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The Dance Off
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TWO
“So how was it? Was it amazing? Aren’t you glad I made you go?”
Ryder pressed the phone harder to one ear to better hear Sam, and plugged a finger in his other ear to ward off the sounds of the construction site. “It was...” Excruciating. Hot. A lesson in extreme—patience. He tugged his hard hat lower over his forehead, and growled, “It was fine.”
“Told you. And how cool is the studio? And the ceilings. I knew you’d love the ceilings.”
No need to fudge the truth there. The beams were stunning. Old school. The exact kind of feature he’d once upon a time have sold his soul to study. He glanced about the modern web of metal spikes and cold concrete slabs around him, the foundations of what would in many months be a sleek, silver, skyscraping tower—as far from the slumped thick red-brick building as architecturally possible.
His foreman waved a torch in his direction, letting him know the group he was there to meet—and who were about to make his day go from long to interminable—had arrived. Ryder tilted his chin in acknowledgement, holding up his finger to say he’d be a minute.
“She was a dancer,” Sam was saying. “A real one. A Sky High one.”
Struggling to picture sultry Nadia Kent in a pink tutu and a bun, Ryder asked, “Nadia’s a ballerina?”
A pause, then, “No-o-o. I told you. Sky High.”
“Sam, just for a moment, treat me as if I am an Australian human male and speak plain English.”
“Man, you need to get out more. Sky High is huge. A dance extravaganza. A kind of burlesque meets Burn the Floor meets Cirque du Soleil; all superb special effects and crazy-talented dancers. In Vegas!”
Ryder’s focus converged until it was entirely on his sister’s voice. “Sam, do you have a showgirl teaching your wedding party how to dance?”
“Oh, calm down. She wasn’t working some dive bar off the strip.”
And yet, picturing Nadia in fishnets, towering high heels and cleverly positioned peacock feathers wasn’t difficult at all. Her pale skin glowing in the dim light, dishevelled waves trailing down her bare back, those lean calves kicking, twirling, hooking... Ryder closed his eyes and pressed his thumb into his temple.
“She’s so graceful. And flexible,” Sam continued, clearly oblivious to his internal struggle. “She was warming up the other night when we came in and she can pull her leg up so far behind her she can touch her nose!”
Ryder’s eyes snapped open to search for a speedy exit from the conversation at hand. He had every intention of shrugging off the spark between them for Sam’s sake, but the kid sure wasn’t helping any.
Sam sighed down the line. “If I had half her talent, half her confidence, half her sex appeal—”
“Okay then,” Ryder said, loud enough to turn heads. A few of his tradies laughed before getting back to nailing, laying pipe, measuring, chatting about the previous night’s TV. “You like her. That’s great. I’m taking lessons, as you wanted. Let’s leave it there.”
Sam might have missed his earlier silence, but he read Sam’s loud and clear. He swore beneath his breath as the hairs on the back of his neck sprang up in self-defence.
Sam’s voice was an octave lower as she said, “She’s single, you know.”
“Got to go,” Ryder growled. “My foreman’s jabbing a finger at his watch so vigorously he’s going to pull a muscle.”
With that he rang off. And stared at his phone as if he couldn’t for the life of him remember which pocket he kept it in.
There was no misreading what had just happened there. The kid was trying to set him up. That wasn’t the way things were meant to go.
He was Sam’s rock. Her cornerstone. Which was why he’d been so careful to keep his private life separate from his life with her; so she didn’t go through life thinking all men were self-centred brutes like the father who’d failed them both.
Damn. Things were changing. Faster than he was keeping up. Faster than he liked.
For if he was Sam’s cornerstone, she was his touchstone. His earth. As the raw ingenuity he’d inherited from his mother had been progressively engulfed by his own well-honed single-mindedness, and the crushing need to succeed that his father had roused in him, being there for Sam, no matter what, had been his saving grace. It had proven he was different from the old man in the way that mattered most.
Without Sam to look out for what would his measuring stick be?
