The Dance Off (11 page)

“Ryder.” Her voice was deep, vibrating, but tinged with warning. “I will leave. I
have
to.”

“I know that,” said Ryder.

Her brow creased into a series of little frowns. Then, just before she slipped into her car, she said, “I will miss you though.”

Hell.
“Right back at ya, kid.”

The ride back to his place was quiet.

* * *

“Crap!”

“Problem?” Ryder asked, glancing up from reading the “paper” on his tablet.

Nadia was settled on his couch wearing one of his T-shirts, glaring at his laptop perched on her bare legs. He’d woken that morning to find her still curled into his arms. The first time she hadn’t snuck out during the night. It seemed he wasn’t the only one debating the benefit of getting as much out of their last days together as they could.

She dug her fingers into her hair. “No. Yes. I don’t know.”

“Anything I can do?”

She pinned him with a dark look that didn’t bode well.

“Not unless you have any Mafia links.”

“For what purpose?”

“I might be in need of a hit man.”

Right.
“I work in construction. What do you think?”

Her eyes widened and lost the dark clouds for a few seconds as she took that in, but they slowly slid back in. Then she lay back on the couch, an arm flung elegantly over her eyes, her feet hooked over the back rest.

“Nadia, you’re currently more intriguing than today’s news but I
am
about to hit the entertainment section...”

One eye poked out. “Nope. Don’t want to demystify your elevated opinion of me.”

When her feet began to point and flex coquettishly over the back of his couch, Ryder pressed himself away from his chair and went to join her. It didn’t take much. “And what, pray tell, does this elevated opinion entail exactly?”

“That I’m formidable and focused and fabulous.”

That pretty much covered it.

“Don’t get me wrong,” she said, hidey arm forgotten as she tilted her gorgeous face to him. “I am
all
of that.”

“And more.”

“Thank you.”

“But...”

“I’m freaking out right now.”

When her feet began to shake up and down, as if trying to lose excess energy through her toes, he knew she wasn’t exaggerating. “Why?”

“Because I’d naturally assumed he’d be travelling to Europe with the old show, so never gave him a second thought. But I just got an email about the audition tour, and he’s been listed as coming. Here. To watch me dance. I’m screwed. I’m royally screwed.”

“
He
being?”

“My ex.” She pulled herself upright and gave the laptop a little shove, tilting it his way. Ryder got a glimpse of a man with brown hair, pale skin, smouldering blue eyes. The fact that Nadia’s lip curled as she said his name somewhat mollified Ryder’s urge to rearrange those pretty-boy features but good.

“Associate producer, I see. You lost your job while he got promoted.”

“So it seems. He always knew how to play the game. The woman—and she was barely that—he left me for was the niece of one of the producers. I, on the other hand, was dancing under another name so as
not
to cash in on my connections. And now look at us.” Her tone was snappy but her body was so expressive he knew she was more upset than she was letting on. “There’s also the fact that he is a brilliant dancer. One of those born with that elusive “X” factor. Stage presence like—”

“How could you bear to leave such a creature behind?”

Nadia didn’t even have the good grace to blush. When her eyes skewed to his her mouth stretched into a knowing smile. “If I didn’t know better I’d say you sounded jealous.”

“Lucky you know better.”

“Mmm.”

When her gaze swept back to the laptop, caught on the image smouldering back at her, all humour faded and she shut it closed with a snap. Then she ran her hands over her face, before hunching and staring through the wall of windows to the sparkling water views beyond.

“If he has hiring rights, which is how it reads, then this ups the ante big time. I’m going to have to pull out all the stops.” She swallowed, hard, then, “The entire time I worked for them they had no idea who my mother was. But what if letting it be known made the difference this time—” She nibbled at her bottom lip. “Because the thought of not getting this job...”

Her hand fisted into her T-shirt—which was actually his—lifting it from the long legs draped over the couch. How could she not know she had so much charisma, so much instant sex appeal she’d only have to saunter into that room and any producer worth his salt would hire her on the spot?

That bloody mother of hers had a lot to answer for.

“Nadia,” he near growled.

“Mmm?”

“Nadia, look at me.”

For once she did as she was told.

“Don’t do it,” he said.

An initial burst of shock lit her eyes before they narrowed. Like where did he get the right to have an opinion at all? He didn’t care much if he had the right or not, she was going to have to hear what he had to say.

