In the Zone (Portland Storm 5) (7 page)

Every time Cole and I had danced near Keith and Alexis, Keith had winked at me or said something that I could never repeat in polite company. I couldn’t understand it. I couldn’t find a way to make any sense of it in my head.

I mean, we’d spent one night together.
One
. And yes, I was insanely attracted to him and I’d had a hard time pushing him from my mind after we’d met. But it had only been one night of weakness for me. It’d been a moment in time when I’d felt my most vulnerable and least confident, a time when I could hardly find the strength to push myself out the door each day. I’d asked him to lie to me, to make me feel beautiful. I’d asked him to help boost my confidence at least enough that I could move on with my life, and he had. Amazingly so.

I could never let it become more than that one night, though.

Yet, here he was, coming up to me after class when I was trying to escape into the office so I could talk to Tanya and pretend to be busy so he would leave. I’d bent over to grab my bag and bottle of water, and I had been hoping to get through the door before he had finished talking to Cole.

That didn’t happen. I felt him before I saw or heard him.

“I still need your number.” He settled his hand on my waist as though it belonged there.

“I’m not in the habit of giving out my personal number to students.”

“I’m not just a student, though, am I?”

“Aren’t you?” I spun around so I could face him. “What exactly do you think this is?”

He shrugged, and I couldn’t stop my gaze from falling to his shoulders. Couldn’t stop my mind from thinking of the feel of them beneath my fingers.

I was a wreck, and it was all his fault.

“I don’t know what it is, but I know what it could be.” He reached up and took my glasses off my face. “We’re good together, Brie.”

“One night doesn’t mean anything,” I snapped, grabbing my glasses out of his hand so impatiently that I smudged sweaty fingerprints all over the stupid lenses. I dug around in my purse for a wipe to clean them with. “We don’t know anything about each other,” I muttered.

“We have insane chemistry. That much we know.” He leaned against the doorframe, crossing his arms and his ankles in a stance that said he didn’t have anywhere else to be. “We know enough that I want to know more. Let me take you on a date. One date, and then if you want me to back off, I’ll back off.”

I twisted the lid off my water bottle and guzzled it to buy time.

“Brie,” he said, and he waited until I looked up and met his gaze. “One date. You can’t tell me you aren’t at least curious.”

I was a heck of a lot more than curious, and that was part of the problem. But the longer he stood there staring at me, the more I felt my resolve slipping away.

“One date? And then you’ll leave me alone if I tell you to?”

“Scout’s honor,” Keith said.

“When?” And why was I even thinking about this?

“Tomorrow night? I can pick you up at seven.”

“Tomorrow’s no good. I have a class.” I didn’t see any reason to tell him more than that. And it was the truth, even though it wasn’t a class I was teaching. I had signed up to take a contemporary class taught by Devin Shreeve, a choreographer whose work I idolized. I doubted I would get any jobs from taking the class. No one wanted to hire a dancer who looked like me. But I still wanted to go, test myself, stretch my boundaries. I wanted the experience. “What about Thursday?”

“We have a game Thursday night. You could come,” he added. “I can get you in.”

I shook my head. That seemed like a girlfriend-status sort of thing, and all I was agreeing to was a single date.

“Okay, no game. What does Friday look like for you?”

I racked my brain, trying to come up with an excuse that didn’t sound like I was searching for an excuse, but nothing came to mind. I even had the whole day off.
Crap
. “Friday’s fine.”

“Could I pick you up early on Friday? Like midafternoon or so?”

It was as if he had read my mind and knew that I didn’t have anything to stop me. “Yeah, I suppose so.”

“Excellent. Now, I need your number.” He’d already pulled his cell out of his pocket, punched a few buttons, and waited with an arched eyebrow, finger poised to press more keys.

I rattled off my digits, and when he was finished saving my number in his phone, he straightened away from the door enough that I could get through. I’d barely gone three steps before he was following me through the hall toward the front office. Cole was in there registering for more classes when I arrived.

Keith came in behind me. “Brie?”

I turned around to ask him what on earth he wanted now, and as soon as I did, he planted a kiss on my lips that threatened to turn all my bones to mush. I had to grab on to his shoulders to keep my balance, and he took that as his cue to wrap both arms around my waist and draw me right up against him. We were both hot and sweaty from the class, but he smelled like spice and bergamot and heat, and I wanted to let myself melt into him. He was more than I knew how to handle.

When he released me, I practically fell into the open chair next to Tanya.

“I’ll call you,” he said casually with a sinfully sexy grin. Then he nodded in Cole’s direction. “Ready to get out of here, Colesy?”

“I…” Cole looked at me with apologetic eyes and mouthed,
I’m sorry
, one more time, then said, “Yeah. Let’s go. I’ll see you next time, Brie.”

All I could do was wave, and even that almost took more out of me than I had to give after that kiss.

“Told you,” Tanya said when they were gone. “Sex on a stick.”

She had no idea.

W
EAR SOMETHING WARM
and comfortable.

