The Dance Off (16 page)

The taxi driver looked up, surprised to find himself actually surprised. “Forget something, missy?”

Nadia shook her head, adrenalin pouring through her at such pace she could barely sit still. “Remembered something, actually. The airport, please.”

“Well, then,” he said, revving the engine and turning the cab into the arc of the driveway that took them back to The Strip, “ten minutes in Vegas and you’re all done with the place. That’s an honest to goodness first for me.”

And even while Nadia’s heart fair thundered against her ribs, the space that had been pressing so hard since the moment she’d left Australian shores no longer hurt. It settled, warmed...

And waited.

* * *

Ryder squinted against the sharp sunlight filtering through the clouds above. The car at his back quiet, its engine cool, its doors unlocked, its presence forgotten.

The large brown building before him sunned itself in the morning’s warmth like an old alley cat—worn, neglected, clearly in its twilight years. And yet Ryder’s gaze was fixated higher—on the row of arched windows reflecting the sun like mirrors on the top floor.

And he silently cursed his sister.

A week earlier he’d handed over all the work on his desk to his shocked employees and left the office. Then, he had boarded the first plane to Vegas, intending to knock on each and every one of the million hotel-room doors in the big, vibrant, elusive city, until he found Nadia.

Sam, still honeymooning, had met him at the airport and looked at him as if he’d gone off the rails. She’d turned out to be right.

Sam had looked up on Google the casino in which Sky High would be performing later in the year. He’d called. No Nadia Kent was booked in. And hell if he knew her grandmother’s name, the name she’d once told him she’d danced under. Meaning she could be anywhere, no doubt becoming more and more ensconced within that dazzling, decadent place with every second that passed.

So he’d gone home, only to end up back to the building housing the Amelia Brandt Dance Academy so often it was practically a second home. All to no avail.

Now he’d reached the end of his patience. If it took for him to stage a sit-in in order for Amelia Brandt herself to tell him where Nadia was, then that was what he’d do.

Then a flutter of movement appeared at the window. A flicker of dark hair, a press of a pale hand. It was doubtless all in his head, some desperate manifestation of his desire, but he was through the cracked front doors and up the rickety stairs before he even knew he was moving.

It was too late before he remembered that at some point on Tuesdays the studio took seniors pole-dancing—and that he might be about to witness something no man in his prime ever should—because he’d already pushed through the studio doors.

Music filled his ears. Music and giggles and the sound of a hundred elephants thundering across the floor. But the daylight pouring through the windows had hit him right in the eyes. A hand as a shield, he blinked away the spots, and then promptly forgot how to breathe.

For there she was, chatting and laughing with a tall lean woman in black while a bunch of little girls in ridiculous pink tutus went mad in the background.

Nadia.

He was sure he hadn’t said her name, that his thought had been enough to capture her attention. As her ever-dancing hands stilled, her pointing toes lay flat against the floor. And she turned.

Ryder might as well have been slammed across the head with a plank as in the next moment his life flashed before his eyes. Only it wasn’t his past. Not his father, or Sam, or the business that had taken him so far off course from his original dream as to make it unrecognisable.

It’s you,
Ryder thought, his future hovering in front of him like a juicy red apple just waiting to be plucked.
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.

And when she began to walk his way, he felt the same way he had the first time, stunned by the instant impact of her earthy beauty, the awareness that sprinted up and down his arms, the eyes that looked past the all the nonsense and consequential career and fancy wheels and right into his soul. A place he’d avoided for a very long time, a place he’d rediscovered because of her.

“Ryder,” she said, licking her lips as if his name were as sweet as honey. “I was just about to come and find you. Bearing gifts.”

At which point she glanced beside him. He followed her gaze to the pink velvet chaise longue, where beside her patchwork handbag sat a massive net bag filled with apples.

He coughed out a laugh, surprise and desire gathering within him like a perfect storm. When he turned back to her, his smile had a dangerous edge. There was only one gift he’d take from her, and it didn’t come in a bag.

It started with a touch. Although worried about for ever damaging the psyches of a plethora of sparkly, pink three-year-olds, Ryder held out a hand. Nadia took it. When he ran his thumb down the centre of her palm and she sighed, desire morphed into need. Need to have, to know, to
keep
.

“You’re back,” he said, his voice barely a hum.

She nodded.

“For good this time?”

“Depends.”

“On?”

“Well, I quit my job when I left, and then I quit my
next
job to come back here. And then the airline went and lost my luggage. So I am currently homeless and unemployed and without stuff. If there’s a way I can get those things sorted, then I’m home free.”

Feeling as if the pieces of his life were floating about his head, just waiting to settle into perfect place, Ryder said, “I may have the solution.”

“Really?”

“I always keep a spare toothbrush on hand, and you already look better in my shirts than I do.”

Nadia let out a breath and Ryder wondered how long she’d been holding it. Unable to hold back any more, he pulled her closer, close enough to see the sparks of hope and swirls of shifting desire in her dark eyes.

He spared a glance over her shoulder where a dance teacher—possibly even Amelia Brandt herself—was watching with one hand to her heart and another to her cheek.

