Two to Tango (Erotic Romance)

Genre:
 Contemporary Romance / Erotic Romance

Length:
  Full-length novel of 72,000 words or 250 pages

This is a complete, stand-alone novel, not part of a series. 

Due to sexual content, this book is not intended for readers under the age of 18.
 

Charlie
 

Because of my family, I was surrounded by beautiful, wealthy girls. Dating club members was against the rules, but I didn’t mind. I could break the rules to date a girl, and when the inevitable
relationship
problems came up, I could suddenly care about the rules and break up with her. Problem solved.

My twenties were all about working hard and playing hard. I never saw the point in settling down with just one girl, but then again, I’d never met a girl like Skye Evans.

She stomped into my life on a pair of long, lean, dancer’s legs. She wore a red dress, killer heels, and a whole lot of attitude.

I fell for her immediately.

But she had a complicated past. People had let her down, and the time she’d spent as a stripper made her distrustful of guys, especially rich ones. Like me.

Skye
 

The two girls standing before me wore the same costumes, but couldn’t be more different.

Adele was only ten, but in her stage makeup, she looked like a full-grown woman. A woman of power and influence.
Adele
. What a name. In my notes from the first day of dance class, I’d marked next to her name, “A as in Alpha.”

Little Adele also belonged to the group of Level A students—Level A on our sliding scale, because both of her parents were doctors. Her family paid the top rate for classes.

The other girl, Bianca, slumped in her pink leotard. Dressed in the exact same costumes, you shouldn’t be able to tell the rich girls from the poor ones.

But you can always tell.

“Sweetie, roll your shoulders back,” I instructed Bianca. I rolled mine back proudly to demonstrate.

Adele got behind Bianca and jerked the girl’s arms back playfully. “Like this!” Adele commanded.

Bianca straightened right up, the obedient Beta to Adele’s Alpha.

The wrinkles on the front of Bianca’s leotard smoothed out, and for an instant they were just two happy girls, horsing around to manage pre-performance jitters.

I had been as oblivious and carefree as them, once.

The stage manager, Roger, tapped me on the shoulder.

“Time,” Roger said.

He was a man of few words, so when he spoke, people listened. I wished I could be more like him, minus the bald head and round belly.

I gathered Adele and Bianca, along with the other thirteen students in their group, and put them in order of size. One of the older girls must have had a growth spurt, because when I looked across the row of heads, something was wrong. One dancer head, with its tightly-twisted bun of hair, stepped down instead of up.

The music changed and the girls filed out onto the brightly-lit stage. They pretended not to care about the welcoming applause. Such little professionals, my students. I beamed proudly.

The applause kept going. For an auditorium filled only with dance judges and parents, the applause was much louder and went on longer than I’d expected.

I couldn’t hear the music, which meant they couldn’t either. The girls missed the first bars of the song, and all but three started late. I clenched my jaw, held my breath, and tried to will them into harmony. The late starters caught up, and I let myself breathe.

The only thing ruining the performance for me was the eleventh girl, whose head went lower instead of higher.

The tenth girl, dancing to her left, was the one who’d sprouted up in height overnight. Of course she was one of the Level A students. That was so like one of
them
to change.

Rich people don’t fear change. There’s little that life can throw at them that can’t be solved with the liberal application of cash, lawyers, and more cash. They welcome change, calling it opportunity.

It’s the poor who fear change.

It was me who feared change. Me, who loved her job but barely got by from month to month. Me, who saw change for what it was: another step down.

~

After the performances of all three of my student groups, I gathered the costumes in a box.

My mother called, and I made the mistake of answering the phone.

“Everything’s coming together for me!” she said between puffs off her cigarette.

I tried to sound upbeat. “That’s great, Mom. You’re almost finished taking that night school course, right? What’s the subject?”

“Accounting.”

I held the phone away from my mouth so she wouldn’t hear me snort.

“I’m really good at it,” she said.

“That makes me happy. Sorry, but I have to go. I’m working tonight and the girls just finished their recital.”

She sighed. “I wish they paid you more. When are you coming to visit?”

Uh, when hell freezes over?

“Soon,” I lied. We said goodbye, and I picked up the box of dance costumes.

We turned off the green room lights and I followed Adele out to her mother’s vehicle.

My mind wandered to thoughts of the chocolate-covered pretzels I had waiting at my apartment.

“There’s Mom,” Adele said, skipping ahead of me clumsily in her sheepskin boots.

Adele’s mother, Mrs. Winfield stepped out in her high-heeled boots. The vehicle was one of those things you could go to war in. Of course.

I tried to hand her the box of costumes, but she wrinkled her nose and jumped back, arms fluttering at her sides.

“Those costumes reek to high heaven,” she said. “You need to put them in the back. Not the front. And I suppose I’ll have to drive with the sun roof open.”

It was only March, and dark out already—not sun roof weather. Whatever. Mrs. Winfield could go ahead and freeze her ass off to make a point about her superior sense of smell.

I breathed deeply and audibly over the box of costumes. “That’s the smell of hard work and winning,” I said. “There’s nothing wrong with sweat.”

We circled around to the back of the truck, where the glowing tail lights cast our faces in red light.

