Somehow I managed to put Blaze Barron, and his ridiculously sexy smile, out of my thoughts for the rest of the morning long enough to get through the rest of my tasks at the shelter. After storming out to the parking lot earlier in an effort to make my point, I realized that I still hadn’t actually accomplished anything, and the soup wasn’t going to stir itself. I waited for Blaze to climb into his black Jeep and drive away before I went back inside. Mostly to give myself a moment to pull it together and slow my breathing before returning to a room full of volunteers who no doubt had all been watching from the window and were armed with a million questions about the celebrity.
I wasn’t wrong.
It took me over ten minutes of dodging questions before everyone finally settled down and we could get back to work. I’d been volunteering both my time and my money at the shelter for the last ten years or so, and besides my business, it was the accomplishment I was most proud of. Being able to provide a service to the town I loved, and residents in need, filled my heart in ways that even yoga couldn’t come close to. The other volunteers were a big part of that, too. My best parts of the week were with them making soup or lasagnas in the kitchen, or mingling in the great room where the residents of the shelter gathered, especially in the colder months.
But today, the run-in with Blaze had left me feeling unsettled and, as soon as I could, I made my exit. I needed to center myself. Some time to refocus and allow me the space to remember why I needed to keep my distance from Blaze was exactly what I needed. And the best way I knew to do that was on the mat.
If I hurried, I could make the eleven o’clock class at Go With The Flow, and I’d still have plenty of time to meet the girls for our lunch date. I kept a mat and a change of clothes in my car for this very reason.
I had just pulled up in front of the studio when my phone rang through my car speakers. I put the car in park and pulled my phone from my purse.
Mom.
I let my gaze travel toward the glass front of the studio and the students milling around, preparing for the start of class. Normally I enjoyed talking to my mom, but the class was about to start and… I let the call go to voicemail and only felt mildly guilty.
A moment later, a text message came through.
I know you’re there.
I could imagine my mother glaring at the phone, as if she could will me to pick it up, and the visual made me laugh out loud. A second later, the phone rang again, and this time, I answered.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Why didn’t you answer your phone?”
“I just did.”
“I meant earlier. When I called.”
“You mean a second ago when you called?” I tried not to roll my eyes. “I was driving.”
“Where are you now? It sounds like you’re in the car.”
“I just pulled up at the studio. I was going to—”
“Oh, I’m glad I caught you then. I never told you about my date with Bruno last week.”
Bruno?
I didn’t even try to keep up with my mother’s boyfriends, dancing partners, dinner companions, or whatever else she was calling them. Apparently, there was a distinction, but if there was, I couldn’t keep it straight.
The irony wasn’t lost on me that my girlfriends probably thought the same about me and the men in my life.
My gaze flickered once more to the studio door. It didn’t look as though I’d be sneaking a class in after all. Oh well, a quick walk in the park might be enough to clear my energy before lunch.
“Oh yeah?” I asked with the appropriate amount of enthusiasm. “What did you and Bruno do?”
Elle Diamond was a vibrant, active seventy-one-year-old, but it wasn’t uncommon for us to be confused as sisters because she seemed so much younger than her age. Mom insisted it was because one day she woke up and realized that life was passing her by. “You only have one life,” she would always tell me. “Don’t settle for less than the best. We’re not given enough time on this planet to do anything else.”
I remembered the day of her awakening well. It was about two months after my father passed away suddenly from a heart attack. I was sixteen years old. He’d only been fifty. Up until that day when I’d come home from school to find the driveway full of cars, the house full of relatives and neighbors who’d brought what seemed like an endless supply of casseroles, my life had been normal.
My mom and dad were like most of my friends’ parents. To me, they’d always seemed a bit quieter, and conservative. They spent their evenings watching television or going for walks through the neighborhood. On the weekends, they’d host other couples for dinner parties, go to the movies, and occasionally take a trip to the beach together. But that was about it, as far as I could see.
If you had asked my teenage self if I thought they were happy, I wouldn’t have given it any thought. Of course they were. They never fought or raised their voices at each other. They spent time together and…they were middle-aged parents. They weren’t supposed to have exciting, full lives.
