Summer Attractions (18 page)

“Right, right,” Jemma said, shooting him a bright smile to try to cover her sudden awkwardness. She kept forgetting that Gabe didn’t care about proficiency the same way that Colin did.

“You know I don’t care about that,” Gabe said easily, like he could read her mind. He reached over and captured her hand in his much bigger one. He grinned at her and Jemma had trouble in the moment remembering that this was only supposed to be a quick, temporary fling with no strings. His smile felt like a promise.

“What else is on the agenda?” Jemma asked, painfully aware that they were heading into their third subject change of the last fifteen minutes. Two days ago, they’d just been having fun, and now everything was morphing and changing. Much like the pedi-cab they were riding in, Jemma wasn’t very good at avoiding the potholes.

“There’s a pickup soccer match at some point, and food and drinks and dancing. Pretty much an all-day, all-night party.”

It sounded amazing, and Jemma couldn’t quite believe that he’d chosen to spend it with her.

The cab hit another dip in the road and her teeth jarred from the impact. Just another pothole.

“You hold your arms like
this
,” Lina said imperiously. She made a graceful, emphatic gesture with her arms and upper body, her dark ponytail swinging and her expressive face making it clear she wasn’t pulling any punches. Jemma had only known Lina for about ten minutes, but she could already tell that tact wasn’t in her vocabulary.

Jemma could have done with a shade more holding back.

She grimaced inwardly and tried to re-adjust the bones and muscles in her arms
just so
, the same flawless,
easy
way that Lina held hers, but her body didn’t seem to understand.

She and Lina might technically have the same anatomy, but in this moment, Jemma’s arms felt somehow alien in nature.

“No, no, no,” Lina cried out, “not like that! Like
this
!” Finally Lina seemed to have given up on Jemma’s miniscule but useless adjustments and came over behind her, making free use of Jemma’s limbs, rearranging them herself.

“There,” Lina said triumphantly. Jemma looked in the mirror and didn’t know how it was somehow easier for Lina to arrange Jemma’s own arms than Jemma herself, but that seemed to be another mystery in a long line that she’d encountered since they’d arrived at the samba school.

Jemma heard a snicker behind her, and briefly contemplated turning and shooting a glare in Gabe’s direction, but that would also mean disturbing the effect that Lina had finally achieved in her upper body. So Jemma had to settle with giving him a pointed look in the reflection of the full length mirror lining one side of the dance studio.

“And you!” Lina exclaimed, moving away from Jemma
finally
and heading in Gabe’s direction. “You’re no better! Your
mäe
would be appalled, after all the
reals
she spent on your dance lessons.”

“And here I thought you were a newbie like me,” Jemma said smugly.

“Oh, no, no, he should be much better than he is.”

“I’ve not danced the samba in fifteen years,” Gabe whined.

“No excuses!” Lina grunted and clapped her hands together loudly. “Now that we have the posture and the arms correct, we do footwork.”

Jemma held back a bit of a groan. She couldn’t even figure out how to hold her arms right; how was she going to manage any footwork?

As it turned out, the footwork itself was not complicated. It was all about bending and switching the leading foot. In fact, Jemma thought she was actually catching the hang of it, her hairline growing damper as she moved along the slower music that Lina had provided, but then it all abruptly stopped and Hurricane Lina was back.

“No!” she exclaimed loudly. “You have no soul!” Without another word, Lina’s hands were on her hips, pushing and pulling them much as she’d done with Jemma’s arms.

Jemma tried to find the rhythm, the slow, sensuous grind that Lina seemed to be looking for, but after a few minutes, it was becoming clear it wasn’t something that came as naturally to her as Lina hoped.

She threw up her arms in exasperation and threw a confused look back at Gabe. “You are sleeping together, yes?” she asked.

Jemma’s mouth fell open. She glanced up, completely startled, and found Gabe’s eyes in the mirror’s reflection. He too looked a bit floored, like that question wasn’t something he’d been expecting.

“Oh, please,” Lina continued. “It’s obvious. And
natural
. But here, you come over, Gabriel, we fix Jemma right up.” She beckoned Gabe over, and with a somewhat reluctant expression, he came, stopping directly behind Jemma. She could feel the heat of him through her thin cotton tank and she couldn’t help the shiver that went up her spine when Lina took his hand and placed it rather forcefully on the curve of Jemma’s hip.

“
Now,” Lina said, “
now,
you will dance
together.
And remember the rhythm. Remember the way you feel together. Yes?”

As if Jemma could
forget
the way they moved together. Some days it felt like she’d always known the way Gabe felt, slow and steady and maddening as he rocked into her, the way his hips stuttered when he got close. It had only been a few weeks, but it was already beginning to feel like forever.

“Ah,
yes
,” Lina crowed with satisfaction as they began to move together, and it was as she predicted, Jemma thought ruefully and with a trace of embarrassment, they moved
much
better together than they did apart.

“I guess we aren’t very subtle,” Gabe murmured into her ear, his warm breath over her sensitive skin giving her goosebumps.

