“Oh, so it’s me who isn’t welcome here,” he speculated.
Wendy looked up from uncorking the bottle and shot him a quelling look over her shoulder. “Of course you’re welcome here, Frazier. Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I was under the impression that your parents liked me.”
“My parents love you. You know that.” After a few seconds of maneuvering, the cork slid out of the bottle smoothly. She set it aside and braced her hands on the edge of the counter. “That’s not what I meant. It just...feels like we’re together every second of the day sometimes. I guess I’m still getting used to it. And I wasn’t planning to tell my parents about us until after I was used to it.”
“You mean, despite the fact that we’re actually not together every second of the day?” His eyebrows met in the middle of his forehead. “What is this really about, Wendy? And who said anything about telling your parents?”
A wave of relief washed over her. If either of their parents knew that they were intimately involved now, they’d have the wedding planned and all ten of the requested grandchildren named before the evening was over with. The thought of being hit over the head with all that made her feel like she couldn’t breathe. But now that she knew he wasn’t planning to go there, she felt herself calming down and breathing more easily. “I thought that was what you were going to do.” Steadier now, she opened a door on the side of the island and took out a serving tray.
Frazier sighed tiredly. “I know you did, Wendy.” He pushed off from the counter and walked over to her slowly, his hands deep in his pants pockets and a laid-back expression on his face. “Do you need help with the wine?”
God, he was gorgeous. In a matter of minutes, she’d gone from being irritated at him, to being happy to see him, to being ridiculously aroused. On a bad day, he could’ve doubled for the actor Laz Alonzo and on a good one, he was as close to a visual orgasm as a woman could get. Even when she was upset with him, she wanted him inside of her. “Um...no,” she said, staring at his lips. “No, I don’t. Thanks.”
“Okay, well, I think I hear voices in the dining room, so I’m going to go in and join whoever’s there, let you have your space.”
Not quite sure she liked the tone of his voice, Wendy watched him swing through the door that led to the dining room and pressed a hand to her belly to settle the butterflies there.
Composed again, she arranged the wine bottle and five glasses on a tray and backed through the door into the dining room. The first face she saw was Lily’s.
“Wendy, your mother was just telling me about the job you have lined up in Chicago this spring. You must be so excited.”
Wendy opened her mouth to clarify that the job in question—the one she hadn’t yet decided on—was in Las Vegas, not Chicago. But Selena spoke up before she could.
“Lily has some excellent suggestions for the kinds of clothes you’ll need to pack,” her mother said. “Oh, and she can tell you about all the sights to see, too.”
She could see Frazier in her peripheral vision, staring at her, but she wasn’t about to look at him. “I’ve been to Chicago before, Mom, remember? You have, too.”
“I know, sweetie, but it’s always nice to get a fresh perspective right before a trip.”
“You’re going to Chicago, too?” Wendy’s father asked, looking confused. He reached up and scratched his bald head as if that might help him keep the facts straight. “I thought the job was in Las Vegas. When did it change to Chicago?”
“It didn’t, Daddy. The job is in Las Vegas.”
“Well, then, what does Chicago have to do with it and when are we going to eat? I’m starving.”
“Nothing, Daddy.” She dropped a hand on his shoulder and squeezed lovingly. “Chicago has nothing to do with Las Vegas. Why don’t I start bringing out the food?”
“How about pouring us each a glass of wine before you do, Wendy?” Selena suggested, sending Wendy a meaningful look over everyone’s heads. Swallowing a sigh, Wendy poured a glass and passed it to her father, since he was sitting closest to her. “While you’re doing that, you can tell Lily all about the job.”
“There’s really nothing to tell,” Wendy hedged as she passed a glass of wine down to Lily and gestured for her to pass it over to her mother. “There’s a youth dance corps in Las Vegas that’s recently gained a lot of national attention. They need a choreographer to work with a group of new recruits this spring and they’ve asked me to take the position.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful,” Lily said, beaming. She looked genuinely happy for Wendy. “Do you think you’ll like living in Las Vegas?”
“I wouldn’t necessarily have to relocate to Las Vegas, not permanently, anyway. At the most, I’d be there for a year, maybe less. I don’t have all the details yet, because I haven’t given them a firm response. Right now the offer is still on the table and I’m still thinking about it, but I do appreciate your support, Mrs. Abernathy.”
She wasn’t exactly lying to her parents and Mrs. Abernathy, but she was being evasive. For some reason, it seemed like the thing to do just then. There was enough tension between her and Frazier as it was and talking about the possibility of her moving to another state certainly wouldn’t help matters any. She wished her mother would, for once, pay attention to the nonverbal cues that she was sending her and drop the subject.
Of course there was something to tell. How could there not be? The Greeley Dance Company was world-renowned. With branches in London, New York and, most recently, Las Vegas, they recruited dance students from all over the world and toured extensively. They were as comfortable performing on Broadway as they were in quaint community theaters, and they managed to do both superbly.
