“I can’t decide,” Carly muttered. “Which is worse, do you think, having Julie-Ann join us or having her critique our performance to Ellen?”
Treena shrugged but said under her breath, “I’d rather have her bad-mouthing us to Ellen, who thinks we’re great unconditionally, than up here showing us up with her perky-ass high kicks.” Raising her voice again, she called, “Restart the music, will you Julie-Ann? We’ll take it from the top.”
The younger woman shot her a venomous look, but crossed to the stereo.
On the downbeat they launched into the routine, and for a few shining moments Treena recaptured the joy that dancing had given her before her eleven-month hiatus had turned everything she’d taken for granted into such a struggle. Ellen was an enthusiastic, uncritical audience who made her want to deliver her very best, and dancing with Carly was always fun. From their very first audition together, she and Carly had connected not only on a personal level but on a professional one, as well. It was as if each could predict the other’s next move before she even made it, and they flowed through the number now in perfect unison. When they brought it to a conclusion with splits on the floor, their hands flung theatrically overhead, Treena felt a twinge of regret that it was over.
Then Ellen heaped effusive praise on them, and grinning, Treena stood and toweled off for the second time while the older woman continued to exclaim over how spectacular she and Carly were.
“Yes, that was really quite nice,” Julie-Ann chimed in. “It’s a shame you couldn’t have seen Treena dance before she left to get married, though.” She gave Ellen a look brimful of faux sympathy. “I’m afraid she lost her edge during her time away.”
Die, you bitch. Before Treena could decide if she actually wanted to articulate her thought out loud, Ellen was patting Julie-Ann’s hand.
“That’s all right, dear. She has something infinitely more valuable.”
Julie-Ann’s eyebrows shot up. “What’s that?”
“Loyalty. Manners. And much too much style to ever denigrate another dancer’s abilities.” With a graceful gesture to Treena and Carly, who stared at her mutely in the wake of her soft-voiced salvo, she politely herded them ahead of her across the floor and out the studio.
The door swinging shut behind them broke their stunned silence, and both dancers whooped.
“Oh, wow.” Treena gasped, and Carly grinned at Ellen as they clattered down the stairs.
“Remind me never to piss you off,” the blonde said gleefully. “You slipped that knife in so slick and clean, Julie-A is probably just now getting around to realizing the blood’s starting to pool at her feet.”
“Oh, yeah,” Treena agreed. “You are good.”
Ellen shrugged. “One doesn’t work in a library for thirty-odd years without learning a thing or two about handling people. That was a beautiful performance you two put on for me, and I wasn’t about to let some self-absorbed young woman trash two of my favorite people after they’d given me one of the nicest presents I’ve had in recent memory.” But her eyes widened in sudden horror as she looked at Treena, who had already descended the stairs and was waiting for her to pick her cautious way down to join her. “Oh, darling, I’m so sorry! I hustled you out of there so quickly you didn’t even have time to change.”
She looked down at her sweaty leotard, bare legs and character shoes, and shrugged. “Not a problem,” she said, pulling her fringed scarf out of her dance bag and tying it around her hips. “I’ve got clothes in here and I’ll change in the car. Carly should probably put her pants on, though. Thong panties and heels on the street might attract a little attention.”
“Then again,” Ellen said drily, “this is Vegas.”
“So, maybe not,” Carly agreed with a laugh. But she stopped to kick off her heels and don her slacks.
It set the tone for the day. They laughed as Treena dressed behind the car in the parking garage and laughed some more while she applied makeup and arranged her hair as Carly drove them to The Boulevard, Nevada’s largest shopping mall. They were laughing still when they made their first stop at The Petite Sophisticates.
“Oh, look at this one,” Carly said, pulling a periwinkle crepe-de-Chine camisole off the rack for Ellen to admire. “This would look beautiful with the suit you have on.”
Treena looked up from the rack she was perusing and nodded agreement. “As well as with a lot of your other pieces.”
