Take the Lead: A Dance Off Novel

by Alexis Daria

“Is that it?” Stone asked, relieved he’d gotten through it without embarrassing himself.

  Lori overheard him and chuckled. “No way. We still have to get through the interviews. Put your game face back on.”

  She was right. The couples were separated and seated in small rooms, where a parade of reporters passed through asking them the same inane questions over and over. Again, Gina did most of the talking, mostly about how excited she was for the new season, and for the audience to see Stone dance. They were seated close enough that she could nudge him when he should answer, and he managed to pay close enough attention that he didn’t think he sounded too much like an idiot.

  Donna popped in a couple times between interviews. “Make it good, Gina,” she said, her smile sharp as a blade.

  “Always.” Gina replied with a tight smile of her own that made Stone want to massage the tension from her neck.

  And then, miracle of miracles, they were done. A PA entered the room to unhook their mics, handed them fresh bottles of water, and bid them good day.

  When they were alone in the room, Gina kicked her legs out and pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose. “Thank god that’s over,” she mumbled. “I love it and wouldn’t change a thing, but damn if it isn’t draining.”

  “You handled it well.” Through every stupid interview, she’d responded with resilience and enthusiasm.

  She shrugged and got to her feet. “Part of the job. Come on, we have the rest of the day to ourselves. I want to show you my city.”

  “I hear you have to walk a lot in New York.” He glanced down at the sexy sandals that made her legs look a million miles long.

  She followed his gaze and laughed. “I’m going to change into sneakers.”

  “And we need our disguises, too, I guess.” At her puzzled frown, he grinned. “Sunglasses and hats.”

  She linked her arm with his. “Look at you. You’re already a pro at this ‘being famous’ thing.”

  “Heaven forbid.” Stone gave a mock shudder to make her laugh, just because he liked the sound.

  He was in too deep, but too tired to care. It was easier to like her, easier to enjoy her company and focus on pleasing her.

  When she smiled, he forgot why he was fighting so hard.

  * * *

  Outside, the weather was cool and sunny, the perfect spring day. The air was as clear as it got in Manhattan, but it had nothing on Alaska. Gina was spoiled for life.

  They were still deep in Times Square territory, though, which meant hordes of tourists and people trying to make money off tourists—hawkers for Broadway shows, street salesmen with tables taking up valuable sidewalk space, and creepy costume characters who’d pose for pictures at five bucks a pop.

  “Where are we going?” Stone asked.

  “Let’s take the train to Central Park,” she said. “You’re too conspicuous, and the people walking around here have their eyes peeled for celebrities.” They’d lost his hat somewhere in the Morning Mix building, and had to buy a baseball hat for him in one of the many souvenir shops. Still, the sunglasses and hat did nothing to disguise him. He was massive, with a blonde-streaked ponytail and full beard. It was like trying to hide a time-traveling Viking in a kindergarten class.

  He shrugged. “Whatever you say.”

  They were close to Bryant Park, which would be populated with more business people than tourists, so Gina hustled them over to the subway station there and led the way underground.

  In the station, Gina bought a Metrocard from one of the machines, and swiped them both in. The B train waited at the platform, and she shoved Stone onto it before the doors closed.

  “Hold on,” she warned. He had good balance, but she didn’t want to see him bust his ass on the train. It was full, and at the next stop they moved further in to make room for the people coming and going.

  Stone removed his glasses and shoved them into his back pocket. “Too dark in here,” he muttered. He sent a restrained glare around them and hunched his shoulders inward, as if trying to take up less space. “And crowded.”

  The stop at 59th Street/Columbus Circle arrived faster than Gina anticipated. She headed for the doors, elbowing the people in her way until the crowd spit her onto the platform. She moved a few feet away to get out of the flow of people.

  “The park is right upstairs,” she said.

  No answer.

  When she turned around, Stone wasn’t there. She whipped off her sunglasses and stood on tiptoe, searching for him over the heads of everyone else on the platform.

  Shit. He was still on the train.

