Romance: Dance with Me (California Belly Dance Romance Book 2) (20 page)

“Yeah,” she said. “You don’t have to say anything. I know I was awful. I don’t know why… no, that’s not true. I know, but it’s no excuse.”

“What happened? Cole is a great guy. I thought you were hitting it off.”

“You’re right, he’s great. He’s awesome.”

“But?”

Melanie stood up, still fully dressed, and walked out of the stall to face her friend. “I don’t know. He’s just so country, and he doesn’t know about music. How can I be with someone who doesn’t know anything about music?”

“Basically it’s because he’s not Taz?”

Melanie sneered. “No, that’s not it. It has nothing to do with Taz.”

Did it?

“I’m not pining for Taz. I don’t pine after anybody. I never do. I never have. That’s why it’s so stupid to fall in love, because you just end up feeling like shit.”

Abby sucked in her lips. She had something to say, but she wasn’t saying it.

“What?” Melanie demanded, growing angrier by the second. “Why are you smirking at me?”

“I’m sorry. I’m not smirking. I never said you were pining for Taz. You said it. Actually, you said it twice, and you also mentioned love.”

“No, I didn’t.”

Abby made a face.

“If I did, I was just making a point.”

“To me? Or to yourself?”

It really sucked when Abby got like this, so patronizing and smug. It was completely infuriating, because now it was obvious. And she didn’t like it.

“I’m going to go insane if I stay here another minute.”

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42

Melanie let herself in and switched on the lights. The studio looked so different at night. So silent and still. She could hear the traffic on busy Newport Boulevard, and the deep growl of a Harley cruising toward the beach.

It was only eight thirty, but most of the shops in the corner shopping center were already closed. Only the liquor store at the end was open, and it appeared to be doing a brisk business.

She turned the lock behind her, leaned against the cool plate glass, and took a deep breath.

When she told Abby she had to leave, she hadn’t intended to come to the studio. She hadn’t thought that far ahead, but it was perfect. She reminded herself mentally to thank Abby for shoving the keys in her hand and telling her to go.

She took another deep, restorative breath then looked down at her miniskirt and strappy sandals. The skirt was great for showing off her cherry blossom tattoo, but it wouldn’t make it through a minute of her dance routine. She eyed the newly arranged clothes racks in the boutique.

Abby wouldn’t mind a couple early sales.

She flipped through the stretchy yoga pants and settled on a black pair with “Belly Dancer” screened in red in a flattering arch over the rear. She grabbed a matching red mini-tank and stopped by the cash register to leave a note for Abby.

While she scribbled her IOU, she noticed a CD jewel case with a sticky note attached. She picked it up, and her chest tightened. In barely legible chicken scratch, it read, “A few experimental tracks. Tell me what you think, Taz.” Below his name was a phone number and an email address.

He must have dropped it off when he dropped off her stuff. Why hadn’t Abby mentioned it? But her frustration with Abby took a back seat to her curiosity.

What was on this disc? Were these new tracks for his solo album?

Only one way to find out.

She marched to the dance room and fed the disc to the stereo. A moment later, the speakers filled the room with a lively drum solo, but it wasn’t like any solo she’d ever heard before. It was Middle Eastern, but there were also Latin rhythms and—what was that? Greek? Romani? It was like a United Nations of sounds, blending a world of influences into a single, amazing piece of music that made her hips shake and her shoulders shimmy.

Without realizing it, she was moving around the dance floor, translating the tempo into rapid-fire hip drops and the slower transitions into floating arms and hand flourishes. This music was infectious, and in an instant she knew this was the music of his heart. This was the kind of music his father had played. That was what he wanted to bring back to preserve his father’s legacy.

There was not just one track. She discovered there were four, all different, but all a wonderful musical bridge of world beats, yet there was something very Taz in the music, too. In her mind, she could see him playing this music in his recording room, striking every note, every chord.

Even more, she could feel how much the music meant to him. His intensity, his passion was as much a part of that recording as the music. She could feel him giving everything to that moment, just as he had given to her that night they’d spent together. She could feel the strength in his hands, not on the drum skin, but on her own skin, his fingertips traveling along every contour of her body, and directing all of that intensity onto her.

Had she really been so wrong about him? The music told her she wasn’t, and his music didn’t lie. He put his heart and soul into it. So why was it so hard to believe he could put just as much of himself into his feelings for her?

Why had she run at the first opportunity?

Now that was clear, too. Just like Abby had said, he hadn’t done anything besides talk to Tamara. Melanie had done the rest.

The truth was, she owed him much more than an apology, and it couldn’t wait five more days. It couldn’t wait one more day.

She didn’t even have to go back to the counter to retrieve his phone number, because the image of it was branded on her brain.

She fished her cell phone out of her purse and dialed.

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43

Taz didn’t return the call that night or the next day. He didn’t return the call at all. Melanie wanted to call again, but she couldn’t muster the courage. If he wanted to talk, he’d call. She had to accept that he wasn’t interested. Plain and simple.

The message he was sending was clear enough: back off.

So she did. Every time he worked his way into her thoughts, she focused harder on the audition.
This
was what was important, she reminded herself. This was what mattered.

She danced until she was exhausted, and then she danced more. She danced till every limb felt like pudding.

When she was finally too tired to dance, she went through her wardrobe, trying to decide what to wear, how to wear her makeup, or style her hair. She settled on something one day, second-guessed it the next, and started again at least a dozen times.

