Chapter Three
“R ule number ten is the same as rule number one. Don’t. Touch. Anything.”
“Wait, what was rule number nine?”
“Don’t leave this room.”
“Why not?”
Jessa crossed her arms, scanning the man behind her desk from his dusty boots to his oversized belt buckle to the straw cowboy hat perched on his head.
“Because parents trust me with their children, and they don’t want to see a random man roaming around the dance studio.”
“I’m not random.”
“Are you kidding? You’re the most random man I’ve ever met.”
Oh, no—there it was. That look. The particular way Caleb tilted his head, looked up at her from beneath thick, caramel-colored lashes, and let a faintly mischievous smile tug up the corners of his lips.
Some of her worst decisions had begun with that look.
And some of her best .
“I can’t sit in here all afternoon, Jessa. There must be something I could do to be helpful.”
Now that was funny. After he’d arranged for another couple of bull riders to bring his truck to her house on their way out of town, Caleb had slept most of the previous afternoon, eventually graduating from the couch to the spare bedroom. She’d called into service every vaguely cushion-like object she owned to keep him propped up and comfortable, and it worked—worked so well that he got up early the next morning, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and a giant pain in her ass.
With more restless energy than his one working arm could handle, Calamity Ross lived up to his nickname, crashing around her house like a rank bull loosed in a porcelain-doll shop. Before eight A.M. he’d dropped a pot of water, spilled a cup of coffee, and elbowed a scented candle onto the floor where it smashed into a waxy glass-shard mess.
She appreciated that maneuvering one-handed would be difficult for anyone, but there was something about Caleb’s size and strength in her tight, twee home that reminded her of a bear trying to get seeds out of a bird feeder. Unwilling to risk leaving him behind unattended, she’d hauled him to the dance studio and installed him in her cramped, windowless office—a plan to which he objected, apparently.
“You’re right. Sitting here quietly, not bothering anyone, and not breaking anything, would be extremely helpful.”
“For how long? ”
“My last class finishes at six thirty.”
“But it’s barely three o’clock. What am I supposed to do for three hours?”
“Meditate. Do breathing exercises. Contemplate the complexity of existence. Here, I’ve got a piece of paper and a whole pack of highlighters—draw a picture.”
He pouted, and if that slight protrusion of his lower lip hadn’t been so delicious, she would’ve been supremely annoyed.
“Come on, Jessa. I want to be useful. Give me something to do.”
The bells on the front door jangled. Her students were arriving.
“I’ll think about it. I’ll check on you in about forty-five minutes. Try not to set anything on fire.”
Jessa shut the door on his dramatic sigh, just in time to conceal his presence from the mom escorting her seven-year-old to the dressing room. She greeted the leotard-clad girl warmly, and then fielded a couple of logistical questions from her parent.
This was the first time she’d carried the school-year schedule into the summer, having previously thought there’d be less demand, but nearly all of her students had opted to continue. Some of her new fall classes already had waiting lists, and finalizing contracts for additional staff was one of this week’s many to-dos.
Opening the Star School of Dance had been an enormous leap of faith. She’d never run a business, knew nothing about marketing or finance, and her only academic qualification was a BFA in dance, which was about as useful as a tutu made of bowling balls. She spent her first few months back in town glued to her laptop, learning as much as she could about commercial leases, small-business accounting, child safety, and the myriad complexities that went hand in hand with asking people to pay money for what you offer.
Her moments of doubt ranged from minor, back-of-the-head niggles to full-blown sob fests, but she pushed through. She’d always danced to other people’s choreography, worked hard to do and be exactly what they wanted. Now she had a goal that was terrifying in its ambiguity, yet achieving it was sweeter than any other, because it was hers.
She shut the mental door on Caleb as firmly as she’d closed the real one and took her place at the front of the class. She smiled as the girls trickled in and lined up at the barre, endeared as always by their off-center buns and run-streaked tights.
At their age she was learning to be hyperaware of the shape and placement of every inch of her body, down to her pointed toes and elegant fingertips. Whenever her teachers praised her ability to correct something, her intense self-awareness was rewarded—and redoubled. The seeds of performance were already sprouting, that consciousness of how you look to someone else, to everyone else, to all those people watching. All those people you can’t disappoint .
But in Jessa’s sunny, creaky-floored studio, her students moved and fidgeted and whispered without any self-consciousness, young and silly and free. And if she had anything to do with it, that would never change.
