blunt assessment was oddly comforting. “It does,” she admitted. “Hey, I don’t know anything about you.”
“I like being mysterious. Sort of a James Bond of the lawyer set.”
She laughed. “Hardly. So tell me something interesting.”
“That’s too much pressure. Ask me a question.”
“Have you ever been arrested?”
“Yes.”
She stopped on the sidewalk and stared at him. “Seriously?”
“More than once.”
“You went to jail?”
“I served time.”
“No way. You can’t have a criminal record and be a lawyer.”
“Pretty and smart,” he told her. “That makes you irresistible. Okay, you’re right. I was a juvenile. My records were expunged.”
“What did you do?”
His normally open expression tightened. “Bad stuff. I was in a gang.”
Evie tried to imagine the well-dressed, smooth man next to her as a kid in a gang. Her imagination wasn’t that good. Before she could figure out what else to ask, he tugged her along and they turned a corner, entering one of the main streets of Fool’s Gold.
Just yesterday the stores and windows had featured turkeys and pumpkins. Any lights had been orange, and garlands had been made of leaves. In the space of a few hours, the transformation to the Christmas holidays had begun.
Baskets of holiday greens with shiny silver and red decorations hung from the lampposts. The windows were now covered with painted holiday displays—pictures of wrapped packages or snowmen, a few nutcrackers. Morgan’s Books had stacks of popular children’s books on tables and a sign promising Santa would be coming to read ’Twas the Night Before Christmas next Saturday, after the town Christmas tree lighting.
Up ahead, in the main square, a large crane was being attached to the biggest live Christmas tree Evie had ever seen in real life. It had to be twenty feet tall.
“But it was Thanksgiving yesterday,” she said, feeling as if she was going to see snow and Dickens carolers any second.
“Tell me about it,” Dante told her. “There’s more.”
He led her toward the center of town, past the tree on the flatbed. Booths had been set up selling everything from hot chocolate to pizza slices.
“Because nothing says the holidays like pepperoni?” she asked.
Dante grinned. “Come on. I’ll buy you a slice.”
They got pizza and soda and walked over to watch the tree being secured by thick chains before being raised into place. The scent of pine filled the air. The pizza was hot and gooey and more calories than Evie usually allowed herself in a day.
She wasn’t a professional dancer anymore, she reminded herself. Or a cheerleader. She could afford to have a BMI over twenty.
Families crowded around them. She recognized one of the women from the brunch yesterday morning, but couldn’t remember her name. She was a pretty blonde, with an adorable toddler in her arms. Her husband held a baby boy.
The little girl pointed to the tree slowly rising from the truck bed. “We have one like that?” she asked.
Her father chuckled. “Sorry, Hannah. Our ceiling isn’t that high. But we’ll pick out a good tree. You’ll see.”
The woman leaned into her husband. They shared a look—one that spoke of love and promise. Aware she’d caught a glimpse of something private, Evie turned away.
Back when she’d still been young enough to believe in miracles, she’d assumed she would find love and have a family. That one day a man would promise to be with her forever. She would belong, and that belonging would finally heal her.
Several bad boyfriends later, she was less sure love was something she could count on and more convinced people who were supposed to love you usually didn’t. She wanted to tell herself it could still happen, but she had a feeling that was just the Christmas tree talking.
She glanced toward Dante. “Thanks for your help yesterday. For getting me home and everything.”
“No problem. Families can be complicated.”
“My mom’s a nightmare.”
“It’s not just her.”
“You mean my brothers?”
Dante looked into her eyes. “Sure, they hold part of the blame, but so do you.”
If they hadn’t been in the middle of a crowd, she would have taken a step back. But more people had stopped to watch the tree put in place, and there was nowhere to go.
“Me? I’m the kid here.”
“You were,” Dante told her gently, his voice low. “You’re an adult now, and if you want things to work out with your family, you have to make a little effort. Does keeping your mom at bay really make you happy? Don’t you want more? A connection?”
She wanted to say no but remembered that he didn’t have anyone. No doubt he would tell her to be careful what she wished for. He was the kind of man who would take care of people, only there wasn’t anyone to watch over in his life. Right now, she had the benefit of his instincts.
“I like the theory of family,” she admitted, “if not the practice. It was so bad for so long, I don’t know how to let go of the hurt.”
“You take baby steps.”
“I’d rather leave.”
“Is that the plan?”
She nodded. “I like teaching dance. I think I want to continue that. I’m going to stick around for a while and learn all I can, while saving money. Then go open a studio somewhere else.”
She braced herself for Dante’s judgment, but he only nodded slowly. “That’s an option.”