“You want to go somewhere more private?” he asked a bit too loudly.
Izzy patted his cheek and shook her head. “I just want to dance.”
At some point after Lenny had left the bar, she’d lost her grip on her Isobel mask and slipped intoIzzyagain. This was who she was, after all, under all her good intentions. This was her true face.
The thought made her ache. She didn’t want to be Izzy. And she didn’t want to be sad. But it felt good to forget, just for a minute, tolose herself in dance and in the feeling of being desirable, even if it was only in a stranger’s eyes.
She saw a flash of red hair in the crowd, there and gone. The lightness in her chest dissipated when the stranger closed a hand on her waist and tugged her back. “Come on, Lily. Stop teasing me.”
She blinked. Took him in. Only moments ago, he’d looked so harmless. Young and carefree, nervous even. Now he looked irritated. When his hand went south to grab her ass, she pushed away.
“My name is Izzy,” she slurred.
The answer wasn’t quite right, even to her ears. Her words, in the voice of a stranger. She turned to walk away, but the man grabbed her wrist. She drove her heel onto his foot, causing him to howl with pain. Thrown off-balance, Izzy fell back a step and slammed smack into a broad stone chest.
A verywarmbroad stone chest.
“Isobel.” The voice was hard, and Izzy’s stomach swooped low. “Are you okay?” Dane demanded.
He smelled expensive. It was something in his soap she hadn’t been able to identify, a clean and masculine scent that had a way of clinging to all his clothes. It wafted into her nose as she leaned back against him, a grin stealing over her face. “I’m great, Sheriff.”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Before she could answer, the stranger whose foot she’d stomped on aimed an accusatory finger at her, the bass swallowing his insult as Dane took her by the elbow and led her off the dance floor. A muscle tensed in his jaw. “Why did you leave the house? I’ve been worried sick!”
That was far too many questions, and the answers felt… hard. So Izzy shucked him off and strode toward the bar, cheeks andneck and heart aflame. Everything was soft-lit and spinning. She made to pick up another drink, but Dane was right there, and he slammed the glass back down on the sticky counter, next to a fleet of lipstick-kissed glasses. His favorite shade—Rose Coquette—wasted on a room of people Izzy didn’t want.
She spun to face him, fire-eyed. “Go away.”
“No.” He sounded angry. He sounded hurt. “We have a deal.”
Damn their deal.
They’d made it years ago, after his divorce was final. A pact, for old friends. He’d just been promoted to sheriff, and he’d gotten a call about a woman dancing on the bar and singing a very loud, music-free rendition of “Jessie’s Girl” on repeat. When Dane had found her, she had passed out on the linoleum with a sticker on her cheek.
A blizzard had made the road up to the cottage dangerously slick, so he’d taken her back to his shoebox apartment. Esther had slept in a crib in the kitchen. Izzy had taken the scratchy couch, nursing her pride and a burgeoning hangover in a pair of borrowed gray sweatpants she’d never given back.
The next morning, he’d held her hand while she’d called to find an AA meeting. After that, she’d promised to tell him whenever she wanted to drink. Day or night. In return, Dane had opened up to her for the first time since his split with June had soured their once-easy trio. He’d confided how afraid he was of failing both Lenny and his daughter. “I’m not good at being the glue,” he’d told her miserably. “Not like you.”
She’d reassured him that night, and many nights since, “You’re a good dad.” And, begrudgingly, “a good brother too.” That was still true, even if Lenny was a human fungus parasitizing Dane’s forgiving nature.
Izzy didn’t want to admit that she needed his help tonight.
“Why did you leave?” Dane asked again.
“I… I don’t know. I had to follow Lenny—”
“To abar?”
She flushed. “At least I did something.”
Izzy was primed for his anger. She wasn’t prepared, however, for him to soften. Dane stepped closer and folded his arms around her. “That you did,” he whispered, ghosting a soft touch to the bruise on her arm that Lenny had left behind. “You brave, terrifying woman.”
Izzy was frozen, afraid to let herself sink into his touch.
Dane pulled back and held her by the shoulders. “But what if he’d hurt you, Isobel? Hurt youmore?”
“Why didyoujust let him go?”
