Into Your Arms (A Contemporary Romance Novel)

by Strom, Abigail

  “Sorry,” he said, feeling like an asshole. “It’s been a long day,” he added by way of explanation, even though it had been a great day.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Sara said. “Sit down and have some pizza.” She glanced at the flowers in his hand and then smiled at him. “Are those for me?”

  “Yeah,” he said, feeling even worse because she was so ready to forgive him. He went over to her and handed her the flowers, and then his phone buzzed in his pocket.

  It was Robert Paxton.

  “I’m going to go to my place to take this,” he said. “Save a slice for me, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  * * *

  “Do you want me to put those in water for you?”

  Sara glanced down at the flowers in her lap. “No, I’ll do it. I’ll be right back.”

  Kevin was sitting with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped when she came back to the living room with the vase.

  “He’s not mad at you,” Kevin said quietly as she sat down.

  Sara looked at him in surprise. “I didn’t think he was.”

  “But you noticed something was up.”

  “Well…yes.”

  Kevin frowned down at the coffee table. “He told me you know about Laura.”

  Why was he bringing that up?

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know about our mother?”

  “Just that she left when you guys were kids. He said he was too young to remember her.”

  “He might not remember her, but she managed to do some damage just the same,” Kevin said drily.

  Sara thought about the night Nick had drawn her out about her childhood, getting her to talk more about her mother and father than she ever had to anyone. But it hadn’t been mutual. Nick had changed the subject when she started asking questions about his parents.

  “Nick would be pretty pissed at me if he knew I was talking to you like this, but here’s the thing.” He took a breath. “I love my brother, and you’re the best thing to happen to him in a long, long time. But you deserve to know that he sucks at romantic relationships. He expects that any woman he cares about will eventually choose someone or something over him. His mother did, and Laura did. So he doesn’t let himself get too invested.”

  Sara felt her heart clench in her chest. “To protect himself.”

  “Yeah.” He hesitated. “Listen, Sara…Nick does care about you. I think you know that. But there are more obstacles between you than the fact that he’s leaving in a couple of months.”

  Sara pulled one of the irises out of the vase and held it in the palm of her hand. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because this whole last week, Nick’s been happier than I’ve ever seen him. And I’d hate like hell to see him screw it up.”

  “You’re right about one thing,” Sara said after a moment.

  “What’s that?”

  “Nick would be really, really pissed if he knew you were talking to me about this.”

  Kevin nodded. “Yep. And if he finds out, I’ll catch hell.” He eyed the three pieces of pizza left in the box. “He said to save him a piece, right? Just one. So if I ate those other two slices—”

  Sara closed the box firmly. “We’re saving these for Nick.”

  “We are, huh? And what did he do to deserve such a sacrifice on our part?”

  “Nothing at all.”

  “So why are we doing it?”

  “Because we love him.”

  There was a short silence. “We do?”

  “Yes.”

  They both heard the door to Nick’s apartment close, and then Nick came in.

  “Who was on the phone?” Kevin asked.

  “Robert Paxton.” He paused. “Kev, would you mind if I talked to Sara alone for a minute?”

  “Of course not. I’m ready to call it a night, anyway.”

  Kevin closed the door behind him, and Nick came to sit down on the couch next to her.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey.”

  “How was rehearsal today?”

  “It was great. How was your day? Is Keisha feeling confident?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. We think we’ve got it in the bag, even though it’s bad luck to say so the night before an election.”

  “Are politicians superstitious?”

  “Hell, yes. One of our staffers is wearing the same socks he wore the day we first went up in the polls. He says he’s not going to wash them until after the election.”

  “That’s pretty disgusting.”

  “Yeah, it really is.” He paused for a second. “So, that phone call was from Robert Paxton.”

  “The senator you told me about, right? The one who’s thinking of running for President in two years.”

  “Yeah. He’s been talking to me about working on his campaign—if he decided to run.”

  “And has he decided?”

  “Yeah, he has. He wants to announce in January, which means he needs to start putting his team together. And the guy he’d tapped to be his communications director just took another job. So…Paxton wants to bring me on board now.”

  His face was serious, his blue eyes meeting hers with the directness she’d always appreciated in him.

  “Okay, so what does that mean?” she asked carefully.

  “It means that I’ll be heading back to Washington a lot sooner than I thought.”

  “What about the campaign?”

  What about them?

  “Keisha will be fine without me. If she wins the primary, which she will, the regular election will be a cakewalk. And she’s found her feet; she doesn’t really need me anymore. So I don’t mind leaving her…but I’m not ready to leave you.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees in a posture that reminded her of his brother. “I know we’ve only been together a week, but…can I tell you what I’ve been thinking?”

  She was still trying to wrap her mind around the idea of losing him so much sooner than she’d imagined. It felt a little like stepping back into nothingness and tumbling down a flight of stairs. “Sure.”

