“Yours.”
She took another sip of her wine and then let the empty dance floor and the tempo of the song she’d chosen lead her. Maggie Beautiful howled, eliciting a sensual smile from Scarlett.
“That woman your sister?” the bartender asked, nodding toward Maggie Beautiful.
“No.” I shook my head. “Mother.”
The bartender whistled low. His wiry hairs stood at attention all over his wrinkled head. “Good genes. You have ’em too.”
Maggie Beautiful still had a youthful appearance about her—eyes that never seemed to dull. Her skin was almost flawless, though she had lines that seemed to only make her more attractive. Sixteen years between her and I—she could’ve been my older sister, the ever-childish one, the wild one who camped out in deserts and traveled the open roads and then stumbled across fortune and fame in California.
“You a boxer, man?”
I turned, catching the old bartender studying me.
“A fighter?” He lifted his fists in demonstration. “You’ve got the build for it. You’re braw.”
“I spar some, but no. I was a diver with the Coast Guard. A rescue diver in Alaska.”
The old barman whistled again. “Just about the same thing.” He set down a glass and filled it with whiskey. “On the house.”
I saluted him and drained it. Then covered my glass when he went to pour another. “I’m good.”
He nodded, taking the glass off the counter. He chucked his chin in Scarlett’s direction, dominating the dance floor. “That one’s your wife, you said? The dancer?”
“Yeah,” I breathed, watching her. “She’s mine.”
“Lucky, lucky man. She’s gorgeous. Can dance, too. Don’t see that often—women that move like her in here.”
Scarlett danced as though she was alone, an invisible band existing in her mind, natural rhythm in her blood.
Her body reacted in perfect time to each pulse of the music. Her hip came up at the exact moment a thump in the music made you take notice of it. She swayed back and forth to the tempo, her hands in her thick hair, her face turned downward, lost to the tempo and the steel guitar.
Her head was tilted back, her arms languorous, though not at all uncontrolled. Her fingertips caressed her collarbone, the cross around her neck, barely drifting even lower. The bones of her sternum were so pronounced that the static-like light sneaking in through the shady bar windows highlighted each one. I could’ve sworn I saw the pounding of her heart beneath the surface of her taut skin.
I knew the feel of those hands, like a caress of wings, and a shock went straight through me at the echo of her touch along my skin.
She moved slowly, sensually, for however long, even when three men entered the bar. As uninhibited as she was with me in the privacy of our bedroom, she was the same with dancing. And she was lost—to the moment, to the beat and pulse of the song, to her own escape.
“Listen here, young gun,” the bartender said, a glance at me and one at the three men. “I don’t want any trouble. Punks, you understand. But this is a cop bar. And they’re not worth taking a ride for.”
Then he moved down the line, asking them, “What’ll it be, fellas?”
I heard one of them laugh, the shorter of the three, as they removed their jackets. Then, “That’s that famous dancer” came from the one who’d laughed.
“Scarlett,” I said.
She didn’t hear me, so into the dance that she had blocked out the rest of the world. I went to her, taking her by the arm, shielding her body with mine. Too late. The shortest of the three had pulled his phone out and had been recording. He was short, but square. A bulldog.
“I’m pretty sure that wasn’t classical,” Bulldog said to his buddies, laughing. “Say something to the camera, sweetheart!”
Scarlett’s eyes narrowed, her lips pinched. “Wha—”
“Here,” I said, slipping on her coat. “Go wait by the door with Maggie Beautiful and Aberto.”
“Brando—” She looked up into my eyes. “Let’s just go.” She took my shirt in her hands and held on. “Please,” she whispered.
I didn’t respond to her, only instructing Aberto to walk her to the door.
