She slid a pair of beige shoes with small heels from under the couch and buckled herself in. Without looking up, she said, “You look hot.”

“Why, thank you.”

His instinctive response echoed through the big room. The only evidence she’d even heard him was the brief pause of her fingers at the last buckle before she slid her hands up her calves to swish her skirt back to the floor.

Was he flirting? Of course he was. Till that moment he’d never imagined the day he might wish he’d come back as a pair of shoes. But this woman was … something else. She was riveting.

“If I were you I’d lose the jacket, Mr Fitzgerald. It gets hot in here—hotter still once we get moving—and I don’t fancy having to catch you if you faint.”

Calling her bluff, he slid his jacket from his shoulders and laid it neatly over the back of the velvet chair. He tugged his loosened tie from his neck and tossed it the same way. Then he rid himself of his cufflinks and rolled his shirtsleeves to his elbows. Moves more fit for a bedroom than a dance hall.

Her gaze was so direct as she watched him losing layers it only added to that impression, and he felt himself break out in a sweat.

Then, with no apparent regret, she looked away, leaving him to breathe out long and slow. She pulled her hair off her face and into a low ponytail, lifted her chin, knocked her heels and Scheherazade was no more. In her place stood Dance Teacher.

Which was when Ryder remembered why he was there and really began to sweat.

Dear Reader

I am such a lover of dance movies I can’t even tell you.

Singin’ in the Rain, Strictly Ballroom, Girls Just Want to Have Fun, Footloose, Shall We Dance? … I’ve seen Dirty Dancing at the movies six times and a bazillion times since. And, boy, could I go on! But this is just going to end up being a list of the best dance movies ever if I don’t contain myself.

So let’s just say, despite all that fabulous training, it never occurred to me to write a story about dance. Then one day an image shimmied into my head—probably when I was in the shower, which is when all my best ideas spring forth.

Night—summer—sultry—sky on the edge of rain … And a man—tall, dark, smooth—in suit and tie, glowering up at a dilapidated building. This man is important, busy. He likes things neat and tidy and doesn’t have time to waste. And yet there he is, about to head inside to take the first of what will no doubt be an interminable string of dancing lessons. Enter the dance teacher—exotic, hypnotic, raw where he is smooth, and as snarky as she is sensuous. I sooo wanted to see how that dance turned out!

If you love dance movies as much as I do I hope Ryder and Nadia’s tale will take you somewhere familiar and new all at once. Then come and chat about your favourite dance stories with me on Twitter (ally_blake) and Facebook (Ally Blake, Romance Author), or e-mail me at ally@allyblake.com

Till then, happy reading (and dancing)!

Ally

www.allyblake.com

The Dance Off

Ally Blake

www.millsandboon.co.uk

In her previous life Australian author ALLY BLAKE was at times a cheerleader, a maths tutor, a dental assistant and a shop assistant. In this life she is a bestselling multi-award-winning novelist who has been published in over twenty languages, with more than two million books sold worldwide.

She married her gorgeous husband in Las Vegas—no Elvis in sight, although Tony Curtis did put in a special appearance—and now Ally and her family, including three rambunctious toddlers, share a property in the leafy western suburbs of Brisbane, with kookaburras, cockatoos, rainbow lorikeets and the occasional creepy-crawly. When not writing she makes coffees that never get drunk, eats too many M&Ms, attempts yoga, devours The West Wing reruns, reads every spare minute she can, and barracks ardently for the Collingwood Magpies footy team.

You can find out more at her website, www.allyblake.com

This and other titles by Ally Blake are available in eBook format from www.millsandboon.co.uk

For my Dom, whose snuggly hugs, gracious affability and eternal wonder makes my heart go pitter-pat each and every day.

Love you, baby boy.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Epilogue

Excerpt

ONE

Loose gravel coursing through the gutter slid and crackled beneath Ryder Fitzgerald’s shoes as he slammed shut his car door.

Through the darkness of late night his narrowed eyes flickered over the uneven footpath, the barred windows of the abandoned ground-floor shopfronts, past big red doors in need of a lick of paint, up a mass of mottled red brick, over deadened windows of the second floor. The soft golden light in the row of big arched windows on the third floor was the only sign of life on the otherwise desolate street.

He glanced back at his car, its vintage curves gleaming in the wet night, the thoroughbred engine ticking comfortingly as it cooled. Since the closest street lamp was non-operational—tiny shards of broken glass pooled around its base, evidence that was no accident—only moonlight glinted off the black paint.

And he silently cursed his sister.

Glowering, Ryder pressed the remote to double-check the car alarm was set, then he glanced at the pink notepaper upon which Sam’s happy scrawl gave up a business name and a street address, hoping he might have read the thing wrong. But no.

This run-down structure in one of the backstreets of Richmond housed the Amelia Brandt Dance Academy. Inside he would find the woman hired by his sister, Sam, to teach her wedding party to dance. And considering in two months’ time he’d be the lucky man giving her away, apparently that included him.

A wedding, he thought, the concept lodging itself uncomfortably in the back of his throat. When he’d pointed out to Sam the number of times she’d done her daughterly duty in attending their own father’s embarrassment of weddings, she’d just shoved the address into his palm.

“The instructor is awesome!” she’d gushed. Better be, he thought, considering the price of the lessons he was bankrolling. “You’ll love her! If anyone can get you to dance like Patrick Swayze it’s her!”

Ryder, who’d had no idea who Sam was talking about, had said, “Life-changing as that sounds, there’s no way I can guarantee my attendance every Thursday at seven for the foreseeable future so you’ll have to have your dance lessons without me.”

Lucky for him, Sam had gleefully explained, the dance teacher had agreed to private lessons, any time that suited him. Of course she had. Sam had probably offered the doyenne enough to lash out on a six-month cruise.

“Your own fault she’s so damned spoiled,” he grumbled out loud.

A piece of newspaper picked up by a gust of hot summer wind fluttered dejectedly down the cracked grey footpath in response.

Ryder scrunched up the pink note and lobbed it into an overflowing garbage bin.

He tugged at his cufflinks as he sauntered up the front steps. It was a muggy night, oppressive in a way Melbourne rarely saw, and he was more than ready to be rid of his suit. It had been a long day. And the very last thing he wanted to do right now was cha-cha with some grand dame in pancake make-up, a tight bun and breathing heavily of the bottle of Crème de Menthe hidden in the record player. But Sam was getting antsy. And he’d spent enough years keeping the antsy at bay to know revisiting the high-school waltz would be less complicated than dealing with one of his sister’s frantic phone calls.

“One lesson,” he said, wrenching open the heavy red door and stepping inside.

A Do Not Enter sign hung askew from the front of an old-fashioned lift with lattice casing. His eyes followed the cables to their origins, but all he saw were shadows, dust, and cobwebs so old they drifted lazily by way of a draught coming from somewhere it structurally ought not to.

Less impressed by the second, Ryder trudged up the steep narrow staircase that wound its way around the lift shaft, the space lit by a string of lamps with green-tinged glass so pocked and dust-riddled the weak glare made his eyes water.

And the heat only grew, thickened, pressing into him as he made his way up three floors—the ground floor apparently untenanted, the second floor wallpapered with ragged posters advertising student plays from years past. As it tended to do, the hottest air collected at the top where a faint light shone through the gap at the bottom of the door, and a small sign mirroring the one downstairs announced that the big black door with the gaudy gold hinges led into the Amelia Brandt Dance Academy.

Ryder turned the wooden knob, its mechanism soft with age. Stifling heat washed against his face as he stepped inside. He loosened his tie, popped the top button of his dress shirt and made a mental note to throttle Sam the very next moment he saw her.

The place appeared uninhabited but for the scent of something rustic and foreign, and the incongruously funky beat of some familiar R&B song complete with breathy sighs and French lyrics.

His eyes roved over the space—habitually calculating floor space, ceiling height, concrete cubic metres, brick palettes, glazier costs. The tall wall of arched windows looking out over the street appeared to be original and mostly in working order—he only just stopped himself from heading that way to check his car was still in situ. From above industrial-size fans hung still. A string of old glass chandeliers poured pools of golden light into the arcs of silvery moonlight streaming across a scuffed wooden floor.