To ground himself, he glanced up at the twenty-feet-high rock-and-dirt walls surrounding him, and imagined what would one day be a soaring tower; a work of art with clean lines, perfect symmetry, and a hint to the fantastical that pierced the Melbourne sky. It was the exact kind of project he’d spent more than a decade aiming towards.
Not that it had always been his aim to draw buildings that split the clouds. His first internship had been a fantastical summer spent in beachside Sorrento with a renovation specialist by the name of Tom Campbell, bringing the grand homes of the Peninsula back to their former glories. The gig had been hard, back-breaking labour, but the heady scents of reclaimed materials had also made him dream more of his mother, and her sculpting of lost things, than he had since he’d been a kid.
Until the day his father sauntered in with the owner of the home Campbell was working on at the time. Fitz couldn’t even pretend it was accidental; the sneer was already on his face before he’d spied the hammer in Ryder’s hand.
No ambition, he’d muttered to his friend, not bothering to say hello to the son he hadn’t seen in two years. Kid’s always been a soft touch. Idealistic. Artistic mother, so what chance did I have?
Damn those bloody beams for stirring this all up again. Because no matter how he’d come to it, the very different work Ryder did now was vital and important. And as for the woman who’d stirred other parts of him, hooking into his darker nature, begging it be allowed out to play? All elements of the same slippery path.
No. No matter how his life might be changing, his crusade had not. So he’d have to be more vigilant in harnessing his baser nature than ever.
With that firmly fixed at the front of his mind, he went off in search of the project manager, foreman, head engineer, the council rep, union rep, and the jolly band of clients, perversely hoping for a problem he could really sink his teeth into.
* * *
It was nearing the end of a long day—Tiny Tots lessons all morning, Seniors Acrobatics after lunch, Intermediate Salsa in the evening, so Nadia happily took the chance for a break.
She sat in the window seat of the dance studio, absent-mindedly running a heavy-duty hula hoop through her fingers. Rain sluiced down the window making the dark street below look prettier than usual, like something out of an old French film.
Unfortunately, the day’s constant downpour hadn’t taken the edge off the lingering heat. Nadia’s clothes stuck to her skin, perspiration dripped down her back, and she could feel her hair curling at her neck.
And it wasn’t doing much for her joints either. She stretched out her ankle, which had started giving her problems during her earlier weights training at the gym. It got the aches at times—when it was too hot, or too cold, or sometimes just because. As did her knees, her wrists, her hips. Not that it had ever stopped her. Her mother had famously been quoted as saying, “If a dancer doesn’t go home limping she hasn’t worked hard enough.”
But it wasn’t her body that had spun her out of the dance world. That would have been way more impressive, tragic even—a sparkling young dancer cut down before her time by a body pushed to the edge...
Looking back, she wished she’d handled things differently. That, after discovering her dance partner boyfriend had dumped her, hooked up with another dancer in the show and moved the girl into his apartment—leaving Nadia without an act, without a guy, and without a home all in one rough hit—she’d acted with grace and aplomb and simply gone on. Perhaps after kicking him where it hurt most. But whether it was embarrassment, or shock, or just plain mental and physical exhaustion, she’d fled.
The only right decision she’d made was in going straight to her mother. Oh, Claudia’s gratification at finding her only kid tearful and dejected on her doorstep had been its usual version of total rubbish, but when her mother had told her to get over it and get back to work, it was exactly what Nadia had needed to hear.
Nadia went to work on the other ankle with a groan that was half pleasure, half pain. It meant she was dancing again. Meant she was getting closer to rekindling her life’s dream.
But for now, she had one more class to go before she could ice up—her duet with Ryder Fitzgerald. She figured it was about fifty-fifty he’d show up at all.
And then, with a minute to spare, his curvaceous black car eased around the corner and into her rain-soaked view to pull to a neat stop a tidy foot from the gutter. Ryder stepped from the car, decked out once again in a debonair suit. Nice, she thought. He’d ignored her advice completely.
