Dirty Dancing at Devil's Leap Read online

  Why then did her entire life feel so . . . haphazard?

  She lay musing, one cheek under her hand, and mulled. She’d had dreams. How was it that she wasn’t living any of them? She craved, suddenly, to do something deliberately. From the very beginning to the very end. Like her brother Jude, who had planned to be a doctor and was now a doctor, or like her friend Rachel, who was now looking for property to expand her burgeoning leadership training empire.

  Avalon levered her torso slowly up from the bed like a mummy rising from a sarcophagus.

  She sat like that, in the dark, her elbows on her knees. Animated not by a curse . . . but by an idea.

  She leaned over the side of the bed and yanked her laptop from its case. She cradled it in her lap for an instant. As if giving herself an opportunity to change her mind.

  Tentatively, she powered it on.

  Then typed a few words in the search engine window.

  Her palms were already damp.

  When she hit Enter, the bright rectangle of the screen in the dark of her little room was a window onto her past.

  And maybe a window onto her future.

  Once she knew what she needed to know, she exhaled the breath she didn’t know she was holding. And then powered the laptop off and clapped the lid closed.

  The old digital alarm clock next to her bed read two thirty a.m.; she set it for seven.

  And when she lowered herself back to the bed, her heart was pounding exactly the way it had the first time she’d taken that jump off Devil’s Leap.

  Chapter 3

  Mac Coltrane’s sheets were a little bit scratchy, which also described his mood.

  They were about a three hundred thread count. And cheap. He liked that they had body and heft and didn’t cling to him on hot nights or tempt him into lingering in bed, and they had cost practically nothing, and these days he knew the cost of everything.

  He didn’t like anything that clung. Or tempted him to linger.

  And that included nearly every tie of every kind.

  Except, well, maybe the goats. He was pretty committed to the goats.

  But his bed was vast, because he was a restless sleeper. He often woke up diagonally across it, limbs flung out, like he was afraid someone would steal his territory. Once upon a time, a lifetime ago, it seemed, when he was test driving the kind of lifestyle one expected of a billionaire’s son, he’d slept on satin sheets. Until that night he’d rolled over and his shifting knee had accidentally punted his date out the other end of the bed. She’d emerged with a soft plop onto the floor as if she’d gone down a waterslide, astonished. They’d laughed like giddy fools. That was a few months before his whole world caved in.

  He’d gone from knowing exactly who he was, where he was from, and where he was going to feeling as blank as the checks his dad used to give him.

  And just as worthless as those checks would be now.

  He’d shifted the rubble painstakingly off himself, one piece at a time, as strategical as a Jenga player and as methodical as any crew sent in to free survivors of earthquake wreckage. The hard way, step by step, he learned exactly who he was.

  Someone who got what he wanted.

  In some ways, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. As the saying went. Even if the tree was in prison for fraud.

  “When the bidding starts, put me on speaker. I want to hear it.”

  “Of course, Mr. Coltrane.” His attorney’s tone didn’t at all betray that Mac had said this to him a hundred times. Mac liked to subtly tweak Graybill, who was English, starchy, correct, and possibly the most literal man Mac had ever met.

  Because, well, frankly, “smartass” was another of the things Mac Coltrane definitively was.

  “Have you changed your bidding cap, sir?”

  “Well, I checked the dryer, the sofa cushions, and all the pockets of my clothes, and came up with nada. So no.”

  He’d also checked the mailbox, and no promised big white envelope from Mike was there, either. He wished he was surprised by this.

  “Ha ha. Ha. Very well, sir.”

  Graybill was humoring him. Mac suppressed a grin.

  Like his father, Mac had the knack for turning virtually nothing into something, and then something into something big. Methodically and skillfully, but not as quickly as he would have preferred. Because unlike his father, he had a little thing about doing it the right way.

  Graybill had worked for Dixon Coltrane and was perhaps the only person on staff who’d managed to remain untainted by the scandal. And Mac knew Graybill shared some of his own life philosophy about how to stay on the straight and narrow.