Speckled mirrors lined the near wall, and to his right, in front of ceiling-to-floor curtains that made his nose itch, reclined a sad-looking row of old school lockers with half the doors hanging open, a piano, a half-dozen hula hoops in a haphazard pile on the floor, a row of bookshelves filled with records and sheet music in piles so haphazard and high they seemed in imminent danger of toppling, and lastly a pink velvet lounge—the kind a woman would drape herself over in order to be painted by some lucky artist.

Ryder took another step, his weight bringing forth a groan from the creaky old floor.

The music shut off a moment before a feminine voice called from behind the curtains, “Mr Fitzgerald?”

He turned to the voice as his earlier prediction shimmered to dust. In place of a grand dame past her prime, Scheherazade strolled his way.

Long shaggy dark hair, even darker eyes rimmed in lashings of kohl, skin so pale it seemed to soak in the moonlight. A brown tank top knotted at her waist, showing off a glimpse of taut tummy. An ankle-length skirt made of a million earthen colours swayed hypnotically as she walked. Feet as bare as the day she was born.

Ryder straightened, squared his shoulders and said, “I take it you’re the woman whose job it is to turn me into Patrick Swayze.”

She blinked, a smile tugging briefly at one corner of her lush mouth before disappearing as if it had never been. “Nadia Kent,” she said, holding out a hand.

He took it. Finding it soft, warm, unexpectedly strong. And so strikingly pale he could make out veins beneath the surface. Warmth hummed through him, like an electrical current, from the point where their skin touched and then she slid from his grip and the sensation was gone as if it had never been.

“You’re early,” she said, her voice rich with accusation, and, if he wasn’t wrong, shot with a faint American accent.

“A good thing, I would have thought, considering the late hour.” He caught the spicy scent again, stronger this time, as she swayed past.

“And whose idea was that?”

Touché.

Light as a bird, she perched on the edge of the long pink chair, her dark hair tumbling over her shoulders in dishevelled waves, her exotic skirt settling about her in a slow sway. And Ryder wondered how a woman who looked as if she’d been born right out of the earth had ended up in a gloomy corner of the world such as this.

With a flick of the wrist, she hiked her skirt to her knee, revealing smooth calves wrapped in lean muscle. She slid a pair of beige shoes with small heels from under the couch and buckled herself in. And without looking up she said, “You look hot.”

“Why, thank you.” His instinctive response echoed through the big room. The only evidence she’d even heard him was the brief pause of her fingers at the last buckle before she slid her hands up her calves to swish the skirt back to the floor.

Was he flirting? Of course he was. The woman was...something else. She was riveting.

While she didn’t even spare him a glance as she pressed herself to standing, poked a small remote into the waist of her skirt, and, shoes clacking on the floor, walked his way. “If I were you I’d lose the jacket, Mr Fitzgerald. It gets hot in here, hotter still once we get moving, and I don’t fancy having to catch you if you faint.”

He baulked at the thought, and for a split second thought he saw a flare of triumph in her eyes, before it was swallowed by the eyes so dark he struggled to make out their centres.

Calling her bluff, he slid his jacket from his shoulders, and, finding nowhere better, laid it neatly over the back of the velvet chair. Moth holes. Great. He tugged his loosened tie from his neck and tossed it the same way. Then rid himself of his cufflinks, and rolled his shirtsleeves to his elbows. Moves more fit for a bedroom than a dance hall. Her gaze was so direct as she watched him losing layers it only added to the impression.

Then with no apparent regret, she looked away, leaving him to breathe out long and slow. She pulled her hair off her face and into a low ponytail, lifted her chin, knocked her heels and Scheherazade was no more. In her place stood Dance Teacher.

Which was when Ryder remembered why he was there, and really began to sweat.

“Can we make this quick?” he said, recalling the reams of architectural plans curled up in the shelves by his bespoke drafting table at home. More awaited his attention inside the state-of-the-art computer programs back in his offices in the city. Projects of his and projects headed up by his team. Not that he had his father’s trouble in settling on one thing; he simply liked to work. And he’d rather pull an all-nighter than spend the next hour entertaining this extravagance.

Nadia Kent’s hands slid to her lean hips, the fingers at the top of her skirt dragging the fabric a mite lower. The faint American twang added a lilt to her voice as she said, “You have somewhere else to be at ten o’clock on a Tuesday night, Mr Fitzgerald?”

“There are other things I could be doing, yes.”

“So it’s not that you’re simply too chicken to take dance lessons.”

His eyes narrowed, yet his smile grew. “What can I say? I’m a wanted man.”

“I’ll take your word for it. Now,” she said, clapping her hands together in such a way that the sound echoed around the space and thundered back at them. “Where are your tights?”

“Excuse me?”

“Your dancing tights. Sam told you, I hope. If we are going to get any kind of indication of your aptitude you need to have the freedom of movement that tights allow.”

He knew she was kidding. Okay, so he was ninety per cent sure. But that didn’t stop hairs on his arms from standing on end. “Miss Kent, do I look like the kind of man who would have come within ten kilometres of this place if tights were required?”

He’d given her the invitation after all, yet when those sultry dark eyes gave him a slow once-over, pausing on the top button of his crisp white shirt, the high shine of his belt buckle, the precise crease of his suit trousers, his gut clenched right down low. Then her answer came by way of a smile that slid slowly onto a mouth that was wide, pink, soft, and as sensuous as the rest of her and the clench curled into a tight fist.

His voice hit low as he said, “If this is how you play with clients who are early, Miss Kent, I’d like to see how you treat those who are late.”

“No,” she said, “you wouldn’t.”

She slid the remote from her skirt, flicked it over her shoulder, and pressed. The sound of a piano tripped from hidden speakers, filling the lofty space; a husky feminine voice followed. “Now, Mr Fitzgerald, you’re paying premium to have me here tonight, so let’s give you your money’s worth.”

When she beckoned him with a finger, moving towards him all the same, saliva pooled beneath his tongue.

He held up both hands. “There is another option.”

There, he thought as a flash of anticipation fired in the depths of her eyes before she blinked and it was gone. But now he knew he wasn’t the only one sensing...awareness? Attraction? Definitely something...

“What do you say I pay you the full complement of lessons, and we call it a day? Sam needn’t ever have to know.”

“Great. Fine with me. But when you hit the dance floor on Sam’s wedding day, and all eyes are on you as you trip over Sam’s feet, what shall we tell her then?”

He wondered for a fanciful fleeting second if the woman might well be a witch. Less than five minutes and she’d struck him right in his Achilles’ heel.

“You done, Mr Fitzgerald? Because honestly, I teach two-year-olds who put up less of a fuss. You’re a big boy. You can do this.”

She lifted her arms into a graceful half-circle in front of her, an invitation for him to do the same. But when he did little more than twitch a muscle in his cheek, she swore—and rather colourfully—before she walked the final few paces, took his hands, and, with a strength that belied her lean frame, lifted them into a matching arc.

Up close he caught glints of auburn in her dark hair. A smattering of tiny freckles dusted the bridge of her nose.

Though his thoughts dried up as she fitted herself into the space between his arms and dropped his right hand to her hip. His palm found fabric, his fingers found skin. Smooth skin. Hot skin. Her skin.

She slid her right hand into his left and the heat of the night became trapped between them.

“Nadia.”

“Yes, Ryder,” she said, mirroring his serious tone.

“It’s been a while for me.”

The teeth that flashed within her smile were sharp enough to have his skin tighten all over.

“I’ll go easy,” she said. “I promise. You just have to trust me. Do you trust me, Ryder?”

“Not a bit.”

The smile became a grin, and then her tongue swished slowly across the edge of her top teeth before she tucked it back away.

Maybe not a witch, but definitely a sadist, if how much she was enjoying this was anything to go by. “Nadia—”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake! One last question. One. And then you shut up and dance.”