  “I’ve been thinking that Washington and New York are less than three hundred miles apart. I’ve never been a big fan of long distance, but when I look at you anything seems possible.”

  He slid over next to her and put his hands on either side of her face. “I don’t want to lose you, Sara. What do you say? Do you want to give this thing between us a shot?”

  She thought about her resolve to always put her career ahead of everything. Then she thought about what Kevin had told her. She imagined Nick growing up without a mother, wondering why she’d abandoned him, and then getting that letter from Laura the day before his wedding.

  Nick had spent his life helping other people achieve their goals, and when his brother needed him, he’d put his career on hold to come to New York. Had there ever been a time when he’d put himself or his own needs first?

  She took a deep breath. “That night at the club, with the Mollies, you said that if I want to teach I don’t have to stay in New York. You said I could go anywhere. What were you thinking of when you said that?”

  “I…” He let his hands drop, and then he shifted away from her a little. “I was thinking about Washington. Obviously. I was thinking that there are dance schools and dance companies down there. But I don’t expect you to move. I don’t expect you to change your whole life because of me.”

  “I know you don’t. Nick, there’s something else I need to know.”

  “What?”

  “When you came home tonight, you were in a good mood. You had flowers. You’d had a good day at work. Then you saw me and Kevin together, and your good mood went away.”

  Nick rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah.”

  “You were jealous, weren’t you?”

  “Not really. Not rationally.”

  “But irrationally?”

  Nick looked down for a moment, frowning, and then he looked back up. When he spoke again, his
voice was husky. “I want to be honest with you, Sara, but I’m afraid that if I am you won’t want to be with me anymore.”

  “You should let me decide that,” she said gently.

  He hesitated a moment longer and then nodded. “Okay. I was jealous. I know it’s stupid, I know it’s baseless, but I was.”

  “Because of what happened with Laura?”

  A muscle alongside his jaw twitched. “I don’t want to think that a relationship I had twenty years ago could have any effect on me today, but the truth is, it probably does.”

  “You think you’re the only person in the world with baggage? My parents were too busy hating each other to give a damn about their only daughter, and the last thing I want to do is send you or anyone else in my life the bill for that. But I’m sure I do, without even realizing it. Do you still want to be with me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, then. But there’s one thing I have to know. You were jealous of Jerry at the Marsden. Is that the reason we got together that night?”

  He didn’t answer her right away. She could see him thinking about what she’d said, wanting to be sure he answered honestly. That was a good thing, she reminded herself. The fact that she might not like the answer was irrelevant.

  “Yeah, I was jealous. Crazy jealous. And I’m not saying the caveman part of my brain didn’t have something to do with what happened that night. But that’s not the reason we got together. We got together because I couldn’t stand looking at you another moment without being with you. We got together because I’m in love with you.”

  She felt her eyes getting bright and her face turning red. This was the first time either of them had said the L word, and her heart knocked against her ribs in a sweet painful beat.

  “I…”

  “You don’t have to say it back.”

  “I appreciate that,” she said shakily. “But I am going to say it back. Because I love you, Nick, and I hear they have dance companies in Washington and I want to check them out.”

  His chest rose and fell. “You do.”

  “Yes.”

  “But what about the piece you’re choreographing?”

  “Even if Miles accepts it for the showcase—and that’s a big if—that’s just one night in December. I could travel back and forth until then, and in January I’d be free to…” she trailed off.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m just at the information-gathering stage now,” she cautioned him. “I’d like to Google ‘Washington’ and ‘ballet companies’ and see what turns up.”

  “Right. Got it. Sara?”

  “Yes?”

  “Take off your clothes.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Because I love you, and I’m going to ravish you right here on this couch in about five seconds.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “That was pretty bad.”

  “Shut up.”

  “I’m not saying I know anything about choreography, because I really don’t, but my honest opinion of that last thing is that it sucked.”

  “Please shut up.”

  “I’m just saying that if that’s your competition, you’ve got it made in the shade.”

  “If you don’t stop talking right now I’m going to beat you to death with a shovel.”

  Nick grinned as the lights went down in the theater. He’d never seen Sara this nervous, and he found it adorable. That was probably an incredibly patronizing reaction on his part, but there wasn’t anything he could do about that—especially since he found everything else about her adorable, too.

  Three figures appeared in the orchestra pit—Jenna, Molly, and Claire. They were in town this week and had offered to perform live for Sara’s audition, and to come back to do the new choreographer’s showcase in December if her piece was accepted.

  “They look pretty relaxed down there,” Nick whispered to Sara. “You, on the other hand—”

  “I swear to God, Nick—”

  “Shh! The curtain’s about to go up.”

  He felt his phone vibrate in his pocket and he gave it a quick glance. It was Robert Paxton’s campaign manager, calling for the third time that day.

  The past week had been intense, between winding down his involvement in Keisha’s campaign and ramping up his role on Paxton’s team. Working on both simultaneously drew a sharp distinction between the low profile of a midterm congressional race and the high-profile, organized madness of a presidential campaign.

