Go after her.
But one hopeful, upturned gaze stopped him. That promise he made to his father at least a hundred times.
That is the life, Tazarian.
With a frustrated sigh that he hoped his smile would disguise, he took the sliver of paper the woman was handing to him along with a pen. “Absolutely. What’s your name, darlin’?”
She giggled. “Charlotte. Charlotte Beaudreaux. Would you mind if my husband and I sit with you during the break?”
| 9
When Melanie returned to the dining room, she had a fresh layer of lipstick, freshly brushed hair, and a fresh attitude. She walked in to find the stage cleared and the crowd thinned. Taz was sitting at her table with a beer bottle in his hand, holding court with the nearby diners like he was some kind of king. The way he flashed his white, perfectly straight teeth and tossed his loose hair back over his shoulder, he didn’t seem to have a care in the world.
It made her resent him just a little bit more.
Did he expect her to grovel to get his help? Her instincts told her again to turn around and march out the door.
It wasn’t like her instincts had been much help lately. If she didn’t give this a try, she’d regret it forever, even if she didn’t make the Divas.
She had killed it up there. She knew it. Even those women in the ladies’ room knew it. She had a chance, probably her best one ever.
If Taz wanted to make it difficult, fine. Let him. She could deal with it. Besides, she had an advantage when it came to him: she was immune to that million-dollar smile of his. If he wanted to play games, let him. Bring it on.
She turned on her own million-dollar smile—or what she hoped passed for one—and walked up to the table as if she were expected.
He turned up a wide grin. “There you are. I thought you’d abandoned me.”
Was that real surprise or sarcasm? She tried reading between the laugh lines tugging at the corners of his eyes. He was still soaking in the adoration. Still on. Maybe he never turned it off.
Then he stood and pulled out her chair. So, the big gorilla at least had some manners. “Thank you,” she said tightly.
The blonde who had urged her on before turned a big, fuchsia smile at her. “Your ears must have been burning. We were just talking about you.”
Melanie faked a smile. “Oh?”
“Nothing bad, of course.” The woman batted her hand playfully. “We were just saying how wonderful you were up there. Both of you, really. You must perform together a lot.”
“No, actually,” Melanie said, trying to detect whether the woman was putting her on. “It was a first, and I hope the last.”
“Don’t say that,” the woman cried a little too effusively. Her words slurred just a bit. “You could feel all that chemistry up there. It was very sexy—”
“Charlotte, honey,” the man in the suit sitting beside her reached out and touched her shoulder. “I’m not sure that’s appropriate.”
The woman turned a wide, confused gaze at him. “What do you mean? I only meant they’re a cute couple.” She turned back to Melanie and Taz. “Right? I didn’t offend you, did I?”
The man stood and gathered her up with an apologetic look. “C’mon, Charlotte, we shouldn’t monopolize Mr. Roman’s time.”
“Oh, you’re no fun. All right. Well, Mr. Roman, it sure has been a pleasure talking with you and your friend.”
Melanie noticed the way the woman leaned forward when she offered her hand. It was hard to say whether she meant to call attention to the plumpness peeking between the deep V of her clingy wrap dress, but Taz certainly seemed to notice it.
“The pleasure was all mine,” he said, staring directly at her breasts.
As the man pulled the woman toward the door, Melanie introduced herself to the martini with three olives awaiting her.
Taz watched the couple leave, then slanted a look her direction. “I didn’t think you were coming back.”
She feigned surprise. “Why? You don’t think I enjoy being put on the spot like that? No warning? No preparation? It keeps life so interesting.”
Her sarcasm sparked amusement in his expression. “You can’t blame me, can you?”
“Excuse me?” Was he really that cruel?
He shrugged. “I need to know what I have to work with before I agree to anything. That’s just good business.”
“Business?” She leaned against the chair’s backrest, stunned—and still furious. “That was your idea of a fun little test, then?”
