12. Rafe #2
“I can’t help what my face does when I’m concentrating.”
I looked down at her, and the step almost went wrong because she was dazzling.
Quinn’s face was flushed from movement. The plum dress turned beautifully when she did, the beadwork at her wrists catching light in small flashes. She looked happy. Not because the evening had been easy. It hadn’t been. Not because she’d forgotten what the room was. She hadn’t forgotten anything.
She’d simply decided to enjoy what she could.
I found that more impressive than any legal argument she’d made.
The dance changed. Guests clapped through a sequence that required everyone to turn outward, then back in. Quinn missed the timing, laughed, and corrected herself without embarrassment. I followed properly, of course.
“Show off,” she said.
“I’m doing the steps.”
“Are you bad at anything?”
“You invited me to dance. I’m dancing.”
“I invited you to be charmingly bad at it.”
I smiled at her. “You failed to specify those terms.”
She laughed again, and the sound moved through me more clearly than the music.
Then the caller gestured to Max. “Bring in the honorary guest.”
Quinn froze. Max stood as if summoned by destiny.
“He appears willing,” I said.
“He can’t line dance. That’s not on the list of commands he knows.”
“Let’s see.” I stepped toward Max and offered my hand, palm down.
Max sniffed once, then gave me his paw.
Everyone applauded.
Quinn covered her mouth, eyes bright. “Oh my god.”
I took the dog’s paw very carefully and stepped once to the side. Max followed with a small, tidy movement, his tail giving one restrained wag. It wasn’t dancing in any technical sense. It was barely movement. But the applause grew, and Max, dignified creature that he was, accepted it all.
I looked up and saw the pure delight on Quinn’s face.
She was laughing at me and Max, one hand pressed to her stomach, the other reaching out to steady herself against a chair. The sight of it stole whatever small defense I’d built around the moment.
I wanted, abruptly and with great inconvenience, to make her laugh like that again.
Max released my hand when I told him, “Enough,” in a tone he apparently respected, then sat as the applause faded.
“He performed admirably,” I said.
She laughed again, her eyes bright. I found myself watching too closely.
The lively dance ended with more laughter than skill, and people drifted back to their tables, still smiling.
I should’ve used the break to retrieve my composure.
Instead, I found myself standing next to Quinn at the edge of the floor, aware of my pulse, her nearness, and the absurd fact that I’d enjoyed the last several minutes more than any formal event in recent memory.
Enjoyed.
The word didn’t become less strange through repetition.
The quartet began again.
At first, I didn’t place the melody. Only the first few notes, slow and lilting, threaded through the room. Conversation softened. Couples adjusted naturally, hands finding shoulders and waists. The music drew the energy inward.
Then the violin carried higher, and a memory crashed over me.
My mother’s parlor in the winter. My grandfather’s old phonograph, carefully maintained long after parts became difficult to find.
My mother humming the melody while teaching me the basic frame of a dance.
I had been twelve and furious about a pack dinner where a girl had asked if my dragon horns interfered with my hearing.
My mother had laughed so hard she had to sit down, but she taught me the steps because she refused to let someone else’s ignorance teach me shame.
“Rafe?”
Quinn’s voice brought me back to the present.
She stood beside me, no longer laughing. “Do you know this song?”
“Yes.”
The answer came out lower than I intended.
Her face softened. “Oh.”
I should’ve stepped back. The moment had turned private too quickly for a public space. The correct thing would have been to suggest we find refreshments, check on Max, and review the plan for Friday. Anything practical that would have restored the evening to shape.
I didn’t do any of that, though. I raised my arms into the old ballroom frame. “Would you like to keep dancing?” I asked Quinn.
Her eyes widened. “I don’t know this one.”
“I do.” I held her gaze. “I can lead.”
Her humor rose, ready and familiar, then softened before it could become a shield. She smoothed one hand over her dress, then placed her fingers lightly in mine.
“All right,” she said. “But if I step on your toes, I’m blaming you.”
“Acceptable.”
When her gaze lifted to mine again, the air between us became charged.
I placed my other hand at her back, above her waist. She set her hand on my shoulder, and the contact was formal enough for any ballroom, yet it moved through me with startling force.
For the first few steps, she watched my face too intently, trying to anticipate the pattern.
“Don’t look at me,” I said.