Carly held the cobwebby garment against her own full breasts. “Man, would you look how tiny this thing is? I feel like Gulliver in the land of the Lilliputians in this store.”
“Oh, now here’s something.” Treena extracted a pumpkin-colored suede shirt-jacket and brought it over to Ellen. “I know it’s probably too hot right now to think of long sleeves, but look at this with your coloring.”
Carly joined them. “Wow. It makes your skin look like pure cream. Don’t you have a beige tank with a mock neck?”
“Yes.” Ellen took the shirt and carried it over to a mirror. She held it up to herself, then set her purse down and pulled the shirt-jacket off the hanger to try it on.
“I thought so. That would look really hot with the jacket and a pair of jeans,” Carly said. “And, oh, look at you. It looks fabulous with the black, too.”
Ellen laughed. Really hot. That probably wasn’t a phrase most people would associate with her.
“Here.” Treena brought her a medium-length strand of chunky stones in cream, orange, verdigris-green, pale gold, and silver-blue that she’d picked out from a display on a nearby counter. “Try this with it.”
Ellen put on the necklace and studied the overall effect in the triple mirror. The girls were right—the shirt-jacket’s color truly did make the most of her complexion. Plucking up the tags dangling from a button, she twisted them around to read. “It’s washable,” she said in delight. “I’ll take it.”
She threw herself into the project after that, forgoing all her previous reservations and grabbing every colorful piece that grabbed her attention. Entering the dressing room a short while later, she hung an armful of clothing from the hooks on the walls and tossed a stack of soft T-shirts and tank tops on the bench. The selections were a mishmash of her style and taste and that of the dancers, and she reached for one Carly had selected first. She inspected the sage-green sleeveless tunic with its back tunnel drawstring, then pulled it on and buttoned it up the front.
The girls had insisted she model every number for them and she soon had three piles: the thumb-downs, the maybes—most of which she figured would end up with the rejects—and the definite buys. Whirling back into the dressing room after modeling one they’d all rejected, she said, “There’s only one left, then I’ll buy you two lunch. This shopping is hard work.”
She pulled the periwinkle camisole that had been Carly’s first selection over her head and tugged it into place. Looking up from her adjustments, she saw her reflection in the mirror and froze. “Oh, my.”
It was the sexiest garment she’d had on since she couldn’t remember when. Not in a see-through or plunged-to-the-waist kind of way, but simply by flattering her coloring, making the most of her curves while disguising her flaws, and caressing her flesh like titillating fingers. It displayed a hint of cleavage before cupping her breasts, and it made her feel beautiful just wearing it.
“Ellen, you still with us?” Treena called.
“Yes. I’m just…um. Yes.”
“Well, come on out and show us the final number,” Carly said.
“I don’t think I should display this one outside the dressing room. It’s that camisole you picked.”
Carly laughed, and Ellen jumped to hear her voice right outside the dressing room door. “No one’s in the store but women, little lady,” she said in an atrocious John Wayne imitation. Then her voice went back to normal. “In fact, there’s no one here right now but us three and the salesclerk. So come on out.”
She opened the door and stepped out.
“Oh, wow,�
� Carly breathed. “Treena! Come see!”
Treena materialized from around the back side of the triple mirrors. She stopped short and stared. “Oh, Ellen,” she sighed. “That is simply fabulous on you.”
“Isn’t it wonderful? I feel so pretty in it.”
“Not to mention sexy as hell,” Carly added. “You know what?” she demanded with a wry twist of her lips. “Pretty soon the only one not having sex in our little threesome is going to be me.”
Ellen’s heart skipped a beat at the mere thought of being held again, of being touched. She stood transfixed until Treena said, “I’m not having sex.”
Carly made a rude noise. “Yet. But we all know it’s just a matter of time.” Her smile turned wistful. “I love sex and, boy, has it been a while since I’ve had any. I really miss it.”