  She rushed back to the doors, yelling his name, and was caught between the currents of people exiting and entering the train. His head snapped up, they made eye contact, and he started to edge his way through the crowd.

  The guy was built like a fucking linebacker, but he was so worried about hurting people with his size that he wouldn’t knock them aside. Before Gina could get back on, the doors slid closed right between them.

  “No!” Gina pounded a fist on the glass. She raised her voice and rushed to give him instructions as the train prepared to move. “Get off at the next stop and wait for me there!”

  He nodded as the train sped up and pulled out of the station.

  “That sucks,” the woman standing next to her said. “You should call him, just to make sure.”

  “Yeah, I . . . thanks.” Gina stood by the newsstand and tried to catch her breath.

  Shit. She’d just lost her celebrity dance partner on the train, a guy who had never been to New York City before and who didn’t own a phone.

  She’d teased him about it, but it hadn’t been a problem because he was always either at his hotel or at the rehearsal studio with her. Now, it seemed dangerous. How did you walk around without a phone? In New York City of all places?

  Her own phone buzzed in her pocket with an incoming text. For a brief, elated second, she thought it might be Stone. A glance at the screen showed it was her mother, Benita, wanting to know when Gina would be coming up to the Bronx to visit and inviting “Rock” for dinner. Of course her family had watched the show that morning.

  Gina’s heart leaped when the telltale rush of air swept along her side of the platform, along with the rumble of an approaching train. Excellent, another B. She’d be at the next station in under two minutes. She rushed to stand by the doors when the train came to a stop. Inside, she squashed herself into a corner by the empty conductor’s booth and fanned her face while a slightly garbled announcement blasted from the overhead speaker.

  More people filed on. Gina tapped her foot. The train started to move. Finally.

  Assuming Stone had followed her instructions, they’d be reunited in . . .

  The train sailed past 72nd Street.

  “What?” She glanced around. No one else seemed surprised. “What’s happening? Isn’t this a local?”

  A middle-aged guy in a suit gave her a disdainful look. “If you’d been paying attention, you would have heard them announce this train is going express to—”

  “To 125th Street.” Stomach sinking, Gina sagged against the metal door and weighed her options.

  There were none, for the time being. New York City transit was notoriously unpredictable, and yeah, sometimes local trains went express for no reason, and vice versa. She was stuck, watching all the local stops go by, each one reminding her how far away she was getting from Stone.

  Her freak out meter was at maximum by the time the train stopped at 125th Street. She dashed out of the train, up the stairs into the station, and down another flight of stairs to the downtown platform.

  A downtown express was pulling in. She hesitated. 72nd Street wasn’t an express stop. But when an automated voice announced delays on the downtown local track, that decided it. She hopped on and headed back to 59th Street, and this time found a seat.

  She spent the entire train ride worrying that Stone wouldn’t be there when she arrived. What was she going to do if he was
n’t there? Did he even know what hotel they were all staying at? How would they find him?

  Tears threatened, burning her eyes and forming a lump in the back of her throat. She bit her lip against them. She wouldn’t cry on the train. The last time she’d done that, she’d been seventeen and stupid, crying because a boy had broken her heart.

  Memories of that time reinforced all her goals and rules. Shoot for the top, and don’t let any man get in the way.

  Still, this was her fault. She should’ve told Stone where they were getting off, or held on to him to make sure he was following her off the train. She would have, if she weren’t actively trying to keep her distance.

  By the time the train pulled back into the station at 59th Street, Gina’s nerves were vibrating with anxiety. She bolted onto the platform, ran upstairs and over to the uptown platform once again, and stood wringing her hands and breathing hard while she waited for a local.

  When it arrived a minute later, she paid close attention. This time, there were no announcements. The train picked up speed, heading for 72nd, and Gina’s heart nearly burst out of her chest.

  In the seconds that passed between stations, her traitorous, anxiety-ridden brain supplied all sorts of improbable images of what she’d find. An empty platform. Stone dead in the tracks. A huge crowd she had to fight her way through, screaming his name at the top of her lungs.

