“I guess.” Who was he kidding? The little ballet teacher was downright stunning. Chestnut hair the same color as her big doe eyes. Taut, trim body. Soft and full in the just right places. When he got close to her she smelled like baby powder. And he liked how her cheeks got all pink and her juicy mouth parted as if she might—
“So can I, Dad? Come on, gangstas do hip-hop. Badass dudes.”
“Watch the language, Josh.”
“I get to do a flip and some B-boy moves.”
“Well…okay. As long as it’s none of that girly up-on-your-toes stuff.”
***
The last of her students gone for the day, Casey stood at the desk in her waiting area rereading the awful letter from her landlord, the reality of her situation poking holes in the bravado she’d mustered this morning. A delicate piano tinkled in the background: Jiao giving a private lesson in the small studio.
Today Casey’s back-to-back Saturday teaching schedule included rehearsing her Cove Corps dancers for their performance at the community bazaar. A rehearsal Josh Byrne missed. She’d gone ahead and coached a second boy in a scaled down version of Josh’s solo in case his insufferable father would keep him from showing up tomorrow. The sad part was Casey saw Josh finally beginning to break out of his shyness, even letting himself show off a bit in rehearsals.
When the front door opened a crack, Casey looked up to see her brother’s rugged, sun-kissed face poke through. “Classes over yet?”
“All done, Parker. Come on in.”
With a body any Mixed Martial Arts competitor would envy and a face like Jon Hamm, Parker had as much reason as the brazen Drew Byrne to put on a macho swagger. But her tall, quiet brother in his cargo pants and tee seemed to have no clue how handsome he was.
He set a cardboard box on the floor. “Brought you some zucchini, tomatoes and eggplant from my garden.”
“Aha. Something tells me that last batch of ratatouille I made for you wasn’t all that bad.”
“If you don’t count the fact that even the raccoons didn’t want it.”
“Yeah, well, I seem to recall you ate plenty of it.” Casey stepped around the desk and gave him a quick hug.
She often wondered how her brother could love gardening so much. After their father died Parker had been forced to take over the family lawn care and gardening business to help support his mother and sisters. He’d actually started running it while a senior in high school during the sad and trying period when their Dad’s cancer had rendered their father too weak to handle the work. Being a couple years younger than her brother, Casey had taken on whatever babysitting, waitress, and shop girl jobs she could find.
Since those days the siblings remained close, which was why Parker was able to zero in on her now, saying, “You look worried.”
Should she tell him? He’d always been the one she went to with her troubles. Parker had a confident, steady groundedness, which he swore came from working with trees and gardens. Casey tended to be scattered and prone to making emotional leaps onto paths leading nowhere.
She strolled into the waiting area across from the desk, took a pitcher from the mini refrigerator, and poured iced tea into a plastic cup. “Here, bro. You look thirsty.”
“That bad, huh?” Parker chugged down the tea and leaned a hip against the desk, his tanned muscular arms crossed over his chest. “Tell me what’s up.”
“Remember how I asked Mr. Vonrelis to give me at least a fifteen-year lease on this building so I could feel secure about sinking all my money into creating the academy?” Casey ran a hand through her unruly hair. She usually started her day with it neatly tied back, but it always fell out piece by piece until she finally gave up and pulled out the clips, letting it hang to her shoulders. “Well, he’s just informed me there is a little clause in my lease that I wasn’t aware of. It allows him to sell this property. And he says he’s already got somebody who wants to turn this building into a restaurant.”
Parker let out a slow whistle. “After all the work you put into it.”
“Hey, you were a major factor in that transformation. Or as you like to say, in the redesign of the landscape.”
She shook her head thinking about how they’d cut up old Leland’s Hardware Store into a small and a large studio with new floors, dressing rooms with showers, lobby and office. Not to mention her apartment upstairs that would have cost her a mint to put in without a brother who knew how to do everything but the plumbing.
Casey flopped onto the faded green sofa and stroked the chubby, tawny-colored Buster, oldest of her three cats. “Remember the night you worked with me until the wee hours and crashed out here on Grandma’s sofa?”
