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He nodded, sipped his water. Again, she could see him selecting his reply.
“I appreciate that,” he said. “But my heart won’t let me move like you do.”
It was sweet how he was trying to steer the conversation away from rough waters, and she bit back the urge to tell him to stop being polite. Anger wasn’t any fun either, but at least when he was angry he was right here, up close, dancing with her. Polite was cold, distant, deliberate.
“Anyway,” she said, “Cyd put a lot of emphasis on the technical part of dancing. Step this way, hit this mark, and so on.”
“That’s not important?”
“It’s very important. But unless you start by focusing on what you feel, what you want to say to your audience, then the best dancing in the world can feel empty.”
Nick took another approach. “So you and Denise, when you’d say, ‘To dancing with your heart,’ what you’d actually be saying was …”
“Dance well,” she finished, “but remember why you’re dancing.”
Hayley expected more questions, but Nick let it go. “I’ve been wondering what you meant ever since you said it,” he told her. “And tonight I thought I could see it on stage.”
“With Kevin?”
“I thought Kevin danced very well.”
Polite again, and Nick’s kindness made it worse, because she knew he was going out of his way to give a compliment. Kevin danced because of how it made him feel, but it was the crowd that lit him up, the applause, the reminder of what people thought of him. He loved to dance, but he never absolutelyhadto. Sometimes Hayley admired him for that, because needing to dance and expressing so much of herself on a stage left her vulnerable in a way he never was.
“Hey, there hasn’t really been a good time to mention it, but you look great tonight,” Nick said.
She chuckled. “Do you have a schedule written out or something?”
He flushed a little, which was very cute. “No.”
“I’ll bet you do. I’ll bet it says, ‘Tell Hayley she looks nice’ in between ‘Get out of car’ and ‘Flirt with Mimi,’ but then I was a few seconds late and threw off the whole routine.”
Nick went from embarrassed to cocky in no time at all, leaning toward her with his arms folded across the table. Shit. She liked keeping him off-balance, but she’d made a misstep somewhere, and now she was going to pay for it. Their dance was speeding up.
This was fun.
“Are youjealousof Mimi?” he asked, delighted.
She snorted. “Shut up.”
“Because it sounded just then like you were jealous of Mimi.”
“If you want to go after girls the same age as your students, that’s fine with me.”
He grinned slowly, and now she was the one feeling flushed. “You know that’s just our patter. Mimi wishes she was born at a cocktail party in a black and white movie.”
“Sure, Freeman.”
“I think this is you trying to avoid acknowledging that you look great tonight.”
Bam. He’d hit the nail on the head, and she wasn’t ready, because she’d ignored his compliment without even thinking about it. Why was she always so completely lost when someone said she was pretty? That had been the goal tonight, after all—she’d picked her clothes and done her hair and expertly applied her makeup so she could look hot for the premiere of Kev’s show, and now Nick was saying she’d succeeded, and it still felt like a surprise.
“And if you must know, smartass,” Nick went on, “I didn’t want to say it around a bunch of people and look like I was hitting on you.”
She was definitely blushing now, and she covered by fishing in her purse for some lip gloss. “Got it,” she said. “So you’ll only be saying nice things about me in private.”
“If you’re lucky.”
She couldn’t help but grin back at him. “Thank you, Nick. You look great too.” She had noticed before—he filled out his black shirt very nicely—but Nick had a point. Some things would come out sounding too weird.