  And he, just like Mac, knew of one possible way Mac could significantly change his bidding cap. He also knew it would be a cold day in hell before he took that route. Because it would involve forgiving.

  How about that. There was yet another way Mac was his father’s son: he was implacable when he decided not to forgive.

  “Okay then. To reiterate: the bidding cap is still three hundred. And that’s firm because it has to be. But I doubt we’ll even hit two hundred.”

  He didn’t mention all the reasons he didn’t think they’d hit that cap: the grounds were gorgeous, but Hellcat Canyon was in the middle of Bumfuck Nowhere, California; the house was immense, idiosyncratic, costly to maintain—beautiful but ridiculous. It needed updating. Rumor had it there was also a ghost. He’d never met the ghost, but then he’d lived there during the summers only, sometimes not even a whole summer, for just short of eight years.

  But there were other ghosts. These were more of the figurative kind. For instance, sometimes when he closed his eyes after staring into the sun an image would hover for an instant behind his lids: a girl with big mahogany eyes filled with gold lights, her hair a few shades deeper in color, impossibly gleaming. But there had never been anything ethereal about her. He knew, because he’d held her. She was the realest person he’d ever known. The truest thing he’d ever felt.

  She’d wanted to be an elementary schoolteacher and she loved animals, and he supposed that described millions of girls. “A common little person,” his dad had called her. Among other things.

  It took Mac years to fully understand now how definitively untrue this was.

  She had disappeared, however.

  So she had that in common with a ghost.

  And maybe all of that had been an illusion after all, like everything else in his life had turned out to be.

  It took him a long time to adjust to her absence. He hadn’t realized that she was the lens he’d begun to see nearly everything through. That even though she was kind of a secret, she was also, in a way, his center of gravity. And when it was clear he was just never going to see her again, life had taken on a peculiar, almost dreamlike quality. What he did had ceased to matter because nothing had consequences in a dream.

  Hence the foray into satin sheets. Life in general had become a satin sheet. Superfluously decadent; nothing of substance adhered.

  He was aware he didn’t like to say her name in his mind. Which meant it had more power over him than he preferred any soul to have.

  That was a helluva long time ago, though. A fair number of women ago. His parents’ divorce ago. His father’s indictment ago. The national guard ago. Backpacking through Europe ago.

  Somehow all of that had led him back to here about three years ago, thanks to Morton Horton and the goats.

  For about two decades he’d been untangling the skein of his life as if it were a wad of Christmas tree lights, all of them burnt out save one.

  That light was the house at Devil’s Leap.

  And he knew Graybill thought he was nuts. Mac hadn’t done an irrational, unplanned thing in about two decades.

  But he didn’t feel the need to explain to Graybill why this was, in fact, the most rational thing he’d ever done in his life. If there was one thing Mac loathed, it was revealing anything that might be construed as a vulnerability.

  Publicity ca
me in a close second in the loathing department. He’d had enough of that for a lifetime.

  Which was why Graybill would be doing the bidding for him tomorrow.

  “Yes, sir. I understand the cap.”

  “Until tomorrow then. Thanks, Graybill.”

  “Until tomorrow, Mr. Coltrane.”

  Mac signed off and stood up abruptly from his perch on the end of the bed and opened the door to let in The Cat, who laced himself around his shins without quite touching them, The Cat’s version of an air kiss. The Cat had showed up one day about a year and a half ago and never left. Mac poured some kibble into the bowl, then turned around for a last look at the room, at all the minimalist decorating at its finest. The shotgun over the door. The vast bed. The shelf alongside it holding all of his i-gadgets.

  Next to those, a collection of neatly stacked tie boxes.

  Mac couldn’t forgive, but he couldn’t seem to get rid of those, either.

  Through the transom window of this cottage the big old Victorian house seemed etched into the night sky, just a few shades less dark. For three years now it had been a hundred-some-odd feet yet two hundred light years away.

  He doubted he’d sleep tonight.

  Tomorrow at nine a.m. was the hour when that gap would close and he, like every Coltrane had stretching back at least a century, would do the inevitable: get exactly what he wanted.

