Kiss Me, Dancer (22 page)

“Let’s try the beaches.”

“Beaches? Where is there to go except the restrooms?”

“Oh, you’d be surprised. I work with an animal rescue group and we find cats and dogs living in — wait a sec. I remember talking to Josh about places around Kenney’s Beach and Peconic Dunes where animals take refuge in small cove-like spaces formed in the rocks and grasses.”

“Gotta be pretty small.”

“Most are, but Josh isn’t exactly a big kid. And he’s thin and flexible.”

Drew gave her a skeptical look. “Sounds really uncomfortable.”

“Hey, I know it’s a long shot, but so is everything else. And I distinctly remember Josh saying he thought it sounded like a great place to hide out.”

“He said that?”

She nodded.

“We’re on our way. And now that you mention it, I think he went to camp at Peconic a couple years ago. So he’d know how to get there.”

On the way, Casey noticed a market along the road, one of those old country stores that looked more like a house. “That looks open. How about we make a pit stop? We can show Josh’s photo, and I can grab a takeout coffee to warm my bones.” The rain hadn’t let up, and she was soaked and shivering.

Once inside, Casey felt how really cold and wet she was, her hair and poncho dripping, her sneakers waterlogged. She wrapped her shaky, stiff hands around the warm paper coffee cup. When she reached the counter she saw a slightly balding middle-aged man nodding at the photo Drew gave him.

“He was here.”

Drew practically leaped over the counter. “You’ve seen him?”

The man nodded again. “About three o’clock he came in.”

“Did he say anything about where he was going? Tell me everything. Please. It’s very important. He’s a runaway, and I’m his father.”

“He looks like you,” the man said as he handed Drew the photo. “He didn’t talk. But I remember wondering what a kid would be up to buying himself ten candles.”

“Candles? He bought candles? What else?”

“Let me check my log.” He worked some keys on his register. “Here it is. He bought two quarts of orange juice, ten candles, three boxes of matches, a flashlight, and eight bags of potato chips.”

Casey couldn’t help smiling at Josh’s choice of staple foods. Or noticing how sexy Drew looked with his drenched shirt stuck to his chest and his wet bangs plastered on his forehead.

“Did you see where he went? He was alone, right? I mean, he didn’t get into anyone’s car, did he?”

“He was by himself. I did look out the door because he left with three bulky bags and I wondered if someone would come out of their car to help him carry it. But there was no car. He just walked down the road alone.”

“Which way?”

The man gestured. Drew thanked him over and over, handed him a fifty-dollar bill, and wrote down his cell number. “Please call me if you see him again. Or if you remember anything else.”

He also thanked Casey when they returned to the car. “I knew you’d help me find him.”

“I haven’t done anything.” And there was still no guarantee they’d find Josh. But she didn’t say that aloud, not wanting to dampen Drew’s renewed hope.

“You got me to come in this direction. Otherwise I’d have been on the other side of town.”

“Should we notify the police?”

“Not yet. Better if he just sees us rather than a bunch of cops with flashlights and dogs.”

They turned down Lighthouse Road to Soundview. The sun had gone down completely now, making it illegal to wander public beaches and parks. Not that it would stop them. They checked Kenney’s Beach with no luck, then moved on to the area near the Peconic Dunes. Casey led the way, as she knew this place better than Drew. But she didn’t mind him catching her waist when her cold, numb feet slipped and stumbled on grasses and sandy pebbles.

“Josh! Are you here? It’s Daddy.”

The Long Island Sound whooshed in the dark behind them, its briny moisture competing with the rain that had slowed to a steady drizzle. But the wind was still strong and periodic flickers of lightning continued in the distance along with the dull rumbling of thunder.

“Josh! Yo, Josh!” Casey remembered one place where a colony of feral cats had been holed up. As they got closer, she thought she heard a muffled voice answering their calls. She took off running toward it, Drew on her heels.

“Over here.” Casey dropped to her knees near a pile of boulders embedded in the dune grasses. Her flashlight split through the jagged surfaces, wet and blackened by the rain.

Drew crawled next to her. “Josh? Are you in there?”

“Dad?”

