Before Daylight Page 3

  She had rehearsal tomorrow evening, too. Most tomorrows she was busy. A pang of regret roiled her empty stomach. She hadn’t felt so much like she was missing out on a whole other life since she was a teenager. When other kids had gone to Friday night football games, she’d been at rehearsal. A boy from a local school had asked her to the prom, rehearsal. She hadn’t even gone to a normal school, with days filled with academic classes. Academics were crammed in between rehearsals and performances, on road trips, and away from her parents and brothers.

  Laura hadn’t even realized that she was on her first date until one of the members of the company tried to kiss her after they’d shared salads after yet another rehearsal.

  The idea of going to dinner with Charlie—a nice guy even if he weren’t her husband—was so appealing to her that it had crawled into her bones. Which was why she had to shut it down and say no.

  Ballet was the only thing she was good at. Outside of her family, it was the only thing she had. They had sacrificed too much for her to jeopardize it because she wanted something as silly as going on a date. Maybe getting to know Charlie Laughlin, a man who had gotten drunk with her and swept her off of her feet when she wasn’t feeling like herself. A part of her she didn’t let out very often, a part of her that she didn’t know very well wanted to remember the full impact of kissing Charlie Laughlin. That part of her wanted to grab onto the one crazy thing she’d ever done in her life and never let go.

  “I can’t. We shouldn’t.” There. She didn’t sound very strong, but she’d shut him down. She turned around to leave, not saying goodbye. She knew that if she said anything else, her no would turn into a yes in less than the space of a “see you around.”

  “I won’t sign any annulment papers unless you go out with me.”

  * * * *

  Charlie hadn’t said a lot of stupid shit over the course of his life. He’d negotiated a whole hell of a lot, too. He was the guy his friends and his brothers called when they were in a tight spot because they knew he could bullshit them out of any hidey hole of trouble with his charm and quick words. And, if there was a woman involved, they called him with the quickness.

  Still, when Laura had turned around and tried to leave, his wit failed him. Any other girl he would have been able to talk her into dinner after one of her rehearsals, but he’d smelled that for exactly what it was—an excuse. And he didn’t know why it bothered him so much that she’d seemed to dismiss him after she’d gotten what she wanted.

  He just knew that his gut twisted at the idea of never seeing the lovely ballerina again.

  The idea that she’d walk out the door, file some paperwork, and be able to pretend that she wasn’t the wild sort of thing he’d seen on screen a few minutes ago? That she wasn’t the desirous and giddy woman he’d kissed and touched and held for one night?

  Unacceptable.

  Despite the reputation that he’d earned in the aftermath of marriage, he didn’t make a habit of lying. But, as soon as she’d offered to get her family involved with getting this whole “oops we got married” thing fixed, he’d panicked a little, and a fib came out.

  “We can’t have sex, though.” Her words were slow, as though she were talking to a small child. Funny how her mind went straight to sex when he’d been careful only to mention dinner.

  “Why not?” He smiled, enough so that she would know he was teasing. If they had dinner, it would surely lead to the sex they hadn’t had in Bali. There was too much—something—between them for it not to happen. He’d settle for a quickie with Laura if that was the only thing her schedule allowed. A hot, quick screw against the door of her apartment when he dropped her off after dinner probably wasn’t as romantic as what would have happened on his ideal wedding night, but it got him excited almost as much.

  “If we have sex, we can’t get an annulment and we’ll have to get a divorce, which will take longer and be more likely to go public.”

  “And that would be a bad thing.” It definitely would be bad for him, and he would make sure it was good before. His ex-wife had lied about him five years ago. Sparring with her was giving him the idea that maybe an annulment was hasty. Perhaps he could convince her to give their marriage as shot. And, if she insisted on ending it, he at least wanted to enjoy his conjugal rights if his relationship record suffered another black mark.

  For a few seconds, a moment ago, he’d thought that she was hurt by the idea of him not wanting his mom to find out they were temporarily married. Just a flash of something across her face that had hit him wrong.

  “Yes.” She crossed her arms over her chest, pushing her dainty breasts up. He couldn’t not look. There wasn’t much about her that he didn’t want to look at.

  “Why is it a bad thing? For you, I mean? My mother will lose her mind and light St. Patrick’s on fire with the number of candles it will take to save my soul if we get divorced.” Not to mention what he’d have to deal with from his father. He hated the sting of rebuke he felt from the man. His father was a lion of the business world. But, like male lions in the wild who killed their young, he only respected strength. Two divorces would stink of weakness all the way to Chicago.

  Even more than he wanted to avoid censure from his parents, he wanted to know why she was so freaked out by the idea of marrying him. He stepped closer to her and her breath caught, making his dick go more than half-hard.

  “Do you have any idea how competitive the world of ballet is?”

  He’d thrown in the money for a web series on the American Ballet Theatre School in New York last year, so he had a fleeting understanding.

  “A vague one.”

  She nodded and her lips turned into a thin line. “If word gets out that I’ve run off and gotten married, the piranhas will start circling.”

  “Who are the piranhas?”

  “The corps de ballet.”

  “Aren’t they—like—your backup dancers?”

