Chapter 10: Chapter Nine

Patrick woke up early the next morning, groaning. He had to meet Anita at seven at the studio to practice before she had to leave for church with her parents. He wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep. He wouldn’t say no to a Jacuzzi or a massage, either. No use worrying about things that could not be.

What was actually happening was that someone was trolling him with fake social media accounts. Like he did not have enough to do.

At first it had just been the one cryptic message, MISSING YOU, but now had devolved into more-disturbing missives. Emojis like a peach and a fire strung together with the kissing face. One had just been all hearts and signed with the emoji with Xes for eyes. At times it seemed like someone unfamiliar with how to creep people out on the Internet and, at other times, was directly on point. The latest message last night had just been a photo of a mouth with a painted-red finger poised over it, almost as if he/she—who was he to judge—was either shushing him or about to suck on the finger. Neither was welcome.

Then there were the comments on his blog posts.

OMG Patrick, you are soooooooo funny lol We need to meet IRL

You were there, too????? I thought you would see me You are so hot I think about you all the—

Maybe if the grammar were better, he would be less freaked out by it all. Or maybe more freaked out.

He had deleted every single message and comment and blocked the accounts, but they kept coming. And coming. Not that he was not used to weird internet traffic, but this was fairly classic cyberstalking.

Which was all he needed while trying to prepare for his first professional competition in over a year, with barely three weeks of practice.

Practice. The studio. Anita sobbing last night and the smell of glass cleaner permeating the air. It couldn’t be related, right? The shit he was dealing with seemed completely, totally unrelated to her drama.

And yet.

Damn it, he had an endorsement deal with a designer menswear company pending, and he could not get bogged down in internet trolls.

Maybe he had gone certifiably insane. He yawned and stretched again, then headed for the shower. Busy, busy, busy.

****

“Nigel!” Patrick exclaimed, opening his arms wide. The older man had not aged at all since Patrick had last seen him over a year ago. He stood about half a foot shorter than Patrick, with bleached blonde spiked hair, thick black eyebrows, and a small diamond stud in one ear. Despite the fact that he had definitely entered his sixth decade, Nigel Walker was still fit and trim and wearing his signature white button-down shirt and black dance trousers.

“Patrick!” Nigel greeted him warmly, returning the embrace.

“You two are adorable,” Anita commented, standing at the edge of the dance floor. “Like Lucy and Ethel.”

“You should have warned me, Anita.” Nigel kissed her on both cheeks. He hadn’t tamed his thick Leeds accent in over thirty years of living in the United States. Patrick had a feeling the choice was deliberate. “I didn’t know you had finally found a partner.”

“It was a last-minute decision.” Anita sat down in one of the folding chairs and changed into her practice shoes. “Patrick’s doing me a favor.”

“You’re dancing at Keystone?” Nigel sipped at his ever-present liter-sized coffee cup.

Patrick sat beside Anita and changed into his own shoes. “Anita hasn’t missed it in almost twelve years. I didn’t think she should have to miss it just because Mikhail is an ass.”

“Hey!” Anita protested, standing up, looking unimaginably regal in her asymmetric tunic over her black tights. Patrick guessed she had recovered from the shock of last night. Then he realized he had tied the laces of his dance shoes together and bent to untangle them before she noticed. “Just because it didn’t work out between us, it’s not particularly anyone’s fault. Mikhail wasn’t an ass.”

Nigel caught Patrick’s eye, and the two grinned at each other. “Sure, love.” Nigel turned to the stereo. “Whatever you want to tell yourself.”

****

Nigel had them move through the routines they had already choreographed. He upgraded a few of the moves and had them smooth out some of the transitions. “Not bad,” he finally said. “What about rumba?”

After finishing their paso doble, Patrick was panting heavily and went to grab his towel to dry his hands and forehead. Did they really need two chassé capes and the leap? He needed to up his cardio over the next couple of weeks.

“Well? Rumba?” Nigel repeated, looking between the two of them. “I haven’t got all night.”