Adele did an impromptu twirl before us, nearly tripping over her own boots. I had to laugh. So what if I didn’t get paid much in my new career? I loved every minute of my job.

Adele kept dancing. “The clapping was too loud,” she informed her mother. “You guys out there in the dark almost ruined everything.”

Mrs. Winfield laughed—a dismissive sound.

Adele’s face crumbled.

I dropped the box on the pavement and grabbed Adele in a hug, tickling her armpits through her light jacket to make her squeal. “Don’t you blame the audience. You have to take responsibility for yourself, because no one else will. And as for tonight, you girls were perfect.”

“Really?” She gazed up at me with wide eyes.

“Perfect,” I said. “Nobody fell down, or tooted. You were perfect.”

Even without looking up, I could feel Mrs. Winfield’s disapproving glare. The Level A parents didn’t view coming in third place as
perfect
, and they didn’t like the instructors giving hugs. What had they called it on the formal complaint? Over-familiarity.

Adele’s mother opened the door at the back. The cargo area of the pseudo-military vehicle was already full of boxes. She let out an exasperated groan.

“We should have gone with the other costumes,” I said, because I couldn’t help myself. “Everyone could have thrown them in the washing machine, instead of having it all trucked over to your special dry cleaner.”

“Skye, I’ve heard more than enough about the costumes. Not everything has to be second-rate out of fairness. We’re not living in Cuba.”

She grabbed two boxes from her vehicle and tossed them to the ground. She hoisted the box of sweaty costumes into the new space with equal annoyance, then brushed imaginary dust off her hands onto her coat. Her camel-hued wool jacked probably cost more than my car.

Ignoring the boxes now on the ground, she said, “At least come this fall, everything is going to smell much, much better.”

I studied the grin on her face as my heart sunk.

“You mean…?”

“Yes,” she said triumphantly. “Adele is already pre-enrolled at The Cedars. They’re bringing in a very prestigious instructor.” She looked me up and down, from my well-worn sneakers to my three-seasons-old jacket. With the force of a final blow, she said, “An instructor from New York.”

Adele, who’d been twirling while listening, began to whine. “Not The Cedars! I don’t want to dance at the stupid club! Everyone there is mean, and they yell, and they’re always washing the floors so they’re slippery! Mom-I-don’t-wanna!”

Mrs. Winfield gave her daughter a stern look. Through clenched teeth, she said, “Are you ten, or are you two?”

Adele shook her clenched fists and pursed her lips.

“That’s what I thought,” Mrs. Winfield said.

“Are you sure about The Cedars?” I stammered. “I thought their dance program was still years away. Aren’t they renovating?”

She waved a hand. “The new wing is cancelled. City bylaws, whatever, who cares. The dance program is starting this fall.”

“I hope you’ll consider keeping Adele here at the Center. She gets along so well with the other girls.”

“I’m sure half of them will come over.”

“But… the funding …”

She rolled her eyes. “Have a bake sale. A car wash. I don’t know. I can’t solve the world’s problems.”

Adele stomped her foot. “I won’t go.”

I mouthed a silent thank-you to Adele.

Mrs. Winfield seemed to be waiting for something from me. What? For me to beg? Get down on my knees and beg her to write a check, so the girls whose families had nothing could still have their dreams? My throat closed against my words.

The woman in the pristine wool coat jingled the keys to her giant vehicle and fixed me with a look that said
change
was coming. Whether I liked it or not.

Change was coming.

Adele whined, “Mom, I want Skye. You know Skye is the best teacher. Everyone knows that.”

Ignoring her, Mrs. Winfield said to me, “They’re having an Open House at The Cedars tonight. That’s why everyone rushed out of here so quickly after the recital.”

“What’s an Open House?” I asked.

“That’s where they allow the public to come inside. It’s supposed to be for recruiting new members, but there’s food and wine, and you know what a town of lookie-loos this is. I’m certainly not going, since I’m already a member.” She gave me a casual nod. “You should go. It would be like Cinderella, at the ball. You might meet a nice young man of means, who’ll take care of you.”

I made an involuntary grunting noise. “I can take care of myself.”

“You’re twenty-nine,” she said. “Your expiration date is coming up.”

My jaw dropped open.

Mrs. Winfield slammed the cargo door shut and prodded her daughter around to the passenger side.

I stood and watched as they pulled out of the parking spot and circled around me on their way to the road. As they passed by, I could see Adele’s rosebud lips sticking out, tears glistening on her cheeks. My heart broke for her, being ripped out of the group she belonged to.

The truck drove away, two red eyes in the night, leaving me in the deserted parking lot.

At my feet were the two cardboard boxes Mrs. Winfield had left behind. I pulled out my key chain and shone the tiny flashlight on the boxes. Written on the top was the name of a local charity, and the word DONATION.

I flipped open the lid and found a gorgeous pair of stiletto heels. The soles were barely scuffed, and the shoes were my size. Beneath the shoes were neatly-folded clothes.

Looking around to make sure no one saw me, I picked up the two boxes and walked them over to the only car left in the parking lot of the community center.

These clothes were for charity?

I had barely enough money saved up to make it through the summer, during which my hours at the community center would be cut to part-time. If a person were to look at my bank account, they’d consider me charity.