“How about you?” Emma asked. “What are you supposed to be?” Thinking, Dominatrix, perhaps?
Hearing the snark in her voice, Leesha pursed her black lips. “I’m a Victorian steampunk vampire, of course. Some people don’t approve of cross-dressing, but—”
“Cross-dressing?” Emma took another look. No way. No fricking way.
“You know . . . wizards cross-dressing as vampires. Some people think it’s really kinky.” Leesha grinned at Emma, and Emma found herself grinning back in spite of herself.
Until Leesha zeroed in on Jonah again. “Let’s dance.”
“No, thanks. Like I said, I’m working.”
“You’re not working now,” Leesha pointed out.
“I’m not dancing either.” Jonah turned his back and looked out at the lake, which hadn’t changed much in the past five minutes. Leesha stared at his back for a moment, then said, “Fine. No problem,” and turned and walked away.
Incredibly, Emma found herself feeling bad for Leesha. Apparently, she wasn’t the only one to feel this way, because Natalie and Rudy had drifted over during the conversation.
Natalie hissed, “It wouldn’t kill you to dance with somebody.”
Jonah looked her straight in the eyes. “You’re right. It wouldn’t kill me.”
“You might find you liked it,” Natalie said.
“You dance with her, then,” Jonah snarled. And returned to his phone.
Natalie rolled her eyes, glanced at Emma, and went silent.
Natalie and Rudy returned to the dance floor. Emma might as well have been sitting by herself, for all the attention she was getting from Jonah.
“So,” Emma said, “are you going out with somebody? Or don’t you like girls?”
Gaah! Shut up, Emma. Shut up shut up.
Jonah focused back on Emma. “I do like girls,” he said. “I’m just not much for dancing. Or dating.”
“Well, then.” Emma raised her glass. “Sucks to be you.”
Jonah stared at her, brows drawn together. Then the corners of his mouth quirked up and he grinned, and Emma realized then how rare it was to see him smile. Then he was actually laughing.
“Sucks to be me,” Jonah said, nodding, and they clanked glasses. “How did you know?” He sat, turning the glass between his hands, momentarily lost in thought.
“Actually, I like the music,” he said, looking up at Emma.
“Obviously. And I do like girls. And if I danced with anyone, it would be with you. . . .” His voice trailed off and that familiar sadness came up in his eyes.
Once more, the music throbbed through Emma’s veins. She just couldn’t sit still any longer. She turned and gripped Jonah’s arms at the elbows. “Come on, then. Dance with me.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “You dance. I’ll watch.”
“Maybe you haven’t noticed, but nobody’s lining up to dance with me,” Emma said. “And they won’t, long as I’m with you.”
Jonah cocked his head. “Do you want me to move?”
“I want you to dance.”
“I don’t know how,” he said, tilting his head back, scanning the couples on the dance floor. He was grasping at straws, and they both knew it.
“No worries,” Emma said, tasting victory. “Dance with me, honey, and I’ll make you look good.”
“All right,” Jonah said. He rested a gloved hand on her bare back, and every nerve in her body went on high alert. What will happen if the man ever kisses me? Emma thought. I’ll probably die of joy.
Natalie was coming toward them, carrying a plate of jack-o’-lantern cookies. “Where are you two going?” she called after them. “Don’t you want cookies?”
“We’re dancing,” Jonah said, over his shoulder. “Apparently.”
It turned out Jonah Kinlock didn’t need any help from Emma . . . in looking good, or dancing either. He was lithe and graceful, amazingly quick on his feet, and had no trouble mirroring every move she made. He seemed to be able to read where she would go next and be there waiting.
Yet, somehow, he always kept that little bit of distance between them . . . tantalizingly close, but never actually making contact. As if he were conscious every single moment of where his body was positioned in space.
It was Emma who kept losing her footing. She was falling for Jonah Kinlock, falling hard, even though he’d made it clear that the two of them were going nowhere.
When the song ended, applause erupted all around them. Emma looked up to find that they were the center of a small circle of dancers who had stopped to watch them.
She faced off with Jonah, hands on hips, breathless, sweat trickling down between her shoulder blades. “Liar,” she said. “You said you couldn’t dance.”
“I never said I couldn’t,” Jonah said. “I said I didn’t know how. But I study martial arts. And fencing. I guess some of the skills are transferable.”
Emma thought of the locked gym at the fitness center. Once again, doubt wriggled to the surface. Jonah had so many secrets. But just because he had secrets . . . it didn’t mean he was evil. . . . Did it?
