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Because McKenzie wanted to kiss Ryder. For real.
She wanted to do lots of things with Ryder. For real.
CHAPTER NINE
“VINE TO THE right and hold. Right foot step to the right,” the dance instructor said via her headset microphone to be heard over the country music playing in the background of the iconic Nashville honky-tonk on Second Avenue.
Jeremy’s uncle had indeed had a heart attack with a blockage in the right coronary artery. Upon arrival at the emergency room, he’d immediately been taken to the heart catheterization lab and had the blockage stented. He was stable, in the cardiac care unit for the night, and doing well with several family members waiting for their brief visit that would be allowed every two hours for a few minutes each.
After going back and forth about whether or not to cancel their original plans, the wedding party and their dates had headed to downtown Nashville at Jeremy and Reva’s insistence. As they’d wrapped up the rehearsal dinner so early it was barely eight o’clock when they arrived at the hopping venue on Second Avenue.
Luckily, they caught a group leaving and grabbed their vacated table up near the bar. Part of their crew, all guys, were still there, having a beer, and claiming to be holding the table. Ryder, Jeremy and a single brave groomsman had accompanied the women to the dance floor. Ryder wouldn’t have minded staying with the guys at the table, but he had to admit, he was enjoying listening to McKenzie sing along with the country song’s lyrics while she went through the motions being given by the dance instructor.
She was a good dancer and kept rhythm perfectly with the directions. He suspected she’d already known the dance prior to their fifteen-minute lesson. But her laughter was contagious, and she seemed to be truly relaxed for the first time since they’d arrived.
He could hold his own on a dance floor during a slow song, was passable during faster dances, but he’d been telling the truth when he implied that he wasn’t much of a line dancer.
McKenzie had insisted he join her on the dance floor for the class that was just starting as their group arrived and he hadn’t had the heart to disappoint her.
Fortunately, he quickly picked up the dance with only a few missteps.
Like now when he went left when he should have gone right, leading to McKenzie bumping into him when he stepped into her dance space.
Which had happened only because he’d been watching her smiling face rather than paying attention to what he was doing.
“Oops!” Laughing, she grabbed hold of his arm to s
teady herself. Her palm was warm against his skin.
Warm? Warm didn’t scorch straight through every layer and singe a man’s insides. McKenzie’s touch did that, quickening his pulse more than moving to the music had.
He usually tamped down his attraction to her, but they were in a public place. What could it hurt? After all, they were a pretend couple. A little heat sparking between them would add to the show they were putting on for her family.
“Sorry.” He grinned down at her although he wasn’t sure he was sorry as her fingers lingered on his arm.
“No worries.” Rather than let go, she slowly let her fingertips graze over his skin in a light caress.
Shivers ran down Ryder’s spine.
What would it feel like if McKenzie ran her fingers that way over his chest? Over his abdomen? If while doing so she looked at him with the light shining so brightly in her big green eyes? If those eyes darkened with desire?
They would. Ryder saw the sexual energy in her eyes when she looked at him. It had always been there, lurking beneath the surface, tormenting him with the knowledge she’d belonged to another.
McKenzie was no longer in her relationship. She looked at him with passion in her eyes.
But Ryder knew all about a woman on the rebound, about how they could project their feelings, how a rebound fling often soothed a deflated ego.
Ryder swallowed the knot forming in his throat.
If anything happened between him and McKenzie, she’d be using him.
The last time a woman had used him he’d been left with a gaping hole in his chest. He refused to go through that again.
But in this moment, dancing with McKenzie, feeling the energy of her laughter, of her sexual energy, remembering anything other than the fact he wanted her seemed impossible.
Oblivious to his thoughts, she leaned toward him and spoke up so he’d hear her over the music. “You’re doing great.”
Well, he had been until she smiled, her eyes flashing with another spark of feminine awareness, and his feet took on a mind of their own. He stepped into her dance space rather than out of it, again.
