The Dance Off (14 page)

It’s sex
.
Just sex. Delicious, exquisite, earth-moving sex. He’s been your port in a storm. A little night comfort in a far-off land. Nothing new there; that’s totally your MO.

Yeah
, she thought,
you just keep telling yourself that
, as his mouth descended on hers, sensation took over and all thought fled.

* * *

Ryder ran a hand over his neck. It ached from too many hours at the computer in his office atop a giant Collins Street edifice.

And yet it hadn’t been a skyscraper keeping him locked to his chair. It had been sketch after sketch of a large space filled with arched windows and high beams and old wooden floors. A building with a broken lift, lights that appeared on the verge of burning the whole place down. With strips of red silk floating from one discreet corner.

He’d been thinking about the place so much of late, to the detriment of his real work. His only option as he saw it was to get the thing out of his head. The sheaths of paper curled up on the carpet beside his shoes proved it hadn’t worked.

Ryder stood, stretched his arms over his head, and felt his spine crick and crack. Then, remembering the posture Nadia had shown him, pressed his feet into the floor from his hips down, and pulled himself as tall as possible from his hips up, as if his body were squashed between two panes of glass... His muscles sang with the relief and release of it, until he caught sight of how ridiculous he looked in the window.

He could have kissed his mobile when it rang.

“Hey, kiddo,” he said, after seeing Sam’s number on the display, “just the distraction I needed.”

“We got married!” her crackly voice exclaimed.

“Say again?” Ryder stuck his finger in his other ear and headed to the window to make sure he had the best reception possible. Because she could not possibly have just said—

“We eloped! I am now officially Mrs Ben Johnson!”

“It sure as hell sounded like you just said that you eloped.”

A pause, then, “That’s because I did. I told Ben everything. About Dad, and the other wives, and the panic attacks. And he was a rock, Ryder. He was beautiful, and perfect, and strong, and wonderful. And we’re in Las Vegas right now. And it’s gorgeous. We flew in at night and the lights—”

But Ryder hadn’t heard much past
Vegas
. The bloody place was fast turning out to be his arch enemy. “Did Nadia put you up to it?”

After a long pause, Sam shot back, “In what possible way?” her voice tight. When he was the only one with any right to be pissed.

“She’s from Vegas. And don’t try to say you didn’t know.”

“She’s not from here. She’s
from
there.”

“Well, she’s moving back there any day now.” He knew he was pulling at straws, but he was struggling to get his head around it all.

“Oh.” Sam’s suddenly soft voice broke through. “Has she heard when?”

She hadn’t. Not when he’d left her soft and warm and naked in her bed at five that morning. When he’d actually toyed with the thought of doing the walk of shame into work in the same suit and tie he’d worn the day before, just to get another hour in her arms.

“That’s not the point,” he growled. “What the hell possessed you guys?”

“It had all just spun so far out of control, Ryder. It was meant to have been small, just us and Ben’s family, and you giving me away. And then all that stuff happened with Dad, and on Ben’s side a fight had erupted over what flavour cake might offend Great-Auntie Wallace. In the end we realised we just wanted to look one another in the eye and say,
It’s you. You’re it. You’re the one who makes my heart race and my bed warm and I’ll take that for ever, thank you very much
.”

Ryder closed his eyes and rubbed his thumb and forefinger over the bridge of his nose. What the hell could he possibly say to that? “And Vegas was your only option?”

“It was quickest,” she said, and he could all but hear her grin. “A sixty-dollar licence and a five-minute ceremony and you’re done. You should have seen the line-up at the courthouse. Picture women in full bridal regalia, their limos waiting at the kerb. Men in Elvis wigs, their luggage at their feet as they’d come straight from the airport.”

Picturing it wasn’t helping. “I just wish...” He wished what? That he could go back to the way things were when he was her everything, and she was his, and his life was laid out ahead of him like a long dark tunnel of more of the same? “I just wish I’d been there to see it.”

“I know.” He heard the wobble in her voice, before she took a great big sniff. “But then we had that dance, you and I. That perfect, lovely dance at Nadia’s.
That
was our dance, Ryder. Not in front of a million people I barely know. Not looking over our shoulders waiting for Dad to ruin everything. That night at Nadia’s studio—you gave me away.”

His thoughts slipped back to that conversation in his car a few weeks back when she’d “set him free”. And he knew then why it had felt like a false victory—it had never been about Sam setting him free; he was the one who needed to let
her
go. And that night in the dance studio, watching Sam and Nadia go head to head, he’d not only given her her first real taste of independence, he’d taken his first step into his own.

