AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Something that brought me back to the last time I had been here.
“Looking up my dress again, I see.” I faced the direction in which I knew the devastatingly handsome stranger would be standing, his stare so overwhelming that I was positive of his location.
What shocked me was, first, how difficult it was to breathe and, second, the lack of distance between us.
He’d climbed the ladder, and he was on the top rung.
His gaze like a hunter.
His lips parted, as though he was ready to feast.
His body positioned in a way that he could easily sweep me off my feet.
Maybe he wanted to get close so he could hear me. This stage was most definitely in a louder location than the last one I’d been on.
Maybe he thought that because of what had happened between us, there were no longer any boundaries.
Whatever he assumed, he was wrong.
“Not looking up your dress,” he growled, near enough that I could hear him over the beat. “I’m just admiring it.”
A smile came across his sexy face. Scruff that had thickened in the days that had passed. Eyes that were a duller green with hints of blue that matched his shirt and speckles of gold, like the metal that was in his bracelets. There were several around his wrist—woven leather bands, some with clasps—that hadn’t been on him last time.
I would have remembered.
There wasn’t a detail I’d forgotten.
“Good evening, Tiny Dancer.”
I felt him.
Everywhere.
In parts of my body that I hadn’t even known existed.
An echo, a pulse that throbbed deep within me—that had nothing to do with the music.
“Tiny Dancer …” I repeated.
He could never understand how ironic that nickname was. That “Tiny Dancer” was a song my parents would dance to on the night before my father was deployed and on the evening he returned. We’d moved often. Every couple of years, followed by a deployment. Each memory I had was in a different living room, the record player’s location somewhere inside, but the dance was always the same.
With Elton John’s record loaded, Dad would come up behind Mom and press both palms on her stomach. By the third verse, he would slowly turn her toward him.
Mom would be hiding tears, covering them in smiles.
Afraid he wouldn’t come back … relieved when he did.
“I’ve been to this club every night since we met, hoping you’d come back.” His gaze dropped down my body, his face only about six inches from where I stood. “And here you are.”
There was a reason I hadn’t given him my name and number.
This feeling, this situation, his stare—those were the reasons. I didn’t have time for this. I didn’t have the mental capacity to take on any more. I was at my tipping point.
“You shouldn’t be looking for me.” I turned my back toward him while I danced.
“And why’s that?”
He was so close that I could still hear him, but I still said over my shoulder to make sure he heard me, “Because I don’t want to be found.”
