In the Zone (Portland Storm 5) (17 page)

He was sitting on the floor, putting on some proper shoes for Latin dance, when I came in. His head popped up when I came through the door, and he flashed me a grin. “Feels weird to be wearing shoes to dance in,” he said. “I’m not sure my feet remember how to deal with that.”

I doubted his feet would be too happy about wearing any shoes for dancing but definitely not Latin ballroom shoes. They had quite a lift in the heel, almost as much as my own heels had. I shook my head, trying to shake off the negativity that had swamped me the moment I’d seen myself in that costume.

“You sure about all this?” I asked. Maybe he would rethink the whole thing and realize I had no business being part of his show. Maybe I could get out of it.

Not that I actually wanted to get out of it. I
wanted
to perform again. I did. I just wished I could feel confident about myself when I did it. The doubts I had went so far beyond the way my body looked. I wasn’t positive I could make my body move the way it would need to for this, despite all the reassurances Devin had given me when he’d first made the suggestion.

Size has nothing to do with it
, he’d told me then.
Your muscles know what to do. They remember what you’ve taught them.

Personally, I was less than confident that muscle memory was going to be enough to pull off something of this scale.

Devin finished tying his laces and stood up. He was taller than me by a few inches, especially in these shoes, but not as tall as Keith. His body was firm, lean muscle everywhere. Today he was wearing a navy T-shirt and lime-green gym pants, and his blond hair was curly and messy all over his head, like he hadn’t bothered to run a comb through it when he’d left the house this morning.

He turned on some music and then crossed over to stand before me, holding out his arms as though to take me into hold. “As sure as I could ever be. This is going to be the big number in my show, you know. The piece that everyone goes home talking about.”

Reluctantly, I put my hand in his, meeting his smile.

“Teach me the Argentine tango,” Devin said, winking. “And then we’ll work together to choreograph our piece.”

Argentine tango
? Now I really knew I’d bitten off something I had no business chewing. The Argentine tango was at turns slow and sensual and then sharp and fast, the dance of two lovers coming together in a battle of wills almost. Not only that, but it was full of lifts. He might be strong, but he would kill himself trying to lift me in a routine.

I hadn’t thought to ask him what dance he’d been thinking of when we’d first discussed our collaboration, though, assuming he would want to go with the cha-cha or something along those lines—upbeat and playful. If he intended to merge his choreography with an Argentine tango, then that definitely made the seamstress’s choice in costume more understandable. It did nothing to alleviate my nerves, however.

I took a breath and tried to slow my pulse. Argentine tango. I could teach him that dance. That was my job, after all—teaching people to move to music. Devin had some ballroom experience, even if he hadn’t made use of it in a number of years. He’d studied just about every style of dance a person could learn. He’d be an exceptional student. We’d have to be sure, as we choreographed it, to steer clear of lifts as much as absolutely possible, and to make whatever lifts we
did
have to include weren’t likely to hurt him.

“All right,” I finally said. “Well, first things first. You’ll remember that in the Latin dances, you always move with a toe lead. Argentine tango is no different, at least as far as that’s concerned.”

“Of course.” Devin grinned at me, and we started to move, and then I didn’t have any more time to worry about what I was going to have to wear.

C
HALK IT UP
to an irrepressible itch to see her, but I couldn’t seem to make myself wait for five o’clock to roll around in order to see Brie. That was why, at about 3:30 in the afternoon, I was walking through the front door of Rose City, hoping to surprise her when she finished up with her classes. I figured I could take her back to her place so she could see to her cats and change clothes, and whatever else she needed to do before we left. And then we could get started. Shopping was first on my agenda—something I never would have imagined before.

The anticipation that had led me here so soon wasn’t because I hadn’t tried to otherwise occupy myself. I’d gone to practice and the team’s weekly goal-setting meeting—Bergy hadn’t been overly impressed with my goal for this week being,
Avoid alcohol and get a good night’s sleep every night
, and had insisted I come up with something better to challenge myself—before having lunch with the boys. Then I had stopped by the Light the Lamp Foundation offices—a charity Kally had begun not long ago—so Jessica Lynch, the foundation’s Portland-area VP, could fill me in on what she was going to need from me for an upcoming New Year’s Eve event they were planning. I’d volunteered to help out in any way they needed, and apparently she thought what I was most needed for was as a designated driver. Well, really a celebrity driver. She’d wanted copies of my driver’s license and insurance information, plus a few other pertinent details.

When I had finished with all of that, I’d gone back to my place and taken the dogs out for a nice, long walk along the trails near the house. They’d come home tired and happy, and they’d been content to lounge around while I flipped channels on the TV. I hadn’t been anywhere near that content, though. I couldn’t focus on the screen or the words. All my thoughts had kept rushing back to Brie and the knowledge that I was going to get to see her soon.

And now, here I was.

Tanya’s head popped up when I knocked on the door to her office, and she flashed me a big grin. “I wasn’t expecting to see you today.”

“I wasn’t expecting to be here.”

“I’m glad you are, though. You remember the places I told you about for shopping?”

I nodded. “Thanks again for the help.” Granted, I didn’t know how Brie was going to react once she realized what all I wanted to help her buy. She hadn’t seemed very sold on the idea when I’d first broached the subject, but surely she’d change her mind once she saw how she looked in some things that fit her, wouldn’t she?

The cold hard truth, though, was that I had no idea how she would react. I didn’t really know her all that well yet. I just knew that I wanted to know her, and that we had some of the most amazing, insane sexual chemistry I’d ever experienced in my life. I only hoped she would get over it pretty soon.

