And never, not once, for any other reason, did she wish harder that the Sky High gig would be through, and soon.
NINE
Ryder didn’t realise that he and Nadia had cruised into a kind of routine until the night it came to a halt.
The union s were threatening a city-wide walkout right when his latest project was at a crucial stage, and it had taken his team every ounce of charm to keep the worksite actually working when tension ran high enough to bring the whole thing crashing down on all their heads. But even as he’d headed back to his quiet apartment for a shower before he had to head to class, all he’d wanted to do was go to her.
Even considering the seismic scene on the stairs leading to her apartment, the thing he hadn’t been able to get out of his mind was the volatile feeling that had erupted inside him when after few impossible days apart he’d seen her appear out of the mist, dancing in the rain.
He pressed the door open; the thought of catching her swinging from some dangerous contraption had him already harder than a beam.
He slowed when he saw she was already with someone—a skinny brunette he knew all too well. “Sam?”
“Hey, bro!” said Sam, a foot up on the barre, pretending to stretch like a knobbly-kneed ballerina.
“Hey, Ryder,” Nadia called out, her back to him as she fiddled with the stereo.
Brow tightening, Ryder dumped his bag on the pink lounge. “What is she doing here?”
“Rehearsing,” Nadia said, flicking him a glance that was far too perfunctory for his liking. “On the big day you’ll be dancing with her, not me. So we thought the time had come for you to practise together.”
Ryder would have bet his right elbow there was far more Nadia in that decision than “we”.
Sam ambled over to him, bumping him with a hip as she passed to grab a drink. “What she’s too kind to say is I want to make sure you’re not going to make a complete fool of yourself before I sign off on this thing.”
Momentarily distracted by Sam’s outfit—hot-pink leg warmers and an obscene green G-string leotard over shiny silver tights; she looked as if she’d stepped straight out of an eighties aerobics video—when he looked to Nadia there was gloom in her gaze. Though compared to his sister a disco ball would have seemed sinister.
Nadia clapped loudly, snapping him into reality. “Warm up!”
And Ryder gave himself a mental shake. Having a joint rehearsal was completely fair. And after an hour of the closest thing to living hell—dancing with his G-string-clad little sister—he’d have earned himself a trip to heaven.
Nadia took them through a few twists and bends and loosening exercises, then asked them to drop into a standing forward bend. He and Sam groaned and barely got their fingertips to their knees, while Nadia folded gracefully in half, the tips of her dark waves brushing the dusty floor.
“I’ve never been able to do that,” Sam groaned.
Ryder squeezed his eyes shut when the thought that slipped into his mind was, Poor Ben.
“Practice, my sweet,” said Nadia, not an ounce of strain in her voice as she lifted herself up straight. “After about the age of three being bendy only comes with practice.”
Bendy, twisty, tricky, intoxicating, Ryder thought, catching Nadia’s gaze before it slid past him and away. Okay, that time he knew he wasn’t projecting. Definite shadows therein. And while that darkness did wicked things to his composure as it always did, he had to fight the urge to grab her by her bendy elbow and drag her to a quiet corner and ask her what the hell was going on.
Oblivious to the undercurrents, Sam groaned again as she pulled herself upright. “You’ve really been dancing since you were three?”
“Yep,” said Nadia.
“So I’m a tad past it, then,” said Sam. “Becoming a pro-dancer, that is.”
Nadia laughed. “You’ve got a sudden hankering to go from standing ovations one day to in-your-face rejections the next?”
“I’d never looked at it that way. Harsh. How do you do it?”
“It’s not so bad. I’m lucky I went in with my eyes wide open.”
“Why’s that?” Sam was bouncing from foot to foot by that stage, rolling her shoulders as if she were about to enter a prize fight, not practise a modified sway.
But Ryder only saw it from the corner of his eye as his focus was absorbed by Nadia, who looked as if she’d been jabbed with a cattle prod. And Ryder realised with a slow dawning that she must never have talked about this side of her life with Sam. Yet she had with him. The alpha wolf in him roared to life.