“So, this competition. Can anyone watch?” Leo asked.
She started, caught off guard by his sudden appearance in the kitchen wearing nothing but his boxer briefs.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to sneak up on you,” he said.
“It’s okay. I’m not really used to having houseguests.”
“We’ll have to see what we can do about that.”
He came up behind her, slipping his arms around her middle before dropping a kiss onto her shoulder. The smallest of affectionate gestures, but it made her chest even tighter. Words filled her head, words she desperately wanted to say.
I love you.
You’re a good man.
Please allow yourself to be happy, Leo. Please let me help you be happy.
But she couldn’t say any of those things to him. Leo had enough on his plate without her adding to his woes. Besides, he would think she was a bunny-boiler of the highest order if she declared her love after one night together. Or he’d think she was hopelessly unsophisticated and gauche.
Neither was an attractive proposition.
“Would you mind keeping an eye on the toast while I start packing up my gear?” she asked.
“Gear. What kind of gear does a dancer have?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know.”
She slipped from his arms and out of the room.
“That was the whole point of me asking, actually.”
His words followed her as she walked up the hallway to the spare room. She grinned, consciously letting go of the melancholy that had gripped her for those few moments in the kitchen. She’d decided to enjoy Leo, and enjoy him she would.
Humming to herself, she entered the spare room, shutting the door long enough to retrieve the garment bag hanging from the hook on the other side. Throwing it on the spare bed, she turned to her dress, ready to stow it ever so carefully in the bag for the trip to the dance studio.
And froze.
For a moment she forgot to breathe as she stared at the shredded satin of the dress’s once-bodacious skirt. Instead of three deep, tiered ruffles with black fringing, there was nothing but a mess of red-and-black threads that trailed down to the carpet, ending in a tangled ball of thread and fabric.
“No. Oh, my God.”
Sick and shocked and dizzy, she sat on the bed, unable to tear her stricken gaze away.
Her dress was ruined.
CHAPTER SEVEN
RACHEL’S HEARTFELT EXCLAMATION echoed up the hallway to the kitchen. Leo glanced over his shoulder and frowned, waiting for her to say more, but he didn’t hear a sound.
“Everything okay?” he called.
He was busy buttering the toast, but there was something about the silence from the other end of the house that drew him into the hallway.
“Rachel?”
“I’m...in here.”
He followed her voice to what was obviously a second bedroom. The moment he saw her face he knew something was badly wrong.
“What’s the matter?”
She gestured weakly toward the dress hanging on the outside of the wardrobe door. At least, it had been a dress. Now it was closer to a mop, the bottom third of it a tangled mess of shredded red-and-black fabric.
“The cat. The neighbor’s cat got in. I must have left a window open somewhere...”
He was no expert, but it was immediately obvious to him that the skirt was beyond repair. The cat had clearly had a very good time.
“Okay. Okay.” He sat down beside her. He was used to dealing with emergency situations, but there wasn’t a section on ballroom dancing–costume disasters in the fire department manual. “Let’s just think this through.”
She was very pale. He could feel the shock and the panic and the disappointment vibrating through her.
“I’ll have to call Greg and cancel. We’ll have to pull out.” Her voice was flat. Controlled. She was being a trouper, trying to take it on the chin.
“What about another dress? You must have something.”
“Nothing that would be even close to suitable.”
“What about the dress you wore last time?”
“Borrowed. And she lives on the other side of town.” She stood. “I’ll call Greg.”
She left the room. Leo stared at the ruined dress, wishing there was some way he could magic it back into one piece. Rachel hadn’t said it out loud, but this dance meant a lot to her. He’d seen her face as she’d danced Friday night—it was as though she’d been lit from within. She’d found something that made her heart sing, and best of all, she was great at it. He knew exactly how that felt, because he was a great firefighter, and there was nothing he’d rather do than hold the line with the rest of his crew. Even though it was dangerous. Even though people died.
It was who he was. It was who he wanted to be.
He went very still as he registered his own thought. Then he bowed his head for a brief moment. So. He’d made his decision, then. He’d go back. He’d pick up his ax and take his exams and continue doing what he did best. Despite Cameron not being at his side.
He lifted his head, his gaze gravitating to the ruined dress once more. An image flashed across his mind—Rachel, whirling across the dance floor on Friday night in a gauzy black skirt and black stockings.
He stood, striding to the door. He found her in the living room, phone in hand, tears sliding silently down her face.
It was so like her to take herself off somewhere to cry. She would never, ever ask for anything for herself or draw attention to her own needs. Witness last night, when she’d taken him into her arms and her bed, despite the line in the sand she’d already drawn. He’d needed her, needed her calm and her warmth after a harrowing day watching Carrie be brave at the fund-raiser. She’d understood that and given him everything he’d asked for and more.
He’d been so torn up, so conflicted over being back at the station house, over how good it was to see the rest of his crew. One minute laughing at a joke, the next racked with guilt because Cameron was absent, the ghost at the feast.