Stunning, sadistic, and bossy to boot. An audacious combination. And, as it turned out, dead sexy. Which was why he made sure she was looking right at him, those eyes dark with frustration, before asking, “Who on earth is Patrick Swayze?”

At that she laughed, threw back her head and let rip. Her hips rocked against his, sending a wave of lust rolling through him. Holy hell.

Her hand landed firmly against his chest. “Let’s not set the bar quite so high, hey, twinkle toes? My aim is to get you through three minutes of spinning on a parquet floor without embarrassing the bride.” Curling her fingers slightly, she said, “Deal?”

While his blood thundered through his veins at her scent, her nearness, the press of her hips, her hand at his heart, Ryder’s voice was rough as dry gravel as he uttered the fateful words, “Where do we start?”

“Where all great dance partnerships start: at the beginning.”

As the music continued to swell through the huge room she told him to listen to the beat. To sway with it. To let his hips guide him.

Gritting his teeth, he wished Sam had never been born. That helped for about five seconds before he gave himself a mental slug. While the kid might well be the one disruption in his otherwise structured life, she was also the best thing that had ever happened to him.

Eleven years old he’d been, only a few months beyond losing his own mother, when his father had remarried. A baby already on the way. Even as a kid, Ryder had understood what that meant—that Fitz hadn’t been true to his mother; a woman with such strength, such heart, such insight. Worst of all she must have known it too, even as she’d been sick and dying.

When he felt the familiar sense of loathing rise like poison in his gut, Ryder shoved the memories back into the deep dark vault from which they’d bled. And instead hauled his mind to the day Sam was born. The first time he’d looked into his little sister’s big grey eyes had changed everything. He’d vowed to never let her down, knowing already, even so young, that her father—his father—would disappoint, would deprive, would step over her to get ahead every chance he got.

And still, with that man as her paternal example, the sweet, clueless little kid was out there right now preparing to get married. Married—

“Concentrate!”

Ryder came to with a grimace as Nadia pinched the soft skin between his forefinger and thumb. He glared at her and she glared right on back. For a woman who felt like a wisp of air in his arms, she had strength to spare. “Honestly, Nadia, I don’t need this. Show me how to get into and out of a Hollywood dip without pulling a muscle and we’re done.”

“First,” she said, “it’s Miss Nadia. Dance protocol. And secondly, the sooner you stop bitching and pay attention, the faster the time will go. Cross my heart.” The scoop of her top tugged across her breasts as she crossed herself, the material dipping to expose the bones of her clavicle, the pale skin, the layer of perspiration covering the lot.

“Yes, Miss Nadia.”

She liked that, clearly, breaking out in a soft laugh. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

“You have no idea.”

She might have brushed against him, or maybe he’d imagined it. Either way, hard was suddenly an understatement.

And as the hour wore on it didn’t get any less so. Her hands seemed to be everywhere. Resting on his hips as she nudged them where she wanted them to go. Sliding slowly along his arms as she lifted them into the right position. Resting on his shoulders as she leant in behind him, pressing her knees into the backs of his to move his feet in time.

It was agony.

And not only because he wasn’t used to being on the receiving end of such terse instructions. Though there was that too. Several years in charge of his own multimillion-dollar architectural firm, a guy got used to being in charge.

There was also the occasional waft of heady scent from that cascade of dark hair to contend with. The temptation of that sliver of tight skin above her skirt. And those Arabian Nights eyes tempting, beckoning, inviting him beyond the dance to places dark and sultry.

And then a knowing smile would shift across her lush mouth just before she counted loud and slow as if he were three damn years old.

When she finally turned off the music, he asked, “We’re done?”

“For tonight.”

Then, as if they hadn’t just spent the better part of an hour about as close as a man and a woman could be without their lowlier natures taking over, she simply walked away.

At the pink chair she pulled the band from her hair and shook it out, running her hands through it until it was a tumble of shaggy waves. As if she’d sensed him watching she looked over her shoulder as she bound herself in a wrap-around cardigan, and looped a long silver scarf around her neck. “Next time dress in loose pants, a T-shirt, and bring something warm for after. Even though it’s crazy hot outside, your body will cool down dramatically after a workout like this.”

Ryder didn’t make any promises—he figured a fast cool-down was exactly what he needed. “I’ll walk you down.”

Her eyebrows disappeared beneath a wave of her hair. “Not necessary. I can handle myself. I’m a child of the mean streets.”

Richmond was hardly mean, but, growing up with a little sister with a knack for climbing out of bedroom windows, Ryder had a protective instinct that was well honed. “It’s eleven at night. I’m walking you down.”

She gave him a level stare from those gypsy eyes of hers, then with a smile and a shrug she said, “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”

“There’s that too.”

He nabbed his jacket and tie and held them over his elbow rather than rugging up. She noticed, but said nothing, clearly considering herself off the clock.

She moved to an ancient bank of light switches and flipped the place into darkness, leaving only patches of cloud-shrouded moonlight teeming through the big arched windows, and Ryder’s gaze was once again drawn to the soaring ceilings, the dusty chandeliers, the obnoxious industrial fans, and last but not least the fantastic criss-cross of exposed beams above, the kind people paid top dollar to reproduce.

Nadia cleared her throat and motioned him out, then with a yank of the door, a bump of the hip and a kick to the skirting board, locked up behind them.

He followed her down the stairs, the green glow of the old lights creating sickly shadows on the wallpaper peeling from the walls. But from topside looking down, the way the stairs curled around the shaft was actually great design. If the lift actually worked—

Irrelevant, he thought, with a flare of irritation. In fact the place should probably be condemned.

But Ryder didn’t need a team of crack psychologists to tell him why the building continued to charm. It was just the kind of place his creative mother would have adored. Her legacy to the world was her wonderful sculptures made from things found, abandoned, forgotten, lost. Her legacy to her son was the knowledge that following your heart led only to heartache.

Pressing the memories far deeper, he redirected his gaze to the exit.

“Will I see you next week?” Nadia asked as they spilled out of the door.

“I fear you will,” said Ryder as he turned on the cracked grey footpath to face her.

A step higher than he, she swayed sensually, hypnotically, from one foot to the other, as if moving to a rhythm only she could hear. Then she tipped up onto her toes bringing her face level with his. “Sam really has you wrapped around her little finger, doesn’t she? I liked her before, but now I have a new-found respect for the woman.”

Ryder sniffed out a laugh.

Then when she moved past him, jogging lightly down the stairs, he shoved his hands in his trouser pockets to keep himself from doing anything dangerous, like finding that slice of hot skin at her hips again and using it to drag her against him. Like losing his fingers in those crazy waves. Like ravaging that smart, soft, tilting mouth till she stopped smiling at him as if she were one up on the scoreboard.

But Ryder held fast.

Because, delightful as she was, his only objective for the next few weeks was to survive until Sam’s wedding without hiding her away in the top of a large tower where no man could hurt her. Getting all twisted up with the wilful and wily dance teacher, who he was fast gathering had become his sister’s friend, would not help his cause one bit.

So instead of drowning in her dark eyes, her lush lips, all that dark sensuality so close within reach, he looked up at the building, past the big red door and up to the big sleeping windows on the third floor. “Do you know who owns this place?”

“Why?” she asked.

Because he was changing the subject.

“Something about the beams,” he said, then glanced back to find Nadia halfway down the block.

“Don’t ask me,” she said over her shoulder. “I just work here.”

Ryder watched her until she was swallowed by darkness, leaving him alone on the cracked pavement with his car, his skin cooling quickly in the night air.

* * *

Nadia fell into bed a few minutes before midnight. Literally. Standing at the end she let herself flop, fully clothed, face first onto the crumple of unmade sheets.

And the darkness behind her eyelids became a blank canvas as her memories began to play.

She could hear the creak of the stairs cutting through the song she’d been free-styling to. Could feel the disorientation of being caught out, leaving her breathless, sweaty, off kilter. Back on solid ground, wiping away the worst of her glow—men sweat, women perspire, ladies glow, her austere grandmother had always said—she’d peeked through the curtains.

