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Because at some point in the past few weeks, she’d dropped her guard. Maybe because the auditions were so close. Maybe it was the fact that it was hard to be impervious when completely blissed out by afterglow and you felt as if you’d been melted from the inside out. Whatever the reason, even with her eyes closed, when she breathed in and caught Ryder’s masculine scent her heart skittered against her ribs, heat slithered below her skin, and she felt jittery and feverish, and yet somehow at ease. Things she’d never felt before. Not with the same purity, the same effortlessness. Because she’d been taught very early on in life to press all her feelings deep down inside. The bad and the good.
Give a damn and they’ll eat you alive.
And the second she stopped pushing it all back down, it bubbled up until she felt it all—the breakdown of the first, real, long-term relationship of her adult life, her mother’s cruel reaction, the senseless flight from the career she adored. She’d honestly thought she’d taken it all on the chin, but she’d only pressed it down, the whole big hot mess that had led her to that point, spilling into her nerves, her heart, until she couldn’t breathe.
“Nadia.”
Ryder’s voice hummed through her like a tuning fork. She shook her head, no. No. No! Formidable and focused and fabulous, she was invulnerable. But she felt so raw her skin might as well have been flayed from her chest.
Unfortunately he was made of as stern a stuff as she. He grabbed her by the chin, turning her head to face him. She looked at the neckline of his T-shirt instead.
At her obstinacy he laughed—laughed!—before saying, “You asked me to let you lead on the dance floor, and I deferred to you once I grudgingly admitted you had the wisdom of experience over me. I’ve been driving for well over a decade. Not a single traffic violation to my name. Defer to me, Nadia. Trust me.”
She let out a roar of frustration and shook the steering wheel some, but this time didn’t let it go. Trapped, panic-stricken, she lifted her eyes to his, all set to tell him to bite her. But the moment her eyes found his, she jammed up. Those eyes. So deep, so beautiful, so patient. And so damn smart.
As if he knew. As if he’d known for some time that she’d been in denial about how quickly she’d gotten over the multiple layers of embarrassment and pain of the events of months past. All she could hang onto was the hope that that was all he’d deduced she was in denial about.
At least she’d learnt one thing from events past—the only way out of any mess was through. Nadia breathed in deep and breathed out shaky, happy right then to be breathing at all. “Okay,” she said. “Tell me what I have to do?”
“Foot on the clutch,” he said. “Gear into First. Key’s in the ignition. Turn it right, wait till the engine hums and let go.”
Sweat prickling down her back, Nadia followed Ryder’s instructions as best she could. And the car bunny-hopped a few feet before wobbling to an ignominious stop. Heat landed in her cheeks with a humiliating thud. “I totally suck.”
“Nobody gets the waltz right first go.”
“I did.”
“And I’ve never stalled. Duck to water.”
At that she laughed; shocked blissful laughter that shaved the sharpest edges off her agitation. With a slow breath out, she resettled herself, went to that quiet place she went before a routine: darkness, silence. Not discounting the natural fear, harnessing it.
In the quiet she heard Ryder’s litany of instructions, and, after a few more false starts, the directions began to blend from one move to the next, until it all seemed to click and she was easing out onto the road proper, rural scenery sliding past the window.
“I’m driving!”
“Yes, you are.”
“It’s easy!”
“Look at the road. Not me.”
She swung back to face the road to find herself veering. She nudged the car straight, her eyes on the horizon as he’d taught her. She pressed a little harder on the accelerator, adrenalin spiking as she was pressed back in the seat. “How far can I go?”
“Do you have a learner’s permit?”
“What?” Nadia said, her hands flinging off the wheel and feet off the pedals in panic. “Of course not.”
The engine stalled and with an oath, Ryder grabbed the wheel and shifted it a fraction so they could ease off the side of the road, where he yanked the parking brake. “Then we’d better stay away from town. And schools, and police, and people in general.”
His voice was rough, but when she looked at him he was smiling.
While Nadia let out a “Woop!” of pure delight and laughed till her sides hurt. Relief and joy spilling through her unstoppered. And like a street after a rainstorm, all the muck that had flooded to the surface before had been washed away leaving her feeling shiny and new. “That was awesome. And even better for being illicit, right? What next?”
