Chapter Thirty

Junior competitions were the best. The participants all had so much energy, little balls of hairspray and mascara writhing and jiving and spinning.

And they were short. Thank God in Heaven they were done by four.

“You ready?” Patrick asked her, high-fiving one of his kids and shaking hands with their parents.

“No.” She pasted on a smile for Lucy Knight, who had come in first in the quickstep. “This is insane. I have never competed with so little preparation.”

He glanced over at her, and he really needed to stop doing that. She could hardly sit still as it was. His gaze on her just made her more restless.

“It will be okay. I’ll catch you if you fall.”

Her heart pounded in her chest. Damn Nigel and his perfect outfit. She could feel all the hairs standing up all over her body, a delicious heat building inside of her.

Shut it down, get it together.

“I’ve got to get ready.” She ignored his questioning gaze and headed upstairs to her room. He would find out soon enough.

****

Patrick wrung his hands and bounced on the tips of his toes. Where was she? He had knocked on the door around five-thirty, offered to get her something to eat, but she hadn’t opened the partition. Patrick had wolfed down a small bowl of soup and an apple from room service, finished gelling his hair and touching up his spray tan. He had forgotten how much grooming was required for a competition, but the routines had come back to him, like they were waiting for him to find them again.

But now he had been biding time for an hour, and he was tired of schmoozing with people who were calling this—somewhat mockingly—“his great return.” He didn’t feel like his smile could stretch any wider. It was making his teeth hurt.

Besides, he really, really needed to talk to Anita.

She had been so jittery all day, unable to meet his eyes, her movements frenetic even as she feigned interest in the proceedings.

Not that Patrick had been any less tense. Adjoining rooms had definitely been a mistake.

Maria St. John was still giving a speech, but he and Anita were up after a group showcase dance honoring Nikita Ivanovna. He saw the six dancers all dressed identically in white-and-gray Standard attire, chattering quietly to one another and waiting in the on-deck area. Patrick checked his phone again. Damn it. No service in the ballroom. Damn hotel ballrooms and their—

“Hey.” Anita sidled up next to him, and his mind went still.

Her long blonde hair was down, held back by a Dutch braid with a crystal ribbon running through it. Her eyes were rimmed with silver eyeshadow and black eyeliner that turned into wings at the corners, and her lips were Rockette-style red. She was stunning.

“Is that the costume?” The top was a formfitting, black, glittery bustier, and then she had on a long, asymmetrical black skirt cut through with lace. He would have chosen something slinkier. The skirt was going to get in the way during several of the tricks.

“Yeah.” She smiled wryly at him, twisting the glittering silver crystal bracelet on her wrist. “Don’t worry. The skirt tears off.”

Patrick whipped his head so quickly that his neck creaked. “Beg your pardon?” Was he a man or a mouse?

He could hear the laughter in her voice. “When we do the first lift, after the tango section and the Amen drops, you tear off the skirt.”

He collected his mouth from where it had fallen on the floor. Shit, was it hot in here? Usually they turned the ambient temp way down, but he must have a fever. “Is it complicated?”

“No.” She turned to show him the tearaway tab at the back of the skirt, and his gaze arrested at the small dip in her lower back. She would taste like sugar and spice there, he was sure. “Just make sure you throw it far enough so we don’t trip.” She turned around, forcing him to look anywhere, everywhere else but at the perfect curves of her ass.

“Should we practice it?” He had said that remarkably well for someone who was currently wolf-panting on the inside.

“Probably, but I don’t think we have enough time.” Indeed, Maria had finished talking about Nikita’s contributions to Dancesport and was finally introducing the Standard showcase group dance.

Patrick heard the opening of “The Saddest Song” and rolled his eyes at Anita to cut the tension he felt building inside of him. “Ballroom’s never subtle.”

Anita laughed quietly. “Nervous?”

He felt the fluttering in his stomach, but it evaporated as he took her hand in his. There. He looked straight into her eyes, her lashes elongated, her makeup flawless. He could look at her forever.

“Not now.”

The audience applauded for the group showcase, and Patrick led Anita to the on-deck area, her hand tight in the crook of his arm.

“And now, dancing to Hozier’s “Take Me to Church,” Pennsylvania’s own Patrick O’Leary and Anita Goodman!” Maria and the crowd started cheering, applauding, and they stepped onto the dance floor.