She switched on the recorded piano music they used for their warm-ups and got started. The girls in this class ranged from ages six to eight, so she focused on the basics—the five positions, spatial awareness, flexibility, and a few simple combinations. She kept her approach light and constructive while at the same time wringing as much as she could out of their limited attention spans, mixing things up when they started to lose focus, and letting them take two-minute breaks when they needed to get their giggles out.
The relative lack of daily structure over the summer meant they were harder to corral than usual, but today they were on good form, quiet and attentive. Jessa took them through the choreography for their end-of-summer recital, moving along the line of girls, making slight, gentle corrections to their posture. She was so engrossed in her instruction that it wasn’t until the very end of the forty-five-minute lesson that she glanced up to find a familiar form lounging in the doorway, cowboy hat and all.
The girls followed her gaze, their antsy chatter lapsing into a rapturous hush.
Caleb smiled and touched the brim of his hat. “Afternoon, ladies. Pardon the interruption. I was looking for Miss Jessa.”
Little heads bobbed between the two of them, the silence turning inquisitive. Jessa hadn’t even opened her mouth to answer before the questions erupted around the room like popping popcorn.
“Are you a cowboy?”
“Do you like ballet?”
“Is that buckle real?”
“Are you Miss Jessa’s boyfriend?”
“That’s it for today, girls. Your grown-ups are waiting for you in the lobby.” Jessa ushered them briskly out of the studio, a wriggly parade of glittery hair bows and pink tutus that invariably paused as it passed the man who’d so graciously stepped into the corridor and out of their way.
Once Jessa made sure all her students were safely dispatched to their guardians, she stormed back down the hall to where Caleb waited, her index finger already itching for an angry point.
“Nope.” She pressed her finger into his chest. “You are not supposed to be out of that office, and you are definitely not allowed to peep at my classes. What if one of those girls tells her mom a strange man was watching her dance? Do you have any idea how creepy that seems?”
“I was there for two minutes, max. I thought you were finishing up.”
“I was, but that’s not the point. This is serious, Caleb. Don’t do that again.”
“I’m sorry. I won’t.” He sobered for a split second before his face brightened again. “I bet those kids can’t get enough of you as their teacher. I could hear some of what you were saying from down the hall. You’re so…nice.”
She arched a brow. “Why do you sound surprised?”
His expression told her he knew better to answer that.
She sighed. “It just so happens that the Star School of Dance is not only the most important thing in my life, it’s where I’m working very hard to embrace imperfection. I want my students to leave every lesson feeling joyful and confident, not obsessing over all the ways they fell short. The complete opposite of my experience as a dancer, basically.”
“What were your teachers like?”
“Strict. Critical. Downright harsh, sometimes. I guess they wanted to toughen us up. I can’t really complain—they got me where I wanted to go. But part of me feels like talent will always find a way to the top, and ninety-nine percent of the kids signing up for dance lessons in Last Stand, Texas, are not future prima ballerinas, so there’s no need to treat them like they might be. May even do more harm than good.”
He smiled then, that quiet, sincere curve of his mouth that was so different to his usual high-voltage grin. Every time he looked at her like that her knees weakened just a touch, her heart fluttered like a baby bird, and her insides were at real risk of melting into chocolate fondue.
She pressed her back against the wall, grateful for its no-nonsense, nonjudgmental support. “My next class starts in three minutes. What did you want?”
“What did I want? Oh, right—why I came to find you.”
“Did you need a quarter for the soda machine?” she asked dryly.
His eyes lit up. “You have a soda machine?”
“Of course not. And if your need isn’t life-threatening, you can go back to the office.”
“I can’t, Jessa. I’m bored out of my mind. Give me something to do. Anything.”
“No offense, but unless you’re a CPA or a lawyer, the only thing I’ve got for you is manual labor—which you’re not doing because you’re concussed and should be resting.”
He looked thoughtful for a second before offering, “I have a tractor mechanic certificate.”
“And I have the same number of tractors as soda machines. Go. Sit. Contemplate. Don’t come out until I tell you.”
She took him firmly by his good arm and bundled him toward the office. Three feet from the door he stopped dead, causing her to smack into his side so hard her nose smarted.
“What’s that?”
Pinching the bridge of her nose, she followed his attention to the small room she’d converted into a dancewear shop. The lights were off, but the door hung open, revealing the few racks of leotards and tights, leftover show costumes, and boxes of dance shoes.
“That’s the shop. Since we’re out here in the sticks, it’s easier for me to buy shoes and dancewear in bulk, then sell on to the parents for a tiny bit above cost.”
