Because it was happening. She was doing this. The first Friday in November, she planned on hosting her first ballet dance class for anyone who wanted to show up at Ophelia.
She had three sign-ups which, if she was honest, was three more sign-ups than she actually thought she would get. Even with the promise of the lessons being free, she couldn’t shake the feeling that the Hamlet locals were being kind when they feigned an interest in taking ballet lessons from an outsider.
Sure, Addy buzzed Maria the day after Grace visited the coffeehouse, asking for more details about the lessons. Her fifteen-year-old daughter, Sally, wanted to learn. She convinced her two best friends to join her: Serafina, Isabella from the beauty boutique’s daughter, and Beverly, whose mother Wilhelmina worked with Sylvester and Rick at the HSD.
Then, on that Friday, the trio arrived. Sally, with her page-boy haircut and a sweet little gap between her teeth. Beverly, who brought a notebook and a pen with her so that she could take notes. And Serafina, a beanpole of a teen girl who had the beginnings of her mother’s crazy good looks. Grace’s first impression was that she’d be a real looker as soon as she learned how to use her height to her advantage. Considering she tripped over her own two feet within a couple of minutes of being led into the foyer, Grace figured the poor girl wasn’t used to it yet. That, or she was super clumsy.
Maria seemed to know the girls pretty well. She introduced each one to Grace, then disappeared into the kitchen to make a snack for the trio for when the lesson was over. Grace nearly snagged her by the sleeve and begged her to stay. Cold feet had nothing on her. Those suckers were blocks of ice, that’s how much she was suddenly regretting this.
Three pairs of earnest eyes. Three girls who looked up at her as if she had all the answers.
Was this what it was like for Rick to teach her?
Just the thought of her gruff instructor, of how he’d seemed to grow more comfortable over their last few meetings, had her warming up. Suddenly, this didn’t seem so scary.
She cleared her throat and then, with a hint of a smile, she let herself remember the way that Rick began their first class. Standing in Ophelia’s foyer, Rick’s mats spread out on the floor like when they did their training, she could almost pretend this was one of theirs. Only, so long as she did this right, none of the girls would end up flat on their back.
“Okay, ladies. Take a seat on the mat, point your toes, and stretch out your leg. This is lesson one: how to warm up and stretch...”
“Evening, Willie.”
Wilhelmina glanced up from her paperwork, her eyebrows creeping high when she spotted Rick sauntering into the station house. She glanced behind her, saw that the clock read a couple minutes past seven, and nodded. “Didn’t realize it was so late. Shift done?”
“That’s right.”
“Mine, too. Here. Let me get the book for ya.” She shuffled a copy of papers to the side, finding the big white binder underneath last month’s payroll report. Flipping it open, she turned it so that the sign-in sheet was facing Rick, then slapped a pen on top of the page.
Rick found his name beneath Willie’s, jotted down the time, and signed his name. He passed the time log back to Willie so that she could do the same. There were still two other names left open on the log: Sly and Natalie. Tonight was one of Sly’s overnight patrols. He signed in at five-thirty. Nat was doing a mid. She’d been on duty since noon, and now that Willie was off, there was a good chance Natalie was on her way back to the station house to do desk duty for the rest of her shift.
Normally, he liked to shoot the breeze with Willie when they both had the time for it. She reminded him of his mom and it was… it was nice to have someone looking out for him. For too long, he’d been on his own.
Not entirely on his own, he amended. Sly had had his back the last few years, ever since they met while on their first deployment, and he would take a bullet for the guy. He was the closest thing to a brother Rick ever had. It was the only reason he gave Sly a pass when he admitted that Maria had intended him to teach Grace self-defense all along.
Well, that and because he kind of liked teaching the outsider. And, hell. He kind of liked the outsider, too.
Shit.
He had to get out of there. When Willie got in one of her mother hen moods, she could keep him at her desk for what seemed like hours. Normally, he was good with that. But not when he needed to get out before Natalie popped her head in. He might have gotten away with limiting their recent interactions to conversations over the radio. His luck wasn’t going to last. It never did. He wasn?
?t about to push it, either.
As he went to the coatrack to swap his uniform jacket for his coat, he heard Willie call out behind him.
“Radio still on, Ricky?”
Rick chuckled under his breath. The laughter was coming more and more easily to him these days. He knew why, too. “Of course, Wil. I told you I would.”
And he did.
Ever since his first training session with Grace Delaney, he kept it on. Sure, it meant he had to answer more than a few buzzes that were basically Natalie checking up on him, but he humored the kid. It was worth it if it meant that he didn’t miss a single time Grace borrowed Maria De Angelis’s radio to check that they were still on for their next class.
“Glad to hear it, sug.”
As he threw his thicker Carhartt coat on—his only nod to the dipping temperatures as November crept in—Rick had to admit that Grace didn’t contact him as much as he would’ve liked. He knew that she didn’t have a communicator of her own. Sly mentioned how Maria wanted to get her one but, because of the trouble she refused to elaborate on, she continued to decline the offer. She only ever buzzed when she had a question about their lessons.
Okay. So maybe he was the one who had to come up with ridiculous reasons to track Maria down and try to get Grace on the radio. To double-check that there wasn’t a change of plan. To make sure she still had the mats. Was it ten o’clock or eleven for their morning training? He’d even gone out and bought her a book from an outside bookstore. It was a guide for women’s self-protection, and its purpose was to add to the classes. Like a true instructor, he gave her chapters to study in advance of their next session. And, whoops, sometimes he forgot to tell her which ones to read while he was in Ophelia. So, of course, he had to buzz her. How else would she be prepared?
And, damn it, he needed Grace to be prepared. Not just for the class. He needed her to be vigilant for this ex that made her so afraid, she’d rather spend two hours a week with him. Rick knew it wasn’t easy. Good training never was. He tried not to be too much of a bastard, but he heard his old boot camp instructor’s words pop out half the time he opened his mouth. Rick pushed her to succeed, and maybe he pushed her too hard, but he had to.