Nigel clapped his hands briskly. “There. You have a rumba, easy peasy lemon squeezy.” He rolled his eyes. “Took you both long enough. See you next week. We’ll spit and polish. Off you go.”
“Uh,” Patrick said sheepishly. “All right if I use the bathroom really quickly?”
“Course, mate.” Nigel sipped again from his bottomless cup of coffee. He moved closer to Anita, who was trying to calm her breathing and change her shoes. Neither task was going well. “This is a good idea,” he said softly to her.
“What? He’s just doing me a favor.” She drank from her water bottle. “He’s retired, remember?”
“Looks very unretired to me.”
“Nigel, there’s no way we can win. We’ve been practicing less than a week.”
Nigel looked at her discerningly. She had never quite gotten used to that look from him, despite having known him since she was twelve. She was never sure if it was belief in her talent, or disappointment that she had not fulfilled his expectations. “You’re selling you both short, love. He’s good for you. I don’t know why you didn’t do this sooner.”
Anita’s hackles rose. “It’s not like I was wasting my time. I made top ten without Patrick. I competed all over the globe. Without Patrick. Mikhail and I were invited to Blackpool twice.”
“Yeah, but you could have won at Blackpool with Patrick.” Nigel caught her eye. “Don’t look at me like that, love. You know I’m right.”
Patrick rushed back across the floor toward them. “Sorry, did I miss anything?”
****
Anita folded her legs into the passenger seat of Patrick’s semi-ancient sedan, zipping her white fleece jacket closed.
“I’m starving.” Patrick turned the key in the ignition. “Do you mind if we grab something to eat here before we drive back?”
“Oh, I’m not really hungry.”
He glanced at her in mock horror. “We just burned practically four thousand calories. Are you really not hungry?”
In defiance of her earlier assertion, her stomach rumbled. She grinned despite herself. “I don’t know. Maybe a little?”
He tapped the wheel happily. Some men never lost their boyish enthusiasm. “Perfect! I never get the chance to show you around down here. Cheesesteaks?”
Anita rolled her eyes. “Absolutely not.”
“You are a born and bred Philly girl, and you will not say yes to a Sunday night cheesesteak? Next thing you’ll tell me is that you’re a Patriots fan, and then we can’t be friends anymore.”
She held up a hand. “Do not go there. I have a mean right hook.”
He held up his own hands in a gesture of surrender. “I’m sure you do. But come on, there’s this great place down in Fishtown.”
Anita felt herself wavering as the heat in Patrick’s ten-year-old car finally kicked on, spraying warmth from the vents. “I don’t know. Do they have chicken cheesesteaks?”
He smiled. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.”
****
Twenty minutes later, Anita snorted with laughter at an outdoor picnic table strewn with grease-stained napkins and checkerboard deli paper.
“That absolutely did not happen.” She grinned as Patrick licked cheese spread off his fingers. “Daniela, she of the ‘oh’”—here, Anita pursed her lips mock-seductively and affected a fairly accurate Brazilian accent—“‘in Brasil we wouldneverdo that.’”
“Yup.” Patrick grinned. “Daniela absolutely did. Completely flaunted over this guy at the bar for at least half an hour—in front of me, of course—before finally realizing it was not, in fact, Johnny Depp.”
Anita snorted again before reaching for her bottled water and one of Patrick’s potato chips. “Can’t say I miss her.”
“Yeah, me neither.” He wiped his hands on a napkin.Damn, those hands.When they danced together, the way his hands felt on her body…
Anita flushed, but Patrick did not seem to be paying attention to her. Thank goodness. He had a wistful, sort of lost expression. Something sad and broken in those blue eyes.
