December Dance

by Verity Norton

  But so far, so good, he thought. She’d asked him out after all. Okay, so it was on the premise that she wanted to redo the photo shoot, but he knew there was more to it. She was attracted to him. That was a good thing. But since he’d been observing her over the last several months, he’d witnessed her attraction to other men. That wasn’t a good thing. So, right now, the only thing going for him was that he had her confused. He would simply have to maintain that. And keep their relationship on a friendship basis, a photographer-subject basis. Until he was sure of her . . . and her intentions.

  There was only one problem with his plan. What if he couldn’t resist her? What if he gave in to his desire to grab her and carry her off to the nearest bed? Or floor? Or whatever surface happened to be handy?

  Damn. Not a good subject to be thinking about if he wanted to get any sleep tonight. It meant one of two things. A cold shower or a very long night. Or both.

  “Any better?” Anne extended her leg forward to complete the grand battement, then holding the position.

  Chris wanted to lie. He wanted to tell her it was perfect, she was perfect. But trust was important in a relationship, and he would never achieve it if he lied to her, even for the sake of sparing her feelings.

  “I guess not,” she answered in response to his hesitation.

  “Definitely better.” But anything was.

  “Just not good enough.”

  How did he explain? She was still self-conscious with him and his Nikon as her only audience. “You need to forget about the camera.”

  “Not going to happen.”

  “If you dance the way you usually do, it will.”

  “And how is that?”

  “With passion. Like you actually enjoy dancing.”

  “What the hell?” She raised her eyes to scowl at him. Actually it was more of a glare.

  He couldn’t help smiling at her. She was so damned irresistible. “You’re cute when you’re—”

  “When I’m what? Glaring?”

  “When you’re ready to scratch my eyes out.”

  She turned away so she wouldn’t have to look at his adorable lopsided smile. “For your information, I always enjoy dancing. I love dancing. It’s all I love!” As if in response to some unspoken challenge, she reached up and yanked the band from around her pony tail and shook her hair free. Then she slid the band across the floor, grabbed the remote for the CD player, did some fancy button pressing, slid it across the floor alongside her hair band, stood up straight, and waited for the music.

  Chris almost laughed. Passionate all right. Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida” could do nothing but bring out one’s passion. He was so enraptured by the way she moved, he had to force himself to remember to take pictures of her. When she stopped dancing at the end of the song, he wondered if the dance was choreographed. But he knew it wasn’t. He knew her dancing well enough to recognize when she was improvising. He would not have even wondered had she hesitated for an instant or struggled with a transition. But there were no struggles, no hesitations, only passionate, vibrant, powerful movement coming from deep in her soul—even if it had been provoked by anger . . . at him.

  She reached back and lifted her long hair off the back of her neck, and said, her eyes dancing with self-confidence and mischief, “Better now?”

  Setting down his camera on top of its bag, he struggled for his words. When his eyes met hers again, he whispered, “Oh, yeah.”

  “Yeah?” She was smiling as she stepped closer to him.

  “Definitely. Pretty much perfect.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Perfect?”

  His voice was still raw and husky. “Breathtaking . . . intoxicating . . . perfect.” Why the hell was she still walking towards him, as if she were crossing a barren desert and he was a giant pitcher of water? Now he wasn’t only having trouble talking, he couldn’t seem to breathe.

  Interesting, Anne thought. Judging from how nervous he suddenly seemed as she inched her way closer to him, he was definitely interested. One more test to prove that, she thought. But not quite yet. One more step and she’d be in his arms, assuming he would open them for her. His eyes hadn’t left hers, and she’d seen everything from desire to fear. Right now the two were battling each other for dominant position. She didn’t wait for the showdown. Instead she stepped to the side and around him, squatting down to retrieve his camera. “Can I see the results?”

  Chris’s breath caught in his chest, and he had to remind himself to breathe. Shit. He’d been sure she was about to kiss him. And he had no idea what he would have done if she had. Hell, of course he knew. He would have kissed her back until the earth stopped orbiting the sun. Or he ran out of breath. Whichever came first. Despite his determination to keep her at arm’s length until he could trust her with his heart, he could not have resisted her kiss.

  Thank God he hadn’t been forced to face that dilemma. All she’d wanted was to see the pictures he’d taken. But when he caught the impish smile on her face as she handed him the camera, he knew she was playing with him. She’d misled him on purpose. That didn’t surprise him. Not one bit.

  He took the camera and carefully set it at the beginning of today’s shoot. The last thing he wanted was for her to discover pictures from several months ago of her dancing in San Francisco or of her teaching classes here in Canden Valley as far back as July. He watched her face as he scrolled through the shots. Not a flicker of ego, he realized. Only fascination.

  “You’re good,” she said when they were done.

  “Thanks.”

  “I mean it. You’re really good. You make me look good.”

  “I think you do that all by yourself.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so. Your timing is incredible, the way you caught me at the best point of each movement. It’s as if you’ve seen me dance to that song a hundred times.”

  Maybe not to that song, he thought, but he’d watched her enough to anticipate and know the timing of her movements. “Thanks but I can’t take all the credit. This is a great camera.”

