The Spark by Vi Keeland
CHAPTER 25
Autumn
“Where is he taking you?” Skye laid on her stomach on my bed with her feet swinging in the air like a teenager.
“He won’t tell me. That’s the problem.” I tossed another outfit next to her and walked back into my closet.
“Did you ask him what to wear?”
“He said wear something sexy.” I have no idea what that means. “Like, do I wear heels or not?”
Skye grinned. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you like this.”
I popped my head out of the closet. “Like what?”
“A nervous wreck. You really like this guy, huh?”
I sighed. “I do.”
“Do you mind if I stay until he gets here? I’m curious to meet him.”
I shook my head. “Of course not. But he should be here in about twenty minutes, so help me find something so I’m not naked when he arrives.”
Skye got up and joined me in the tiny closet. “Being naked when he arrives might solve your outfit problem. I’m sure he’d love that.”
“We’re going to try to take it slow.”
“Boring.” Skye fingered through the hangers in my closet and pulled out a royal blue dress tucked all the way in the back. “You should wear this.”
I held it up against me. “You think? It’s kind of sexy.”
“I thought he said to wear something sexy.”
“He did. But I don’t want to send the wrong message.”
“What do you want the outfit to say?”
“I don’t know. That things are casual and I put in effort, but I didn’t freak out trying on fifty outfits just for the date.”
“Oh, you don’t have to worry about this dress saying all that.”
“No?”
“Not at all. Because your face is going to say just the opposite anyway.”
“Ugh…that’s not helpful.”
She shrugged. “Maybe not. But it’s the truth. So you might as well look smoking hot since you’re never going to be able to hide the truth.”
I spent fifteen more minutes trying on a half-dozen outfits, but in the end, I wound up wearing the blue dress. When the door buzzed, I opened the app I had on my phone to view who was downstairs and started to feel queasy. “Maybe I should cancel. I don’t feel well.”
Skye plucked my cell from my hand. “Oooh…he’s gorgeous.” She pressed the button to talk as she hit the unlock button that opened the lock downstairs. “Come on up, hot stuff.”
My mature response when she looked to me was to stick my tongue out.
“Attractive,” she smirked. “Maybe he’ll suck on it later, if you’re lucky.”
“I need to pee before I go. Can I trust you to let him in if he’s up here before I get done?”
“Of course.” She grinned. “What could possibly happen?”
As I fixed my lipstick in the bathroom, I heard Skye speaking from the other room. “So have you ever owned a van?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Harmed any animals?”
“Can’t say I have.”
Oh Lord. I capped the lipstick and yanked the bathroom door open. Just as I approached the living room, Skye said, “Can I see your teeth, please?”
“Skye!” I yelled.
She turned with an innocent face. “What?”
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to figure out if he’s dangerous. You need a van to put the puppies in so you can lure children, and I read that most serial killers don’t start out hurting people. They work their way up from small animals.”
I shook my head. “And his teeth?”
She smirked. “That was for my own purposes. I just like a man who doesn’t have a lot of fillings.”
Luckily, Donovan was a good sport. I walked over and put my arm around my best friend. “So I see you’ve already met my friend Skye.”
“I did. She’s protective. That’s a good quality in a friend.”
“It is. Though crazy…not so much.” I squeezed her shoulder. “Skye was just leaving.”
She grabbed her purse and kissed me on the cheek before turning to Donovan.
“I have two pieces of advice for you.”
“Okay…”
“One, if you can’t get her to talk, try Twisted Tea. She guzzles them and relaxes. Then you can’t get her to shut up.”
Donovan smiled. “Good to know.”
“And two, don’t hurt her.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a black leather men’s wallet, letting it dangle between two fingers. “Because I know where you live now.”
Donovan patted his pants. His brows drew together. “Is that my wallet?”
“Don’t feel bad.” Skye smiled. “I have an angelic face. It fools everyone.”
Donovan took his wallet back and scratched his head as she breezed out the door. Once it closed behind her, his eyebrows rose. “Well, that was…interesting. I take it that was her who let me in and called me hot stuff?”
I nodded. “I have an app that connects to the camera downstairs. Depending on which apartment you ring, the tenants can see video of who’s at the door. It’s one of the reasons I picked the building.”
“Nice. Though I think you have a better chance of getting robbed by your friend. Does she steal wallets often?”