On the morning of my mother’s awakening, I was woken up early to an old Rolling Stones record on full volume. The music was so loud in the kitchen, my teeth rattled when, bleary-eyed, I finally made my way to see what was happening.
What was happening was beyond comprehension for my teenage brain. My quiet, conservative, boring mother was dancing wildly around the kitchen. Her long hair that was almost always fastened into a tightly wound braid spilled over her shoulders in blonde waves. She wore jeans and a tight tank top I’d never seen before, and most alarming, she was smoking a joint.
At nine in the morning.
At some point, she’d registered me in the doorway, staring at her with my mouth agape.
“Darla! Today is the first day of the rest of our lives!” She grabbed my hand and spun me into a dance; the thick smoke of marijuana snaked around my head. “You only have one life, Darla.” She’d stopped dancing abruptly and held me by the shoulders to stare into my eyes. I would never forget the look on her face when she told me: “If you don’t get busy living, you might as well already be dead.”
Every morning after that started the same way, although she did stop smoking weed in the mornings—a detail that, even as a teenager, I thought was a good choice. She sang more. Danced more and laughed more. And then slowly, the men started to arrive, too. They never stayed long, and that was exactly the way Mom wanted it.
“Life’s too short to be tied down,” she’d say. “Trust me, Darla. I know.”
Even though I’d been a fairly self-absorbed teenager at the time, I wasn’t completely blind. It didn’t take much to see how my mother was thriving with her new outlook on life. I loved my father deeply, and I missed him every day, but there was no denying the positive change in my mother now that he was gone. Maybe she was right? Maybe marriage had been stifling to her. She’d blossomed in his absence. The years since he’d been gone were filled with fun and excitement compared to all those boring times with my father.
It was a strong message for a young girl, and one that I felt in my soul. Life was too short to spend half of it bored. Why not live every day the way my mother did after she’d became a widow? Why not just skip to that step and avoid the boring, soul-crushing years altogether?
It was a philosophy I adopted for myself early on, and it had served me just as well as it had my mom.
“Wait.” I pulled myself back to the conversation at hand. “Did you just say you went whitewater rafting with Bruno?”
“That’s exactly what I said!” She squealed into the phone and her laughter filled my car. “Have you ever been?”
“Not in years.” I shook my head with a laugh. “Wow. Good for you. Were you scared?”
“Terrified.” She laughed again. “It was exhilarating. I can’t wait to do it again.”
It was my turn to laugh. “Good for you, Mom. But be careful, okay? Don’t get hurt.”
“Don’t be silly.”
I could picture her waving my objections away.
“You know what I always say, Dar.”
“If you don’t get busy living—”
“You might as well be dead!” She finished with a shout that echoed in my car. “You don’t want me to be—”
“I’m glad you’re having fun, Mom.”
“Always! Now tell me something fun about your life.”
Fun?
I could tell her about the potential for the addiction treatment program, but that would mean telling her about Blaze Barron, and I needed to put him out of my mind, not bring him back to the front. Besides that, it would be unusual for me to mention a man to my mom in any capacity. She’d ask questions. Elle wasn’t like other mothers who wanted their children to settle down and start a family. At least, she’d never said it outright, but it was definitely implied by the example she’d set for me. Still, she didn’t ask, and I made it a point not to talk to her about the various men who kept me company for reasons I couldn’t completely articulate.
“You know what, Mom? I have to run. I have lunch with the girls right away. But it’s been great catching up. Talk soon, okay?”
“Kisses, darling.”
“Kisses, Mom,” I said into the dead air, because she’d already hung up.
Maybe it was the elevation of being in the mountains, or more likely, it was just the fact that after a few months on the road promoting my film, my fitness was not where it used to be. Either way, the six-mile run I’d just—barely—finished might as well have been an entire marathon the way I was sucking air from across the valley.