“When is it open?”
“Whenever someone tells me they need something. Why?”
“I could sit at the register for you. Let the adults browse while their kids are in class.”
“The adults don’t need to browse .” She put the word in finger quotes.
“How do you know? You’ve never given them the opportunity.”
“Because I only stock the basics. The standard stuff the girls need for their classes.”
“Maybe they don’t know what they need ’til they see it. C’mon, Jessa. I won’t mess anything up, I promise.”
She glanced past him into the shop, mentally inventorying the breakables. He had a point—it was a hassle for parents to only have five-minute windows between classes to nab an extra set of tights or let a kid try on the next-size shoe. She hated it, too, rooting through piles of boxes, biting back her impatience as an unhurried adult threatened to make her late for her next class. Other than the mirrors on the walls, everything was fairly indestructible. How much damage could he do?
“Okay,” she relented. “But if I hear so much as a pointe shoe drop, you’re done.”
Caleb grinned like he’d won the lottery, his happy expression never faltering as she showed him how to use the mobile card reader, the price list, and where she kept the cash. He sat behind the slim, pedestal-style counter and surveyed his domain as if he were a Wyoming cattleman cresting a ridge, not a busted-up bull rider surrounded by pink tutus.
“Open for business,” he declared.
She had to turn toward the hall to hide her smile.
“I’ll be back after this class,” she called over her shoulder, then hurried to meet her students.
To Caleb’s credit, keeping the shop open while she was teaching proved more popular than she expected. For the next hour she focused on her students and their instruction, but every so often she heard a muffled voice from the direction of the shop, or muted footsteps down the hall, and one trilling, baldly flirtatious laugh she recognized as belonging to a recently divorced mom who was very much in the market.
She checked on him just once, in between classes, and was delighted to find him at the tail end of selling one of the expensive recital costumes she’d over-ordered by mistake.
“For Keira’s birthday,” the purchaser explained, naming the younger of her two daughters. “All she wants is to be exactly the same as her sister, and now they’ll match.”
He’d flashed Jessa an I-told-you-so grin across the room, and she was so pleased to get that sequined albatross out of the shop that she smiled right back .
Her final class of the day was her smallest and most demanding, an advanced ballet group comprised of a handful of teens. These were the dancers who would go en pointe , who would continue through high school and maybe even college, who’d chosen ballet instead of softball or theater or whatever else would become their defining extracurricular activity. Jessa tried not to measure their levels of innate talent even to herself, focusing only on their commitment and effort—although with Fern, it was hard to ignore.
Fernanda Santamaria was her shining star, a fourteen-year-old with so much promise and potential, Jessa couldn’t help but compare her to herself at that age. Fern’s story was different—her father left the family a few years ago, which meant a move to Last Stand and an end to the expensive dance classes in Dallas, followed by her mother’s ebullient delight when the Star School popped up as a local, affordable option. Although she’d been rusty at first, within weeks Fern had made up lost ground and surged ahead—so far ahead, in fact, that Jessa began giving her an extra hour of free, private lessons here and there since the group classes were so obviously unchallenging.
The more she worked with Fern, the more Jessa worried that her instruction wouldn’t be enough. She was brand-new to teaching and although she could see Fern’s progress, she hated the idea that her inexperience might hold Fern back. Two weeks ago, after a class in which the gulf between Fern’s skills and the others’ was particularly evident, Jessa had opened her contacts and started making calls, trying to see if she could put something better in place.
Now, as she watched Fern execute crisp, confident turns, she felt surer than ever that had been the right decision.
She wrapped up the class with some gentle, cool-down stretching, waited for the girls to crouch by their cubbies in the changing room and swap their shoes, and then followed them as they filed out into the lobby. She greeted the waiting parents, answered a couple of their questions, and was waving goodbye to the first girl to depart when an almighty crash sounded from the shop.
Jessa’s smile froze in place, a stiff contrast to her thundering heart. “Oops, my new assistant must’ve tipped something over. See y’all next week.”
She forced herself into a calm, easy gait as she made her way back down the hall, willing her mood to follow suit.
It’s just an accident. The man’s arm is in a sling. As long as he hasn’t broken the mirror…or the counter…or the card reader… Oh, God, how much is this going to cost?
She turned the corner into the shop with a dark scowl and a darker attitude—and burst into hysterics at the scene laid out before her.
