Burned Deep (Burned 1)

Alex beamed brightly, then said, “I’ll get yours next, Miss DeMille.”

“Thank you.” Not surprisingly, Mr. Bax ranked much higher in priority than Miss DeMille.

Dane’s head tilted and his eyes slid over me again. Unabashedly. Unapologetically. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Ari. I look forward to seeing you again. Soon.”

He stalked off, all stealthy and pantherlike, as I fought the urge to gape—and wondered why I couldn’t breathe normally around him.

As I stood there awestruck and shell-shocked—so embarrassing—Alex said, “Seriously cool sports car, huh?”

My gaze followed the shiny silver vehicle until it disappeared into the inky night. I’d never seen anything like it, with aggressive lines and a low profile.

“What is it?” I asked, trying to get my mind churning once again, instead of leaving me in a mental standstill while my insides burned.

“Hennessey Venom F5. Only thirty are being made. Base model is like one-point-five mil or something, but Mr. Bax optioned his to the hilt. It’s a blast to drive. I’d kill to take it up the switchbacks.”

My gaze shifted to the young valet. “I can see you’re in a hurry to trade that thrill seeker’s experience for my sensible Kia Sorento.”

He laughed. “I’ll just be a couple minutes.”

“Thanks.”

My thoughts returned to Dane Bax.

I look forward to seeing you again. Soon.

What had he meant, exactly?

And did I really want to know?

* * *

“Time for the hand wedge, Ari.” My dad gave me that disappointed look any golf professional would throw his daughter’s way when she’d just hacked the hell out of a bunker.

I scooped up the ball and tossed it haphazardly onto the green. Then I raked the sand trap and climbed out of it. Joining my dad—former PGA golfer Bryce DeMille—I said, “It’s always this last hole that kills me.”

I’d just added five unnecessary strokes to my scorecard, devastating my respectable showing.

“You’ve got to let the sand work for you, sweets. Get underneath the ball and blast it out. I tell you this every time.”

Maybe it was my OCD that made it so difficult to create my own sandstorm just to get my ball onto the green. I was the same on the fairway, hating to leave divots, even though I always replaced the patches I took out when trying to avoid a worm burner.

“Easier said than done,” I muttered.

He chuckled. My father was the type who struggled to appear good-natured in order to cover a sullen disposition. The result of his doomed marriage and career. He and my mother had started going at it with venomous words not long after I’d turned five. The terrible twos had nothing on their tantrums. Apparently, when your heart had been ripped from your chest—as was my dad’s case when he’d discovered my mother had cheated on him, repeatedly—you checked your civility at the door. And there was residual bitterness, no matter how hard you pretended to be “over it.”

They’d stayed together until I was thirteen. All those years, I’d spent an exorbitant amount of time wearing headphones blaring music to tune them out. And picking up the broken pieces of glass or porcelain when one of them got particularly miffed and hurled something at a wall or slammed a door too hard, making windowpanes rattle and picture frames fall to the floor.

It’d been a toxic state of affairs for all parties concerned. My maternal grandparents had suffered the same nasty fate, rivaling The War of the Roses. Leaving me full-on convinced it was genetic and I should therefore avoid romantic relationships and marriage at all costs.

Kind of a painful bane of existence, given that I loved weddings. Obviously. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t make believe that all of my brides and grooms were as deliriously happy the day after they’d exchanged vows as they were during those few magical moments. I was pretty good at creating my own little Emerald City so that I wasn’t bitter.

Reaching for my putter, I lined up my shot and employed a nice, clean sweep toward the ball. It rolled tried-and-true to its target, made one pass around the rim of the cup, then popped up and out, rolling downhill. Even farther away from the pin than where I’d started.

“Son of a bitch,” I grumbled.

My dad laughed a bit heartier this time. His cerulean eyes crinkled around the edges. He was of medium height with brown hair several shades lighter than mine. Perpetually tan from his hours spent on the course. A handsome man in excellent physical shape for his forty-seven years, with the exception of the crushed rotator cuff that had been operated on twice, along with a semi-detached bicep muscle. The very reason he’d gotten so close to a championship but hadn’t been able to pull it off. Something we never talked about, though I knew it was a lost dream never far from his mind.

“Circle of love?” I asked of my wayward ball, calling on the sympathy factor that would put me out of my misery without adding more strokes.