I fell into one of the loungers beside the pool and made a mental note to talk to Brad, my trainer. He either needed to come for a visit to see for himself that these mountains were no joke, or whip me back into shape in person. Or, more likely, both. Having Brad come to visit would definitely be a careful what you wish for situation. But a necessary evil if I was going to sign on for another Lethal Mission movie. The thought of playing a soft-bellied dad role suddenly seemed a little more appealing.
If Sheila had her way, that wouldn’t happen for many years to come, and she was probably right. The world was responding well to an action hero in his forties; I might as well take advantage of that as long as I could. Even if it did mean torturing myself on the mountain roads.
After a few minutes of catching my breath, I wandered into the kitchen in search of some cold water.
The designers really had done a good job. The rental house still didn’t feel like mine, but it was a lot better and would at least be tolerable until I could find something more permanent. Which was exactly what I was going to do. Especially now that the wheels were in motion for a treatment program.
The meeting earlier had gone better than I’d expected. Not that I had much in the way of expectations at all. I had been surprised that Darla had been so instantly and adamantly against me working closely with her, especially when I was so sure that most of the time she was flirting with me. Of course, the rest of the time, I couldn’t be sure she even liked me. Still, it was a good start and although we still had a lot of details to work out, I was confident Darla and I would make a good team.
And she had agreed to have dinner with me.
That was a very good step. She was softening to me.
I chuckled at the ridiculous idea that Darla Diamond—with her flowing skirts, wild hair, natural beauty, crystals around her neck, and arms full of bangles—was anything other than soft, and I knew all of my new friends would laugh at me if they’d heard me describe her otherwise. Still, there was some reason she was pushing me away while simultaneously pulling me toward her, and I was determined to find out why. Especially because I wanted to be closer to her. A lot closer.
At any rate, we’d made the first step when it came to the treatment program, and that’s what was important.
And speaking of the… I grabbed my phone and hit the button that would connect me to a video call with my mom and dad.
Moments later, my mother’s face filled the screen.
“Hi, Mom.”
She looked tired and my heart clenched in my chest.
“Hi, honey. Where are you? You look sweaty. Are you at the beach?”
I laughed. “No, Mom. I told you, I’m staying in Aspen Valley for a little while. I rented a house here.”
She nodded, but there were no guarantees she remembered that I’d told them that. It wasn’t so much her memory that was starting to fail, I thought, but her listening skills when it came to the details of life.
“I’m all sweaty because I was just out for a run, but I wanted to call and tell you and Dad the good news.”
“You’re getting married?”
There was so much hope on her face that for an instant I contemplated telling her about Darla. I could make all the movies humanly possible, earn billions of dollars, win every type of award there was, but none of those accomplishments would mean anything to my parents if I told them I was getting married. Still, there was nothing to say about Darla beyond the fact that she’d agreed to go for dinner with me. And even then, I wasn’t deluded enough to think it was a date.
“I just knew you and Amelia would work things out. She’s such a sweet girl.” My mom’s smile lit up her face. “A little bit younger than you, certainly. But maybe she’d like to have children someday. Oh, wouldn’t that be—”
“I didn’t work things out with Amelia, Mom.” Nor would I. Amelia Kelly had been my girlfriend for eight months, and yes, there had been times I thought maybe it had the potential to be something serious. But Mom was right; she was younger than me by about eight years, which wouldn’t have been an issue if she also hadn’t been an opportunistic cheater who was more interested in how her dating life could further her modeling career rather than give a shit who it was she was dating. Which became crystal clear when the scandal that she’d started dating an NFL player while I was on location broke. No, we would not be working things out.
“It’s someone else, then?”
I shook my head. “Sorry to disappoint, Mom.” I really was. “I’m not getting married. But I have some other very exciting news.”
“Is that Blaze?” My father’s voice preceded him, and moments later, his face, an older version of my own, appeared on the screen next to Mom’s.
“Hey, Dad.” I gave him a small wave. “I was just about to tell Mom the good news. And no,” I cut him off before we could revisit the marriage conversation. “I’m not getting married.”
His mouth clamped shut.