Wendy was already a freshman in high school when Greeley was first established, so she hadn’t grown up with dreams of dancing with the company. But before the accident, they had definitely been on her short list of coveted placements.
The youth program that Greeley wanted her to work with was new, only about two years old, but it was already making important waves in the dance community because of its work with underprivileged youth. Thanks to Greeley, talented young dancers who might not have otherwise been given the opportunity to train professionally were now training under master dancers and performing for audiences all over the country. If she took the position, she’d be working directly with a group of high school students from Las Vegas, training and preparing them for a summer tour that would begin in Las Vegas and take them all the way to New Zealand before it was over.
And if she took the position, she’d need to be in Las Vegas and ready to get to work in less than three weeks’ time.
Wendy poured one last glass of wine and forced herself to meet Frazier’s eyes as she passed it to him. If he noticed that her hand was trembling, he didn’t say anything. “I forgot the apple cider, Mrs. Abernathy. I’ll bring it out to you and then I’ll start bringing out the food. Can you wait a couple more minutes, Daddy?”
He slanted a dubious look in her direction. “Do I have a choice?”
“I’m afraid not, but I promise I’ll be quick. Does anyone need anything, other than food, before I—”
Frazier’s calm, accusing voice cut her off. “You told me you turned down the job.”
She met his gaze and looked away quickly. “No, I didn’t. Not yet. I’ll, uh, be right back.”
* * *
Frazier was seething.
He couldn’t remember the last time he felt so invisible. All through dinner, Wendy had avoided eye contact with him and only responded to his attempts to engage her in socially polite conversation with one-word responses. She’d only glanced at him a handful of times in two hours and now that dinner was over and they were, once again, alone together in the kitchen, she wouldn’t even give him that.
Their parents were two rooms away, havin
g after-dinner coffee and dessert by the fireplace. To get away from him, she volunteered to put away the leftovers and start on the dishes. And because he’d been on a slow simmer all evening, he had offered to help. Now she was giving him the invisible-silent treatment, hoping he’d go away, and full of attitude because he wouldn’t.
Like he gave a shit.
Frazier had always known that he was one of the “good guys.” Growing up, he’d always held doors for women, stood when a woman entered a room, and looked away when another man would’ve ogled. It wasn’t hard to respect women and as he’d grown older, he discovered that the extra perks afforded to “good guys” were well worth the wait.
He’d been with more than his share of women, but a good guy never kissed and told, and he’d never tried to be anything other than just that.
When he was a kid, he hadn’t minded being the butt of nerd jokes...up to a certain point. When he was a teenager, the nerd jokes dried up around the time that he suddenly and very mysteriously became irresistible to girls. And, as a man, he was happy to be the nerd who earned a six-figure salary and was very close to never having to work another day in his life if he didn’t want to...and he was still mysteriously irresistible to women.
He almost laughed out loud at the thought. There was no damn mystery to what he did, to who he was. He respected women...people. Period. And when you gave respect, it was only natural that you demanded it in return.
Up to a certain point, he’d let the jokes roll off his shoulders, mainly because they were good-natured and he did have a sense of humor, but he had never allowed himself to be willfully and intentionally disrespected. Experiencing it now was strange and, as he watched Wendy load up the refrigerator with plastic storage containers filled with leftovers, he decided that it was as unacceptable now as it was back then.
Wendy knew that better than anyone.
Thirty minutes of strained silence had passed when he glanced at his watch and straightened from leaning in the kitchen doorway. Earlier, he’d offered to help her with KP duty and been summarily dismissed, so he wasn’t about to offer again.
Instead, he closed the distance between them in a couple of steps and leaned a hip against the countertop next to where she stood at the sink. It was getting late and his mother would be ready to leave in a little while, so if he was going to tell her to go to hell, now was probably a good time.
“I think you mistake my kindness for weakness,” he said thoughtfully.
Her hands went still in the sudsy water. “Frazier, please.”
“Oh, no, you’re not the only one who gets to speak.” He studied her profile—her smooth dark skin, the delicate line of her neck—and told himself not to reach out and touch her. “Earlier, you accused me of smothering you—”
“That’s not what I said.”
“That’s what you meant, though. You said you didn’t realize that we’d be together all the time, as if I’m the sole reason we spend so much time together. As if I’m smothering you. Don’t insult my intelligence by trying to backpedal now, all right?”
“Frazier, if you came in here to start a fight with me, I am so not in the mood right now.” She dropped a soapy plate into the double sink harder than necessary, then started scrubbing another one. “Can we please do this later?”
“I don’t think so, Wendy, because I don’t think there will be a later.”
Now she did look at him. It was the first time in half an hour. “What?”
He tipped his head to one side, stared into her gorgeous brown eyes and answered her question with a question of his own. “This new dynamic between us isn’t working, is it?”
That rattled her. He could see it in the way her shoulders stiffened and hear it in the way her breath caught in her throat. When she finally released it, it was long and shaky. “Are you breaking up with me? Is that what this is?”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? It would make your decision so much easier, wouldn’t it?”