Patrick glanced over, but Anita was studiously looking anywhere but at him.

“We—we haven’t done it yet,” Anita replied.

Patrick wondered if Nigel’s eyes were going to pop straight out of his face. “You have less than two weeks until Keystone, and you don’t have a routine? For the rumba? Are you out of your minds?”

“We’ve been a little busy.” Anita scuffed at an unseen mark on the floor with the toe of her shoe.

Patrick wisely kept quiet. Since that first waltz, she had avoided being so close to him unless absolutely necessary. The other dances could be done more in shadow position or generally have less intimate contact. But the rumba…the rumba, in certain circumstances, could be like sex on the dance floor.

From his position in the unrequited Friend Zone, Patrick tried not to read a lot into Anita’s reluctance to stage the rumba. Nigel, though, clearly had no such compunctions.

“That’s no excuse, Anita. Patrick, get out here. We solve this now.” He scoffed. “Honestly, you call yourselves professionals.”

Patrick moved back onto the dance floor and took his stance by Anita.

“Hey, not my fault,” Patrick whispered to a stone-faced Anita.

She looked everywhere but at him. “Hey.” Patrick nudged her. “Is there something in my teeth?” He grinned broadly at her, knowing he had stuck a piece of gum between his incisors. Caught unawares, she finally smiled and seemed to relax.

“Right. Let’s start together. Patrick, invite her to dance by reaching for her face. Anita, hesitate, but then reach around his back. Swivel, swivel, swivel, long leg through his, had yada. Go!”

Patrick saw Anita stiffen, but the music was starting. There wasn’t time. “What do you think he means by the had yada?” Patrick whispered to her. Her eyes flicked to his. He heard the classic rumba beat, 2-3-4-and-1, and reached out for her. “No, seriously. Does he mean this?”

Patrick scooped her off the floor and into a lift where he wrapped her around his back and then quickly rotated her into a cartwheel, all while anchoring her hips with his hands. Anita burst out laughing when he set her on the floor.

Nigel turned off the music. “Cute,” he said dryly. “You don’t have time for cute. Back to positions!”

****

Anita tried to involve herself in the precision of the movements instead of her proximity to Patrick, but her body was not cooperating. It didn’t help that Nigel had chosen Enrique Iglesias. Still, though, Patrick was being…so Patrick, Anita couldn’t help but ease into the game of the rumba. The push and pull, the enjoyable seduction, the way he seemed to know exactly where she would be, ready to catch her or spin her.

If only sex could be like dancing.

Before she could realize it, the hour was over. The music abruptly stopped, and Anita became suddenly, desperately aware of her hands on Patrick’s temples, and his hand encircling her thigh, which was wrapped around his waist. Shit. She disentangled herself from him, ignoring the hum in her skin where he had touched her. He needed to keep those amazing, soft, sensuous hands to himself. Even if they did arouse a lot of weird and unusual feelings within her.

Nigel clapped his hands briskly. “There. You have a rumba, easy peasy lemon squeezy.” He rolled his eyes. “Took you both long enough. See you next week. We’ll spit and polish. Off you go.”

“Uh,” Patrick said sheepishly. “All right if I use the bathroom really quickly?”

“Course, mate.” Nigel sipped again from his bottomless cup of coffee. He moved closer to Anita, who was trying to calm her breathing and change her shoes. Neither task was going well. “This is a good idea,” he said softly to her.

“What? He’s just doing me a favor.” She drank from her water bottle. “He’s retired, remember?”

“Looks very unretired to me.”

“Nigel, there’s no way we can win. We’ve been practicing less than a week.”

Nigel looked at her discerningly. She had never quite gotten used to that look from him, despite having known him since she was twelve. She was never sure if it was belief in her talent, or disappointment that she had not fulfilled his expectations. “You’re selling you both short, love. He’s good for you. I don’t know why you didn’t do this sooner.”

Anita’s hackles rose. “It’s not like I was wasting my time. I made top ten without Patrick. I competed all over the globe. Without Patrick. Mikhail and I were invited to Blackpool twice.”