She took her position, head bowed, expression seductive, then started to move as the song began. Patrick stepped into her backlight and took one of her hands. A few moments of hands meeting and pushing away, then he pulled her into a tango section, feeling the warmth and strength in her body pressed to his. At the prelude to the first chorus, he dipped her low, turning her slowly as she reached a hand up to his face. At the last Amen, she placed her head on his shoulder, he wrapped his arms low around her waist, and as the chorus commenced, he whipped the overskirt off and lifted her high into the air. Underneath was a short, silver negligee that accentuated her hips and legs. Dimly, he could hear the crowd roar its approval, but he and Anita were now deep into the conjoined rhythm. They spun, performed sliding doors, moved into some Argentine tango, some waltz, some rumba, and with each chorus there was a lift, a trick, each building on the last. With one, he flipped her up onto his back, where she curled into a tuck as he spun her slowly. With another, he took one outstretched leg and curled it around himself, loving the feel of his hands on her body, the way she instinctively responded to him. Every movement was sensation, instinct. Reach and pull and slide and spin.

The last chorus was a rapid succession of mixed dance moves, spins, all with her pressed against him, so close he could taste her breath mixing with his, and then there was the final spectacular star lift. He held her on her side, her arms and legs extended as he spun her two, three, four times, then tucked her into both of his arms, still spinning, gaze fixed on hers, slowing gently until he set her feet to the ground. He knelt before her, reverent, arms around her waist and her palms extended against his temples.

Patrick was aware of nothing else for a few moments more, not that the music had ended, not that the crowd was on its feet roaring with applause. In that moment, it was just him and Anita alone on the dance floor, bathed in a single pool of light, wrapped around each other. They were one, two parts of the same whole, two wings of the same bird. That instant stretched and bowed like a galaxy around them, the pair nestled in the other’s gaze. He wanted this to be forever. He wanted to kneel at her feet, worship at her altar. Did this mean she would let him? Hope fluttered tentatively in his chest.

She broke eye contact with him with a slight turn of her head, and he crashed back to the ballroom in Harrisburg. Winded as though he had just leapt from an airplane, he stood, pasting a smile on his face. He turned Anita out and bowed with her several times, the audience still cheering and chanting their names.

As he took Anita’s hand to lead her off the dance floor, she whispered, “That went surprisingly well.”

“Yeah,” he panted. Focus. He needed to focus. What had just happened? He wasn’t naked, was he? Usually he only felt like this when he woke up from an erotic dream.

“I really need to talk to you.” Adrenaline flooded him, but he could not hold back the gate any longer. This was it. This was his moment, his one perfect, shining moment. She had felt it, too. He knew she had. They could not have danced like that otherwise. “Can we find somewhere quiet?”

Anita turned and gazed intensely at him. Yes, her eyes said. Yes.

Patrick could not run from the dance floor fast enough.

****

“Oh my goodness!” Maria. Shit, Maria. Fanning herself dramatically with her clipboard. Excellent timing, as always. “You two certainly delivered.”

“Hello, Maria, thank you for the opportunity.” Was her heart still beating? It was so fast she could not tell if it was racing or at a standstill.

She was acutely aware that Patrick’s eyes had gone dark, nearly black like the sea during a hurricane. For a moment on the dance floor, for the whole dance, really, she had never felt so connected with someone. It was the most sensual foreplay she had ever experienced, and she forced herself to focus on the task at hand. Not on the heat of his gaze burning through the thin fabric of her costume. Not on the way his hand clutched at hers like she was his life preserver, and they were caught in a riptide. Not on the way that sexy dimple of his kept winking at her, calling to her, like catnip.

“I knew it. I just knew it!” Maria gushed. “I knew the two of you could pull off something amazing. Patrick, thank goodness!”

Maybe if Anita was super pleasant, Maria would just leave, and she and Patrick could get back to—Whatever the hell it was they had been about to do. Make out on the dance floor? Strip Patrick naked and have her wicked way with him? She wasn’t into exhibitionism, but she was so heated at this point she might have agreed to anything.

Patrick pulled his eyes from Anita, leaving her feeling strangely unmoored. “I didn’t do anything. It was all Anita. She’s the real professional here.”

