CHAPTER 65
EMILY
Darlene had that faraway look she got when her brain was firing in the rhythms of the show. She was pacing the length of the platform she was supposed to perform on.
Having spent half the night at the police station making a statement, I’d been late for the sound check and run-through, but I’d never felt better.
“No, no, no.” Darlene waved her hands at everything. “I can’t see it. I need to see it.” She jumped off the platform to the seats. “Can we play it so I can freaking see it?”
I pointed to the girl behind the soundboard. “Can we get it on the monitors?”
She held up five fingers and mouthed the word minutes.
“Oh for the love of . . .” Who had five minutes? Lines of dancers waited, ready to try again.
Carter stood with Fabian and Carlos. Thor checked things off a list. He was halfway between the stage and the back exit, but when he looked my way, I felt him right next to me.
“Sing it, all right?” Darlene shouted. “Please? Can we just do it?” She never shouted as if she were ready to bust a vein. I’d kept her up late with movies and girl talk and woken her early to be in the station with me.
“Make Him Yours” was a slow jam and the only song with a standing microphone. This was our first and only chance to get it right, mostly because I’d been late, which wasn’t my fault, but it wouldn’t kill me to grease the wheels a little.
I pointed at Darlene, who had her arms crossed.
“I’ll only sing for you.”
I took a deep breath and began. I sang in front of people, without amplification, while my dancers did their routine behind me. I didn’t even realize what I was doing, except my job. Except what I was capable of.
The sound girl obviously didn’t need five minutes, because five seconds after I started, my voice came over the system, loud and clear. Darlene rolled her hands to say “Keep going,” so I did. She scrambled up the platform, stood next to me, and her voice joined mine. I’d forgotten how much fun it was to sing.
“Go, girls!” Simon cried behind us. Everyone was looking, even Carter from half an auditorium away. Our eyes met. What had happened in the hours since he’d shown up at my suite with security?
We’d stated our case. He explained why he’d stolen the tag, run up the stairs, slipped into the next elevator on the second floor, and run to my room.
Was that all? It felt like more. It felt as if I’d shaken off a hundred pounds of chains. When I looked at him unbound, I didn’t see problems. I didn’t see a conflicted man with baggage, and I didn’t see through the eyes of fear. I saw what he was and what he wasn’t. He was a man. Not a protector. Not a target for my past. Not a repeat of all the mistakes I’d made. He was more than all that. He was just a man. A glorious, gorgeous, strong, loving man, and he was smiling at me, and I was singing for him.
He held up his fist. It was the exact size of his heart.
I made a fist and put it against my chest.
Darlene and I used to harmonize all the time, and that day we sang her chorus as if I’d never stopped singing. I wasn’t as practiced as Darlene, but the sound of us together, the way we made something bigger than the sum of us, sounded perfect. I was carried away on it, the way I always used to be.
Make him yours.
Make him yours.
Make him yours.
“See?” I said into the mic. Darlene slow-clapped. My cheeks shot through with the pink of surprise and sudden awkwardness. Simon slow-clapped. All the dancers did. When I couldn’t look at them another moment, my eyes fell on Carter, who was front and center, clapping for a verse and a chorus.
“Lunch!” a voice cried over the huge space. Equipment dropped, stations were abandoned, voices drifted away. Darlene hugged me.
“You sound amazing.”
“Thank you.”
She pulled back, holding me by the biceps.
“I’m so glad you’re all right.”
“Me too.”
Darlene got pulled away to make a decision or have a salad. I’d never know, because Carter was at the ends of the platform, taking all my attention.
I stood over him. He had his security badge around his neck, and his gun bulged under his jacket. He’d been given clearance to work the show with a slap on the wrist.
“It was worth coming to Vegas just to hear you sing,” he said, reaching over the edge and laying his hand on my ankle.
“Saving my life last night notwithstanding?”
“One was necessary. One is just pleasure.”
His finger trailed over the top of my foot. He was too far away. I couldn’t smell him; I couldn’t touch him. His voice was at a normal conversational distance when it should have been so close his breath warmed my skin.
I knelt on the edge of the stage, and his hand went from my ankle to my knee.
“I sound like a frog.” I tucked a sliver of loose hair behind my ear and slid my hand over his. “But it was fun.”
People yelled all around us. The sound system popped, and men dangled from the light racks above us. I was so happy to see Carter, none of it distracted me. I could smell lunch. Chicken and garlic and, to my surprise, brownies. I was hungry but couldn’t move. Not while he touched me. Not while he looked at me as if I were the only woman in the world.
“We were so distracted,” I said. “You never told me why you came all the way here.”
“Because I wanted to apologize. And I wanted to win you over. And tell you that the closer you got to me, the harder I pushed you away. I kept repeating these reasons why I couldn’t be in a relationship, and they were great reasons until we met. When you came along, it all changed. None of the reasons held water anymore, and that? It scared me. I fought for those reasons as if my life depended on it. But, tiny dancer, I’m sorry. My life doesn’t depend on protecting what I have unless I have you.”
Our clasped hands rested on my knee. His thumb ran along my finger.
“And I had an idea,” he added.
“What kind of idea?”
“The kind you don’t need now. Get down here.”
I took his face in my hands, but my face couldn’t reach his from up so high. Leaning on his shoulders, I pushed forward. He held me at the waist and lifted me, holding me up and dropping me in the circle of his arms.
Our lips found each other. He was warm and strong, and I was free to love him.