Expecting a male version of Sam—tall, big grin, two left feet, handsome, sure, but slightly goofy with it—she’d been critically mistaken.

Ryder Fitzgerald was tall but that was where the similarities ended. Handsome had nothing on the guy—he was simply stunning. In that midnight suit, snowy white shirt, not a hair out of place, not a scuff on his beautiful shoes, he was big, dark, sleek, and razor-sharp. And to top it off, shimmering at the edges of all that relentless perfection was an aura of rough and raw sex appeal, as if the guy left behind an unapologetic testosterone wake.

When she’d ducked back behind the curtain her hands had been shaking. Shaking! Her breaths had shortened. Her stomach had curled tight and hot while her blood had thwacked against the walls of her veins. And all she had been able to think was, Oh, no.

With the grace of hindsight she could hardly blame herself. It had been over a year since she’d broken up with her ex after all. And if she was honest, longer again since she’d felt anything near that kind of all out, sweet, sinful, wonderful, carnal reaction to a man. For a woman whose entire life had been spent learning her body, knowing her body, celebrating her body, the fact that her body had become some sort of neutral zone had been damn near unnatural.

So much so, in her more wavery moments she’d wondered if something more than a two-year relationship had been damaged during the whole sordid mess. Even more than a bruised ego and a crumpled career.

But no, she was a Kent, and Kent women didn’t cry over broken relationships—or broken bones for that matter. They got over it. Which she had admirably, thank you very much.

And then—right when she was doing so great, when she was dancing better than she had in her entire life, when she was mere weeks away from having the chance to reclaim all that she’d given up—right then was when the old flame had to flicker back to life?

Groaning, she rolled over and pulled a pillow tight over the thumping in her chest. It didn’t help. Even with her eyes wide open she could still feel the play of muscle beneath the man’s prosaic white shirt—hard, strong, a surprise. As had been his latent heat. All she’d had to do was touch him and she’d felt it pulsing beneath his skin. The exact same heat that had thudded incessantly through her for the entire hour straight.

Let it go, she thought. The man’s immaterial. And heard her mother’s voice.

Her mother who’d taken one look at Nadia when she’d turned up on her doorstep a year before with nothing but a suitcase and a sad story...and smiled. Not because she was glad to see her only child, oh, no. Claudia Kent’s own ballet career had been ruined over a guy, and, seeing the product of that mistake in the same sorry position, she’d found herself looking down the blissful barrel of karmic payback.

Nadia gripped the pillow tighter, this time to stifle the woozy sensation in her belly.

Her mother might be completely devoid of any maternal genes, but at least Nadia had learnt early on how to cope with rejection, which for a jobbing hoofer was pure gold. One couldn’t be precious and be a dancer. It was the tough and the damned. Ethel Barrymore had once said to be a success as an actress a woman had to have the face of Venus, the brains of Minerva, the grace of Terpsichore, the memory of Macaulay, the figure of Juno, and the hide of a rhinoceros. Working dancers needed all that and to be able to do the splits on cue.

Nadia had all that going for her and more. Yet if she didn’t nail the fast-approaching chance to get her life back in a few weeks’ time, she’d have deserved that contempt as she’d made the same mistake her mother did before her.

Well, not the exact same mistake—at least Nadia hadn’t fallen pregnant.

With that wicked little kick of ascendancy fuelling her, she reached into her bedside table and found her notebook. For the next few minutes she pushed everything else from her mind and sketched out the moves she’d added to her routine that night before Ryder Fitzgerald had arrived.

In her early twenties she’d lived on natural talent, on chutzpah, and maybe even on her mother’s name. A year out of the spotlight and that momentum was gone, and every day away younger, fitter, hungrier dancers were pouring into the void, eager and ready to take her spot. But what those hungry little dancers didn’t know was that this time Nadia had an edge—she didn’t simply want their jobs; this time she really had something to prove.

Sketches done, she slumped back to the bed. She’d shower in the morning. And since she didn’t start work till two the next day, she’d have time to attend a couple of classes of her own—maybe a contemporary class in South Yarra, or trapeze in that converted warehouse in Notting Hill. Either way she’d kill it. Because look out, world, Nadia Kent was back, baby.

Despite the late hour, the last whispers of adrenalin still pulsed through her system, so she grabbed her TV remote and scrolled through the movies on her hard drive till she found what she was looking for.

The strains of Be My Baby buzzed from the dodgy speakers in her second-hand TV, and grainy black and white dancers writhed on the screen. When Patrick Swayze’s name loomed in that sexy pink font, Nadia tucked herself under her covers and sighed.

Yep, things were still on track. So long as she didn’t do anything stupid. Again.

Sliding into sleep, she couldn’t be sure if it was her mother’s voice she’d heard at the last, or her own.

TWO

“So how was it? Was it amazing? Aren’t you glad I made you go?”

Ryder pressed the phone harder to one ear to better hear Sam, and plugged a finger in his other ear to ward off the sounds of the construction site. “It was...” Excruciating. Hot. A lesson in extreme—patience. He tugged his hard hat lower over his forehead, and growled, “It was fine.”

“Told you. And how cool is the studio? And the ceilings. I knew you’d love the ceilings.”

No need to fudge the truth there. The beams were stunning. Old school. The exact kind of feature he’d once upon a time have sold his soul to study. He glanced about the modern web of metal spikes and cold concrete slabs around him, the foundations of what would in many months be a sleek, silver, skyscraping tower—as far from the slumped thick red-brick building as architecturally possible.

His foreman waved a torch in his direction, letting him know the group he was there to meet—and who were about to make his day go from long to interminable—had arrived. Ryder tilted his chin in acknowledgement, holding up his finger to say he’d be a minute.

“She was a dancer,” Sam was saying. “A real one. A Sky High one.”

Struggling to picture sultry Nadia Kent in a pink tutu and a bun, Ryder asked, “Nadia’s a ballerina?”

A pause, then, “No-o-o. I told you. Sky High.”

“Sam, just for a moment, treat me as if I am an Australian human male and speak plain English.”

“Man, you need to get out more. Sky High is huge. A dance extravaganza. A kind of burlesque meets Burn the Floor meets Cirque du Soleil; all superb special effects and crazy-talented dancers. In Vegas!”

Ryder’s focus converged until it was entirely on his sister’s voice. “Sam, do you have a showgirl teaching your wedding party how to dance?”

“Oh, calm down. She wasn’t working some dive bar off the strip.”

And yet, picturing Nadia in fishnets, towering high heels and cleverly positioned peacock feathers wasn’t difficult at all. Her pale skin glowing in the dim light, dishevelled waves trailing down her bare back, those lean calves kicking, twirling, hooking... Ryder closed his eyes and pressed his thumb into his temple.

“She’s so graceful. And flexible,” Sam continued, clearly oblivious to his internal struggle. “She was warming up the other night when we came in and she can pull her leg up so far behind her she can touch her nose!”

Ryder’s eyes snapped open to search for a speedy exit from the conversation at hand. He had every intention of shrugging off the spark between them for Sam’s sake, but the kid sure wasn’t helping any.

Sam sighed down the line. “If I had half her talent, half her confidence, half her sex appeal—”

“Okay then,” Ryder said, loud enough to turn heads. A few of his tradies laughed before getting back to nailing, laying pipe, measuring, chatting about the previous night’s TV. “You like her. That’s great. I’m taking lessons, as you wanted. Let’s leave it there.”

Sam might have missed his earlier silence, but he read Sam’s loud and clear. He swore beneath his breath as the hairs on the back of his neck sprang up in self-defence.

Sam’s voice was an octave lower as she said, “She’s single, you know.”

“Got to go,” Ryder growled. “My foreman’s jabbing a finger at his watch so vigorously he’s going to pull a muscle.”

With that he rang off. And stared at his phone as if he couldn’t for the life of him remember which pocket he kept it in.

There was no misreading what had just happened there. The kid was trying to set him up. That wasn’t the way things were meant to go.

He was Sam’s rock. Her cornerstone. Which was why he’d been so careful to keep his private life separate from his life with her; so she didn’t go through life thinking all men were self-centred brutes like the father who’d failed them both.

