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It wasn’t as if she mattered to him, not in the way Sam meant. Even if it was natural for a proprietary feeling to come into play when you’d been naked with someone, when that someone had taken you to heaven and back on your kitchen table, in your shower, and slow, tender, deep, trembling, and weak up against the front door, they’d never talked about the chance of an extended run. Or even going for a second act. In fact once their clothes had come off they’d barely talked at all.
“So you and my brother...”
Nadia found Sam watching her, chin on her upturned palm, grin spread across her face. “Excuse me?”
“You were looking all dreamy and far away just now. I know that look. I see that look on Ben’s face each and every day.”
Nadia brought her now lukewarm beer to her mouth while she tried desperately to fashion a response.
“At least I hope it’s my brother you’re looking so moony about, considering the last time I saw the two of you, you had your tongues entwined.”
When Nadia near choked on her drink, she put it down carefully then sank her head into her hands, before sliding said hands through her shaggy hair. “What makes you think that was anything but a momentary lapse of reason?”
“I know my brother, Nadia. He’s the human version of the skyscrapers he builds—big, strong, invulnerable. This is the first time I’ve ever seen him so struck he can’t hide it and you, my sweet, did the striking.”
At that her palms began to sweat, her blood rang in her ears, and she wondered if this was what one of Sam’s panic attacks felt like. “Sammy Sam, I don’t meant to burst your bubble, but there is no your brother and me. Not in the way you mean.” She paused, knowing what she was about to say would complicate the simplest friendship of her life. “Melbourne was always a time-out for me, Sam. But that time’s run out. In the next few weeks the reps from the new Sky High show are flying out to Australia to see a small contingent of Australian dancers who’ve been asked to audition by invitation only. I’m one of those dancers.”
Sam’s face fell, for a second seeming to literally slip down over her bones. “Does Ryder know?”
Nadia swallowed. “I never would have agreed to take on your wedding party account if I wasn’t sure I’d be here until all your lessons are done.”
Sam’s next look was older than her twenty-four years. “That’s what’s my brother would call being deliberately obtuse.”
Nadia breathed out hard and fast. Then threw out her hands in surrender. “No, I don’t believe I’ve mentioned it to him. Or to any of my other students, for that matter.”
She sent Sam a pointed glance, which Sam returned in good measure. And rightly so. Nadia hadn’t spent a good many hours the evening before naked with any of her other students.
So why had she with Ryder? What made him so different from the dozen or so clients who’d made advances? Because there had been more. Plenty.
Ryder was beautiful to look at, sure, and unbelievably sexy in a prowling panther kind of way. But she was also fast gathering that he was ambitious and wry, complicated and intense, and while she’d gambled with more than her share of luck over the years he wasn’t big on second chances. Maybe that was it—he had the right amount of emotional baggage to draw her to him, like moths to the same flame.
Sam held up a hand at Nadia, halting her mid-thought, before hailing a waiter, ordering more beer, then saying, “I’m going to say one more thing and then that’s it, lips zipped shut. And that is Ryder would rather pull out his toenails with tweezers than talk about our father, though he will any time he knows I need to, which is only part of why he’s a great guy. Any woman would be lucky to have him in their life. And no matter what’s at the end of the road, for this moment in time, Nadia, that woman could be you.”
Nadia slid the red paper serviette from around her unused knife and breathed in deep, hoping Sam couldn’t see how shaky her breath was. Because in the quiet dark hours of night, she’d gone in circles thinking pretty much the same thing: that here and now didn’t have to have anything to do with the near future.
But it did. It always did. She knew better than anyone that past and future were so tightly knotted and profoundly intertwined, if one didn’t tread lightly they could strangle you.
“For as long as I can remember all I wanted to do was dance. Then a year ago I had it all—a job I loved, in a city filled with life and excitement and opportunity. And I threw it all away because—” Because of a guy, she’d been about to say. But no. She’d come to admit that had only been an excuse. Then why? Because she’d needed to take a breath? Because it had given her the perfect excuse to go running home to Mum? A little bit of all that. But also, “Because I didn’t know what I had till it was gone. I’ve realised since then that life doesn’t just happen, you choose it. And I choose dance. I’ll always choose dance.”