He glanced away, considering it, then nodded. “Yeah, if you want to call it that. Look, I know you can dance on your home turf, in front of a friendly crowd. I’ve heard that much. But performing on big stages in strange cities where nobody knows you, that’s not the same thing. I need to know how you do under pressure.”
She set down her martini glass, and a splash of gin sloshed over the rim. “You asked around about me? Why? When?” The questions were racing through her brain faster than she could spit them out.
“Today. After you left the studio.”
“But I told you I wasn’t interested. I told you no.”
“I had a feeling you’d come around.”
Melanie replayed the scene. There was no way. She’d been clear when she left. She cocked her chin. “It was Abby, wasn’t it? What did she tell you?”
His glance skittered away again. “Nothing I didn’t already know.”
She folded her arms and planted her elbows on the table. “What do you think you know about me?”
He fixed her with a steel glare. “I don’t even have to know you to know you,” he said. His jaw tensed as he stared, not at her, but through her, into her past, into her secrets.
She shifted, but he didn’t ease up.
“I see your kind all the time,” he said. “You want to be a Belly Dance Diva. You want it so bad you can taste it. You can smell it. But you let your nerves get the better of you. You’re a good dancer, maybe even great, but when the pressure turns up, you fall apart. You want it, but you’re afraid of it. How am I doing so far?”
Hitting the nail on the head, but she’d never give him the satisfaction of telling him that. “I want it,” she shot back. “I’ll give you that. But I’m not afraid to fail.”
“Then why haven’t you ever tried out before? Auditions happen every year, and I’ve never seen you there.”
“I’ve been busy. I have a job. Besides, my boyfriend wasn’t exactly excited about the idea of me being off on tour for months at a time.”
His eyes flashed. “A boyfriend? How’d you change his mind?”
“I didn’t. That’s why he’s an ex-boyfriend,” she said, shredding the corner of her cocktail napkin into bits. “My point is that I’m ready, and I want this, and I can do it without your help. I’m just smart enough to know that when an opportunity comes up, you take it.” Her gaze slid across the tabletop and climbed up slowly to meet his. “So let’s not forget who really needs who here.”
He tipped back his beer bottle and smiled, like she’d just passed another secret test. She resisted the urge to reach over and slap that smug look off his face.
He set down his bottle with a thump. “Okay. Here’s what I’m not going to do,” he said. “I’m not going to guarantee you a spot in the troupe. I couldn’t even if I wanted to. The producer makes those decisions. I sit on the audition panel, along with the choreographer and a few others, but Garrett makes the final call. He has the vision. You’re going to have to earn it the same way everybody else earns it.”
She opened her mouth to reply, but he stopped her with a raised finger.
“But,” he continued, “in the years I’ve been working with him, I’ve sat through a lot of auditions and rehearsals, and I know what he’s looking for. I know what he likes, and more important, I know what he doesn’t.”
The way he was staring at her made her shift uneasily in her seat. “If you have something to say, just say it.”
H
e shrugged. “I just want you to know that all I can offer is advice. I’ll critique your routine. I will give you pointers, but I cannot and will not promise you a spot. If you think that’s worth your time, then we’ll talk about my part of the bargain.”
Melanie took another sip—a gulp, really—of her martini. She felt the alcohol burn its way down her throat and warm her belly. Was it worth it? She broke off their standoff stare. Her gaze brushed over the silky, white sheers along the windows, billowing gently from the breeze coming in off Newport Bay. He wasn’t offering her a sure thing, far from it. But it was still an edge. “Yeah, I’m in. What do I have to do?”
He leaned back, looking relieved. “For starters, you’ll have to move in with me.”
She sputtered the martini that was at her lips. She set the glass down. “Are you kidding me? Why?”
His overabundance of confidence vanished. “I know. It’s a lot. But I kinda mentioned that to my sister, that you and I—well, my girlfriend and I—were living together.”