Damn. Things were changing. Faster than he was keeping up. Faster than he liked.

For if he was Sam’s cornerstone, she was his touchstone. His earth. As the raw ingenuity he’d inherited from his mother had been progressively engulfed by his own well-honed single-mindedness, and the crushing need to succeed that his father had roused in him, being there for Sam, no matter what, had been his saving grace. It had proven he was different from the old man in the way that mattered most.

Without Sam to look out for what would his measuring stick be?

To ground himself, he glanced up at the twenty-feet-high rock-and-dirt walls surrounding him, and imagined what would one day be a soaring tower; a work of art with clean lines, perfect symmetry, and a hint to the fantastical that pierced the Melbourne sky. It was the exact kind of project he’d spent more than a decade aiming towards.

Not that it had always been his aim to draw buildings that split the clouds. His first internship had been a fantastical summer spent in beachside Sorrento with a renovation specialist by the name of Tom Campbell, bringing the grand homes of the Peninsula back to their former glories. The gig had been hard, back-breaking labour, but the heady scents of reclaimed materials had also made him dream more of his mother, and her sculpting of lost things, than he had since he’d been a kid.

Until the day his father sauntered in with the owner of the home Campbell was working on at the time. Fitz couldn’t even pretend it was accidental; the sneer was already on his face before he’d spied the hammer in Ryder’s hand.

No ambition, he’d muttered to his friend, not bothering to say hello to the son he hadn’t seen in two years. Kid’s always been a soft touch. Idealistic. Artistic mother, so what chance did I have?

Damn those bloody beams for stirring this all up again. Because no matter how he’d come to it, the very different work Ryder did now was vital and important. And as for the woman who’d stirred other parts of him, hooking into his darker nature, begging it be allowed out to play? All elements of the same slippery path.

No. No matter how his life might be changing, his crusade had not. So he’d have to be more vigilant in harnessing his baser nature than ever.

With that firmly fixed at the front of his mind, he went off in search of the project manager, foreman, head engineer, the council rep, union rep, and the jolly band of clients, perversely hoping for a problem he could really sink his teeth into.

* * *

It was nearing the end of a long day—Tiny Tots lessons all morning, Seniors Acrobatics after lunch, Intermediate Salsa in the evening, so Nadia happily took the chance for a break.

She sat in the window seat of the dance studio, absent-mindedly running a heavy-duty hula hoop through her fingers. Rain sluiced down the window making the dark street below look prettier than usual, like something out of an old French film.

Unfortunately, the day’s constant downpour hadn’t taken the edge off the lingering heat. Nadia’s clothes stuck to her skin, perspiration dripped down her back, and she could feel her hair curling at her neck.

And it wasn’t doing much for her joints either. She stretched out her ankle, which had started giving her problems during her earlier weights training at the gym. It got the aches at times—when it was too hot, or too cold, or sometimes just because. As did her knees, her wrists, her hips. Not that it had ever stopped her. Her mother had famously been quoted as saying, “If a dancer doesn’t go home limping she hasn’t worked hard enough.”

But it wasn’t her body that had spun her out of the dance world. That would have been way more impressive, tragic even—a sparkling young dancer cut down before her time by a body pushed to the edge...

Looking back, she wished she’d handled things differently. That, after discovering her dance partner boyfriend had dumped her, hooked up with another dancer in the show and moved the girl into his apartment—leaving Nadia without an act, without a guy, and without a home all in one rough hit—she’d acted with grace and aplomb and simply gone on. Perhaps after kicking him where it hurt most. But whether it was embarrassment, or shock, or just plain mental and physical exhaustion, she’d fled.

The only right decision she’d made was in going straight to her mother. Oh, Claudia’s gratification at finding her only kid tearful and dejected on her doorstep had been its usual version of total rubbish, but when her mother had told her to get over it and get back to work, it was exactly what Nadia had needed to hear.

Nadia went to work on the other ankle with a groan that was half pleasure, half pain. It meant she was dancing again. Meant she was getting closer to rekindling her life’s dream.

But for now, she had one more class to go before she could ice up—her duet with Ryder Fitzgerald. She figured it was about fifty-fifty he’d show up at all.

And then, with a minute to spare, his curvaceous black car eased around the corner and into her rain-soaked view to pull to a neat stop a tidy foot from the gutter. Ryder stepped from the car, decked out once again in a debonair suit. Nice, she thought. He’d ignored her advice completely.

And then he looked up.

Nadia sank into the shadows. Dammit. Had she been quick enough? Last thing she needed was for Mr Testosterone to think she’d been waiting for him, all bated breath and trembling anticipation. She nudged forward an inch, then another, till through the rain-slicked window she saw he’d already disappeared inside.

With a sigh she slid from the window seat and padded over to the door. She twirled the hoop away and back, caught it in one finger and tossed it in the air before turning a simple pirouette and catching the ring on the way down.

She tossed it lazily onto the pile on the floor, plucked dance heels and a long black skirt from the back of the pink velvet chaise, and stepped into it so as to make the slinky black leotard and fishnet tights with the feet chopped off more befitting of the job ahead. Wouldn’t want the guy to get the wrong idea.

Though if there was any man she’d met since coming home who she’d like to give the wrong idea... A week on and she could still remember exactly how good it had felt having the heavy weight of his hands on her hips. How lovely the strength in those arms, the hardness of his chest, the sure, slow, sardonic curl of his smile that made her lady parts wake up and sigh—

“Gak!” she said, shaking her head. Her hands. Stamping her feet. Anything to rid herself of the ominous cravings skittering through her veins. It didn’t matter that she was a worshipper of the brilliance of the human body and all it could achieve en pointe, upside down, and most definitely horizontal; she’d be playing with fire if she went down that path. Her entire career hinged on what she did the next couple of months and that was not a gamble she was willing to take.

The beat of another set of stomping shoes syncopated against her own as the sound of a man’s footsteps on the stairs echoed through the studio.

With a deep breath, she pulled herself upright, shoulders back, feet in first. She ran a quick hand over her ponytail, and then plastered an innocuous smile on her face as the door creaked open and the man of the hour stomped inside.

“Why if it isn’t Mr Fitzgerald. I’d made a bet with myself you’d not show. Seems I won.”

He glanced up, skin gleaming, wet hair the colour of night, the rain and heat having added a kink. A drop of rainwater slid from a dark curl on his forehead then slowly, sensuously down the length of his straight nose.

She swallowed before saying, “Get a tad wet, did we?”

He shook his hair like a wet dog, rainwater flying all over place. “This is Melbourne, for Pete’s sake. It’s tropical out there.”

When Nadia was hit with a splat she called out, “Whoa, there! Ever tried dancing on a wet floor? Doable, but chances are high you’ll come off second best.”

She moved a ways around him, doing her all to avoid the puddles littering the floor, to grab a towel from the cupboard by the front door. Then turned and draped it from the crook of her finger.

His smile was wry as he realised he had to come and get it. Only he didn’t look down as he took the three steps to take it, before rubbing the thing over his face and hair, all rough and random, in that way men did.

When he moved the towel to the back of his neck, eyes closed, muscles in his throat straining, Nadia gripped her hands together in front of her and pinched the soft skin at the base of her thumb to stop herself from moaning.

She must have made a noise anyway, as Ryder stopped rubbing and looked at her, hazel eyes dark over the white towel. Knowing eyes, hot and hard. Then he slowly, deliberately, held out the towel, meaning this time she had to go to him.

Eyebrow cocked, she barely got close enough to whip the thing out of his hand, only to be hit with a waft of his natural scent. Hot and spicy, it curled over Nadia’s tongue until her mouth actually began to water. She dropped the towel to the ground and used her shoe to vigorously wipe the floor.

As if he knew exactly what was going on inside her head, Ryder laughed softly.

Nadia blamed the rain. Rain made people crazy. The last of the Tiny Tots that morning had literally gone wild, hanging from the barre like monkeys.