“You got where you were despite her once before. You can do it again.”

“Sweet sentiment, Ryder. But you don’t know that.”

The number of people Ryder was certain he could count on in his life could be tallied on one hand. Less. Which was why he ran his behemoth business—from the plans to the paper clips—like a mini-monocracy. But in that moment he knew he could count on Nadia. To be true. To do her best. To aim as high as the sky. Because not only was she stunning, provocative, and slippery, she was brave, and gutsy, and honourable.

“When it comes to you, Nadia Kent, I most certainly do.”

She swallowed. Then hooked her thumbnail against a tooth, a soft pink flush rising in her cheeks. “While you, Ryder Fitzgerald, might just be the most surprising man I’ve ever met.”

When the intensity in her arresting eyes began to bring on that upside down inside out feeling, he ducked his chin to the simpering sap on the laptop. “All evidence to the contrary.”

Yet her eyes remained on his. It was a long moment, a heady moment, before she glanced away and said, “Yeah. And you’re right about the other thing too. A moment of weakness averted. Bugger it. It just means my routine will have to be so amazing, so beyond the edge of anything they’ve ever seen, they’ll have to hire me.”

She uncurled herself from the chair and shook out her whole body. Ryder’s eyes roved over her mane of unkempt hair, her sexy bare feet with the faint crisscross of old rope burns and the sparkly hipster G-string under that T-shirt of his. She far from harmonised with the minimalist décor of his home. So why did she look so damn good inside it?

It hit him that it wouldn’t be much longer before he’d no longer have this view to look forward to. No more of that soft, sweet warmth to smooth the edges off his busy days. No more of that spitting, sparking heat to set fire to his spacious bed. No more fogged-up bathroom after her decadently long hot showers. No more missing fruit. No more Nadia.

Glad she’d stayed, he reached out and snagged her hips, catching her off balance so she fell into him. Laughing, she settled her thighs over his, shuffling till she was more comfortable, till he was anything but.

He slid a hand into her hair. Laughter lit her eyes, laughter and enquiry. When he ran a thumb down her cheek, tangling his fingers in that wild voluptuous hair, the laughter dried up. And he once again caught that touch of yearning.

And he knew he wasn’t the only one now counting the days, the hours, wondering which kiss would be their last.

Nadia pressed her lips to his neck; it was so welcome he groaned. She kissed him again, more, until kisses rained all over his cheeks, his ear lobe, his collarbone. Her tongue following in their wake, warm and terrible in the reactions it invoked. The need, the tension, building and burning inside him, impossible and everything all at once.

Then gentle hands found his buttons and opened them one by one. Slow enough he felt each pop like something unhooking inside him.

Her touch was reverent, her mouth searching. The yearning not locked away this time, but right there. Every kiss honest and real, peeling away the layers of reluctance he’d spent years building. And by the time she laid his shirt open, she’d laid him bare.

He could feel his heart beating, not only in his chest, but in his wrists, in his feet, at the back of his head, as if a tornado were trapped behind his skin.

Then her mouth was on his chest, her lips following the rises, her tongue dipping sweetly into the falls, before her teeth closed over his nipple, biting down. It lasted a second, probably less, but the shock of it was like a dagger in his thorax.

He swallowed down the pain, owning it. He had to if he had any intention of enduring this as she slid his shirt from his shoulders and kissed him there. Her hands running down the flats of his blades, her fingers tracing his spine, spanning his waist till every muscle clenched with the sweet agony of her touch.

It was unbearable. Ryder clenched his teeth till his head rang from it.

And when her hands moved to slide under his backside, her mouth slanting over his, he gave up and took it. Took it all. He’d suffer the guilt another day. Right then he was too far gone to care.

In one swift move, he flipped her onto her back, her hair falling in waves across the cushions, her eyes bright, her luscious lips slick. And he made love to her right there. Slowly, gently, eyes on hers the entire time. Feelings sweeping through so strong him he could barely breathe.

Nadia came with a swift rise of heat, her neck arching, her hands gripping his arms, her mouth sliding open with sweet pleasure. And as she hit her peak his followed, pleasure riveting him inside and out, for the longest time, until he thought it might clear knock him out.

And then in a shudder of limbs and sighs they tumbled into afterglow. Together.

