The Daddy Dance (12 page)

Ashamed of her actions all over again, she shook her head and hugged herself, trying to ignore the incipient spinning of the world around her.

“Come on, Kat. You’re the one who said you’re an adult. Let’s be adults together.” She flashed him a mortified glance. “Let’s go get something to eat,” he clarified.

She sighed and let him pull her to her feet. One single step, though, on the gravel footpath, and she found that her balance was compromised by the damn walking boot. What had she been thinking, betting Amanda about the band, drinking that second beer?

She let Rye slip an arm around her waist, helping her to his truck. At least there was no question of his demanding that she drive tonight. That was one reason that she could actually thank Amanda. She closed her eyes in mortification as Rye reached across her to work her seat belt.

He made small talk as he drove to the diner. She couldn’t be sure what he was saying, something about his father finding a new seed-line of heirloom carrots to plant on the family’s organic farm, and Rye’s sister Jordana developing a series of recipes based on the vegetables, something for a restaurant she was planning to start.

The more Rye talked, the hungrier Kat realized she was. By the time they got to the diner, she was fantasizing about home-cooked food—turkey dinner with mashed potatoes and gravy, meat loaf with peas and carrots. Rye helped her out of the truck, and he kept a protective hand beneath her elbow as he guided her into the diner, but she was already feeling much steadier on her feet.

She studied the entire menu, front to back, but ultimately, she followed Rye’s lead. A bacon cheeseburger, slathered with blue cheese, thick with lettuce and juicy tomato. Fries on the side, with a single sizzling onion ring to top it all off.

Rye watched Kat tackle her meal with the single-minded determination that she devoted to everything. He’d half expected her to chicken out at the last moment, to order a side salad with a slice of lemon or some other girlie excuse for a meal.

But he had to hand it to her—she matched him bite for bite, washing down burger and fries with generous amounts of sweet tea. Maybe it was the beers that Amanda had conned her into drinking, maybe it was simple craving for a single ridiculous splurge of a meal, but Kat dug in with a gusto that astonished him.

Okay. Maybe not “astonished.” He’d felt the illicit energy coiled inside her on the bench outside of Andy’s. He’d felt a little of the wicked damage she could do when she let herself go unleashed.

But he’d never imagined that she would wreak so much havoc on a Smoky Blue Burger Platter. And he was damned pleased to see that she could.

“So,” he said when they both finally came up for air. “The floorboards should be ready for installation next week. It’ll take two days to get them down. Another day to set the ceiling tiles, and then a couple of days for painting. We’ll be done in a week.”

Seven days, Kat thought. Seven days, and then all the damage would be repaired. Rye would be finished at the studio, free to stay up in Richmond forever.

“Wonderful!” she said, forcing every ounce of fake cheerfulness that she could summon into the word. Oops. She must have poured it on a little
too
thick. Rye was looking at her funny. She cleared her throat. “I worked with Niffer’s teacher, and I’ve sent home flyers with all the kids in the elementary school. We’ve already got two summer sessions of Beginning Ballet filled, and one of Intermediate.”

“That’s great! But I thought that you didn’t have anyone to teach.”

“Oh, I didn’t tell you. I found an old recital program in the back room on Tuesday. It was from last summer’s performance, so I could still track down most of the teachers listed there. Three of them agreed to come back.”

“I knew you could do it.” There. That was the way enthusiasm really sounded.

Kat took another long swig of sweet tea. It was impossible to find the stuff in New York—not that she would have indulged at any point in the past ten years. Stirring artificial sweetener into iced tea didn’t come anywhere close to savoring the supersaturated syrup of her childhood.

Feeling a little rebellious, she tried to imagine what her dance colleagues would say about her Eden Falls night out on the town—beer, burgers and enough sweet tea to float a luxury yacht. What did it matter, though? She couldn’t remember the last time she had laughed as hard as she’d laughed with Amanda. And there were a lot worse ways to spend an evening than sitting across from a man as gorgeous as Rye Harmon.

Even if her fellow dancers would vow to eat nothing but lemon juice on iceberg lettuce for an entire week, if they had indulged like Kat.

“Hey,” Rye prompted. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” She smiled. And she was. She was more than fine. She was relaxed and happy. “I was just thinking about what everyone is doing in New York. It’s Friday night, so there’s a lot of scrambling. The company does matinees on Saturday and Sunday, so everyone is probably a bit crazy.”

He heard the fondness in her voice, the easy familiarity with routine. Sure, she might call them “crazy”, but it was a craziness she knew and loved. “You must really miss it,” he said.

“I do,” she answered, but he caught the pause before she went on. As if she were looking for words. Searching for a memory. “I miss the feeling of testing myself, of pushing myself to do the most my body can do. I miss the feeling of becoming another person, someone totally different from me.” She sighed. “I miss…” She trailed off, swirling an orphaned fry in ketchup.

“What, Kat?”

“Sometimes I’m not sure that I can do it.” The admission seemed to unlock something in her, to free her to rush on with more words, more confessions. “The big parts, the principal dancer roles…I need to impress the company director, to prove I have what it takes. That’s why I pushed myself so hard before I got hurt—extra rehearsals, extra sessions at the barre. And all I ended up with was this stupid boot and a forced month off.”

He knew what she wanted him to say. He knew that she wanted to hear that she would succeed, that she would conquer her injury, that she would come back stronger than ever.

But he couldn’t be certain of that. He didn’t know enough about her world, about the demands of ballet life in distant New York City. No matter what
he
thought of her, how great he thought she was, he couldn’t say that she had the pure strength, the unalloyed physical power to master her chosen profession’s greatest challenges.

“You’ll do the best that you can,” he said. “And if the people who make the decisions are too foolish to take every last drop of devotion that you can give them, then you’ll figure out the next step. And you’ll master that. Goals, strategies and rules, right? That’s what someone told me once.”

