by Tracy Wolff
“Harrison?” she asked.
Only then did he realize he hadn’t answered her question about having everything he wanted from the storage unit. “For now,” he said. “I’ll get the rest of it as soon as I can.”
He turned around in time to see her struggling to lift a box that was too wide for her to carry. When she began to pitch backward with it, Harrison lurched toward her, grabbing the box from the side nearest him. For a moment, they grappled to stabilize it, and then, as one, they set it down where she had been aiming. That, however, left the two of them standing literally shoulder-to-shoulder, something that each seemed to notice at once, and something that left them both speechless. They were also unable to make eye contact, since every time their gazes met, they glanced away from each other.
Where before the air in the storage unit had just been uncomfortably warm, it suddenly felt like a sauna. It was a really bad analogy, Harrison decided, since it also brought to mind naked, sweaty bodies wrapped in towels. Towels that could be removed with the simple flick of a wrist, thereby allowing lots of other, infinitely more interesting ways for naked bodies to get sweaty.
“Well, that was close,” he said. Not that he was talking about the box they’d just saved, but Gracie didn’t have to know that.
“Yeah,” she said breathlessly.
A little too breathlessly. Maybe she wasn’t talking about the box, either. Maybe she’d been having some sauna ideas, too. As if triggered by such a possibility, a single drop of perspiration materialized from behind her ear, rolled along her jaw, then down the front of her neck, before finally pooling in the delectable divot at the base of her throat. Harrison watched its journey with the same single-minded fascination a cheetah might show toward a wildebeest, wanting to pounce the moment the time was right. Like right now, for instance. But Gracie lifted a hand to swipe the drop away before he had the chance. Dammit.
But when his gaze met hers again, he saw that the reason for her reaction wasn’t because she’d felt the perspiration running down her neck. It was because she had noticed his preoccupation with it. Their gazes locked for a minute more, and the temperature ratcheted higher. A single strand of damp blond hair clung to her temple, and it was all he could do not to reach for it and skim it back, and then follow his fingers and brush his lips over her damp skin.
“We, uh, we should get going,” she said roughly, the words seeming to echo into his very soul. “We have to...to get cleaned up before going to the Moondrop. And we need to have, um...” She hesitated just a tiny, telling moment before finally concluding, “Dinner. We need to have dinner.”
Dinner, he echoed to himself. Yes, they would definitely have that before going to the Moondrop. But maybe later, if the stars were aligned—and if they were both still having sauna thoughts—they could have something else, too.
After all, dancing could really work up a sweat.
Eight
Having known the Moondrop Ballroom was one of the places where she would take Harrison, Gracie had packed the dress and accessories she’d bought for the Dewitts’ party and instructed Harrison to bring a suit. So it was a surprise when she answered his knock on her hotel room door to find him on the other side wearing a tuxedo. He even had a white silk scarf draped around his neck. She battled the wave of heat that wound through her at the sight of him, so dashing and Hollywood handsome, and the feeling was not unlike the one she’d experienced in the storage unit that afternoon.
And what the hell had that been about? One minute, she’d been about to drop a box on her toe, and the next, Harrison had been staring at her neck as if he wanted to devour her. His damp T-shirt had been clinging to him like a second skin, delineating every bump of muscle on his torso. His dark hair had been falling rakishly over his forehead, his blue eyes had been hot with wanting, and...and... And, well, suddenly, she’d kind of wanted to devour him, too.
“You look...nice,” she finally said.
He smiled. “You look beautiful.”
“Thanks,” she replied, the heat in her belly nearly swamping her.
“So what time does this thing start?”
When Harry was alive, he and Gracie had been regulars at the Moondrop for Fox-trot Fridays, with an occasional appearance for Samba Saturdays and Waltz Wednesdays. Her favorite nights, however, had been Tango Tuesdays, which, as luck would have it, was tonight.
“There’s a beginner’s hour at seven,” she said, “which is where the instructors give some basic lessons for people who’ve never been dancing before. The main event is at eight. If you want to go early for the first hour, though, we can,” she added, thinking Harrison might not be comfortable jumping in with both feet, especially with the tango, since that was probably the hardest dance to know where to put both feet.
“You know what you’re doing, right?” he asked. “I mean you said you and my father did this sort of thing on a regular basis.”
“Yeah, but Tango Tuesdays tend to be tricky.”
He smiled at her unintended alliteration. “But aren’t you trained in tango? A tip-top tango teacher I can trust?”
Gracie smiled back. “Totally top-notch.”
His eyes twinkled. “Terrific.”
Another moment passed where they did nothing but smile and twinkle at each other. Then Harrison, at least, seemed to recall that they had something to do.
“So...do we have time for dinner?”
“Sure.”
She gathered her purse and exited, pulling the door closed behind them. When Harrison proffered his arm with all the elegance of Cary Grant, it somehow felt totally natural to tuck her hand into the crook of his elbow. The warmth in her midsection sparked hotter, simmering parts of her that had no business simmering this early in the evening.
Or ever, she hastened to correct herself. At least where Harrison was concerned. That way lay madness.
