Into Your Arms (A Contemporary Romance Novel)

by Strom, Abigail

  “Are they still married?”

  “No. Laura divorced him a couple of months ago.”

  “Oh.”

  She was frowning as she looked at him, and before he could stop himself he reached to smooth the line away, running the tip of his finger between her brows. “Don’t do that,” he said softly.

  “Do what?”

  “Look all worried and sympathetic. You wanted to know if I ever had my heart broken, and I have. But that was almost twenty years ago. I’m over it.”

  She reached out and grabbed the front of his shirt with both hands. “You don’t need me to tell you this, but I’m going to anyway. Are you ready?”

  He grinned down at her. “Go for it,” he said, not really caring what she was about to say. He was too busy enjoying the feel of her hands against his chest.

  “You are an amazing man. You’re smart and funny and kind and—” she paused for a second “—and sexy. Incredibly sexy,” she added firmly, as though having put it out there she might as well double down. “Any woman would be lucky to have you.”

  Warmth spread through him again. There was something so charming about Sara’s earnest intensity, something that made her wine-fueled compliment one of the nicest he’d ever received.

  Not to mention the fact that she’d called him sexy.

  “Thanks,” he said after a moment, covering her hands with his.

  Another beat went by before she pulled away. “Okay, that’s your affirmation for the night. Let’s go hear some music.”

  * * *

  The club was small and dark and intimate, and it was such a perfect place for a date that Nick started to wonder if it had been a mistake to come. Every cell in his body urged him to put his arm around Sara when the bartender flirted with her, to stake a claim he had no right to.

  “Do you know that guy or something?” he asked as they sat down at a table near the stage.

  “Sid? Yes, I know him. He and Emilio used to date.”

  The bartender was gay. He hadn’t been flirting with Sara; they’d just been chatting. Which meant he was starting to see things that weren’t there.

  Because he wanted Sara for himself.

  Get a grip, Nick.

  The club was full but not crowded, which meant that the word hadn’t gotten out yet beyond the people Jenna and Molly and the other band members had told. He was starting to wonder where they were when someone hugged him from behind.

  “Nick! I’m so glad you could make it.”

  It was Jenna, wearing an ancient Velvet Underground tee shirt with her black hair tied back with a red bandana. He hugged her back and introduced Sara.

  “I’m so excited to be here tonight,” Sara said. “Although the person who should really be here is my friend Emilio.”

  “He couldn’t come?” Jenna asked, pulling up a chair as her band mates started to set up on the tiny stage.

  “Well, I didn’t ask him. Nick said you wanted to keep this quiet.”

  “True, but since it looks like we succeeded, why don’t you give him a call? We can fit in one more,” she added with a grin.

  “I’ll text him right now,” Sara said, pulling her cell phone out of her purse.

  A young woman with short spiked hair came up beside Jenna. “I think I’m going to be sick,” she said, as Nick tried to remember when he’d seen her before.

  “Nick, this is my stepdaughter Claire. I’m not sure if you remember her from the wedding. Claire, this is my cousin Nick.”

  This was Claire Stone? The gawky teen had grown into a lovely young woman in the last few years, although she was looking a little green around the gills at the moment.

  “Hey, Claire. It’s nice to see you again. Are you feeling okay?”

  She shook her head and sat down next to Jenna. “Definitely not,” she said as Sara slid her phone back into her purse.

  “Emilio’s coming, and he says he’s going to owe me for the rest of his life. I’m Sara, by the way,” she said with a smile at Claire. Claire tried to smile back.

  “Claire’s going to be singing with us for the first time tonight,” Jenna said. “The first time in front of people, that is. She’s a little nervous.”

  “I’m not a little nervous. I feel like I’m going to puke. And you’re no help at all, because you’ve never had stage fright in your life.”

  “I’m sure I did when I was your age,” Jenna said. “But it goes away after you’ve been performing for a while.”

