Count to…however many it takes to keep from embarrassing myself. Heat rose in Russell’s face. When Kathleen leaned back, responding to his lead, her hips tilted into his and…oh, this was not good.
Five, six, seven, and…he spun Kathleen out…and then she spun back in, his tug a little strong, bringing her flush against his body.
And his body was responding.
The soft fabric of her dress under his fingers, the brush of her long hair against the back of his hand, the easy unselfconscious way she moved, that damn elusive perfume. The total package, driving him crazy.
The song ended only to be followed immediately by the up-tempo intro to Straighten up and Fly Right. He reminded himself that the lyrics instructed the listener to cool down and not blow his top.
Words to live by.
Dancing to this number put a little more distance between his body and hers and his libido settled down as they whirled and spun across the floor. He was vaguely aware of eyes on him, of the other guests slowing down to watch, but the applause that met his ears when he dipped Kathleen at the end of the song, her flushed, happy face practically glowing up at him, was a surprise.
Straightening his back and pulling her upright, he looked around. Raised eyebrows, clapping hands, and even a whistle from somewhere made him laugh and cover his face with one hand. The other still clasped Kathleen’s.
“Showing me up at my own wedding,” Colin called out. “Nicely done, mate.”
“Hey, it’s not my fault if you can’t dance,” Russell replied, dropping the hand from his face and pointing at his friend. “Anyway, I’m done for now. I need a drink.” He wasn’t actually that thirsty, but he wanted the attention off him and some time to cool down.
“Indeed.” Colin’s eyes, narrowed with the effort not to laugh, flicked to the hand that held Kathleen’s. “Well, now that you’ve finished showing off…” he turned to Alicia and held out his own hand. “Darling?”
The rest of the guests started swaying around the dance floor to the strains of Pretend.
Simon’s playlist seemed to be narrating Russell’s evening. He had to play it at least somewhat cool for about another hour, he guessed.
Kathleen was still breathing quickly, the exertion of the last dance showing in her sparkling eyes and reddened cheeks. “Care to join me for a drink?” he asked.
One eyebrow arched provocatively. “I think I deserve one. I’m parched.”
“Okay, then.” Leading her to the snug little room that contained the bar, he nearly cheered to find it empty of wedding guests, the rest of whom seemed to be either dancing or observing the other guests in the dining room. “What would you like?”
Kathleen considered for a moment. “A glass of white wine, please. And a glass of water.”
Placing her order and getting a whiskey for himself, he nodded to a little love seat in a corner. “Sit out the current revels with me?”
“I wasn’t thinking of doing anything else,” she said, taking her wine and water from the bartender and moving over to sit, crossing her legs and arranging the skirt of her dress over her knees.
Forcing himself to ignore the way the soft, green fabric draped over her legs, Russell sat, drawing one knee onto the seat and turning towards her. “So. Where were we?”
Her eyes shone with humor as she raised her water glass to her lips. “Trafficking in clichés?”
Russell raised a hand and blinked, shaking his head as if he had just taken a punch. “Okay, then. No sugarcoating. Let’s have it right out.”
An arched eyebrow and tilted head met his gaze. “Sorry. It was too tempting to resist.”
Kathleen’s pulse thudded uncomfortably. Did I just go too far? Setting her water glass down on the little table in front of the settee, she looked back at Russell, taking stock of his blank expression.
Then he burst into laughter, the dimple denting his cheek in a way that made her want to launch into his arms.
Instead, she picked up her wine glass and took a judicious sip.
“So why did you decide to become a professor?” she asked. Growing up, she had often wondered the same about her father. But Professor Fitzgerald wasn’t the kind of person you asked such questions of. A stern and forbidding presence in her life, Kathleen realized once when she was a teenager that she couldn’t imagine her father as a child, even though she had seen photos of him as a little boy.
Russell shrugged. “Practicing law was…dull. I liked the idea of the life of the mind. Of course, the reality is grading exams and cranking out the next journal article or book chapter. Committee work. Mostly.”
“I think most professions seem more interesting from the outside.”
“You mean being an actress isn’t all red carpets and applause?” There was that twinkle again. This man was too charming for words.
Kathleen snorted. “Right. More like ninety percent of the time you’re waiting for something. Waiting for the scene you’re not in to finish rehearsing, waiting for equipment to get set up for the next take, waiting in your dressing room or the green room or the wings for your next entrance…” She rolled her hand to indicate the minutes and hours that were spent doing nothing.
“I get that. But then, in teaching, there are the good moments. Things that stay with you, make it worthwhile. The meeting you have with a student who isn’t getting it and you help them understand the material. The class where a couple of students had a discussion that didn’t turn into an all-out ideological war…”
“Huh. Sounds delightful.”
“Yeah, well. Law students: amateur arguers looking to turn pro.”
Tilting her head, she considered Russell. She had to keep reminding herself that she had just met this man. She felt like she had known him for years. “You don’t seem argumentative to me.”
“Maybe that’s another reason why I didn’t stay in practice. Why did you become an actress?”
