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“Dance? What here, by myself, without music?” His voice filled with the audacity of it. He shook his head, a stunted smile of incredulity on his face. “With you watching?”
It was harder than she’d thought to keep a straight face. “Yes. It will warm you up and make up for your master and commander act.”
“I’m not going to dance.”
“You did push-ups, what’s the difference?”
“Vast,” he laughed. He shifted about. Restless, but amused not intimidated.
“You’re not reneging are you?” That thread of fear was now a strand of thrill. Darcy liked that she’d surprised him, rattled him.
He stopped still, immoveable object still, back in control. “I am.”
“Wimp.”
“A man should never be frightened of backing down when he’s in too deep.”
“I thought you were noble. A noble man would keep his promises. He’d honour a dare.”
“I’m not noble. That was the punchline to a joke.”
“Is everything you’ve told me a joke, a lie?”
His stillness deepened. “No.” Definitively said. Miss Fredrick and her French kiss wasn’t a lie, Spiderman, not being able to read, putting the Rhodes scholar in hospital. None of that had been said for entertainment value. She could see it in his eyes. It was her signal to retreat.
“Well. I have some interview prep to get on with.”
That was the smart thing to do, though the loss of the game, the withdrawal from him, gave her a twisted pang of regret. The sudden freedom of telling a stranger intimate things about herself, and not caring what he thought, was an unexpected side effect of Chinese immigration practice. She got up from the table and went for her bag. She didn’t feel like reading, but she couldn’t sit there looking at him.
“Goddamn. All right. I’ll dance.”
He was scoping the room; for what, a looking glass to fall through, a rabbit hole to disappear down? There was no meal delivery to divert attention this time. If Smiley came back now with validated visas it would be an offense against fair play.
His eyes came back to hers. “Give me your scarf.” He had a determined look. Like this was a problem customer order he could fix with basic ingenuity. She unfolded the blue pashmina and held it out to him. Was he going to turn it into a skirt and go hula girl? Whatever he did: dead ant, pole dance, strip, shuffle, crump, she knew she’d be transfixed. She pressed her lips together to stop laughing, but he knew he was the focus of her attention.
“Yuk it up, Lois.”
He held the pashmina at a fringe edge and shook it out like a beach towel. He closed that end in his fist and held it out to his side, elbow bent. He took the other end and held it in front of him, waist high. Closed position for a waltz. He was Fred Astaire without a broom to dance with, her pashmina his partner. Darcy’s wariness of him dissolved.
He was on his toes, not graceful, more like a boxer, ready to cut away. He took a step backwards and hit the edge of the table, and his arms came down, the illusion busted. He was right, this was vastly different to push-ups. He’d had mastery over them. He was out on an entirely different limb here, one where humiliation was an obvious outcome.
A less determined man, a man who worried what people thought about him, might call the whole thing off.
He glanced behind him, brow creased, annoyed, then stepped away from the table and lifted his arms again, the shawl draped in front of him between his big hands with their wide knuckles and blunt nails. His eyes were down, he was concentrating. Trying to remember or just trying to get through this.
He stepped back, sideways, forward and sideways again. A basic box step. He was truth, he was daring. He was dancing with cashmere in a stiflingly dull, over lit, freezing cold room in the depths of Pudong airport.
She let him complete the box step twice more then started clapping. His head came up. His face was flushed. He made her throat dry. And there was no Mrs Man from Tara.
Darcy stepped forward, stopped in front of him. He gave her a quizzical look. She ducked under his arms so she was between him and the pashmina. That’s all the hint he needed. He flung the shawl on the couch and took her hand, his other coming around her back. They box stepped awkwardly, their bodies wide apart, their eyes on their feet.
His hands were so warm; she could feel heat radiating off him. How much warmer would he be if he held her against his chest? He tightened his grip bringing her closer. He might’ve been dyslectic but his mind-reader skills were superb.
“This okay?” he said.
She smiled up at him. She trusted the question. It was an open door, not a closed command. His eyes were moving over her face. His lips bowed in a soft smile. He tightened his arm around her back again and she came closer still, though their only contact was her hand in his, his arm along her mid back and hers on his shoulder.
“This okay?”