Jessa spotted the worn soles of his boots first, then followed the lines of his legs sprawled on the floor to where the rest of him practically disappeared beneath a heap of pastel-pink pointe-shoe ribbons. They were everywhere, snagged on the edge of his belt buckle, trailing from the brim of his hat, a veritable avalanche of satin that had taken down this rough, tough rodeo cowboy faster than a snarling bull.
“Are you okay?” she asked between fits of giggles.
“All good.” Caleb blew a ribbon dangling in front of his face out of the way. He started to heave himself up, but with the overturned tub that had once contained the ribbons blocking his good arm, he flopped back down.
“Actually, I could use a hand,” he told the ceiling.
She rushed to kneel beside him, ribbons fluttering in her wake, and then slid one hand under his uninjured shoulder as he grabbed hold of the other.
“Ready? One, two—”
He popped up suddenly, and then he was there.
Right there.
She was close enough to make out all the shades of blue in his eyes, the way they melted from one to the next like a sunlit Caribbean sea. She saw the grain of his five-o’clock shadow, lighter than his hair, lighter still against his tanned cheek. His breath warmed her face, its sweetness betraying that he’d found her stash of juice boxes, but beneath that was something fresh and clean, something that shot up out of a deeply buried memory with the force and violence of a geyser spitting water high into the air.
The scent of his skin.
Jessa scrambled to her feet, turning her back on recollections she’d studiously set aside two years ago. Tucking her chin in the space between his collarbone and his jaw. Tracing the muscles in his bare back, careful not to let her marveling exploration rouse him from sleep. Pressing her face into his throat at the peak of her ecstasy and breathing him in, cotton and salt and leather and pure, perfect cowboy.
She swallowed. Cleared her throat. Busied herself scooping the ribbons back into the plastic tub, and ushered those unbidden, unhelpful memories right in behind them.
“Do I want to know how this happened?” she asked, her breezy tone a million miles away from the tension stiffening her body.
“Tripped.” That slight strain in his voice was from the effort of getting to his feet, she told herself. There was no way he’d felt what she just had. Probably didn’t even remember those nights that way.
She kept her eyes on her task as he straightened, wobbling just a little before he braced his hip against the counter.
“Ribbon incident aside, you earned your keep today. I thought I’d be stuck with that spare costume forever.”
“Not sure I heard you correctly. Did you just say I was right?”
“No, I didn’t say that.”
“That’s what you meant, though.”
She twitched a shoulder, ducking her chin to conceal her smile.
“Because if I suggested opening the shop was a good idea, and you said it wasn’t, but now you’re agreeing it was, well, where I come from that sounds an awful lot like me being right. Or am I wrong?”
Jessa stuffed the last ribbon into the tub, snapped on the lid and stood, brushing off her hands as she faced him.
“Okay, you were right. You hear that, everyone?” She cupped her hands around her mouth as though there was anyone left in the building besides the two of them. “Let it be known to all that on this historic day, Caleb Ross was right. I repeat, Caleb Ross—”
“Am I interrupting?”
Fern’s mom, Mariela, stood in the doorway, glancing between the two of them with an amused smile.
“No ma’am, Miss Star was just singing my praises. Did you want something from the shop?”
“This is my friend, Caleb. He was injured in the rodeo on Saturday, so he’s staying with me while he recovers—and attempting to be helpful.” Jessa smiled smoothly, hoping her ears weren’t as red as they felt.
“Oh, gosh, I think we saw you. Are you the one who got rammed by that bull?”
Caleb’s grin broadened. “That’s me.”
“Thank God you’re okay. And welcome to Last Stand, for as long as you’re here. You’ll be in good hands with Miss Jessa.”
“Thank you, ma’am, I appreciate it. She’s taking good care of me.”
He managed to weave so many inferences into those last six words that her whole body flushed with a mix of irritation, paranoia, and flat-out lust. She prayed Mariela hadn’t picked apart his tone, could’ve smacked him for thinking this was funny, and simultaneously found herself fanning her face, as if a couple weak waves of room-temperature air could cool the heat simmering between her legs.
Wow, she really needed to get laid.
But not with Caleb Ross, who no doubt was enjoying her obvious discomfort. Thankfully Mariela didn’t seem to notice their dynamic, which was surprising since Jessa wasn’t sure she could move in this room without tripping over it.
“Can I talk to you? Fern’s waiting in the car. It’ll just be a minute.”
“Of course.” Jessa led Mariela into the hall, out of sight of the shop.
“I got a call from a ballet school in Austin. The Larson Academy?”