  “Okay, so don’t accept my compliment.”

  “Oh, I accept it. I just don’t want to take credit that’s not mine.”

  She nodded as if she understood. Then she took the camera out of his hand and set it back in its case. This time when she stood up, there was no doubt what she was about to do, and no time to will himself to walk away.

  When her mouth melded into his, he knew he was toast. There was no way he could resist this, her. No way in hell. His hands found their way around her waist as hers encircled his neck. God, he could have swallowed her whole. He pulled her against him, not caring that she would now be fully aware of his desire for her. All he cared about was the feel of those luscious lips against his and her tongue that was teasing and tantalizing and having its way with his. He didn’t think he’d ever been more aroused in his life. But then, he’d never wanted a woman as much as he wanted her.

  But damn it! He didn’t want this. Well, yeah, he did. But not like this. He wanted a helluva lot more. But before he could convince his body to stop, she did it for him. She stepped back before looking up to meet his eyes. Then she was smiling that sultry smile he’d caught more than once on camera. “Nice.”

  “Nice?” She called that nice? “What was that all about?” slipped out in a raspy voice.

  “I was just checking.”

  “Checking what?”

  “Your level of interest.”

  Before he could ask what she had deduced, she spun on her heel and trotted off to greet her students. But shit, he didn’t need to hear her assessment of his interest in her. It was blatant enough that he grabbed his camera bag that he would be forced to hold in front of him until he could get to a cold shower.

  Chapter 10

  Anne climbed onto a barstool and motioned for her cousin to join her. Skye whipped off her apron, tossed it under the bar, grabbed a couple glasses of water, and scurried around the corner to sit beside her. There
weren’t that many customers in the pub at two o’clock in the afternoon. Nick would cover for her. She was anxious to catch up. They hadn’t had a good talk in what, a couple days? Definitely not since her cousin had invited the man who was in love with her out for coffee. She wondered if she’d confess.

  “You look happy,” Skye said

  “What? I don’t get tea?” Anne shivered to indicate its necessity.

  “In a minute. What’s going on?”

  “Why do you assume something’s going on?”

  “The silly grin on your face?”

  “I don’t have a silly grin on my face.”

  “The pink cheeks.”

  “What are you talking about?” Anne’s hand inched upward to confirm Skye’s suspicions.

  “You look different. You look like you do when there’s a guy in the picture. A really hot guy. So, who is he?” Skye struggled to maintain a neutral expression.

  Anne shook her head in denial, wondering why she was bothering. She never kept anything from Skye. “I’m just excited about the production. It’s really coming together.”

  Skye’s hands went to her hips. Chris must have been making progress if he had her cousin so close-mouthed about him. “Spill. You know you want to.”

  Anne laughed. “Okay, but it’s weird. I mean, he’s weird. I mean, I don’t even know what’s going on with us. We’ve never even gone on a date.”

  “Who?”

  “The photographer.”

  “What photographer?” Skye asked innocently.

  “The one who’s doing a photo shoot of dance, featuring me.”

  “What?” Skye hoped Anne didn’t see through her contrived surprise. “You didn’t tell me!”

  “I didn’t?”

  “No!” Skye’s forehead wrinkled as she considered that perhaps Anne had told her but she’d forgotten. But she was relatively certain the only information regarding the photo shoot came from the photographer himself.

  “Oh, well, there’s this guy, Christopher Newell. He saw me dance in San Francisco, and apparently he liked what he saw and called my agent about taking pictures of me. That was way back in September, I think. Anyway, it never happened. But now he’s here, in town, in Canden Valley . . . .”

  “And?”

  “And he’s been taking my picture and pictures of my students and helping me out backstage, and he’s even been bringing his niece over here from Winslow to take my classes.”

  “And?”

  “And—” Anne’s hand covered her heart, and Skye knew she was a goner. Fast work, Chris. You’re doing better than you realize.

  “And you like the guy—obviously.”

  “Damn, Skye, he’s the sexiest man I’ve ever met!”

  Hmm. He was cute all right, and Skye supposed he was sexy, and he did have that husky voice, but she only had eyes for one man. However, she was happy to see her cousin was so obviously taken with the guy. “That bad, huh?”

  “Not bad, good,” Anne corrected.

  “I meant, you’ve got it bad.”

  Anne considered that for a moment. “I wouldn’t exactly say that. I mean, I don’t know him all that well. I just know I want to, you know? I want to know him, and God, I want to really get to know him, if you know what I mean.”

  Skye laughed at the tangle of words that had just spilled from her cousin’s mouth. “Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. You want a cure for antsyness.”

  Anne cringed. She should have known Skye would know exactly what she meant . . . and would verbalize it.

  “I just don’t know what to do about it. I mean, I know he’s into me. He has to be if he picked me over the thousands of dancers out there. And the way he looks at me. And that kiss—”

  “There was a kiss?”

  Nick hadn’t told her that part, but then, maybe Chris hadn’t told him yet. He was probably too embarrassed to admit that he hadn’t been able to resist her.

  “Yeah, yesterday, after the photo shoot.”

