Chapter 5 Emi #2
“It wasn’t for my sixteenth birthday,” I say defensively.
“I was twenty-two and it was his way of rewarding me for making principal dancer.” I’m not mentioning the brand-new Mercedes I’d been given for my sixteenth.
In fact, I need to steer this conversation in a different direction.
I’d rather find things we do have in common than don’t.
“Do you and your dad do a lot of fishing together?”
Austin slides me a wry grin. He knows I’m changing the subject, yet he doesn’t comment on it.
“Yeah, it was how we bonded. I didn’t even know my dad until I was fifteen.
Before that I was raised in a small town outside of Dallas with my mom.
My dad never even knew I existed until my mom was diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer and she decided she had to tell him. ”
“Why did she keep you a secret?”
“They were young and in an ‘off period’ of their on-again-off-again relationship when she realized she was pregnant. When she told my dad, he panicked and mentioned maybe terminating the pregnancy. My mom, coming from a very religious home, never considered that an option. She decided to tell him she’d been wrong about being pregnant and moved back to Texas to be with family.
” Something shifts in his expression, a flicker of sorrow maybe, but then it’s gone.
“Anyway, after she passed away I moved to Chicago to live with my dad. But we had a hard time adjusting to each other.”
He falls silent for a minute, and my heart breaks a little for him.
I still sometimes feel like I’m reeling from losing my mother three years ago, and I was an adult who didn’t have to go through other life-altering situations like he did.
“I can only imagine how hard that must have been for you.” I lay my hand on his forearm.
“I’m so sorry about your mother, Austin. ”
Turning earnest green eyes on me, he replies softly, “I’m sorry about yours, too, sweetheart.” My mouth parts in surprise. He shrugs almost sheepishly as he turns his attention back to the road. “I read about her when I Googled you before.”
“Oh, right. Thank you,” I say, giving him a reassuring smile and light squeeze of my hand. It wasn’t what I’d meant by finding things we had in common, but knowing we understand each other’s loss is an odd sort of comfort.
“Anyway,” he continues, “one day he told me to get in the truck and he took me to Lake Michigan. When I started to give him attitude, he told me to shut up and put a damn line in the water. So I did. Something about staring out at the water as we sat holding our poles allowed us to let our guards down. A few hours later we’d talked through our issues, and we had a stringer of brown trout and a new understanding of each other. Fishing’s been our thing ever since.”
“It’s nice when you have something like that with your parents,” I say, thinking of my mom. We’d done everything together; the ballet version of the Gilmore Girls.
“Yeah, it is.”
He pulls into a parking space at the wine bar and orders me to stay put.
I wait patiently for him to come around and open my door, then accept his hand to help me down.
Austin tucks my hand into the crook of his arm as we walk, and I’m struck by what a gentleman he is.
I’m very accustomed to this sort of treatment, growing up in the formal circles as I did, but with Austin it feels different.
More…special. It feels like something he does without question because he believes in why he does it and not because it was drilled into him at cotillion as a kid.
Smiling down at me, he leads me into the small bistro I chose for our date.
The decor is sleek and modern, with the entire back wall acting as one huge wine rack.
There’s a bar off to the right, and the left half is for diners, some of the seating being normal tables and some with a lounge arrangement.
A small band is playing live music in the corner near the front windows, and the place is near capacity with people enjoying good food and drinks while laughing with friends.
The hostess seats us at one of the lounge settings, two low armchairs with a round coffee table between us.
He orders a whiskey sour, and I order a glass of Pinot Noir with the charcuterie and cheese platter as we’d agreed upon last night.
I honestly don’t care what we eat, but I’d felt compelled not to give in to everything he wanted when he caught me so off guard at the studio.
And I’m nothing if not a woman of my word.
He smiles, drilling those swoon-worthy dimples into his cheeks. It’s a good thing I’m already sitting, or my knees might have made a fool out of me when they caused one of the most graceful people in Chicago to topple to the floor.
“Tell me something about you, Emi. Something I wouldn’t find on Google.”
“Am I to assume you’ve already read everything about me on Google, then?”
