Dream Spinner (Dream Team Book 3)

  Praise for Kristen Ashley

  ‘Kristen Ashley’s books are addicting!’

  Jill Shalvis, New York Times bestselling author

  ‘I adore Kristen Ashley’s books!’

  Maya Banks, New York Times bestselling author

  ‘A unique, not-to-be-missed voice in romance’

  Carly Phillips, New York Times bestselling author

  ‘I don’t know how Kristen Ashley does it; I just read the damn [Dream Man series] and happily get lost in her world’

  Frolic

  ‘[Kristen] Ashley captivates’

  Publishers Weekly

  ‘When you pick up an Ashley book, you know you’re in for plenty of gut-punching emotion, elaborate drama and sizzling sex’

  RT Book Reviews

  ALSO BY KRISTEN ASHLEY

  The Dream Man Series

  Mystery Man

  Wild Man

  Law Man

  Motorcycle Man

  The Colorado Mountain Series

  The Gamble

  Sweet Dreams

  Lady Luck

  Breathe

  Jagged

  Kaleidoscope

  The Chaos Series

  Own the Wind

  Fire Inside

  Ride Steady

  Walk Through Fire

  The Dream Team Series

  Dream Maker

  Dream Chaser

  Copyright

  Published by Piatkus

  ISBN: 978-0-349-42588-7

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2021 by Kristen Ashley

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Excerpt from Dream Keeper © 2021 by Kristen Ashley

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  Piatkus

  Little, Brown Book Group

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Contents

  Praise for Kristen Ashley

  Also by Kristen Ashley

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One: Ivan the Terrible

  Chapter Two: I Blew It

  Chapter Three: Don’t Give Up

  Chapter Four: Whoosh

  Chapter Five: Because We Love You

  Chapter Six: Anytime

  Chapter Seven: Worth It

  Chapter Eight: Keep Putting in the Work

  Chapter Nine: Porn Preferences

  Chapter Ten: Us. Here. Finally.

  Chapter Eleven: B

  Chapter Twelve: Safe Place

  Chapter Thirteen: Fireman’s Hold

  Chapter Fourteen: Scratched the Surface

  Chapter Fifteen: Back on Track

  Chapter Sixteen: That Path Is Always Open to You

  Chapter Seventeen: Two Drawers

  Chapter Eighteen: Off

  Chapter Nineteen: Setup

  Chapter Twenty: Tripped

  Chapter Twenty-One: Stolen Base

  Chapter Twenty-Two: In Her Corner

  Chapter Twenty-Three: She Was Mine Before

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Fly Forever

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Deviled Eggs

  Chapter Twenty-Six: The Women

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  For my ice-blue-eyed protective,

  possessive alpha, Axl.

  I miss you.

  PROLOGUE

  Right at Him

  HATTIE

  It happened on the opening night of the Revue.

  I knew it when I finished my dance.

  And I looked for him.

  They were there, all the guys (and Evie) to cheer us on.

  To support us.

  But when my dance was done, I didn’t look to my friend Evie.

  I didn’t look to Lottie’s man (and my friend) Mo.

  I didn’t look to Evie’s guy (and also my friend) Mag.

  I further didn’t look to Ryn’s fella (and yes, my friend too) Boone.

  Or Auggie, who should be Pepper’s, but he was not.

  I looked right at him.

  Right at him.

  At Axl.

  And he was looking at me.

  Of course, I’d just been dancing.

  But it was more.

  Because I’d picked that song.

  And it became even more when my eyes went right to his.

  I saw how his face changed when I did this, and I didn’t know him all that well, but I still read it.

  I knew exactly what it meant, the way he was looking at me, and the fact, after I’d finished dancing to that song, I’d looked right at him.

  And what it meant was …

  I was in trouble.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Ivan the Terrible

  HATTIE

  It went well.”

  “Tens of thousands of dollars on teachers, leotards, pointe shoes, payin’ for gas to drive you to class, recitals, competitions, and you’re sittin’ here tryin’ to convince me all that was worth it seein’ as you got the big promotion from being a stripper to being a burlesque dancer.”

  “It’s not burlesque exactly. They’re calling it a Revue.”

  “It’s a fuckin’ titty bar.”

  I sat opposite my father and decided it was a good time to start keeping my mouth shut.

  Dad did not make that same decision.

  “You can try to dress it up however you want, Hattie, but you’re a glorified whore,” he went on. “Though, just sayin’, a whore’s more honest. Least she doesn’t take a man’s cash while she’s givin’ him nothin’ but a tease.”

  I wish I could say Dad was in a rare mood tonight.

  But he wasn’t.

  It was just that it was more foul than normal.

  A lot more.

  “I think maybe I should go now,” I said quietly.