I chuckled. “It’s one of Skye’s many talents. Luckily, she doesn’t use that one much these days.”
“She used to?”
I nodded. “Back in the day, yeah.”
“Was she one of your cases?”
“No. But Skye’s very open about her history, so she wouldn’t mind me telling you. She gives talks at schools and stuff now. We met at a therapist’s office and went to the same victim-support meeting for years.”
Donovan’s face fell. “So she was…”
I nodded. “Her uncle. It started when she was only nine.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Pickpocketing became one of her hobbies, as did cutting and sleeping with grown men when she’d barely hit puberty. But she’s come a long way.” I shook my head. “Anyway, that’s depressing to talk about. Let’s not pick up where we left off the other night.”
He did his best to smile, but I could see I’d put a damper on the start of our evening. I tried to bring the mood back around by tilting my head. “Why don’t we start over? You knock, I’ll answer the door, and you can tell me how nice I look?”
The corner of Donovan’s mouth twitched. I’d been kidding, but he turned around, opened the door, and walked out, closing it behind him. A few seconds later, there was a knock.
I beamed from ear to ear as I opened it. “Hi. You’re a few minutes early.”
His eyes dropped to my feet and ever so slowly worked their way up my body. By the time our eyes met, I was tingling all over. “You look phenomenal.”
I’d told him to go outside, knock, and tell me how nice I looked; yet I still blushed at the comment. “Thank you. You don’t look so bad yourself.”
Donovan let himself in and shut the door behind him. I felt giddy, a feeling I definitely wasn’t used to.
He wrapped one hand around my waist and the other slipped into my hair.
“Kiss me,” he growled. “I can’t wait any longer.”
I leaned forward, but didn’t get the chance to pursue the kiss, because Donovan immediately took over. He crushed his lips over mine, swallowing an unexpected gasp. Just like that day in the bathroom, within seconds I had completely forgotten where I was. He smelled incredible, and even though his body was not pushed up against mine, I felt the heat emanating from it, and it set me on fire. I clung to him and my fingernails dug into his back as he tugged his mouth from mine to suck his way down to my neck, teeth scraping over my chin and hot breath sending a shockwave that I felt between my legs. Lord, can this man kiss.
By the time it broke, I was panting.
“Is that better?” he growled.
“Oh my God, better than what? I don’t even remember what we were talking about.”
Donovan smiled. “You told me to make a new entrance.” His eyes roamed over my face. “You really do look beautiful.”
I had to blink a few times to snap out of my haze. “Thank you.”
He stroked my cheek with his thumb. “I could stand right here and do this for hours, but we should probably get going. We have an appointment.”
“An appointment? You mean a reservation?”
He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Nope.”
“Where are we going that we need an appointment?”
“You’ll see.”
I didn’t usually love surprises, but tonight was an exception. It had been a long time since I’d let my heart lead, and it felt almost freeing. I smiled. “Let me just grab my bag.”
***
“Are we here?” I looked around the strip-mall parking lot. There was a barber, a closed-down taco place, a dry cleaner, ballet studio, and a Chinese restaurant.
Donovan unbuckled his seatbelt. “We are.”
I glanced at the row of stores again. “Are we going for Chinese food?”
“Nope.”
“Picking up your dry cleaning?”
He grinned. “Nope.”
“Haircut?”
“You’re running out of choices…”
I looked over the stores one more time to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. But the only thing left was the ballet studio.
“Oh my God. You’re secretly a ballerina, and you’re going to perform for me.”
“Not quite. But you are getting warmer.” He got out of the car and came around to open my door, offering me his hand.
“The ballet studio also teaches couples dance lessons. Last year, during our weekend together, you asked me to describe my idea of the perfect woman. When I asked you about the perfect man, you said he knew how to dance.” He shrugged. “I don’t. So I figured I need to learn, and you also wanted to avoid day-to-day predictability and take things slow. I thought taking dance lessons would be pretty unpredictable.”
My heart fluttered. He’d remembered what I said so long ago and wanted to be my Mr. Perfect. We were twenty minutes into our first date, and I realized going slow with this man had nothing to do with anything he could control. I needed to rein in my own heart, or I’d be a goner faster than I could say two left feet.
“Umm... I think I should’ve mentioned something to you.”
