Patrick frowned and held out his hand to help her stand. “I know. It’s kind of at a crucial moment, though. I don’t think we can take it out.”
“We don’t have time.” She put some weight on the hip and winced but managed to stand. “The showcase is tonight. If we keep this up, I won’t be able to walk, let alone dance.”
Patrick looked about how she felt. “I could use a break.”
They moved off the dance floor to the folding chairs where they had stashed their water bottles. A junior couple across the room practiced a quickstep. They were about fifteen, the girl in a long blue dress with marabou across the bottom. She needed to pull up her elbow in her dance frame, but no one had asked Anita.
“Can I offer some unsolicited advice?”
The tension in her shoulders eased almost immediately when Nigel stepped out of the shadows. “Thank goodness.”
Maybe she wouldn’t be as tense if Patrick were being a little less sweet and attentive. It rankled like an itch she couldn’t scratch.
****
Nigel asked them to show him the lift, and they obliged. Patrick led Anita into slinky swivels, then lifted her while she bicycled her legs. When he tried to rotate her into the next move, though, their rhythm fell apart.
“Shit!” It would certainly be a fashion statement to show up with a giant ice pack taped to her ass.
She lifted her gaze to Nigel, who was rubbing his gold-tip-frosted hair contemplatively.
“You’re not going to like what I have to say,” he finally said.
Her heart sank.
“Well, we don’t have a lot of time, so I’ll just have to deal.”
“All right, come here.” Nigel gestured brusquely.
Great, now she was in trouble with the headmaster.
“Stand here.” Nigel moved Patrick behind Anita. “You need to put your hands here.” Nigel took Patrick’s hands and wrapped them underneath her breasts. A current of electricity and heat nearly stole her breath. “You were positioned too low before. Try it now.”
“Are you okay?” Patrick whispered.
Of course she wasn’t okay. She was suspended less than a foot from the ground, and he was about to flip her over, and all she could think about was how the heat from his hands—
And she did not fall.
The lift worked?
She caught his gaze, the fire of triumph burning in his eyes, the dimple winking back into existence. Something feral and wild coursed through her—lust? It had to be. Images flashed so quickly through her brain she wondered if she had indeed fallen and now was concussed. Images of her and Patrick. Laughing together, grooving to the Jackson Five, tossing pieces of popcorn into each other’s mouths. His body, pressed so firmly to hers that she could not tell where one left off and the other began.
“Great!” Nigel clapped his hands, and Anita staggered to her feet, trying to regain her composure. “Now do that fifteen times so you don’t muck it up tonight.”
****
Patrick excused himself half an hour later.
Thank God and all that was holy. She absolutely could not manage another moment with him without breaking into an ugly flop sweat and/or tearing off his clothes.
Neither seemed appropriate for the venue.
She winced and unbuckled her shoes from her ankles.
Nigel sank into the seat beside her, his posture unhurried.
“Go on, say it.” She rubbed at her feet, brushing over and massaging the calluses. “I know; it’s lacking. It’s—it’s too juvenile.”