Next came a slow dance. Amazingly, Emma talked Jonah into staying for it. He didn’t seem to be suffering through it, though. He pulled her in close, tucking her head under his chin, one hand planted on the back of her neck. Her breasts pressed against his chest, the T-shirt a flimsy barrier between them. When she pressed her cheek against his shoulder, she could hear his heart thudding in her ear.
Once, she tried to turn her face up to his, but he tightened his hold and murmured, “No. Please, Emma. Just like this, all right?”
It was all right. She rested her hand on the small of his back, her fingers just touching the waistband of his jeans. Dancing with Jonah Kinlock was like having sex with one of those gods in mythology. At the end of it you couldn’t recall exactly what happened. All you knew was that you had a damn good time.
“What are you thinking about?” Jonah said, his breath stirring her hair.
Emma’s face burned. “There is no way I’m telling you, Kinlock, so don’t ask again.”
As they turned, Emma was glad to see Leesha Middleton dancing with a tall, angular, red-haired boy in a velvet cape. It seemed she was flexible when it came to dance partners. When the dance was over, Natalie was waiting for them, grinning. She put her hand on Jonah’s arm and leaned in toward him, speaking in a low voice. “What did I tell you? You two practically burned this place down. That wasn’t so hard, was it? Nothing bad happened, did it?”
“It was just a dance, Nat,” Jonah said, loud enough for Emma to hear. Maybe intentionally so. “Don’t make more of it than it really was. Now we’d better go get organized. It’s almost showtime.”
Chapter Forty-five
Showtime
It was just a dance. Don’t make more of it than it really was. The words echoed in Jonah’s head, each time cutting like a blade into flesh. Double-edged. Wounding the swordsman, too.
What was that seventies song . . . “Cruel to Be Kind”? They were in the small parlor they band was using for a green room, just off the conservatory. Rudy, Alison, and Natalie had already gone out front. Emma was still fussing with the tuning on the Studio G, her movements quick and angry, muttering under her breath. When she forced the tuning peg, the string snapped.
Jonah rested his hand on the fingerboard. “It’s fine,” he said. “Really, it is. You’ll see.”
“Of course it’s fine.” Emma sucked her finger where the string had cut it. “Who said it wasn’t?” She looked up, met his eyes, and quickly looked away. “Stay the hell out of my head!”
“I wish I could,” he said softly.
“I’m the one that needs to be able to get in your head, so I’d have a fighting chance.”
“No!” he said, drawing back. “Trust me. You don’t want to go there.”
“Probably not,” Emma said, threading the new string through the machine head.
“It’s not you, it’s—”
“If you tell me, ‘It’s not you, it’s me,’ I’m going to punch you, so don’t,” Emma warned.
“I just don’t want to hurt you more than I already have,”
Jonah said. “This—this happens . . . every time I—”
“Don’t make more of it than it really was,” Emma growled, turning his own weapon against him. “And don’t say you just want to be friends, because friends don’t tie friends into knots.” Jonah was all out of ideas. Everything he tried to say just made things worse.
After an awkward silence, Emma said, “Why don’t you go on out? I’ll be there in a minute.”
Jonah stood. “Just—just try and focus on the music,” he said. “That’s what I do. And we know that works . . . right?”
He picked up the Stratocaster, fastened the strap to the end pin, and walked through the door.
Natalie woke up the house with a rattle, bang, and crash. “I’m Natalie Diaz,” she said. “We are so glad to be here tonight. We’re Fault Tolerant, all the way from Cleveland, Ohio, and we call this one ‘A Tientas.’”
Jonah laid down the first few chords, and then Natalie came back in on drums, a pulse-pounding cadence that stirred the blood. These were Natalie’s lyrics, an in-your-face kind of love song. Natalie sang lead, while Jonah harmonized. Emma hung back a bit at first, her face a mask of concentration, till she found her footing. Gradually, she layered notes under and over Jonah’s guitar line, insinuated herself into the spaces Jonah left open for her. Sometimes he was lead dog, sometimes she was. Their guitar work laced together flawlessly. Well, pretty much.
It was straight-up rhythm and blues: two guitars, drums, a bass line, keyboards. No artificial ingredients, as Nat liked to say. Jonah’s Stratocaster came alive, delivering in a way it never had before. And the Studio G? That guitar was absolute magic in Emma’s hands.