And then he looked up.
Nadia sank into the shadows. Dammit. Had she been quick enough? Last thing she needed was for Mr Testosterone to think she’d been waiting for him, all bated breath and trembling anticipation. She nudged forward an inch, then another, till through the rain-slicked window she saw he’d already disappeared inside.
With a sigh she slid from the window seat and padded over to the door. She twirled the hoop away and back, caught it in one finger and tossed it in the air before turning a simple pirouette and catching the ring on the way down.
She tossed it lazily onto the pile on the floor, plucked dance heels and a long black skirt from the back of the pink velvet chaise, and stepped into it so as to make the slinky black leotard and fishnet tights with the feet chopped off more befitting of the job ahead. Wouldn’t want the guy to get the wrong idea.
Though if there was any man she’d met since coming home who she’d like to give the wrong idea... A week on and she could still remember exactly how good it had felt having the heavy weight of his hands on her hips. How lovely the strength in those arms, the hardness of his chest, the sure, slow, sardonic curl of his smile that made her lady parts wake up and sigh—
“Gak!” she said, shaking her head. Her hands. Stamping her feet. Anything to rid herself of the ominous cravings skittering through her veins. It didn’t matter that she was a worshipper of the brilliance of the human body and all it could achieve en pointe, upside down, and most definitely horizontal; she’d be playing with fire if she went down that path. Her entire career hinged on what she did the next couple of months and that was not a gamble she was willing to take.
The beat of another set of stomping shoes syncopated against her own as the sound of a man’s footsteps on the stairs echoed through the studio.
With a deep breath, she pulled herself upright, shoulders back, feet in first. She ran a quick hand over her ponytail, and then plastered an innocuous smile on her face as the door creaked open and the man of the hour stomped inside.
“Why if it isn’t Mr Fitzgerald. I’d made a bet with myself you’d not show. Seems I won.”
He glanced up, skin gleaming, wet hair the colour of night, the rain and heat having added a kink. A drop of rainwater slid from a dark curl on his forehead then slowly, sensuously down the length of his straight nose.
She swallowed before saying, “Get a tad wet, did we?”
He shook his hair like a wet dog, rainwater flying all over place. “This is Melbourne, for Pete’s sake. It’s tropical out there.”
When Nadia was hit with a splat she called out, “Whoa, there! Ever tried dancing on a wet floor? Doable, but chances are high you’ll come off second best.”
She moved a ways around him, doing her all to avoid the puddles littering the floor, to grab a towel from the cupboard by the front door. Then turned and draped it from the crook of her finger.
His smile was wry as he realised he had to come and get it. Only he didn’t look down as he took the three steps to take it, before rubbing the thing over his face and hair, all rough and random, in that way men did.
When he moved the towel to the back of his neck, eyes closed, muscles in his throat straining, Nadia gripped her hands together in front of her and pinched the soft skin at the base of her thumb to stop herself from moaning.
She must have made a noise anyway, as Ryder stopped rubbing and looked at her, hazel eyes dark over the white towel. Knowing eyes, hot and hard. Then he slowly, deliberately, held out the towel, meaning this time she had to go to him.
Eyebrow cocked, she barely got close enough to whip the thing out of his hand, only to be hit with a waft of his natural scent. Hot and spicy, it curled over Nadia’s tongue until her mouth actually began to water. She dropped the towel to the ground and used her shoe to vigorously wipe the floor.
As if he knew exactly what was going on inside her head, Ryder laughed softly.
Nadia blamed the rain. Rain made people crazy. The last of the Tiny Tots that morning had literally gone wild, hanging from the barre like monkeys.
She hooked the towel over the heel of her shoe and flicked it up into her hands. “Now that’s sorted, I think we need to take a step back.”
“Back from where exactly?” he asked, his deep voice tripping luxuriously over her bare skin.
“Learn to stand before we start to move. Tonight we’ll work on your posture.”
“What’s wrong with my posture?”
