The Dance Off

EIGHT

Which was how Nadia ended up on the side of a long straight road leading to the Yarra Valley, sitting in the driver’s seat of Ryder’s charming vintage coupe. Though from her vantage point, with all the old-fashioned dials and lights and pedals clogging her vision, the thing looked anything but charming. It looked positively petrifying.

Hands levitating an inch off the steering wheel she turned to glare at him. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Not, in fact.”

“But I told you I can’t do this.”

“I never thought I’d hear the word can’t come out of that mouth.”

“Well, you heard it here. Can’t. Cannot. Unable. Now let’s go. To the beach. I have a bikini that’ll make your jaw drop—”

“If seventeen-year-old boys who don’t even know how to pull their own pants high enough to cover their asses can drive a car, then so can you.”

Nadia muttered a few things about seventeen–year-old boys and the men they turned into, before facing front. He’d pulled her out of the most intense bliss of her life for this?

She looked obstinately into the rear-view mirror as the gently winding country road stretched behind her. The lanes were wide, with plenty of space to pull over. They’d been sitting there for five minutes and not a single car had gone by. And yet at the mere thought of driving, she came out in a cold sweat.

Which was ridiculous, really, considering what she did for a living. She’d long since proven she wasn’t afraid of anything: heights, rebuff, pain.

All she could put it down to was that she was in some kind of delayed shock about her ex. Because while she’d thought she’d handled the news with about as much aplomb as any person could be expected to, seeing his face, knowing she’d soon see him, had rattled her.

But this was more than rattled. At the thought of attempting this thing with Ryder sitting there watching her like a hawk, her throat went crazy dry.

She looked over the bucket seats into the tiny back bench seat of the two-door beast, then back at Ryder. “Ever had sex back there?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

Nadia bit her lip and faced front. “Shouldn’t I read the manual first? Or practise in a simulator of some sort?”

Ignoring her, Ryder went on, “Like most things in life the best way to learn how to drive is by simply doing it.”

“What if we crash? What if I roll the car and we die in a burning inferno?”

“Then you can tell me you told me so.”

“Don’t you have a smaller car? Something a little less magnificent?”

That hooked his attention. Finally! “I thought you didn’t think my car all that fancy.”

“It’s grown on me. And at some point I might have looked it up on Google, you know, in case I one day did want a car. Turns out I’d have to sell a kidney, and a lung, for the privilege of owning one of these babies. I took it as a sign.”

He laughed, the sound filling the car with its husky gorgeousness. Nadia looked to him in appeal.

“Stop being such a wimp, Nadia, and do it already. Turn the damn key.”

“I’m not a wimp! I’m stronger than I look. I’ll prove it. Get out of the car. I’ll lift you off your feet right now.”

Her hand went to the door handle, but he reached over and locked the door. There his arm remained, pressing her to the back of the seat, the heat of him burning across her chest. But it was his eyes, his stunning hazel eyes, and his voice, smooth and sexy, that had her pinned as he asked, “What are you so afraid of?”

“Not a damn thing!” she said, but even as the words came out of her mouth she knew he was right. She was afraid; heart beating in her throat, prickly-skinned, blurry-visioned scared out of her mind. So it was a blessed relief when, like a familiar security blanket, her mother’s voice slipped all too easily inside her head: Grow a spine, kid.

“Ryder, no, I’ve had enough—”

“You can do it,” Ryder said, his voice deep, demanding, but most of all indulgent, and the anaesthetic dogma that had protected Nadia for so many years simply failed to work.

And through the chink in her armour, she saw, with a flash of insight, what she’d been trying to disregard. She’d never feared being rebuffed by a panel of experts looking for a very specific person to fill a dance role. That was their prerogative. But rejection by someone she respected, someone she trusted, someone she admired...

Ryder. This current craziness was about Ryder.

She pressed her eyes shut tight and swallowed hard. But there was no stopping the feelings, the knowledge, now they’d been set free. She cared what he thought, he mattered to her, and she didn’t want him to see her fail.