  Dad shook his head. “You never could hack listening to reason. Or honesty. Or truth. I can see you’re too fat to be in New York or London, Paris or Moscow, but for fuck’s sake, not even the Colorado Ballet?” Again with the head shaking. “Instead, you’re onstage at Smithie’s strip club.”

  Yes, whenever he got into calling me fat, it was time to go.

  I got up and started clearing his dinner dishes.

  “I can do that,” he snapped.

  He couldn’t.

  He could barely walk.

  Mismanaged diabetes.

  The mismanaged part being, when I was fed up with his abuse, I’d quit coming to give him his insulin, take his blood sugar, make sure he ate, and doctor his booze by watering it down so his drinking didn’t put his body out of whack.

  None of which he did for himself.

  Three trips to the hospital, and the subsequent medical bills, which meant selling his old house (something I saw to), downsizing (something I also saw to), and putting up with his complaints he had about having to move (something I listened to, though the move part, I saw to), meant I kept coming back.

  Mom didn’t get it.

  She’d washed her hands of him years ago. Even before she did it legally with the divorce.

  But I simply could not do nothing and let my father die.

 
And I knew this would happen if I did not manage his health and his life.

  I took his dishes to the kitchen, rinsed them, put them in the dishwasher, tidied and headed back to the living room to remove the TV tray from in front of Dad.

  Then I was going to get my purse and go.

  “Hattie, it’s just—” he started in a much less ugly tone as I was folding up the tray.

  “Don’t,” I whispered.

  All these years, he thought he could dig in and dig in and dig in because … whatever.

  He didn’t like his job?

  He didn’t like his marriage?

  He didn’t like his health?

  He didn’t like his life?

  So he took that out on his daughter?

  And then he has a think about what he’d said, or what he’d done, and realizes he’d been a jerk, so he decides he can say he’s sorry and that will wipe away all that came before, like it didn’t happen.

  It didn’t wipe it away.

  It never got wiped away.

  A person was born clean.

  But I believed they died with the stains their parents gave them.

  Even if they lived to be a hundred and two.

  I mean, seriously?

  He’d called me a whore.

  “I just wanted more for you, sweetheart,” he said gently.

  I looked him right in the eye.

  “I started with a tour jeté down the center stage. It was massive. I was the first solo to go out. Ian wanted their attention. And I got it. He wanted to make a statement right off the bat this was a change for Smithie’s. And I made that for him, and for Smithie, flying through the air in a titty bar.”

  “I wish I’d seen it,” he lied.

  “Well, I don’t,” I retorted. “Because you would have found something wrong with it. And you would have shared that with me. And I don’t need that. Because I thought I was magnificent, and I probably was not, but at least it’s nice to think I was, even if only for a little while.”

  On that, I moved to my bag while Dad called, “Hattie.”

  I said not a word.

  I walked right out the door.

  It was torture—stupid—but after that conversation, I did what I shouldn’t do.

  When I got in my car, I cued up Anya Marina’s “Shut Up” on my iPhone, Bluetoothed it to the car stereo and listened to it on my way home.

  Repeatedly.

  Doing this playing the dance I’d choreographed to it in my head.

  And thinking about the look on Axl’s face after I was done.

  That first dance I danced for the first solo at Smithie’s on opening night five nights ago when Smithie’s Club became Smithie’s Revue.

  The dance was slow, avant-garde, my movements staccato.

  So when I’d do my double fouettés, arabesque turns, and the final grand jeté that was reminiscent of Kitri, it came as a shock to the system for the viewer.

  And by that time, I fancied, they didn’t care I was dancing in a red turtleneck bodysuit that had the thighs cut up nearly to my underarms.

  Even for the patrons of a strip club, it was about the dance.

  Days before that, when Dorian had cornered me, saying he wanted to see all the girls’ routines so he could set the lineup, I’d performed it for him, just him and me.

  And when I was done, he sat side stage at his uncle’s strip joint that he was reforming into something else, and he did this immobile.

  “You didn’t like it,” I’d said, thinking the avant-garde part would be too weird for the gentleman’s club crowd and I should go back to my first thought, pulling something together for “Dancing Queen.”

  “You’re first,” Ian had declared. “You’re also last. If they see you first, they’ll stay and drink until the lights go down on you.”

  My heart had thumped hard at these words.

  “So you liked it?” I asked hesitantly.

  Ian stood to his impressive height and stated, “Hattie, you took something beautiful and made it cool. Sexy … and cool.” He nodded decisively. “You’re first, baby, and you’re last. Every night.”

  I loved that Dorian clearly enjoyed what I did.

  But I worried that this would make Lottie, the current headliner (and my friend … well, she used to be), mad at me, but since I was avoiding all the girls, and had been doing it for so long (weeks!) I had it down to the art, I didn’t know if she was.

  Which was another reason why I was torturing myself with that song, that dance—a song I picked to a dance I put together to say things to Axl Pantera I wished I could in real life say because I knew he was going to be there.