  Avalon roared into the courthouse parking lot at about three minutes to nine, skidded to a sideways halt, yanked her seatbelt out of its socket like it had taken her hostage, and all but toppled out of the car, scrambling gracelessly upright and ramming her hip but good on the door frame in the process. She took three leg-dragging, whimpering, Quasimodo-esque steps to adapt to that little mishap, sucking air in between her teeth against the pain.

  Fuck fuck fuck.

  She had three minutes. Elbows tucked into her side, head down, morning air whistling through her ears that had always stuck out just a little more than she preferred, hoping the little butt nudge she’d given the car door was enough to swing it closed, but not staying to hear the click.

  If only everyone in Hellcat Canyon wasn’t so freaking nice. She’d planned to be the first person in line before the credit union opened this morning; she was the second. The first was Mrs. Corcoran, who was eighty-seven and had brought with her a coffee can full of dimes.

  “Boy, you must have been saving these for decades, Mrs. Corcoran! If dimes could talk, I bet they’d have a tale to tell. Let me get those wrappers for you . . .”

  To keep from hyperventilating and frightening both Mrs. Corcoran and the sweet, helpful clerk, Avalon multitasked.

  To her current assistant (Kenneth? Daria! No! It was Enrique—staff turnover among young, flaky, skilled tech workers was so high she sometimes forgot who was on deck), she sent a text:

  I’ll be out of the office thru end of week due to family emergency. Defer all decisions to Corbin. Pls overnight anything currently in my inbox to the address I’ll send soon.

  “Okay, now you have five dollars, Mrs. Corcoran . . . I remember when I could get a whole breakfast down at the Misty Cat for five dollars, don’t you . . . ? I like the Hellcat Scramble myself . . .”

  Then it was time to put a stop to Corbin’s thirty-five texts:

  I’ve told Enrique I’m out of the office for the rest of the week due to a family emergency. You’ll need to handle things. I’ll be in touch in about a week. DON’T text me again until you hear from me.

  “Handling” things was basically Corbin’s worst nightmare. The administrative day-to-day decision-making was so so so so torturous for someone of his genius caliber.

  How fascinating to live in a world where people ended up doing things for you just because you didn’t want to. How very like a Pasha.

  The anger was almost as good as the coffee she desperately needed.

  Almost.

  “Okay, now you have fifteen dollars, Mrs. Corcoran . . . whoopsie! This is a Canadian dime! Ha ha ha! Now, how did that get in there? Did I tell you I went to Vancouver over the summer . . .”

  Avalon was officially hyperventilating now. She shot Rachel a quick text:

  I may have exactly the property you’re looking for in the North State! Stay tuned.

  Finally, a yawning clerk opened another window. Perhaps alerted by a manic gleam in Avalon’s eye, she dispensed with pleasantries and got right down to it.

  A few minutes later Avalon bolted out of the credit union like she’d just robbed it with an all-but-drained personal bank account and a stack of cashier’s checks. Which is what the website had instructed her to do.

  And she was going to be on time! She was going to make it! She might even be a minute earl—

  Fuck.

  She came to a screeching halt. The Hellcat Canyon courthouse had been built around 1870. It was handsome, modestly scaled, white domed, Doric of column and marble of foyer.

  And it was situated at the top of at least thirty fucking granite steps.

  Why, Hellcat Canyon? Why? To make rash brides and grooms think twice before getting hitched by a justice of the peace? To make criminals think twice about making a break for it?

  She whipped her sunglasses off and wiped the sweat and surrendered to a split second of crushing doubt, her lungs already burning and heaving. Maybe the universe was trying to protect her from yet another metaphorical bike jump across Whiskey Creek.

  She tipped her head back and stood on her toes. About a half dozen people were milling about the courtyard fountain, each of them limned in the rose-gold of an early morning autumn sun. Her competition.

  Suddenly a big guy in suspenders and a denim shirt stretched tautly over his barrel torso burst from the courthouse double doors like a cuckoo from a clock and bustled over to the fountain. He flourished a clipboard. The little crowd surged toward him.