She hooked the towel over the heel of her shoe and flicked it up into her hands. “Now that’s sorted, I think we need to take a step back.”

“Back from where exactly?” he asked, his deep voice tripping luxuriously over her bare skin.

“Learn to stand before we start to move. Tonight we’ll work on your posture.”

“What’s wrong with my posture?”

Not a single thing. “It’s a process, Ryder. A journey we are going on together. A journey in which I impart my wisdom and you do as you’re told.”

“So what are you telling me to do, exactly?”

She looked at him—hands in pockets, legs locked, suit jacket as good as a straightjacket for all the movement it offered him—and then, before she could stop herself, she said, “Strip.”

Quick as a flash, he came back with “After you.”

She hid her reaction—instant, hot, chemical—and, with a flick of her hand, she spun on her toes till she was standing side on. “Unlike you, I came wearing appropriate attire. Can you not see my spine, the equilibrium in my hips, the tension in my belly?”

So much for not playing with fire. The gleam in the guy’s eyes turned so flinty it was amazing they hadn’t sent up sparks.

Then, right when Nadia was on the brink of recanting her rash invitation, a muscle twitched in Ryder’s jaw and his dark eyes began to rove. Over her neck, her collarbone, her breasts, her ribs, her belly, not lingering at any one spot longer than any other. Which only heightened the tension pulling at every place his eyes touched.

Point made—and points lost too, she rued—she slowly turned to face him, hands on hips as she waited till his gaze lifted to meet hers. “Take off your jacket, Mr Fitzgerald. And your tie. Dress shirt too, if you’re game. You can leave on your singlet. I just need to figure out where your stiffness comes from.”

He opened his mouth to say something, and then closed it. Instead merely leaving his gaze on hers as the double entendre remained, lingering on the air between them, all the hotter for not being touched.

Gaze snagged on hers, Ryder lifted his hands to his jacket, sliding it from his shoulders. Next came his tie. She had no idea where the things landed as she couldn’t take her eyes from his. For then she’d have to look somewhere else. Somewhere lower.

But when his long brown fingers went to the buttons of his shirt, her disobedient eyes followed as he slid them through the neat holes of his perfect white button-down one by one.

He tugged his dress shirt from his suit trousers, slid it from his arms and laid it neatly over the chaise with the rest of his gear. As it turned out, the guy wasn’t wearing a singlet after all. And when she looked up again, it was to find his eyes still on hers, daring, challenging, till defiance hummed between them, filling the dimly lit room so that the windows near vibrated.

“This what you were after?” he asked, the roping muscles of his long arms bunching as he held them out to the sides.

But Nadia couldn’t answer; by that stage her mouth had gone bone dry. All she could do was nod, then busy herself with getting rid of the dirty towel. She somehow made it to the corner of the room and tossed it into the plastic bin. Curling her fingers around the edge a moment, she attempted to calm her thundering heart.

Okay, so asking him to strip had been a reflex action. The curse of a quick tongue. She was her mother’s daughter after all. But she’d hardly thought he’d acquiesce. And how...

The men in her life had been lean. Not an ounce of fat on their undernourished bodies. Their faces on the edge of gaunt, the rest of them covered with the kind of muscle that clung in desperation to the bones. And waxed to within an inch of their lives.

Ryder Fitzgerald, with his hulking shoulders, big rolling muscles, thick thatches of hair beneath his underarms and whirls of dark curls all over his chest that dared not mar the taut, rolling muscles of his stomach before reforming in a flagrant V that disappeared beneath his trousers, might as well have been an entirely different species. Everything about him was bigger. Stronger. Lustier. Every inch of him gleamed with robust health.

And with one glance something primal had roared to life deep within her.

She glanced back over her shoulder to check if he was for real, and found he wasn’t even watching her. While she was deep in the grips of a wave of impossible lust, hands on hips, back to her, he was staring up at the damn rafters!

“Right,” she said, gathering her scattered wits and forcing herself to get a grip. “Clock’s ticking. Let’s do this thing.”

Ryder turned; silvery moonlight and golden light of the old chandeliers pouring over him till his skin glowed, making the absolute most of the hills and valleys of his musculature. If the guy could actually dance he’d have given Patrick Swayze himself a run for his money.

With each clack of her heels on the old wooden floor, Nadia’s tension ramped up and up. But this was a dance class. A close-hold dance class. Not touching him would only draw attention to her folly. At least that was what she told herself as her hand went to his shoulder.

His naked skin was silken, hot, it twitched at her touch, and the spark between them morphed into some living thing, twisting and shooting around them, filling the huge space with a crackling energy that struggled to be contained.

Nadia barely had time to take it all in, as Ryder didn’t wait for instructions. He curled his fingers around her right hand, placed his other hand in the small of her back and moved deep into her personal space.

Her gaze was level with his collarbone, the scent of his skin so near she was lost within the mix of rain, heat and spice, her eyes so heavy she couldn’t seem to lift them to his.

“Music?” he asked, his voice deep, low, intimate.

And it took half a second for Nadia to realise she’d yet to turn the damn CD player on. Snapped out of her haze, she swore under her breath and yanked the remote from the overturned waistline of her tights, and poked the thing in the direction of the stereo.

Norah Jones oozed from the speakers, warm and sultry. As she made to change it Ryder’s hand came down over hers.

“Seems as good as any,” he said, his gaze as good as saying, Now you’ve got me where you want me, what are you going to do with me?

What she wasn’t going to do was tell the guy the song was too damn intimate for her liking, making her think of smoky jazz bars, and dark corners, and roving hands, and hot lips, and hot skin...

She lifted her chin, clamped her hand hard over his. “Start at your feet. Press them into the floor. Your leg muscles will switch on. Now soften your knees. Like you’re about to bend them, without bending them. Press your inner thighs together—”

At that his hips pressed into hers and Nadia prayed for mercy.

“Lift your torso away from your hips, like there’s a string coming out the top of your head and somebody’s stretching you to the rafters. Now chin up, shoulder blades back and down and—”

“Breathe?” he asked, his voice strained.

The laughter that shot from her was unexpected, and he rewarded her with a small smile.

“Can only help.”

Only when she felt in her bones, in that place inside her that knew dance better than it knew life itself, that they were positioned just so, she began to sway. Pressing his hand with hers, his thighs with hers, she tilted her hips to his until his movement matched hers. And even while every point of contact thrummed with awareness, dance-wise, compared to the week before, it was actually better.

“Feel that?” she asked several bars later.

“I feel something,” he murmured.

“Not so stiff tonight,” she said, and felt him turn to stone beneath her touch. “Oh, relax. I meant in the hips,” she added, giving his arm a shake to get him moving again. “Been practising, have we?”

A muscle clenched in his jaw as he grumbled something about the better he knew the steps, the fewer lessons he’d have to endure.

“Really?” she said, honestly surprised. “Good for you.”

He grunted. “I feel like I’m in one of those movies were you’re about to ask if I could be your partner in some dancing contest.”

She laughed again; this time it slid more readily through her. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, sunshine. You couldn’t keep up with me if you tried.”

“No?” Without warning, he took her by the hand and twirled her out to the ends of his fingers. Years of training kicked in and she went with it, using her weight to hit the end and swing back where he swept her into a dip that left her breathless.

It wasn’t the most graceful move she’d ever executed, and yet her breath thundered through her body as his dark shadow loomed over her, as his strong arm braced her back, as his striking eyes stared hard and deep into hers.

Her hands curled against his bare pecs, and for the first time she wondered about Mr Testosterone’s life beyond the hour they spent together Tuesday nights. Did he lift cars for a living? Chop down hardwoods? No, not a bump in that perfect nose, not a single scar on that dauntingly flawless face...

Then, far more gently than she expected, he eased her back upright until they stood hip to hip, thigh to thigh, in a loose ballroom hold.

“How was that?” he asked, shifting so that she fitted closer still. Close enough to see flecks of gold in his hazel eyes. Close enough that every breath in was filled with his scent.

“Needs work.”

“That’s what I’m paying you for.”