  She let out a short laugh. “No, they’re the enemy.”

  Charlie couldn’t help but smile at the militant set to her jaw. Seeing her so worked up and passionate had him even more determined to get some time with her, to touch her velvet-soft skin and make her grit her teeth with pleasure. He rubbed the back of his neck, hoping to get ahold of himself. “I’ve gotta admit, your military metaphor kind of has me even more turned on.”

  She blushed and let out a huff of breath. “Of course, you don’t understand.”

  “I understand, but there’s no reason anyone has to find out that we got married.”

  “We don’t even know how many people already know.” The panic in her voice decidedly did not turn him on—in fact, he’d do just about anything to assuage it.

  “We’re connected through your cousin and my best friend. If we go out to dinner and someone”—he stepped closer to her—“sees us, they’ll probably just assume that we’re dating. You know? Like real people.”

  “I’m not real people.” Again, with the school teacher voice that got him hard.

  “Sure felt real to me at the wedding.” He ran one finger over her forearm, and the electricity between them nearly set him on his heels.

  The flush underneath her olive skin travelled all the way to her hairline when he said that, and he knew she was remembering what they’d done to each other. How shamelessly greedy she’d been with her kisses, how generous with her moans. He wanted that girl back, and he knew he could get her at dinner.

  “Just one dinner.” He smoothed a strand of hair behind her ear, almost feeling her heart skip with just that light touch. “I’d like to know a little bit about the woman I married.”

  “But no sex?”

  That almost sounded like a complaint, but he was going to let it go. He didn’t need to scare her off with the possibility that given some candlelight, delicious food, and his massive flirting ability, they wouldn’t be able to resist ending u
p naked and sweaty—and in a very real, very consummated marriage.

  He put two fingers up in a salute he remembered from the Boy Scouts. “Scout’s honor.”

  Her eyes narrowed into slits, and he had to bite his lip to stop from laughing when she said, “You were a Boy Scout? Shocking.”

  “Why’s that shocking?”

  “It just seems so—wholesome.”

  “I’m a very wholesome guy.”

  “Yeah, a wholesome guy who marries a strange woman and sticks his hand up her skirt at a wedding.”

  “Hey, you called yourself strange, and I’ve only ever done that once.”

  “You did a pretty good job with the hand/skirt thing for your first time.”

  It was his turn to blush. “You’ve given me enough shit. Agree to dinner.”

  “Fine. Sunday night.”

  It might be the least romantic night of the week, but he’d take it.

  Chapter 3

  “Abuela!!!!!”

  Laura’s yell echoed through her loft condo. She’d lived with roommates—other dancers—until recently, when Carla, Jonah, and the baby had moved to a house together. Carla had called her up one day, asked a criminally low price for the condo and popped the keys in her mail.

  A few days later, her grandma Lola had shown up with a suitcase and ensconced herself in the guest bedroom. Laura welcomed the time with her grandmother, who she hadn’t seen much growing up. She’d had a convenient excuse because it had been difficult until recently to travel to Cuba, which Lola had refused to leave for decades after her children and ex-husband had moved to the mainland. But even if the borders had been open, Laura wouldn’t have been able to spend school vacations in her ancestral homeland. She hadn’t had school vacations; she’d had ballet.

  Sometimes, when she returned home from rehearsal, she felt suffocated by Lola’s presence. They didn’t really know each other, and Lola had a big personality, the kind that swept a person up and set them down when it was good and done with them. Lola was like the twister from The Wizard of Oz. Except less predictable.

  But tonight, Laura’s condo was silent, and she was a bit a disappointed. If ever a girl needed her grandmother’s good counsel, it was when she’d accidentally gotten married to a dashing stranger at a tropical destination wedding.

  And then agreed to date him.

  From what Lola had told her about her past, which was way TMI, it seemed like precisely the kind of situation that Lola had gotten herself into and out of plenty of times over the years.

  Laura pulled one of her pre-cooked meals out of the fridge and turned the oven on to low heat. She’d hired a service to bring her nutritionally balanced, low-calorie food every week so she didn’t have to think about it. Everything in her life was like that—suited and engineered to the life she’d chosen for herself. Looking down at her sad three ounces of salmon and par-cooked broccoli—no oil, no salt, no flavor—she wondered if it was worth it.

  Seeing herself on that tape earlier, looking wild and carefree, was in stark contrast to how she’d felt later, at rehearsal. Dancing at her cousin’s wedding, she’d looked happy. Thinking back, that whole weekend—far away from the company—she’d felt free. Rehearsing a new production of Carmen, she’d been scolded multiple times regarding her face. Apparently, she’d looked too sad to be a believable destitute sex worker. Her face was telling the story of being burnt out, tired, and sore all the time. It wasn’t the kind of soreness she could shake off with a trip to the trainer, a massage, or even a frigid ice bath. It was the kind of soreness that told her she was approaching her sell-by date as a ballerina.

  She was hanging on by her fingernails, and part of her wanted to loosen her grip and just let go. Maybe she could teach ballet or be a receptionist for her uncle, Hector, while going back to school. She’d need time to figure out the rest of her life. The possibilities seemed frightening and exciting at the same time.

