Dance for Me (Fenbrook Academy #1) - New Adult Romance (5 page)

I wanted her, more powerfully than I’d ever wanted a woman. And I was never going to see her again. I had absolutely no way of contacting her—even if I could get her to change her mind.

I slapped my hand over my eyes as I remembered what I’d said. Who says they’re an
engineer
, even if it’s true? Why hadn’t I told her I had money, or a big house, or—

I knew why. I didn’t want someone who was interested in the money. I’d tried a few of the high society parties, mostly because Neil wanted to try his luck with the women. I’d put on the suit and stood around with a glass of champagne and pretended to be interested in trust funds and venture capital. And yes, some of the women had been beautiful and I’d even tried dating a few of them, but we’d broken up within months. We just had nothing in common. They were all
rich.
I was just a guy who built stuff, who happened to have wound up with money.

I needed someone more like me, someone who did something with a passion. She was perfect...and I’d let her walk away.

I hadn’t slept the night before, and eventually fell into bed around midnight, asleep before I could even pull my clothes off.

***

The next day, I got up early, made a pot of really serious coffee and
thought.

Should I search for another dancer? It wouldn’t be hard to find someone who
would
dance for money, right here in my house. But now I’d seen her, I didn’t want another dancer.

I sighed. I had to give it up. She was one person in a city of eight million.

I stood up and paced, eventually winding up next to the half-finished prototype. Back to work, then. Forget about being happy, or having a normal life. Back to making a better, faster, more efficient way of killing people.

My knuckles turned white on the handle of the coffee mug and a voice inside me said, “
No.”

I turned my back on the prototype and sat down at my computer. I had Google and Facebook and the dance websites I found the night before. I knew her rough age and I could make some assumptions—like she was probably in some sort of dance school. String all that together and I was looking at thousands, not millions. And although I might not know her name, her face was burned into my memory forever.

Of course, if she wasn’t from New York—if she’d flown or driven in from out of state to go to that audition—then it was all over. But you don’t solve problems by worrying about
ifs.

I got to work.

Two hours later, I had a program that would grab the photo of anyone on Facebook between 19 and 22 (I’d pegged her at 21, but I couldn’t be sure) who went to one of the long list of dance schools, academies and colleges I’d drawn up. It eliminated the men and then flashed up the photos one every second on my monitor. I poured more coffee and clicked
Go.
The hell with the odds. I was going to find her.

Chapter Six

Natasha

In high school, endless dance rehearsals kept me way too busy for a boyfriend.

Freshman year at Fenbrook—my first week, in fact—I hooked up with a sophomore actor. He was playing the lead in some crazy post-apocalyptic version of Hamlet and that made him a superstar to wide-eyed little me. Three dates and we were rolling around on the bed in his apartment. Four dates and I was no longer a virgin. Fifth date and I found out about the violin player he was seeing behind my back.

Sophomore year, Clarissa set me up with Vincent (Vincent, not Vince), a brooding cellist who was practically her twin—his lustrous blond hair was even longer than hers. We went on a string of dates, and had sex a couple of times at my place. Things eventually fizzled out, though. I think he sensed I was hiding something from him, and it felt like he had secrets of his own. We split amicably, and I still saw him around the academy.

That was the sum total of my relationships, and it was pathetic. I hadn’t been with a guy—in either sense of the word—in a year.

That, I told myself, was the only reason I dreamed of Darrell.

I didn’t normally remember my dreams, and when I did, they were some abstract crap about flying—never about sex. This one, though, was all about sex. Full, Technicolor sex with sound effects and the feel of his skin under my palms. I remembered the touch of him against my thighs very clearly. In the dream, the skin there was flawless and smooth.

I woke in a tangle of sheets, feeling exhausted yet unsatisfied. This wasn’t good—Darrell had already been filling my every waking thought, and now he was in my dreams, too?

I needed a second opinion. I needed to know if I should do something—pursue this, somehow—or be sensible and leave it well alone. I told Clarissa that I’d tell her all the gory details of the audition if we could go to Harper’s for breakfast coffee and she agreed.

Harper’s was one of two local places with a workforce almost entirely made up of Fenbrook students. The other place was Flicker, the bar I worked at. Harper’s was a deli and a café, serving up half-decent coffee (depending who was brewing it), maple pecan twists that I pigged out on when I could afford them and huge sandwiches that formed the basis of most academy lunches.

We hooked up with Jasmine, too. Jasmine, an actress, had been part of our little group since freshman year. She had auburn hair down to her waist, huge pale green eyes and generous curves that stopped traffic when she wore anything low cut.

Clarissa bought us all coffee. Normally that made me uncomfortable—I made a big deal of making sure we always alternated, even though she had way more money than me. For once, though, I was happy to be pampered.

Clarissa brought over three steaming mugs. “So? Spill.”

I went quiet.

“That bad?” Jasmine asked.

I stared at the little cracks in the tabletop and told them about the guy who burst in. I left out the part about him being hot, and the part where I’d danced imagining his hands all over me.

“
Idiot
,” Jasmine said, as soon as I’d finished. “Probably just wanted to get a look at girls in Lycra.”

“He probably has a
thing
for dancers,” Clarissa told me. “I went out with one guy who wanted me to wear the whole thing: tights, leotard, shoes—
every
time we went to bed.”

“Did you do it?” Jasmine was fascinated.

“Only for a couple of weeks. Then he wanted me to stand en pointe while he”—she exchanged a look with Jasmine—“Uh,
yeah.
So I got out.”

