Page 54 of The Dance Deception
Aleksis shakes his head and fires him a warning glance before turning away with a sigh. I watch him stalk across the room to join Tammy and Elijah, where he stays with his back to us. I consider following him, but curiosity gets the better of me. I want to hear what Merle has to say.
‘Sonowyou decide you want to talk to me?’ It annoys me that I sound so snippy.
He puts his hand on my back and steers me further away from everyone else, and that familiar electricity radiates out from his fingers. The spark shouldn’t still be there, but my treacherous body has its own ideas.
‘I thought it was time we made our peace,’ Merle says earnestly as I battle to ignore the fizz in my veins. ‘I know it hasn’t been easy. I have wanted to talk to you, honestly I have, but I wanted to protect you. I didn’t want to give anyone here anything more to talk about. I didn’t want to make your life more difficult.’
I scowl at him and wait for him to continue.
‘I thought I was doing the right thing. But now, being around you again, it’s made me realise that was a mistake. It’s really good to dance with you again, Kate. It’s reminded me how special it was before. It really meant something. I miss it – all of it.’
I stare at him wide-eyed. I don’t know what I was expecting but it certainly wasn’t this.
‘You had a wife,’ I hiss, struggling to keep thoughts of our studio days at bay.
‘I didn’t want to tell you and scare you off. I didn’t want it to stop. Especially not the way it did. We had a good thing, Kate, didn’t we? Don’t you miss it too?’
It would be so easy to tell him I do. But it only takes a glimpse of the grimace on Aleksis’s face and the withering look on Emilia’s to bring me back to my senses.
‘What exactly are you doing here, Merle?’ I snap. ‘You’re with Emilia now and I’m with Aleksis. I don’t know why we’re even having this conversation.’
‘But you’re not, though, are you?’ he says, placing hishands on my shoulders and looking me straight in the eyes. ‘I see you together and you’re not really together. Not like we were. Not like we could be.’
I shake myself free, not quite believing what he’s suggesting and not wanting him to think I’d even entertain the idea. Thankfully, Tammy chooses that moment to come to my rescue.
‘Hey Kate! I need your help a minute. Sorry, Merle, I’m going to have to steal her away.’
She grabs my hand and pulls me towards the ladies’ loos.
‘Everything okay?’ she checks.
‘It was nothing.’ I wave it off. ‘He just wanted to say sorry for everything that happened.’
‘As long as that’s all he wants. You know you can’t trust him,’ she warns.
And she’s right, of course. But I can’t pretend I didn’t feel the tiniest flicker of temptation – and it’s left me rattled.Why?Because I thought I was stronger than that and that I’d never let him get under my skin again.
And there’s something else, too. The mere suggestion of it feels disloyal to Aleksis, even though we’re not really together.
I do my best to put it out of my mind for the rest of the day, but it stays in the background despite Ros giving us plenty to think about. By the end of the session, I feel mentally drained and it’s a relief when Aleksis suggests we don’t hit the town afterwards. All I want is a hot bath and my duvet – and some time to try and work out how I’m feeling. I even turn down a quick drink with Beth, Liam and Tammy.
Back at the flat, Lucy perches on the edge of the bathtub while I soak in a sea of bubbles so she can hear how my day went and, more importantly, what it was like to dance with Merle again. I tell her about our exchange.
‘But Tammy interrupted before he could say anything more, so it was left with him having more or less suggested we could pick up where we left off,’ I sigh.
‘Would you want to?’ she asks, sounding surprised.
‘I know I shouldn’t. But he’s just that one who you know with every fibre of your body is bad news, and yet you want him anyway. I mean, why would I not want to have amazing sex with the hottest man I’ve ever laid eyes on?’
‘Erm, because he ghosted you afterwards, he’s with someone else now and because you’ve become friends with his wife?’ she points out.
‘I know all that. But then when he’s standing in front of me, I forget about all of it and just remember the sex. The annoyingly fantastic sex. It’s infuriating.’
Lucy pats my shoulder and stands up to leave. ‘I think I can predict where this might be going,’ she says. ‘Just make sure you don’t end up getting hurt.’
Chapter 29
At our cha-cha practice the next day, Aleksis admits he spent the rest of the evening thinking about how to get us more press coverage ahead of the next live show, now the rueda practices will take up most of our free time this week.
