CHAPTER TWO

Present day

“He’s not going to be there tonight.”

Colin spoke as if he were a soothsayer, as if he’d peered into the oracle itself and been granted a view into the future, three hours from now when they were to meet with the Edge nightclub to seal the deal.

“How do you know for sure?” Shannon asked as she rested her ankle atop the barre in the studio at the Shay Productions offices, a few miles from downtown. Effortlessly, because she’d been doing it since she was four, she reached for her ankle and stretched. She’d just finished putting some of the new girls through their paces, and they were fantastic—sexy, gorgeous, enticing—everything her dancers were hired to be at clubs around the country, and the world now, too.

The late afternoon sun dipped in the sky, blasting its blinding light through the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out on, oddly enough, sidewalks and trees. It always shocked outsiders that her Vegas-based company was actually located in an office park, not in the glittering skyscrapers and hotels that greeted visitors with neon and lights. No need for spark and dazzle during the day.

“Because the meeting is with James, his business advisor and main investor. James is the guy at Edge that I’ve been working the deal with,” Colin said. A venture capitalist, Colin ran his own firm but also handled the business partnerships at Shay Productions. He’d been in talks with the second-in-command at Brent’s nightclubs about integrating Shannon’s choreography. Shannon hadn’t followed her ex’s every move, but she was well aware that after a wildly successful career in comedy, he had transitioned to the business world and opened a string of popular nightclubs. Those clubs needed dancers.

“So it’s just James going tonight?” she asked, triple confirming what she hoped would be the line-up at the meeting. She didn’t care if this dude brought his poodle if he had one. As long as Brent wasn’t present, she’d be good to go.

Colin nodded. “Just James. Besides, he said Brent’s not even in town. He’s in the Caribbean or something, and I have a date at nine, so it’ll be short and it’ll be done,” he reassured her, as he tugged at his wine-red tie, which was already close to unknotted.

Shannon rose. “Stop it,” she said, tsking her twin brother gently. “You always do that.”

“Do what?”

“Tug at your tie.”

“I hate these stupid things.”

“Then why do you wear one?”

Colin shrugged, and ran a hand through his dark, nearly black, hair. Funny that she and Colin were the twins in their quartet of siblings, but they couldn’t have looked more different. Not that fraternal boy-girl twins should look the same. It was just ironic that Colin, the one closest to her, had the darkest hair and darkest eyes of her three brothers, while Shannon’s natural coloring was fair.

“It’s expected,” he grumbled, as she straightened the knot in his neckwear. “I swear sometimes you treat me like I’m still the baby of the family.”

“You always will be,” she said, as she finished her task and held up five fingers to remind him. Five minutes younger.

“Anyway, James wants to meet you, since you’re the face of the company. You’re the star.”

She scoffed, as she stretched her neck from side to side. “I’m absolutely not a star. Does this investor guy know it’s me, though?”

Colin arched an eyebrow. “As in, does he think he’s contracting entertainment services from Shay Sloan or from the woman who’s the object of Brent’s desire in ‘King Schmuck,’ one of the most popular viral videos in the last year?”

She rolled her eyes as she walked to the other side of the room to grab her water bottle. “I presume he knows the first,” she said, taking a sip. “How about the second?”

Colin laughed. “I’m guessing no. That’s what’s so funny about it. Brent has no fucking clue that you’ve been under his nose all these years.”

“Well, I had no clue he was here, either, until you started talking to his business guy. I didn’t go looking him up,” she said, though that wasn’t entirely true. For the first few months after they’d split, she’d Googled Brent nearly every day. Hungry for breadcrumbs, she’d gobbled up each and every bit of information she could find, reading posts here and there in the entertainment trades about his show. But then she’d stopped searching for him regularly, because what was the point? They were through, they were over—they were done. She’d sent a friend to pick up her things from his place, and though he had called a few times in the days after he took off for L.A., she hadn’t answered. After she’d left for London, she’d tried him once or twice from overseas, but had never reached him.

