Grease Monkey Jive
Contents
Acknowledgements
1: The Moment
Before the Moment
2: Crook
3: Bird
4: Half the Sky
5: So Much Like
6: Scent of Power
7: 1800 Sorry
8: Crude
9: Lapse
10: Enrolment
11: Cavemen Can Dance
12: Spark
13: Tea Ceremony
14: Bluff
15: In the Dark
16: Break
17: Replacement Feet
18: Side of Beef
19: Decision Tree
20: Rough Edges
21: Spark
After the Moment
22: Shock
23: Critique
24: Surfer
25: Shuffle
26: Punishment
27: What You See
28: Office Politics
29: Circling
30: Shadows
31: Heat
32: Spotlight
33: Unreal
34: Fudging the Line
35: History of a Kiss
36: Death of the Dog Day
37: Man Up
38: Rebound
39: Unbound
40: Fresh Lines
41: Remade
42: Too Early
43: A Game for Two Players
44: Balance
45: Tiff
46: Provocative
47: Delayed
48: Gratification
49: A Relative Choice
50: Stall
51: Breakdown Lane
52: Wreck
53: Carcass
54: Beached
55: Ghosts
56: Clearer
57: Son of a Bitch
58: Aversion Therapy
59: Dancers Can Surf
60: The Moment
Before the Moment
61: Final
62: Dedication
After the Moment
63: Coming
64: Crook
About the Author
Excerpt from Christmas Wishes
Excerpt from In Safe Hands
Excerpt from Chaos Born
Grease Monkey Jive
Ainslie Paton
A romance about changing the game, finding the truth, and fancy footwork.
When ballroom teacher Alex Gibson dances with Dan Maddox she’s reminded of the time she stuck a knife in the toaster, gave herself an electric shock, and saw stars. He’s precisely the type of man Alex’s mother warned her off – a player, like the father who abandoned her.
Dan Maddox comes from a long line of men who were hiding under the hood of a beat-up car when the ‘successful relationship’ gene was given out, but he was first in the queue for an extra jolt of chick-pulling power.
The chicks in Dan’s life are universally gorgeous, random, and disposable, until one drunken night when he picks the wrong girl, hurts a good friend, and realises that unless he does something to change, he’ll end up like his violent, unstable father.
It’s Pimp My Ride meets Dancing With The Stars as Alex and Dan come together to compete in a ballroom dancing competition that changes the way they both feel about relationships and love.
Acknowledgements
To the folk who made my characters really dance.
Huge thanks to the all powerful readers of the BTA crash test club. You did so good by me. Again.
Thanks also to the singing heroes of the story for their inspirational lyrics and beat including: Sneaky Sound System, Cold Chisel, Billie Holiday, Eminem, Rhianna, Taio Cruz, Jason Derulo, Enrico Perez, Kelly Clarkson, Ed Sheeran, Christina Perri, Flo Rida, Black Eyed Peas, Alesha Dixon, Adam Levine, Christina Aguilera, Chiddy Bang, and Lil Wayne, Lloyd, and Andre 3000.
1. The Moment
When Alex was a kid, she gave herself a nasty electric shock by sticking a knife down the slot of the toaster to rescue her breakfast. As the electricity gripped her in the seconds before shutting off, every muscle spasmed and the air crackled and fizzed with blue sparks.
She was twelve years old, had burned fingers, and was in lot of trouble with Mum and Gran.
She was twice that age now and hadn’t forgotten the intensity of that electric zap and how wildly it made her heart beat and her thoughts fly, from the sheer physical surprise and the recognition that she was in serious strife.
There was no toast, no toaster, and no knife anywhere to hand, but the sensation that struck her body when she looked into his eyes was the same. Electricity pulsed through her nerves, leaped in her muscles, and fired inside her brain. She was in deep trouble.
All he’d done was lower his chin and raise his eyes, looking at her from across the room. That’s all. It barely counted as a movement. It was more a re-positioning, more an adjustment than a conscious action, but everything changed in that moment.
The breath sucked out of her; the room closed in. She felt energised and inspired beyond the bounds of her training and the encouragement of the music. There was nothing she couldn’t achieve. Her feet flew through the steps, her placement never more accurate, her leaps and kicks never higher, her body positioning and posture never prouder or more abandoned at the same time.
She danced on air, as a beam of sunlight might chase a shadow across the floor. It was physically effortless and without the need to think. She was carelessness and precision, passion and control, pure energy and heat. She was the blue fizz and crackle, she was the shock of power, and she adored it.
When she got closer to him she could hear him breathing hard, see the dark blue of his bright eyes and their expression of wonder. She caught fire. When she circled around him, she saw tension flick along the ridge of muscle in his back and across the breadth of his shoulders. The line of his jaw tightened and his lips twitched into a smile as he looked for her and the fire caught, flared, lifting her higher, giving her iridescent wings and divine purpose.
When the music stopped, the silence was hopelessly profound. Her body became her own again and she felt the old stiffness behind her left knee and the too tight strap of her shoe.