Ellen happened to be looking at Treena and caught the funny little nose wrinkle she made, as if she neither loved nor missed the act herself. But that couldn’t be right. Still, intrigued, she said to Carly, “Would you mind seeing what other colors this comes in, darling?”
The moment the tall blonde disappeared from view, she turned to Treena. “Did you decide you’re not that crazy about your Jax, after all?”
The dancer’s eyes rounded. “Oh, no, I’m pretty crazy about him. Why would you think I wasn’t?”
“When Carly mentioned sex you got this look on your face. I thought perhaps things were cooling off between you.” Then a vision of Treena’s face, the way it had looked when she’d returned from walking her young man to the door last night, flashed into her mind. “But that doesn’t make sense. You looked as though you’d been kissed to within an inch of your life when you came back to the table last night.”
“I had been. And I love the kissing part. The whole necking and petting part.” Then she blinked and shot Ellen a glance as she flushed a painful-looking red.
But not what comes after? Ellen opened her mouth to query the young woman further, encouraged by the fact that Treena looked at her as if she weren’t totally adverse to the idea of discussing the matter further.
Then Carly strolled back into view with several more camisoles, and her young friend stiffened and said under her breath, “Please, I don’t want to talk about this right now, okay?”
“Of course.” She reached out and gave the redhead’s hand a gentle pat. “But being a retired librarian is rather like being a pit bull. Neither species lets anything go once we’ve sunk our teeth into it. So resign yourself, darling. You and I will talk. Soon.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
JAX ROLLED HIS shoulders, then lifted his hand to tap out a rhythm on Treena’s door. He supposed he should have called first, but he wanted to take her for a drive and he was afraid announcing his intentions might give her the opportunity to say no. He didn’t know why it meant so much to him that she go. His head insisted it was strictly to get his agenda rolling, but his gut seemed to have a different theory.
One he didn’t particularly want to study too closely.
A moment later the door opened and Treena stood on the other side clad in a faded aqua sports bra and low-riding cutoffs that were worn nearly white at the seams. Her face was scrubbed clean. For just an instant she stared blankly at him. Then she blinked, and a smile curved her lips, lit up her eyes. “Well, hi there.”
“Hi, yourself. Sorry I didn’t call ahead, but I thought maybe we could—” He broke off, staring at her nose. “Hey. You’ve got freckles.” Only a few, but he’d never noticed them before.
She rubbed her fingertips across the bridge of the object under discussion. “Oh, God. You caught me without makeup.” Then she shrugged and stepped back. “But that’s what you get when you don’t give me warning. Come on in. I was just cleaning the place up.”
“Need any help?”
“I bet you think I’m gonna murmur a polite ‘no thank you,’ don’tcha?” she said as she led him to the kitchen. “Well, more fool you, baby—I grew up with sisters who were always trying to wiggle out of their share of the work around the house, so I learned early to take my help where I can find it. Grab the dust mop out of the closet there. You can sweep up the dust bunnies on the living room floor while I finish dusting the furniture.” She shot him an ironic smile over her shoulder. “Feel free to move the furniture. I know neatness ranks right up there on your list of essentials.” She strode into the living room.
He eyed the roll of her hips as he strolled after her, floor duster in hand. Music poured out of the stereo in the armoire, and the swivel in Treena’s walk grew more pronounced the closer she came to the source, her hips swinging in time to the music. She sank into a straight-back crouch in front of the credenza, her butt bumping and gyrating in sync with the bass backbone of the jazzy tune. He watched for a minute, mesmerized, then turned his attention to the floor.
Flipping the dust mop over, he studied it for a second, then attached the disposable cloth to the rubber pad and flipped it back and began gliding the appliance along the hardwood floor. It slid easily into narrow spaces and beneath low furniture, and he grinned at the back of Treena’s head. “This thing is pretty cool.”
She twisted to look at him and the corner of her mouth tipped up. “Yeah. It’s one of those things that makes you wish you’d invented it, doesn’t it? Simple, effective and bound to make millions.”
He eyed her thoughtfully. “What would you do if you had a million dollars?”