Not a single thing. “It’s a process, Ryder. A journey we are going on together. A journey in which I impart my wisdom and you do as you’re told.”
“So what are you telling me to do, exactly?”
She looked at him—hands in pockets, legs locked, suit jacket as good as a straightjacket for all the movement it offered him—and then, before she could stop herself, she said, “Strip.”
Quick as a flash, he came back with “After you.”
She hid her reaction—instant, hot, chemical—and, with a flick of her hand, she spun on her toes till she was standing side on. “Unlike you, I came wearing appropriate attire. Can you not see my spine, the equilibrium in my hips, the tension in my belly?”
So much for not playing with fire. The gleam in the guy’s eyes turned so flinty it was amazing they hadn’t sent up sparks.
Then, right when Nadia was on the brink of recanting her rash invitation, a muscle twitched in Ryder’s jaw and his dark eyes began to rove. Over her neck, her collarbone, her breasts, her ribs, her belly, not lingering at any one spot longer than any other. Which only heightened the tension pulling at every place his eyes touched.
Point made—and points lost too, she rued—she slowly turned to face him, hands on hips as she waited till his gaze lifted to meet hers. “Take off your jacket, Mr Fitzgerald. And your tie. Dress shirt too, if you’re game. You can leave on your singlet. I just need to figure out where your stiffness comes from.”
He opened his mouth to say something, and then closed it. Instead merely leaving his gaze on hers as the double entendre remained, lingering on the air between them, all the hotter for not being touched.
Gaze snagged on hers, Ryder lifted his hands to his jacket, sliding it from his shoulders. Next came his tie. She had no idea where the things landed as she couldn’t take her eyes from his. For then she’d have to look somewhere else. Somewhere lower.
But when his long brown fingers went to the buttons of his shirt, her disobedient eyes followed as he slid them through the neat holes of his perfect white button-down one by one.
He tugged his dress shirt from his suit trousers, slid it from his arms and laid it neatly over the chaise with the rest of his gear. As it turned out, the guy wasn’t wearing a singlet after all. And when she looked up again, it was to find his eyes still on hers, daring, challenging, till defiance hummed between them, filling the dimly lit room so that the windows near vibrated.
“This what you were after?” he asked, the roping muscles of his long arms bunching as he held them out to the sides.
But Nadia couldn’t answer; by that stage her mouth had gone bone dry. All she could do was nod, then busy herself with getting rid of the dirty towel. She somehow made it to the corner of the room and tossed it into the plastic bin. Curling her fingers around the edge a moment, she attempted to calm her thundering heart.
Okay, so asking him to strip had been a reflex action. The curse of a quick tongue. She was her mother’s daughter after all. But she’d hardly thought he’d acquiesce. And how...
The men in her life had been lean. Not an ounce of fat on their undernourished bodies. Their faces on the edge of gaunt, the rest of them covered with the kind of muscle that clung in desperation to the bones. And waxed to within an inch of their lives.
Ryder Fitzgerald, with his hulking shoulders, big rolling muscles, thick thatches of hair beneath his underarms and whirls of dark curls all over his chest that dared not mar the taut, rolling muscles of his stomach before reforming in a flagrant V that disappeared beneath his trousers, might as well have been an entirely different species. Everything about him was bigger. Stronger. Lustier. Every inch of him gleamed with robust health.
And with one glance something primal had roared to life deep within her.
She glanced back over her shoulder to check if he was for real, and found he wasn’t even watching her. While she was deep in the grips of a wave of impossible lust, hands on hips, back to her, he was staring up at the damn rafters!
“Right,” she said, gathering her scattered wits and forcing herself to get a grip. “Clock’s ticking. Let’s do this thing.”
Ryder turned; silvery moonlight and golden light of the old chandeliers pouring over him till his skin glowed, making the absolute most of the hills and valleys of his musculature. If the guy could actually dance he’d have given Patrick Swayze himself a run for his money.