Her hand dove into the hair at the back of his neck, and she pressed herself closer, as if searching for an anchor. He felt it too; the wreckage, the insanity, the irrationality of how good they were together. How frustratingly perfect. It reverberated through him. Like a warning. Like a huge calamitous siren that any rational person would know meant go back, do not enter.

Danger lurked behind that door. The kind he’d long since vowed he’d never risk. And yet there’d been a moment back there when he’d shoved aside reason, knowing he was about to knock on that door hard enough to split the thing right down the middle.

Gripping onto his last tattered vestiges of sense, Ryder pulled himself away from her.

“Come on,” said Ryder, taking her hand in his to haul her limp, soft, stunning body from his couch.

“Come on what?”

“Just come on.”

“Don’t you have to go to work?”

“Not today.” He did, of course. But he wouldn’t. For the first time in his life he was blowing off work. Today, it seemed, was a day of breaking rules.

“So where are we going?”

Anywhere but here. Anything but this.

“You’ll see.”

EIGHT

Which was how
Nadia ended up on the side of a long straight road leading to the Yarra Valley, sitting in the driver’s seat of Ryder’s charming vintage coupe. Though from her vantage point, with all the old-fashioned dials and lights and pedals clogging her vision, the thing looked anything but charming. It looked positively petrifying.

Hands levitating an inch off the steering wheel she turned to glare at him. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Not, in fact.”

“But I told you I can’t do this.”

“I never thought I’d hear the word can’t come out of that mouth.”

“Well, you heard it here. Can’t. Cannot. Unable. Now let’s go. To the beach. I have a bikini that’ll make your jaw drop—”

“If seventeen-year-old boys who don’t even know how to pull their own pants high enough to cover their asses can drive a car, then so can you.”

Nadia muttered a few things about seventeen–year-old boys and the men they turned into, before facing front. He’d pulled her out of the most intense bliss of her life for
this
?

She looked obstinately into the rear-view mirror as the gently winding country road stretched behind her. The lanes were wide, with plenty of space to pull over. They’d been sitting there for five minutes and not a single car had gone by. And yet at the mere thought of driving, she came out in a cold sweat.

Which was ridiculous, really, considering what she did for a living. She’d long since proven she wasn’t afraid of anything: heights, rebuff, pain.

All she could put it down to was that she was in some kind of delayed shock about her ex. Because while she’d thought she’d handled the news with about as much aplomb as any person could be expected to, seeing his face, knowing she’d soon see him, had rattled her.

But
this
was more than rattled. At the thought of attempting this thing with Ryder sitting there watching her like a hawk, her throat went crazy dry.

She looked over the bucket seats into the tiny back bench seat of the two-door beast, then back at Ryder. “Ever had sex back there?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

Nadia bit her lip and faced front. “Shouldn’t I read the manual first? Or practise in a simulator of some sort?”

Ignoring her, Ryder went on, “Like most things in life the best way to learn how to drive is by simply doing it.”

“What if we crash? What if I roll the car and we die in a burning inferno?”

“Then you can tell me you told me so.”

“Don’t you have a smaller car? Something a little less magnificent?”

That hooked his attention. Finally! “I thought you didn’t think my car all that fancy.”

“It’s grown on me. And at some point I might have looked it up on Google, you know, in case I one day did want a car. Turns out I’d have to sell a kidney, and a lung, for the privilege of owning one of these babies. I took it as a sign.”

He laughed, the sound filling the car with its husky gorgeousness. Nadia looked to him in appeal.

“Stop being such a wimp, Nadia, and do it already. Turn the damn key.”

“I’m not a wimp! I’m stronger than I look. I’ll prove it. Get out of the car. I’ll lift you off your feet right now.”

Her hand went to the door handle, but he reached over and locked the door. There his arm remained, pressing her to the back of the seat, the heat of him burning across her chest. But it was his eyes, his stunning hazel eyes, and his voice, smooth and sexy, that had her pinned as he asked, “What are you so afraid of?”

“Not a damn thing!” she said, but even as the words came out of her mouth she knew he was right. She
was
afraid; heart beating in her throat, prickly-skinned, blurry-visioned scared out of her mind. So it was a blessed relief when, like a familiar security blanket, her mother’s voice slipped all too easily inside her head:
Grow a spine, kid.

“Ryder, no, I’ve had enough—”

“You can do it,” Ryder said, his voice deep, demanding, but most of all indulgent, and the anaesthetic dogma that had protected Nadia for so many years simply failed to work.