Jasmine was doing her doe-eyed
I’m shocked but loving it
face. Seriously, that girl was going to be massive when she hit Hollywood. As usual, I sat there silently, not sure how to join in. Whenever the subject of sex came up, I sort of shut down. It wasn’t that I didn’t like sex, just that I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting me.

Well...maybe one person.

“He asked me to dance for him,” I mused. Then realized with a shock that I’d said it out loud.

“He
what?”
asked Clarissa, too loudly. Heads turned.

“Eww! Like, in his bedroom?” Jasmine wanted to know.

“Or maybe a lap dance. He probably wanted a lap dance,” said Clarissa.

I bit my lip. I’d had the same thought when he suggested it. Well, maybe my mind hadn’t gone straight to
lap dance
, but the idea had sounded weird. And yet...something about the way he’d said it had sounded so honest, so straightforward. I had a feeling that if a lap dance was what he’d wanted, he would have damn well asked for one and, worryingly, that thought didn’t horrify me as much as it should have done. “He said he wanted a muse,” I told them.

“A
muse?
Who is he, Van Gogh?” Clarissa asked.

“An engineer.”

“What’s his name?” Clarissa pulled out her laptop.

“Darrell,” I said doubtfully. “Darrell Carner.”

Clarissa’s fingers skittered across the keyboard. She took a sip of her coffee as she waited for the results to come back and then froze, staring at the screen. I could see her eyes darting back and forth as she read.
“This
Darrell Carner?” she asked disbelievingly, and spun the laptop to face me.

It was him. He was in jeans and a shirt again, shaking hands with some guy in a suit, his floppy black hair soft and perfect. Something went through me when I looked at him, a crackling wash of energy that started in my face and soaked straight down, hitting the gas pedal on my heart and finishing in my groin. When I dragged my eyes away from the photo, I saw it was a news story.

Jasmine crowded in. “Ohmygod he’s
hot
!”

Clarissa read the first line to us, one perfect eyebrow raised. “Darrell Carner today signed his third
deal with Sabre Technologies, licensing his latest design for an estimated
twenty-six million dollars.”
She looked at me. “You left out that part.”

“I didn’t know.” I was trying to fit
rich
together with the guy I’d talked to outside the audition, but the two refused to stick. “He didn’t
seem—
”

“Did he offer to pay you?” asked Jasmine.

I had to think about it. “Well, yes, but—”

“Well then what the hell are you waiting for?” Jasmine was staring at me incredulously. “He’s super-
gorgeous,
you should do it.”

“Wait, wait...” I held my hand up. “A second ago he was a creep and probably wanted a lap dance. Now just because he’s rich and”—I flushed—“and hot, he’s suddenly okay? What if he’s a rich, hot creep?”

“I don’t think you can be rich, hot and a creep,” Jasmine told me, then turned to Clarissa. “Can you?”

Clarissa shook her head happily. “No, if he’s rich and hot then he’s just kinky.
Adventurous.”
She saw my expression and sighed. “I’m
kidding!
Of course you should be careful. I’ll drive you there and check you’re okay. We’ll do the phone call thing and everything.”

Jasmine bounced up and down in her chair. “Ooh, ooh, we can have a duress code, in case he’s got you tied up in a tutu.”

I looked at both of them in turn. “I don’t have a choice about this, do I?”

Clarissa shook her head. “This is easily the most interesting thing that’s happened to you in about a year, and the thought of you possibly hooking up with some uber-bachelor...? No. You don’t have a choice.”

“Who says I even like him?”

Jasmine smirked. “We saw your face when you looked at his photo. Don’t ever play poker.”

Clarissa suddenly grinned as she remembered something. “Is
this
who you were—”

I kicked her under the table, my face turning red. I really didn’t want to talk about the couch incident.

Jasmine leaned forward. “What? What did she do?”

Clarissa glanced at Jasmine, holding the secret over me like an axe. “Answer!”

I sighed and nodded and Clarissa squealed with delight. “You have to call him, right now. Before he finds some other dancer.”

I hadn’t considered that. Of course, he’d probably already found someone else. The idea made me suddenly angry—jealous, almost, which was crazy. “I can’t. I don’t have his number.”

“He’s famous,” Clarissa told me. “We can find it.”

“Facebook him,” Jasmine suggested. She lived her life on Facebook, when she wasn’t watching cop shows and
24
reruns.

I took out my phone, mostly because I was curious to see if there were other pictures of him on his Facebook profile. But something stopped me before I could enter his name in the search box.

I had a new friend request. From him.

***

I hit ‘accept’, because I didn’t know what else to do (and I knew Clarissa would kill me if I didn’t). My heart was thumping so hard everyone around me must have been able to hear it.

In less than ten seconds, I got a message from him.

“Hi.”

I tried to come up with something witty, or clever, or flirty.

“Hi,”
I typed back at last.

There was a pause, as if he was choosing his words very carefully. Then,
“I’d really love to see you dance again.”

Why
me?
Why not any of the other dancers at the audition? Or...a horrible thought went through my head. Was he talking to all of us? For all I knew, he’d propositioned every one of them as they came out the door.

“You couldn’t find anyone else?”
I typed.

“I haven’t asked anyone else.”

Clarissa and Jasmine demanded an update. I was sitting pushed back from the table, so they couldn’t see my phone’s screen. “He hasn’t got a muse yet,” I told them. They both gasped and made
do it, do it
gestures.