“And woke up to see you lugging in folding chairs and a geriatric printer from the hospital thrift store.”
“None of this would have worked if you hadn’t loaned me the extra money after I’d exhausted every penny of my savings. Should hang a plaque with your name on it in between my photos of Baryshnikov and Paloma Herrera.”
“Sounds like you intend to fight him.” Parker turned and picked up the letter she’d left on her desk. He made a grumbling sound. “You need a lawyer to look into this.”
“Know any freebies? I’m flat broke as usual.”
“What about that woman on the community board?”
“No. I don’t want news of this getting around. I’ll lose my students. People have a way of abandoning a sinking ship. Speaking of which…” Casey put an index finger to her sealed lips as Jiao walked into the room escorting her piano student to the door.
Jiao Xin, forty and recently divorced, was a tiny, energetic woman who’d once been a serious contender as a concert pianist. She and Casey had crossed paths while both worked in an off-Broadway play that folded after two weeks.
When the student left, Jiao greeted Parker and said, “You missed some excitement here today. Your sister almost went pugilistic on a guy.”
Casey groaned. Parker looked at her, eyebrows lifted in question.
Jiao laughed. “He came bursting into the middle of class and dragged his son out by the arm. Guess he couldn’t get used to the idea of seeing Josh in tights.”
“Who was it?” Parker asked.
“A divorced dad from out of town,” Casey said, trying to sound casual, when in fact her memory of the sexy hunk sent a rush of heat right through her. “His name’s Drew Byrne.”
“Drew Byrne of Byrne Trucking?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you happen to notice his arms?”
Every perfectly sculpted inch of them. Casey nodded, hoping her brother didn’t pick up her hormonal reaction to the man.
Parker pointed to his own shoulder. “See a tattoo of a tractor trailer on his delt?”
“Well, now that I think of it, he did have a blue truck tattooed there.” Not that she could focus too well with Mr. Gorgeous standing close to her.
“That’s Drew,” Parker said.
“You know him?”
“I work for him. He’s one of my South Fork clients. He and his dad own one of the biggest trucking companies in America. Guy’s filthy rich. And a powerhouse. Unlike me, plugging along to keep the business our dad started afloat, Drew Byrne turned his father’s business into a Fortune 500 company.”
Casey wondered if that accounted for his self-important attitude or if he’d always been that way. “Well, Mr. Powerhouse and I sort of locked horns.”
She’d learned a harsh lesson in the past about guys like him. Still, a part of her was itching to ask if he’d remarried.
But then Parker said, “Just as well. Byrne’s a notorious womanizer. He was recently on that reality show. The one where they link ladies up with bachelor millionaires. Or in his case, a mega-millionaire. I couldn’t resist checking it out.”
“Oh, yeah? How was he?” Jiao asked.
“Let’s just say I wouldn’t want him getting close enough to work his moves on my little sister.”
“Not to worry,” C
asey said. “I steer miles away from his kind.”
Chapter 2
Wandering through sweaty crowds at a community bazaar was hardly the way Drew wanted to spend this ninety-degree Sunday. Especially when he could be tooling around on the Pretty Baby, his fifty-foot Ferretti yacht he moored near his home in Southampton. He hated these kinds of events. Checking out the scenery, he had to admit they did a decent job of transforming the North Cove playground into a fair ground. But he felt out of place. Old ladies selling pies. Booths with rows of cutesy stuffed animals perched behind targets for water pistols and baseballs. Squeals and laughter from children on the Tilt-A-Whirl, Bumper Cars, and Ferris Wheel.
Then there was Miss Casey. Ah, yes, the phenomenally sexy, but oh so irritating, Miss Casey. He watched her directing her group of kids near the raised platform that served as a stage. Fussing with their costumes and hair, waving her arms around as she gave instructions, even bandaging a last minute boo-boo. Her animated face all lit up.
