Dance of Desire (1001 Dark Nights) Read Free

Belinda’s home is so thoroughly covered in cream-colored carpet and upholstery, so thoroughly dotted with fragrant room diffusers, sometimes she feels like she works inside of a really expensive breath mint no one can bring themselves to take a bite out of.
    And Belinda’s office would put Oprah’s to shame. A fifteen-foot ceiling complete with a chandelier that would barely fit in Amber’s living room. Soaring bookshelves in between gold- framed maps of all the oil fields her family has managed in the sixty years since her great grandfather struck black gold on his cattle ranch outside Fort Worth.
    As usual, Belinda sits amidst this splendor dressed like she just stumbled out of a spin class. A pink workout visor sits on her tight cap of steel gray curls. Her yoga pants slide down her legs as she rests her sandaled feet on the edge of her antique black and gold Louis XIV desk.
    Belinda doesn’t look up when she enters, just keeps flipping through a copy of Texas Monthly so fast it looks like she’s afraid all the pages will stick together if she pauses to read any of them. She loves her boss’s mix of big money and no bullshit. Hell, she even invented her own term for it— brash casual. When Belinda took a liking to the phrase the minute she heard it, Amber knew they’d have a good relationship. Maybe even a kind of friendship.
    “How’s that drink, honey?” Belinda asks without looking up from her magazine.
    “Haven’t tried it yet. I’m no bartender.”
    “Have a seat and take a sip.” She drops her feet to the floor and sets the magazine to one side.
    Seated, Amber says, “I’ve got the seating chart for the Women of Industry breakfast all printed out if you—”
    “Yeah, yeah, later. Sip, honey. That’s an order.”
    As she feels the burn, she fights the urge to take in a deep, gasping breath and loses.
    “Good stuff, huh?” Belinda asks.
    “I’m not much of a drinker.”
    “I can tell.”
    “Am I getting fired?”
    “You think I waste good vodka on people I’m about to fire?”
    “It doesn’t seem like your style, no.”
    “I figured if you had a drink in you, you’d be more likely to tell me the truth when I asked you what was really going on at home.”
    “I’ve told you the truth. We’re having problems.”
    “Like he left dirty dishes in the sink problems or her name’s Tiffany and she makes him feel like a real man ’cause she’s too young and stupid to know what a real man is problems.”
    “Her name’s Mary and she’s twenty-four.”
    “Son of a bitch!” Belinda hurls the copy of Texas Monthly to the floor. “ Scum! I knew he was scum. You gonna get offended if I tell you I knew your husband was scum? Knew it since he walked through the front door at my damn Christmas party.”
    “Just please don’t tell me he hit on one of your nieces.”
    “Oh, hell, no. He didn’t need to. I just had to look at him. That’s all.”
    “Look at him?”
    “I know his type. Five years ago he was God’s gift to women. Now he’s over thirty and the chicken fried steak’s leaving its mark and the music career ain’t happening, so he’s expecting the world to make him feel as good as it did when no one was judging him on the content of his character. That’s all Little Miss Mary’s about.”
    Amber downs half the martini. This time it doesn’t burn so much.
    “There you go, sweetie,” Belinda says.
    “Wait…his music career ? When did Joel tell you about his music career?”
    “Wouldn’t shut up about it at my Christmas party, soon as you were out of earshot. Forgive me for saying so but it didn’t take a detective to figure out that the main reason he talked your daddy into leaving him that bar is so he’d have a stage for him and his band to play on. What the hell are they called again? The Junky Toadstools?”
    “The Blinking Jailbirds.” Just saying the name of her husband’s band now feels like coughing up a razorblade.
    Hell, just saying the name of her