I laugh, shaking my head. “I think he must just be in a good mood.”
I get maybe ten minutes of feeling like the new kid at a good school, the teasing warm, the women chattering to me about my dress, before a big guy with a beard braid and meaty hands decides the night needs improving. He takes my hand off the bar rail, engulfing it, already tugging toward the little dance floor.
“C'mon, little darlin', one dance, I promise I don't bite…”
He's harmless; I've spent years studying the difference. I'm already assembling my polite no when the tug on my hand just... stops.
Wrench is there. I don't understand how a man that size crosses a room like a ghost, but the guy’s suddenly three feet away, and my hand is free. Nobody has raised a voice or spilled a drop of beer. Wrench doesn't even look at him. He looks at me, bends to my ear, and under all that noise I get the words meant for me alone.
“Nobody touches you but me.Nobody.”
It should raise my hackles. I have opinions about men who talk like they own women. But then he straightens, and this impossible, silent mountain of a man turns his hand over between us, palm up. Asking, not ordering.
“Dance with me, dulzura?”
“You dance?” It comes out breathless.
He smiles. “Put your hand in mine and find out.”
I do.
I don’t even know what’s playing, something uptempo, I’m so surprised. Because this mountain can dance.
His hand frames my shoulder blade and the first pressure of his palm tells me everything, lead sure as a compass, and my body answers before my brain. He takes me through a turn, catches me on the exact beat, and the grin that breaks through the black beard is one I've never seen on him: young, carefree and a little wicked.
“You've been holding out on me.” I grin up at him, spinning.
“Says the woman doing triple steps in heels.”
Around us, the Saloon seems to have lost its mind. Taryn's up on a chair, whooping and clapping. Bethany's filming on her phone. Savage appears to be mock-weeping into Lucky's shoulder. Then there’s just his hands and the sweet geometry of moving with a partner who will never let you fall. We dance until my curls come loose and my sides hurt from laughing. When the song ends he dips me back low and the room roars. Upside down and breathless, I’m happier than I’ve been in a long, long time.
Later, we take our drinks out to the porch, the night air cool on my flushed skin, the party thumping happily along inside without us.
“Where does a biker learn to dance like that?”
“Mamá's kitchen.” He looks out at the dark line of the mountains. “There were six of us. In a house that loud, the quiet kid disappears. I worked something out early on: you talk, somebody bigger talks over you. You fix the truck, people remember who fixed it.” He turns the bottle in his hands. “So I fixed things. Bikes, radios, the roof. Danced at every party, because dancing you don't need words for. Been the useful one my whole life.” A shrug.
My heart beats faster. All those months of Wrench talking to my daughter and his dog, then going silent for me. I thought it was indifference, but it wasn’t.
“You know what I did before all this?” I say. “Before Rosie, before... everything. I danced. Competitive rock and roll, if you can believe it. Regionals two years running. My mom had a whole cabinet of my trophies. Probably still does.” His eyes come to me and stay. “I haven’t been able to contact her in case Shawn targets her. And I quit dancing when my life stopped being mine. Tonight's the first time.”
He's quiet a moment. Then: “Will you show me? Teach me?”
“What, here? Not in front of everyone… I can’t hear myself speak.”
“Your kitchen's got a floor, doesn't it?”
We leave with the party still going. I ride back on the back of his bike, the thrum of the big engine hot between my thighs, leaning close against his broad back.
In my kitchen I kick off the heels, pour us water, and put on my playlist. It’s the uptempo stuff, the songs I've been dancing to in my head behind the counter at the diner for months without letting my feet do more than hint at it. And then I teach him how to rock and roll.
“It's a six count. Your salsa brain will fight it.”
He laughs. “My salsa brain is open-minded.”
He's a shameless quick study, huge but light on his feet in my little kitchen. This time I lead, and he lets me, following my hands with complete attention. There’s something about that, this enormous man letting me steer, that undoes me faster than any dip. We're laughing through a botched turn when the laugh runs out of both of us at once and the song keeps playing to an empty count, because I'm up against his chest.
“Lila.” His voice is deep as he kisses me, walking me backward down the hall with his hands spread over me, and between kisses he keeps telling me how beautiful I am, low and rough against my skin. About all the months of watching me. Describing my every curve, in two languages, until my knees quitand he simply picks me up with no effort in it at all, and carries me into my bedroom.
