by Ally Blake
And that was as far as Nadia intended to go. “Ryder, I want you to know I asked my boss to assign your classes to someone else.”
The guy actually looked surprised. His next step faltered, leaving him a beat behind. He covered it well though, as she expected he would. Blinded by all that simmering heat, it had taken her a while to see it; Ryder Fitzgerald was one cool customer. With a staggering ability to disengage himself, and his emotions, from one second to the next.
She’d known people in her life with that level of detachment. Had spent so long trying to get through that wall it had near crippled her. She could only be thankful she’d come out the other end. At least with the sense to know when to stick up for herself. And when to walk away.
Having reached the wine stall, Nadia lined up and kept her eyes dead ahead, but from the corner of her eye saw Ryder lean against the divider between the elevated stalls.
He said, “Am I to expect someone new to grumble over my feet on Tuesday night?”
“Turns out none of her other staff are stupid enough to agree to see a strange man at ten o’clock at night.”
She shuffled forward a step.
“So it’s still you and me?”
Nadia breathed out long and slow. Truth was she’d floated the idea with Amelia about shuffling Ryder’s class to another teacher, but when Amelia had struggled to find a replacement she’d told her not to worry, despite the saga so far.
Kiss and run once, shame on him. Kiss and run twice, shame on her. There would not be a third time.
In a nice moment of helpful timing, she hit the front of the line before she could give Ryder his answer. Ignoring the man leaning moodily against the wall beside her, she chatted to her favourite stand owner—a dashing sommelier with the most charming French accent. The man was a total darling—in his eighties he could flirt with the best of them. Charming, innocent, simple. Oh that all men could be so.
Nadia bought her wine, and, still smiling, she turned to find Ryder watching her. There was nothing innocent, nothing simple about the way he looked over her with those dark eyes. From the muscle ticcing at his jaw to the bunched muscles of his crossed arms, he was a mass of coiled energy. And heaven help her if she didn’t want to be right there with him when he uncoiled.
Wondering just how much she was going to regret it, she waited till his wandering eyes met hers, then said, “This isn’t fun and games for me. It’s my work. My life. I’ll teach you on one condition. When we’re in class I need you to behave and do as I say.”
“Okay.” Ryder didn’t even hesitate. As if he really meant it.
Her success was short-lived as Ryder’s eyes slid to her lips and stayed there, staring, glaring, as if he remembered exactly how she tasted and wished he could buy it by the ounce.
With a groan, she eased around the back of the queue and walked away.
“Where’s your car?” he asked, on her heels again.
“I’m taking the train.”
“Fair walk with those bags.”
“Don’t have a choice,” she said, picking up her pace and shifting the weight of her bags. “I don’t drive.”
“Why on earth not?”
“I’ve lived in cities my whole life. Never needed to.” Grimacing, Nadia went to shuffle the bags again, only to find herself relieved as Ryder reached out and slid them from her fingers.
“Thanks, but I can carry them.”
Ryder glanced pointedly at her red hands, which curled into themselves in relief. He moved the bags easily to one hand, using the other to herd her, protect her from the crowd. “My turn to put in a proviso.”
Of course. “What would that be?”
“That was rough, last week. I could barely bend over at work the next day.”
Nadia let out a laugh, and when their eyes connected a gleam lit Ryder’s eyes.
Nadia looked straight ahead. “And what kind of work would that be, needing for you to do so much bending over?”
“On a construction site.”
“You’re a builder?” Huh. “So what’s with the slick suits, Ace?”
“Architect, actually,” he said, the gleam morphing into a sexy smile, which, when surrounded by all that rough stubble, was as good as a loaded weapon.
“Is that why you’re interested in my building, then?”
When he was silent a while she risked a glance to find his sexy smile had faltered. Right, back to being Mr Tall Dark and Taciturn. She gave herself a mental slap, and a reminder not to forget it. Not if she wanted to make it through the next month and a half without becoming unhinged.
“That’s not the kind of architecture I do.”
“What is?”
“High rises. Skyscrapers. Big, tall shiny ones.”
“Ah, compensating.”
His laughter came from nowhere, his eyes crinkling as deep waves of joy rolled from his lungs. People stopped. People turned. People sighed. People closed in as if magnetised. All of them women.
Rolling her eyes, Nadia shouldered past them out of the food hall and into the weak wet sunshine. “Your car’s not that flash, though,” she threw over her shoulder, in case he’d made it out of there alive, “which always gives a girl hope.”
“My car is plenty flash,” he said, having caught back up. “You’ve just never been inside her.”
“Your car’s a girl? My hopes for you are falling.”
He shot her a look that was half lit with laughter, but mostly lit with something else. Something that made her feel as if baby ants were tap dancing all over her skin.
“So, Miss Nadia,” he said, leaning in close enough his voice rumbled through her, “care to tell me about these hopes of yours?”
Her tummy rolled in honeyed pleasure. She bit her lip in atonement. “Not on your life, Ace. Now, why not bring back the glory of beautiful old buildings with beams strong enough to swing from if it’s not about—” she glanced at his crotch and whistled “—you know?”
