Lead and Follow (18 page)

Dima hid a grimace. She spoke as if the hiatus of their partnership could be explained so easily. So much more had built a brick wall between them. Ironic, considering how close they’d been for the past thirty-six hours.

“I’ve never been much of a dancer,” Paul said.

“Oh, really?” Dima couldn’t help his sardonic smile. “Because I happen to know you have quite the sense of rhythm.”

Paul laughed, and so did Lizzie. It warmed Dima to be able to give them that, even if he wasn’t moved to laughter himself.

“Fine, yeah,” Paul said. “But I’ve never known the steps.”

Lizzie wound her fingers with Paul’s. “Moves are extraneous. It’s not like I’m going to demand an
assemblè devant
in a park.”

“Devant? Like the club?”

“Funny.” She made eye contact with Dima, who shrugged. “Maybe we take it for granted.
Devant
means out in front. I bet Declan thought it was clever.”

His blond brows lifted. “I assumed it was something kinky I didn’t quite get. Deviant, you know?”

“Nope. On the up-and-up. Mostly.” Lizzie twirled out, tugging him along with her. Even on a casual trip like this, she wore dance heels that turned her calves into works of art. “Now, all you have to do is feel the music.”

With a few words whispered in Paul’s ear, she slung her arms up over his shoulders. Their bodies plastered together like coming home. He instinctively pushed one thick thigh between hers. His hands rested low on her hips, unsurprisingly making a beeline for her ass.

A smile on his mouth, Dima pushed his hands back in his pockets and retreated a step. Yet another scene that would imprint him for life.

He could still hardly believe he’d had them both.

It didn’t take long before Lizzie tutored Paul in long, grinding movements. Their hips slid together, playing, taunting. The easy rapport they shared made Dima think he should back off and let them develop a normal relationship.

He was not that good. He was greedy, through and through, and he’d keep both as long as he could. When it was all over he’d still have Lizzie. He’d make sure of that. There was no giving up the ground he’d already claimed, the concessions she’d already made. No going back to what they were when something so much bigger hovered just out of reach.

So many unknowns still remained. He hated unknowns. If she couldn’t trust him, couldn’t forgive him…

Lizzie spun around, nestling her ass against Paul’s pelvis and wiggling her hips in a move more suited to Club Devant than any formal competition. If only she could realize that. Her innate sexuality could take them places he’d never even thought of.

By the time Lizzie finished with Paul, he was panting slightly and staring at her with that familiar heat. They’d gathered something of an audience, drawing the notice of the crowd that had been listening to the music. Dima tossed a ten in the vato’s hat, shrugging silently as Lizzie and Paul tripped away, laughing.

He caught up with them in just a couple strides. They hadn’t noticed he’d been lagging behind.

At the door to the restaurant, Paul held the brass-handled glass open with a wide flourish. Lots of black-and-white checks filled the interior, from the tiles across the floor to the backsplash behind the giant flat-topped grill. The booths were all red vinyl, topping off the slightly ’50s kitsch vibe.

Dima slid into a booth by the plate-glass window. Paul automatically sat across from him. For a moment, Lizzie hovered at the edge of the table as if she didn’t know where to go. Decision made, she hopped in next to Paul and tucked her shoulders under his.

He ought not to blame her for the choice. If given the opportunity, he’d have enjoyed teasing and tormenting the blond god. He wouldn’t have been gentle as he dug his fingers into Paul’s thighs, either.

Dima had never claimed to be a reasonable man. He was a petty, small bastard and damn it all, he wanted Lizzie sitting next to him. As if she were his girl, not his partner. The bone-deep grind of his teeth spiked pain down his jaw.

The menu was a single laminated sheet. “Where are the lighter items?”

Paul and Lizzie exchanged an amused look. While Dima didn’t wish to be so self-centered as to think it was at his expense, he could see no other option.

“There is no light stuff,” Paul eventually supplied.