Well reminded, she pulled away and jabbed the remote until she found something less...Norah. A basic foxtrot, pure muzak, the least sexy sound on the planet.

“Your posture’s closer,” she said. “Now we’ll work on your feet. Because, my friend, they suck.”

* * *

Soon the hour was over. Sweat had added a sheen to Ryder’s skin, a muskiness to his scent.

“Okay,” she said, running her hands over her damp hair. “Work on your feet this week. Give me something else to pick on next time.”

As she went to walk to the chaise to gather her stuff his hand clasped her wrist, stopping her. She looked back, hoping he couldn’t feel the sudden flurry of her pulse.

“I thought it was something in the air, but it’s you, isn’t it?”

“I’m sorry?”

“That scent?” He leant into her, his nose brushing the edge of her hair as his eyes closed and he breathed her in. “I caught it last week too. Thought it was coming through the windows.”

She opened her mouth to say...who knew what. Her throat locked up as her entire body stood stock still, riveted by the sensation of his intense attention, and all that intoxicating male body heat intermingling with her own.

“What scent might that be?” she finally managed, her words thick, as if she were speaking through a mouthful of marshmallows.

“It’s spicy yet sweet. Like brandy.”

She breathed in and figured it out. “Ah, my hairspray. Industrial strength.”

His eyes moved to her hair, which was in its usual dishevelled array after a day’s worth of dancing.

“I don’t use it on my hair. Not unless I’m performing.”

His eyebrows all but disappeared into his hairline. “Then where?”

“It keeps the leotard from rising.”

“Rising?”

“Up,” she said with a swish of her hand towards the offending area. And then she walked away, completely unable to help from looking back to find his eyes had zeroed in on her backside with enough intensity he might as well have been using X-ray vision to see beneath her skirt. And if she added a little extra va va voom to her walk? She was only human.

She grabbed her lucky black wrap cardigan, criss-crossing the cord around her ribs.

She turned everything off while her student made himself decent. Pity. It had been fun while it lasted. Heady, hazardous, but worth every agonising second. While it was imperative she keep her hands to herself outside the one hour a week, at least her fantasies now had something to live off for months to come.

As he had the week before, Ryder waited for her as she locked up, walking behind her as she headed down the rickety old staircase. It was kind of endearing, actually, or it would have been if the feel of him a step behind her didn’t make her knees give out on the already precarious staircase.

When they got outside, he motioned to his slumbering car, all vintage curves and glossy gleam, its swanky dash glinting through the heavily tinted windows. “Can I drop you somewhere?”

She looped her big soft bag over one shoulder and gripped the strap in front of her. “Thanks, but no. I live just around the corner. And I’ll be fine walking. I have a mean right hook.” She lifted her hands in a boxing move, then backed away from the temptation of the cool luxury of the car, and the man who owned it.

His eyes remained steadfastly on hers. “Then would you like to get a coffee?”

Damn. Nadia nibbled her bottom lip and struggled to dampen the distinct tightening in her belly. “Thanks, but no. Hate the stuff. Stunts your growth, don’t you know. See you next week.”

Without another word, she turned and headed home, knowing he was watching as she walked away. She could feel it as surely as if his big hands were sliding down her back, over her backside, down her calves, deep into the arches of her sore feet.

Her pulse beat hard in her neck, her breaths coming tight and hard. And she was forced to ask herself, again, if she’d done the right thing saying no. A fling needn’t be completely out of the question—

No, it needn’t. Just not with Ryder.

The man had proven himself far too capable of wrong-footing her. And with the biggest audition of her life looming, she needed complete control of her feet. And the rest of her.

Yet, as she hit the corner, she looked back.

But Ryder was gone.

The heaviness that settled low in her belly had nothing to do with being alone in the dark. Living out half her teen years in New York, then Dallas, then Vegas meant it was nothing for her to walk through the shadows as easily as the pools of light.

No, it wasn’t human company she craved; it was one very particular human.

She scuffed her shoe against a crack in the footpath and swore beneath her breath. Trouble lurked down that path, and, as was the fate of a Kent, she’d be the one who’d pay.

THREE

Lights flashed through the darkness and music through speakers too old to handle the beat as bodies bumped and ground across the dance floor.

Nadia lifted her bare arms over her head, eyes closed, hips swaying, feet burning, as deep in her bliss she tripped the light fantastic. For her that was exactly how it felt; when the killer groove of the song met the rhythm in her bones, filling her muscles with liquid heat, and sparkling across her senses. It was approaching divine.

Add a fall of silk, a length of rope, better yet a sparkling silver hula hoop suspended thirty feet above the stage, adding danger, suspense, and an audience hushed with a mix of hope for a touch of magic and fear that something might go wrong... Now that was nothing short of orgasmic.

Feet well and truly on the ground—unless you counted three-inch spikes a prop—the vertical-drop strands of her fringed silver sparkly top swished over her belly, sensual, sexual, lifting the experience a nudge higher. Especially when she could so easily imagine the stroke of the strands belonged to the sure, sensual fingers of a man with dark hair and dark eyes and a dark voice that settled like a purr in her very core. Since she couldn’t have him, she had to ease the sexual tension somehow, and dancing the hours away in a hip club deep within Prahran was the best way she knew how.

A sudden wave of dehydration swelled over her, condensing her vision to a pinprick. Knowing when she’d overdone it, Nadia wiped her hands over her face, slipped through the surge of sweaty bodies, and headed for the stairs that led down to the bar. And iced water. A jug of it for starters.

She skipped lightly down the stairs, doing a little twirl as the song upstairs hit its crescendo.

“Kiss me, Dancing Queen!”

Nadia felt herself grabbed. With a “Whoa!” she held onto a strong male arm, using momentum as much as the strength of his arm at her waist to haul herself upright. Then she looked up to find herself in the grip of a random guy. With golden curls and a wonky grin, he was cute as a button.

“What’s in it for me?”

“My mates bet me a twenty you wouldn’t. Too gorgeous, they said. Way out of my league. Do a guy a favour and show them different. I’ll split it, fifty-fifty.” The guy flashed his adorable dimple, proving no woman on the planet was out of his league.

When the dancing was as good as it got, it might even be better than sex, but sex sure had its place. And the guy was a serious honey. If she wanted a fling, a chance to scratch the itch that had been bothering her all week, this was it. Unfortunately the kick in her belly, the tension making her ache, wasn’t his to erase.

“I’ll have to pass.” She grabbed his hand, ducked under his arm and twirled away, leaving behind a “Hey!” as she threaded through the lighter crowd to find the bar.

Instead she found that while she’d been dancing Sam and her friends had made their way downstairs too, taking up a group of soft velvet couches in a warm little alcove in the corner of the busy bar. Nadia walked that way in time with the smooth song crooning gently below the sweet murmur of conversation.

Sam stood and waved her over. Tall, skinny, knobbly; like a newborn colt. With her long straight dark hair and fey grey eyes Sam was quietly beautiful. Though, perhaps that was only compared with her brother’s terrible masculine beauty, which was like a smack between the eyes.

Nadia nudged Sam’s fiancé, Ben, to scoot over.

“Don’t you go sweating on me, Miss Nadia,” said Ben as he made space. “This jacket is suede.”

Nadia eyed it, and raised an eyebrow. “That jacket is a travesty.”

“See!” Sam called across the couch. She grinned past the straw between her teeth, the other end of which was deep in a tall glass of something poison green.

Nadia spied the jug of the stuff, mist wafting from the ice sprinkled across the top—at least she hoped it was mist—and poured herself a glass. Dancing hadn’t erased the tight craving in her belly, and, since she’d stupidly given up a chance at a cute guy, poison-green cocktails might be her last resort.

She took a sip, shook her head at the beautiful bitterness, and settled into the lounge and the conversation swirling around her. The first real friends she’d made since moving home. Being able to talk about other things, fun things, silly things, serious things, things that had nothing to do with dance, was unexpectedly nice. Rare times she might even admit it was a relief. She’d miss them when she left.