The morning of the audition, she had narrowed the search to either a teal tiered skirt, plum harem pants, and a matching choli, or a pair of black flared-leg pants with lettuce edges and an imported cherry silk choli.

She was trying on the flared-leg pants one more time when she heard a rip and saw bare skin where the rear seam should be.

“Great,” she mumbled. She slipped them off and tossed them over a chair. “Better here than in front of a roomful of judges, I guess.”

Ten minutes later she was dressed in the teal and plum outfit, with her music, dance shoes, and other essentials packed in her duffel bag. On her way out, Abby thrust a travel mug of fresh coffee in her hand.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to come along for moral support?” Abby asked for probably the tenth time in two days.

“No, you’ll only make me more nervous.” She sipped the coffee—oh, it was heaven—and made her way to the door.

She wasn’t going to mention that it was the prospect of seeing Taz again that had her stomach in knots. She’d gone over in her mind exactly what she wanted to say and how she would say it. She knew he was going to be angry, but she also knew it didn’t matter. She had to do this. He had to know she never meant to hurt him.

In her car, she was still so focused on rehearsing her speech that she stepped on the gas instead of the brake when she put the car into gear. The vehicle lurched violently, and the engine died.

She stared at the hot, brown liquid pooling in her lap. The coffee mug was no longer standing securely in the cup holder in the center console, but had jumped out of that pocket and was lying on its side, dribbling its contents onto her skirt and turning the beautiful teal into a dingy and wet brown mess.

She wanted to crumple into a ball of tears, but there wasn’t time. She had given herself twenty minutes to get to the theater, which should have been plenty of time to park and find where she was supposed to check in before the eleven o’clock call time.

She returned the now-empty cup to the cup holder, jumped out of the car, pulled a spare towel from the back, and pushed it into the worst of the spill. Then she made her way back to the apartment.

When she rushed in, Abby was on the couch with the newspaper. “Did you forget some—oh, no.”

“Yeah, coffee catastrophe. I don’t have time for this.” By the time she finished her sentence, she was already in the bathroom and shimmying out of the wet skirt. She soaked up the excess liquid with a towel and then ran it under the running faucet until the stain diminished.

“Let me do that one,” Abby said, edging her away from the sink. “You take care of the harem pants in the kitchen.”

Melanie looked down. The harem pants were in bad shape too. She did as Abby said, yanked off the harem pants, and made her way in her panties to the kitchen. She was already running water over them when she realized the balcony blinds were open and the older couple who lived across the path were sitting on their patio. The man had obviously seen something, because he was being less than subtle about craning his head to get a better view of her now that there was a breakfast counter between him and her underwear.

Melanie pulled a dish towel from the counter and did her best to cover up her lacy, black underthings as she made her way back to the window to draw the blinds. The man was still craning, but his wife must have figured out what was up, because she was swatting his shoulder. He had the gall to act indignant. “Whatever, you pervert,” Melanie said under her breath and hurried back to the faucet.

“I think I got it all out of the skirt,” Abby hollered. “How are you doing?”

“It’s coming out, but they’re soaked.” She bit back the curse she wanted to hurl at them, at anyone who would listen.

“You must have something else to wear.”

Melanie tensed her face, squishing her eyelids, her lips, her nose. “I did until I split a seam in the pants. I’d rather not be ‘that girl with the torn pants,’ but it looks like that’s what it’s going to be. Do you have any safety pins I could borrow?”

“Hold on, I have an idea.”

A moment later, Melanie heard the whine of a hair dryer. “The fabric is so thin, I think this’ll work. Bring yours.”

By the time Melanie brought in the wad of wet harem pants that she’d wrapped tightly in a towel, Abby had nearly a yard of the ten-yard skirt dry. “Here, use your dryer.” She handed Melanie her travel-size model.

Melanie grabbed an extra hanger, fastened the waistband to its clips, and hung the harem pants from the towel rack as Abby had done. She got to work.

Before long, both garments were mostly dry.

“That’s good enough,” Melanie said. She pulled them back on, grabbed and hugged Abby, and hurried out the door, slowing just long enough to catch the time on the microwave on her way out. Eleven twenty.

She groaned, but she didn’t stop.

She jumped back in her car and didn’t stop, didn’t let herself think, until she was standing in front of the silent theater, staring at the sign taped to the door.

“Belly Dance Divas Inside” was scrawled in black marker. This was it. All the talk, all the preparation, everything came down to this. Whatever happened on the other side of this glass was going to change everything.

“Here for the audition?”

Melanie wheeled around to find a stout woman with fluffy, burgundy hair shuffling toward her. She held a clipboard with a pen dangling from a string that bobbed nearly to her Birkenstocks.

Melanie hiked her dance bag higher on her shoulder and tried to ignore the still-damp feeling of the fabric against her thighs. “Yeah. Am I in the right place?”

“You’re late.”

“I know, I’m sorry, it was—”

The woman waved her hand in a gesture that said, “I don’t care.”

“Are you registered?”

“Yeah, I submitted the application online a few days ago.”

The woman nodded. “Name?”

Melanie told her.

The woman flipped pages on her clipboard, stopped at one, and scanned it with her fingertip. She paused. One eyebrow lifted. She glanced up. “You’re a friend of Taz Roman?”

What kind of question was that? “Sort of,” she answered.

“Interesting.”

Before Melanie could ask why, the woman pulled open the door and pointed to a wall of doors across the lobby.

“Follow the duct-tape arrows on the floor to the check-in room. Let them know you’re here, and they’ll give you a number and show you where to wait.”