“Yeah, but you could have won at Blackpool with Patrick.” Nigel caught her eye. “Don’t look at me like that, love. You know I’m right.”

Patrick rushed back across the floor toward them. “Sorry, did I miss anything?”

****

Anita folded her legs into the passenger seat of Patrick’s semi-ancient sedan, zipping her white fleece jacket closed.

“I’m starving.” Patrick turned the key in the ignition. “Do you mind if we grab something to eat here before we drive back?”

“Oh, I’m not really hungry.”

He glanced at her in mock horror. “We just burned practically four thousand calories. Are you really not hungry?”

In defiance of her earlier assertion, her stomach rumbled. She grinned despite herself. “I don’t know. Maybe a little?”

He tapped the wheel happily. Some men never lost their boyish enthusiasm. “Perfect! I never get the chance to show you around down here. Cheesesteaks?”

Anita rolled her eyes. “Absolutely not.”

“You are a born and bred Philly girl, and you will not say yes to a Sunday night cheesesteak? Next thing you’ll tell me is that you’re a Patriots fan, and then we can’t be friends anymore.”

She held up a hand. “Do not go there. I have a mean right hook.”

He held up his own hands in a gesture of surrender. “I’m sure you do. But come on, there’s this great place down in Fishtown.”

Anita felt herself wavering as the heat in Patrick’s ten-year-old car finally kicked on, spraying warmth from the vents. “I don’t know. Do they have chicken cheesesteaks?”

He smiled. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.”

****

Twenty minutes later, Anita snorted with laughter at an outdoor picnic table strewn with grease-stained napkins and checkerboard deli paper.

“That absolutely did not happen.” She grinned as Patrick licked cheese spread off his fingers. “Daniela, she of the ‘oh’ ”—here, Anita pursed her lips mock-seductively and affected a fairly accurate Brazilian accent—“ ‘in Brasil we would never do that.’ ”

“Yup.” Patrick grinned. “Daniela absolutely did. Completely flaunted over this guy at the bar for at least half an hour—in front of me, of course—before finally realizing it was not, in fact, Johnny Depp.”

Anita snorted again before reaching for her bottled water and one of Patrick’s potato chips. “Can’t say I miss her.”

“Yeah, me neither.” He wiped his hands on a napkin. Damn, those hands. When they danced together, the way his hands felt on her body…

Anita flushed, but Patrick did not seem to be paying attention to her. Thank goodness. He had a wistful, sort of lost expression. Something sad and broken in those blue eyes.

“I’m really sorry, Patrick.” Anita moved her hand near his, but not quite touching. “First Daniela, then Tatiana, and Nikita…”

“Nikita?” He scrunched up his face in confusion.

“Yeah.” Anita squirmed in her seat and took her hand back from where it had been on the table. “I still can’t believe that happened at the Jersey Classic. She was a nice woman.” Anita waited, but no response. She wasn’t wrong, was she? She had heard enough gossip. “It was awful how she was killed.”

“Yeah. I mean, I only met her once or twice, but she seemed like a nice lady.”

Anita’s brain short circuited, and she almost dropped her iced tea all over her shirt. “Wait, what do you mean, you only met her once or twice?”

“Umm, there isn’t that much mystery in that statement, Anita.” Patrick took a large bite of his cheesesteak.

“But weren’t you two, like, having an affair?”

He almost spat out his food. Patrick’s eyes widened, and his brow furrowed. “Are you joking? Of course not. Who told you that?”

Anita held her water against her cheeks to try to hide the blush. “I don’t know. It was just, like, a rumor that was going around. So-and-so saw you together, thought you looked—cozy, I guess.”

Patrick sighed. “I interviewed her, about a week before she died. The Star Trib wanted a piece on the competition. We met for drinks in Princeton the night before so she could answer some follow up questions. That’s really it. I mean, yeah, she called me a few times afterward, but nothing happened. I keep things professional.”

