Chapter 5 #3
Dane’s eyes returned to the girl, who was still holding her foot, her long, blonde hair shielding her face.
God, what if he’d broken a toe, crushed a bone?
He knew how long it took for a toe to heal, for a small bone to mend itself.
And it was damn sore. He shoved his hand into his hair, grateful for Wren’s approach.
She placed her hand on the girl’s shoulder and ducked her head to look into her face.
“Hadley, honey, are you okay? What happened?”
The girl lifted her head, tucked her hair behind her ear, and dropped her foot. She grinned at Wren, and Dane realized she’d been laughing, not crying. She leaned forward to whisper in Wren’s ear.
Wren laughed, gave her a quick hug, and walked back to the front of the room. When she took her place again, her smile lit up the room. Dane had no doubt he was the butt of their joke.
The music resumed, but instead of following Wren’s instructions, he lightly touched the girl’s shoulder to get her attention. When she looked at him, he bent down to talk to her. “Are you okay? I’m so sorry.”
“I’m fine. You just squished my toe.”
“Not broken, right?” he asked. “I’m a doctor, I could check.”
She stood on her tiptoes and bounced. “Not broken, I promise,” she shouted, her words just reaching him. Dammit, had Wren turned up the volume again?
He gave her a thumbs-up and stepped back, out of both hers and Colt’s way. Neither kid would be in danger if he kept his distance.
Safe distance, check. There would be no collateral damage if he kept out of everyone’s way.
* * *
Wren cut the music, and silence filled her studio. Three, two, one…
Groans and moans replaced the silence as kids dropped to sit, some of them lying on their backs on the floor.
She noticed the sweaty faces, the matted hair, the sweat-stained shirts.
Yeah, they’d worked hard today, even if they hadn’t done much more than her usual warm-up.
Picking up her water bottle from its place beneath the barre, she smiled.
Some were better than others, some were a lot better than others, and some needed work. One or two were pretty bad.
But Dane was the worst of the lot. She looked at him, still standing at the back of her class, looking shell-shocked.
He wasn’t out of breath, but he was slightly sweaty.
He’d said he didn’t have any rhythm, but surely everyone could do a basic bounce and sway?
How could a man who could do complex operations at high speed under stressful situations be so catastrophically bad at dancing? It made no sense.
He met her eyes, lifted one shoulder, and grimaced.
But there was humor in his eyes, an adult acceptance of how bad he was.
And a man who still radiated self-confidence after his dismal performance in front of a woman he was attracted to—he was attracted to her, right?
—was such a freakin’ turn on. An adult man whose self-worth was determined by a lifetime of achievements and not one performance was a rarity.
He held her eyes, one eyebrow arching.
“I can’t dance,” he mouthed.
Wren grinned. “I noticed,” she mouthed back. Since the kids were showing signs of life, she told them to get back on their feet and led them through a series of basic dance stretches.
With the music still off, she paced the area between them and the barre. “So, I’ve got good news and bad news. Good news first… Collectively, you’re better than I thought, so well done! Bad news, as I said earlier, I’m just a temporary stand-in and won’t be working with you going forward.”
The chorus of disbelief and “Why nots” filled the room.
“Guys, I need to take a break,” she explained. “I’m in H-Town to take some time off, to recenter myself. I need to refill the well. To rest and reflect.”
“Yeah, because dumping Kyro was a dick move,” a female voice drifted over to her.
She was not going there. She didn’t owe a kid, or anyone, an explanation. “Just work with whoever Miss Luna employs and do your best,” she said, keeping her voice even. “I had fun today, I hope you did, too.”
Wren turned, picked up her water bottle, and drained it.
“Well, my one and only dance class was fun,” a voice drifted over to her. From the corner of her eye, she saw the red-headed boy talking to Hadley.
“Why?” Hadley asked him.
“My dad will only let me dance if Dane does, too, and he’s only here because Wren is teaching the class. There’s no way he’ll sign up to dance class with another instructor.”
“Why do you think that?” Hadley asked, as they made their way to the far side of the room, where all the kids had dumped their backpacks. Good question, why would Colt think that? Neither she nor Dane had done anything to make him think that was the case. Was their attraction so obvious?
