children, though the basketball goal was long gone, replaced by a light pole to illuminate the area when needed at night.
“You have no reason to be nervous,” he chided gently. “You aren’t going with John Travolta here. Close your eyes. Get out of your head.”
When she complied, Rory spoke in that low way he did that captured her attention completely. "Dance for me. Close your eyes, let me see the way you dance in your head, or when you're alone. Do you ever do that? Think of a favorite song and dance to that.”
Thinking of one of the country songs he played that she particularly liked, she began to sway. Turn. Step forward and back, sway some more. A little more tentative and far less boisterous, but similar to how Julie and Les sometimes danced on their “slumber party” nights.
On one of the turns her hand landed in his. Her eyes opened, and he moved his chair around her, speaking a word of encouragement, showing her how to turn with him. They were doing well, and then she tripped over her own feet and stumbled to one knee.
She saw the frustration on his face when he grabbed for her and missed, nearly overbalancing himself, and she was immediately contrite. “I’m sorry, I—”
He shook his head, took her hand to tug her closer, examine her scraped knee. “I hate not being able to catch you when you fall. That’s all.”
“There's more than one way of catching someone when they fall,” she said.
His jaw flexed at what she hoped he saw in her eyes. “Okay,” he said.
He didn’t get frustrated again, even though they had plenty of missteps during their practices, which included tripping over him or having her toes run over, but since the former occurrence usually landed her in his lap instead of on the ground, she couldn’t object.
At the end of that first dance lesson, he finished up with a “slow dance,” her curled up in his lap while he moved the chair in easy circles, rocking back and forth to a ballad he hummed in a sexy, off-tune rumble she’d choose over the radio any day.
When they moved their practices to the open floor space of the store aisles, he showed her more ways to use counterbalance to move together, that momentum pulling his chair into the turns and step changes. Occasionally a customer would come in and glimpse their efforts. Rory didn’t let her get nervous about it; he helped her look past her self-consciousness to register the customer’s delight at the chance to watch them.
He was a good teacher, and she loved dancing with him. The way they could touch, slide away, come back again. The more they worked at it together, the more they seemed to anticipate one another’s movements.
She’d watched mating birds dance like this in the air. When she was dancing with Rory, she felt like she was flying. Sometimes, seeing the deep pleasure in his eyes when they danced, she thought he felt like he was, too.
Chapter Twenty
“Dance with me.”
Now she tuned in to the present. Rory spoke in her ear, so he could be heard over the music that had just started up. Seeing the glint in his brown eyes, the smile on the lips that could do so many things to her, and the true happiness in his face, made her feel the same. Whether it was alone or in the middle of a crowd, it was still just him and her. This night was turning out to be as good as it could possibly be. Her fears, though always there, couldn’t push through all of that to touch this, make it any less pleasurable for her.
Rory shot a teasing look at Thomas. “Ready for me to show you up on the dance floor?”
Thomas snorted. “You can give it your best shot.” He tilted his head at Elaine. “Mom, you want to help your firstborn son prove his dance supremacy? Despite the shocking miracle of my little brother discovering a silver tongue on stage, I know I’m your favorite.”
She chuckled, but shook her head. “I’ve already promised my first dances to Miles Warner and Jeremy Stone. The two of them are determined to see which one can overload their pacemaker first. Dance with Marcus.”
“You’re definitely toast,” Marcus said to Rory. “Because I’m a better dancer than you and your brother.”
“That may be,” Rory said, unruffled. “But I’ve got the ace in the hole. I have her.” He squeezed Daralyn’s hand.