The man who had appeared next to her grinned at her surprise. “Sorry to startle you, but there wasn’t a good way for you to see me coming.” He held out his hand. “Care to tango?”
Vivian gave him a quick look up and down. He was dressed well, his suit sharply cut over broad shoulders, the fabric an unremarkable black. He still held his hat, which meant he either hadn’t been there long or he hadn’t had a dance yet. Dark hair waved over his forehead, and one side of his smile lifted up even higher as he saw her looking him over. “I promise I’m a gentleman.”
“If you were a gentleman you wouldn’t be here,” she retorted, but that didn’t stop her from sliding her hand into his. “Bea, put my purse behind the bar, will you?” she said over her shoulder as she slid off the barstool. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
The stranger’s hand was large and cool around hers, and his lead was strong but not pushy, easy to follow without trying to do anything too flashy. Vivian relaxed, and he must have felt it, because his smile returned. “Were you worried I couldn’t tango?”
“I was worried you were one of those fellas who’d use it as an excuse to get all handsy instead of actually dancing,” Vivian said.
He laughed. “Do you have a name you use here?”
“I have a name I use everywhere. What about you?”
“Leo.” He slowed them into a languorous break as he said it, pausing with the music so that for a moment they were frozen, bodies pressed together.
Vivian drew in a shivery breath in time with the break, and together they slid back into the movement. “Nicely done, Leo.”
“You too.”
He didn’t pause at the end or draw it out into a question, and that undemanding politeness made her relent. “Vivian,” she said.
“Vivian,” he repeated.
“You like dancing just for the sake of dancing, don’t you?” she asked, feeling a little breathless. Warmth fizzed up her spine from the place where his hand rested, and he hadn’t taken his eyes away from hers yet.
“You do, too.”
“Yes.”
For the next minute they danced without speaking, until he noticed her exchanging smiles with a few of the other dancers. “You’re a regular here?” he asked.
“When I can be,” she admitted. “If I could be here every night I would. But I don’t think I could afford all the shoes I’d go through,” she added, flattered when he laughed at the joke.
“Well, you’re clearly here enough if you’re on chatting terms with the bartender,” he said, his voice teasing. “You probably know everyone in the joint.”
“A few of them. But I don’t think I’ve seen you here before.”
“That’s because I haven’t been in New York for a few years,” he admitted. “Just came back to the city a few weeks ago.”
“Where were you before that?”
“Chicago.”
Vivian stiffened. The way he said it, so deliberately casual, as if Chicago were just a small town that no one could ever find on a map, gave her an instant idea about what he’d been doing there. Prohibition had made Chicago even more dangerous than New York, if the newspapers were to be believed. And from what Danny had let fall about the business of running liquor, the Chicago boys in that line of work weren’t the sort you wanted to get to know too well. Florence’s sharp words about bootleggers flashed through Vivian’s mind before she could stop them.
Leo seemed to feel her hesitation, and the smoothness of their movement faltered. Rather than dragging her back into the dance, he lowered his arms, easing them both toward the edge of the floor. “Are you done dancing with me?” he asked quietly.
The genuine regret in his voice made her pause. “Should I be?” she asked, sounding more vulnerable than she liked.
He started to reply, but before he could say anything, something over her shoulder caught his eye. “Oh hell,” he whispered.
Vivian glanced where he was looking. Whatever she had expected to see—a jealous wife? One of the Nightingale’s bruisers?—it was not what met her eye.
She was looking at an unremarkable man in a suit, sitting quietly at a table by himself, a glass of something amber-colored a few inches from his fingertips as he checked his watch. Vivian frowned, about to turn back to Leo and ask what was wrong, when she realized that the glass next to the man hadn’t been touched. Her eyes widened in alarm as she saw his lips moving. He was counting down.
She spun back to Leo. “Is he—”
“Go, quick—” he said at the same moment.