Donovan’s brows pulled together. “What?”
“The reason Mr. Perfect needs to know how to dance is because I’m terrible at it.”
“I’m sure you’re not that bad.”
I lifted my elbow and showed him a small scar. “Do you see this?”
“Yeah.”
“This is from my one and only dance recital. I was eight and could not get my left and right straight for the life of me. Honestly, I still can’t. I have to think about which hand I write with in order to figure it out. Anyway, I went left when I was supposed to go right—again. I knocked into a few of the other ballerinas and tumbled off the stage. I landed on my elbow, dislocated it, and had to get nine stitches.”
Donovan looked amused. He bent and placed a gentle kiss on my scar. “Poor baby. But don’t worry, I promise not to let you fall off the stage today.”
“Alright, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. I have on heels, so your toes are absolutely not safe.”
He smiled and looked down at his watch. “I’ll take my chances. But the lesson starts in two minutes, so we better get going.”
Inside I was surprised to find we were the only ones in the waiting area. A white-haired woman with a ponytail, wearing a bodysuit and a long, flowy skirt walked out from the back to greet us.
“Hello again, Donovan. It’s nice to see you.” She turned to me and smiled as she held out her hand. “And you must be Autumn.”
“I am.” We shook.
“I’m Beverly, but everyone just calls me Bev. I’ll be your instructor today. Are you ready to get started?”
I took a deep breath. “I guess so.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll stretch out and warm up your ankles to minimize the risk of injury.” She opened the door to the back and waved for us to follow. “Right this way.” Inside was a typical dance studio, with mirrors on the walls, wood floors, and a ballet barre on both sides of the room. Bev pointed to a wall of cubbies. “You can just put your purse and anything else in one of those. It’ll be safe since it’s just us.”
“It’s just…us?”
She looked between Donovan and me. “Your boyfriend booked a private lesson.”
“Oh…” I have no idea why, but that freaked me out even more. I guess because all the attention would be on us, and it would be even more apparent that I sucked.
Donovan must’ve sensed my trepidation. He leaned and whispered in my ear. “We don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.”
I shook my head and managed a smile, sucking it up. “No…no, it’ll be fun.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “Let’s do it.”
Not long into our lesson, it was apparent who the better dancer was.
I squinted at my partner. “Are you sure you’ve never done this before? Maybe took some lessons as a kid?”
“What are the chances you could get Storm to take dance lessons?”
“Uh, slim to none.”
“Not only could we never have afforded dance lessons when I was a kid, but there was no way in hell I would’ve risked taking them and my friends finding out. They’d either have tortured me for years or beaten the crap out of me. Probably both. Most of the world is changing for the better these days, but nothing changes in the old neighborhood.”
Donovan pressed his hand into my back to guide my steps as Bev stood alongside of us counting.
“One-two, one-two. That’s it. Two quick to the side and then a slow step forward. You count the slow over two beats of the music and the quick over one.”
I was glad he seemed to know what the hell she was talking about. Bev directed us to add in the second step now, something called “Together, Together.” But I hadn’t even realized we’d been working on two different steps. Though again, Donovan seemed to catch on quickly and took a strong lead. On our third or fourth pass of putting together the two different steps she’d apparently taught us, I started to feel like I was getting the hang of it. Except at one point, I stepped forward when I should’ve stepped back and wound up stomping right on Donovan’s foot.
He winced, but quickly wiped the pain I’d caused from his face.
“I’m sorry.”
“No worries.” He laughed.
A few minutes later, Bev told us to take a five-minute break and left the room. Donovan bought two waters from the machine in the lobby, and then we went back into the studio.
I was really warm and drank half of the bottle. “I just want to say that it’s an old wives’ tale that if you can’t dance, you’re not good in bed. There is no actual correlation.”
Donovan smiled. “You have rhythm, you just can’t seem to memorize the steps. You definitely still confuse your left and right and sometimes front and back.”
“Yeah…that was always my problem when I was little, too.”
Donovan chugged the rest of his water and winked. “Plus, I have zero worries about us in bed together. I already know we’re a good match.”
“How?”
“Eye contact. You give incredible eye contact.”
I laughed. “I don’t even know what that means.”
“You look at me with an intensity. It mimics the way I feel inside when I look at you. Chemistry is all about eye contact.”
