“Why don’t you ever ask me to explain, Dane?”
He frowned at her out-of-the-blue question and lifted his head to look down at her. Unfortunately, he could only see the top of her head. “What do you mean?”
“Things happen, but you don’t ask for clarification,” she said. “I mean, I screamed in the studio, and you didn’t ask why. Alex rocked up unexpectedly last weekend, and you just accepted the minimal information I gave you. You don’tpush.”
This was one of those conversations where he wasn’t sure how to respond. Did she want him to ask, or was she happy he hadn’t pried? “If I did ask, would you tell me?”
Wren pushed herself up, swung both her legs over his thighs, and sat at a right angle to him. She took a long sip of beer and looked at the still white screen. “I’m not a good talker or explainer, but I could try,” she quietly replied. “If you are interested and if you ask.”
He’d hit a fork in the road, and he could either veer left—keeping things light and surface-based—or right, and find out what happened between Alex and Wren. He knew he should keep emotionally distant, but his curiosity was killing him. But first things first.
“Start by telling me why you screamed in the studio,” he said, pushing himself up to sit up straight, his legs still under hers.
She grimaced. “Ah, that was because, out of the corner of my eye, just for a minute, and in the mirror, I saw the image of a woman, dressed in a sequined, old-fashioned leotard. She wore bright red lipstick and an elaborate ostrich-feather headdress.” Wren scowled at him. “And if you suggest that I saw a ghost, I will tip you into the water.”
She could try, but she’d fail. He had a hundred pounds and a lot of muscle over her. But she was determined and gutsy, and they might both end up going in. “So, who do you think you saw?” he asked, keeping his tone neutral, choosing not to mention that Hadley saw the same apparition she did. He didn’t believe, per se, in ghosts, but that was one hell of a coincidence.
“I don’t know, but it definitely wasn’t a ghost!”
He nodded. “A hallucination? Have you been dizzy lately? Seeing or hearing voices?” he asked, tongue in his cheek.
“No!” She slapped his thigh. “I don’t know who or what I saw, or what I imagined,” she muttered.
Dane chuckled at her mutinous face and lifted his hands when she scowled at him. “Okay, peace. So, tell me about the guy who spoiled my plans to take you home last weekend.”
Her head shot up, and her eyes collided with his. “You were planning on taking me home?”
Come on, that couldn’t be a surprise. “Well, I was going to start by kissing you and see where we ended up,” he said, enjoying the heat blooming in her cheeks and on her chest. Judging by the way she kept looking at his mouth, he thought he might’ve succeeded.
“Then why didn’t you call me during the week, ask me to dinner?” she asked, sounding confused.
That was easy to answer. “Because you needed some distance between what happened last Saturday and what’s going to happen between us.”
Her eyes didn’t leave his. “And something is going to happen between us?” she asked, her words little more than a whisper.
Fuck the future and keeping his distance. He was done fighting his attraction. “I hope so,” Dane quietly told her.
She nodded, her eyes on his lips. She leaned forward, and he gently pushed her away, but leaned close just until his mouth grazed her ear and he felt her shiver. “I can’t shit on Tad and then kiss you,” he told her. He was desperate to move just a little to the right, explore her mouth again, but this wasn’t the time and place. Mostly because he currently had Tad’s level of control.
“I think the good residents of H-Town can handle a kiss,” Wren protested.
He loved that she seemed as desperate for him as he was for her. “Not the way I want to kiss you, Wren,” he told her, leaning back to place his hand high on her leg and rubbing his thumb along the inside of her thigh, sighing at her soft, soft skin. “And who says I only want to kiss your mouth? There are other places on your body I want to place my lips.”
She groaned, and when she tipped her head back, he saw her throat bobbing and her eyes closing, as if she were imagining him going down on her, the feel of his tongue on her sex. His boardshorts felt tight across his crotch. He cursed, low and slow. Removing his hand, he dragged it through his hair. He started reciting the steps to a tracheotomy in his head.
When his heart rate dropped to below bursting-point levels, he cleared his throat.
“Tell me about the guy.”
Wren wrinkled her nose. “Way to kill the mood, Trafford,” she said on a loud sigh. Then she wrapped her arms around her bended knees and looked past his shoulder. “The empty boats are back,” she commented.
He looked over his shoulder and frowned. That was weird because, again, there was no wind. But empty floats drifting across the lake weren’t important. Returning to look at her, he waited. He was good at waiting, as his recent cold-shower-filled week showed.
“Alex has been, at certain points, my dance partner, my business partner—we’ve choreographed many dances together, done videos—my mentor, and always my friend. If we were free, we’d come to H-Town whenever we could.”
It was a while before Wren spoke again, and judging by her subdued tone, he knew she was finding it difficult. “When we were here the last time, something happened that caused me to think we had a shot at something …more.”
“You slept together,” he baldly stated, conscious of the acidic flare of jealousy deep in his gut.