She looked at Dan, still standing where Trevor had put him, but studying her as though he’d never met her before. She looked at Scott – surely he’d noticed something odd just happened – but he only had eyes for Dan, critical eyes.
She shook her head to try to reclaim her scorched senses and when she walked across to the stereo, she thought her legs might give way on her and spill her on the wooden floor.
Dan’s eyes never left her and a flood of self consciousness coursed through her, replacing the earlier feeling of joy with embarrassment. That was too much inspiration for a trial run. She could’ve just walked it through; there was no reason whatsoever to have danced like that, not for Dan, he’d have no idea of the technique he was seeing. Scott might’ve enjoyed it, the freedom and clarity of it, but Scott would’ve been annoyed she didn’t dance like that for him.
“What do you think?” said Scott, but not waiting for her reply. “You’re a good physical match and he does look the part. Of course, you’ll have to do all the work, girlfriend, but assuming he can at least do what he did then, we might be able to pull this off.”
Afterwards, Alex would wonder what she’d said in reply; she was already thinking it might be better to abandon this idea before it took on its own life and required her to reorganise hers.
He felt like he’d been hit by a train.
The shock to his chest was palpable, as though something steel hard and lightning sharp had ripped through him, leaving him open and raw and aching hot with sensation. His jaw dropped, his lids lower
ed, his breathing was suddenly laboured, and every muscle was tense with anticipation.
And despite the impression that he’d been shoved backwards at a great rate, staggering from the sheer force of the impact, he was standing stock still, statue still, shop window dummy still, just like he’d been told to.
He had no idea what just happened, why it felt like there was fire in his fingertips and his blood was circulating four times faster than normal, why he could hear bells ringing deep inside his head…
Maybe he was sick, this was a stroke or an aneurysm, come on suddenly with no warning and pushing him so far off balance he was electrified. He needed Google to check for the symptoms because maybe that explained his unexpected inability to speak or think clearly.
He had no idea how long Scott had been talking at him, so obviously his hearing was blown as well. It was her hand placed softly on his arm that brought him back, rushing back, and her honey voice saying his name that snatched him into the present again.
He snapped his mouth closed and made some sound, more a grunt than anything intelligible, and she turned away. Shit, she thought he was a Neanderthal and he’d just proven it. He ran a hand through the tangle of his hair and pushed a breath out, turning to look at Scott.
“Can you do that again, caveman?”
“Ah...?”
“Don’t over-think it. You either can or you can’t.”
“I don’t know what I did.”
Scott groaned, “You were perfect. Who’d have guessed, straight out of the box, never been used. You just have to do exactly what you did then and everything will be rainbows.”
‘Rainbows!’ What was this tool talking about? He couldn’t do that again; he wouldn’t live through the intensity of it. How was it she appeared so unaffected?
She was over by the stereo, nonchalantly selecting the next track, her long dark ponytail swinging over her shoulder, cascading across her elegantly slender neck. She had her extraordinary pale amber eyes down on the screen, leaning forward slightly, a delicious arch in her back, one long, well muscled leg in front of the other.
She looked real and natural, made of ordinary flesh and bone, where only a minute ago she’d seemed entirely illusory, like air, like desire given life in the form of an exotically beautiful girl.
He looked at Mitch and Fluke, sitting on the floor over against the mirror. They were both grinning at him like circus clowns. They must have felt it too then, or seen her change form and become something supernatural.
“Dan!”
“Sorry, Scott – what?”
“We’re going to do it again.”
“No, I...”
“Ok, take a minute.”
He glanced at Alex, now discussing something with Scott, a bright smile animating her face. He might as well have been insect repellent for all the impact he had on her. He shook his head to try to clear it and walked across to the boys.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost, mate,” said Fluke.
“Did you see it too?” He heard how utterly dazed and insanely stupid he sounded.
“Nope?”
“Mitch?”
“Nah, you’re the one got stung.”
“I don’t know what just happened.”
Mitch laughed, but not unkindly, and jostled Fluke. “You’re in trouble, Dan.”
“But I haven’t done anything. I just stood there like they told me to.”
“Yeah, you did something.”
Dan turned to Fluke, always the ‘go to’ for tricky things. “What did I do?”
“I think you might have taken the plunge, mate.”
“What are you talking about?”
“She’s the one.”
“What?”
“She’s the one.”
“What one?”
Mitch jumped in, “Some pissed off angel in a nappy shot you in the fat head with a laser beam.”
“Be serious!”
“I am. She just hit you for six, Dan. You’re gone.”
Dan looked at Fluke to verify the emergence of this horror, both hands up as though to ward off the danger, to bounce the dirty truth of it away.
“Yeah,” said Fluke, “Your dog days are over bar how fast she tells you to fuck off and how long you stay depressed about it.”
Before the Moment
∞
2. Crook
He crooked his finger and she came.
Across the club, in between the drinkers and the dancers, the predators and the prey, the spectators and manipulators, she made her way to Dan. She was all hip and hair toss, open mouth and wet lips. She was shrink-wrapped in a hot pink package of dress that showed all her sweet curves and angles. Nothing that wasn’t fit for immediate consumption. Mitch could see this was a girl without a noticeable use-by date.
