to my quiet apartment, but I wouldn’t leave before Miss Mary did. Short of sitting and pouting, accepting Miles’s invitation looked like the only option.
I placed my hand in his and stood, wishing I’d worn taller shoes when I realized I only came up to his chin in my flats. I wanted more height to feel like I was on equal footing. Or more distance, so I didn’t feel the sharp pull in my belly when I caught a whiff of the soft spicy notes in his cologne. Or maybe that was just how Miles smelled. Maybe someone should bottle his pheromones and make themselves a billion dollars.
He led me toward the improvised dance floor, keeping my hand in his, and when we joined the three other couples dancing, he tugged gently, drawing me close to him to rest our clasped hands between us against his chest, his other arm sliding around my waist.
As simple as that, the rest of the world grew quiet, and we moved in time with my heartbeat. Maybe with his heartbeat too. But it was perfect rhythm, and I wanted to fight it, to step back and hold myself stiff. He might read too much into the way I relaxed into him, but I couldn’t help it. The trio was only doing instrumental covers, but my brain supplied the lyrics. Baby, let’s cruise away from here. Except...it was Miles’s voice, singing quietly in my ear, his voice soft and husky like it was one of his acoustic performances when the arrangements were stripped down.
“Don’t be confused, the way is clear,” he sang softly, and my heart tripped. It had been a brilliant song choice. I’d always loved Smokey Robinson’s impossibly smooth voice on the original, not realizing what a suggestive song it could be until I was much older. The arrangement the producers had given Miles for his Starstruck performance had been perfect for his boyish charm, emphasizing the idea of a road trip with some wholesome girl of his dreams.
But as he sang to me now, his voice tangled with the words in a way that was so sexy, I curled my fingers into his shirt to make up for my weak knees. This wasn’t a sweet song about a road trip anymore. It was a seduction, and the soft rasp in his voice rubbed along my nerve endings, making my mouth go dry.
He pulled me more firmly against him, and I nestled my head beneath his chin so there was no danger of eye contact. I didn’t want him to read the truth in them that I’d been trying to hide for weeks now. That I had tumbled, and I was verging on falling, not the way a kid does, but in the way a grown woman does for a man who is good and strong and smart and funny.
As he sang about inch-by-inch getting closer to every part of each other, he drew me even tighter, until even the music couldn’t have snuck in between us.
I leaned my forehead against his chest. “What are you doing?” I breathed between the tones of the song’s bridge.
“Private concert,” he murmured into my hair. “It’s the least I could do.”
I drew back the tiniest bit to search his eyes now, trying to read him. Was this my friend and client Miles showing off for me? But what I saw in them looked so much like the wanting I felt for him that I couldn’t look away.
The lyrics died on his lips, and we’d slipped into barely swaying, pressed against each other on the dance floor, everything else gone. “We signed on the dotted line, so that means I’m your tenant no matter what now, right?”
I gave a short, slow nod.
“Ellie.” I saw my name on his lips more than heard it, watched the slow incline of his mouth toward mine, and I stretched up to meet it, still inside our bubble of only us and the music, but the notes for the last verse reached me just as Miles’s lips brushed against mine. If you want it, you got it forever...
Heat flared between us and wrenched a gasp out of me. I stepped back, pressing a hand to my mouth like I’d been burned. And maybe I had.
“Ellie?” Miles moved as if he meant to draw me back toward him, but I pulled my hand from his and stepped back again.
“Thanks for the concert,” I said, mustering a smile. I could barely hear myself over