  Her phone pinged.

  Ava, at least tell me WHERE you are!

  Another freaking text from Corbin.

  She growled ferally, jerked her head away from it exactly as if he was forcing her to stare at his bobbing white butt again. Her back teeth clamped down hard.

  The anger was a gift. It was all the adrenaline she needed.

  She took a deep gulp of air like a deep sea diver and all but hurled her body forward.

  Bam Bam Bam. Bam. The hard fall of her feet on the steps vibrated her teeth; her breath roared in her ears. She was reasonably fit thanks to San Francisco’s hills, but her only goal in life at this moment was to not throw up before she reached the top, and hopefully not even then.

  The entire group pivoted to stare wonderingly at her.

  She managed to stand regally erect for three triumphant seconds, hands planted on her hips, smiling enigmatically, the breeze whipping her ponytail sideways.

  Before she buckled in two like a two-by-four sliced by a karate chop. Black spots danced before her eyes. Wheezing, she waved away the concerned feet she saw from her bent position. A couple of pairs of John Deere work boots, a pair of Nikes, a pair of handmade loafers so shiny she could see herself in the toes.

  She levered herself upright a few seconds later. Sweaty and more than a little nauseated, but then, she was an old hand at both of those conditions.

  Everyone was still staring at her. They now, to a man (they were all men), seemed faintly alarmed.

  She smiled placidly back at them.

  Handmade Loafers was Los Angeles–thin and his gray hair was ruthlessly barbered. She would bet all of her cashier’s checks that he smelled like expensive aftershave. His charcoal-gray suit was meticulously tailored if unadventurous (though arguably, any suit in Hellcat Canyon would have been noteworthy). He looked like a G-man or a lawyer. Her money was on the latter.

  She knew instinctively this was the guy to beat.

  She scanned them and summed them up as Overalls, Cardigan, Timid Guy, Button-down Shirt, and Handmade Loafers. A fly had begun orbiting all of them. Avalon was a little worried she was the at
traction. She needed a shower.

  She was the only woman, the only one in black, the only one in yoga pants; the only one in sunglasses, a sweaty T-shirt, messy high ponytail, and a cardigan speckled with lint. These were all the things she’d found in her gym bag. The blazer she’d worn to speak to the young entrepreneurs yesterday was hopelessly crumpled.

  But one thing she’d learned in her by-the-seat-of-her-pants school of business was when you’re feeling underdressed, too young, too . . . female . . . in a room full of men: hold yourself as if you own the place. As if you’ve graciously granted everyone present audience and they are there on your sufferance.

  “Good morning, folks!” The auctioneer boomed into the sleepy silence, which made everyone give a little start. “I’m Chuck Beasley, and I’ll be your ringmaster for today’s proceedings. Today you’ll be bidding on the beautiful fairy-tale Victorian manse at Devil’s Leap, once belonging to the storied Coltrane billionaire dynasty, whose history stretches back a few hundred years and contains heroes and rogues alike. Three thousand five hundred square feet, ten rooms, five bathrooms, breathtaking grounds, glorious hardwood parquet floors, nine-foot ceilings, and as if that wasn’t enough, it also comes with a groundskeeper under contract through the end of the year. Presumably you’ve had a chance to review the photos online, yes?”

  A sort of assenting murmur rustled through the little crowd. Avalon had spent the good portion of last night perusing all those photos. And the house looked the same inside as it had the last—and only—time she’d seen it. It did need some updating, a little TLC, and paint.

  “Excellent!” Chuck Beasley was clearly a force of nature. “All bidding is at your own risk! Bid early, bid big, bid often, and bid at your own risk! Do we have an opening bid?”

  “Fifty thousand,” said Overalls. Avalon had pegged him as the sort who was here for the spectacle, given that entertainment options in Hellcat Canyon ran the gamut between A (bingo at St. Anne’s) and B (whatever was going on at the Misty Cat or The Plugged Nickel). If you wanted to elevate your pulse at all in Hellcat Canyon you had to get creative.