Chapter Twenty-Six

Anita rolled her shoulders and did some relevés against the barre set along the wall of the studio. She stretched her leg long into the air and then rested it against the wood. Her hamstring stretched and pulled, the fire in it warm and inviting.

“How do you always beat me?” she heard Patrick ask.

She did not look up from her exercises. He did not need to know that she had woken up at two in the morning, dreaming of bathtubs and him.

“I avoid the internet before bed so I can get a good night’s sleep.” She raised her other leg to rest on the barre and stretched out the other hamstring.

“Well, it is my job,” he grumbled. “Besides, you live just upstairs.”

Anita snuck a peek at him. He had taken off his jacket. It had been raining that morning, and his hair was slick with raindrops. Even slightly mussed and grumpy, Patrick was impossibly handsome.

He was certainly handsome enough in her dreams.

Keep it together. “So what did you find out?”

His normally sardonic face had tightened into seriousness. “I looked into Melanie. She seemed the obvious choice.”

“No argument.” Anita sipped at the cup of green tea he had offered. Since she had gotten sick, she had lost a little of her coffee fervor.

Patrick had a look of boyish pride on his face, like a kid showing his school project to his parents for the first time. Her heart tugged in her chest, reaching for him, but she mentally slapped its greedy little hands. “She has kind of a normal online print. She’s tagged in a lot of the burner account photos, but it doesn’t seem like the accounts belong to her. Though some of the messages I was able to geo tag to this location.”

“We knew whoever it was had to come here to the studio. I mean, they saw us the night of the dance.” Whoops. She should not have brought up what the stalker saw, what almost happened.

He frowned. “But the weird thing is that I don’t see any mention of her husband.”

“He does seem on permanent trips abroad. I realize how stupid I sound, but I never really bothered to understand what he does.”

“I looked into it. He’s an executive at a pharmaceutical company. He also has social media accounts, but he hasn’t posted anything in three weeks.”

Sounded like a vacation. “Is that unusual?”

He sighed. “Social media is an addiction. For someone who goes from posting pictures of every cocktail and cheese plate every single day and then nothing, that’s kind of a red flag.”

The nerve endings on the back of her neck tingled. “Did you tell John?”

Patrick nodded. “Late last night, right before I called you. He’s looking into it.”

“It’s so bizarre,” Anita said. “Odd that Melanie doesn’t mention her husband vanishing off the face of the internet.”

“So I also looked into Kim. I stupidly did not know her last name.”

“It’s Smith.” Anita had checked her name off enough Zumba rosters. “Kind of generic.”

“Yeah. And I don’t know if that’s the reason or something else, but I cannot find her at all on social media.”

“Isn’t she in Melanie’s posts? They’ve been all over each other the last few months.” Some friendships burned hot and heavy. She gulped. She could not think about anything hot and heavy at the moment. Not when he was standing so damn close to her.

“No, she’s not in any of the pictures. She isn’t tagged in the comments. I looked through the people who comment frequently on Melanie’s posts, but none of them matched the burner accounts, and none led back to anyone named Kim. It’s curious, too, but Melanie seems to have just recently met Kim. She had this other friend in all her photos a few months ago.”

“How on earth do you have time for all this?” Anita yawned. He had certainly not convinced her to increase her social media presence. She did not like the idea that so much information could be found out by just about anyone.

Patrick grinned at her. “Coffee and confidence.”

****

Later that day, Anita lugged her suitcases down the stairs and dropped them at Patrick’s trunk. “Carpool, save the planet, safety in numbers,” he had said.

There went all her excuses.

“I called the hotel,” he said as she climbed into the front seat. “They had adjoining rooms available, so I asked if they could switch us.”

Her hand froze on the seat belt. “Why is that a good idea?”

For many, many reasons, she did not want him so close to her at night. Lately he had filled her dreams, and she had woken up sweaty, panting, needy. If he were so geographically close, she did not know if she could be in charge of her actions.

“Practice.” He tuned the radio to her favorite station. “We want to squeeze in every moment, right? We still need to nail work on the tuck turn in the show dance, and our cha-cha needs more syncopation. Plus it will make it a lot easier for the stalker to find us.” He grinned broadly. “Hey, I absolutely promise to knock first. Wouldn’t want a repeat of Stuttgart, right?”

She had a sudden and intense urge to hit something.

Stuttgart and Giorgio.

Adjoining rooms were a terrible idea.

She should have known. That’s all. She should have stuck to her guns, not confused a dance partnership with a romantic relationship. Then maybe she would not have to live with the memory of Stuttgart, walking in to see her naked boyfriend Giorgio atop Eva, Patrick’s partner.

“At least it had a silver lining.” Patrick squeezed her hand. “We were both free of them after that night.”

“Giorgio was an ass.” Why had she ever agreed to dance with him, date him, sleep with him? Giorgio was nothing compared to Patrick. Whoops, she had to get off that slippery slope. “I thought that you had really liked Eva, though. You two certainly seemed…compatible.”

Patrick laughed. “Eva was a sociopath. She used me to get what she wanted, just like Giorgio used you.”

Sighing, Anita leaned her head back against the headrest, her eyes shut. “Just tell me this weekend is going to be okay.”

“Better than okay. It’s going to be spectacular.”