He blinked, then grinned. And the honeyed pleasure hardened so fast it fractured into a thousand pieces that pierced her insides with hot little spikes of desire.
“I interned with a few mobs after I graduated. The first commercial firm offered me a good package and I took it. Learnt a lot, learnt fast. Went out on my own a few years later.”
“Hence the eighty-hour weeks.”
“Hence. Helps that it’s immensely satisfying work. For the most part...” The frown was back a moment before it slid away.
“Well, good for you. And I’m sure your...towers are awe-inspiring.”
He shot her another of those glances, those new ones, filled with humour and that flicker of heat that he could never quite quell even when he was being all distant and haughty. This one came with a new angle, as if he was trying to figure her out.
“How about you—you like teaching?” he asked.
“It pays the bills.”
“Damned by faint praise.”
“Said the man who finds his own work satisfying for the most part?”
She expected a frown, and instead got a smile. The kind that slipped under her defences like a hot knife through butter.
Mmm. She’d need a flashlight, a map, and a millennium to figure this one out. She only had a few short weeks. Not enough time. Yet way too much.
She stopped and held out her hands for her bags. “Thanks for the help, Ryder, but I’ve got feeling back in my fingers. I can take it from here.”
He just stood there, the muscles in his arms bunching as he slowly rearranged the bags, his dark eyes unreadable.
She clicked her fingers at him but he still didn’t move. “Ryder—”
“It was Sam on the phone the other night,” he said, the words seeming to tear from inside him. Then, “She was the reason I
had to leave.”
As if he’d thrown a bucket of warm water over her, Nadia felt herself pink all over. The heat grew when she remembered the one part she’d made herself forget—the torture in his eyes that he’d had to leave her.
Sam. Of course. But what didn’t make sense was that he hadn’t just said so. Unless...
Nadia swallowed, her voice barely above a whisper as she asked, “Oh, Ryder. Is she okay?”
He lifted an arm, as if to reassure her, then realised both hands were full. “Nothing like that. She’s fine. But that night she was upset. Very upset.”
Nadia kicked herself for not noticing anything at Sam and Ben’s rehearsal Thursday night. It seemed the Fitzgerald family as a whole were good at keeping things close to the chest. “So what happened?”
“Our father happened,” he said, and since he had her lunch and next day’s leftovers in his hands, when he started to walk she had no choice but to follow.
“Your father’s alive? I’d assumed... Since you’re walking Sam down the aisle...”
Ryder’s eyes became stormy. “He’s well and truly alive, just not a part of our lives. He turned up at Sam’s last Tuesday night. Tore strips off her for not asking him to walk her down the aisle. Father of the bride carries some social weight, don’t you know. She was hiding out in the bathroom when she called; he refused to leave until she changed her mind.”
While Ryder’s voice grew hard as ice, Nadia’s scalp felt all hot and prickly as she tried to picture Sam huddled in her bathroom, scared of her own father. “Ryder, I’m so sorry. I had no idea. What a creep.”
Ryder’s mouth twisted into a wry smile. “No apology necessary. Though I’d go more for bully. Or asshole. Selfish bastard pretty much covers it as that comes with the knack for abusing the trust of anyone who dares care about him.”
Ouch. Literally. Nadia’s heart gave her such an unexpected little pinch she rubbed the heel of her palm over the spot.
“When she rang he was... I could hear him... While Sam was...”
He stopped. Breathed deep. While Nadia couldn’t breathe at all.
“Sam’s had panic attacks before, but not for a long time. Not this bad. She was so distraught by the time I got to her I ended up calling an ambulance. It was nearly three before she was calmed and back home asleep in bed.”
Nadia’s fist curled against her ribs. Poor Sam. Poor Ryder. While Nadia had been pouting and kicking things and generally thinking the guy was a big jerk, he was going through all that. She felt like a fool. Then, “Where was Ben?”
At that Ryder’s granite gaze skewed back to hers. Behind the surface she saw such a deep river of concern it made her thumping heart twist.
“She didn’t call him,” said Ryder. “She only called me.”
“Oh, no.”
“Yeah. Pretty much my first thought too.”
After a few loaded beats, they both began walking again, close enough they were as good as bumping shoulders. The ground was hot and steaming beneath their feet, the rest of the world a blur as they remained lost in their thoughts.
After a good minute, Nadia asked the one question that had been left unanswered. “Where does your mother fit into the picture?”
A flare of something warmer pierced the granite. “My mother was...something else. A sculptor of found objects. A champion for the beauty redolent in bits and pieces others had cast aside. She could make something inspired out of detritus the rest of us wouldn’t even notice.” Then, as if he’d been working up to it, “She was sick for some time. I was eleven when she died. It took my father mere months to marry Sam’s mother. And Sam was born weeks after that.”
Nadia didn’t ask how long after. She didn’t need to. It was there in the set of his big shoulders, the tension of his beautiful mouth. His father hadn’t waited for his ill wife to pass before knocking up wife number two.
