Grease Monkey Jive (16 page)

Alex was breathing heavily. This time she’d succeeded in pushing Dan past irritation and annoyance and right on up to the edge of anger. He’d injected poison into the word ‘sweetheart’ and flung it at her, and she wondered if it was some act from his player’s handbook under the heading
Charming Her With Righteous Indignation
.

He was a complete mystery to her, but he was also her last chance.

“We’re fine, Trev. All good,” she called and as Trevor boosted the sound she clasped Dan’s hand and blinked up at him. She could do this. Dan was just a means to an end, and there was an end to the time she’d have to spend with him. There was no reason to let him upset her.

“Hello Dan, I’m Alex. It’s good to meet you. It’s really kind of you to step in at such short notice to help out my partner, Scott, and me. We’re very grateful. We’re going to get along brilliantly, don’t you think?”

The smile that broke on Dan’s face started slow at one corner of his mouth. It travelled up one side of his face and flared across his cheek bones, ending in the fine crinkles at the edge of his eyes. Alex choose to ignore the way it made her breath catch in her throat, but could do nothing about the blush that heated her cheeks.

Now that they had him, Dan assumed the idea was not to scare him off.

It was Trevor’s idea that his first competition class should start off with some fun. He’d asked him to bring Mitch and Fluke and Alex brought Belinda. Carlie happened to drop by to rescue her left-behind cardigan and got roped in too.

“I want to see you dance,” said Scott, leaning forward on his crutches and facing the small group assembled in the studio. Dan didn’t think it wasn’t an invitation; it was a royal command.

“Like how?” He flicked a look to Mitch and Fluke. They’d thought he was joking when he told them what was going on and he didn’t blame them. It sounded like a joke to him too. It was a no brainer that Mitch would come. He was happy for any excuse to hang out at the studio in case he ran into Belinda. It was less certain Fluke would come, but since he was still feeling guilty about Scott’s accident and sensing humiliation in the air, he agreed to rock up.

“Just like you dance at that dive you all go to,” said Scott.

“We like that dive,” laughed Mitch. He was looking at Belinda rather than Scott, like she was a winning scratchy ticket he needed to get his hands on.

“Then it shouldn’t be too hard to pretend to be there.” Scott fired the remote at the stereo and the Taio Cruz, Flo Rida song,
I’ve Got a Hangover
, started up.

“Really?” Dan called.

“It’s not a social commentary on caveman habits,” Scott called back, but Trevor, sitting by the mirrored wall, scowled at him. “Maybe just a tiny social commentary,” Scott grimaced, and Dan laughed, taking Mitch and Fluke with him, so Scott knew they weren’t offended.

“Shall we?” he said to Alex and she took his hand when he offered it, letting him swing her under his arm in a rock ‘n roll move. When they were face to face again, Alex said,

“Why don’t you dance at the bar?”

“Does it matter?”

“But you can dance socially, so I’m interested in why you choose not to. Fluke told me you were too cool.”

Dan laughed. “Did he? Fluke has a big gob.”

“Don’t avoid the question.”

Dan reached for Alex’s hand again and she stepped in close, her eyebrows raised in expectation of a response. “Dancing at a club is about being looked at. It’s a mating ritual. It’s not something I’m comfortable doing.”

“You’re kidding?”

“Nope. When you’re sober in that dive, it’s a form of showing off.

“And when you’re not?”

“It’s still about showing off, but you don’t care as much about what people think.”

“You care about what people think about you?”

Dan paused, looked down at Alex, unsure if she was trying to pick another fight or not. “Nope. I’m too cool for that.” He kept a straight face, waiting to see disapproval put a furrow in her forehead. She turned her face away, but not before he saw the quick uptick of her lip. It made him relax a little. If he could make her smile, maybe she would cut him some slack.

Alex danced away from Dan, snaking her hips in time with the music. His answer had surprised her. Choosing to avoid the spotlight didn’t seem like a player’s tactic – or the actions of a man who’d just agreed to take part in a dance competition. Perhaps he had an old edition of the playbook and needed to download the 2.0 version.

“Oi! More dancing, less talking,” yelled Scott, as the track changed and the Black Eyed Peas sang about tonight being a good night. He stumped in among the dancers, eyeing Dan and Alex.