“Mmm-hmm,” was all Tanya said. That didn’t give me a ton of hope that I was right. But then again, how long had Tanya known Brie? Maybe not so long. Brie had only lived in Portland for a few months.

“How much longer does Brie’s class run?” I asked to change the subject.

“Class?” Tanya muttered, typing on the keyboard so fast it sounded like machine gun fire. She didn’t bother to look up at me. “Her last class ended at two. She’s in working with Devin Shreeve on a piece they’re going to perform together at his show in a few weeks. The job I mentioned yesterday.”

She was going to perform? Had Tanya mentioned a job yesterday? If she had, it had completely slipped past me in all my thoughts about taking Brie shopping. I’d thought that Brie had convinced herself all her performing days were in the past. I felt a little lighter, just from the thought that she was going to get back to doing something she loved, something that was so much a part of her. That was bound to give her a boost in confidence, something she desperately needed.

“Would they mind if I went in to watch?” I asked, certain that Tanya would tell me to cool my jets and take a seat in the office with her.

She surprised me with her response. “You could go sit up in the gallery. That’s where a lot of parents hang out during the kids’ classes—they can watch what’s going on without being in the way or interfering.” She went on to tell me how to find the stairs so I could make my way up.

It was empty when I reached it. There were a dozen chairs or so set up in two rows looking out over the studio. I’d noticed the space when I had taken that class with Colesy but hadn’t bothered to think about what it might be for. Careful not to make any noise, since there wasn’t even a pane of glass to mask my sounds, I took a seat front and center and watched down below.

The sound system was pumping the strains of “Love Runs Out” by OneRepublic through the space, a strong, driving beat that further masked any noise I might make. Brie and a man who must be Devin were in the middle of the dance floor, surrounded by mirrored walls, going through the steps of a tango. Except, even to my untrained eye, it wasn’t strictly a tango. It had all the sharp kicks between the legs and close body position that I expected, but those movements were broken up with spurts where their bodies flew through the space, limbs flailing in exquisitely controlled abandon.

Fragments of it felt almost like ballet, although I couldn’t really say why I thought so. Ballet was about as far outside of my realm of expertise as rocket science. Still, whatever it was, I’d honestly never seen anything like what they were doing, and I’d spent countless hours watching Garrett and Monica dance together over the years. I would have thought it would seem at least somewhat familiar, but it was foreign to me.

Even from this distance, I could tell that Brie was as exhilarated from their movements as I was watching them. Her eyes sparked, her hair flew free from the loose ponytail at the back of her head, and it seemed as though her feet barely brushed the floor as Devin guided her effortlessly across it. Dancing with him was a far cry from dancing with me and my clunky, plodding exertions. They did some sort of twirling, ballet move that ended with Brie back in Devin’s arms in a perfect ballroom hold, foreheads meeting and their noses only a breath away from each other, gazes locked, and Brie executed a fast series of kicks that went directly between Devin’s legs—sharp and deadly enough that, were they not perfectly placed, she could have unmanned him.

When Brie finished her kicks, they stopped even though the music continued to swell into one of the choruses.

“Yes, that’s exactly what I want,” Devin said, taking a step back and a few visibly deep breaths. “And then I think I should sweep you up into a lift of some sort.”

Brie shook her head. “Let’s take five and get some water.” Before he could argue, she crossed the floor to the speaker system and stopped the music. She grabbed a couple of bottles of water and tossed him one.

He opened it and drank about half. I could see his expression clearly in the mirrors around the room. He hadn’t stopped staring at Brie, his eyes narrowed. She was keeping her distance, fiddling with a stack of CDs beside the sound system as though reorganizing them was the most important thing on her mind at the moment. After a couple more swallows, he screwed the cap back on his bottle and held it out, gesturing toward her with it. “You keep trying to push me off whenever I talk about the lifts I want to put in.”

“Do I?” She looked up at him, eyes all innocence. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“Well, I have. You’ve done plenty of lifts before. I’ve seen video of you when you danced with Val Nazarov. You were up in the air half the time you two were on the dance floor.”

“Hardly,” she scoffed, going back to her CD reorganization.

“Are you scared of heights?”

“No.”

“Did he drop you? Is that why you two aren’t dancing together anymore?”

“No.” With a move of unadulterated aggravation, Brie removed the band holding her hair back and forcefully redid the whole thing, leaving it messier than before but pulling it out of her face.

“Then what is it? Why are you trying to avoid doing these lifts?”

Her head snapped up, and even from this distance I could see the hurt and shame in her eyes. I knew it was there because that was how she’d looked at me every time I’d tried to look at her body.

My stomach clenched at the sight of her agony, but there was nothing I could do to make it any better. I was trying, but this wasn’t something that could be fixed overnight. For that matter, it wasn’t anything
I
could fix at all. Brie was the one who had to stop listening to Val’s voice in her head. She was the one who had to start seeing herself in a new light. All I could do was point her toward the mirror when the light hit her and hope that, in her eyes, it wasn’t one of those carnival mirrors that distorted everything it reflected.

“Can’t you let it go?” she pleaded after a moment. “We don’t have to do lifts for this—”

“Who’s ever done an Argentine tango without lifts?” he interrupted.

“But it’s not strictly that. It’s a fusion.”

“True. But I want to keep the flavor of both styles, and that means we need lifts. I’d want to do lifts in a contemporary piece, too. That’s one of my strengths. Surely you knew that about me.”

She shrugged, taking a long slug from her bottle of water, likely to buy time.

“You know why I asked you to do this with me, Brie?” Devin asked after a minute or two during which the only sound had been the ticking of the clock over the door and my own breathing.