  When the train stopped at 72nd Street, she waited at the doors, chewing her lipstick off. Every second seemed to drag, until finally the doors slid open.

  Gina stumbled out, looking up and down the platform with wild movements. She couldn’t see anything yet, couldn’t see him. People were leaving the train, and she searched for Stone towering over them, but he wasn’t there. She’d just inhaled a shaky breath to call his name when the crowd passed, and she saw him.

  Stone was sitting on a bench, ankle propped on his knee, reading one of the free newspapers distributed daily in the subway.

  When she let out the breath she was holding, he looked up. His eyes lit, and a smile curved his lips.

  “There you are.” He folded the newspaper, but before he could get up, she rushed him. Her knees wobbled as she dropped onto his lap and threw her arms around his neck.

  “You’re here,” she whispered into his hair, inhaling the scent of him that had become so familiar and comforting to her.

  “Of course I am.” His voice held a note of surprise. His arms encircled her, and for the first time in . . . she didn’t know how long it had been . . . but for the first time since she’d lost him, she felt okay.

  She refused to examine the feeling further.

  “You told me to get off here and wait for you. So, that’s what I did.”

  He’d listened. She didn’t know what she would have done if he hadn’t. “I’m so sorry, Stone.”

  “Gina.” He eased her back and tilted his chin down so he could meet her eyes. “I’m fine. It’s all right.”

  She let out a shuddering breath, the stress of the day taking its toll. Her words spilled out in a jumbled mess. “I lost you, and I’m supposed to be responsible for you, and you don’t even have a phone, and—”

  “Hey.” He cupped her face and leaned in. “You didn’t lose me. I should have been paying attention. And you’re not responsible for me—I’m a grown man, and I’ve been lost in worse places than this.” The corner of his mouth kicked up. “Besides, I think I was sitting here all of twenty minutes.”

  Gina blinked, ignoring the way her stomach fluttered at his touch. “That was it? It felt like hours.”

  “I’m sorry I made you worry.”

  “I’m sorry I made you wait.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t be. It was an accident. I knew you’d come back for me.” He shifted and held up the newspaper. “Do you have a pen? I’ve been doing this crossword puzzle in my head and it’s getting confusing.”

  She laughed full out and hugged him, relishing in the way he hugged her back.

  “I’m not letting go of you again,” she mumbled into his shoulder.

  “I think I’m okay with that.” His voice was soft, and she strained to catch his words. Time to break the tension.

  “My mother invited you to dinner.”

  He exhaled, and she felt it throughout her entire body.

  “Really? Because I would do just about anything for a home-cooked steak.”

  She snickered. “I think that can be arranged. She might call you Rock, though.”

  “For a steak, she can call me anything she wants.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Here we are. Central Park.”

  Stone followed Gina up the stairs that led out of the underground station, blinking in the bright sunlight. March in New York was warmer than March in Alaska by far, and it was a sunny day. Over the park, the sky stretched clear and blue over the tops of the budding trees. It was a poor substitute for Alaska, but it beat out the palm trees and smog of Los Angeles.

  Gina took his hand as they crossed the street to the park entrance and gave him a playful smile from under the bill of her Yankees hat. “I’m not going to chance losing you again.”

  He’d chosen a Mariners cap from the display in the souvenir shop. Gina had sent him a puzzled frown and asked, “You follow baseball?” Her question incited a panic in him, and he’d babbled out a reply. “Yeah, I mean, when I can. We’re off-the-grid, but not, like, on another planet. Sometimes we go into town. But not . . . not often.”

  Gina was too perceptive, and he was a terrible liar. He’d have to do a better job of keeping his mouth shut. In truth, he followed the Mariners because he’d been born just outside Seattle, but that didn’t fit the Alaskan identity, so he wasn’t supposed to mention it.

