The Dance Off

“Ryder,” she and Sam said at the same time.

Nadia clamped her teeth around the straw so as not to say anything else incriminating.

“The big man!” called Ben, pulling himself to half standing to extend a handshake to his future brother-in-law.

Ryder moved in to take Ben’s hand, his shadow flowing over Nadia in the process.

He acknowledged the chorus of greetings with a smile in his eyes. Though when he finally looked down at Nadia, lifting his chin in acknowledgement, the glints hardened. Nadia crossed her legs to hold in the sensation that poured unbidden through her.

Belatedly, she noticed he’d changed. Gone was the ubiquitous pristine suit and in its place dark jeans and a dark sports coat. Beneath that an olive-green T-shirt that hugged the curves and definitions of his chest and made the very most of the flecks of green in his eyes. Nadia shoved the straw deeper in her mouth and took a hearty gulp.

“I’m so glad you came!” Sam called across the couch. “Was it the begging that did it? Or the promise of dancing? Ooh, you should dance with Nadia. Nothing like doing it for real to pick up some pointers.”

Nadia bit down on her straw so hard her jaw hurt. Oh, Lordy, Sam was playing matchmaker. Nadia would have to put a stop to that. Meaning she’d probably have to explain why.

She’d managed not to tell a soul here her plans as yet. Not at the studio. Not her mother. And not Sam and her friends.

Not that she had any concerns of jinxing things. She’d never been superstitious though she knew many dancers who were: lucky shoes, miracle lipstick, turning three times on the spot while chanting “Isadora Duncan” over and over. It was a little more selfish than that—she’d moved on a lot in her life and knew how people began to pull away when a job was near the end. She wanted this—the ease, the acceptance—a little while longer.

“I just remembered!” Ben jumped in. “The Big Man’s taking lessons too. I hear she told you you’d have to wear tights. Classic!”

Nadia opened her eyes wide at Ben but he just looked at her in sweet ignorance.

“Told you that, did she?” said Ryder.

“She’s sitting right in front of you,” Nadia muttered into her straw.

“How is he going, Nadia?” Sam asked. “I bet he tries to lead all the time.”

Nadia smiled at Sam. “He’s got potential, especially if he keeps applying himself.”

“Applying himself to dance?” Sam repeated, eyes wide and suggestive as she grinned at her brother. “Well, I never.”

Nadia made the mistake of looking up at the man in question to find his eyes glinting in warning. Unfortunately he didn’t know her well enough to know that he’d just tossed fuel on her fire.

She blinked up at him. “Turns out he has excellent posture too. Quite the form.”

Another beat went by in which the gleam in his eyes deepened, and the pulse in her wrist began to kick like a wild thing.

“In fact,” she continued, evidently unstoppable, “I have a few amateur ballroom enthusiasts on my books who are desperate for a male partner. If I let slip about your brother here, there’ll be blood in the water.”

The muscle twitched in Ryder’s jaw and he shoved his hands in the front pockets of his trousers, drawing her eyes down to what he’d framed all too nicely. Accident? Who knew? The man was an ocean of enigmas. Either way, by the time her eyes rose back to his, the pulse in her wrist had begun to beat loud and proud behind her ears.

Which was when the strains of a Kylie song filtered down the stairs and as one Sam’s friends shot to their feet, babbling about the song and the school formal and somebody falling off the stage, before they were all gone up the stairs in the search of the dance floor.

Ben remained, stoic in his charge of the bags and chairs, and not about to get his new suede jacket anywhere near the sweaty dancers upstairs. Then with the couch all to himself he shuffled deeper, and spread out with a sigh.

“Want to get some air?” Ryder asked, not having moved an inch.

She looked back up at him, and up, and up. Did she? Hell, yeah. “You okay, Ben?”

“As a lark.”

“Then air it is.” Nadia put her cocktail back on the table and stood, running her damp hands down the thighs of her jeans.

She pointed the way to a balcony populated with beer drinkers and followed as Ryder made a way through the throng and to a quiet patch of railing. Music pulsed through the windows above. Soft chatter spread from the star-gazers outside. While Nadia breathed deep of the cool night air, the busy street below, the Prahran railway station peeking between the nearby buildings.

Then, without preface, Ryder asked, “When I asked you out for coffee, why didn’t you tell me you had plans with Sam?” and with a darkness in his voice that Nadia hadn’t seen coming.