Excitement knotted in Jessa’s chest. “That’s the best dance studio in Austin. I know someone who knows the owner and asked her to pass on one of Fern’s videos. Did she watch it?”
“I guess so. She asked Fern to come in for an audition.”
“That’s amazing! They take students on scholarship—she’d definitely qualify. Let me know as soon as you’ve got the date booked. We’ll start working on an audition piece for her. Larson is classic, but highly technical. Fern’s style is so lyrical, we’ll need to showcase…” Jessa trailed off, registering the concern drawing together Mariela’s brows .
“This is good news,” Jessa insisted.
Mariela glanced toward the sliver of the parking lot visible through the glass front door. “I just don’t understand why she can’t stay here. Why you can’t teach her.”
“Is it the drive into Austin? Because they can probably—”
“It’s you . She loves her lessons with you, never stops talking about what you told her or showed her. If it’s about the money—”
“It’s not that. And I love teaching Fern. But I can’t get her where she needs to go. She’s outgrown me.” Jessa offered a self-effacing smile.
Mariela still looked troubled. “But you’ve taken her so far already—far enough that this Larson Academy is even willing to look at her. Are you sure this is the right step?”
“I’d be holding her back if I said it wasn’t.”
“Well, you haven’t been wrong yet.” Mariela sounded unconvinced, but her sigh was resigned.
“I’ll look at the calendar and send some options for us to work on her audition piece.”
“All right. And if you change your mind, let me know.”
Jessa brushed that off, walked Mariela through the door and, with a quick wave to Fern in the front seat of her mom’s car, locked it behind her. She blew out a breath and then turned toward her other pressing concern—the one in the cowboy hat.
She found him straightening leotards on hangers, and as she scanned the shop, she had to admit he’d done a good job tidying up. Her approval vanished when she remembered his previous comment, however, and she propped her hands on her hips.
“Thank you for your work in the shop today,” she said, carefully, diplomatically. “But your little remark in front of Mariela was really embarrassing.”
“Remark?” His gaze was blank.
“That I’m taking good care of you.”
He stared at her as if she was speaking a foreign language, and her face heated all over again. Could she have heard innuendo where none existed? That was even more mortifying than the alternative.
“Never mind—she didn’t notice, thankfully. In future, though, please remember that this is my business, these people pay me their hard-earned money, and it’s important that I appear professional.”
“In future,” he repeated, his face splitting into a grin. “Does that mean I get to do this again?”
“We’ll see.”
“I sure would like to. Better than sitting in the house all afternoon. Hey, why don’t you want to teach that girl anymore?”
“You heard all that?”
“It’s a small building.” He leaned his good shoulder against the wall.
Jessa hastily assembled a fulsome justification, an ironclad reason why she was acting in Fern’s best interests—all of which dissolved with one glance at the patient, gently inquisitive expression on his handsome face.
Dang, but that boy had a way of drawing out of her what no one else would dare try.
“I’m not good enough,” she told him, certain even as the words left her mouth that this was too honest a disclosure—and doubly certain there was no one better to trust with it.
“But you’re a great teacher. I’ve been listening to you all afternoon, and hell if I haven’t learned some ballet techniques myself just from being nearby.”
“I’m a good teacher,” she corrected. “I’m a good choreographer, and I was a good dancer. Never great. Fern could be great, but only if someone great teaches her.”
“I thought you danced in New York and all that, got paid money to do it. How could you not be great?”
She shrugged. “I was good enough for that, and better than most. But never great. That’s why I walked away when I did. No point in fighting for fifth place.”
He smiled at that, and it was a little rueful. “That’s exactly what I’ve been doing for the last six years.”
“Guess you’re made of sterner stuff than I am.”
“I don’t know about that,” he said softly.
Jessa looked at the linoleum floor, at her own two feet, and at the base of the counter—anywhere but into those unnerving ocean-blue eyes and the man whose most innocuous comments landed like flaming arrows in the carefully constructed walls of her life.
She couldn’t afford to let him knock her off-balance—not here, not in Last Stand. Baring her soul and her body in the confines of a round-trip plane ticket was one thing. Falling prey to his transient charm in the limitless surroundings of her future was quite another.
They could have fun. They could be friends. And when she waved him off in his creaking rust-bucket truck, he could not take any part of her with him.
“Ready for dinner?” she asked brightly, pleasantly, the way she’d speak to a guest.
Because that’s what he was. Her guest. Not her lover, not her boyfriend, and certainly not her husband.
At least, not in any way that mattered.