“I take my research very seriously.”
The waitress sets our drinks down, and I take a sip of mine before answering with a grin tugging at the corners of my lips. “I enjoy fishing, too.” His eyebrows wing up in clear disbelief, making me laugh. “Okay, fine, I only did it once, but I had fun.”
“Don’t stop there,” he says, picking up his glass. “I want to hear all about the ballerina princess and her fishing trip.”
“I told you, I’m hardly a princess. Though if my father could justify locking me away in a tower I’m sure he would.”
“If that ever happens, you can count on me to come to your rescue.”
I chuckle at his playful wink. “That’s very reassuring, thank you.”
“Hey, I might be more of a stableboy than a gallant prince, but us stableboys know how to have a lot more fun.” The green of his eyes heats with the kind of prurience that causes me to shiver in anticipation of what’s to come. If only I have the courage to chase it.
The waitress breaks the spell when she shows up with the food, and I force myself to take in a deep breath.
Slow down, Emi. Clearing my throat, I busy myself with choosing slices of duck prosciutto and manchego cheese and place them on a slice of crusty French bread.
For the next half hour we enjoy ourselves and make small talk.
I share the story of my one and only fishing trip with my uncle when I was nine.
He had told my parents he’d bought us tickets to a matinee showing of Beauty and the Beast downtown, so they let me skip my training that day, then he took me out on his charter boat instead.
I spent the whole afternoon fishing, laughing, and eating junk food.
We thought the theater had been the perfect alibi until I returned smelling like fish and lake water.
I’d gotten grounded for a month, but it had been totally worth it.
“Dance with me,” Austin says out of the blue.
After managing to not choke on my wine, I look over at the small floor space in front of the band, who just started playing a cover of “Say You Won’t Let Go” by James Arthur. “No one else is dancing.”
“That’s no reason to let a good song go to waste.” He rises, extending his hand. “Dance with me, Emmélie.”
My breath catches at the way he says my full name.
No one except my mother and grandparents in France had ever used it.
It’s always sounded too formal and less like me.
But the way Austin’s mouth wraps around the syllables speaks of an intimacy that shouldn’t exist between two near strangers… and yet it does.
I place my hand in his much larger one and let him lead me to the open space that’s to be our makeshift dance floor.
He pulls me in close with his free hand splaying between my shoulder blades.
His posture is impeccable, his form utterly perfect.
Then, to my shock and delight, Austin Massey, man of mystery, leads me in a sensual rumba.
“Don’t look so surprised, princess,” he says with a lopsided grin. “Even stableboys can learn to dance like the royals.”
“Stop referring to yourself as a stableboy before my knee connects with your family jewels.” His eyes widen, but I’m not fooled.
He’s not the least bit worried I’ll follow through with the threat, and he’s right.
I’d never do something like that unless I feared for my life.
Something I can’t imagine happening with this man.
“If anything,” I continue, “you’d be the strong and valiant knight, which I much prefer to the pompous princes anyway. ”
He leans in to speak into my ear. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear that.”
Erotic tingles race through my body, and it’s only the steps of the dance that keep me grounded enough to carry on the conversation. “Where’d you learn how to dance like this?”
He spins me out and back in, to the oohs and ahs of the audience we’ve attracted, but he doesn’t miss a beat as he answers.
“My mother was a competition ballroom dancer before she had me. Then she stopped competing and switched to giving lessons. She taught me from when I was little, and once I was tall enough, she used me in her classes as her partner.”
“That’s amazing.” I let him spin us in a full rotation around our small area. “My mom put me in ballroom classes when I was in high school. She thought it could help with my ballet.”
“And did it?”
“Absolutely. More than that, I really enjoyed it. It was so much more freeing, with all the different styles. I thought we should add ballroom classes at the studio, but my mom wanted to keep it strictly ballet. Now that I’m running things, though…
” I let the sentence trail off, still finding it hard to admit that my mother is no longer around.
“I think it’s a great idea, Emi. I know you love ballet, but sometimes the things we love aren’t the same things that feed our soul. I’m a firm believer that we need both to truly be happy.”