Page 38 of Meant to be Mine

She blinked and then she was smiling at me with that full smile that went all the way up to her eyes. Hell, I think her ears moved.

“You stole a flower from a centerpiece,” she said.

“Your corsage.”

“In my hair.”

“It’s a flower. It fulfills the prom requirements.”

“We’ll have to do the prom pose soon,” she teased.

I took her hand again and pulled her back in. I was not going to think about the way she’d gone still when my fingers touched her face. I was not going to think about any of it. We were dancing. The song shifted again. Something with a little more rhythm underneath. A few more couples moved onto the floor and the energy changed. I spun her once, just to do it. She laughed and came back around.

“Nice,” she said. “Very smooth.”

“I have a few moves.”

“Let’s see them then.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You first.”

She gave me a look that said challenge accepted and then she did something that involved her hips moving in a way I was completely unprepared for. Natural and absolutely deadly. She grinned at me over her shoulder.

“East coast moves,” she said.

She laughed and turned back to face me, and then she was doing something with her knees and hips and I was thinking some very R-rated things. I laughed because if I didn’t laugh I was going to do something significantly less appropriate for a professional event in front of my entire family.

“You’re terrible,” I said.

“You asked to see my moves.”

She was delighted with herself. We kept dancing. I had to remind myself this was not a woman I was trying to take home at the end of the night. We were just having a good time. It was not about foreplay on the dance floor. But damn, her dancing certainly made me feel like that’s where things were headed. By the time we decided to take a break, we were both exhausted and a little sweaty.

“That was fun.” She sucked down the vodka spritzer I got for her.

“You’re a good dancer.”

“I haven’t danced in forever. I forgot how much I love it.”

“We’ll have to go out while you’re here. More dancing. Club dancing. You can show off those hip moves.”

She winked. “Wait until you see me twerk.”

The party wound down and people started to thin out. The bartenders started quietly consolidating. The servers made their final passes with the last of the dessert trays. I did the circuit one more time. Shook hands and made promises to be in touch. By the time I got back to the center of the room, most of the family had said their goodnights.

Callum found me near the bar. He put a hand on my shoulder.

“You pulled it off,” he said. “Good job. Really good job.”

“We pulled it off.”

He and Victoria left with Cleo, the three of them disappearing into the warm dark of the parking area. The New York cousins had already gone back to the estate to collect their offspring.

And then it was quiet. Or quieter, at least.

I found Kensey in the side room where the models had gotten ready. The models had done their jobs well tonight, showing off the outfits up close and personal where all the guests could see them.

Kensey was carefully moving the garment bags back onto the rolling rack, checking each tag against the list on the clipboard. Annika’s team had already done the majority of the breakdown, but there were a few remaining pieces that needed to be consolidated and accounted for before the rack went into the van.