“I don’t want to get ahead of myself,” I began. “But I just had the first meeting about starting up an addiction treatment program here in Aspen Valley.” I waited, but they didn’t offer any reactions, so I continued. “There isn’t anything like it here yet, and just like some of the programs I’ve been able to donate to in the past, this one will provide a much-needed service to the city. There will be support for families as well as public education so we can help reduce the stigma surrounding it. I’m going to be involved from the ground up, so I can be sure that everyone who needs access to help, no matter what their socioeconomic status, will get it.”
Still, there was no real reaction. My dad cleared his throat, and Mom blinked slowly.
“It’s my goal to have a program in place that could help people like—”
“It sounds great, Blaze.” Dad cut me off. “You’ve obviously put a lot of thought into it. That’s great.”
I nodded. “It is. It’s still in early stages, really early, but don’t you think that—”
“Hayden’s always loved projects like this.” My mom managed a small smile. “Have you thought about talking to him about it?”
I froze. In my heart, I’d hoped she’d finally moved past this. She couldn’t help herself, and I tried not to let it bother me, but no matter what I accomplished, or what I wanted to do, my mother always brought up my big brother in some way. Hayden always wanted to spend a summer in Greece. Or, Do you remember when Hayden used to pretend he was a movie star? Just like that character you play.
“I hadn’t thought of that, Mom.” I tried to proceed gently.
Dad pressed his lips together in a thin line and looked away.
“You should, Blaze,” she continued. “He’s always been so passionate about a cause, and especially when it comes to—”
“We should go, son.” Dad interrupted as he put a hand on my mother’s shoulder. “Let’s chat soon.”
I nodded. “I love—”
The call was disconnected, a black screen replacing my parents’ faces.
I put my phone facedown on the cool marble countertop, dropped my head into my hands, and tugged at the roots of my hair, willing myself not to let it bother me.
The thing was, it wasn’t so much the constant comparison between Hayden and me that I could never measure up to. Oddly, I longed for those days. Because as hard as it had been to know that I’d never be able to achieve the greatness of my golden big brother—who everyone loved, who’d been captain of the rugby team, was on the honor roll in high school, and accepted into his choice of any top school to study medicine—at least it gave me a measuring stick to which to hold myself up to. Even if I did consistently fall short.
Now, there was nothing to compare to except memories. Hayden had been dead for almost twenty years.
I could never decide what was harder: the fact that he was gone or that my parents refused to accept it.
I was the first to arrive at Hourglass to meet the girls. Mostly because the walk I’d tried to take in the park to clear my head had backfired, causing more thoughts to crowd my mind. I’d opted instead to secure a table—and a glass of wine—and wait for the rest of my friends to arrive. It had ultimately been a good choice. After half a glass of rose, the thoughts swirling around my brain weren’t any clearer, but the wine was doing its job, and I was at least feeling a lot more relaxed about everything.
For the time being, anyway.
It wasn’t like me to get so worked up. About anything. Let alone a man. But for reasons I couldn’t articulate, Blaze was not an ordinary man. And worse, the feelings he sparked in me were far from ordinary.
“Hey, Dar.” Abby was the first to arrive. “I came a bit early to grab a table, but you beat me to it.” She cocked her head and narrowed her eyes. “What’s up? Why are you early?”
It wasn’t that I was always late, but it happened more often than not. And I was never early.
I shrugged and took another deep sip of my wine. “I had some free time, so I thought why not?”
I knew my friend well enough to know she didn’t believe me, but thankfully she didn’t press the issue.
“I was actually just talking to my mom, so I missed my yoga class,” I told her truthfully. “So really, you have Elle to thank for the fact that I’m here early.”
Abby laughed and ordered a drink of her own when the waitress appeared. “How is your mom doing? Still living it up, wild and free?”
“She sure is.” I told Abby the story of my mother whitewater rafting as the other ladies arrived, settled in, and ordered their own drinks.
“Your mom sure does have the life,” Sandy said almost wistfully. “I don’t think I’d be brave enough to do half the things she does. It’s so crazy. But in a really fun way,” she added quickly.
“It is,” I agreed with my friend. “But you know, I guess I’d rather have my mom like this than sitting around just getting old, you know what I mean?”
