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Now he knew why Polly had cut her hair short. And why she had that super-bright smile. And why she’d flinched when he’d mentioned dancing at a wedding: because her engagement to Harry, the producer of her show, had just been broken. Very, very publicly.
Thanks to Bianca, he knew what it felt like to be dumped in the full glare of the public eye. Celebrity Life had scooped Bianca’s plans before she could tell him that she was leaving him for someone else—a man who could still dance and help her win a World Championship trophy, at the point when everyone had thought that Liam’s career was over.
And he’d hated every single one of the pitying smiles that people had given him afterwards. Every single one of the platitudes mouthed at him. They hadn’t had a clue how he’d felt. How hurt and angry and resentful. And how relieved, in a weird way: because being brave for Bianca’s sake and pretending that he felt just fine had become so, so wearing.
He’d bet it was just the same for Polly. A mixture of misery and anger and all kinds of unwelcome emotions. So, no, he wouldn’t tell her that he knew about the break-up. He’d spare her the pity party.
But he wasn’t going to go easy on her, either. That wouldn’t be doing her any favours; she needed to work hard if she was going to stay in the competition. And staying in the competition, he thought, might just be better for her confidence and her self-esteem than anything else right now.
Polly was outside the dance studio at five to eight the next morning. When she rang the intercom, Liam buzzed her in.
‘So, did you like any of the songs I sent you?’
‘Yes. But they’re a bit—well, old-fashioned. The kind of thing my grandparents would listen to.’
‘You’d be surprised at how popular they are among people in their twenties. They’re easy to dance to.’ He shrugged. ‘I have a friend who’s a wedding DJ and he sends people to me to choreograph their first dance. Sometimes they have a song in mind; if they don’t, that’s the list I usually send them.’
Their first dance. Polly couldn’t help flinching. She could see that Liam noticed, but was grateful that he didn’t ask why. Though she had a nasty feeling that someone must’ve told him. Or maybe he’d seen the story in one of the weekend papers. Not that she’d been able to face looking through them herself, but she was pretty sure they would’ve run the story about When Harry Dumped Polly. Especially as she was in something as high-profile as Ballroom Glitz.
She only hoped that the interviewer in Step by Step, the Thursday evening programme that followed the couples and their training, wouldn’t ask her about it. Because she really, really didn’t want to talk about Harry and Grace.
‘Right. Time for training. Show me the steps you learned yesterday.’
She took a pair of shoes from her bag and showed them to him. ‘Are these OK?’
‘As long as they’re comfortable, yes.’ He gave her a guarded look. ‘If you’ve forgotten the steps, just say. Don’t waste time.’
‘I haven’t forgotten,’ she said, giving him another glower as she changed her shoes. ‘There’s no need to be snippy with me.’
He said nothing, just raised an eyebrow.
‘Right leg back, left leg back, step right to the side, bring both feet together,’ she said, talking herself through the sequence. ‘Back, back, side, close. Slow, slow, quick-quick.’
‘Can you remember the hold?’
‘I might be a novice dancer,’ she said crisply, ‘but credit me with a little intelligence. If I can’t remember something, I’ll ask you.’
He inclined his head but didn’t smile or try to mollify her. ‘The hold?’
‘Left hand, the vee and the butterfly fingers,’ she said, doing it. ‘Right hand, up and with my fingers over yours and my thumb round yours.’
‘Good.’ He’d clearly already cued up the music, and this time used a remote control to switch it on. ‘Let’s go.’
Her skin tingled where it touched his, flustering her into missing a couple of steps. Liam gave her a speaking look.
‘Sorry,’ she mumbled.
‘Let’s start again.’
This time, something seemed to click; she was still incredibly aware of his body, his closeness, but this time it meant that her movements dovetailed with his. Connected. Going round the dance floor seemed entirely natural. By the time the music stopped, she felt as if she’d actually achieved something. And she loved that feeling.
‘I’ll teach you the next step after coffee,’ Liam said.
‘Not one of the spinning-round steps?’ she asked. Right now she couldn’t ever see herself being able to manage that.
