Spring Secrets - Allie Boniface Page 0,46

know you’re not heading down the aisle, what’s the harm in having a little fun?”

Dash bet there could be a whole lot of harm. In fact, he was about to list the ways he could mess up a perfectly good friendship when Ella Ericksen walked over. She slipped her arm through Zane’s and gave Dash a curious look. “So Sienna Cruz is your date? Wouldn’t have pegged you for dating a church girl.”

“It’s not like that,” he said, but he wasn’t sure if he meant the dating or the church girl part. “We’re friends,” he said. “We have a good time together.”

Ella rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

“See ya.” Dash took the drinks, tipped the bartender, and joined Sienna at a table across the room. She offered him some appetizers from a plate in front of her. “They’ve done a great job here. The shelter should make a lot of money tonight.”

“Hope so.”

The band started playing a rock tune, and she jumped up. “Want to dance?”

“Ah, no. Sorry. I’m not the dancing type.”

“Seriously? You asked me to an event that involved dancing. You have to give me one, at least.”

“You dance. I’ll watch.”

She tugged at his shirt sleeve. “No fair. Come on.”

He grumbled but followed her to the dance floor. “I look like an idiot when I try this.”

She began to move, her arms and hips finding the beat as he stood there like a stone. “Then you haven’t had the right partner.”

Isn’t that the truth. Hard, angry memories of Edie rushed in like waves. They’d never danced together. Drank, smoked weed, gone skinny dipping, stolen from a 7-Eleven, gotten married on a whim, yes. But they’d never done this. Maybe if they had, things would have ended up differently. Or maybe I never would’ve ended up with her at all. Man, what a sweet thought that was. Erasing the past and all the mistakes that went with it. Dash banished the thoughts and focused on Sienna, who worked her way closer until he could smell her perfume.

Before he knew it, his feet began to move. His hips followed, not with any great style, but at least he wasn’t standing like a statue in the middle of the dance floor. Enough people had joined them by now, and the lights had dimmed, so he hoped no one could see him.

“Ah, you do have a move or two,” she said. She danced up to him and then away, spinning with ease, mixing silly moves with semi-sexy ones until he finally laughed and let himself go. She took his hand and spun under his arm, gripped his fingers, came in close, then moved away again. He smiled, and laughed, and finally he stopped worrying about people watching him. Instead he just watched Sienna.

The song came to an end and another one came on. A slow one. A love song from the 80s. Dash froze. But Sienna didn’t even blink. She stepped into the circle of his arms and placed her own around his neck. Casually. With a good few inches between them. Still, his whole body responded as if he’d been lit on fire. Don’t let her feel that. He tilted his groin away from her. We’re friends. Just friends.

But then she stepped closer. “This is nice,” she said against his cheek, and he was a goner, a dead goner, and he didn’t even care. He hadn’t touched a woman, held a woman close like this, in over a year. The sensations swept over him, pleasure and desire mixed with a faint dread that getting involved would be a bad idea.

She isn’t Edie, he argued with himself. She’s not even close.

Maybe she’s not interested in you that way.

She wouldn’t have come here tonight if she didn’t like you.

But she’s leaving this summer. And she’s way out of your league.

True. All of that, true. But you want her.

The voices warred inside his head, neither one winning, until the song finally ended and she stepped out of his arms. He tried to study her face, to see if she’d been as unsettled by their closeness as he had, but she looked as calm as ever. Unruffled. Just...happy.

“While you’re helping yourself to the buffet,” a woman said from the podium at the front of the ballroom, “I want to thank all the sponsors tonight, as well as let you know...”

Dash didn’t hear her. He didn’t hear anything except his heart pounding as they filled their plates and joined Zane and his friends at a table near the