“She’s the best dancer you’ll ever see, and you know it. Give her a job!” he barked.

The dance teacher jumped, nodded, and proceeded to herd the tutu brigade into some sort of line away from the big grumpy man.

But Ryder needed more privacy than that in order to do what he intended to do. He grabbed Nadia’s gear and tugged her out the door. Noise spilled from the floor below for the first time since he’d ever set foot in the joint, as what seemed like a never-ending stream of uni-student types in too-skinny jeans and ironically labelled T-shirts bundled into the dubious writers’ centre space on the second floor.

When it looked as if the procession would never end, Ryder took the only option. He pulled open the doors of the lift, which now swung happily at the top floor. And as he wrenched the old glass doors closed, then the rusty wrought iron bars behind them, the sounds of the stairwell lowered to a mere hum.

“Daring,” Nadia said, looking up through the glass ceiling to the old cables hulking above, before jumping up and down till the thing began to swing. “My kind of place.”

The moment her eyes dropped back to his, hot, hooded, and dark with desire, Ryder dropped her bag and his apples, dragged her into his arms and kissed her as if his life depended on it. Hell, it did depend on it. And by the way she kissed him back—clinging, desperate, pressing herself into every part of him—her life
had
to depend on it too.

When he pulled away the ground beneath his feet continued to shift, even as the lift settled to a halt. He tipped his forehead against hers, waiting until their laboured breaths found a matching rhythm, and then he looked inside himself for the words he’d spent days trying to shape into some kind of sense.

“I’d like to give it a shot.”

“What’s that?”

“Adoring you.”

At that she shuddered, her body melting against him, her head lying against his heart. Then she melted some more.

Intending to keep her there as long as he could, for ever sounded about right, Ryder ran his hand down her back, sliding his fingertips under the belt-line at her waist, her warm skin sending his heart rate thundering and turning his vision red. He kept it together, just, because there was more he intended to say. More she deserved to hear.

“I’ve been thinking for some time now that it’s a damn shame a woman like you hasn’t felt adored. And I want to be given the chance to be the man who adores you on a regular basis. Daily. Multiple times a day. Every minute. Every second.”

He pulled back to find Nadia’s head still tipped down. Her eyes closed. And when he propped a finger beneath her chin and tilted her face to his, he saw tears flowing down her cheeks. He leant in and kissed them away.

“Ryder,” she said on a gulp.

“Yes, Nadia.”

“I love you.”

Well
, he thought, his face splitting into a smile,
I should have just started with that
. “I know, sweetheart. This I do know. What I need to know, for sure, is if you’re sure about being back. I know how much getting that job meant to you—”

She shut him up with a finger to his lips, and it took everything not to suck it into his mouth and taste her. Every bit of her. By the darkness that spilled into her eyes he knew she was feeling it too.

Rather than tempt fate, she curled her finger away and lay her hand on his chest, right over the beating of his heart. “I got all the way there, right up to the reception desk, but I couldn’t check in. I couldn’t pretend, even for a second, it was where I was really meant to be. Easiest decision of my life was to come back. To find you, Ryder. To tell you—”

“I love you too, Nadia,” Ryder said.

It was Nadia’s turn to beam, her smile turning her dark eyes bright, the utter happiness lighting that beautiful face sapping his breath straight from his lungs.

And in that moment, Ryder Fitzgerald—long-time lost thing—found himself.

All because he’d found her.

And now he was never letting her go.

This time the kiss was slow, this time deep, this time he took his time to bring her to the edge of thought and feeling.
Because for the first time since he’d met her all they had was time. Years. For ever.

And then the lift began to move.

Nadia squealed, or at least Ryder hoped it had been her squeak that echoed in the small box.

“It works!” she said, laughing and spinning by that stage. “Near a year I’ve been teaching here and it’s never worked.”

“It’s a sign.”

“That while maintenance ignored Amelia’s pleas they responded to her lawyers?”

“That this big slumberous lump of a building wants us here. Together. On one condition,” said Ryder, waggling a finger at the lift as it drifted and screeched all the way to the ground floor. “No more dance lessons. Ever.”

“Deal,” said Nadia, sliding her hands around his waist as he pulled her deep into the circle of his arms, where she plastered herself against him, resting her cheek against his chest, her hip bumping his as the lift shook them side to side. “We can sway though. We’re good at that.”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice a rumble, “we sway just fine.”

They hit the ground with a thud and Ryder dragged the doors open, leaving them to spill into the sunshine.

Out on the street Nadia spread her arms, bags dangling from each hand, and closed her eyes and filled her lungs. With feet that seemed to float across the ground she twirled out into the middle of the deserted back street. “It feels like a brand-new day. Doesn’t it?”

“A brand-new world,” he agreed.

She looked over his car at him with a dark smile, a smile that spoke of cool sheets and hot limbs and getting all that as soon as possible, and said, “I do have a couple of hours before senior pole-dancing starts.”

He laughed so loud it echoed off the buildings around them. “You little con-artist. You do have a job.”

A shrug. Then, “For now. Until I find my real thing. Which I will do.”

Ryder took her scarf and looped it around her neck, tugging her closer. “Of that I have no doubt. And...until then?” he asked, in a voice loud enough only she could hear it.

