His left eye twitched. “Dance school.”
“Yes,” she said slowly, sensing his guard coming up. “She taught me everything I know.”
Leo sighed, uncrossing his arms to scrub at the back of his neck.
Whoa. Landmine.
She hadn’t even gotten to the bad part yet.
Go on. She’d landed on the perfect transition. Can you help me?
How hard could it be?
She’d come here for the purpose of getting another chance at Bexley. Just because she was experiencing an odd instant attraction to the famed chorographer’s son didn’t mean she could just drop her plan, forget the main reason she’d come to New York City in the first place. This was her only hope. The words wouldn’t come out, though, remaining stuck like a peach pit in the center of her throat.
Because it was wrong. To use Leo that way. Even if he consented and agreed to throw her a life preserver in the form of a rescheduled audition, it would be awful. And there was something about his reaction to finding out she was a dancer that made Reese wonder if dancers were a hot button issue for him. His suddenly reserved body language hinted at the topic of dancing in general being a no-fly zone.
She ached to find out why.
Ached to know anything more about Leo, really.
But she’d screwed herself over by not being upfront. If she came clean about her ulterior motives now, the last magical fifteen minutes would be seen as an act, when they were anything but. Far from it, actually. She’d forgotten just about everything in the path of those blue eyes.
Guilt pressed down on Reese’s shoulders, made worse by the fact that Leo was no longer looking her in the eye, a conflict waging in his expression. There was no choice but to leave and regroup. Think of another way to scrap her way onto a stage.
It wouldn’t be through Leo.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, the sincerity of those words pulling a string taut in her chest. “I just realized I’m late for something.”
With one last sweeping look at the gruff giant and his colorful, well-ordered baking paradise, Reese swept from the back room, pushing through the swinging door and walking at a fast clip toward the exit of the bakery. Jackie and Tad were in the middle of helping customers, Reese saw in her periphery, and she threw them the friendliest wave she could muster under the circumstances. Was the pressure in her chest really coming from leaving this man she’d only just met? It didn’t seem possible and yet, there was a sense of loss that grew stronger the closer she got to the stenciled glass door.
“Wait,” Leo said, thundering out of the back room behind her. “Reese.”
Her hand paused on the antique brass door handle, breath catching.
Don’t turn around. Keep going.
But then his warmth reached her back. Not touching, just close. And his big hand landed on her shoulder, setting off a little explosion of giddiness in her belly. “I made it awkward, didn’t I?” he said, quietly.
“What?” She had no choice but to turn around, her neck craning in order to look him in the eye. “No. You didn’t. I just…”
She just what?
Came in here with self-serving intentions?
Ding ding ding.
God, she didn’t want him to know that. Would hate for him to disregard her as a schemer. Even if this was their first and last meeting.
“I just, um…” She swallowed. “I have an early rehearsal.”
“Oh.” Some of the tension left his broad shoulders. “You’re already cast.”
Jesus. Why had she said that? It was an excuse she’d used seven hundred times to stave off unwanted attention from guys or at the end of a bad date. I have an early rehearsal. Goodnight. She’d neglected to consider that phrase might have a totally different meaning to the son of Broadway’s most legendary choreographer.
Say whatever you need to say to get out of here.
“Yes. I’m a chorus line dancer in…” Might as well swing for the fences and name a hit show. What did it matter? She’d never see him again. That thought caused her stomach to flop over. “Daliah’s Folly.”
“Wow. That’s the hot show right now. Sounds like the last thing you need is help,” Leo muttered to himself, that hand squeezing her shoulder gently, almost in apology. “Look, I’m not good at this, but…”
He was going to ask her out.
If she let him get that far, she would say yes.
It would be unconscionable.
She’d already lied to him. Once in earnest, once in omission.
Turning him down would be impossible, though.
Panicked, Reese did the only thing she could think of to stop him. She shot up onto her toes and melded their mouths together. A tingle started at her lips and blew down through her limbs, turning her boneless against him. And Leo wasted no time returning the kiss, almost as if he’d read her intentions and prepared himself in a split second, his lips softening and parting slightly along with hers, their breath escaping into one another’s mouth, before they slanted in opposite directions, their tongues meeting briefly, hesitantly, then with more assurance.