  Dirt and asphalt trails wound this way and that in the park, and holding Gina’s hand as they meandered down one of the trails was nice. Really nice. He shouldn’t be getting any closer to her, for fear of letting something slip, but more than anything right now, he wanted the distraction of human connection.

  The path turned to orange bricks. Up ahead, an ornate stone railing looked out over a large round fountain with a majestic angel rising out of the center, arms outstretched. A pigeon sat on the angel’s head.

  “Bethesda Fountain. My favorite spot in the whole park.” Slipping her sunglasses into her jacket pocket, Gina boosted herself up to sit on the edge of the railing.

  Stone stared at the statue in the fountain. He’d seen this before. In movies, not in person. But he couldn’t ask Gina about it, because she gave him a suspicious look every time he said something about pop culture. “Nice.”

  “My senior photo was taken here.”

  “Oh yeah?” He couldn’t tell her where he’d gone to high school. The official Living Wild story was that he and his siblings had all been homeschooled by their mother, but it wasn’t entirely true. He and Reed had gone to a regular high school in Alaska.

  Gina pointed to a spot to the right of the fountain. “That’s where I stood with my friends. Imagine five hundred teenagers packed into the space below, and the photographer standing right here.”

  Stone moved in and slipped an arm around her waist. Sure, Gina had superior balance, but it was a long drop. This close, he filled his lungs with her tropical-sweet scent. When she turned back to face him, her lips parted, and her cheeks pinked.

  Every so often, he caught her looking at him like this. Usually she turned away, but not this time. This time, her gaze dropped to his mouth and she licked her lips. His pulse beat heavy in his throat.

  They were close, like they’d been in the train station when she’d thrown herself onto his lap. Now, there was no sense of danger. Just desire.

  She slipped her sunglasses back on and slid down from the rail, breaking the moment. “Let’s go down and see the terrace.” She took his hand again and led him down the steps.

  So, hand-holding was fine, kissing was not. It made a weird sort of sense. After days of dancing together, something as c
asual as linking hands was nothing. A friendly touch, that’s all. But kissing? That would complicate matters, and as much as he wanted to taste her lush mouth, Gina’s actions made it clear kissing was off the table.

  When they reached the bottom, they circled the fountain while Gina regaled him with funny stories from her high school years, like the time Natasha had fallen into the water.

  “I guess I pushed her,” she added. “It was an accident, though. I swear.”

  He let out a low chuckle. “I’ve pushed my brothers into lots of bodies of water. Not by accident.”

  “My mother would have been so pissed if my siblings and I had done stuff like that. We tried not to do anything that made more work for her. She worked hard enough as it was.”

  He wanted to ask what that meant, but didn’t. If Gina wanted to tell him something, she’d say it. She was entitled to her secrets.

  Lord knew he had plenty of his own.

  She led him underneath the terrace, where it was cool and shaded. A ceiling of beautifully painted tiles spread out above them, supported by ornate columns.

  She started to say something, then raised a hand to smother a jaw-cracking yawn.

  Stone almost laughed, but then he caught the yawn, and they both ended up covering their mouths and wearing sheepish grins.

  “You were saying?” he joked.

  “I guess we didn’t sleep a whole lot last night.”

  “Hard to sleep on a plane full of celebrities.”

  She tucked her hand into the crook of his arm. “Come on. I know where we can go.”

  They climbed the stone staircase back up to the road—well, one of many roads. Gina led the way, but she didn’t talk anymore. A quick glance at the sky told him they were walking south. They passed a large gray band shell. A few people on rollerblades zipped around the open space. Nannies pushed babies in carriages. Old men slouched on park benches. Overhead, the trees along each side of the walk formed a canopy of new green.

  The smells of spring were everywhere, a combo of dirt and water and green that spoke of growth and rebirth. The park was beautiful, an odd mix of city and nature that managed to maintain a relaxed vibe even while bikers zipped along the main roads, and cars cut through to travel crosstown. It was a haven of peace in the city that never slept, a way to witness the beauty of the changing seasons without giving up the amenities of modern living.