Page 16 of Jessica, Not Her Real Name

“How are you?” he asked quietly.

She swallowed hard. Looked away. “I’m okay.”

A lie.

As much as she’d tried to seal shut the lid on the box of horrors in her head, she couldn’t stop the flashbacks. They came, relentless: dark rooms. Sweaty fingers. Hot breath against her skin.

She forced herself to meet his gaze. “I didn’t tell anyone, you know.”

His expression sharpened, though his voice remained relaxed. “Why not?”

She shrugged. “Didn’t think you’d appreciate cops showing up at your door.”

A long silence.

Her voice was quieter when she finally said, “I’m not thrilled he got away with it.”

Daniel’s jaw tightened. “He didn’t.”

She glanced at his knuckles again. At the letters on his hand. A chill passed through her.

Then decided she didn’t want to think about either. Ever again.

Daniel cast his eyes up at the house. Julia followed his gaze, taking in the Beaux-Arts mansion that loomed over the manicured grounds. Four stories of limestone and glass, a palatial display of excess. Seven bedrooms. Nine bathrooms. A private gym, a cedar sauna, a theater. And that was just the house. Beyond the tree line were the tennis courts, the staff quarters, and the garage stocked with luxury European cars. It was the kind of house that looked like it belonged in a magazine, not in real life.

Daniel let out a low whistle. “This place is insane. Your dad own a bank or something?”

She shook her head. Her father had been a musician, brilliant but broke. After his death, when Julia was six, her mother had apparently made a vow never to marry for love again. Because every marriage after that had been for money.

“Glen’s my stepdad,” she said. “And it’s a finance company.”

Daniel nodded, his gaze drifting to the half-finished gazebo where his coworkers hammered and sawed away. “It’s not your wedding, is it?”

Julia blinked, then let out a short laugh. “Oh, God, no. It’s my sister’s.”

Something in his expression shifted. A barely-there flicker of relief. It was subtle, but she caught it. Which was ridiculous. He didn’t even know her.

A quiet settled between them, the hum of drills and distant chatter filling the space. His eyes flicked over her, not in the way men usually looked at her. It was more like he was trying to figure her out, slot her into some frame of reference that made sense to him.

“So,” he said finally, “you’re a ballerina. For real.”

She nodded. “I’m a corps dancer with the Joffrey.”

Daniel considered that, chewing on his thumbnail. “Does it hurt?”

She frowned. “Does what hurt?”

“When you fall down like that.”

A flicker of embarrassment crept in, but she brushed it off with a shrug. “I’ve been dancing since I was four. I don’t think I have nerve endings in my knees anymore.”

His gaze lingered, not on her knees. Any other time, she might have felt a warning bell go off, a sense of unease creeping in. But she didn’t. Instead, a strange awareness curled through her, a tingling beneath her skin, like a million nerve endings coming back to life.

She scrambled for something to say. “So…how’s your, um, Cuba?”

“’Cuda,” he corrected with a smirk. “And she’s finished. Got wheels and everything. You wanna see her?”

She glanced toward the driveway, assuming that was where it was parked.