“I’m a side of beef again, aren’t I?” Dan said.

“Get used to it,” said Scott. “It’s only going to get worse from here. When we compete you’ll have hundreds of people watching you. And that doesn’t count the hundreds more that will watch the performance online, dissecting it move by move.”

Alex saw the colour drain out of Dan’s face. In some ways the less he knew about what he’d signed up for, the better. If he really knew what he’d agreed to put himself through, she thought he’d be out of here as fast as his shiny orange and chrome muscle car could carry him.

She lifted both hands and draped them over Dan’s shoulders. “Forget about Scott. It’s just you and me.”

“Ok,” he said. Alex heard the wariness in his voice and realised that, despite the fact he did know how to dance socially, he was far more self-conscious than either Mitch, who was enthusiastically dirty dancing with Belinda, or Fluke, who was chatting happily while doing a deadly repetitive side step, only just on the beat, with Carlie.

“Let’s see what you’ve got,” said Alex, taking a cue from Mitch and Belinda and moving in closer to Dan, putting her foot between his and grazing her hip lightly across his body. He blinked in surprise, his head jerking up, and she thought he might pull away. Instead he dropped his eyes to the space between their bodies and brought his hands to her waist and held them there while she shifted her weight foot-to-foot to roll her hips in a sexy circular motion.

“Are you trying to scare me off?” he said, meeting her eyes.

“Is it working?”

Dan put his hands up to hers still resting on his shoulders and ran them down her arms to her elbows. “Does it look like it’s working?” He cupped her elbows to encourage her to wrap her arms around his neck. She took the hint, stepping in closer, bringing her chest into his body and flattening herself against him.

“No!” She laughed up at him, liking the way he’d reacted to her, not shying away, not trying to dominate her.

“Good,” he grinned, wrapping his arms around her and spinning them twice.

“Just so you know, I wasn’t trying to scare you off.”

“Will you give me a heads-up when you are?”

“Oh, you’ll know,” she said, threading a hand through the thick curls at the nape of Dan’s neck and giving a sharp tug. “You need a haircut.”

“A haircut. I didn’t agree to that.” He took the hand that still twisted in his curls and spun her away from him. He’d sounded stern, so she glanced back anxiously, but he was smiling. He’d been teasing, a player’s move, but under the circumstances a definite improvement.

Back outside the circle of dancers, Scott leaned on his crutches. Trevor was right. Dan and Alex did look good together. There was a definite chemistry there, something to work with. He watched Dan run his hands, palms flat, down Alex’s body from ribs to hip, and then down her thighs, cutting the move off just on the edge of becoming too intimate. Yes, there was definitely a spark. As they moved in towards each other and then backed away, their eye contact playing hide-and-seek, Scott thought, ‘flirty’. He could work with flirty.

He aimed the remote at the stereo and stopped the song, the sound of Fluke saying, “The dog really did eat my homework,” suddenly loud in the room, making them all laugh, making Carlie blush bright pink.

“Thank you everyone. That’s all we need. You’re welcome to hang out and watch, but now we get serious.”

Dan grabbed Belinda’s hand. “Don’t suppose I could get you to make up with Mitch and drag him out of here, and take Fluke with you?”

Belinda’s laugh rattled in her throat. Her eyes twitched from Dan to Mitch and back again, and when she said, “Nice try,” no one in the room except Mitch was surprised. Mitch sat down hard on the floor by the mirror, his lips flat-lined. He watched her and Carlie leave, and Dan thought all the clues were in the sway of Belinda’s hips and shoulders.

Fluke sat too. Dan knew this was special just for him. Fluke made himself comfortable beside Mitch and gave Dan a look that said, ‘bring on the humiliation’.

Dan sighed. He’d been hoping for a more private form of mortification from this point. It was enough that Alex, Scott, and Trevor had front row tickets to his upcoming case of two-left-feet awkwardness.

“How many shouts?” he said.

Fluke looked to Mitch. They both knew exactly what Dan meant.

“Shouts are too easy,” said Mitch and Fluke approved with a quick nod. “We’re staying.”

Dan groaned and looked to Scott for support, then closed his eyes when it became obvious that was a dumb choice. Scott waved a hand, “Get used to having an audience.”