‘Not today. Though you will be doing that pretty soon. And you’re talking either about a spot turn or a pivot.’
Polly placed her palm horizontally and whooshed it just above her head. Just so he’d know she didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.
‘Message received and understood,’ he said.
And then he smiled.
There was a funny feeling in the pit of Polly’s stomach. Not the same feeling she’d had when Harry smiled at her, all warm and safe; this wasn’t safe at all. It was something dangerous. Something she couldn’t cope with.
She fell back on her standby—a super-bright smile—and followed him into the kitchen. This time he took three mugs from the cupboard.
‘Three mugs?’ she asked.
‘One’s for Amanda,’ he explained. ‘My PA. She keeps things running for me. Well, part time. She works for me between the school runs.’
As if on cue, a woman with wild, curly red hair walked in. ‘He’s a slave-driver. My advice would be, don’t let him get away with a thing.’ She smiled at Polly. ‘It’s great to meet you, Polly Anna. I’m Amanda. My kids love you on Monday Mash-up, so we’d be voting for you even if you weren’t dancing with Liam.’
Polly’s eyes were stinging, and she blinked back the tears. She wasn’t going to start crying just because someone was being kind to her. OK, so she’d miss the team on Monday Mash-up—she’d miss them horribly, because Danny, Mike and Charlie had become good friends over the last couple of years—but life had to go on.
Just as long as Harry didn’t put Grace in Polly’s place on the show, as well as her place in his life.
She lifted her chin, straightened her back and gave Amanda a full megawatt smile. ‘Thank you.’
‘Pleasure.’ Amanda waved a packet of chocolate biscuits at Liam. ‘Supplies. And I brought more proper coffee, because I bet you forgot.’ She smiled at Polly. ‘I’ll let you into a secret. Liam has a horribly sweet tooth. If he starts being bossy, just give him cake. Then he’ll be nice to you.’
This time, Polly’s smile was genuine.
‘I like Amanda,’ she said when Liam led her back into the dance studio.
‘So do I.’ He paused. ‘And I’m not bossy.’
‘You are.’
‘No, I’m focused,’ he corrected. ‘Which is how I need you to be, right now, because I’m going to teach you the balance step.’
‘Balance step,’ she repeated. How ironic, for someone as clumsy as her. She was only surprised that nobody had suggested she tried tightrope-walking on the ‘Challenge Polly Anna’ slot. Or maybe they had, and Harry had nixed it because he hadn’t wanted her to fall off and break her neck or something. ‘OK. I’m listening.’
‘Instead of moving two steps forward or back, we stay where we are and shift our weight—just a gentle side-to-side rock, really—and then we do the side-close.’ He talked her through it.
Polly just couldn’t get the hang of it and kept swaying the wrong way. Which made things worse, because then she ended up even closer to Liam, physically. Every time she touched him, even through layers of clothes, it made her feel as if the air were crackling round her.
Which was ridiculous.
She barely knew the man. And he wasn’t sweet and gentle, the way Harry was. He was driven and intense. Scary. And it threw her when he switched between being Mr Nice for the cameras and Mr Snippy, who only just managed to suppress his impatience with her inability to pick up the steps. Which was the real Liam?
‘You’re panicking,’ Liam said.
Yeah. He could say that again.
‘OK. Back to basics. This is exactly the same as we did before, except your feet don’t move for the first two steps—you just shift your weight as if you were taking a step to the side and then back again. Right, left, right, close.’
It took her a while, but finally she got the hang of it. And then, without even the hint of a break, he took her through the promenade step. ‘We’re both going to turn to face the same way, point our arms out together, and step forward. Remember you always move your right foot first, then your left.’ He demonstrated. ‘Then we turn to face each other again, step right to the side, and close with your left foot.’
Tricky. She had to think about which was her left and which was her right. And she got it wrong half the time.
He sighed. ‘Am I going to have to tie ribbons to your wrists, or something? Red for left and white for right?’
No way in hell was he getting close to her wrists. ‘There’s no point. I’d only get it mixed up with red for right and left for lemon,’ she said sweetly.
He muttered something that sounded like, ‘Give me strength.’