Except where Dan was concerned, her shelf life was likely to be a night or two, a week maybe, a month tops. Anything more would be some kind of a personal best and Dan would’ve gone freaking soft.
Mitch was in awe and frustrated by it. He elbowed Ant, who nudged Fluke, so the three of them could have the pleasure of watching her approach and the gut grinding annoyance of seeing Dan do it again.
It was hard to credit it. The power of that finger. That microscopic bend. It wasn’t even a proper movement, you’d think barely visible in this dungeon lighting. It had to be more about the extension of his arm than the actual working of the knuckle, but maybe it was more to do with the intention in his eyes than any obvious joint action.
He had bedroom eyes, or so chicks told him, way too many times. Mitch had made a study of Dan’s eyes, trying to see what it was that Dan had that he and Ant and Fluke didn’t. Well, maybe not Fluke. Fluke wasn’t in the same league.
They were just plain old dark blue peepers as far as Mitch could tell, set deep in Dan’s fat head, under dark brows with almost girly-thick black eyelashes, but Dan had a way of looking at women that made them come undone. Fucked if Mitch could work out what it was, but it was a Class-A secret weapon that was for sure.
‘Cause the chicks, they just kept coming and coming undone. And it wasn’t like Dan did that much to inspire them. He never broke a sweat over them, either before they arrived or after he’d finished with them.
He was a freaking legend where it came to pulling birds. And what he knew about cars. And that’s what made him an acceptable human being – otherwise it was just too painful to be mates with him.
“Fuck!” mouthed Ant, shaking his head at his beer. He was another fifty bucks down. He glued his eyes to the wet dream. She was now almost on top of them, looking real dangerous up this close. Not that she was sparing any of her mega-wattage for anyone but Dan. Not that Dan noticed. He just expected her to sidle up next to him and whisper in his ear and stuffed if that’s not exactly what she did.
She pressed herself against Dan’s side and made a show of having to talk directly into his ear on account of the music being so loud and how it let Dan get a real good handle on her wares.
Mitch watched Dan’s arm slide around her waist, like it was natural, like that’s what a chick who came across a crowded room at the crook of a finger and whispered in your ear expected, and next thing he knew, she had both her arms around Dan’s neck and their fronts were plastered together like wallpaper and wall.
“Shit!” said Fluke. “There goes my ride home.”
“Why’d you bother?” Mitch shouted at Ant. He meant bother making a bet Dan couldn’t pull a chick from half way across the room in less time than it took for another shout to come around.
“Law of averages. The bastard has to lose his mojo sometime,” growled Ant, his baritone not hard to hear above the thump of the dance music.
“He never bloody looks like losing it,” yelled Mitch.
“What?” shouted Fluke.
“Dan. Bastard. Magic touch. Ant. Idiot. Soft touch,” yelled Mitch in Fluke’s ear.
“That’s way too familiar,” said Ant, as they watched Dan wrap
the girl in a proper two-hander, one hand where a bra strap would’ve been and one spread on her butt. “Cheat already knows her.”
“Maybe,” nodded Mitch. It was a pornographic hug for two people who probably hadn’t exchanged names and were now exchanging saliva.
“Nah,” said Fluke. “You’re just fucked off he pulled her and you didn’t think to get to her first.”
“Isn’t it your shout?” responded Ant. He was an idiot to bet against Dan and a woman. Unless he could find a woman who was the female equivalent of Dan in the ‘treat ‘em mean, keep ‘em keen, love ‘em and leave ‘em’ school, then he was just chucking good money after bad. That was something to think about. That would be worth betting on and it was about time Dan Maddox coped a bit of his own back. Yeah, that was definitely worth thinking about.
“Great legs,” said Mitch, focusing on the lack of distance between Dan’s hand and the end of the chick’s dress. In theory, he could have pulled Shrink-wrap himself if Ant hadn’t got Dan all up on the bet. Dan didn’t like to lose and Ant had more money than sense and the sole purpose of this dive was to come in alone and go out with someone to keep you warm. So it wasn’t a miracle Dan was standing there, not a decent spit away, playing tonsil hockey with some wannabe swimsuit model.
Except it was. Mitch knew he could’ve crooked his finger, his hand, his whole body in a brightly light room where there was only this chick and himself and she’d still have looked right through him. He seriously had no idea how this whole thing worked.
He’d known Dan since primary school. They were the same height, both of them nudging past 6ft, had the same colour eyes and brown hair, though Dan’s always needed a cut. They were so physically similar that people took them for brothers, but in the eyes of the female population Dan was a premium parking spot and Mitch was a kind of dodgy off ramp to the back of nowhere.
That’s not to say he didn’t do all right with the birds. They all did, except Fluke. And he and Ant were just as likely to go the roundabout with a chick for a few days and then break the speed limit to hit the exit as Dan was, but Dan never thought about it. Bastard never cared whether they were into him or not.
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