Then earlier that year, the King Schmuck video had surfaced, making the rounds online and catching Colin’s eye. One evening when he was meeting her for dinner to discuss Shay’s expansion in Europe, he’d instead marched into her restaurant, slid into the booth, and thrust a phone in her face.

She’d eyed him inquisitively. “Why are you showing this to me?”

“Just watch,” he’d said insistently, and she’d zeroed in on the small screen.

Someone in the audience at a comedy club had recorded Brent. He strolled across the stage during a bit, looking far too handsome to be believed. Broader, sturdier, and older. A decade older, and she liked the way he’d aged. He shoved his hand through his hair—all that dark, soft hair.

He brought the mic to his lips. “Ever been that schmuck in a business meeting? You know which one I’m talking about. The one who has all sorts of shit up on his computer screen? You’ve seen this guy, right? He goes into a business meeting, he talks a good game, he flips open the laptop—he’s about ready to share some really key business point. Like, some big important thing. But he forgets he was watching ‘Hot, Horny Girls Who Get Off to Comedians’—wait, not that, that’s a good site.” He smiled briefly as the audience laughed. “So this guy, he forgets he was watching ‘The Postman Always Comes Twice’ or ‘Hot Girls Who Like Ugly Guys,’ and then his laptop gets plugged into the overhead. The guy is about to present at a meeting, and bam. There’s his presentation right there. On screen. Splattered for everyone to see.”

Laughter rippled through the crowd.

Shannon had craned her neck to stare at her brother. “I’m here to have dinner with you. Why do you think I want to see him talking about porn on his laptop?”

“Just trust me. I swear that’s not what the bit’s about,” he’d said, as if he’d had a naughty little secret up his sleeve, using that same kind of voice he’d relied on as a kid, when he’d tried to trick her into touching a frog or a worm. She didn’t trust that voice one bit.

But Brent had stage presence. He had that intangible quality known as charisma. Maybe it was the looks, maybe it was the charm, or maybe it was the sexy gravel of his voice. Who knew? Or maybe it was just that he was hot as hell, and he was funny. Rarely did those two traits exist in one man, but they resided in Brent, and she’d had a hard time looking away from the screen.

Brent had continued, pacing the other direction across the small stage. “So that was me. Yeah, me,” he’d said, pointing at himself, stabbing his finger against his chest. “So, I’m meeting with the head of this hotel chain, and I’m suited up, right? Got the tie, the jacket, the tailored pants,” he’d said, then glanced down at his jeans and loose T-shirt, as if to say I’m still casual when I moonlight on stage from time to time. “And we’re talking about moving my nightclubs into his hotel, and I said ‘let me show you the plans.’ And what do you think was on my screen?”

He’d stopped, shaking his head, utterly bemused with himself. That was the self-deprecating tone and expression that he alone had mastered. The one that had worked its way into her heart in seconds when they were younger and made her fall in love with him. He was so damn charming, so utterly irresistible like this. When he owned every second of who he was.

“No, it was not ‘Hot, Horny Girls Who Like Comedians,’ though that would be a fucking awesome site. Someone needs to make that if it doesn’t exist. And I will gladly sponsor it, bankroll it, whatever. Anyway, it was my ex’s Facebook profile. Yeah. I’m that guy. That idiot. King Schmuck. That asshole who Facebook stalks his ex,” he’d said, then he’d stopped pacing and tapped his chest, the look on his face one of utter disdain for his own antics.

She’d grabbed the phone from Colin’s hand and pressed end on the video.

“It was just getting to the part about you—”

She cut him off. “I don’t want to see him. I certainly don’t want to hear about him Facebook stalking some girlfriend.”

“Um, Shan. That ‘some girlfriend’ is you,” he’d said, sketching air quotes.

“I don’t care,” she’d said, and then gritted her teeth and tapped the menu. “Let’s order and talk about Europe.”