“Frazier, I—I don’t know what you want from me. I mean, right now, I don’t even know what I want from me.”
“Is that why you lied to me about the job in Vegas?”
“I didn’t exactly lie—”
His sigh was long-suffering. “Wendy...”
“Well, I didn’t. But if I had told you that I was keeping my options open, you would’ve just tried to talk me out of going because of this new thing we’re doing and I probably would’ve listened.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it. I have never tried to talk you out of doing anything you wanted to do. Ever. Come up with another lie, because that one doesn’t apply here.”
Her shoulders sagged in frustration as she walked over to the breakfast nook across the room and pulled a chair away from the cherrywood table there. She dropped into it heavily and looked up at him wearily. “Frazier, we’ve been seeing each other for what, a month now? Do you realize that you bring up the subject of us getting married at least twice a week? You know how many kids you want and what schools you want them to go to. You probably have their names picked out, too. You have your future all mapped out and, suddenly, because we’re exploring what it feels like to be together, you’ve got my future all mapped out, too. And I have a feeling that it doesn’t include me moving across the country.”
“So my crime is wanting to marry you?” He tried to keep from laughing out loud, but he couldn’t help himself. A deep, sarcastic chuckle shot out of his mouth before he could stop it. “My crime is wanting to make a life with you and—”
“I never said I wanted marriage,” Wendy blurted out.
In the silence that followed her declaration, he could see that her words had caught her by surprise. If so, then one out of the two of them wasn’t bad. For his part, she had just confirmed what he’d already suspected. “You’re right. You never said that...” He trailed off, considering her. “As a matter of fact, you never said much of anything, except, of course, when you wanted sex. Perhaps I should’ve been paying more attention to what you weren’t saying and, if so, that was my mistake.”
“Frazier...” His name was a soft plea on her lips. She was hurt and trying not to show it.
“I won’t waste my time being with someone who just wants a good fuck, Wendy.” For a moment, he let his own hurt show. Then he checked it and gave her a lopsided smile instead. “Even if she is my best friend.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying you’re off the hook. I think I liked you much better when we were friends.”
She stared at him for the longest time. Then she was up and crossing the kitchen in his direction. Anticipating her, he slipped his hands from his pants pockets and used them to steady her when she pressed up against him, slid her hands up his chest and then palmed his face. “That’s not what I want.”
“What do you want, Wendy?”
Silence. Then a whisper. “Frazier...I just... I need some time to figure things out.”
“So take it,” he told her, though it cost him dearly. “Take all the time you need.”
“So we’re breaking up because I don’t want to marry you right now?”
“No, Wendy. We’re breaking up because I want more from you than just sex.”
“That’s not fair.”
He rested his forehead against hers and sucked the breath from her mouth into his. “Fair to whom?”
“Frazier.” There it was again. His name. This time, though, it was his mother who said it.
Lily’s caramel brown cheeks were bright red when he turned to look at her. She and Wendy’s parents were crowded in the kitchen doorway and it was a toss-up as to which one of them was more scandalized. “I-It’s getting late and the temperature outside has dropped, so there’s no telling what the roads might be like. We should probably go.”
�
�I was just thinking the same thing,” Frazier said as he stepped back from Wendy and clasped her hands in his. They stared at each other for a beat and then he brought one of her hands to his mouth and pressed a kiss into her palm. She looked just as scandalized as their parents, so he said, “I guess our secret is out.”
Chapter 5
Wendy taught ballet classes every week, but teaching and dancing, though intricately intertwined, were two different animals. While teaching required her to dissect the mechanics of the dance, dancing allowed her to connect with them on a physical, almost spiritual plane. Dancing required her to move within the music and movement was what she needed right now. When all else failed, it was what kept her mind clear and focused...and blank. En pointe, nothing else mattered, nothing except the combination of muscle and skill, of technique. Balance was everything. There was no room left for thought or feeling.
She chose the first movement of Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik to put her through her warm-up paces. Then, when she was damp with perspiration and her muscles were so loose that they flowed like liquid, she slipped another CD into the boom box. The music on it—five arrangements in all—were twisted fusions of R&B/hip-hop and classical music that couldn’t be found in any retail store. She’d had the tracks created especially for her own use and the choreography that she had paired with each track was part of the reason the Greeley Dance Company wanted her to train its students. What better way to engage inner-city youth in the art of ballet than to show them how it could be used to make hip-hop come alive? And who better to show their students exactly how to merge the two than Wendy?
She certainly wasn’t the first dancer to come up with the concept of a hybrid dance genre, but she was definitely one of the best choreographers to create movement within it, even with a less-than-perfect leg.
En pointe she waited for the first track to begin and then, when it did, she let it lead her into oblivion. There, she didn’t think about the fact that she hadn’t seen or spoken to Frazier in almost two weeks, because every time she did, the shock of missing him punched her in the gut harder than any fist ever could. It made her want to curl up into a ball and do something that she hadn’t allowed herself to do in earnest since the day she learned she would never dance on Broadway—cry.
Hot Christmas Nights Page 13
