right now! Oh my God!”
“Thank you, Kayla, for giving me exactly what I needed.”
Adrian offered a hand, but Kayla just went in for a hug. “You’re not just my first client. You’re going to be my favorite client forever. Bye, Sadie!” She raced for the glass doors, then stopped, posed. “I’m an interior designer.”
Laughing, she jogged away.
Adrian knew how it felt to see a dream realized. Thinking of just that, she took out her phone to text Hector, Loren, and Teesha.
Hi, gang, time to coordinate for our first production in my new home studio. Which looks freaking fantastic. I’ve got the theme, have the routines nearly nailed down. My schedule’s open, so work out when you can fit me in, and we’ll go. Teesha, Kayla’s on her way to you now. And, guys? Wait until you see Teesha’s new house. Not to mention my new studio. Talk soon.
She jogged up two flights of stairs, delighted the house was empty because her grandfather had gone in to work. Every day now, she thought as she went into her bedroom to change. Sometimes just for an hour, but often for most of the day.
The work, she thought, his love of it, brought him both joy and solace.
She felt the same about her own.
After donning workout gear, she went back down to her new space. She opened the glass doors so Sadie could wander out as she pleased or needed. She put on her basic keep-the-beat music, set a timer. And, facing her mirrored wall, got to work.
As she rehearsed and refined the warm-up, she had a flash of herself as a child, watching her mother rehearse. The house in Georgetown, the sleek room with mirrored walls and her mother’s reflection.
How she’d yearned.
How, alone again, she’d danced in that room, imagining herself a ballerina, or a Broadway star, or what she’d become. And so good, so exceptional, her mother would watch her with the same yearning she felt.
Then the man had come, bringing fear and blood and pain.
His face—she remembered every detail of it—blurred everything else from her vision so she had to stop the timer.
“No point, no point, no point going back there.”
Closing her eyes, she breathed through it. Even the media rarely dug that horrid old story up now. Old, old news. No point.
She reminded herself she rarely had moments like this, when the fear rushed back, turned her cold, then hot, then breathless.
She’d push through it. She had pushed through it.
“I’m strong,” she told her reflection. “And I’m not defined by one horrible day in the whole of my life.”
She started to turn the timer back on, then caught a glimpse of Sadie in the mirror, sprawled a few feet back, watching her.
Yearning, Adrian thought.
Instead of turning on the timer, she walked back to sit on the floor, nuzzle the big bear of a dog who made love noises in her throat. A sound that always made Adrian laugh.
“I’ll come back to this. Let’s you and me go outside and play chase the ball.”
You made time for the ones you loved, she thought as she went outside, picked up the big orange ball that put a light of joy in Sadie’s eyes.
If her childhood had taught her anything, it was to make time for her passion, her responsibilities. And for the ones she loved.
CHAPTER TEN
Through the summer after his wife’s death, Raylan worked almost exclusively from home. And almost always at night. Sleep hadn’t been his friend since Lorilee’s death, so he turned nights into work time, and snatched some sleep in the early morning hours.
He napped when—if—the kids napped.
He couldn’t handle the idea of a nanny, couldn’t stand to bring yet another drastic change into his children’s lives. And he couldn’t bear the idea of leaving them with someone else.
And since for the first few weeks Bradley often woke up crying in the middle of the night, sleep became more luxury than priority.
He’d never forget the help, the comfort, the attention his mother and sister had provided, but they couldn’t stay forever.
He had responsibilities, first to his kids, then to his work. And the work not only provided for his family, but kept his company solvent and employees who counted on him paying their bills.
For snatches of time, he could lose himself in the work, or in the needs of his kids. The laundry, the grocery runs, the food prep, the attention, the trips to the park. The everything that added up to trying to give them a sense