“Where’s Ward?”
She shrugged. “Perhaps with Bryony?”
“Ah.”
Then Luna held out her hand. “I don’t really know the steps,” she said.
“I don’t either.”
“I guess we just . . . try not to step on each other’s toes then?”
He took her hand. Drew her toward him. Placed his other hand on her waist.
They stood there. Looking at each other.
Neither of them moved.
“Maybe . . . a spin?” Luna suggested.
Mr. Grimm set his teeth as though gearing up to perform some great feat . . . when the music stopped. All around them, dancers clapped, whooped, and applauded, while Luna and her boss stood in a little space of silence, their mouths both slightly ajar with surprise.
Before Luna could even summon the wherewithal to take a step back, a new song began to play, sighing on the strings of a sweet violin. Immediately, the crowd of dancers burst into singing the all-too familiar lyrics of the hit tune of the summer:
“I watched you dance with someone new,
Heartbreak wrapped in shades of blue,
Every smile you give away,
Turns my dreams to shades of gray.
Oh, love! Like a rose in the rain,
Each petal a sigh, each thorn a sweet pain.”
“Gods, I hate this song,” Mr. Grimm growled, his sad blue eyes still staring into Luna’s.
Luna giggled. “The dance is easy though. Do you know it?”
He shook his head.
“Well, you don’t have to if you’d rather not—”
To her surprise, his grip on her waist tightened. Just a little. And did he pull her a fraction closer?
“I want to,” he said, his voice still so low, she had to concentrate on his mouth to understand his words. “Only, you’ll have to show me how.”
Her breath felt a little tight. Like her cardigan, which had hung loosely all this while, had suddenly transformed into a compression garment. “All right,” she managed, then gave her head a little shake before continuing in what she hoped was a lighter, careless voice. “The girls at Mrs. Boggs’s taught me. Here. Like this.”
She backed away a step. For an instant, the hand on her waist resisted letting her go, but it was so brief an instant, she might have imagined it. She stood now with only one hand held in Mr. Grimm’s, two paces of space between them. “See?” she said. “Step, step, step, glide. Step, step, step, glide.”
Still holding her fingers tight, his other hand out for balance, Mr. Grimm studied her feet and tried to move his in rhythm with hers.
“There, you’ve got it!” Luna said and caught his gaze with her smile. “A little closer perhaps?” She stepped toward him, and his chin came up sharply. “Step, step, step, glide,” she said, bobbing her head in time. He began to bob his along with hers. “Now,” she said, as his confidence grew, “your other hand.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“On my waist.”