But eventually Polly got the hang of it. And when she stopped concentrating so hard, she was surprised to discover that she was actually having fun. She loved the music he was playing—an old Van Morrison track with a strong beat that even she could hear clearly—and she was finally moving around the floor with him, so easily that her worries about tripping over him faded into the background.
‘I love this,’ she said, smiling. ‘I totally get why you do this for a living.’ She hummed along to the song.
When Liam realised that she’d changed the lyrics to talk through what she was doing—not to guide herself, but almost celebrating the steps—he couldn’t help smiling back. ‘Yes. It’s everything. The music, the steps, how it all blends together and your body’s in tune with the whole lot.’
She looked up at him, her brown eyes sparkling with pleasure. At that moment, Liam felt connected with her. Really connected. The beat of the music was thrumming through his body, and he knew it was the same for her.
It would be oh, so easy to dip his head, find out if that lush mouth was as soft and sweet as he suspected …
And he’d really need his head examined. This was a complication he didn’t want or need. Yes, they could keep dancing, but he needed some space. Now. He stopped. ‘OK. That’s us done for today. See you tomorrow.’
She blinked for a moment, as if she’d lost herself in the dance, then gave him one of her super-bright smiles, making him feel obscurely guilty. ‘See you tomorrow,’ she echoed.
The next morning, Polly arrived at the studio with a bag of Danish pastries. ‘There’s a nice bakery round the corner from my flat, and as you’re providing the coffee I thought this could be my contribution. I’ll leave a note in the kitchen so Amanda knows to help herself, too.’ She gave him an arch look. ‘Plus the sugar might sweeten your mood so you don’t get stroppy with me this morning.’
‘Don’t push it. We’re doing corners this morning. I’ll have to be stroppy with you.’
But she did at least get a smile out of him. Score one to Polly Anna, she thought.
Except that smile did things to her. If it weren’t so ridiculous, she’d be tempted to think that this was the kaboom Harry had described. Her stomach was all fluttery, her skin felt too tight and her temperature was definitely a couple of degrees above normal. Worse still, it made her more aware of him physically. Of how small the gap was between their bodies when they danced. Of how easy it would be to close that gap. Of what it would be like to be skin to skin with him.
And the whole thing sent her into flat spin. It had taken her months to fall for Harry, and even then she hadn’t felt a physical reaction towards him like this. How could she feel this sort of thing about Liam, when she barely knew him?
She really had to get this under control. He was her dancing partner for the show. No way could she let him become anything more than that. Her heart had already been stomped on; and she had no intention of letting anyone near her until she’d got some good, solid defences in place. Defences that would mean nobody could hurt her again, the way that Harry had.
CHAPTER FOUR
EVERYTHING was fine until Saturday.
Saturday.
The day Polly had been trying not to think about.
Liam was busy during the day, so they weren’t doing their training session until the evening. And she’d already refused offers to spend time with her friends—even her best friend—because she really didn’t want to spend the day brightly talking about anything else except the elephant in the room. Thankfully they’d accepted her excuse that she couldn’t make it because she was training. It was true; she’d simply been a little creative with the timing of her session.
She spent the day scrubbing her flat, to keep herself busy. With long rubber gloves that hid her wrists. She wasn’t going back there. Ever again. She was older and wiser, and she’d learned to focus on the positive side; even if there was one dusty droplet of water in her glass, as far as she was concerned it was still partly full instead of mostly empty. And she had a lot to be thankful for. She had a roof over her head, even if her flat was tiny; she had a job, even if it was a bit precarious; and she had friends who loved her as much as she loved them.
Three more hours until training. Liam had said they were going to start their foxtrot routine today and spend the rest of the week polishing it. Learning the routine would definitely take her mind off today. Even though he could lead her through it, she’d still have to remember all the sequences and count her way through until she was confident.
Somehow she managed to fill the time until she could head for Liam’s studio. He made no comment when she walked in, so either he didn’t know what today was or he’d decided to be kind and not mention it. And she managed to smile until he switched on the music and the first notes filled the air.
She recognised it instantly.
Oh, no. Of all the songs he could’ve picked, why did it have to be this one?