Maybe this part of his Harry tour hadn’t been such a good idea. If this was the way her body reacted when it was just hand-to-elbow contact, what was going to happen when they got into dance mode? Sure, ballroom dancing in its purest form allowed for space between the bodies, but there were still a lot of parts touching. Not just hands and elbows, but shoulders and backs. Waists. Hips.
Yikes.
Then she remembered this was tango Tuesday. Uh-oh. That meant leg contact. Torso contact. Damn. Why hadn’t they been in town for open dance night instead, where she could have insisted they do the bunny hop or something? And now she’d gone and told him she would be his top-notch tango teacher. Tsk, tsk.
Note to self, Gracie, she thought as they waited for the elevator—and her stomach did a little cha cha cha. It’s a treacherous tactic, teaching tango to a tempting, um, guy.
* * *
Stepping into the Moondrop Ballroom was like stepping back in time. Not just because it had been beautifully preserved in all its postwar elegance since opening in the 1940s, but because the people who came here did their best to dress as if they’d been preserved from that period, too. Most of the regulars were elderly, people who remembered coming here or to ballrooms like it when they were young. That was why Harry had liked the Moondrop so much. But many were Gracie’s age or younger, newcomers to ballroom dancing who loved the period and wanted to experience the manners and styles of the time, if for just one evening. Even the orchestra dressed the part. The ceiling was painted the colors of twilight with twinkling white lights that looked like stars. Each wall had a silhouette of the 1940s Cincinnati skyline, topped with more stars. Between the décor and the music—the band never played anything written after 1955—it was easy to forget there was another world beyond the front doors.
“Wow, this place is like something out of a movie,” Harrison said when they entered, clearly having fallen under the spell of the ballroom as quickly as Gracie had the first time she was here.
/> “Isn’t it wonderful? It’s exactly like I remember.”
“How long has it been since you were in town?”
She stiffened at his question, even though it was one she’d fielded in one way or another ever since her arrival. “I left six months after Harry’s funeral,” she told him. “I haven’t been back since.”
“But you have so many friends here,” he said. “I mean, all those people yesterday obviously knew you pretty well. But it sounded like you haven’t stayed in touch with any of them.”
“That’s because I haven’t.”
“Why not?”
He didn’t seem to be asking out of idle curiosity. But she told herself she was imagining things. She was just hypersensitive because of all the questions she’d fielded about Devon since she’d come back.
All she said was “It’s complicated, Harrison.”
He looked as if he might let it go, but then said, “Because of Devon.”
For some reason, hearing that name spoken in Harrison’s voice was far worse than hearing it in anyone else’s.
“Yes,” she said. “Because of him.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
She shook her head. And she told Harrison what she’d told everyone else, what she told herself whenever Devon invaded her thoughts. “That’s all in the past.”
Harrison looked like he was going to say more, but the band saved her, striking up the first notes of “La cumparsita.”
“Well, aren’t you lucky?” she said. “You’re going to wet your tango feet with the mother of all tango tunes.”
He listened for a moment. “I recognize this song. This is in Some Like It Hot when Jack Lemmon is tangoing with Joe E. Brown.”
And when Tony Curtis was making out with Marilyn Monroe, she thought, but hopefully neither of them would mention that part. Judging by Harrison’s expression, though, he was definitely thinking about it. And also judging by his expression, he knew she was thinking about it, too. Damn.
“Shall we?” he asked, tilting his head toward the dance floor, where a number of people were already in full tango mode.
She smiled in a way she hoped was flirtatious. Not that she was flirting with him or anything. She was just keeping in the spirit of the Moondrop Ballroom, that was all. “If you think you’re ready for it.”
He smiled back in a way that went way beyond flirtatious and zoomed right into bewitching. “I’m ready for anything.”
As if to prove it, he extended his left hand, palm up. The moment she placed her right hand against it, he closed his fingers over hers, drew her close and lifted their hands to chin height—his chin, not hers—so her arm was higher. Then he pressed his other hand to the small of her back and drew her body, very firmly, against his. There was nothing tentative in his hold. His confidence was absolute. Her own body’s response was just as fierce. In every single place they touched, little explosions detonated under her skin, rushing heat to every other part of her body.
The moment she was in his arms, he assumed a flawless tango stance, placing his right leg between hers and his left alongside her right. Then he began to guide her forward. Well, for her it was backward, since—obviously—he intended to lead. His first step was with his left foot, all fine and good—except for how Gracie’s insides were turning to steaming lava—and his next was with his right, which would have also been fine if Gracie had reacted the way she was supposed to and stepped backward.
But thanks to the little-explosions-of-heat thing, not to mention the steaming-lava thing, she wasn’t exactly on her game. So his step forward pressed his thigh into the juncture of her legs, and wow, talk about an explosion of heat and steaming lava. Her entire torso seemed to catch fire and melt into his. Even though she was pretty good at the tango, she stumbled those first few steps, something that made Harrison splay his fingers wide on her back and pull her closer still, and— Oh. My. God. She was going to spontaneously combust! After that, it was all Gracie could do to just try and keep up with him.