That’s what Keith had said when he’d called yesterday afternoon before his game. I’d asked him for more clarification as to where he intended to take me on this date and how I should dress, but he hadn’t told me much of anything. Nor had he given me any indication of what sort of warm and comfortable, not that it really mattered. It was still a date, and that meant I needed to wear something nice,
plus
warm and comfortable. The problem was that I didn’t own anything in my current size that I’d consider
nice
.

For the last ten minutes, I’d been staring into the tiny, overstuffed vortex of my closet, my mind completely blank about what I could possibly put on that wouldn’t look as frumpy and ill-fitting as everything else I owned. My closet was full to bursting, mind you. I had kept the clothes I’d bought in every size along the way, ever since I’d started gaining weight when my thyroid went haywire about four years ago. I’d been twenty-two and it had seemed as though the world was waiting for me, and then suddenly, it wasn’t. I’d only gotten rid of things when they were too stained or threadbare or otherwise unwearable. I pretty much had a full wardrobe in every size from two up to twenty-two, not that I expected I’d ever be able to wear most of those things again.

These days, I fit into an eighteen. The medications that my doctor had put me on had helped to stabilize my metabolism, at least somewhat, so I’d managed to drop a few pounds. It had taken me two years on those meds, along with watching my diet like a hawk and working out more than I ever had before—even more than when I’d been a full-time professional ballroom dancer—to lose enough weight to drop back down to that size.

So there was no chance I was ever going to get into a two again. Heck, there really wasn’t any possibility I would ever squeeze my body into a size ten, so I didn’t know why I couldn’t let the smaller sizes go. Especially since I really didn’t have room for them. My closet was so jam-packed that it was impossible to know what was even in there. I should have donated most of it to Goodwill so they could have gone to someone who could actually make use of them.

But instead of doing anything sensible like that, I’d packed them all up when I’d left Providence a few months ago, and I’d moved them all the way across the country to Portland, and now they were practically laughing at me, bulging from the stacks, while I tried to figure out what I should wear on this date.

My eyes wandered over to the cute side of the closet—the side filled with sizes two to twelve, even though a decade ago I would never have imagined calling size twelve
cute
—and I let my fingers trail longingly over a few of the pieces that had made me feel good about myself. Amazing jeans that fit my butt like a glove. Tops in bright colors or full of sparkle and flash. Snug, slightly revealing dresses. I hadn’t even needed to wear Spanx back in the day to keep everything where it belonged. My body had been sleek and toned, and it had done whatever I’d wanted it to do. Now I felt like a big lump. I was like the marshmallow-puff dude from the
Ghostbusters
movie.

Staring at that part of the closet wasn’t going to do me any good. It would just remind me how I wasn’t that person anymore, and I never would be again, and then I might end up texting Keith and telling him that something had come up and I couldn’t go out with him after all. I’d done that to a couple of guys in Providence after the night I’d spent with Keith, before I’d been offered this position with Rose City. Chickening out had only made me feel worse about myself than I already had, and that was saying something.

I couldn’t keep doing that. I had to find a way to be comfortable in my own skin again, to feel good about myself because of who I was on the inside, regardless of how I looked on the outside. This was no way to live. I was getting to the point where not only was I lacking in confidence but I was starting to not like the person I was because disliking my outward appearance was becoming something of an obsession.

After a ton of hemming and hawing, I finally settled on a gray maxi skirt that I sometimes wore when teaching my smooth ballroom classes. It had silvery threads woven through it to add a bit of pizzazz. I settled on a black, shapeless tunic on top because at least if it was shapeless, it wasn’t hugging me too tight anywhere. That was about as
nice
as I could manage with the current state of my closet.

I threw those things on over my Spanx, found a pair of silver pumps that would do the job, and added a silver scarf since it was pretty cold out and Keith had made a point of telling me to wear something warm. A couple of other accessories later, I was ready to go.

When I returned to the living room of my apartment, Bradley Cooper lifted his head and yawned so wide that his entire face disappeared. He was all mouth. Not the real Bradley Cooper, of course. This Brad—BC—was one of my cats, a big, fluffy Ragdoll that was almost fully white. His face, ears, paws, and tail were a soft brown, but everywhere else he was white. Which meant I couldn’t let him come anywhere near me at the moment or my black-and-gray outfit would be covered with white cat fur. And
that
meant that, of course, there was nowhere else he would rather be at the moment that curled up on me and my clothes.

BC jumped down from the back of the sofa where he’d been lounging and sauntered over to me, burrowing under my skirt and sitting between my feet. He always did that when I wore long skirts, as though he thought they created an invisibility cloak for him or something.

At least he was only going to hang out under my skirt. I’d just have to be sure I didn’t sit down or I’d have fur all over my butt and back, and he’d jump up on my lap in an instant.

My other cat, Richard Armitage, was an orange Maine Coon with tabby markings, and he was presently trying to disappear in the hidey-hole I’d made for him in my closet when we’d moved in here. Richie was as sweet as could be but scared of his own shadow. As soon as I’d started going through my closet for something to wear, he’d figured out that something was up, and he hadn’t liked it, so off to his hidey-hole he’d gone.

He would have ended up there anyway once Keith arrived and knocked on the door because, of course, anyone knocking on the door was a terrifying thing for my Richie. I figured it was for the best that he was already in his safe spot. Maybe he wouldn’t get too worked up this time.