The air was thick with grease and the scent of potatoes, but Dima had assumed there would be other options in this day and age. The stupid, small problem ate at him.

Just like Lizzie’s words from this morning still niggled and ate at him. Just like he blamed himself for the months they’d lost. Every time a woman’s heels clicked on a dance floor, he expected the sickly crunch of bone to follow. Tears and bellows of pain were inevitable. Lizzie hadn’t just cried from the pain, but with the panic of uncertainty. He’d only been able to hold her and murmur nonsense words until the paramedics arrived.

How could Dima expect her to let his failures go if he couldn’t let them go either? So much had always weighed him down, from his parents’ expectations to his own. Anyone he dropped had a long way to fall.

He’d been contemplating making Lizzie his partner in more than just dance? What a fool.

A tiny brunette waitress appeared. With the pad in her hand flipped open, she smiled as if greeting old friends. “What can I get you?”

“Coffee for me,” Paul said.

“Same,” Lizzie chirped.

“Please, a cup of coffee.” Dima pinned his gaze on the pair at the other side of the table. “As it seems to be the only thing I’ll be having this morning.”

Paul grinned. “You’ve got to try the bacon omelet. I think they put half a pig in it.”

“I don’t think that’s nearly as enticing as you mean it to sound.”

“C’mon, live a little,” Lizzie said.

She rubbed the toe of her shoe along his calf. If she believed she could manipulate him with a half-assed caress like that, he would need to reeducate her.

“I take care of myself. Much as I take care of you.”

Her eyebrows went up, but she said nothing.

Paul glanced back and forth between them both and waved the menu. “I think my favorite is the hash browns though. Perfectly done. Crispy on the outside, soft on the inside.”

Dima was as locked and ready as if he were about to begin a tango. Supercharged. Stretched near to breaking.

Lizzie leaned forward and splayed her hands on the glossy table. “Do you have a problem, Dima?” she asked, her voice so low it neared a growl.

“That display, in the park.” He narrowed his eyes. “And yesterday, using me to show off for Remy. You danced with more passion and vitality than in the last two years on tour. You’ll dance like that for fun, but not when it could mean a second career for us?”

“We have a career, as soon as my therapy is done.”

The waitress snapped her notebook shut. “I’ll just come back in a few,” she said before she scuttled away.

Paul sighed, but only put his arm across the back of Lizzie’s seat as if settling in for a long wait.

“Your therapy could be done if you weren’t scared.” From what must be the deepest recesses of his brain, he spilled out heated words. “You’re scared I’ll let you down again. That I’m not as invested as you are.”

“You’re full of crap.” Her eyes flashed with the most passion he’d seen from her during daylight hours. “You’re the one who wants to stay in that dive. I’d have expected more ambition from you!”

This. This was what he’d missed. Not the fighting, but the engagement. The feeling that they were connected. Only feeling it while his cock was in her mouth made him realize how much they’d lost. Even sniping at each other in a grease-laden diner felt better than two months of frozen hell.

He fisted his hands on his knees beneath the table. She’d withdrawn her foot. “Do you have any idea what I’ve given up for you?”

“Nothing.” Her mouth turned down into a genuine pout. “You slid right into Devant as if you didn’t even miss dancing with me. So yeah, thanks for visiting me at my parents’ house. Believe me, I appreciated the distraction from mom hovering. But that isn’t the same and you know it. How could you decide to just…
quit
? Quit us?”

He reached out, snagging her hands between both of his. Her fingers were cold, which made sense because he was a rock in a midwinter field. Everything had been colder in these months living a half-life. “I missed you. You are my partner. But I won’t have my decisions thrown in my face as if I’ve done something wrong.”

Just as he’d expected, she tried to pull away. Paul put a hand behind her back. Though the other man was rubbing softly, the sympathetic look he threw Dima said he was also keeping her put.

Lizzie pursed her lips, her posture aggressive. “What decisions? To throw away your training? To give up on our partnership?”

“No, to give up on Svetlana.”