  “Okay, let me get this straight. Yesterday, after the photo shoot, the photographer with whom you’re obviously besotted, kissed you.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Okay, what part did I get wrong?”

  “I kissed him.”

  “Oh!” Skye’s grin widened as she looked across the room at Nick as if she could relay this entire conversation to him via telepathy “Okay, so I’m confused. You don’t know what to do because . . . ?”

  “Because he hasn’t even made a move. He hasn’t asked me on a single date or even out for coffee. I invited him for coffee. I kissed him. He hasn’t even hinted at any interest in me. But the chemistry—” Anne looked as if she might swoon right off of her barstool.

  Darn. Why hadn’t she talked to Arielle about this yet? They needed a plan, a strategy. A really good strategy. And they needed to tell Chris exactly how to play it. She glanced at the clock on the pub wall and decided as soon as this conversation was over, she was going to ask Nick to finish out her shift and head straight for Winslow to consult her therapist cousin-in-law.

  “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “Sheesh, Skye, keep up, will you? What do I do?”

  Skye’s curiosity got the better of her and she asked, “First tell me, how was the kiss?”

  Anne’s whole face lit up. “Amazing!”

  “So, in other words, he kissed you back?” As smitten as the poor guy was, Skye didn’t doubt that for a minute.

  “Oh, yeah, he kissed me back. And he was so turned on . . . . ”

  “Wow, so what’s the problem again?”

  “He hasn’t even asked me out on a date! Why hasn’t he asked me out on a date? And he hasn’t tried to kiss me since I kissed him. Why hasn’t he tried to kiss me?”

  “Have you been alone with him since then?”

  “Well, no, but still—If he was interested, he’d find a way to be alone with me, wouldn’t he? And he could always ask me out. So, why hasn’t he?”

  Skye shrugged. “Uh, I don’t even know the guy, so I can’t answer that. Uh, what do you know about him?”

  “Nothing much. He’s really great with his niece. She obviously adores him. That says a lot. He brings her over from Winslow so she can take my dance classes. I assume he’s staying with his sister while he’s working on this story.”

  When he isn’t staying upstairs, Skye thought. Obviously Anne wasn’t aware that he had rented the studio apartment above the pub so he could be near her. Kind of like Nick had done.

  “Do you think I should ask him out? Kiss him again? What should I do?”

  “First you need to figure out what you want.”

  “Him.”

  “For a play-toy between tours?”

  “Skye! Can you be any more crass?”

  “Hmm, let me see.”

  “Never mind. No! I mean, yes.” Damn, what did she want? “I just know I’m really attracted to him and would like to see where it leads.”

  “You mean you might be willing to get involved with this guy?”

  “Involved? Oh, yeah.”

  Skye slapped Anne’s knee. “I don’t mean sex. I mean, get involved—with your heart.”

  “No way! You know me. Serious relationships and I are not compatible.”

  “So, he would be just another between-tour toy.”

  Anne felt her shoulders slump. Crass or not, that was exactly what he’d be. “I guess.”

  Skye shook her head, already feeling sorry for the guy. And for Anne. She didn’t know what she was missing.

  * * *

  “She’s really nice, isn’t she?”

  Chris glanced over at his niece who was bundled up in her winter jacket and strapped securely in the passenger seat beside him. “Who?”

  “My dance teacher. Anne.”

  “She seems nice.”

  “And she’s really really pretty.”

  “She’s definitely easy on the eyes.”

  Sara giggled and looked up at her
uncle as he pulled into the tiny village and headed for the dance studio. “You like her, don’t you?”

  “Sure, I like her.”

  “No, I mean really like her.”

  Chris felt his back stiffen. This couldn’t be good. If Sara could tell he liked her, Anne was certain to know. Of course, Sara had known him all her life, whereas, Anne had known him for little more than a week. But there was no way she could have missed his blatant attraction to her when she kissed him. Although, it would have taken a ninety-year-old blind man with no feeling in his body not to react to that kiss.

  “Well?” Sara said in that adorable way she had when she was trying to get information from the adult in the room—usually her mother. Not so adorable now.

  “Well what?” he said as if bored by this conversation.

  He should have known better. His niece had inherited brains and keen awareness from both of her parents. “You know perfectly well what! You really like my dance teacher.”

  “What makes you say that?” he asked.

  “I can tell.”

  He turned off the engine of his Highlander hybrid and reached over to tickle her. “Oh, you can, can you?”

  “Yeah, I can.”

  “How?”

  “The way you look at her.”

  Shit. “How do I look at her?”

  Sara giggled and leaned away from him before she answered. “Like you’d like to kiss her.”

  “The imagination of an eight-year-old,” he said.

  She raised a single eyebrow and looked up at him. He could hear the sassiness in her voice before she even spoke. “I’m right and you know it. Admit it.”

  He unfastened his seatbelt and shoved open the car door. “I’m not going to admit anything. Except maybe that I think she’s pretty.” And very kissable. “But don’t you dare tell her that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because—” Shit, how did he explain? “It just wouldn’t be a good idea, that’s all. It wouldn’t be professional.” And it could ruin everything he had been working towards.