  She’d finished her meal by the time a key turned in the lock, announcing her grandmother’s return.

  “Where have you been?” She didn’t intend for her question to come out as sharply as it did. Her tiny grandmother stopped in her tracks. Everything about her screamed color, from her flamingo-pink Capri pants to her azure-colored off-the-shoulder T-shirt. If Laura wasn’t mistaken, there was pink in her hair.

  “Out.”

  “Out where?” Laura didn’t want her grandmother to feel like she was monitoring her, but she felt some responsibility for making sure her elderly relative stayed safe in a city she was just getting to know.

  “None of your business.” Lola certainly had the sullen teenager act down.

  “Did you know that I got married in Bali?”

  Her grandmother stopped in her tracks, literally froze in the middle of putting her purse down on the console table. The faint smile she’d had on her face while obscuring her whereabouts dropped, and her face took on an unmistakable mask of guilt.

  “So you did know.” A knot formed in Laura’s belly. The idea that members of her family had been complicit in this foolishness made her want to scream. Her brothers and her grandparents had all been there. One of them certainly could have stopped her. Or told her about it before her grandfather had the chance. “Abuela, why did no one tell me that I’d gotten married?”

  Lola had stepped fully into the dining area, and leaned against the back of the chair opposite to Laura’s. “How did you find out?”

  “Abuela!” Laura took a deep breath, trying not to lose her shit. The last thing she needed was to give her grandmother a heart attack. “Why did he know before I did?”

  “We were going to tell you, mi amor.”

  “When were you going to tell me?” Laura stood up to clear her plate, not wanting to look at Lola in that moment, but her grandmother followed her over to the sink.

  “When the time was right.”

  Laura tried to focus on the water rushing over her hands, the slippery texture of the dish soap. Whenever she was upset about something, it helped for her to focus on what was right in front of her. She’d always been like that. As a little kid, she’d been all over the place, kind of a wild child. Ballet had given her something to focus all that energy on, and taught her to be present.

  Right now, after finding out that her family had allowed her to make a colossal mistake, she felt like she was in a turn that had gone out of control. She was falling, and about to hit the ground, and focusing on the dishes was the only thing that would keep her from throwing the dish at the wall and shattering it into a million pieces.

  “Who told you? It was Max, wasn’t it? I may not know you children well, but I know—” Lola pointed up at the ceiling, as though she was calling on God for corroboration. “He has the biggest mouth.”

  “It wasn’t Max.” Her older brother might be the family communicator, but even he had been mum on the subject of her secret nuptials. “It was your ex-husband. I found out because he couldn’t file my taxes without my husband’s signature.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Laura turned and looked at Lola, pressing her lips together to bite back the mean words that she wanted to say. Her grandmother appeared to be truly remorseful. Though she couldn’t be certain if she was sorry for keeping the secret or the way that Laura had found out. “For what?”

  “For not telling you.”

  “And you’re not sorry for not stopping me?”

  Lola shrugged and all the guilt evaporated from her demeanor. “You were having fun. Since I came back for Alana’s wedding, I never see you have any fun. Charlie is handsome, and so I didn’t pay close attention.”

  “Is that everyone’s excuse?”

  Lola took her hand and pulled her towards the living room. The older woman was shockingly strong, but Laura didn’t fight it. She even sat down next to her grandmother.

  “They didn’t tell
you because I didn’t want them to tell you.”

  Laura gasped and balled her fists in her lap. “So you’re the ringleader?”

  Her grandmother then had the nerve to pat her hand. Pat. Her. Hand. “You looked so happy, and so—in love—the night of the wedding. I didn’t want anyone standing in the way.”

  “How could I be in love with him?” Laura stood up, unable to stay seated in the face of such utter bullshit. “I barely know him, and I was drunk.”

  “How drunk?” Lola’s brow furrowed, as though it was finally sinking in that she’d made a grave error.

  “So, so, so, so drunk.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “So you thought I remembered all this time and had decided to say nothing about getting married?”

  “I didn’t know you really got married—legally—until you told me.”

  “You thought I had just gotten mildly tipsy and decided to have a fake wedding at my cousin’s wedding with a guy I barely know?”

  Lola stood up and shrugged again in a way that was growing more infuriating by the moment. “I didn’t know exactly what you were up to, but I thought it was time you had an adventure.”

  “I don’t need adventure, Abuela.” She took a deep breath and turned away from her grandmother. “I need structure and discipline.”

  Lola made a haughty “pfft” sound. “The last thing you need is more structure. You work yourself into the ground. Dios, there’s nothing to you but skin and bone.” She walked around the coffee table until she was facing her again. Her face was soft, care dripping from her gaze. “You look so tired, mi amor.”

  “I’m fine.”

  Lola grabbed her arms. Laura’s chest ached at the tenderness that she’d never really gotten from her aloof parents. They were broken people, and they didn’t care much about how people felt on the inside. Her father had been too busy growing a business in a weird competition with her mother’s cousin Hector when Laura was growing up to kiss boo-boos or even attend recitals. Her mother’s answer for most things was an afternoon of shopping or a dosage of Valium.