  “It never did for me,” Sara put in. “I get nervous every single time I go on stage. And I’ve been on stage since I was eight years old.”

  “Are you a musician?” Jenna asked.

  “She’s a dancer,” Nick said proudly. “With the NYBT.”

  “You’re a ballerina?” Claire asked, looking interested.

  Sara shrugged, pulling her injured leg out from under the table and gesturing towards the cast. “I was a ballerina. These days I’m just a has-been dancer who’d give anything to go on stage again.”

  “Even though you get nervous?”

  “Yes. That’s just a part of it. The adrenaline, the butterflies…they never went away for me, but I learned how to deal with it.”

  “How?”

  “Deep breathing helps. When you’re nervous, you tend to breathe sort of shallowly, in the upper part of your lungs. When you let your breath fill your lungs all the way down to your belly, it relaxes you.”

  Claire nodded. “Anything else? Do you have, I don’t know, routines?”

  “Just my usual warm up—and a little prayer I say before every single performance.”

  “What is it?”

  “God, if you get me through this, I swear I’ll never do it again.”

  Everyone laughed, and Nick saw some of the tension easing out of Claire. “You don’t think God minds that you broke that promise, like, a million times?” she asked.

  “No, I don’t think God minds at all. I think He understands what I’m asking for.”

  “What are you asking for?”

  “Just a little bit of courage. Enough to get on stage one more time. Because once I’m on stage, all the butterflies go away. Once I’m on stage it’s all good.”

  Jenna grinned at Claire. “See? That’s what I’ve been telling you.” She turned her head towards the stage. “Toss me the camera, would you?” she asked Molly, the redheaded leader of the group.

  She did, and after Jenna caught it she handed it to Nick. “Would you be willing to tape the first few songs, when Claire’s singing with us? Her dad’s at a conference in Geneva and can’t be here.”

  “Of course.”

  “Great. Okay, Claire, it’s time to get up there.”

  Claire nodded and took a deep breath. “Okay.”

  * * *

  Sara watched the Mollies finish setting up while Nick checked the focus on the video camera. She felt a warm buzz of anticipation, from the funky, cave-like ambiance of the club to the sight of a standing bass and a saxophone on stage. It looked like the Mollies were going retro for a few numbers.

  “That was really nice, what you did for Claire,” Nick said when he’d finished fiddling and set the camera on the table. “But I have to disagree with one thing you said to her. You said you were a dancer, but that’s not true. You are a dancer.”

  She looked at him, and she knew that part of the pleasure she was feeling in the moment was because he was sitting next to her.

  “Not really. I can still be part of the company as a teacher, but my performing career is probably over. So I’m not a dancer anymore. I’m just someone who used to dance.”

  She’d spoken lightly, but Nick grabbed her hand and looked at her seriously.

  “You are a dancer. It’s part of who you are. Maybe you’re not a dancer on stage right now, but is that the only way you define it? After the accident, you seemed to think that you’d changed somehow, that breaking your ankle meant you weren’t the same person anymore. But that’s not true. You are the
same person, with the same mind and heart and spirit, the same way of being in the world. The only thing that’s changing is the way you express who you are. But what you’re expressing—who you’re expressing—is still the same. Dance isn’t something you used to do. It’s inside you.”

  His words made her remember a line from a poem. “How can we know the dancer from the dance?” she said softly.

  “That’s it,” Nick said. “That’s what I mean. Is that a quote from something?”

  “A poem—Yeats, I think.” She smiled at him. “Was that my affirmation for the night?”

  He smiled back at her. “I just don’t like hearing you talk like your best days are behind you, that’s all. And I know that teaching isn’t your first choice, but after hearing you with Claire, I think you could be pretty inspiring to students.” He stopped suddenly, as though he’d been about to add something.

  “What?” she asked, finally.

  “Nothing.”

  “You never let me get away with that. What were you going to say?”