And through the chink in her armour, she saw, with a flash of insight, what she’d been trying to disregard. She’d never feared being rebuffed by a panel of experts looking for a very specific person to fill a dance role. That was their prerogative. But rejection by someone she respected, someone she trusted, someone she admired...

Ryder.
This current craziness was about Ryder.

She pressed her eyes shut tight and swallowed hard. But there was no stopping the feelings, the knowledge, now they’d been set free. She cared what he thought, he mattered to
her
, and she didn’t want him to see her fail.

Because at some point in the past few weeks, she’d dropped her guard. Maybe because the auditions were so close. Maybe it was the fact that it was hard to be impervious when completely blissed out by afterglow and you felt as if you’d been melted from the inside out. Whatever the reason, even with her eyes closed, when she breathed in and caught Ryder’s masculine scent her heart skittered against her ribs, heat slithered below her skin, and she felt
jittery and feverish, and yet somehow at ease. Things she’d never felt before. Not with the same purity, the same effortlessness. Because she’d been taught very early on in life to press all her feelings deep down inside. The bad
and
the good.

Give a damn and they’ll eat you alive.

And the second she stopped pushing it all back down, it bubbled up until she felt it all—the breakdown of the first, real, long-term relationship of her adult life, her mother’s cruel reaction, the senseless flight from the career she adored. She’d honestly thought she’d taken it all on the chin, but she’d only pressed it down, the whole big hot mess that had led her to that point, spilling into her nerves, her heart, until she couldn’t breathe.

“Nadia.”

Ryder’s voice hummed through her like a tuning fork. She shook her head, no. No. No! Formidable and focused and fabulous, she was invulnerable. But she felt so raw her skin might as well have been flayed from her chest.

Unfortunately he was made of as stern a stuff as she. He grabbed her by the chin, turning her head to face him. She looked at the neckline of his T-shirt instead.

At her obstinacy he laughed—laughed!—before saying, “You asked me to let you lead on the dance floor, and I deferred to you once I grudgingly admitted you had the wisdom of experience over me. I’ve been driving for well over a decade. Not a single traffic violation to my name. Defer to me, Nadia. Trust me.”

She let out a roar of frustration and shook the steering wheel some, but this time didn’t let it go. Trapped, panic-stricken, she lifted her eyes to his, all set to tell him to bite her. But the moment her eyes found his, she jammed up. Those eyes. So deep, so beautiful, so patient. And so damn smart.

As if he knew. As if he’d known for some time that she’d been in denial about how quickly she’d gotten over the multiple layers of embarrassment and pain of the events of months past. All she could hang onto was the hope that that was
all
he’d deduced she was in denial about.

At least she’d learnt one thing from events past—the only way out of any mess was through. Nadia breathed in deep and breathed out shaky, happy right then to be breathing at all. “Okay,” she said. “Tell me what I have to do?”

“Foot on the clutch,” he said. “Gear into First. Key’s in the ignition. Turn it right, wait till the engine hums and let go.”

Sweat prickling down her back, Nadia followed Ryder’s instructions as best she could. And the car bunny-hopped a few feet before wobbling to an ignominious stop. Heat landed in her cheeks with a humiliating thud. “I totally suck.”

“Nobody gets the waltz right first go.”

“I did.”

“And I’ve never stalled. Duck to water.”

At that she laughed; shocked blissful laughter that shaved the sharpest edges off her agitation. With a slow breath out, she resettled herself, went to that quiet place she went before a routine: darkness, silence. Not discounting the natural fear, harnessing it.

In the quiet she heard Ryder’s litany of instructions, and, after a few more false starts, the directions began to blend from one move to the next, until it all seemed to click and she was easing out onto the road proper, rural scenery sliding past the window.

“I’m driving!”

“Yes, you are.”

“It’s easy!”

“Look at the road. Not me.”

She swung back to face the road to find herself veering. She nudged the car straight, her eyes on the horizon as he’d taught her. She pressed a little harder on the accelerator, adrenalin spiking as she was pressed back in the seat. “How far can I go?”

“Do you have a learner’s permit?”

“What?” Nadia said, her hands flinging off the wheel and feet off the pedals in panic. “Of course not.”

The engine stalled and with an oath, Ryder grabbed the wheel and shifted it a fraction so they could ease off the side of the road, where he yanked the parking brake. “Then we’d better stay away from town. And schools, and police, and people in general.”

