The Dance: the Chase Duet

      By Kimberly Knight

Release Date: December 8, 2022

Stacy is a free spirit. A dancer at heart, but her practical side had sent her to college for a degree in business with a miner in dance. She still had little more than a year left at college.  She’d gone to a couple of auditions but hadn’t placed in either. The plan had been to finish school and then find a job. Hopefully as a backup dancer for a group, but if not, she’d have her degree in business.

Blake was a bartender at the Wild Pony Bar. He had a dream too. He wanted to own his own bar or possibly a club, but raising the money needed for his venture was slow going. He’d been walking in the shadow of his older, very successful, brother for some time now making it hard for him to seriously focus on anything, but his dream.

Stacy and Blake had been spending some recreational time together when they needed to let off steam. And he was good at listening when she needed to talk.

 Stacy’s Mom was paying her part of the rent on the apartment, she shared with her friend Molly. When out of the blue her mom called with the bad news that her business had fallen off to the point where she would have to close it soon. Both she and her mom would be in trouble if that happened. It was time for Stacy to step up, try to help give her mom’s business a boost with some new marketing ideas. Soon going to school during the week and helping her mom on weekends started to take its toll on her energy.

In the end it was Molly who suggested a solution for Stacy’s shortage of funds, that might keep her in  school and pay the rent. She introduced her to Sweethearts, a high-end escort service, that paid very well if you were willing to play the game. And she was in…

Blake had asked Stacy to go with him when he visited with his family a couple times to keep his parents from harping on his lack of ambition, higher education and single state. She’d done it, even If, she didn’t agree with his strategy. It was one of the reason’s she had told him about her work with Sweethearts. Until the night she came to the bar to find him after one of the men she dated turned out to be a rapist… leaving her battered, beaten and terrified. He was the one to comfort her, try to get her to report the man and finally took her home and helped her forget.

Then Stacy ran into Eddie, an old friend, the son of a man her mother had lived with when she and Eddie had been teens and their lives took another sharp turn. Eddie had loved Stacy as a teen and wanted to try again to reach her.

The tale takes place over several years, with long stretches between seeing each other, picking up months later. Their lives change and each tend to go their own way at times only to come back together again. There are triggers such as rape, high-end escort services, spicy scenes with open doors and abuse. But the story has heart, characters gradually change trying to learn from past mistakes. There is heartbreak and at times each of them lets the other down. Their lives mesh off and on, but each of the characters have a way to go before they can find themselves on a path to a better life.  But will they ever end up on the same path wanting the same thing, at the same time?  The last page isn’t the end of the story, for me the cliffhanger was heartbreaking. The story will continue with the next book.

This is a book I probably wouldn’t have picked up on my own if I hadn’t been given an advanced copy to read and review. I can’t pinpoint any particular part of the tale when I realized that I really cared about the characters and wanted a happy ending for all of them. I recognized their pain and understood some of the poor decision making while struggling to make their lives work and their dreams come true. I recommend this story if you can get past the triggers, because for me the people felt real; the story snuck up on me, wrapping itself around me, drawing me in.

 I gave it four stars only because I found the blank time slots a bit disorienting to the flow of the story for me.