“Not my fault you broke up with that cow.”

He turned the words over in his head once, twice. He’d held few secrets from Lizzie. He hadn’t liked keeping this one, but it had been his burden. It had been his call. She’d needed all her strength to recover without hearing his dilemmas.

“Sveta offered me the lead in her new show.”

She pulled on her hand again, but he wasn’t letting go. Instead, her eyes drifted shut—as close to hiding as she could get without physical movement. “The one on Broadway?”

“Yes.”

“I…” The lovely dark green of her eyes had clouded with confusion. “What happened? Tell me.”

“Word about what had happened to your knee didn’t take long to get around. You know how fast bad news travels.”

He stared down at the glossy red polish on her fingernails. Maybe earlier that morning he would’ve found pleasure in the thought of her nails on his flesh, as her stinging need urged him on. At that moment, however, he would’ve looked at
anything
. Anything to distance himself from what he needed to admit.

“I sat in the ER waiting room. They wouldn’t let me see you yet.” The diner’s savory scents mingled with that sharp memory, twisting his stomach. “Svetlana called me. She made her offer. Tried to convince me to become partners on stage as well as off. Broadway was what she dangled. Our own show.”

Lizzie’s brow wrinkled. “You passed it up?”

He flicked a glance at Paul. How strange to think they were playing out such intimacies both with and before him. “I did, and I ended it with her on the day of your first surgery.”

“You’d been with her for two years. I didn’t like her, but…” More confusion, with something near to sadness. “Why would you do that?”

“Don’t you understand yet, little one?” His heart pinched. They were lost. Both of them. He only knew one thing. “I will never go anywhere you aren’t eventually willing to follow.”

Chapter Seventeen

Lizzie stood beside Mr. George at the entrance to Club Devant. He smoked a cigar and nodded on occasion to the notable faces who slipped through the velvet ropes without hesitation. Other curious guests and ticketholders waited for Mr. George to feel like doing a little work. Lizzie could’ve gone in right away, but she lingered while calling herself all manner of chickenshit.

More than a week had passed since their weekend and since Dima had left the diner without eating. As a featured headliner, he wouldn’t be performing on a Tuesday night, but she knew he’d be there. They couldn’t share an apartment and not know one another’s comings and goings. Having for the most part avoided her since walking out of that disastrous breakfast, he would be inside somewhere. Talking with the other dancers. Mingling with patrons, even though he hated it. Practicing with women who weren’t Lizzie.

Although she would’ve liked to avoid him right back, she hadn’t seen Paul either. She missed them both. Negotiating the currents of their threesome had meant a living-on-the-edge weekend. Now she had none of it. No danger, companionship, fun. It highlighted all the more exactly how limited her world had become since her injury.

Back on the circuit, her mind kept saying. All this unsettled crap would fit back into the right shape. She’d have her friends back, her partner, her life.

Yet…where had those friends been when she was in a hospital room, so doped up on painkillers that she’d sung along to a block of ’80s vids on VH1? Where had they been when Dima was, apparently, fending off a stringy Russian witch who scoped for dance partners in the ER waiting room? Where were they when endless questions spun her brain like a top?

Nope. Nada. After more than a decade as a touring professional, she had left the circuit with exactly zero by way of non-Dima-shaped friends.

“He turned her down,” she said absently to Mr. George. So much a fixture of Club Devant, talking to him was like talking to the massive red-and-gold neon sign. She could never tell if Declan had designed the place ironically, or if his odd Irish sense of style decided this was how an upscale sex revue should look.

Mr. George only nodded. “Course he would.”

Lizzie glanced at him sharply. Surely he didn’t know what the hell she was talking about.
She
barely did. “I mean, who would do that? Turn down an opportunity like that?”

He shrugged. “Not me. Which means you’re talking to the wrong guy. In or out, Miss Lizzie. Unless you like nosy bitches shooting eye daggers at you. Yeah, I’m talking about you, you skinny tramp. Get back in line.”