“Yeah,” he said. “I did.”

“Lucky for you,” said Sam, “the cabana boy wants to be a cinematographer so he took the video for us.”

“Lucky me.”

And then his sister was babbling about the lights and the casinos and that you could sit in the Keno bar all night, play a game an hour and get as many free Long Island iced teas as you wanted.

“You sound happy, Sam.”

Her breath shook. “So, so happy.”

“Love you, kiddo,” Ryder said before he bloody well joined her.

“Love you more.”

And then she was gone. Leaving Ryder alone in his big office, with the moonlight and etchings his only companions.

He looked out at the view over the city, glancing over the number of significant new buildings he’d had a hand in creating. His legacy. And he waited for...something. A feeling of satisfaction. Or pride. Even relief that for the first time in more than half his life he had only himself to consider.

But no matter how long he stood there, he didn’t feel a damn thing.

Because the honest truth was, the only decision hanging in the balance in his life wasn’t up to him. It was in the hands of a bunch of tights-wearing strangers on the other side of the planet. And there was not a damn thing he could do about it.

TEN

Long shadows sliced
through the golden glow of the street below as Nadia left the studio in daylight for the first time on a Tuesday in over two months.

She knew Ryder wouldn’t be there leaning against his big black car. Dance lessons were over; Sam’s crazy, wonderful elopement a couple of days earlier had put paid to that. Yet the empty street tugged painfully at her stomach.

She jogged down the steps and headed towards her spartan rooms where everything was so temporary. So quiet. All those hours ahead of her in which to think.

She could have stayed and rehearsed, but she just didn’t have the urge. And with Sam and Ben away she couldn’t call on them to go out dancing to shake off the odd sense that she was in limbo. Waiting. As if the other shoe were out there, dangling above her and about to drop right on her head.

She turned up the collar of her light jacket, shoved her hands into the pockets and turned the corner, picking up the pace as a light drizzle filled the air, taking the edge off the heat as the longest, hottest summer of her life drew to a close.

But in spite of how far she walked, the tension still rode her, made her muscles tight, her stomach hard, her head jittery. Another day of not knowing what was around the corner for her—much less another ten—and she’d be off her nut.

And there was only one way she could think to ease the pressure that had been building inside her for days.
Ryder
. She walked faster instead. Because she couldn’t go there. Especially not after she’d taken that swan dive into fairyland the other night.

In retrospect she put the whole thing down to a mini emotional breakdown. Still roiling from the aloofness of her mum’s phone call, and then mixing in Sam’s supreme happiness and the big man’s total tenderness, as well as the realisation her time in Melbourne was coming to an end—it had all whirled into some great vortex of syrupy sentiment.

Which meant that Sam’s elopement could
not
have come at a better time. If they wanted a neat and tidy end to what had been morphing into a more complicated affair than either of them had signed up for, they’d been handed it on a platter.

Unfortunately her body didn’t agree. Turned out she couldn’t walk fast enough to get away from thoughts of his hot touch, his strong hands, his devastating mouth.

A cab pulled up at the kerb ahead, letting out a passenger. Her feet stalled to a halt, her knees twitching, her teeth clamping down on her lip.

Then before she knew it she was running up to the driver, asking if he was free to do a drop-off in Brighton, and was in the back seat and away. It felt like less than a minute before she was out of the cab and walking up to Ryder’s stunning split-level near the beach.

Her hair was damp from the rain. Goose bumps tightened her skin to the point of pain. Her heart knocked hard and heavy against her ribs, opening them up with each beat until she felt as if she were completely exposed. Then, as if she were a magnet and Ryder the centre of the earth, she lifted a hand and knocked.

Blood pumping so hard she could barely hear the traffic and waves and thrash of the wind as the drizzle whipped up into a late summer storm, Nadia waited. The ground tilting out from under her as she realised he might not even be home. And worse, if he was, the second he opened the door and saw her there, he’d know—

“Nadia?” Ryder said, surprise lighting his voice as he did just that.

He was decked out in old jeans that had clearly seen a worksite or two and a black shirt untucked with the sleeves rolled up. His hair was mussed and his jaw unshaven. And he looked so beautiful, so strong, so vital Nadia’s thumping heart leapt right into her throat and stayed there.