Her brows lifted. “That feels counterproductive.”
“Watch the line of my shoulder. You’ll feel the direction before you need to think about it.”
“Of course you make dancing sound like litigation.”
“I think we can agree that litigation is less pleasant.” I stepped forward, guiding her back.
She followed half a beat late, but she quickly found the rhythm.
The music was slow enough to allow mistakes and graceful enough to forgive them.
Around us, couples turned in measured circles beneath the chandelier light.
Max trotted at the edge of the dance floor for several steps.
When he’d decided we weren’t abandoning him, he settled near Miriam, who had returned from dancing with Georgiana and now watched us with open amusement.
Quinn noticed. “Your new friend is staring.”
“She’s your new friend.”
“She likes Max best.”
“Don’t most sensible people like animals more than people?”
Quinn’s mouth curved, and this time she didn’t look away from me. Her nerves loosened by degrees. I felt it in the way her hand settled more fully against my shoulder, the way her steps became smoother as she let herself be led through the dance.
The pleasure of that should’ve been simple.
It wasn’t.
Guiding her required attention, but not the kind I used in negotiations or flight.
This was different. My hand at her back, her breath brushing my cheek when I turned us, the exact moment she trusted the next step enough to stop bracing.
She was warm and alive with the same quick intelligence she brought to everything, only now it moved through her body instead of her words.
“You’re really good at this,” she said.
“My mother taught me.”
Her smile gentled. “Did she use a phonograph to play the music? Sounds idyllic.”
I frowned at her.
“You mentioned something about her father’s old phonograph in the car,” she said.
I had mentioned it, but as an aside, not something to be remembered.
Quinn had remembered.
“Yes,” I said. “This was one of her favorites.”
Quinn’s hand softened in mine. “It’s beautiful.”
“It is.”
For several measures, we didn’t speak. I turned us carefully, keeping her clear of a couple drifting too close.
She followed without hesitation now, the skirt of her dress moving around her legs.
The city, the museum, the law firm, Marco Bellandi, every badly built room I’d ever tried to win—they receded under the quiet insistence of the melody.
Quinn’s face changed as we danced.
At first, she’d looked nervous, then amused. Now she looked almost wonderstruck, but not by the lavishness around us. Her wonder was more personal than that, as if, for a few minutes, something she’d thought belonged to other people had allowed her inside.
I had the uncomfortable sense that I was watching a wish form in real time.
Worse, I wanted to be worthy of standing inside it with her.
My understanding of love had always been solemn, almost burdensome. But now, as I was dancing with Quinn, I saw another possibility: attention could feel like delight before it became duty.
I gave a mental shake of my head. I barely knew Quinn Bradley. I shouldn’t even be thinking about these things in relation to her.
That was what reason supplied.
My body, traitorous and far less interested in logic, noted the warmth of her hand and her smile when she finally stopped counting steps.
“You’re thinking again,” she said softly, a teasing lilt in her voice.
The urge to answer honestly was unwise.
“I was thinking,” I said, “that you seem to be enjoying the gala.”
“I am.” Her eyes moved briefly over the ballroom. “I know it’s excessive and weird and full of people who probably have strong convictions about linen weights, but yes. I am.”
“It doesn’t bother you?”
“The excess?”
“Yes.”
“Some of it.” She considered that as we turned.
“But I’ve spent a lot of my life outside spaces like this, imagining everyone inside them was either happier or meaner than they actually were.
Tonight, mostly, they’re just people. Some generous.
Some pompous. Some bored. Most of them are ignoring the servers, which I’ll be mad about forever, but the food is good, the music is wonderful, and a woman named Miriam used ancient Greek marital lore to stop her wife from being a jerk in public. So, you know. Range.”
I nearly missed a step.
Quinn’s eyes gleamed. “Did I almost break your dance prowess?”
“No.”
“I think I did.”
“You didn’t.”
“Max saw.”
“Max is not a reliable witness.”
“He is the most reliable witness.”
“He can’t testify.”
“Which, as established previously, is a flaw in the legal system.”
I smiled before I could stop myself.
The teasing in her expression slipped into something quieter.
The music slowed further, the final notes of the melody drawing out.
We were near the edge of the dance floor now, partly shielded from the room by a large floral arrangement.
No one was paying us any particular attention.
Or perhaps they were and I simply didn’t care.
That was new.