She steeled herself as the vocals began. It didn’t matter. She could do this. Think positive, she told herself; at least she knew the song, so that was one less unfamiliar thing to deal with. And she forced herself to listen to Liam, let him talk her through the routine before they started dancing together.
Liam looked at Polly through narrowed eyes. She was crying. Silently, but she was still crying, the tears brimming over her lashes and rolling unchecked down her face.
What was going on? He wasn’t asking her to do anything more difficult than she’d done in the last week.
‘OK. Four basics, then two promenades,’ he said. Once she’d started the routine, she’d realise it wasn’t going to be problematic and everything would be fine. She’d stop crying.
He hoped.
To his relief, she didn’t miss a single step.
‘Corner,’ he said, glancing swiftly at her. Then he realised that her tears hadn’t stopped. At all. She was still silently weeping, the tears running unchecked down her cheeks.
This time, she stumbled. ‘Sorry.’ Her voice was quavery.
And then she pulled her hands away from the ballroom hold so she could cover her face with them. Her shoulders were shaking, and Liam could hear that she was trying to gulp back the sobs.
He couldn’t ignore this any more and try to make her dance on, regardless. Even though he wanted to back away, because seeing such raw, painful emotion bursting through someone’s defences made him feel incredibly uncomfortable.
The Polly he’d come to know wasn’t a crier. Whatever had upset her had to be something major. She needed a shoulder to cry on—and right now he was the only person who could fill that role, whether he liked it or not. He had to make the effort.
‘Polly,’ he said softly.
She gulped. ‘Sorry, I forgot where I was. What’s the next step?’
‘Polly, you can’t cry and dance.’
‘I’m not crying. I’m fine.’
He reached out and brushed a tear away with the pad of his thumb. ‘No, you’re not. And I’m being a selfish jerk, trying to pretend this’ll all go away if I ignore it.’ He bit back a sigh. ‘What’s wrong?’
How could she tell him? Once Liam knew about Harry, she knew he’d treat her differently and she couldn’t bear that. She didn’t want his pity.
She shook her head, unable to put it into words.
‘We need a break. Go and put the kettle on,’ he said.
She knew Liam was giving her some space, and she was glad of the chance to scrub her face with a tissue and breathe hard enough to stop the tears.
When the kettle was just about to boil, he walked into the kitchen and handed her a bar of chocolate.
‘Where did you get this?’ she asked.
‘Amanda’s secret stash. I’ll replace it before she gets in on Monday, but right now I think your need is greater.’
His kindness made her want to cry all over again. She knew her tears had made him uncomfortable. The awkwardness had been written all over this face. She’d expected him to be caustic about her inability to concentrate—and now he’d done this. Camera Liam. Or was this Real Liam?
‘Thank you.’ She bit into the confectionery. The rush from the sugar and the cocoa felt good.
He took over making the coffee. ‘Better?’ he asked, handing her a mug of coffee.
‘Yes,’ she lied.
‘So are you going to tell me?’
She dragged into a breath. ‘I know you’ve been working really hard on the choreography, and I’m being ungrateful, but I …’ She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. I just can’t dance to that song.’
‘It brings back bad memories for you?’ he guessed.
‘Not bad memories, exactly.’ She grimaced. ‘It’s something that never happened.’
He frowned. ‘I’m not with you.’
She lifted her chin. ‘If I tell you, I don’t want you to treat me any differently. No pity, no condescension, no cotton wool. OK?’
Liam knew exactly where she was coming from. After the accident, pity was all he’d faced. He’d been at screaming point. And then, when Bianca left him, there had been more and more of the same. People seemed to stop seeing him for himself; it was as if he’d had the word ‘victim’ tattooed across his forehead.
‘OK. It’s a deal,’ he promised, knowing already what she was going to tell him. That she’d been dumped. And somehow he’d have to find some words to bolster her.
‘Today’s my wedding day.’
Her wedding day? Now that he hadn’t expected. The gossip rag hadn’t said that her engagement had ended only a few days before she was supposed to get married—just that Harry had broken up with her and gone off with someone else.