Anita frowned. She never paid attention to the ballroom gossip. Why had she listened to the shit about Patrick? “I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to offend you.”

“You didn’t,” he replied curtly. “It’s just been a long week.” He shivered. “It’s freezing out here. Maybe we should get back home.”

Anita nodded and bit her lip as she helped clear the plates. She had messed that up right and proper.

****

They drove home in silence, ostensibly listening to an old Snow Patrol CD on Patrick’s ancient sound system. Anita kept her eyes out the window, watching the shadowy trees and outlines of homes pass.

“Are you okay?” Patrick finally asked.

Just rethinking everything she thought she knew about her friend. “Of course,” Anita replied instead. Maybe if she counted mile markers she would be less inclined to say something stupid.

Beside her, she heard his slow inhale and exhale before he continued. Great, now he was going to ream her out and tell her all the reasons he no longer wanted to dance with her.

But he wasn’t Mikhail. She chanced a glance at him, his familiar profile outlined in the headlights of passing cars. How could she know someone for so long and not really know them?

“Are you mad I didn’t tell you I had met Nikita?”

Anita barked a laugh. “Seriously? I thought you were mad that I had listened to the gossip.”

“Everyone gossips, Anita. I have to admit, I was a little surprised you believed it.” He glanced at her, the crooked smile casting a bright flashing light on his super sexy dimple. Anita’s breath caught in her throat, and she bit her bottom lip. She had a sudden, almost uncontrollable urge to lean over and lick that dimple. When they were sixteen, he had let her paint it peacock blue before a comp.

Which was clearly evidence that lack of sleep and being stalked with weird messages had driven her bats hit crazy. She sat on her hands. She could do impulse control.

Patrick did not seem to notice. “At least it didn’t feel like you were accusing me of murder,” he teased.

Anita licked her lips and stared out the window. “Patrick, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone less capable of murder than you.”

“Well, that’s the nicest compliment I think I’ve ever had.”

He pulled the car in front of the studio and turned his dark-blue eyes to hers. It really was unfair. They were so warm, so inviting. It did not seem right how Patrick could seemingly hug someone just by looking at them. “Should I walk you inside?”

Yes. “No, I’m all right.” But she could not move from the seat, her hand frozen on the handle of the door. She had a full menagerie caught in her chest, threatening to burst out at any moment.

He placed one hand on her shoulder, an old, friendly sort of gesture, but a pulse of electricity frizzled down her back. Her eyes were drawn to that sexy little dimple, always painted peacock blue in her mind.

Keeping her shit together was exhausting.

Before she could give herself time to rethink it, she leaned over and pressed her lips right over the dimple at the corner of his mouth. The little divot tasted like cheesesteaks and potato chips and salt and a thousand other warm and sexily comforting things that were one thousand percent going to torture her all night long.

Damn it. Cover, Anita. Cover.

Patrick’s wonderful face was too close to her own. Was he angry? He must be angry.

He didn’t look like it, though. His dark-blue eyes had clouded over, and his gaze was fixed on hers. If looks were fire, she would need a specialized burn unit.

Was he going to kiss her?

Red lights flashed warning in her brain even as her heart warmed.

She had to shut this down. But she wanted it so badly. The knot of repression that she had wound so tightly simply begged to be ripped open, laid bare.

Patrick was not Mikhail. Patrick was more than Mikhail, more than Giorgio, more than Tyler. He was the best man she had ever known.

She did not deserve him.

But damn it, he was now very, very close to her, his breath hot against her skin.

“Thank you.” She might have croaked like a frog, but the words popped some balloon of tension in the air. She pulled back, unable to meet his gaze. His breath, so warm and inviting with the promise of a thousand mornings of French toast and crossword puzzles under quilted blankets, caught in his throat, and he made some sort of strangled sound. He was not for her. “Um. Bye.”

With that witty rejoinder, she pushed open the car door and cursed herself in eight languages as she unlocked the studio, relocked it behind her, walked up the twenty-two steps to her apartment, and then she crashed face-first into her brightly colored comforter.