Her mouth opened but nothing came out. What could she possibly say? The truth? That her last few days were a fog? That her feet had just brought her there? That her mini emotional breakdown was still very much in force? Either that or she was falling in love for the first time in her life and that she was terrified she’d spend the rest of her life aching without him.

But she’d never had a relationship that didn’t end. Had never had anyone in her life who’d stuck around. Not when she’d asked, not when she’d enticed. Not when she’d out and out begged.

Give a damn and they’ll eat you alive.

Which was how she summoned the remaining echoes of a lifetime of feigned ambivalence, ducked a hip against the doorjamb and looked up at him beneath her lashes. “It’s Tuesday night. And for the first time in for ever I have no plans. You?”

He stood there, a wall of strength and quiet, saying nothing. And a flood of mortification flowed thick and fast through her. Oh, God, she
was really alone in this, wasn’t she? The only one feeling at a loss. Like every other time she’d dared to reach out to someone in her life. She took a step backward—

Ryder’s hand clamped over her wrist, and he pulled her to him, and his lips were on hers, her hands in his hair, not an ounce of dying daylight between them as he walked her inside.

He slammed the door shut with his foot before he was all over her again. Ridding her of her bag, her scarf, her jacket. Flicking her hair out of the way to get to her neck.

She leant into him with a sigh, sensation pummelling her; her hair was everywhere, her skin already slicked with sweat. Too much feeling shooting through her to slow it down before it consumed her.

Not that Ryder gave her a chance. With a growl he found a wall and pressed her up against it. And their clothes were gone, skin on skin, his heat filling her up, the light inside her so bright it spilled over in her sighs, her moans, the damp gathering at the corners of her eyes.

And then he was inside her and Nadia spiralled so far down the rabbit hole there was nothing but the deepest delectation and absolute relief.

* * *

Ryder held the mobile phone tight in his hand, not sure how long he’d been sitting up in his bed staring at the screen. Seconds probably, considering it had yet to hibernate to black, and yet it felt like for ever.

“Ryder?” Nadia’s sleepy voice murmured from beside him, just before she snuggled her face into his hip, her arm curling possessively about his thigh. “Was that my phone?”

Ryder gripped the thing a moment longer, stalling, stretching time, before he accepted time had run out. “It rang. I didn’t get to it in time.”

Nadia dragged herself to sitting, bringing his sheet with her. Knees to her chest, she swept the messy mass of her hair from a face soft with sleep and swiped a thumb over the screen. She got halfway through a yawn before she saw the name that had stopped his heart.

Wide awake now, her eyes shot to his. Even in the soft wash of moonlight he saw how big they were. And how damned excited. “I was expecting an email. They said they’d email.” She swept her hair from her eyes again; this time her movements were quick, breathless. “I’m sorry. I have to—”

“Go ahead,” he said, leaning back against his pillow with his arms propped behind his head, like a man with not a care in the world. When truthfully, his insides were coiled so tight that his lungs struggled to fill.

She spun away from him, her toes dropped to the floor, and she curled over her phone with both hands as if it were something precious. Within seconds her voice hummed into the thing. “Sorry, Bob, I was asleep.” Laughter, then, “No, that’s fine. But only because it’s you.” Then came a series of quiet
mmm-hmms
.

Ryder closed his eyes and, for the first time since he found a thirteen-year-old Sam in the midst of her first panic attack frozen to the point of near catatonia, he prayed.

When he realised what he was praying for, his eyes snapped open. And his blood ran cold.

Nadia slowly hung up the phone and held it in her lap, her naked back curved towards him, her dark waves spilling over the unearthly pale skin, her scent of her all over his sheets, all over his skin.

And he knew.

Strike that. He’d known from the moment she’d walked towards him so dark and lush and tempting that any part she played in his life would be transitory, titanic, fatal.

“When?” he asked.

She turned so one leg was hooked onto the bed, and glanced quickly over her shoulder before turning back to the phone, and in that glance he saw that any excitement that might have been there was now lost beneath the quicksilver mess of emotion shimmering across her face. “Next weekend. No,
this
one. Bob’s emailing flight details right now.”

Ryder somehow nodded, even while he was blistering on the inside from the effort not to hold her, touch her, lose himself in her every last moment they had together. But mostly from the effort not to make good on his prayer and do whatever it took to make her stay.

Because it was going to be brutal. Hell, if she hadn’t come to him that night, by five minutes to ten he’d have been ripping her door off its hinges. Like some seductive vapour she’d invaded his thoughts, his needs, his life. At times when they were apart he could have sworn he could feel her energy flowing through him as if she’d seeped into his very marrow.