She rolled her eyes. “Whoever said anything that stupid?”

“Not stupid.” He shook his head. “Not stupid at all.”

She flinched under the intensity of his gaze. Now that she had finished eating, the last tendrils of her tipsiness had floated away. She was sober, but her body still remembered the way that she had used it. She felt tired, raw. And with Rye staring at her that way, she felt totally exposed.

“I don’t know,” she said. “That stupid formula helped me when I was fourteen years old. It’s probably not good for anything anymore. Not ten years later.”

“It’s good enough for me,” Rye affirmed. “Up in Richmond this week, I applied your ‘stupid formula.’ I got more done in five days than I had in five weeks before that.” Of course, that was the first time that he’d spent five consecutive days in his new office. The first time that he hadn’t let a so-called emergency drag him back to Eden Falls.

“I’m glad I was able to help you,” Kat said, trying to ignore the fact that her smile was a little wobbly around the edges.

It was funny, really. It was almost like there was a limited amount of “get up and go” to go around. Rye had listened to her, and he was moving forward with his career plan, full steam ahead. Kat, meanwhile, caught herself repeatedly musing on what life would be like if she stayed in Eden Falls.

How would it feel to teach at Morehouse Dance Academy? To stand in the center of the room, clapping out a rhythm for aspiring ballerinas, for good girls who wanted to be graceful and pretty and never, ever dance professionally on any stage, anywhere? How would it feel to stop by Susan and Mike’s home every day, to watch her father continue to gain back his strength, to sit at her mother’s kitchen table and drink tea using her grandmother’s china? How would it feel to greet Niffer every afternoon as she got off her school bus, chattering about art projects, and reading class, and learning the capitals of all the states?

Wonderful, Kat realized, even as she was astonished to recognize that truth. Absolutely, unqualifiedly
wonderful
. In two weeks of living in Eden Falls, Kat had already had more fun than she had in the past two
years
in New York.

And what did that say about her chosen home? Her chosen career?

“Hey,” Rye said, interrupting her thoughts. “Ready to get out of here?”

She nodded, sliding out of the fake leather booth. Rye paid at the cash register, waving away her attempt to reach her wallet. He held the door for her, and he ushered her into the truck, but this time she fastened her own seat belt. He smiled and stroked a single finger across her cheek before he closed the door. She shivered at the unspoken promise of that touch.

It took less time than she expected to drive to Rachel’s house. Rye put the truck in Park and killed the engine. “Where’s Niffer tonight?”

“Sleeping over at Mama and Daddy’s. She has them wrapped around her little finger.”

“Kids have a way of doing that.”

She knew that it was her turn to say something, to make a joke about Niffer, about family, about something light and easy and funny. For the life of her, she couldn’t imagine what she could possibly say. “Want to come in for a drink?” she finally settled on. “Of tea,” she hastened to add. “Or, er, water. That’s all we have inside.”

“That’ll be enough.” Kat watched as he took the keys from the ignition, carelessly tossing them by his feet. That was yet another aspect of life in Eden Falls that she’d never see in New York. If anyone were foolish enough to own a pickup in New York, they’d keep it secured under lock and key—maybe with a mad Doberman in the cab to deter potential thieves. Somehow, it made Kat’s heart sing to think of a place that was safe enough to leave car keys on the floor mat.

Inside Rachel’s home, Kat headed toward the kitchen. “Let me get you a drink.”

Rye caught her before she could cross the foyer, folding his hand across her flame-red scarf. “I have a confession. I’m not really thirsty.”

A frisson of excitement raced across her scalp as she registered the rumble of his words. She let him turn her around, felt his other hand settle on her waist.

She was a dancer. She was used to being held by men. She was accustomed to the feeling of strong fingers on her flesh, gripping her tightly, holding her upright.

But all those sensations were her job. They were as routine, as mundane, as utterly bloodless as sitting down at a computer, typing an email, ordering supplies over the telephone.

This was something different. This was something more.

Rye felt the hitch in Kat’s breath, and a lazy smile spread across his lips. He’d watched her through the evening; he knew how quickly she had sobered as she ate dinner. He had no qualms about kissing her now. Kissing. Or more.

“You know,” he whispered, purposely keeping his voice so low that she had to pull closer to hear him, “we left Andy’s too early tonight. We never got a chance to dance.”

Her laughter was as soft as her silken hair. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not exactly in dancing shape.” She waved a hand toward her walking boot.

“I wasn’t thinking of anything too strenuous. Not your pliés or arabesques or that sort of thing.”

“Mmm,” she whispered. “You’ve been doing your homework.”

“All part of renovating the studio. I have to know how the space is going to be used, don’t I?” That was a lie, though. He had whiled away hours in Richmond, thinking about Kat, thinking about what she did for a living. He had gone online, looking for pictures of her, and he’d picked up a bit about dance along the way.

He should have been working, of course, instead of spending his time online. Should have been focusing on Harmon Contracting. But all work and no play… He’d almost succeeded in convincing himself that his…research was good for business. That there was nothing personal in it. Nothing at all.

“Ready to sign up for a class?” she asked, obviously amused.

“I don’t think either of us needs any training.” He pulled her close, relishing her surprised gasp even as she yielded to his pressure. She felt marvelous in his arms, pliant but hard, melting into him even as she maintained her dancer’s balance. He leaned down and found her mouth, sinking into her sweet silken heat.

Deepening the kiss, teasing her with his tongue, he raised his hand to the marble column of her throat. He could feel her pulse flutter beneath his thumb, a butterfly dancing against his flesh. His fingers wrapped around her nape, urging her closer, then skimming down the length of her spine, molding her fine-boned body to his.