Dance Away with Me - Susan Elizabeth Phillips Page 0,51
itself around him. He leaned down to blow out the candles. One by one their flames flickered and died.
* * *
Wren woke at five in the morning with no intention of falling back to sleep. “Would it kill you, just once, to sleep in, you little butthead? Huh? Would it?”
Apparently, it would.
On the other side of the window, the sun shone. Tess lifted the sash. The air was cool and fresh. It was as if spring had arrived overnight. Last night in the studio seemed like a dream. The couch. The candles. What had she thought would happen? More upsetting, what had she wanted to happen?
It was too soon. She wasn’t ready to deal with this newly awakened part of herself. Her skin itched. Her body ached to move. To dance. It had been weeks since she’d danced.
Instead, she changed Wren and fed her. “Now would you please go back to sleep?”
Wren stuck out her little pink tongue.
“Did you really do what I saw you do?” Tess pushed her feet into her sneakers. “All right, young lady. It’s warmed up outside, and if you’re strong enough to give me attitude, you’re strong enough to get used to the great outdoors.”
She bundled the baby in a fleece onesie and a warmer hat, tucked her in the sling, and headed out.
The birds were celebrating the extra kiss of warmth in the air with a noisy cantata. Instead of going to the cabin, she chose the trail leading up the mountain to the abandoned Pentecostal church. A pair of squirrels searched for the nuts they and their pals had hidden in the fall. The old fire tower rose in the distance. Wren’s cap slipped over one eyebrow, but she was wide-awake and attentive, her gaze fixed on the shifting patterns of light and shadow as they passed beneath the trees. Tess heard the distant barking of a dog. One of the Eldridges’?
The trail opened onto a rutted road that had once carried the faithful to worship. What was left of the church sagged on its foundation. Weeds encroached on the rotting wooden siding, and a tree grew through an opening by a chimney. Where the front doors had once been, a hole gaped. Through it, Tess could see the broken altar window.
Despite the decay, the church was a friendly sight, alive with birdsong and speckled sunlight. Off to the east, the last tendrils of mist uncurled in the low spots of a small clearing. Among those tendrils, a figure moved in a slow, methodical choreography.
Defying the morning chill, Ian was shirtless, the muscles of his chest perfectly delineated as he extended one arm and then the other in a slow-motion pantomime punch, both measured and powerful. Mesmerized, she watched him turn his arm. Change the position of his hand. Every movement deliberate.
A knee came up. He raised a leg to the side with absolute control. He pulled the knee back and thrust it out again. Twice, three times, four . . . His torso remained perfectly upright, his resting foot as steady as if it had sunk roots deep into the ground. He brought the other knee up. Once again, that perfect balance.
His movements quickened in a beautiful martial arts ballet of slow squats and meticulous kicks. She’d wondered how he stayed so muscular. Now she knew.
He hadn’t seen her, and she didn’t want him to. This was a private ritual. Wren squeaked, but he was too far away to hear. Seeing this private part of him discomfited her. She’d been aware of his physicality from the beginning, but witnessing this was something else entirely.
The more she knew about Ian North, the more complicated he became.
* * *
After what had happened in the studio last night and what she’d just witnessed, she wasn’t looking forward to the awkwardness of seeing him right away, but as it turned out, they didn’t encounter each other again until that afternoon. As she bundled Wren in a warm towel from her bath at the kitchen sink, she heard voices coming from the other room. Adult voices, not teenage girls.
Ian came into the kitchen. “You have more company.”
She regarded him quizzically. To her surprise, he reached for Wren. She gave him the damp, towel-wrapped baby and followed him out.
Two people waited in the living area, neither of whom she wanted to see. Kelly Winchester, Ava’s mother, stood next to a tall, thickly built man, dressed in suit and tie, who could only be her husband, the man Tess