“When you decide to lie, you really go all out. Honestly, I’ve never been happier to be an only child.”
“I know. It was a stupid thing to do. She wanted to stay at the house…” He stopped, shook his head, and tried again. “I thought if I told her she couldn’t, she wouldn’t come. She hates hotels. Obviously, my plan backfired. So I need a live-in girlfriend. That’s number one.”
Okay, she hadn’t expected that, but it wasn’t a deal breaker. “What else?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess you have to act like you don’t hate me.”
She tilted her head. “You think I hate you?”
His eyes widened. “Seriously? You make it pretty obvious. So I’m just saying—you know—pretend when she’s around, if you can.”
If you can?
Behind her, she heard a shuffling and a distant but unmistakable voice whisper, “Just do it. Just ask him.”
She didn’t turn to look who had said it, and she didn’t let it distract her. Instead, she reached over and laid her palm on the soft bed of sandy curls on his forearm. When his muscles tensed, her lips stretched into a slow, seductive smile. She made a sad Snoopy face. “You don’t really think I hate you, do you?”
His glance flashed to something behind her, but only for a moment, and then his attention was again riveted on her. Beneath her hand, his muscles eased. Not just where she touched him, but the shifting in his seat told her the effect was moving south, too.
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
She made a soft tsk-tsk-tsk sound. “Now what if I told you that I do like you, Taz Roman. I like you very much.”
He pulled back and threw his other arm over the chair’s back, angling his body to give her a better view of his partially exposed chest. “When you put it like that, I guess I was wrong. You just always seem annoyed by me, I guess. Irritated.”
Was that a tinge of pink around his neck? It was almost endearing. But she wasn’t ready to let up. Not yet.
She lowered her voice to a whisper. “A girl has to keep a guy guessing, doesn’t she? She has to have some mystery to keep his interest.”
His chest was rising and falling with quickening breaths. “Yeah, I get that,” he said.
She stretched back slowly against her chair with that sexy, seductive smile and then dropped it like a hot coal. “Good. Because if you believe it, I’m sure your sister will, too.”
His smile vanished. “Wait, that was fake? You were faking all that?”
She wiggled her eyebrows. “I’m good, huh? You aren’t the only one who can lie.”
He frowned and rose from his seat. “Okay, you proved your point. I think I need another drink. Can I get you something?”
She shook her head. “No, I’m good.”
As he walked toward the bar, she heard him mutter, “Maybe too good.”
When he was gone, she exhaled the breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. She watched him saunter back to the bar, and looked around. Who had been trying to get their attention? Then she saw the shroud of blond hair marching out the dining room door, followed closely by a short, brunette bob, and she knew. The bloggers from the ladies’ room. Apparently she’d gotten in the middle of their exclusive interview.
Should she feel bad? Probably. But the last thing he needed was more adoring fans, and she needed to prove her point.
She had, but she’d gotten something else, too. She stared at her fingers. It was back. The hot tingle that had pulsed through her like a licking flame when she touched him. She curled her hands into fists, trying to force the feeling back, and trying to get herself back under control.
A few minutes later, he slid with effortless grace back into his chair.
“I guess there’s just one more thing to discuss,” he said and took a slow sip of what looked like a shot of whiskey.
She clamped her hands together and held them in her lap, far from him, and far from danger. “What now?” she asked, laying on the snark. “Personal references? Work history?”
“Nope.” He smirked. “Just a question. How soon can you move in?”
| 10
Four days later, Melanie stood in front of a ten-foot-tall river rock wall with a suitcase on wheels beside her. She punched the buzzer on the security system and saw her own black-and-white image flicker to life on the closed-circuit television screen perched above her. Damn, this place was a fortress. When Taz had given her his address, she had expected the Huntington Beach neighborhood to be nice and probably near the water. She didn’t expect it to be one of the waterfront mansions in the priciest part of the harbor. These secluded homes were the kinds of places where you expected to find movie stars or sports heroes, not doumbek drummers.