A finger running down the spine of his car, she sauntered around the thing, every step an exquisite sensuous thing he’d never become immune to. Neither did he want to. “I don’t know—we could walk? Window-shop? Coffee?”

“I thought you hated coffee.”

“Please, when did I say that?”

“First time I asked you out.
Stunts your growth
were your exact words. Miss Nadia, were you playing hard to get?”

“Ha! I’ve never played hard to get in my life. You just...overwhelmed me.”

Ryder found it hard to imagine that this creature of his was overwhelmed by much in life, but he’d take it. “And now?”

“You still overwhelm me.” At his side now, Nadia lifted onto her toes and pressed a soft, sweet kiss on his lips. Then, holding his cheeks between her palms, said, “Lucky for you I appreciate the thrill of being up high looking down, on stage looking out, eyes closed or blinded by stage lights, nothing but a ribbon and practice between me and certain death. But you, gorgeous man, are the greatest thrill of my life.”

When she kissed him it was anything but sweet. It was deep, real, so far beyond a mere thrill.

“I’m thinking takeaway,” said Ryder. “And they rent rooms above the pub around the corner, right?”

“Man after my own heart.”

He held out an elbow, she slid her hand through the bend and rested her head on his big shoulder as together they walked down the thin Richmond street, sunlight filtering gently through the patchy clouds, the soft swish of their shoes on the crooked pavement in perfect time.

EPILOGUE

Nadia dodged the
piles of plasterboard and plastic sails hanging from the scaffolding as she headed out of the soft double doors and down the stairs of the old Richmond building she now called home.

From the second-floor landing she caught Amelia’s eye through the open doorway of the makeshift studio she was using while Ryder’s company decked out the new slick arts studio near his old place in Brighton.

Wrangling a group of teenagers, no doubt forced to attend class to get ready for the senior formal, Amelia beckoned Nadia inside mouthing,
Help me!
But Nadia waved the appeal away. Been there, done that.

She wrapped her thick scarf around her neck and tugged her beanie tight about her ears, then pushed open the brand-new, shiny red doors at the front of the building and jogged down the tidy steps. Once she hit the far edge of the footpath, she walked backwards and as always marvelled at how warm her building looked even in the winter light with the scrubbed façade, windows all now free of bars and gleaming with the light of endeavour, the neat row of apple trees and box hedges planted along the entire front.

Hands in pockets and shoulders lifted high to her ears with pride, she glanced up at the arched windows of the third floor; the one with the window seat at which she sat and sketched ideas of a weekend. The other up against which their huge king-size bed had been shoved that first night the place was officially theirs and had never been moved. The next one that gave the most light for Ryder’s vintage drafting table that he used in the morning while she slept in, the one that had been his mother’s before him.

To think in a few short months it would all be done. The bottom floor for Ryder’s new boutique firm—RF Renovations. The middle floor for her very own private studio—or her “swaying and swinging room” as Ryder called it. The top floor with its windows and beams, big industrial fans, crazy chandeliers and Ryder’s imaginings for the layout of their first home, just gorgeous and perfect.

To think how much
had changed since she’d made the choice to come home. After Vegas, she’d also made the choice to give her mother a break, because, no matter how tough the woman was, she mattered and always would. They were stuck with each other. Nadia had sat her mother down and told her exactly that and then had neatly put the onus on her mum to deal with it. Or not. Amazingly, she had. Slowly though. Kent women were stubborn after all.

“Hey, kiddo.”

Nadia spun on her heels to find Ryder coming up the street towards her with breakfast for the crew: a tray of coffee and a bag of bagels from the most
amazing
pub just around the corner. It had become their local. For coffee, and for occasional accommodations when they couldn’t wait for the restoration crew and/or dance students to vamoose for the night.

“Hey, handsome!”

Ryder’s beautiful face broke into a grin. She’d thought the man the most gorgeous male specimen on the planet in his slick suits and shiny shoes. Turned out in old jeans, long-sleeved T-shirt and plaster dust in his hair he was even better.

“Off to work?” he asked, leaning in for a kiss.

“And lucky I’m not late. You were meant to wake me,” she chastised.

“You looked too rumpled to move. I like you rumpled.”

Coming over all warm, she hooked a finger into the beltline of his jeans and tugged. “Rumpled will not endear me to my new boss.”

Ryder scoffed. “Your new boss adores you. The crazy, high-flying, death-defying acrobats you are choreographing adore you. I adore you. Now shut up and give me a kiss and get out of here. Or you’ll really be late.”

Nadia did as she was told, wrapping herself around her man while he held coffee and bagels out of her way.

“Here.” He gave her a coffee and she gave him one last kiss. “Go teach them a thing or two.”

“Planning on it,” Nadia threw over her shoulder.

“If they need to know how to sway—”

“I know who to ask!” she added with a laugh.

And even as the laughter faded, the smile stayed. Stuck. A permanent fixture. Like so much else in her life. Her extraordinary, adorable life.

* * * * *

Keep reading for an excerpt from CONFESSIONS OF A BAD BRIDESMAID by Jennifer Rae.