Page 51 of The Dating Contract

“I remember how you told me how historic this collaboration was,” she said.

Luckily his comment wasn’t picked up by the rest of the group, because the last thing she wanted was to follow him down memory lane and rehash her private memories…in public.

But as the music changed, some of the group, headed toward the dance floor. She debated going to the bar for a drink; instead she stayed in her seat. So did Samuel.

Right next to her.

He wasn’t close enough for his pants to touch her dress, but she was thinking of it, moving just slightly to…

Something pulled her out of whatever trance was going on in her head, and when she met Samuel’s beautiful brown eyes, she saw a question there.

Yet she didn’t know this version of him well enough to figure out what he wanted. So she just sat there, looking at him.

“Do you want to go?”

Go.

What? Leave…

No. It was too early and he couldn’t be asking that, especially before the auction.

Which meant the realization of what he was actually asking her hit her hard. Dance. She was being asked to join the group who’d gone to the dance floor. “Do you dance?”

He laughed, and she tried not to laugh along with him. His laughs had always been contagious and clearly that hadn’t changed either.

“Not well,” he said, answering her question and letting his drop. “But well enough to dance to a string quartet.”

A string quartet that had just finished playing a song about lost love, and the hope that when a relationship ended, one partner would remember the other in their best moments. That wasn’t a song she wanted to dance to. She didn’t want to glorify hope of being remembered.

But the music changed again, the first notes of a song she loved, about strength. About how love couldn’t hurt the singer anymore because they’d encased themselves in a metal shield. She’d stopped being surprised about the ability of string quartets to turn the most powerful songs into softer ones, all the while keeping their essence.

“Let’s,” she said. “Let’s go.”

He offered his hand then. She took it without questioning, letting her fingers get as tangled up in his as she was getting in him, and let him take her to the floor.

There were people around but she didn’t look to see who she knew; where her sister or sister-in-law or niece or future brother-in-law were. She just followed him. And when they arrived at a spot on the floor, he bowed.

She wasn’t sure what to make of that; was it honesty or was it just following the protocols of the waltz they were about to mangle? She threw the concern out of her head as they slowly moved into the dance, sliding back and forth, his arms encasing her, his warmth filling her.

Leah held Samuel’s hands, those long fingers, as they twirled with everybody else in the crowd, his motions matching hers, even as she moved back and forth to a dance that required clasped hands to one that encouraged her hips to shake.

She didn’t care who watched her, didn’t care who saw what was happening. She just…was.

And they melded, merged, his hand was there to dip her when it was time, his fingers grasping hers as he took her into a twirl. Being lost with him in the center of the floor and the music…

When she realized it was over, there was only one thing she could do.

She drew her fingers along his cheekbones, feeling the immense power of his stare upon her. “Do you…wish?”

“I do…I mean you may…” He shook his head and leaned toward her, pressed his lips to hers and simply blew her mind. His lips, the way his mouth fell against hers, was overpowering in the best of ways. The way his hands followed the path of her shoulders as if he hadn’t forgotten her…

Then she remembered, as if cold water had burned the fire of memory. “We can’t do this,” she said.

“Tell me why,” he said. “What’s going on?”

“This is business…you have too many contacts,” she managed, “I have too many contacts, too many people…I just can’t.”

He nodded. “I’m not going to push,” he said, fully aware of the need to let a conversation thread drop. “But they all know we’re dating at this point.”

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