His only thought once he’d made his escape was that he had to see her. He’d driven out of the city and parked in front of her house, but the memory of their kiss, of what she’d said, had stopped him from going inside.
So he had walked. And walked some more. Until he was wet and miserable and unable to stay away.
She hadn’t hesitated to take him in, to give him what he’d needed, and now it was his turn to reciprocate.
Anything to take away the misery in her eyes, to make her smile again.
Anything.
“What about the skirt you were wearing the other night?”
She shook her head, using the back of her hand to wipe away her tears. “It’s just a skirt. I need a whole outfit.” She sniffed, lifted her chin. “It’s over. I have to accept that. Maybe next year I’ll know better than to leave a window open when Claudius is around.”
She started to dial. He took the phone from her hand.
“So what if we put the top of the competition dress and your practice skirt together? Wouldn’t that be an outfit?”
She frowned. “I don’t even know how I would do that. I’d have to find some way to finish the hem of the bodice... The competition starts in less than three hours.”
“Then we’d better hustle, hadn’t we? You’ve got a sewing machine, right?”
She blinked at him. “Leo... It’s too hard.”
But he saw the hope in her eyes. He hooked an arm around her neck and dropped a kiss onto her mouth. “Lucky we’re both so smart and stubborn then.” He swatted her on the backside, just hard enough to make her blink. “Move it, soldier.”
She frowned, but she went to the hall cupboard and pulled out a sewing machine. “I guess I
could use what’s left of the old skirt as a sort of bias binding around the bottom of the bodice,” she said when she returned. “Then I could stitch the skirt to the bodice.”
He had no idea what a bias whatever was, but he liked that she was thinking now, and not giving up. “Great. That sounds perfect. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”
The next hour passed in frantic activity. Together they worked to separate the bodice from the shredded skirt, then, under her instructions, he cut strips of fabric from what was left of the skirt. She used big looping stitches to hold things in place before sewing the makeshift band to the bottom of the bodice.
“Your mother would tell me to do it again if she saw this, but we don’t have time to make it better,” she said, running a dissatisfied hand over the puckered seams.
“Sweetheart, you have legs all the way to the moon. No one is going to notice a crooked seam. Trust me.”
She blushed and rolled her eyes, but he could see she was starting to get excited again. It was another ten minutes before she’d stitched her rehearsal skirt to the bodice and announced herself happy with the result.
“Great. Into the shower, tell me what I need to pack for you.”
He’d been doing his best not to mention the time, since it was in increasingly short supply, but when she glanced at the clock she leaped to her feet.
“Crap. It takes an hour to get there. And I haven’t done my hair or makeup or anything.”
He steered her into the shower. “Panic while you wash. You can do your makeup in the car. What do you want me to pack?”
She shucked her robe and leaned in to turn on the shower. “Um... A change of clothes. I don’t care what it is. I’ll have to go in the dress.”
He couldn’t help pausing to admire her in all her glory. Clothed, she was gorgeous. Naked...
“Leo,” she said, pushing him toward the door.
“I’m only human.”
She kept issuing orders while she showered, then she flung on underwear and fishnet stockings and finally the salvaged dress. They both examined her reflection critically in the mirror. He could tell she wasn’t happy, that this wasn’t how she’d wanted to present herself.
“You look great,” he assured her, despite the fact that even he could see that the detail and color in the bodice was not matched by the very plain skirt.
“It’ll have to do.”
Inspiration struck while she was throwing makeup and hair spray into a tote bag—he called his mother. Five minutes later, they were in the car, heading toward the highway out of town.
“What are you doing?” Rachel asked, her expression comically panicked when he detoured via Main Street and stopped in front of his mother’s store.
“Two seconds.” He leaned on the horn and his mother raced out, a bulging shopping bag in hand.
“I grabbed everything that looked like it might work. Just give me back what you don’t need. And good luck, Rachel. We can talk about you keeping such a juicy secret another time...”
“Thanks, Mum.” He stepped on the gas then, tossing the bag into Rachel’s lap.
She opened it and made an appreciative noise. “Oh, these are perfect.”
He’d remembered his mother had a display bin full of artificial roses at her store. When he’d called, he’d explained the situation and his mother had risen to the occasion, filling the bag with big red roses and ribbons and other bits and pieces he didn’t have names for.
“Leo, thank you. What a perfect idea. Who knew firemen were so creative.”
“You make a single crack about me being in touch with my feminine side and I’m pulling over,” he said.
“I wouldn’t dare. I’m too busy being grateful.”
He happened to glance across at her then, and the way she was looking at him, the gratitude and warmth and affection in her eyes... His chest got tight all over again, but for a completely different reason this time.
Making Rachel Macintosh happy was the kind of work a man could very easily find himself getting addicted to.
* * *
THEY MADE IT to the studio with ten minutes to spare. Leo let her out at the front door and drove off to find somewhere to park, and Greg rushed out to greet her.