“I can’t imagine why,” Jemma retorted, loving the way his hands touched her body, fingers skimming over the curve of her hips like he couldn’t get enough. He’d never been particularly shy about displaying his desire in private, but he’d been somewhat reticent in public, with the exception of the first night when they’d practically humped on the dance floor. But now, he held and moved her in a rhythm so sexually explicit that she couldn’t help but flush at Lina’s presence in the room.

But Lina seemed supremely unconcerned—even pleased—as she walked around them, giving their movements a critical eye.

“Good, good,” was all she said, though. As if all this was perfectly normal and expected, and maybe, Jemma thought,
it was.

They were working on a couple’s version of the samba—Lina had pronounced them “more than ready to move onto that part of the lesson”—when a group of men about Gabe’s age walked in, chattering in Portuguese. They took one look at Gabe and broke off into exclaimed shouts. The dancing stopped then, and Gabe greeted them all with embraces and responses in equally rapid Portuguese.

He turned to her after a minute or so of excited discussion. “Do you think you can continue with Lina on your own?” he asked. “There’s a pickup soccer game.”

She didn’t really want him to leave her with Lina, who was liable to eat her whole and then spit her out again, but the enthusiasm in his eyes gleamed bright and Jemma found she couldn’t tell him no.

“Go on,” she said, “I’ll be fine here.”

“We’ll come watch in an hour or so,” Lina chimed in. “I’ll take of her, Gabriel.”

The men left with Gabe, who gave her a quick peck on the cheek and a last reluctant caress to her hip.

“Now,” Lina said, “we dance.”

Jemma shot her a disbelieving look as she wiped the sweat off her hairline. “I thought we were already dancing?”

Lina just laughed and turned back to the stereo.

“You know,” Lina said, as she and Jemma walked down the sidewalk to the empty lot where she said they liked to play pickup games, “I might make a dancer out of you if we had lessons every day.”

“I’m not sure whether I’m flattered or regretful,” Jemma said. Thankfully the buildings provided some shade as they walked down the street, or else she might be sweating off what was left of her makeup. She’d tried to repair part of the damage in the tiny bathroom in the dance studio, but the mirror had shown her frizzy hair and flushed cheeks, and there wasn’t much to be done about either of those things.

“You’re definitely flattered,” Lina stated.

“I’ve never thought I could be a dancer,” Jemma confessed.

“You’ve got great natural rhythm,” Lina said, which was the nicest thing she’d said to her since they’d first met nearly two hours before. “I mean, you dance like a frigid virgin, but good rhythm.”

Jemma could only laugh. She hadn’t known what to make of Lina’s forceful honesty, but she’d finally settled on amused. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“You should,” Lina said as they crossed the street toward the lot where a number of observers had gathered on a set of makeshift bleachers. The lot was a pitted, cracked concrete field, and the only greens were wild grasses growing between the crevices. The goals were set up with old, battered traffic cones that at one point might have been orange, but had been baked by the sun into a pale salmon shade. Lina looked over at Jemma and raised an eyebrow, practically daring her to say something. Jemma wisely kept her mouth shut.

“Do you ever watch football at home?” Lina asked as they joined the crowd lining the edges of the “field.” Jemma spotted Gabe, who’d changed into a pair of athletic shorts and taken off his shirt. She was so distracted by how amazing he looked nearly naked that she nearly missed Lina’s question.

And as it turned out, she was sufficiently distracted, she did the two things she’d promised herself she wouldn’t do. “Yeah, all the time actually. I have a good friend who plays. He actually got picked first in the NFL draft this last year,” Jemma said blithely, only realizing the fundamental error she’d made as Lina shot her a dirty look.

1. She’d mixed up football with
   American
   football.
   
2. And she’d mentioned Colin, which was something she was trying not to do.
   

“You Americans and your heathen football,” Lina said, the judgment rife in her tone.

Jemma shrugged awkwardly, tearing her eyes away from Gabe stretching so she wouldn’t make another humiliating mistake because she was distracted by the way his abs flexed.

Just last night, she’d touched them, sliding her hands down his broad chest, right down to where his shorts began . . .

“Should I leave you two alone?” Lina asked with amusement, gesturing to the distance between Gabe and Jemma.

“Uhhh,” Jemma said, perfectly aware that she’d not only been caught red-handed by Lina, but by Gabe himself, who was looking quite satisfied himself. Like maybe he’d actually been
showing off
, that jerk.

A really hot jerk, but still
a jerk
.

“You’re good for him, I think,” Lina offered, as though Jemma had asked, even though she most definitely had not.

“We’re . . . I guess we’re not really
together
,” Jemma was forced to awkwardly explain. “We just met.”

Lina shot Jemma an incredulous look. “And yet you nearly had sex in my studio.”

“You wanted us to do that!” Jemma exclaimed. “You said I was dancing like a prude!”

“Right, well, you
were,
” Lina said dismissively, as if this explained everything. “Now, the game’s starting.” Jemma glanced over at her, and couldn’t miss the amused expression on her face. “Do you need me to explain the rules?”

“No,” Jemma ground out, “I know the rules.”

“Good, then maybe you can actually focus on the game instead of on your boyfriend’s ass,” Lina pointed out, sounding quite pleased with herself.