His voice was rough, but when she looked at him he was smiling.

While Nadia let out a “Woop!” of pure delight and laughed till her sides hurt. Relief and joy spilling through her unstoppered. And like a street after a rainstorm, all the muck that had flooded to the surface before had been washed away leaving her feeling shiny and new.
“That was awesome. And even better for being illicit, right? What next?”

“Next we lunch. I’m driving.” Ryder got out of the car and motioned she do the same.

Lunch? He wanted to
eat
? She was so wired she could fly! Nadia gripped the wheel a moment longer and wondered how far she might get if she just took off. When he opened her door she squinted up at him. “Bonnie and Clyde had to start somewhere.”

He merely held out a hand. She let him help her out of the car when she realised she was trembling all over, adrenalin knocking about her insides till her nerves sang. He must have felt it as he cupped her elbows in an effort to steady her, which was kind of sweet. Then his eyes turned dark and he pressed her back against the sloping side of the car which was anything but sweet. “Tell me how that felt?”

Shaking hands running over his chest, she said, “You were the one putting your life in my hands. How did
that
feel?”

His eyes narrowed. “Not in the least bit unusual.”

“Oh,” Nadia said in barely a whisper. While in the cocoon of the car she’d managed to just hold herself together while being cracked apart. Now, out in the open air, the country breeze tickling at her hair, sunshine pouring down over her bare shoulders, Ryder’s challenging hazel eyes looking deep into her own, she felt...too much.

Heat rising, everywhere, she looked up at him. “I know I was a bit of a beast to start with, but thank you for today.”

“It just seemed like a nice day for a drive.”

Said the man who worked so hard that he never had time to change out of his suit for a ten p.m. appointment, who’d taken a day off because he’d seen she was about to crack and chose to be there to hold her together when she did. “Come on, Ryder,” she said with an unsteady laugh. “I doubt you’ve done a thing in your life that wasn’t entirely deliberate.”

Something slid behind his eyes like quicksilver, something deep and onerous. “So I might have had an ulterior motive.”

His gaze slipped to her neck, the hot spot below her ear, before landing on her lips, and any breath she’d managed to gather in her lungs poured out of her in a shaky sigh. Then his eyes slid back to hers. “You, Nadia Kent, have reserves of strength inside of you you’ve not yet tapped. Add drive, talent, panache, and you can do anything you set your mind on. You don’t need your mother’s permission to soar.”

Mention of her mother was quite enough for the adrenalin still sliding hot and molten through her veins to solidify like cooling candle wax. “Ryder—”

“Tell me you know it.”

His eyes were no longer smiling. They were intense. Serious. Unrelenting. As if he believed in her. Not just her ability to dance. To do well despite her ex watching on. But
her
. And he wouldn’t give up until she believed the same.

“I know it.” And like a flash of white-hot light bursting inside her, illuminating the shiny new places inside her she’d only just begun to feel, she did. In fact in that moment she felt pretty much invincible.

Pure and unadulterated instinct taking her over, Nadia lifted up onto her toes, slid her hands over his big shoulders and kissed him. Soft at the start. Appreciating every lick of heat building in its wake. And when his hand moved to her breast, kneading, running a thumb over the centre, it ached. She ached. Every last bit of her inside and out, filled with such sweet pain she could barely stand it—

A car zoomed past, flushing them with a burst of hot air, and a beeping horn that echoed off into the distance. Still, they were slow to pull apart, and when Nadia leant her forehead against Ryder’s shoulder the erratic beat of his heart more than matched her own.

“Lunch?” Ryder asked, his voice coarse.

“Sounds like a plan.”

* * *

When Ryder dropped Nadia home late that evening, he helped her from the car once more. And once again made a meal of her self-control, the cold metal of the car at her back doing nothing to dampen the heat of the man kissing her senseless.

But after the events of the day—the news, revelations, and realisations—she was exhausted, emotionally and mentally wrung out. The thought of putting one foot in front of the other to get to her door was enough to make her whimper. So she pressed a hand to his chest. “Ryder, wait.”

When he growled in frustration, she bit her lip so hard it bruised. She swiped her tongue over the spot, then said, “I’ve been thinking, and I need to cool things between now and the audition.”

Hard, and hot, and breathing heavy, Ryder didn’t move for a long while. When he did it was to curl away from her and lean back against the car, where he crossed his arms and looked out into the night.