She didn’t wear those body-clinging dance tights today. But seeing her in a tank top and tight denim shorts put him in just as much pain. He couldn’t stop picturing those smooth, muscular legs wrapped around him, her perky butt in his hands.
What would Casey be like in bed? He’d slept with his share of sexy bimbos as well as brainy lawyers, doctors, Wall Streeters, and an unbelievable actress turned real estate agent. But he’d never had a ballerina. Maybe if he…
Nah, wouldn’t work. Drew could tell Casey was a Screener. One of those women who screened out players with her own specially built-in software. Party-pooping gatekeepers with a sixth sense for alpha bulls who were only interested in one thing: getting in and getting out. She probably held lofty ideals about relationships and seeking the deeper stuff that led to the dreaded M word.
And marriage was a mistake Drew had no intention of ever repeating.
He gritted his teeth, chewing on the ice cubes from his way-too-sweet orange soda. Staring down at his watch, he wondered how much longer before the dance would begin.
Why did Heather get their son involved in this sort of thing? When Drew was Josh’s age he’d been an all-star catcher for his Little League team, not to mention taking his first algebra course while the other kids were still working on basic math. Always a step ahead of the competition. That was Drew Byrne’s motto.
Finally a portly, silver-haired woman in a huge, flower-bedecked hat that looked like one you’d see worn at the Kentucky Derby spoke into a mic. “Now we have a special treat for you. A group of young dancers handpicked and trained by Casey Richardson, the director of the North Cove Dance Academy. Let’s hear it for the Cove Corps!”
Drew rolled his eyes and joined in the polite applause, hoping whatever he was about to witness wouldn’t mean he needed to tell Josh too big a lie about how much he enjoyed it. The boy had been all keyed up this morning over this grand performance.
The dance included eight kids. Two were older girls who looked maybe fourteen or fifteen. The rest seemed closer to Josh’s age. He was not the only boy, but one of three. And, no, they weren’t in tights, but in jeans and sneakers.
To Drew’s surprise the group was not just a bunch of kids slopping around. The dance actually looked like something you could see on a music video. But the real surprise came when Josh took center stage in his Yankees cap and danced a solo, performing flips and spins and jumps that made Drew’s jaw drop. And got the audience cheering.
Was this truly his skinny, sulky, timid son?
Drew’s face glowed with affectionate pride. Any kid who could move like that had to be a great athlete. When the dance finished Drew clapped like mad, whistling and cheering along with the rest of the enthusiastic crowd.
Then he made the mistake of glancing over at Casey Richardson. She looked back at him with a smug little grin and gave him a satisfied “I told you so” nod.
***
Casey made the rounds, eating ice cream, cotton candy, caramel popcorn, chocolate cake and every fattening thing she could find. And lured her best bud since childhood into being her partner in crime. “Oooh, don’t you just love butter pecan?”
“Love now. Pay later,” Natalie said, head tilting, tongue shooting out to catch the mocha almond fudge dripping down the side of her cone. “No way I’ll make target weight at my next Weight Watchers meeting.” Aside from her ash blonde hair, Natalie D’Alessio’s features were almost Eskimo-like. Her impish smile and gently slanting eyes in a round face made her an exotic cutie.
“You could burn it off in the potato sack race.”
“No. I will not go hopping along wearing a potato sack in front of three hundred people.”
“What? I heard burlap’s becoming the cutting edge of fashion.”
“And don’t try to get me on the Scrambler again, or you’ll be wearing everything I ate.”
Casey and Natalie used to tease each other about being the only two from their high school who hadn’t landed either a husband or a career. But this year Natalie’s little eatery, the Coffee Cove, had finally taken off. And so had the dance academy.
Which reminded Casey of the call she’d put in to her landlord about her lease and that horrible letter he’d sent. She checked her mobile. Nothing yet.
Natalie downed the last of her cone and said, “Since my caloric sinning spree is totally your fault, you can make it up to me with a favor.”
“I’m bracing myself.”
“Monica Bickles left two days ago for a trekking holiday in Tibet.”