“You’re late,” a familiar voice growled through the speaker.
“I hit traffic. I’m surprised I got here at all.”
“You should have taken side streets.”
“I’ll make a note,” she snapped back. She wasn’t going to mention that traffic wasn’t the only cause of her delay. When she’d planned how long it would take to pack, she hadn’t factored in the extra hour to argue with her mother, who had apparently decided to take Melanie’s departure as yet another personal affront.
A buzz signaled her to open the gate. She pushed the door and nearly choked at the sight of the house on the other side.
Taz stood in an arched doorway, wiping his hands with a dish towel.
“Welcome home,” he said with a wry grin.
“Yeah,” she muttered, her eyes still roaming over the courtyard that hugged the building’s wave-like contours. Every gently curved wall was open glass, displaying an immaculately white interior and making it seem more like an aquarium than a home. In the distance, she could hear the ocean crashing against the shore and seagulls squawking at the setting sun. “You live here?”
“It’s a little much, isn’t it?” he said with a chuckle. “Blame my dad. He loved architecture, especially mid-century modern design. Of course, when he bought the land and commissioned the house in the ’60s, people weren’t calling it that. Back then, it was just modern. Now? Well, you get used to it. C’mon, I’ll show you around.”
He threw the towel over his shoulder, and without a word, grabbed her suitcase and wheeled it inside.
Ordinarily, she would have protested. She didn’t go for that macho sense of chivalry, but she was too busy gawking at the house. It really was amazing. Like a giant, white palace. Not just the walls, but everything was white: the tiled floors, the carpets, the furniture. Only a few massive oil paintings hanging in strategic places throughout the home splashed various shades of blue. The floor-to-ceiling windows let in the colors of the ocean and the sky.
The house really was remarkable, like something a Kardashian or a Clooney might live in up in the Hollywood Hills or tucked away in Malibu. She’d always heard the Romans were considered royalty in Middle Eastern music circles. Maybe that was a lot more lucrative than she’d though
t.
“This is quite a place,” she said, following him deeper inside.
He glanced around at the curved staircase, recessed alcoves, and the wide open gulf designed down the middle of the house, which rose three stories to a giant skylight above. “Yeah, it’s nice. My parents had a blast working with the architect. My dad especially, because he was such an architecture enthusiast. He used to take us to places like the Ennis House and Wayfarers Chapel the way other parents took their kids to Knott’s Berry Farm and Disneyland. You know, before the accident.”
The drop in his tone made it clear that wasn’t something he wanted to discuss. She went a different direction. “So you’ve lived here since you were a kid?”
It didn’t seem possible. Everything looked so clean, so frigging brand new.
“Only part time until a few years ago. When my parents died, my sister and I moved to Brooklyn to live with an aunt. She brought us here a couple weeks in the summer, but most of the time the place was empty. It was kept in a trust until I was eighteen and Gina was twenty.”
“So you both own it, but only you live in it?”
“Yeah, for now. The will prevents us from selling until I’m thirty. That’s probably another reason she wants to come back and check on me. Make sure I haven’t damaged her investment.”
“I can’t believe you live here all alone.” She wasn’t going to say it, but she’d never had more than a bedroom to call her own. Lately, she didn’t even have that.
“I don’t live alone anymore. Now you’re here.” He didn’t exactly sound pleased.
“Right,” she said. “That’s going to take some getting used to. Sorry if this is too blunt, but how in the world do you keep this place so clean? I’ve never met a guy who could keep a room clean, let alone a whole house, especially a house like this.”
“Anna,” he said.
“Huh?”
“My housekeeper. She’s here Tuesdays and Fridays, unless I need her more often.”
“I should have known,” Melanie said. “Of course you’d have a housekeeper. That’s what rich people do, right?” Inside she winced. She hadn’t meant to sound snide.
Romance: Dance with Me (California Belly Dance Romance Book 2) Page 4