“Don’t be so modest!” Maria put a hand on his arm, suddenly flirtatious. Anita wanted to smack the hand away from him, then inwardly chastised herself for her unkind thoughts.

“I’m not.” He slipped an arm around Anita’s waist, and she almost died. “I retired, remember? Anita works at the studio every day, she teaches fellow champions. She is incredible.” Her knees wavered, but she managed to stay upright.

She needed to eat something more than a granola bar. Maybe Patrick.

“I think I need a cold shower after that performance,” Maria said conspiratorially. “Well done, you two. Can’t wait to see what’s in store tomorrow night.” She blew them a kiss with her fingers.

Alone again. Good. No, no bad. Bad. Alone with Patrick equaled bad.

But the still, soft voice at the back of her mind did not want to cooperate. The still, soft voice reminded her that they had adjoining rooms and nowhere else to be for the next eight hours. The still, soft voice that remembered every single curve of Patrick’s body, the taste of his kiss, the way it had felt pressing her lips to his dimple.

“You didn’t have to say that.”

“This isn’t my triumph.” The color had seeped back into his eyes as the intensity had left. Damn it. They had lost the moment again, hadn’t they? Shit. “You deserve all the credit, Anita. You really are amazing.”

“Yes, she is,” said a thick, dark voice.

Perfect, just perfect. Of all the zasranets—

“Hello, Mikhail.” No greeting was too frosty for him. He looked shorter all of a sudden, particularly next to Patrick. As Mikhail was not performing tonight, he was dressed in a light-blue button-down shirt and dark-gray suit with black highly-polished Oxfords. He had slicked his hair back in a nouveau pompadour, and Anita was certain he was wearing gray eyeliner.

She just kept making the same bad choices. She couldn’t drag Patrick down with her.

Patrick shook the hand Mikhail extended tersely. At least this time he had acknowledged Patrick’s presence.

“That was quite the performance.” Mikhail set his hands on his hips and jutted out his chest. An image of a preening blue jay popped into Anita’s mind, and she choked on a giggle.

“Thanks.” Patrick tightened the arm around her waist.

Ugh. If anything could kill the mood—

“You never danced like that with me, Anita. If you had, maybe we should not have broken up.”

“It’s lucky you did,” Patrick replied, his gaze steely. “Now you can finally get out of her way.”

Mikhail whipped toward him, and Patrick dropped his arm from her to adopt a more offensive stance. “What did you just say?” Mikhail demanded, fists clenched at his sides.

“I said, now that you are out of the way, maybe Anita can start winning again.”

“Boys, please.” She crossed her arms over her chest. The fire from the dance had fled, leaving her chilled and ticked off and frustrated. She was so done. Men and their idiotic pissing contests. “You two are being ridiculous.”

Neither paid any attention to her. Their voices had risen as well, drawing a crowd.

She bristled at the tension in the air and wished they could go back a few moments in time so they could have just left the ballroom. And gone where, Anita? Her heart pounded. She told it to hush.

“You are just some halfwit writer, dancing on the weekends. You think you can do better than me?” Mikhail thumped on his puffed-out chest.

Patrick smiled languidly at him. “Yeah. Yeah, I kind of do. I may be a halfwit writer, but even I can see that you can’t tell your mambo from your cha-cha.”

Mikhail moved so quickly, Anita almost missed it. Patrick dodged the first fist, but Mikhail brought a second uppercut into his chin.

“Stop it, you goddamn idiot!” She pulled at the back of Patrick’s shirt, but he pushed her away from him and threw a wild punch at Mikhail’s ribcage.

The crowd that had gathered oohed and aahed, their collective breathing rising each time a hit landed. Anita tried again to intervene, but they seemed lost in their own world of the fight.

Idiots. Men!

Two security guards from the hotel rushed into the middle of the circle and pulled the two men apart. Both were bleeding, disheveled. Mikhail’s shirt had come unbuttoned, and Patrick’s was ripped across the front, exposing his tanned and muscular chest. Both men had their teeth bared at the other, and neither noticed Anita’s anger or the crowd’s presence.

Anita watched for one more moment as the security guards broke up the fight, then, seething, spun on one heel and left them to themselves.