“Completely.” Jessie nodded. “I actually think that’s good advice for everyone.”
“I agree,” Abby said. “I think we should all strive to be like Elle when we’re her age.”
“Except…” We all turned to Britt, who bit her lip. “I mean, I love Elle and I agree, we should all try to be more adventurous and get out there and live life even as we get older. But I think I’d much prefer to get old with Trent instead of the way Elle’s doing it.”
“With a string of dance partners, you mean?” All eyes turned to me, and my girlfriends all nodded in turn.
“I agree,” Sandy said. “I mean, it’s working for you, Darla,” she added quickly. “But I’m definitely a one-man kind of woman.”
“Me too,” Abby said, and Brittany, who up until recently we all thought would also be single for life, nodded in agreement.
It was Jessie who stared directly at me; her eyes challenged me until I raised my eyebrows. “What?”
“Is it?” she said. “Working for you?”
The conversation wasn’t a new one. For years, my friends had tried to convince me that finding a man and settling down would be the key to my everlasting happiness. The problem was, they were trying to sell me on the idea while their own lives—complete with a man in most cases—were less than amazing. Abby was married to a man who was more concerned with appearances than with her, and who ultimately turned out to be a liar and a criminal, embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars and eventually going to prison. Jessie married her high school boyfriend because she accidentally ended up pregnant with twins. It was loveless and lackluster from almost the beginning, until he finally left her and the kids to be a single mom and run a diner all on her own. Sandy was the only one who’d seemed happy with her husband and two sweet little girls, until she was very suddenly widowed by a drunk driver who took her husband’s life. Years after his passing, she admitted that although she’d loved him very much, their marriage had always been lacking, too. Brittany was the only one who had never tried to pressure me into a relationship that would ultimately leave me wanting. And that was only because she was married to her career, always choosing it over the possibility of a relationship. Until recently.
“Would you believe me if I told you it was?” I fiddled with my necklace, rubbing the crystal absentmindedly. “I know I don’t need to remind you all that the Diamond women aren’t built for monogamy. My mother absolutely came alive when she was given the opportunity. And maybe it’s not the way you think you’d do it, but single really is the way that works for us.”
My mind flashed back to the conversation I’d just had with my mom. She was happier without Dad, and as much as I still missed him, I couldn’t help but be thankful for the opportunity Mom had to truly live her life to the fullest. I couldn’t imagine her any other way now.
“You know we just want you to be happy, Dar.” Sandy reached across the table and put her hand over mine. “No matter what that looks like for you.”
I blew her a kiss across the table. I’m pretty sure she’d only become sweeter since she’d been with Dylan. It was amazing to see the way she’d blossomed in her new relationship, which just went to show you that it could be different for everyone.
“Maybe a certain super gorgeous movie star could make you happy.” Britt sipped her wine and winked over her glass. “You know, if you spent more time talking to him the other night instead of avoiding him, you might have—”
“I was not avoiding him.”
She raised an eyebrow.
Britt wasn’t wrong. After our little interaction in the kitchen, where I’d alternated between overt flirting and casual indifference, I had done my best to avoid him. It felt ridiculous to admit it, but it was easier that way. I was like a child who’d been told she couldn’t have something. It literally was the only thing I could focus on.
“You know, Darla,” Abby said. “The point of the pact isn’t for you to just avoid Blaze completely. It’s to get to know him.”
“What if I don’t want to get to know him?”
Abby shot me a look, and I laughed. “Okay,” I conceded. “That’s not fair. But I don’t want to date him.”
“But you do want to sleep with him.” It wasn’t phrased as a question, but Jessie was waiting for an answer regardless.
I took a sip of my wine to fortify myself and went with honesty, because that’s all I’d ever given my girlfriends. “I don’t know what I want.”
Judging by their reactions, you would have thought I just told them I wanted to get married in a white ballgown dress and have four babies, all in the next six months. Sandy squealed. Jessie laughed, and Abby clapped. Even Brittany slapped the table and declared, “I knew it.”