Our gazes caught, and my heart sped up. I guess he had a point. We’d had that spark from the very first moment we met.
Bev came back in, and Donovan excused himself to go talk to her by the stereo. They exchanged a few words, and she smiled as she glanced over at me, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying.
“What was that all about?” I prodded when he came back.
“Nothing.” He took one of my hands and wrapped the other around my back as the music started.
Bev was back at our side and counting again before I could interrogate him further. The second half of our lesson went better than the first. I finally started to relax and enjoy myself once I stopped caring what I might look like. To be honest, the way Donovan looked at me, I knew judging me for some missteps was the furthest thing from his mind. At one point, Bev stepped back.
“Alright. There’s about ten minutes left to our lesson. I’ve really enjoyed working with you. If you’re interested in continuing, just give me a call.”
“Thanks, Bev,” we both said.
She walked back over to the music, changed the song, and waved one last time as she walked out of the dance studio and into the lobby.
“I’m confused. Didn’t she just say there were ten minutes left?”
Donovan pulled me into his arms. Unlike the way he’d held me during the rhumba lesson, our bodies were pressed close together now.
“I asked her if we could have ten minutes of time to dance alone. Her lesson was nice, but there was too much distance between us. I want you closer.”
The instrumental introduction to John Legend’s “Slow Dance” ended, and he started to croon. My body melted into Donovan’s touch as we swayed back and forth.
“This was a very thoughtful idea. Thank you.”
“Let’s be real, my motives weren’t entirely altruistic. These lessons were also an opportunity to hold you close for the first hour of our date.”
I laughed, and Donovan spun us around, burying his nose in my neck and inhaling deeply.
“You know, you ruined a date for me because of how you smell,” he said.
I pulled my head back. “How so?”
“You smell like vanilla. A few months after you disappeared, I went out with a woman. After our date, she invited me back to her apartment for a drink. When we got there, she lit a few candles—made the entire room smell like vanilla. I had one glass of wine, told her I had an early morning meeting I’d forgotten about, and called it a night.”
I couldn’t help but smile.
Donovan shook his head and laughed. “I see you’re really broken up about ruining my date.”
“Says the man who followed me into the bathroom during one of mine.”
He groaned. “Let’s not talk about any of that. The thought of you with Blake—or any other guy, for that matter—makes me feel explosive.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I feel like punching the woman who lit candles for you.”
He smiled. “It does.”
“You know so much about my dating history, but you never really told me about yours. I can already tell you’re way too good at this dating thing to not have had a lot of girlfriends.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Well, have you ever had a serious girlfriend?”
“One, in law school. We went out for about two years. Broke up when we went our separate ways after we graduated.”
“So…since then?”
“I’ve dated, but I’ve always been upfront that I’m not looking for anything serious and my job is my priority. Turns out, sometimes the best things come when you’re not looking at all.”
I bit my bottom lip. “You scare the hell out of me, Donovan.”
“Right back at ya, Red. But you know what?”
“What?”
“I’m more afraid of what I’ll be missing if we don’t give this a real shot.”
I took a deep breath and nodded. “Okay.”
Donovan pulled me against him again and led me around the dance floor a few times. He held me a little tighter, and I had a feeling it had nothing to do with the dance. Normally, any possessiveness from a man sent me running, but not this time. I liked that Donovan felt that way about me, mostly because the feeling was mutual, and somehow it was less scary to me that way.
The song came to an end, but Donovan kept my hand in his.
“You ready for our date?”
“I thought this was our date?”
“Nah. This was just me finding a way to get your tits pushed up against my chest when we’re supposed to be going slow.”
I laughed, but stood on my tippy toes and brushed my lips with his. “You can’t fool me, Mr. Decker. You’re thoughtful and sweet and have a very romantic side.”
He looked back and forth between my eyes. “Oh yeah? Well, if that’s true, you better keep that a secret. I have a reputation of being an asshole that I need to keep intact.”
My belly did a little somersault. The way he looked at me turned my insides into warm mush. I still had the urge to flee, but I was learning that I could get past those flare-ups if I just rode it out and took things slow.
Though every minute I spent with this man made the hope inside me bloom a little bigger. I was learning to trust again, and I’d just have to hope that this time, my trust wasn’t misplaced.