Sam’s eyes suddenly widened to comical proportions as she spied something over Nadia’s shoulder. Enough that Nadia lifted herself from her slump and turned. And found herself looking into the hot hazel eyes of the man who’d sent her to drink.

“Ryder,” she and Sam said at the same time.

Nadia clamped her teeth around the straw so as not to say anything else incriminating.

“The big man!” called Ben, pulling himself to half standing to extend a handshake to his future brother-in-law.

Ryder moved in to take Ben’s hand, his shadow flowing over Nadia in the process.

He acknowledged the chorus of greetings with a smile in his eyes. Though when he finally looked down at Nadia, lifting his chin in acknowledgement, the glints hardened. Nadia crossed her legs to hold in the sensation that poured unbidden through her.

Belatedly, she noticed he’d changed. Gone was the ubiquitous pristine suit and in its place dark jeans and a dark sports coat. Beneath that an olive-green T-shirt that hugged the curves and definitions of his chest and made the very most of the flecks of green in his eyes. Nadia shoved the straw deeper in her mouth and took a hearty gulp.

“I’m so glad you came!” Sam called across the couch. “Was it the begging that did it? Or the promise of dancing? Ooh, you should dance with Nadia. Nothing like doing it for real to pick up some pointers.”

Nadia bit down on her straw so hard her jaw hurt. Oh, Lordy, Sam was playing matchmaker. Nadia would have to put a stop to that. Meaning she’d probably have to explain why.

She’d managed not to tell a soul here her plans as yet. Not at the studio. Not her mother. And not Sam and her friends.

Not that she had any concerns of jinxing things. She’d never been superstitious though she knew many dancers who were: lucky shoes, miracle lipstick, turning three times on the spot while chanting “Isadora Duncan” over and over. It was a little more selfish than that—she’d moved on a lot in her life and knew how people began to pull away when a job was near the end. She wanted this—the ease, the acceptance—a little while longer.

“I just remembered!” Ben jumped in. “The Big Man’s taking lessons too. I hear she told you you’d have to wear tights. Classic!”

Nadia opened her eyes wide at Ben but he just looked at her in sweet ignorance.

“Told you that, did she?” said Ryder.

“She’s sitting right in front of you,” Nadia muttered into her straw.

“How is he going, Nadia?” Sam asked. “I bet he tries to lead all the time.”

Nadia smiled at Sam. “He’s got potential, especially if he keeps applying himself.”

“Applying himself to dance?” Sam repeated, eyes wide and suggestive as she grinned at her brother. “Well, I never.”

Nadia made the mistake of looking up at the man in question to find his eyes glinting in warning. Unfortunately he didn’t know her well enough to know that he’d just tossed fuel on her fire.

She blinked up at him. “Turns out he has excellent posture too. Quite the form.”

Another beat went by in which the gleam in his eyes deepened, and the pulse in her wrist began to kick like a wild thing.

“In fact,” she continued, evidently unstoppable, “I have a few amateur ballroom enthusiasts on my books who are desperate for a male partner. If I let slip about your brother here, there’ll be blood in the water.”

The muscle twitched in Ryder’s jaw and he shoved his hands in the front pockets of his trousers, drawing her eyes down to what he’d framed all too nicely. Accident? Who knew? The man was an ocean of enigmas. Either way, by the time her eyes rose back to his, the pulse in her wrist had begun to beat loud and proud behind her ears.

Which was when the strains of a Kylie song filtered down the stairs and as one Sam’s friends shot to their feet, babbling about the song and the school formal and somebody falling off the stage, before they were all gone up the stairs in the search of the dance floor.

Ben remained, stoic in his charge of the bags and chairs, and not about to get his new suede jacket anywhere near the sweaty dancers upstairs. Then with the couch all to himself he shuffled deeper, and spread out with a sigh.

“Want to get some air?” Ryder asked, not having moved an inch.

She looked back up at him, and up, and up. Did she? Hell, yeah. “You okay, Ben?”

“As a lark.”

“Then air it is.” Nadia put her cocktail back on the table and stood, running her damp hands down the thighs of her jeans.

She pointed the way to a balcony populated with beer drinkers and followed as Ryder made a way through the throng and to a quiet patch of railing. Music pulsed through the windows above. Soft chatter spread from the star-gazers outside. While Nadia breathed deep of the cool night air, the busy street below, the Prahran railway station peeking between the nearby buildings.

Then, without preface, Ryder asked, “When I asked you out for coffee, why didn’t you tell me you had plans with Sam?” and with a darkness in his voice that Nadia hadn’t seen coming.

Completely foxed by the direction of his conversation, her incredulity was ripe as she blurted, “Why? Do you have a problem with that?”

He stayed silent, but the twitch in his cheek gave her the answer.

“You do!” She jabbed his forearm with a finger; when it hit solid muscle it bounced right back. “What do you think I’m going to do, corrupt her? Buddy, that venomous green potion masquerading as a drink back there was all hers.”

Ryder’s hands curled around the railing, the frown marring his forehead easing some. “She’s...open-hearted. She’s never been very good at protecting herself. That’s long since fallen to me.”

Okay, then. Not so much an indictment on her. This was about him. Nadia lowered her mental dukes. “I’d say Ben back there has you covered on that score.”

Ryder scoffed, his frown back with a vengeance.

“What? Ben’s smart, solid, and he’s clearly smitten with her. I’m totally jealous.”

“Jealous?” Well, that wiped the frown from his face. He turned to lean his elbows against the railing as he stared through the crowd at the young man scooched low in the soft seat, the collar of his jacket bunched up about his ears.

Nadia rolled her eyes. “Not of Sam, you goose. Of how much Ben adores her. I’ve never even been close to so adored.”

Ryder’s eyes slid back to hers, an eyebrow raised in raging disbelief.

“Admired by audiences, sure,” she said, floating a who cares hand between them. “Envied by other dancers, oh yeah. Enjoyed by men, you can count on it. But adored?” She shook her head as Ryder continued to stare at her as if she’d grown an extra head. “Don’t panic, Ryder. I’m not about to huddle in a corner and cry. A dancer’s life is an endless series of rejections with just enough triumphs thrown in to keep us hungry. We’re a tough breed, Kent women and dancers both. And it’s hard to be tough and adorable at the same time.”

“Puppies are adorable,” said Ryder, his eyes now roving over her face, her hair, her shimmering silver top that she’d not all that long ago imagined slid over her skin with his touch. When his eyes roved back to hers she felt a good degree hotter. “Baby bunnies too.”

“And your sister.”

“Alas, my sister has a tendency to be that, to my constant disadvantage. As for you...” Nadia fought the urge to twist and turn under his heady gaze. “Adorable you may not be. But only because you’re something else entirely.”

The urge to ask what he thought was so acute she only just managed to swallow it down. If she went there, there’d be no going back.

Instead she leant on the railing and looked out into the night.

“My adorable sister is really marrying the twerp, isn’t she?” Ryder asked at long last.

“Yeah,” Nadia said on a relieved laugh. “Did you think it was all pretend?”

“No. Maybe.” He ran a hand over his face, then through his hair, leaving it in spikes. And upon witnessing the first spark of vulnerability she’d ever seen in the man, Nadia felt her heart kick hard against her ribs.

In punishment, she bumped her hip against the railing hard enough to leave a bruise, and said, “I see what’s going on here. It’s like something out of a Jane Austen novel. The big sister—or in this case brother—overlooked, left on the shelf, while the younger sister shines.”

As hoped, the ridiculousness smacked the vulnerability from his eyes. Then he grinned, his teeth flashing white in the moonlight. “Alas, I am a confirmed bachelor.”

“Confirmed by whom?”

“Every woman I’ve ever been with.”

Not dated. Not known. Been with. Nadia breathed deep.

“I’m a determined man when motivated, Miss Kent. And my motivations lead me to work eighty hours a week in a job I take seriously. I am less motivated to give up my standing holiday in Belize every Australian winter, one ticket return. Or full rights to the remote control. And at the end of the day I go home to the bachelor pad to end all bachelor pads.”

“Posters of women in bikinis straddling large...motorbikes all over your walls?”

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