Page 83 of Trap ’N’ Trace

The orchestra had begun playing again. He didn’t know what kind of music it was and didn’t care. Dancing had never been his forte. Tonight, he’d wing it.

“Kat!” Colin blocked their path. “You need to apologize to Crystal.”

“Not a chance in hell.” Still holding Dayne’s hand, she pushed past Colin.

Over his shoulder, Dayne watched the man’s eyes narrow to slits. He couldn’t help what he did next and shot the asshole a sly grin that said it all. She’s mine. For tonight, anyway.

When they reached the center of the dance floor, she placed her hand on his shoulder. He tucked her against him and rested his other hand at the small of her back—her very sexy, very bare back. He trailed his fingers lower, to the slight curve of her buttocks. Her body trembled, and her lips parted.

Man, I’m in trouble here.

He swung her into a slow, easy waltz. Thank you, Mrs. Evans. The teacher who’d taught all the teenage boys in his class how to dance right before senior prom.

“To coin a cliché,” Kat said, “you dance divinely.”

“Liar.” He nuzzled his chin against the silky curls artfully arranged atop her head and breathed in her scent. “I dance adequately, and you know it.”

She laughed, a sound that went straight to his groin. One little laugh and the instinct to kiss her turned into a full-blown, flat-out craving. When she pressed her head to his chest, he thought he’d die and go straight to Heaven, bypassing the stairway to Hell where, as a teenager, he always assumed he’d wind up.

Being near her always left him supercharged. Leonardo DiCaprio had nothin’ on him. Tonight, he was king of the world.

They danced in silence and in perfect rhythm, as if they’d always been meant to do this. Three songs went by before the need to have the answer to his burning question got the better of him. “Why?” he said huskily in her ear.

She lifted her head from his chest. “Why, what?”

“Why did you do that? You must have broken every rule of decorum and protocol in the book.”

“It needed to be done,” she said simply, but there had to be more to it.

With two fingers, he tipped up her chin. “And?”

“And”—she locked eyes with his—“I meant every word I said. You are more honorable and courageous than anyone else in this room.”

His heart beat faster. He’d thought he was in deep trouble before, but now… I’m in deep-as-a-diamond-mine kind of trouble.

Now he understood what the more was. When he’d signed on for this bodyguard gig, he never expected to fall for her. Katrina Vandenburg. Who’d have figured? She was turning out to be the most wonderful woman he could possibly imagine.

“Don’t you want to ask me something?” He still couldn’t believe she hadn’t pumped him for information. Then again, hadn’t she shown him many times over that she was anything but what he’d pegged her for?

Her glossy pink lips twitched. “No.”

He snorted. “Liar.”

She gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Of course I want to know. But it doesn’t matter to me. Whatever happened between you and Crystal Lockwood is your business. I figured if, and when, you wanted to tell me, you would. If not, I don’t need to know.”

He stared into her eyes, searching for insincerity, knowing there wasn’t an insincere bone in her body. She was telling the absolute truth. Kat trusted him. Completely and unconditionally. That only made him want to tell her everything.

He maneuvered them to the edge of the dance floor where there were fewer couples. What he was about to say was for her ears, and hers only.

“When I was eighteen, Crystal’s Lamborghini broke down outside my parents’ hardware store. She’d gotten lost and wound up in Newark, of all places. I fixed her car and after that, she started coming around the store. Not because she cared. Because she wanted me on her arm and in her bed.”

He waited for Kat to ask the next obvious question. When she didn’t, he answered it for her.

“I never had anything to do with her, but I couldn’t stop her from hanging around the shop. She was a walking, talking ad for poison control. Toxic didn’t begin to describe her, and I did everything possible to avoid her.”

Kat frowned. “Knowing Crystal, she didn’t like that.”

“Nope.” His gut tightened. “The next thing I knew, Newark detectives showed up to arrest me. Crystal had filed a police report saying I stole her diamond tennis bracelet, an heirloom her grandmother had given her on her eighteenth birthday. She came from a wealthy family. I came from the streets.”