Sweet Sinful Nights(4)

She swiveled around, grabbed her purse from the living room table, and marched to the door. He swore a cloud of angry smoke swelled behind her.

“Where are you going?” he asked, following her.

“I’m going out,” she said, biting out the words.

“You’re telling me you won’t even consider going to L.A. with me?”

“Are you telling me you won’t even consider going to New York with me?” she asked, countering him.

He said nothing. He let his mind cycle through his options. They were being squeezed thinner by the second. This job was the biggest opportunity he’d ever have. It could make or break his career. He had to take it, and he had to keep her. He imagined himself at the tables, laying down his bets, taking a risk. He was going all in, and he was doing it with a big bluff.

“If you don’t go with me, there’s no point staying together,” he said, making his Hail Mary pass. He had to do something. He couldn’t lose her. He had to let her know his way was the only way for them. “You’ve got to go to L.A. or we might as well be over.”

Her nostrils flared. Her eyes widened. And her fingers started working. She reached for her left hand, twisting the silver ring.

“That’s how it’s going to be? This is what we’ve come to? You make threats to keep me?” she said, and she didn’t shout, she didn’t raise her voice. She whispered her vitriolic words and they sliced him.

“Shannon,” he began, trying desperately to backpedal. “It wasn’t a threat.”

She held up her hand, her eyes like ice and her lips a firing squad. Then she tugged on the diamond ring. His stomach dropped. He might have been bluffing. But she was not.

“You made this choice. You,” she said, her eyes narrowed and full of fire, her fingers shaking. “Here’s your hard-earned diamond. I want my band back. Send it to my grandmother’s house.”

“Please. I didn’t mean it,” he said, trying to claw his way out of the hole he’d dug.

She pressed her finger against his lips. “There’s nothing you can say to me now. You already said it all with your ultimatum. So, allow me to have the last word.” She peeled open his fingers one by one, and dropped the ring into his palm. “I might be the one leaving right now. But you are the one walking away from us. You just made the biggest mistake of your life.”

A black cloud engulfed him. He had no clue how the day had gone to shit so quickly. He reached for her shoulder, trying to figure out how the hell to take his foot out of his mouth. “Shannon—”

She held up her hand, then walked out the door and out of his life.

As the latch clanged shut, he knew she was right. He was the one walking away, but there was no going back now.





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.