“Buy a studio,” she replied promptly.
He stopped pushing the dust mop around the floor to stare at her. “Like—what?—Warner Brothers?”
She laughed so hard she plopped over onto her butt. Raising her feet, she spun on her rear to face him. “No, I think I’d probably need more than a million for that. I’m talking about having my own dance studio. A little place where I could teach classes and rent rehearsal space.”
“You want to be a teacher?”
“Yes.” Clearly, however, he’d sounded every bit as incredulous as he felt, for she gave him a crooked smile and said, “I know it probably doesn’t sound all that exciting to a guy who’s traveled the world, but I like teaching dance and—believe it or not—I’m good at it. I was saving up for my own place, but then…well, things happened.”
He wanted to ask what things, but she cocked a slender eyebrow at him and demanded, “What about you? What would you do if you had a million bucks?”
“I actually won one point three million at the Aviation Club de France in Paris two years ago.”
Her jaw dropped open.
“Before you get too impressed, though, know that doesn’t make me a millionaire. I had to give almost half of it back to Uncle Sam for taxes.”
Treena snapped her mouth shut. “Oh. Well, gee. Poor baby. Only six or seven hundred thousand dollars for a single night’s work?”
“Four days’ work, sweetheart. Four long days. Not to mention travel time.”
“Hell-o! To Paris.”
“I can see I’m not going to get any sympathy for the long, hard, nerve-racking days I put in, am I?”
She snorted, but then looked at him with bright-eyed interest. “What was the most you bet on a single hand in that game?”
He didn’t even have to think about it. “One hundred and ninety-two large.”
“Large being…?”
“A grand.”
Her jaw dropped. “As in dollars? You bet one hundred and ninety-two thousand dollars?”
He grinned at the look on her face. But that win was a good memory, and he said, “You should have seen it, Treen. I went ‘all in,’ which means I pushed all of my chips into the pot.”
“Oh my God,” she moaned.
“That’s a favorite tactic of the Europeans, but I’m usually a fairly conservative better, and the players on the circuit know it. So it worked in my favor. My stiffest competition in that hand was an Australian named Benny. He actually had a better hand than mine, but he folded because he thought I must have something massively great t
o be betting it all.” A big smile stretched his lips at the memory. “There was three hundred and seven thousand dollars in that pot.”
Treena shook her head. “I can’t even imagine. I would have been sitting in a pool of sweat.” Her voice squeaked on the last word, but immediately recovering her poise, she cocked an eyebrow at him. “So. Wanna be a silent partner in a nice dance studio?” Without giving him a moment to decide whether she was serious or not, she demanded, “What did you buy yourself with your windfall?”
“A new suit. Well, the jacket, anyway.”
“A suit jacket? That was it?”
“Hey, it was a really nice jacket.” When she continued to stare at him as if he were crazy, he shrugged. “There wasn’t actually a helluva lot I wanted. But I did take the Eurostar over to London for a few days.”
“Oh, my God.” Lounging back on her elbows, she stretched her long, bare legs in front of her on the hardwood floor. “Paris, London, the Eurostar. I could listen to this all day. You’re my Living Vicariously guy. Tell me everything you can remember about the things you saw.”
So he did, and as he regaled her with tales of London and Paris he had a tough time believing anyone could fake the level of enthrallment that she displayed. Although she kept trying to dust, she would invariably turn around and stare at him with bright, fascinated eyes as he described a district or a landmark. He tried to chase dust bunnies, but she kept asking questions that made him cross his arms over the dust mop and talk some more.
Finally he couldn’t take it any longer. She was so enthusiastic that he had to touch her, had to feel for himself the heat that came off her skin, that emanated from her personality. He crossed the room, where he squatted, scooped his arms under her thighs and behind her back, and surged to his feet.
A startled whoop escaped her, and she clutched his shoulders. “What on earth…?”
He rocked his mouth over hers.
“Oh,” she murmured beneath his lips. And kissed him back.
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