  He shrugged, turning his head to look up at the stage, where the Mollies seemed to be ready to go. “Nothing important. It just occurred to me that if you’re going to teach, you don’t necessarily have to stay in New York. You could go anywhere.” He shrugged again, his eyes still on the stage. “But I’m sure you want to stay here.”

  “Hey there, everybody, thanks for coming out tonight!” It was Molly, the lead singer, stepping up to the microphone and smiling into the spotlight. She told the audience that the band was taking a break from their usual set list to play some new material they’d just started working on, and to have fun with some old jazz standards.

  But Sara was only half listening. She was replaying Nick’s words in her head, and over-thinking them as only a woman could.

  When he’d suggested that she could teach anywhere, had he been implying Washington D.C.?

  No, that was crazy. Nick was the one who’d drawn the boundaries between them. He couldn’t have meant anything by what he’d said.

  She stole a glance at him, and saw that he was frowning a little as he looked up at the stage. His arms were folded, and he’d shifted away from her a little.

  If he had been implying something, he obviously regretted it now. A sudden wave of irritation made her very happy to see Emilio coming towards them through the crowd.

  “I can’t believe it,” he said breathlessly, pulling up a chair and sitting next to Sara. He was staring at the Mollies with a rapt expression. “I thought for a second you were joking, but you could never be that cruel.”

  Thank God for Emilio, she thought as Molly started to introduce the members of the band. There was no uncertainty with him, no confusing attraction, no mixed signals or sudden pangs of longing. Just the warm comfort of friendship.

  She took a deep breath and let it out. For the rest of the night, she was just going to relax and enjoy herself.

  The last person Molly introduced was Claire, who stepped forward to her microphone looking tense and determined and very young. Sara felt a sudden twinge of anxiety for her, knowing exactly how crushed she’d be if she didn’t perform well tonight.

  The band went into a jazz song—Black Magic, Sara thought from the intro. She watched Claire catch the beat in her body—her foot, her hips, her shoulders. Then she started to sing.

  Sara’s jaw dropped. How could a voice that big come from someone so young? She forgot her momentary irritation with Nick and jabbed him in the ribs, mouthing Oh my God when he turned to look at her. I know, he mouthed back, grinning, before turning his attention back to the video camera he held.

  “She’s good. Who is that?” Emilio whispered.

  “Jenna Landry’s stepdaughter.”

  “Wow.”

  After that they settled in to enjoy the show, tapping their toes, singing along to a Cab Calloway call and response, and cheering after every song.

  “You’re too kind,” Molly said with a grin after they finished a rousing rendition of Wild Women Don’t Get the Blues. “We’re going to change things up a little now, and do a song for you that Jenna just finished last week. As of this moment it’s a cappella, and we’re liking it so much we might just keep it that way. And so you don’t make yourselves nuts trying to figure out what we’re saying, you should know we’re using vocables, not words. Sort of like primal scat singing. So don’t look for any meaning on top, folks. If you want to find something in this one, it’s deep inside.”

  Jenna, Molly, and Claire set down their microphones and came to the front of the stage, obviously trusting that their voices alone could fill the space. Jenna murmured “One, two, three,” very softly, and then they started to sing.

  It was like stepping off the edge of a cliff but rising instead of falling. The voices of the three women wove into a golden braid of sound, so pure and bright and fierce that Sara closed her eyes to let it flow over her.

  That’s when it happened. Images of bodies moving on stage, leaping and falling. She felt the movements in her very bones. And then she saw a stairway on stage, a stairway leading nowhere. Dancers climbing, striving, jumping into empty space and landing before continuing their dance.

  As the women’s voices grew softer, Sara saw the dancers’ movements growing softer. Then the voices rose again into a sudden crescendo of beauty, piercing and wild, and Sara saw a single dancer—Emilio—dashing up the stairs and then jumping into nothingness, a mighty leap, yearning upwards with every fiber of his being. And just as he hit the top of his arc, before gravity could pull him to earth again, the lights would go out. The last thing the audience would see was the pure essence of a dancer’s desire...the desire to fly.