“It’s him!” Drew’s voice quaked. He shined the flashlight into a burrow-like space way too small for an adult. “Are you hurt? Can you get yourself out of there?”

Slowly an arm and then another reached out. Then Josh’s head. His skinny frame followed, inching along the ground. When he got to his feet, he hurled himself into his father’s arms and cried.

Sobbing out each word, Josh said, “I forgot to buy batteries for the flashlight. I couldn’t even light the candles ‘cause of the wind and, and…”

Drew chuckled softly and kissed his forehead, clutching him tight.

Casey wept, too, watching them, wishing she could join, but knowing it wasn’t her place. She was neither wife, nor mother here. And her deep desire to be both made her weep all the harder.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Casey waited in the Range Rover while Drew returned Josh to Heather’s house. Had she brought her own car it would’ve made the earlier search awkward, but not as awkward as the ride home with Drew would be — thanks to Josh inadvertently exposing the eight hundred pound gorilla lurking between Casey and Drew. Only a child could speak his mind with such forthrightness. To hell with the consequences or the embarrassment factor.

Josh had been curled up on the back seat, swathed in blankets when he came out with an award winning comment from relationship hell. “None of this would’ve happened if you’d married Miss Casey. Then Mom would agree to let me stay here and live with you guys.”

Casey wanted to crawl out the car window. Especially when she saw the way Drew froze up, shoulders hunched, pretending not to hear. She knew marriage was a dirty word to Drew Byrne. No doubt he hoped as much as she did that this part of Josh’s defensive tirade would just disappear in the jumble of the boy’s histrionics.

But Josh continued with vehemence. “It’s not too late for you to marry her, Dad. There’s still time. Mom’s not leaving till the end of the month. You wouldn’t mind being my second mom, would you, Miss Casey? I don’t usually do bad stuff like this. But what’s going down is so totally catastrophic! Come on, Dad, you want to marry her, don’t you?”

That sent Casey reeling. She almost felt sorry for Drew.

Until he answered in a flat, irritated tone. “I’ll arrange for you to stay with me until you do the performance on TV.”

Game over. Casey realized Josh had voiced the very wish she’d been carrying around in her sinking heart. And Drew’s reply made it painfully clear her wish was a fool’s errand.

But what did she expect? Did she really think Drew would say, “Yes, Josh. That’s exactly what I want. Casey, will you marry me?”

More like: “Hey, Josh, I’d love to have you stay, but Daddy’s got all these babes that need to be pleased…”

Josh was not happy with Drew’s reply either. “I’m not leaving here, Dad. Ever. And I mean ever. Miss Casey’s school is the only place where I finally made friends. I’m popular there. I even started choreographing my own dance. And all the best kids want to be in it.” His voice cracked, and he broke in to fresh tears.

Casey felt herself crumbling. She knew so well what it was like to not fit anywhere and to finally find your place. She wanted to take the boy in her arms and tell him it would be all right. She wanted to yell at Drew and tell him to fix it all so his son could be happy. The worst part was that Josh would soon find out the dance school he loved was going to close.

She’d never felt so powerless.

Drew made a lame attempt. “Look, Josh, you never know what you’ll find in a new place. So many things can—”

“I hate you! I hate you and mom both.”

Casey listened for a seatbelt, fearing Josh would dive out of the car. But he just melted into a sad, resigned heap, tucking his head under the blankets and sobbing.

When they reached Heather and Nate’s home Drew lifted Josh, blankets and all, and carried him into the house. Casey made no move to go with him. It would only make all parties uncomfortable.

Now, as Drew came striding down the walk, looking even sexier than usual in his pensive, brooding state, Casey could not bear to look him in the eye. Josh’s words had shattered their artificial state of neutrality. She turned away to face the passenger side window as soon as he opened the car door.

At first they drove in tense silence shrouded by the sounds of tires on the wet street and the battering rain that had picked up again.

“You hungry?” he said.

“No.”

“It’s nearly ten. You haven’t eaten since before your afternoon class.”

“What are you, my keeper?”

“You just did me a huge favor, helping me to—”

“No problem. Just take me home.”

Drew’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Oh, so I’m the monster now. What was I supposed to do? Heather has custody.”

“None of my business. I’m not even sure why you came to the studio and got me involved.”