With each clack of her heels on the old wooden floor, Nadia’s tension ramped up and up. But this was a dance class. A close-hold dance class. Not touching him would only draw attention to her folly. At least that was what she told herself as her hand went to his shoulder.
His naked skin was silken, hot, it twitched at her touch, and the spark between them morphed into some living thing, twisting and shooting around them, filling the huge space with a crackling energy that struggled to be contained.
Nadia barely had time to take it all in, as Ryder didn’t wait for instructions. He curled his fingers around her right hand, placed his other hand in the small of her back and moved deep into her personal space.
Her gaze was level with his collarbone, the scent of his skin so near she was lost within the mix of rain, heat and spice, her eyes so heavy she couldn’t seem to lift them to his.
“Music?” he asked, his voice deep, low, intimate.
And it took half a second for Nadia to realise she’d yet to turn the damn CD player on. Snapped out of her haze, she swore under her breath and yanked the remote from the overturned waistline of her tights, and poked the thing in the direction of the stereo.
Norah Jones oozed from the speakers, warm and sultry. As she made to change it Ryder’s hand came down over hers.
“Seems as good as any,” he said, his gaze as good as saying, Now you’ve got me where you want me, what are you going to do with me?
What she wasn’t going to do was tell the guy the song was too damn intimate for her liking, making her think of smoky jazz bars, and dark corners, and roving hands, and hot lips, and hot skin...
She lifted her chin, clamped her hand hard over his. “Start at your feet. Press them into the floor. Your leg muscles will switch on. Now soften your knees. Like you’re about to bend them, without bending them. Press your inner thighs together—”
At that his hips pressed into hers and Nadia prayed for mercy.
“Lift your torso away from your hips, like there’s a string coming out the top of your head and somebody’s stretching you to the rafters. Now chin up, shoulder blades back and down and—”
“Breathe?” he asked, his voice strained.
The laughter that shot from her was unexpected, and he rewarded her with a small smile.
“Can only help.”
Only when she felt in her bones, in that place inside her that knew dance better than it knew life itself, that they were positioned just so, she began to sway. Pressing his hand with hers, his thighs with hers, she tilted her hips to his until his movement matched hers. And even while every point of contact thrummed with awareness, dance-wise, compared to the week before, it was actually better.
“Feel that?” she asked several bars later.
“I feel something,” he murmured.
“Not so stiff tonight,” she said, and felt him turn to stone beneath her touch. “Oh, relax. I meant in the hips,” she added, giving his arm a shake to get him moving again. “Been practising, have we?”
A muscle clenched in his jaw as he grumbled something about the better he knew the steps, the fewer lessons he’d have to endure.
“Really?” she said, honestly surprised. “Good for you.”
He grunted. “I feel like I’m in one of those movies were you’re about to ask if I could be your partner in some dancing contest.”
She laughed again; this time it slid more readily through her. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, sunshine. You couldn’t keep up with me if you tried.”
“No?” Without warning, he took her by the hand and twirled her out to the ends of his fingers. Years of training kicked in and she went with it, using her weight to hit the end and swing back where he swept her into a dip that left her breathless.
It wasn’t the most graceful move she’d ever executed, and yet her breath thundered through her body as his dark shadow loomed over her, as his strong arm braced her back, as his striking eyes stared hard and deep into hers.
Her hands curled against his bare pecs, and for the first time she wondered about Mr Testosterone’s life beyond the hour they spent together Tuesday nights. Did he lift cars for a living? Chop down hardwoods? No, not a bump in that perfect nose, not a single scar on that dauntingly flawless face...
Then, far more gently than she expected, he eased her back upright until they stood hip to hip, thigh to thigh, in a loose ballroom hold.
“How was that?” he asked, shifting so that she fitted closer still. Close enough to see flecks of gold in his hazel eyes. Close enough that every breath in was filled with his scent.
“Needs work.”
“That’s what I’m paying you for.”
Well reminded, she pulled away and jabbed the remote until she found something less...Norah. A basic foxtrot, pure muzak, the least sexy sound on the planet.