He led her deeper into the crowd of other dancers with a few perfectly executed barridas, sweeping his feet along the floor in a way that made hers move that way, too. Then he spun them in a perfect boleo, punctuating the move with a beautiful gancho, wrapping his leg briefly around hers before turning her again. Then he threw in a lápiz, tracing a circle on the floor with his free foot—he was just showing off now—and followed with a parada, where he suddenly stopped, literally toe-to-toe with her, to perform a really delicious caricia. He drew his leg slowly up along hers, then pushed it slowly back down again, generating a luscious friction. She wished he would do it again, and he did. Then he did it again. And again. And—holy mother of mackerel—again.
By now Gracie’s heart was hammering hard inside her chest, even though they’d only been dancing a matter of minutes, and he’d been doing most of the work. Harrison had to feel the pounding of her pulse, too—their bodies were so close, in so many places—but he didn’t say a word. He only held her gaze tight with his and began to dance again, with all the grace and style of a vaquero. As the final notes of the song came to a close, he pulled her close one last time, and then—of course—he tilted her back until her head was nearly touching the floor, in a dip that was nothing short of spectacular.
At that point, they were both breathing heavily, a combination of both the dance and their heightened awareness of each other. They’d also earned an audience, Gracie realized, when she heard applause. Or maybe that was just in her own brain, acknowledging his skill at...oh, so many things, because she honestly wasn’t even conscious of anyone in that moment but him.
Still poised in the dip, her free arm looped around his neck, she said breathlessly, “You’ve been holding out on me.”
He grinned. But he didn’t let her up. Instead he only roped his arm more possessively around her waist and pulled her closer to him. He, too, was out of breath, his voice quiet when he spoke. “My mother made me take cotillion classes when I was in middle school. I hated it until I realized how many points knowing how to dance earned me with girls. Knowing the tango multiplied those points by about a thousand.”
“I can see how that would work in a guy’s favor.”
Still, he didn’t let her up, and still, Gracie didn’t care. For one interminable moment, it almost seemed as if he were bending his head closer to hers, as if his mouth were hovering over hers, as if he actually intended to—
She closed her eyes, and for the merest, faintest, most exquisite millisecond, she thought she felt the brush of his lips over hers. But when she opened her eyes, he was levering her to a standing position, so she told herself she’d only imagined it.
The crowd had dispersed, caught up in another song, another dance, another moment. But Gracie couldn’t quite let this moment go. Their fingers were still curled together, her other hand still curved around his nape while his was still pressing into the small of her back. Although they’d stopped moving, she couldn’t seem to catch her breath. And in spite of the music that still swirled around them, she couldn’t seem to make herself move.
But neither, did it seem, could he. His breathing was as erratic as hers, and he wasn’t any more inclined to move than she was. And that maybe-imaginary, maybe-not kiss still had her brain so muddled, she wasn’t sure what to do. Even when he began to lower his head toward hers—there was no mistaking his intention this time—she didn’t know how to react. Not until his mouth covered hers completely. After that, she knew exactly what to do.
She kissed him back.
The feel of his mouth on hers was extraordinary, at once entreating and demanding, tender and rough, soft and firm. He kissed her as if he had done it a million times and never before, confident of his effect on her and tentative in his reception. Gracie kept her hand cupped over his nape, and with the other, threaded her fingers into his hair.
It had been so long since she had been this close to a man, so long since she had allowed herself to get lost in the sensation of two bodies struggling to become one. She didn’t want it to stop. She wanted to stay here in this spot, with this man, forever.
By the time he pulled back, her brain was so rattled, her body so incited, her senses so aroused, all she could do was say the first thing that popped into her head. “I thought you didn’t like me.”
He nuzzled the curve where her neck joined her shoulder. “Oh, I like you very much.”
“You think I took advantage of your father.”
He nipped her earlobe. Gracie tried not to swoon. “I don’t think that at all.”
“Since when?” she asked, her voice barely audible.
Instead of answering, he skimmed his lips lightly along her throat, her jaw, her temple. But just when she thought she would melt into a puddle of ruined womanhood at his feet, he straightened. And then he began to lead her in the tango again, as if nothing had happened.
Well, nothing except a major tilt of the earth’s axis that had just changed everything for Gracie.
* * *
It was that damned dress.
That was what Harrison told himself as he and Gracie sat on opposite sides of a cab as it sped down Hamilton Avenue, back toward their hotel. Someone somewhere had put a spell on that dress that made men’s brains turn to pudding whenever they got within fifteen feet of it. And when it was on someone like Gracie, with creamy skin and silky hair and eyes dark enough for a man to lose himself in for days, well... It was amazing all he’d done on that dance floor was kiss her.
But he had kissed her. And he’d told her he liked her. Very much. But he hadn’t been able to answer her question about “since when.” Probably because he didn’t know “since when.”
When had that happened? Today at the storage unit? Yesterday at the baseball game? That morning at the stock exchange? He honestly didn’t know. He only knew he had been wrong about her. She really had been his father’s friend and nothing more. She really was a decent person. She really was a girl next door.