  And I was thinking all this, listening to that song, because if I thought about what I should be doing right then in order to get where I should be going that night, I’d break down, blubber like a child and probably get into an accident.

  So yeah.

  There it all was laid out, messy and unfun.

  My life.

  I had an abusive father that I, as a twenty-six-year-old woman, kept going back to and enduring his abuse.

  I had Axl, a handsome man who’d asked me out, I’d turned him down, he started seeing someone else, but in the interim he saw me have a mini-breakdown, so then he tried to befriend me, which was worse than him just moving on to some other chick.

  And I had a pack of friends I was avoiding because they all wanted me to go for that handsome man, even though now he had another woman, and he just wanted to be my friend. A pack of friends it had long since stopped being semi-kinda-rude (but understandable, considering how embarrassing the event was that started it) to constantly blow off and avoid them and now it was just ugly.

  And that night was Lottie’s pre-bachelorette-boards-at-Elvira’s party, and Lottie, Ryn, Evie, Pepper and Elvira had all texted me to tell me they wanted me to come. And I didn’t even know Elvira. I just knew she worked with the guys (that being Axl’s guys, or more to the point, Hawk’s guys (since Hawk was their boss): Mag, Boone, Auggie and Mo).

  I’d heard Elvira’s charcuterie boards were everything.

  But no.

  Nope.

  Not me.

  I wasn’t there, enjoying life and being with my friends. Instead, I did what I had to do to make certain my father lived another night. I tortured myself with a cool song that was a stark plea to take a chance with your heart. And I was going to go home, and I didn’t know, binge I Am a Killer or something on Netflix, while all my friends were beginning celebrations to herald in one of the happiest times in life.

  What was the matter with me?

  I should go to the studio.

  I should get some work done.

  But that wasn’t helping like it used to.

  Because if I didn’t have the guts to tell my father to take care of his own damned self …

  And if I didn’t have the courage to say yes to a handsome guy when he asked me out, further not having the backbone to accept him as a friend when he gave up on me …

  Last, if I didn’t even have it in me to lay it on my friends, or if not, just tell them to back off, I was dealing with my own issues, and instead, it felt like I was losing them, and it was me who was making that happen …

  Then I wouldn’t (and didn’t) have the ability to boss up and do something with what I was creating in the studio.

  So that was me all around.

  Hattie Yates.

  Failed dancer.

  Failed daughter.

  Failed friend.

  Failed artist.

  But really freaking good loner.

  I parked at the back of the house where my and three other apartments were and let myself in the back door, thinking at least I had this.

  My pad.

  A weird, funky space, part of a big, old home broken in chunks. But the landlords wanted to make it cool, so they did, with up and down steps, insets in the walls to put knickknacks, interesting lighting, creamy white walls and beautifully refinished floors.


  Mine was on the first level.

  Living room and kitchen up front, a step up to the kitchen from the living room. A wall that was open, seeing as it was made up of open-backed shelves. Shelves in which there was a doorway with three steps down to delineate my bedroom area. That back area had a walk-in closet and biggish bath, which, no other word for it, was divine. And the only other room, what I was in now, a side area at the back that had a washer, dryer and some storage.

  As décor, I’d gone with white and cream in furniture with dove-gray curtains. Some navy-and-cream throw rugs. Black-and-white art or photos in white frames.

  I added to this only shocks of color here and there. In some pictures, one with a frame that was geranium pink.

  Turquoise. Sky blue. Lime green. More pink.

  And my prize possession, a loud beanbag in primary colors that was covered in a print of flowers that I used as a beanbag as well as an ottoman.

  My funky little me space. Small. Light. Bright. Interesting.

  All things that were not me.

  With ease born of practice in that small, dark room lit only slightly by the waning sunlight of a Denver summer night, light that was coming through the single narrow window, I went up the three steps that should lead me to my living room/ kitchen.

  And stopped dead when I got there.

  Illuminated by the big wicker-globe-covered hanging fixtures, sitting back in my comfy, creamy armchair with his feet on my flowery beanbag, was Brett “Cisco” Rappaport.

  The man who, a few months back, had kidnapped Evie, Ryn, Pepper and me—my friends, but also fellow dancers (except now Evie had quit and gone full time as an engineering student and computer tech).

  Then he went on to kidnap Ryn again some weeks later.

  He’d since been cleared of the crime he’d been framed for committing by two dirty cops who had killed another cop.

  But still, not a good guy.

  In my living room. “I’m irate with you,” he announced.

  Okay …

  Did I run?

  I mean, he didn’t have any henchmen with guns trained on me this time.

  So that was good.

  But he didn’t even say “Hi” before he told me he was irate with me.

  And he was nefarious, what with having henchmen and kidnapping women and all. I didn’t know what he did to make a living, but I didn’t think it was running an animal shelter.