“Your posture’s closer,” she said. “Now we’ll work on your feet. Because, my friend, they suck.”
* * *
Soon the hour was over. Sweat had added a sheen to Ryder’s skin, a muskiness to his scent.
“Okay,” she said, running her hands over her damp hair. “Work on your feet this week. Give me something else to pick on next time.”
As she went to walk to the chaise to gather her stuff his hand clasped her wrist, stopping her. She looked back, hoping he couldn’t feel the sudden flurry of her pulse.
“I thought it was something in the air, but it’s you, isn’t it?”
“I’m sorry?”
“That scent?” He leant into her, his nose brushing the edge of her hair as his eyes closed and he breathed her in. “I caught it last week too. Thought it was coming through the windows.”
She opened her mouth to say...who knew what. Her throat locked up as her entire body stood stock still, riveted by the sensation of his intense attention, and all that intoxicating male body heat intermingling with her own.
“What scent might that be?” she finally managed, her words thick, as if she were speaking through a mouthful of marshmallows.
“It’s spicy yet sweet. Like brandy.”
She breathed in and figured it out. “Ah, my hairspray. Industrial strength.”
His eyes moved to her hair, which was in its usual dishevelled array after a day’s worth of dancing.
“I don’t use it on my hair. Not unless I’m performing.”
His eyebrows all but disappeared into his hairline. “Then where?”
“It keeps the leotard from rising.”
“Rising?”
“Up,” she said with a swish of her hand towards the offending area. And then she walked away, completely unable to help from looking back to find his eyes had zeroed in on her backside with enough intensity he might as well have been using X-ray vision to see beneath her skirt. And if she added a little extra va va voom to her walk? She was only human.
She grabbed her lucky black wrap cardigan, criss-crossing the cord around her ribs.
She turned everything off while her student made himself decent. Pity. It had been fun while it lasted. Heady, hazardous, but worth every agonising second. While it was imperative she keep her hands to herself outside the one hour a week, at least her fantasies now had something to live off for months to come.
As he had the week before, Ryder waited for her as she locked up, walking behind her as she headed down the rickety old staircase. It was kind of endearing, actually, or it would have been if the feel of him a step behind her didn’t make her knees give out on the already precarious staircase.
When they got outside, he motioned to his slumbering car, all vintage curves and glossy gleam, its swanky dash glinting through the heavily tinted windows. “Can I drop you somewhere?”
She looped her big soft bag over one shoulder and gripped the strap in front of her. “Thanks, but no. I live just around the corner. And I’ll be fine walking. I have a mean right hook.” She lifted her hands in a boxing move, then backed away from the temptation of the cool luxury of the car, and the man who owned it.
His eyes remained steadfastly on hers. “Then would you like to get a coffee?”
Damn. Nadia nibbled her bottom lip and struggled to dampen the distinct tightening in her belly. “Thanks, but no. Hate the stuff. Stunts your growth, don’t you know. See you next week.”
Without another word, she turned and headed home, knowing he was watching as she walked away. She could feel it as surely as if his big hands were sliding down her back, over her backside, down her calves, deep into the arches of her sore feet.
Her pulse beat hard in her neck, her breaths coming tight and hard. And she was forced to ask herself, again, if she’d done the right thing saying no. A fling needn’t be completely out of the question—
No, it needn’t. Just not with Ryder.
The man had proven himself far too capable of wrong-footing her. And with the biggest audition of her life looming, she needed complete control of her feet. And the rest of her.
Yet, as she hit the corner, she looked back.
But Ryder was gone.
The heaviness that settled low in her belly had nothing to do with being alone in the dark. Living out half her teen years in New York, then Dallas, then Vegas meant it was nothing for her to walk through the shadows as easily as the pools of light.
No, it wasn’t human company she craved; it was one very particular human.
She scuffed her shoe against a crack in the footpath and swore beneath her breath. Trouble lurked down that path, and, as was the fate of a Kent, she’d be the one who’d pay.
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