“He’s not wrong.”
Wren looked over her shoulder to see Dane approaching her. He sent a longing look at her water bottle, so Wren reached for her cooler bag. Opening it, she pulled out two bottles of water and tossed one to Dane, who caught it with his left hand. Good reflexes, she noted.
“Thanks,” Dane said, cracking the lid as he walked over to her.
He handed her his open bottle and took the other one from her hand.
“As I said, Colt isn’t wrong. I’ll come to your dance class.
I like Colt, and I hate his father’s pissant attitude, but I’m not a martyr.
I’m not going to attend someone else’s class and sacrifice my time for a kid I don’t know unless there’s a payoff for me. ”
“And what’s your payoff?” she asked, intrigued. It wasn’t learning to dance, he was hopeless.
Their eyes caught, snagged. “Watching you do something you love.”
She swallowed, seeing the admiration in his eyes. Was he saying that he hated dancing but loved watching her? Really? Her heart filled with heat, expanded, and knocked against her ribcage.
He shrugged and looked away. Wren could feel it, he’d pulled back, just a little, as if realizing that he’d said too much.
“Is that your way of blackmailing me into continuing teaching the class?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No blackmail, I’m just stating my position. You teach. I try. Colt dances. You don’t. I don’t. The world will continue to turn for Colt.”
He wasn’t exerting any pressure, just stating facts. It was her choice, and whatever she chose, it wouldn’t come with any judgment. “Maybe I should…” she said, biting down on her lip to keep her words in check.
“Carry on with classes?” Dane filled in the blanks. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
“Helpful,” she muttered.
He smiled. “Let me ask you this… Did you have fun? It looked like you did.”
Wren nodded. “Mmm, I did. There wasn’t any time or performance pressure. I could just enjoy the way my body moved, the way the kids moved. I haven’t felt that for a long, long time.” And it was what she’d been missing, that freedom. The joy.
Joy was the missing ingredient. Had she found it in a dance studio in H-Town of all places? That was nuts. Actually, maybe that fit, since this town wasn’t exactly sane.
“So, I have this theory…” Dane said. She waited for him to continue, her eyebrows raised. “I think that when you find something you enjoy and love to do, you should do more of that. And don’t think about it too much.”
“Do you do what you love?” she asked and watched as confusion clouded his clear blue gaze.
He waited a beat or two before speaking. “I thought I was doing what I loved, thought it fulfilled me in all the ways it should. Now I’m not so sure.”
Wren knew when to push, and this wasn’t the time, so she bumped his shoulder with hers. “I’ll think about it, Trafford.”
He nodded. “You do that, Dunlop,” he replied, sounding as if he knew exactly what her answer would be.
But how could she cave to Luna without losing her dignity? How would she avoid her told-you-so’s? It was enough to make her rethink her decision.
Dane sat down on the bench and rested his head against the wall behind him, closing his eyes. “God, that was torture.”
She laughed and sat next to him. “Didn’t you enjoy it?” she teased, knowing that he’d spent most of her very basic lesson flailing.
He sat up, opened his water, and took a long swallow. “No,” he muttered.
Wren crossed her legs, rested her elbow on her knee, and shook her head. “How can anyone be as bad at dancing as you?” she said. “You have no rhythm, no coordination, and no sense of the music.”
He shrugged, unoffended. “It’s one of the great mysteries of the world.”
“So why on earth did you take awful Penn up on his dare?”
“He pissed me off.”
“I got that.” Wren touched his thigh, just lightly, her fingers briefly connecting with hot, hard muscle. “I had fun, but you definitely didn’t.”
“I didn’t have fun when I first joined the army, or when I first started med school, either. Everything gets better with practice,” he stated.
He drank some more and rested the bottle on his thigh before lifting his wrist and squinting at his watch. “Would you be interested in getting a drink with me?”
She’d promised herself a drama-dance-and-man-free summer: three months to pull herself together, to slow down and recalibrate. She’d ninety per cent decided to continue teaching this class, which meant she’d failed at one of her resolutions before her summer had even properly started.