“Why? Are they having a sale on incense? Or has she gone bonkers for a monker?”
“Monker isn’t even a word.”
“I know, but monk doesn’t rhyme with bonkers.”
Natalie made a tsking sound. “I hate to interrupt your highly intelligent train of thought, but that’s not the issue. You know Monica moonlights as a psychic reader known as Madame Lumina?”
Casey nodded. “So I hear.”
“And you know I’m in charge of the raffle. Well, Monica donated three free readings. But since she won’t be taking any calls in the Himalayas…”
“Oh no. I can guess what favor you want.”
“See that? You are psychic.”
“No. I’m not. And I am not going to pinch hit as a gypsy for Monica.”
“But I listed the prizes everywhere,” Natalie whined. “Someone will be expecting to win the free readings. Consider it your donation to the new library fund.”
“I already donated ten dance classes.” Assuming I‘ll still have a dance school, thank you, Mr. Vonrelis.
“Come on, Casey. It’s only a few measly phone calls. Look, I have a deck of tarot cards—”
“Great. You do the readings.”
“If I had to pretend I was Madame Lumina I’d get all nervous and blow it. But you’re a performer and a good actress. You could pull it off. Which is why you’re hired.”
After a long pause and a deep sigh, Casey said, “All right. But only because of the time you took my place on that blind date with the chiropractor from Bayonne.”
“Chiropractor from Bayonne? Oh, you mean Herbie.” Her eyes lit up. “Got news for you: he was huge.”
“Spare me the details.”
“No time anyway. Gotta go organize the raffle drawing.” She patted Casey’s hand. “Don’t worry, I’ll prep you before the first appointment. I’ll loan you my tarot deck and make you big printouts of the various meanings. And to avoid a lot of confusion, like getting a bunch of calls from Monica’s other clients, I’ll give you one of my back-up mobiles that I hardly ever use. That number will be given to the raffle winner.”
“I have a bad feeling about this. And it isn’t psychic.”
They parted ways and Casey ambled toward the ping-pong tables. A hand-eye game of skill she hadn’t played in years. She used to be pretty good at it. All she needed was a partner.
“Miss Casey.”
She turned to see Josh Byrne standing there. Next to his dad.
She glanced at his perfectly carved delt. Sure enough, there was the tattoo of a blue tractor-trailer. So, he was definitely the womanizing player her brother mentioned. Knowing it spelled bad news, she tore her gaze away from him, forcing back fantasies of licking him from head to toe.
Casey turned to his son and covered her discomfort by saying, “How about a game of ping-pong, Josh?”
He tucked in his chin and shook his head. “I’m terrible at it. You’d only get annoyed with me.”
“No, I wouldn’t.” Poor kid. Was it his father who made him feel that? “In fact, I’ll teach you some slick moves.”
Drew stepped forward, his expression cocky, his eyes doing the elevator dance on her. “Like what?”
A nervous Josh must have feared another run-in between his father and his dance teacher because he said, “My dad is a champ at it. You should play with him.”
Oh, she wanted to play with him, all right, but not ping-pong.
Before Casey had a chance to decline, Drew said, “Think you can handle a grown man?”
She wasn’t sure if that was a sultry double entendre or just a snide challenge. Either way, Casey decided this obnoxious, arrogant butthead who didn’t want his kid in her ballet class could use a good ass kicking. “Try me.”
The game moved quickly into a fierce competition. She had to admit he was good. But cracks began to show in his ego every time Casey delivered one of her trademark smashes, sending the ball like a bullet off the far corner of the table for a point. His grumbling and the tense crease that formed between his brows tickled her predatory instincts. Moving in for the kill, Casey revved up her best backhand spin shot. The same one she’d used to beat all the guys she grew up with, including her super athletic brother, Parker.
It hadn’t exactly won her any dates in high school, but that wasn’t an issue here. Mr. Sexy Moneybags was way out of her league. He’d never bother with a plain Jane scrounger like her. And if he did, it would only be for a lark. She’d learned that lesson years ago.
Spring Into Love Page 148
