He put his arms around me, and every light around us sparkled.
I guess I shouldn't have been amazed that he was an incredible dancer.
When the song changed to a waltz, he put his hand on the perfect spot on my waist, and I dare say he was a better lead than the dance instructor I'd crushed on a few years earlier.
He gazed at me, and I lifted my chin with pride as I stared into those gorgeous green eyes. The man had a perfect face, with no flaws. Even his nostrils were perfectly symmetrical.
“Is there something in my nose?” he asked.
“Sorry, I was staring. For the record, your nostrils are clear, and there's nothing in your teeth. Your lips look perfectly moisturized, and except for a streak of icing in your hair, you're camera ready.”
“Icing in my hair? I blame your little brother.”
I laughed, a little too loud, my chest squeezing.
He murmured, “You're a beautiful dancer. Notice how we move together as one? That doesn't happen by accident. I'm telling you, the stardust we came from has been reunited before, perhaps in previous lives.”
“I took a few dance lessons. My roommate, Shayla, is always signing me up for things.”
The song ended, and people were talking to the DJ, so there was a gap with no music at all. The lights dimmed down even more, and Dalton started to sway to his own music.
He grabbed me around the waist with both hands, pulled me to him, and leaned down to kiss me again.
I flushed at the naughtiness, embarrassed to be having what felt like sex, right on the dance floor in front of people.
Another song started, and people started to dance around us. Locked in his embrace, we only swayed in one spot as we kissed, and everyone moved around us like water past two stones in a creek.
The kiss traveled down from my lips, looping around my whole body, until I was glowing, alight from within.
I thought about stones in a creek, then I thought about stardust, then I thought about absolutely nothing.
~
Three things I dread:
1. Customers trying to return books because they didn't like the ending.
2. A long-overdue root canal on my lower-right premolar.
3. The last song of the evening, when everything's going so well, and you don't want the spell to break.
We've already visited the topic of me not being the fun, adventurous type. But have I mentioned how stupid I am? This girl. Petra “Peaches” Monroe.
I'm stupid in the way that only a girl with a Mensa-level IQ can be. Ask me to calculate the volume of a three-foot-tall barrel with a one-foot radius, and I'll tell you. Those questions about two trains traveling at different speeds? Love 'em. They're like Sudoku to me. I can spell anything, and I do the crossword in pen.
Yet when it comes to guys and dating, I'm a Capital-D Dum-dum.
Even though Dalton Deangelo was holding me tenderly as the last song of my cousin's wedding played, and even though he kept sneaking kisses, I didn't think he was actually interested in me. My best guess was that he was researching a role.
When he leaned down to whisper in my ear, the shadow of his end-of-day beard rasping lightly against my cheek, I stopped breathing in shock.
“What?” I hadn't understood a word he'd said.
He murmured, “Do you want to take me home?”
His words tickled in my ear and sent a tingling message straight to somewhere—and I don't mean my pancreas.
“Wow, you really go all-out when you're researching a role.”
He pulled me closer, with a firm hand on my back, and led me into a turn on the mostly-empty dance floor. “You're cute, Peaches. I hope your cousin isn't mad at you for stealing focus.”
“You're drunk, Mr. Dalton Deangelo.”
He responded by stopping still in the middle of the dance floor and putting his hands on either side of my mouth. Squishing my lips with his hands on my cheeks, he moved my mouth in time as he said in falsetto, “Yes, you're quite drunk, Mr. Deangelo. You'd better come home with me.”
I swatted his hands away. He laughed and caught me in an embrace, tighter than when we were dancing. I could feel the bumpy parts of his chest and abs right through our clothes. Whenever Shayla and I saw a hot shirtless guy, we'd giggle and say, “Ew, he's so bumpy!” Now that I was pressed up against a wall of these bumps, there was absolutely nothing funny about it.
“Yes, come home with me,” I said. My heart was going pitter-patter, and I knew I was being stupid, but it felt different this time, because I knew I was being stupid and I didn't care. Maybe it was all those hours I'd watched him on TV, but I felt like I could trust Dalton. He said I was cute. I believed him.
He led me off the dance floor, I grabbed my purse, and we ducked outside to his fancy car. The driver was napping, but snapped to attention after Dalton tapped on the window.
We got in the back seat and I gave the driver my address on Lurch Street. He didn’t seem to believe me that was the actual street name, but I gave him directions and assured him I knew where I lived.
Dalton waited until the privacy glass was up, then said, “If you change your mind before we get to your place, just say the word. I'll drop you off and leave you be.”
“Are you playing hard to get?”
He grinned, deepening the sexy million-dollar dimple in the middle of his chin. “Is it working?”
Oh, that chin. I wanted to smack it with the back of a spoon and eat it like crème brulee.
“I'm glad you ran into my bookstore.”
He moved into the center of the bench seat, reached over, and roughly slid me next to him. “I've had a tough week, but things are starting to look up.”
He placed one hand on my thigh and caressed the outer edge of my leg as he kissed my neck.
He continued, “The press is out to make their dollar, and they don't care who gets hurt. Some people are willing to do anything to make it, except work hard.”
Cautiously, I moved one of my hands up along his leg and then along his torso. His lips on my neck made my body melt, and moving my hand required conscious effort.
“You seem like a hard worker,” I said.
He burst out laughing at that, grabbing my hand and holding it tight to his muscular chest. “Oh, I'm a hard worker, all right.”
The heat of my face made me glad for the dim lighting in the back of the car, as I was surely tomato-red from embarrassment.
“Don't tell me that being a famous actor is already tiresome for you. What are you, twenty-eight?”
“Officially? Twenty-four.”
“What does it say on your birth certificate?”
“Someone else's name.” He stretched one arm behind my back and stroked my hair. “That's a secret, by the way.”