Read Online Dancing Barefoot by Amber Lea Easton - Free Book Online Page A

with them for a short time, had crashed on their sofa and shared stories well into the night.
    “She’s an architect, can you believe it?” He looked away from the knowing in his friend’s eyes. 
    “Oh, my God, not an architect. The whore.” Carter rolled his eyes and leaned back in his chair. “No wonder you hate her.”
    “I never said I hated her.”
    “No, you never have said that, have you? Interesting. I have no trouble hating the women who dumped me.” He held up his fingers and began counting. “Now that I think about it, that's a lot of women I never want to see again.”
    "She claims she went back." He shoved his hand through his hair and closed his eyes. "She must be lying."
    "So she didn't dump you, is that what you're trying to say? Is that why she left everything—"
    "She vanished." He dropped his fist onto the table, opened his eyes and stared at his friend. "For three weeks I looked for her like a fool, no idea where she had gone or what had happened, only to find out from a detective that she had boarded a plane and left me. What was I supposed to think? She left."
    "So this entire break up is the result of a miscommunication?" Carter frowned and shook his head. "I don't understand."
    "Neither do I."
    "Why didn't you ask her for more details? Oh, let me guess...you were being dramatic again and stormed off without getting the full story."
    "Why does everyone say I am dramatic? I am the calmest person I know." Snap, snap went the rubber band. Screw quitting. He needed a cigarette.
    "Doesn't the fact that she went back mean something to you?"
    "Meaningless." It pissed him off, that's what that piece of information did for him. What had she expected him to do? Wait forever after finding out that she'd flown back to the United States? How could he have known she would return?
    Trust, that was the bottom line. Neither had had enough trust to believe in the other. They're relationship had been built on sex and laughter and nothing more.
    "You two were good together, Jacques. I liked her a lot." Sadness clouded Carter's eyes when he looked up from his beer. "I think you need to let her explain."
    "Forget I said anything. Life is good for us all, yes? It is pointless to look back."
    "That must be why she's the starring attraction of both your book and your exhibit...no looking back for you, right?"
    “I need to go.” He tossed money onto the table and patted his friend’s back. “I need to walk.”
    Thunder echoed through the streets of Tribeca, drowning out all other noise.  A gust of wind whipped through the artificial valley. Rain pelted his face.
    He never should have given up the ring. It had been a piece of their puzzle, a symbol of what they'd shared, even if the outcome had been less than what he had expected. He had lost it once, had fought to get it back. He shook off the memory of that awful time following Italy. He'd lost more than the ring then...he'd lost a part of his soul he would never get back. What would Jessica think of him if she knew how far he'd fallen after she had gone?
    Rain soaked through his shirt to his skin. He blinked through the haze toward his apartment building. It wasn’t much. A stopping place, really. He didn’t need a home. He was a gypsy, a wanderer who felt at home only on the road, in a foreign land, with nothing but his backpack and a friend.
    Once inside, he walked the two flights to his apartment. He dropped his head against the door and closed his eyes.
    Jessica wasn’t the liar. He was. He missed the apartment in Florence more than he could admit. He missed the way it had smelled, especially after a good rain like this. The air would fill up with aroma, flowers and food. Jessica would leave the windows open, it had always been too hot for her. God, how he missed it.
    “ Jacques? Are you all right?” Ava, his older sister, stood on the stairs behind him. Dressed all in black with her blonde hair twisted into a loose knot at her neck, she looked the