Nadia couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for a kid to go through that. Her relationship with her own mother was complicated, to say the least, but, even when she hadn’t been around, she’d always been there. Even if “there” was the other side of the world.
In the end it hadn’t taken a flashlight, a map, or a millennium. This big strong man had just given her a most unexpected glimpse behind the iron curtain. A glimpse at hidden depths, at the moral struggles that had been waged beneath that slick exterior. And even while she tried telling herself it didn’t mean anything, that it didn’t change anything, it felt like a precious gift.
Feeling a sudden urge to even out the score, Nadia picked the path of least resistance. “I never knew my dad.”
Ryder’s dark eyes flicked to hers.
“He was someone in the dance world, I gather. My mother was a dancer too. From bits and piece I gleaned over the years I think he was one of the owners of the ballet, or on the board.” From the incessant mutterings of her sober grandmother, Nadia had also gleaned her mother had slept with the man in order to get ahead, and it had backfired spectacularly. No solos for a prima ballerina up the duff.
“Are you close to your mother?” Ryder asked.
“She lives in Toorak.”
It wasn’t what he’d meant, of course, and the clever glint in his eye, and hook to the side of his mouth, told her he was well aware of her prevarication. But he didn’t push. Didn’t ask for more than she was willing to give. This man holding her groceries. The same man who’d given her his jacket to keep her warm. The man who after every lesson—bar the one he’d fled to take care of his sister—had walked her out to make sure she stayed safe.
Emotions a little tender, a little raw, Nadia moved to the crossing lights, pressing the button to alert the machine she was there. When Ryder moved beside her, close enough now she could feel the shift of his body as he breathed, and goose bumps followed every time he breathed out.
“Hungry?” she said, before she’d even felt the words coming.
His gaze shot to hers, hot, dark, way too smart for his own good. Or hers.
But it was done now. Out there. The invitation for more. “Nothing fancy on the menu. Spare ribs and salad. Home-made cheesecake made in someone else’s home. A bottle of really fine red.”
He didn’t answer straight away, and Nadia felt herself squirming in some deep, hot, hopeful place inside.
“I’m game,” he said, his face creasing into the kind of smile that could down an army of women in one fell swoop. Then he started walking backwards, back towards the car park. “You cook, I’ll drive. If you can bear to be taken about in my not so flash car.”
She took a moment, as if mulling it over, all the while her still raw and tender emotions indulged in the provocative smile that spread across his face.
Then she fell all too easily into step beside him.
* * *
Ryder sat on the opposite side of the wobbly kitchen table watching Nadia slide the last pork rib between her lips, her eyes shut as she sucked the last of the meat from the bone.
Either the woman had no idea he was pressing his feet hard enough into the cracked vinyl floor to leave dual dents so as not to make good on the urge to tip the table over and kiss that sweetness right from her lush mouth, or she knew exactly what she was doing to him and loved every second of it.
He figured it about a ninety-five per cent chance it was the latter.
In an effort to save himself from doing damage, Ryder took in his surroundings instead. Turned out her place was as much of a mystery as she was. He would have imagined lots of rich earthy colours and unusual bolts of light, perhaps even a secret passageway or two. Instead her apartment was small, neutral, and undecorated apart from the basics. In fact, apart from a few photos of dancers on the mantel over an incongruously blank wall, it was devoid of any personal touches at all.
And yet sitting in the shabby kitchenette of
the tiny apartment above the abandoned Laundromat below, sunlight pouring through the grubby old windows, he felt himself relaxing for the first time in days.
And from nowhere it occurred to him that his colourful mother would have liked her. Would have been drawn to her spirit, her pluck, the way she seemed to fit in anywhere, yet not much care what anyone thought.
As for what he thought? From the first moment she’d walked towards him in the dance studio, all dark and mysterious and brazen, he’d thought her a creature of the night.
But in the bright, warm, quiet room he felt himself take that assumption apart and put it back together again.
In daylight her skin was beautiful, pale, and smooth. Threads of chestnut and auburn strung through her dark hair, which she’d twisted off her face showing off the most graceful neck he’d ever seen. With one bare foot tucked up onto her chair, her supple body curved over her food, she looked casual, content. And smaller somehow, softer without the va va voom and invisible whip that was such a part of her in teacher mode.
Which made it all the harder to remember why he’d spent the past few days carefully, determinedly distancing himself from thoughts of her. Disentangling himself from the desire that had wound itself around him like a straightjacket.
She licked her lips, and her eyes fluttered open. When she caught him watching her, she gave a husky laugh. The desire returned with all the force and ferocity of a rogue wave.
“Enjoying yourself?” he asked, his voice rough as rocks.
“Yes,” she said on a long slow sigh. She flicked a glance towards the battered fridge-freezer in the corner of the room. “Dessert?”
He shook his head. Dessert wasn’t close to what he wanted. “I’m not sure where you could fit dessert.”
Her leg splayed to one side as she patted her flat belly and he had to hold back the groan that started right in his crotch.
Blinking innocently, she said, “Dancing is a damn fine workout, Ace. Which you’d know if you worked half as hard as I tell you to. I need all the energy I can get.”