Colin had never brought it up again. While she knew the popular video was about her, she’d resisted every single urge to watch it. She didn’t care to hear anything he could possibly say about her that was uttered in the same breath as ‘porn on his computer screen,’ no matter how funny, or how trendy the video had become.

Brent was an asshole, and the way things had ended between them was entirely his fault. He’d had the choice to have both her and work, but he’d picked work and ditched her. Case closed, in a classic stone cold fucking of her heart. Maybe that was why she couldn’t deny her delight in the wild goose hunt he’d taken himself on via Facebook. He might have found Shannon Paige-Prince and been checking out her profile, but she wasn’t that person anymore, and she barely maintained that page. Hell, she didn’t maintain any profile because she didn’t want to be known, or to be found. She preferred her new name, and new life, and living it off the Internet.

When she’d started her company four years ago, after amassing several high-profile choreography jobs following West Side Story, she’d already switched her hair color from bright blond to dark brown. Next, she’d jettisoned the last name she had growing up. She’d needed a sleeker and sexier name. Companies wanted to hire Shay Sloan more than Shannon Paige-Prince. But she also didn’t want to see that look, that furrow of the brow that came when someone heard her last name. “Are you one of the Paige-Princes of...”

Nope.

Those questions needed to be cut off at the knees.

She’d taken her cues from Michael, her oldest brother. They all had. They always did. He’d been the first among them to change his last name to Sloan, and had suggested they all do the same. Sloan was an everyman name. It had no history, no notoriety. They could slip easily through this town and live free of all those questions from people who remembered who they had been long ago. With new names, their old life faded away, receded far into the rearview mirror.

“Anyway, Shay.” Her twin brother lingered on her business name, mocking her playfully as he said it. “The guy you hate won’t be there.”

“I don’t hate Brent,” she said quickly. But she did. Oh, how she did some days. She hated him with all she had.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. And no, I didn’t tell James you were engaged to King Schmuck back in college.” But even those words and the weight of their promise— engaged—seemed like a terrible understatement of what she and Brent had shared. They were everything to each other. “It’s just not germane to the business deal we’re striking. It’s a private matter. Like a million other things that are private.”

“A million things,” she echoed. Things the four siblings would take to the grave.

“Then let’s go to this meeting tonight and seal the deal to bring the hottest dance show around to the hottest clubs worldwide,” he said, holding up his fist.

She banged her fist to his. “See you in three hours.”

Shannon left their offices and headed to her nearby home, driving past a billboard of The Wynn, the place that had put Shay Productions on the map three years ago when she’d choreographed a sultry extravaganza of the senses for the theater housed inside that upscale hotel. The show has been called “lush, sensual, and a feast for both the eyes and the loins.” That production had enabled her to quickly build her business, to take her routines and choreography well beyond one stage and on to worldwide venues.

She’d come far from West Side Story, but that first gig after college had led to the next one, then the next one, then to this.

She turned onto her block, a trendy street not far from the Strip, with an organic breakfast cafe and a hipster coffee shop, then pulled into the parking lot at her condo. As she locked the car door, she reminded herself that if she’d chased Brent to Los Angeles, she might never have had the chance to become who she was today. Her career had given her freedom and distance from the past, and that was a dream come true.

On the way upstairs she snagged her mail, slapping it on the kitchen table to look at later. She showered, blow-dried her hair, and applied fresh makeup, twisting her long chestnut hair into a neat updo. She slipped into a sleek black dress that zipped up the side—the whole damn side from hem to sleeve—then into a pair of four-inch red suede shoes that tied up her ankles and to her calves. Vegas nights could be chilly, so she grabbed a shimmery, silver wrap for her shoulders.

She looked the part. She needed to look the part. She might not be the one on stage, but she still looked like a dancer.

Hell, she still was a dancer, even if she’d never dance again the way she wanted to.

But she’d gotten over her injury.

She’d gotten over her loss.

She’d gotten over Brent.

She knew how to get over stuff. She’d done it since she was thirteen.