Liam stared at her in shock. He’d had no idea that she’d been coping with this much of a mess.
‘Well, it was going to be my wedding day,’ she amended, ‘until last week.’
Liam still didn’t have a clue what to say. And that only added to the guilt he felt about not comforting her earlier.
‘And this—’ she lifted her chin and treated him to her brightest smile, which he knew now was a sure sign that her heart was breaking ‘—this was going to be the song for the first dance.’
‘I’m sorry. If I’d known, I would’ve picked something different.’
‘I should’ve said something. Except it wasn’t on the list of songs you sent me, so I assumed it wasn’t one you were thinking about using.’ She lifted one shoulder. ‘I didn’t want to tell you before because—well, I didn’t want you to start pitying me. I don’t want to be this pathetic, needy creature.’
‘I know where you’re coming from. And you’re not pathetic.’ Needy, yes. But who was he to judge? ‘I saw the stuff in the paper. But I had no idea he’d called it off this close to the wedding. That’s rough on you.’
‘It could have been worse. He could have just not turned up at the church today. At least he told me himself and he didn’t leave it up to his best man or what have you to do the deed.’
Though Harry hadn’t spared her those terrible photographs in the gossip rags, Liam thought. The photographs of Polly with empty eyes, looking as if her world had ended.
‘Or, worse still, he could have married me today and then realised it was a mistake, so we would’ve had a legal mess to sort out as well as an emotional one.’
Yeah. Liam knew all about that one. Been there, done that, got the rights to the merchandising.
And she must really, really love the guy if she could come up with all these excuses for his behaviour when he’d clearly hurt her so badly.
‘There’s an awful lot to sort out if you cancel something at the last minute,’ Liam said. ‘I hope he was the one who had to ring up and cancel everything.’
She shook her head. ‘No, that was my job.’
Liam whistled. The guy had called it off, but he’d still made Polly pick up all the pieces? ‘What a selfish …’ The curse slipped out before he could stop it.
‘It’s not like that. Harry’s a creative.’
‘He’s a what?’ This was like no excuse Liam had ever heard before.
‘He produces TV programmes. He’s great at putting things together and seeing where the real story is behind things, but he’s really not very good at organising things outside a TV studio. So if I sort it out, at least I know it’s done and nothing’s been forgotten.’ She shrugged. ‘Anyway, I was the one who organised the wedding, so I had all the contacts. It was much easier for me to be the one to cancel things.’
She was underplaying it, Liam knew. Because Harry had left her to make all the explanations as well as cancel all the arrangements.
‘It’s still unfair that he left it to you to sort everything out. And to tell everyone.’
‘If I’d left it to him, Liam, he wouldn’t have done it. Someone else would’ve had to do it,’ she said quietly.
The penny dropped: Harry would’ve talked his new girl into sorting things out for him. Cancelling the wedding to her predecessor. Liam winced. ‘Oh, Pol.’
‘No pity. You promised,’ she reminded him.
‘No. But I don’t get why he’d do that to you.’
She sighed. ‘He couldn’t help falling in love with someone else. He hated himself for breaking up with me. But he couldn’t live a lie. We would both have ended up being miserable.’
‘Are you telling me you’re still friends?’ Liam couldn’t keep the note of disbelief from his voice.
‘Not right now, no. But one day, we will be. We were friends before we got engaged. Good friends. We liked each other.’ She swallowed hard. ‘I thought that would make the difference and would mean that our marriage would last, because we had more than just some kind of fleeting passion. Except …’ She shrugged. ‘That wasn’t what he wanted in the end. He wanted the kaboom.’
He didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. ‘What’s the kaboom?’
‘Harry says it’s like fireworks going off in your head when you meet the right one.’
‘Hmm.’ Liam couldn’t remember now if he’d had fireworks in his head with Bianca. Everything that came afterwards had kind of wiped that out. ‘So is that why you’re not working on Monday Mash-up any more?’
She nodded. ‘I resigned. I couldn’t face it.’
‘Seeing him every day, you mean?’
‘No.’ She coughed. ‘Seeing the producer’s new assistant.’
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