  “Are you okay?”

  It was Nick’s voice, whispering in her ear. Her eyes fluttered open and she realized she had grabbed his arm sometime during the song.

  She let go just as the last note of the song faded and a crash of applause greeted the three singers. She joined in, as did Nick and Emilio.

  After the cheering and hooting finally died down, Molly thanked Claire, who was done for the night, and announced that the band would be taking a break. Sara was very glad to hear the loud applause for Claire as she left the stage, blushing like a furnace and looking ecstatically happy.

  Nick set the video camera on the table and turned to Sara. He seemed struck by her expression. “What’s going on? You look…” he paused as he searched her eyes. “I don’t know how to describe it. You’re sort of…glowing. Like you’ve seen an angel or something.”

  Without thinking, she grabbed his hand and squeezed. “I did. Sort of. I had an idea,” she went on breathlessly. “For a piece I want to choreograph.”

  “To the song we just heard?”

  “Yes.” Suddenly she came crashing back down to earth. “But I can’t. Can I? They haven’t even finished it yet. It’s not recorded or anything. And there’s only a month before the auditions for the new choreographer’s showcase, and even if I could get a piece ready Miles said he doesn’t think I—”

  “Stop.”

  “What?”

  “We’re going to make this happen.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m going to do whatever it takes to keep that look in your eyes.” Before Sara could ask him what he was talking about he was up and gone, heading for the side of the stage where Jenna was chatting with the bass player.

  “Oh, God,” she muttered, her stomach twisting into knots.

  “Man, that was unbelievable,” Emilio said, twisting in his chair to look at her. “I’ve never heard anything like it. What an awesome—hey, what’s going on? You look a little weird. Is your foot okay?”

  “My foot’s fine. I’m afraid Nick’s going to—damn. Here they come.”

  Nick was coming towards them with his cousin in tow. “I didn’t know you were a choreographer,” Jenna said, smiling at Sara as she sat down at the table. “Nick says you’re interested in using our new song for a project you’
re working on?”

  “I—” she stopped, tongue-tied, and glared at Nick. He grinned back at her unrepentantly. “I think Nick got a little carried away. Of course I’d never presume to—”

  “You’re going to choreograph to that song?” Emilio interjected, looking delighted. “That would be incredible. There better be a part for me.”

  This was all going way too fast. “I don’t—” she stopped and took a deep breath. Then she focused on Jenna.

  “I thought your new song was amazing, and I’d love to choreograph to it someday. But I know you just finished it, and you probably haven’t recorded it yet, and—”

  “We actually do have a recording of it. We recorded tonight’s performance, and we have a studio version, too. I could give you a copy of that tonight, and I can send you a copy of the live tape in a few days.”

  Her heart thumped in her chest. Was this really happening?

  Fear gripped her. What if she couldn’t bring her vision to life? What if Miles wouldn’t let her audition? What if—

  “Hey. Stop that.”

  It was Nick, sitting down beside her again. Emilio was asking Jenna something about the Mollies’ last album, so Sara was the only one who heard him.

  “Stop what?”

  “Stop doubting yourself.”

  “How did you know that’s what I was doing?” she hedged.

  “You’re not that hard to read. Don’t you know you wear your heart on your sleeve?”

  “You said that’s not a ticket to success,” she reminded him.

  “Not in politics. But in your line of work, it might be.” He leaned a little closer. “Don’t think about all the reasons this might not work. Think about the music, and whatever it made you imagine.”

  She closed her eyes for a second, and it all came back.

  “There it is,” Nick said softly, and she opened her eyes again, smiling.

  “You’re really good at this, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “Good at what?”

  “Making people believe in themselves. That’s the real reason your clients love you.”

  “They don’t always love me. Sometimes they hate me.”

  “Because you push them.” She could feel the vision in her head pulsing like a heartbeat, ready to burst out of her. “Thank you for pushing me, Nick.”