“Sorry to have troubled you. I thought you cared about Josh.”

“I do. Very much. It’s you I can’t stand.” She faced Drew, meeting his eyes with a gaze that reflected the anger building in her from the time she watched him kissing Amber Von Alston, through sleepless nights of tear filled regret, all the way to his insulting reaction when Josh dared to suggest he marry her.

He returned his focus to the street in front of him and muttered, “Pathetic groupie.”

“Arrogant slime bag.”

“Bitch.”

“Asshole.”

“Loser.”

“You’re the loser.”

“Prove it.”

“Anytime.”

He turned a corner, drove two blocks and pulled the car to the curb. Streetlamps illuminated the wet blacktop of a basketball court that seemed to be part of a small playground attached to some building Casey couldn’t identify in the dim light.

Drew got out and walked to the back of his SUV. Lifting the back hatch, he dug around and came out with a basketball. “Let’s do this.”

The part of Casey that was wet and hungry and sick of traipsing through the cold night in the rain thought this guy was insane. But a bigger part of her was so angry with him she hopped out of the car and said, “You got it.”

Drew jogged across the grass and onto the paved court. He began dribbling the ball. “A game of Twenty-one?”

“You’re on.”

“Ladies first.” He handed her the ball.

Casey stepped up to the free throw line and squinted to make out the rim of the basket that was half in shadow. The rain and wind whipped against her face. Her clothes sopping, her fingers cold and numb, the shot fell short of the net.

Drew snatched the ball in his left hand and dribbled his way to the line. Looping around, he charged back in for a layup. Casey stayed right on him. Leaping up at the same time, arms extended, she tried blocking his shot. The ball banged off the boards and straight through the hoop.

“First blood,” Drew said.

Going for his free throw, Drew released the ball from his fingertips sending it adrift in a deliberate and perfectly measured arc that seemed destined for the heart of the net.

Alas, Mother Nature had other plans. In the final moment a mighty gust came blowing in from the Sound offsetting the ball’s trajectory and sending it veering to the side for a miss. “The wind did that.”

“Whiner.” Casey claimed the rebound. She put her lead foot outside the line and pivoted into a graceful two-point jumper.
Swish
. To add to his misery she knocked down a pair of tosses from the foul line.

Drew scooped up the rebound from her last shot and drove for a layup. The ball hit the backboard and—
whoosh
. “Back in business.”

At the foul line his eyes locked on the net. Totally focused, it seemed as if every fiber in Drew’s body was concentrated on the shot. He made the first, but the second bounced off the rim.

Racing in at full speed he dove for the rebound at the same time as Casey. They collided and both grabbed the ball.

“Give it up, damn you,” Drew said.

They wrestled for the ball, each refusing to let go. “I had it first, you big baby.”

“Did not.”

“You’re pathetic. Afraid of another humiliation.”

“Think you’re so damn special.”

“Still up by a point.”

Pushing and shoving, struggling and cursing, they careened to the edge of the court where the pavement ended. Casey’s feet skidded in the wet grass. She fell against Drew, and they both tumbled to the ground. They rolled and grappled in the muddy, sodden dirt. The ball slipped away. Still, they continued their scuffle, bodies tangled together.

Casey wasn’t sure how it happened, but their wrestling turned to clutching, their mouths frantically seeking each other’s. Drew gave her violent kisses, and she grasped his strong back, responding with a hungry desperation she could no longer hide. Fierce emotions swelled inside her. Hating him, wanting him, and relishing how good it felt to have the weight of his body pinning her to the ground, his narrow hips between her thighs. She felt him go hard as his lips bruised hers, his tongue invading her mouth, his hands gripping her wet hair.

Drew moved back to his knees, holding Casey tight against his chest. She wrapped her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck. He lifted her as he stood and trotted through the rain to the car. Their faces close, he licked the raindrops that ran down her cheeks. He lowered her to the back seat, shut the door and resumed kissing her wildly.

Feverishly prying off wet clothes and putting on a condom brought impatient curses. The car smelled musty, the dampness rank, but that familiar scent of sandalwood and Drew had her quivering with a reckless desire for him. That and his godlike silhouette in the dark. Squelching any last effort of her resolve against him.