I looked between them all, certain they’d all lost their minds. “What do you know?”
“You like him.” Brittany pointed her finger at me.
“That’s not a secret.” I took a deep breath in through my nose, counted to ten, and blew it out slowly. “I already told you I liked him,” I said when I was a little more centered. “And I think he’s very attractive. But that doesn’t mean I want to—”
“You agreed to go for it.”
Abby got my attention. I turned in my chair to look at her directly. “I agreed not to have sex with him.”
She shook her head with a small grin on her face.
“Yes,” I said. “That’s what I agreed to.”
“You also agreed to the pact,” Jessie said. “To go for it. Which means doing something you wouldn’t normally do. That’s the whole point, Dar.”
I shook my head. This was ridiculous, and it was getting out of hand. “Listen. I agreed to the whole pact thing, and because I’m a woman of my word, I’ll stick with it.” Even if all I can think of when I see him is kissing every inch of his hard, chiseled chest. “And you should know that I’m going to have the perfect opportunity to get to know him, because we’re going to be working together.”
That got their attention the way I knew it would, and for a few minutes, the conversation shifted to the topic of the shelter and the addiction program that Blaze insisted on being part of. I’d had a few hours to get used to the idea of working with him directly, and I wasn’t as opposed to it as I was initially. I honestly did think his intentions were in the right place, and I’d meant it when I’d said that I liked him. Despite the fact that he was a super-famous movie star, Blaze was a genuinely nice guy. It might even be fun to get to know him as a friend. A platonic friendship could be fun.
And maybe if I kept telling myself that, I might actually believe it, too. Or at the very least, I might stop thinking about how he would look naked, in my bed.
“Darla! You’re blushing.” Brittany’s voice pulled me from my daydream.
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
Abby chuckled. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you react like that before.”
I loved my friends, but sometimes I think they forgot that high school was over twenty years ago. I shook my head.
“There was no reaction,” I insisted. “We’re going to work together and so yes, I’ll get to know him. He’s very interested in working—”
“With you?” Jessie wiggled her eyebrows.
“No,” I corrected her with a dramatic sigh. “I was going to say, he’s very interested in working on the project directly. He seems to be very hands-on.”
“Oh, I bet he is.”
Everyone turned to stare at Sandy, who up until recently was the least likely of all of us to make a sexy joke. Her new man was definitely making an impact.
“It’s not like that.” I forced a seriousness into my voice. “We’re really just going to work together.” Fake it till you make it. “Friends.” I pasted a smile on my face. “That’s it.”
The girls exchanged glances before finally looking back at me.
“What?”
“We’ll see,” Britt said, a smug look on her face.
“He is single right now,” Jessie said. “It’s been ages since he broke up with Amelia Kelly.”
“She was never right for him,” Sandy said casually, as if she’d ever actually met the supermodel who had dated Blaze very publicly.
Although, I couldn’t disagree with her. Amelia wasn’t right for him at all.
But that didn’t mean that I was.
Thankfully, the waitress chose that moment to interrupt and take our orders, giving me a reprieve, albeit only for a few minutes. The moment she left, all eyes were once again on me.
“Can we talk about something else?” I asked. “Surely one of you has some news that’s more exciting than whatever I’m not doing with Blaze. Really.”
They all laughed and fortunately, the conversation drifted away to other topics. Normally, I’d be completely interested in the trip that Jessie and Shane were planning to take her college-aged twins to Europe. Or how Sandy’s little girls were learning how to ride their new ponies at Dylan’s ranch. Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t focus on any of the conversations happening around me.
My friends were right. There was a reason they’d decided to apply the go for it pact the way they did. They could see through me as if I were made of tissue paper. I did like Blaze. And if they hadn’t already made me swear I wouldn’t, I would have taken him to bed already.
But a promise was a promise. Especially when it came to my friends.
If they wanted me to try something different with Blaze, I would. But even if they thought they could trick me into something more, it never would be. I’d get to know him. I’d work with him. We’d build a brilliant addiction treatment program that would be an amazing asset to the town, and not once would I even think about him sexually.
No problem.