In the next ten minutes Dan didn’t have time to dwell on Mitch and Fluke. He had Trevor in one ear and Scott in the other, showing him steps, arm movements, poking his chest out and his shoulders down, telling him to breathe differently, stand differently, think differently. He had trouble remembering his left foot from his right hand, kept forgetting to look up and balance his weight on his toes, and two seconds after he’d mastered a simple movement, he’d forgotten it.

“Right Dan, turn right, use your right foot,” growled Scott. “No, your other right.”

They were teaching him the basic rhythm of the samba and it might as well have been the formula for nuclear fusion with its criss-cross and locks. It was complicated and Alex wasn’t even involved yet. She was on the other side of the room, arms folded tight across her body, tapping one foot in an anxious rhythm.

Dan completed the sequence of steps and made what he hoped was the correct hip movement, looking at Scott for approval. He got a, ‘Harumph’, which he judged to be less than approving, but better than being yelled at. He looked at Alex and saw her frown and tighten the grip she had on her folded arms.

“Dan, you’re doing ok,” said Trevor, laying a hand on his forearm.

He shot Trevor a look to see if he was joking, but he couldn’t tell from his expression whether Trevor was just humouring him or not.

“Let’s do it again,” he said and Trevor stepped in front of him to pace through the step. This time Dan had his weight distributed right, turned the right way, finished the movement facing in the right direction.

“One small step for caveman kind, one giant leap for a grease monkey,” said Scott, making Mitch and Fluke laugh, reminding Dan they were still there.

“Alex, I want you to do the sequence right before the lift,” said Scott. “Just use Dan as a prop for now and we’ll put the two parts together later.”

“What am I doing?” said Dan.

“As little as possible, surfer boy. I want you to stand there and get the feel of what Alex is doing.”

“Just stand here?” Dan quizzed and got an, ‘I’ve just said that,’ look from Scott, but Trevor showed him where to stand and how.

He was across the room from Alex. She looked calm and at ease, adjusting a strap on her shoe, while he was as nervous as if they’d asked him to split an atom with his bare hands. But just standing still, surely he could do that? Part of him had been standing still now for years and wasn’t that why he was here?

He squared his shoulders, settled his weight more fully on his back foot and shook his hands out. Scott started the music. When Dan lifted his head, his eyes met Alex’s, and what he saw made him suck in a deep breath and hold it. Everything changed. She wasn’t just a girl who taught dance, she wasn’t just that uptight woman he’d agreed to do an impossibly stupid favour for, she was the split atom. She was light and energy, a flare of brilliance moving towards him, targeting him with her radiance.

She moved effortlessly, ethereally, like something not of this world. He tracked her movements, not capable of taking his eyes off her, and when she was in front of him it was all he could do to stop from reaching for her, to hold on to her liquid joy and electric spark.

He was breathing heavily. When she brushed against his arm as she moved around him, he groaned softly and reached for her, but she’d danced on, leaving him hungering for her. He forgot to stand still and spun around to watch her, but she’d moved again and was across the room from him, letting him hold her only with his eyes.

Dan thought he knew about change, about disruption, about the things that could interrupt a life. He knew nothing.

This was the moment everything changed.

Alex looked down at her hands and was surprised to see they weren’t trembling. She could feel adrenaline coursing through her body and she couldn’t understand how she wasn’t a mass of shaking limbs and twitching muscles. She looked at herself in the mirror wall. She looked perfectly normal – she wasn’t even out of breath – but she felt like she was in shock. Something she couldn’t explain just happened, unravelled and couldn’t be put back neatly together again.

She snuck a look at Dan, now talking with Mitch and Fluke. It’s not like he’d done anything, except reach out for her, not a move he’d been told to make, except look at her, burn her with the expression in his eyes, wonder, excitement, awe, and desire. Maybe it was always like that for partners who were attracted to the opposite sex, attracted to each other, because if nothing else, that’s what was going on out there, the birth of her physical attraction to Dan. That was undeniable and unquestionably hazardous.

Well, she could use that. It would help them in the competition, give them an edge to make up for Dan’s lack of training.

If it didn’t send her into a meltdown, fry her senses, and cook her reason first.