  As the week had gone on he’d tried to remind himself that that organized madness was what he lived for. He should be itching to get back to Washington, to be back in the thick of things. To be a player again. To be so damn busy every minute of the day that he didn’t have time to think about anything but the campaign.

  The fact that he liked the people working for Keisha a lot more than the people working for Paxton was irrelevant…or should be. He’d been in politics too long to expect to like everyone he worked with.

  Of course he’d always drawn the line at disliking his clients. He’d never agreed to work for a candidate he didn’t like and respect. He knew there were plenty of political operatives who could work effectively either way, but he wasn’t one of them.

  “You can’t tell me you won’t miss us.”

  That had been Jerry, making a last ditch effort to keep Nick on the Watkins campaign over a beer after work.

  “You don’t need me,” he’d said for the tenth time.

  “Maybe not, but we want you. Which ought to impress you, considering you stole my girl.”

  “She’s my girl, and you don’t need me.”

  “The candidate respects you.”

  “I respect her.”

  “She likes you, too.”

  “Ditto.”

  “And can you honestly tell me you feel the same way about Robert Paxton?”

  “He’s a very able politician, and I agree with about eighty percent of his policy positions.”

  “He’s also going to be a real contender for the White House.”

  “I know.”

  Jerry had sighed. “I guess it’s hard to compete with that. Well, I tried. I told Keisha I would, and I have. What I really wanted to do was congratulate you on the new gig. You deserve to be in the big time, and now you will be.”

  Now he would be.

  But not for the next few minutes. For the next few minutes he’d be watching Sara’s piece, which she’d titled Impossible Things. He turned off his phone and sat back in his seat.

  The curtain went up.

  Three voices, wild and piercing and beautiful. On stage, five dancers, rising and falling and rising again. There was a staircase in their midst, a staircase that didn’t lead anywhere. They climbed and fell, climbed and fell, catching each other over and over. They defied gravity and surrendered to it and defied it again until triumph and defeat and joy and yearning seemed woven together inside their bodies.

  The music and movement together were so beautiful his throat ached. The singers’ voices softened, spiraling down, as the dancers bent their bodies and bowed their heads. Then, suddenly, the voices rose again and Emilio was running towards the staircase, flying up the stairs and leaping off with such abandon that everyone in the audience gasped.

  And at the very top of his leap, the lights went out.

  There was a moment of utter silence in the theater. Then the lights came up, and the dancers came forward to take their bows as a crash of applause greeted them.

  Nick got to his feet without thinking, and after a few seconds he noticed he wasn’t the only one. The theater wasn’t full—mostly friends and family of the choreographers and performers—but every one of them was standing and applauding. Sara’s had been the last piece on the program, and once the house lights came up, he saw people turn and direct their applause to her, shouting and whistling and cheering.

  “Look what you did,” he whispered, as people started to come towards them. He’d only have a minute more alone with he
r. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

  “I didn’t either,” she said, looking at him with shining eyes. “Thanks for making me believe I could.”

  “Anytime. Do you want me to stay?”

  She shook her head. “I know you have things to do. You were here for the piece, and that’s the important part.”

  “Sara?”

  “Yes?”

  He took her by the shoulders. “I don’t know much about choreography, but I thought that was goddam incredible. I’m predicting big things for you. Just so you know.”

  She smiled tremulously. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  * * *

  Nick decided to walk back to the apartment. Considering it was August in New York, the heat and humidity weren’t too bad today. In fact, it was a beautiful summer afternoon, and Nick let his stride degenerate into a stroll and then into an amble.

  His brother was at an outdoor table at the café on the corner, and Nick went to sit with him.

  “You want to know something?”

  “What?”

  “I really like this city.”

  “You do, huh?”

  “I do.”

  “So stay.”

  “I’ve got a job on a presidential campaign.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  Nick shifted a little so the sun wouldn’t be in his eyes. “You know who should stay?”

  Kevin looked at him suspiciously. “Don’t say Sara.”

  “Sara.”

  “Nick—”

  “Kevin, I just sat in a theater full of people and watched Sara absolutely blow them away. I don’t know a thing about dance and she blew me away, too. She’s good.”

  “You already knew she was good. And there’s no reason she can’t be good in Washington.”

  “Maybe. But don’t you think she—”

  “Don’t second guess Sara’s decision. It’s her choice. She wants to be with you, and you sure as hell want to be with her.”

  “Of course I do. She’s amazing. When I’m with her, I—”

  Kevin held up a hand. “No rhapsodizing. I already know you’re crazy about Sara. That’s why you shouldn’t try to talk her out of moving to Washington.”

  “We’ve only known each other a couple of months. We’ve only been going out a couple of weeks. She’s lived in New York her whole life. Her entire social and professional network is here. And she’s incredibly, incredibly talented.”