And considering her history, he had no doubt he could chisel that fissure of hesitation into full-blown uncertainty. A kiss just below her ear, a thumb run softly along her jaw, a stroke of her inner thigh and he could make her his. But for how long? Until another opportunity like this came along? Until things naturally simmered down? Until disillusion leached in, restlessness took hold, and he realised he’d had enough?

He knew how badly she wanted the job, how much of her own self-worth was wrapped in whether or not she had it in her to succeed on her own, how much healthier it would be if she got as far away as possible from the insidious destructive influence of her mother, and yet he’d yearned for her to fail. Just so he could keep her close.

If he’d ever harboured any small hope that he might one day be able to love a woman in a more honest way than his own father ever had, that doubt had just been pulverised.

He was a selfish bastard. Which was his problem, not hers. His hit to take.

As he saw it he had one chance at redemption. He had to let her go. And he had to do so in a way that meant she’d never look back.

“You appear a little shell-shocked, Miss Nadia.”

In profile her forehead scrunched into a frown. “Probably because I am.”

“I thought you’d be bouncing off the walls. Literally.” He said it with a smile that felt as if it had been cut into his face.

Then she turned to him, her eyes wide, her lips pursed, her expression...lost. “What if I’m not ready? What if I’m kidding myself? What if it’s not what I really want? What if I’ve been too busy running towards what I think I should want to see that what I really want is something else—something right under my nose?”

Dammit. Nadia. Sweetheart.

Ryder lifted off the pillow and slid a hand up her spine before it curled around the back of her neck. Her soft skin and sleepy warmth carved a hollow in his chest. “You forget, I’ve seen you spinning circles in the sky. Of all the people I’ve met in my life, you are the one who’s had the most manifest purpose. That show is what you were born to do.”

“You think?”

“I know.”

“Ryder,” she said, pulling away. Her eyes glistened, swarming with emotion he understood more than he let himself dwell on. What had happened between them might be real, it might feel rich and thick and true, but he couldn’t promise it would last. And he wouldn’t risk hurting her simply for the chance to find out.

“I
know
,” he said, holding her gaze until she breathed out, and belief poured back into her dark, soulful eyes.

And then she leant into him. Snuggling into his touch. Trusting and soft and small.
Adorable
, he thought. And between breathing out and breathing in again, Ryder felt something inside him split right in half, the pain of it cracking through him like a gunshot.

But she didn’t need to know the arguments his conscience and his ego were battling out inside him. What she needed was sleep. And to feel damn proud of herself. So he laid her down, and rolled her into his arms, wrapping her up until her head fitted just under his chin and her breath shifted against his chest.

He lay there, all night, staring at the phone still clutched in her hand, telling himself he’d done the right thing.

* * *

When Nadia woke up the next morning, Ryder was gone.

She reached out for him to find his side of the bed empty and cold and on his pillow a note. A note and an apple.

For the road
, the note read.

And the lump that had formed in her throat the moment she’d seen the Sky High producer’s name on her phone dislodged itself and the tears that had gathered behind it poured from her eyes like a damn waterfall.

Because she loved the idiot.

Up and down, through and through. She’d known it with absolute certainty the moment Bob had told her she was in. She should have felt elated, over the moon, vindicated, relieved. Instead all she’d felt was a keening sadness whistling through a hole in her heart.

Even while she’d seen in his eyes that he felt...something, if not love then a definite desire to keep her close, he’d congratulated her, wished her luck, and held her with such tenderness she’d slept like a log. And woken not to the man who’d misappropriated her heart, but a damn apple, and a note that as good as warned her not to let the door hit her on the backside on the way out.

Was that it? Good luck and thanks for all the sex? Because he simply didn’t care, or because he cared too much for some drawn-out farewell?

She couldn’t think surrounded by his heat, his scent, the bachelor pad to end all bachelor pads. She had to get out of his bed. She swiped her palms over her damp cheeks, and then tried to untwist herself from the sheets, but they fought back. By the time she’d yanked herself free she tumbled out of bed and onto the floor with a thump.

And there she lay, breathing heavily, looking up at the ceiling as she had the first night she met him. Only this time it wasn’t the ceiling of her lonely little flat. And this time she wasn’t lost, wasn’t filled with hope that she might one day get her act together. This time all her dreams had come true.