“Thank. God. You made it. And you look gorgeous.”
She glanced down at her makeshift dress, complete with a skirt that was now dotted with half a dozen red artificial roses that she’d stitched on as Leo drove. In between doing her hair and makeup, naturally. It was not the dress she would have chosen to wear, but it wasn’t an embarrassment, either.
Thanks to Leo.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” she said, even as she craned her neck to locate Leo.
“He can find his way into the building. He’s a big boy,” Greg said, dragging her inside. “We’re going to have a little chat later about you keeping him a secret for so long, too, by the way.”
It seemed she would be having quite a few little chats in the near future.
She still hadn’t laid eyes on Leo when the first dancers took to the floor. She fidgeted nervously, dividing her attention between the dance floor, the door and Jack’s last-minute instructions.
Then she saw Leo’s head at the back of the crowd. He was pushing his way through to where they were waiting. His gaze did a slow track down and then back up her body, his mouth curling into an appreciative smile.
“Great dress, sexy legs,” he said.
“Thanks. You should meet my seamstress. He totally rocks a pair of dressmaking scissors,” she said.
Jack nudged her in the ribs. “Two minutes.”
“Okay. Thanks.” She took a deep breath, nerves suddenly jangling as adrenaline zipped through her.
“I’m going to go sit over there,” Leo said. “So I can get a good view of you wiping the floor with the rest of these suckers.”
He kissed her cheek carefully so as not to smudge her makeup before turning away. She watched him until he was swallowed by the crowd, a fierce surge of longing knifing through her.
This morning she’d told herself she’d be content to take whatever she could from Leo, that she’d settle for a short bit of joy and love and laughter if the only other option was nothing at all. But she didn’t want a little, she wanted a lot. She wanted it all.
She wanted Leo to call her sexy legs and to ogle her in the shower every day.
She wanted to lie in bed and talk about books with him on lazy weekend mornings.
She wanted the right to look at him and know in her heart that she was his and he was hers.
She wanted his time and attention and interest for always, not just for a night or a week or a month.
And she had no idea if he wanted those things from her. She had no idea what was going on in his head or heart. His mother had warned her he was a bad bet. Her own gut had confirmed it.
And yet today he had moved heaven and earth to get her here. He’d talked her out of despair, found solutions for her and believed he could make them happen. Because this mattered to her. Because he wanted her to have this moment.
It wasn’t every day that a man braved the terrors of dressmaking for a woman, after all. A man who was used to hacking his way into buildings with an ax. But he’d done that for her. That had to mean something, didn’t it?
“Okay, kids, you’re up. Do me proud. And remember—little steps. And smile like you mean it,” Jack said.
Greg led her out into the center of the floor. Her stomach did a slow roll as she registered the lights, the crowd, the man with the video camera off to one side. If she and Greg made it through this round, they would go to the state level.
She scanned the crowd, searching for one dark head. And there he was, a small smile on his mouth. Watching her. They locked eyes and he gave her a slow nod.
She could almost hear his voice in her head. Wipe the floor, sexy legs.
Greg cleared his throat and she broke eye contact with Leo and took up their starting position.
Concentrate, Macintosh.
The music started, and she and Greg began to move. Back and forth, in and out, making good use of the space. Her makeshift skirt swished around her legs. Sweat trickled down her spine. She flicked her hips and strutted her stuff and let Greg lead her where he would.
And just as it had the other night, that lovely sensation of rightness bubbled up inside her. Her fingers tingled with it. Her chest was filled with it. She felt beautiful and strong and desirable. She felt invincible, a siren, a heroine, a vixen.
She lived the dance, felt it in every cell, every bone. And then the music stopped and it was over and she had to restrain the urge to let her head drop back and whoop for joy.
Greg hugged her, grinning ecstatically. “Baby, baby,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t know what you had for breakfast, but I want me some.”
She was too busy searching for Leo to respond. Because she suddenly realized there was something she needed to say to him. It didn’t matter that it was too early, or that he might think she was unsophisticated. It didn’t matter that his mother had warned her off.
What mattered was that she loved him, and as she’d whirled around the floor, it had hit her that she would be doing them both the greatest disservice in the world if she denied him the chance to know her love.
Because she was a catch. She was smart, and she was fun, and she cared deeply about people. She had a great job and she burned up the dance floor and she had so much love to offer the right man. The only reason for not declaring her love was that she was afraid.
Afraid that he would reject her. Afraid that someone as golden and perfect as Leo wouldn’t want someone as mousy and quiet as her. Afraid that the only reason she’d been allowed into his world at all was that he was off balance and injured and low. As she searched the room for his familiar face, she forced herself to acknowledge that the root of all those fears lay in those overheard comments from long ago. Such was the lingering legacy of that night.
The Christmas Wedding Quilt: Let It SnowYou Better Watch OutNine Ladies Dancing Page 26