“At first it was because I loved to pretend.” Loved to pretend her life was her own, that she wasn’t the odd one out in her family, the one nobody understood, the cuckoo in the nest.
“At first? What changed?”
She sipped her wine, considering. “Well, as I got older I realized it wasn’t really pretending.”
Russell appeared to think this over. “How so?”
Kathleen took another sip of her drink, trying to frame the inchoate thoughts in her head. “It’s more…taking a piece of yourself and bringing it forward. Taking a past experience and letting it shape the emotion in the scene.”
“So less pretending and more…editing?”
“Yeah, kind of.”
He shifted on the seat, leaning closer to her. “Interesting. I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. There’s a lot of talk about people being ‘fake’ on social media, but don’t we all edit what we present to people, no matter how we’re interacting?”
Well, that hits a bit too close to home. Kathleen pulled the hem of her skirt further down over her knees. “Um. Yeah. I guess.”
“What did I say?”
“Nothing.” Kathleen looked at Russell’s face. The twinkle and the dimple had both vanished and there was concern in his expression.
“I must have said something. You shut down like a bank vault just now.” He held up a hand. “But you don’t have to tell me. I’m sorry. For whatever.”
Kathleen sighed. Perversely, his backing away had her wanting to spill her guts. “I guess I was editing myself a bit a minute ago, that’s all.”
He nodded. “But that’s the point. We always do that. We never tell everyone everything. And we do it for a lot of reasons. To say that it’s a social media phenomenon isn’t true.”
“Yeah. Well.” Kathleen’s lips pressed together. “It might as well be the Fitzgerald family motto.”
Russell sat straighter, surprised by the turn of the conversation. “Is that so?”
The corner of her mouth twisted up mirthlessly. “One reason Alicia and I get along so well is because our backgrounds are sort of similar. Our fathers were both rigid and controlling. With my dad, his god was his reputation. Her dad’s god was…well, God. Growing up for both of us was pretty much ‘thou shalt not’ most of the time.”
“Huh. And here I was picturing you with some sort of idyllic upbringing in Annapolis. All brick buildings and croquet in the sunshine.”
She shrugged one shoulder. “It was like that sometimes. And don’t get me wrong, I love my family. They love me. They just don’t get me. Like, at all.”
“What’s not to get?”
“Being an actress. Literally making a scene. I’m the—” She set her wine glass down to hook her fingers in exaggerated quotation marks. “‘Free Spirit.’ It’s what people say about you when they are kind of embarrassed that you have a career in the arts and can’t possibly imagine why you’d want to make a tacky spectacle of yourself, but it’s also equally tacky to not seem to approve of your kid’s chosen profession.”
“Just your parents, or your whole family?”
“Mostly my parents. Most of my siblings are kind of baffled but benign. My brother David gets me a little.”
“What does he do?”
Kathleen fidgeted with the hem of her skirt, folding it in little pleats. “He’s a computer programmer. Which, as I’ve discovered, entails more creativity than a lot of people would give credit for.”
“I can see how that would be.”
Her eyes lifted, met his. “Do you?”
“Yeah. Isn’t programming solving problems? Solving problems takes creativity.”
Kathleen frowned, a crease appearing between her eyebrows. “I never thought about it that way.”
He leaned back, sipped his drink. “I think a lot about solving problems.”
“You make it sound like math.” Kathleen rolled her eyes and shuddered. “Why do you think so often about solving problems?”
“Well, believe it or not, the law is about solving problems too. Or it’s supposed to be.”
The corners of Kathleen’s eyes creased with lurking humor “Solving problems by arguing?”
“Don’t knock argument. It has been known to change minds. At least, historically.”
“I suppose.” Her lips had a slight, provocative curve. “To go back to your social media example, it doesn’t seem to work so well these days.”
“Are you one of those people who avoids conflict?”
“Maybe. I prefer discussion to argument.” Her head tilted, her hair sliding across one shoulder, catching the light and shining with burnished highlights.
“Why?”
Her eyebrows lifted. “Why would I want to fight with someone when I could…not?”
“I didn’t say fight. I said argue. Different things.”
“What’s so different?”
“Fighting…” He paused to gather himself as images from his short-lived marriage crashed into his thoughts. He pushed them away, taking a small sip of whiskey. “Fighting is—or can be—about two people with differing agendas trying to gain supremacy. Whereas argument—at its finest—is about making your case when both parties are coming to the table in good faith, both wanting a good outcome, but coming from different positions initially. Sometimes you can even get a win-win out of an argument. But not a fight.”
“Are you arguing me into something now?”
“Maybe. What do you think?” Reaching out, he twisted one auburn wave around his finger.
A slow grin crinkled her eyes. “I think I might be argument-curious.”
Russell’s eyes creased endearingly as he smiled. “What do you think I’m arguing for?”
Kathleen bit her lip and her pulse began to race. “A win-win?”
He glanced at the doorway to the dining room. “Looks like the party’s thinning out.”
Twisting in her seat, she saw that it was true. The music had stopped and people were drifting out of the room, singly or in pairs. Turning back to Russell, he had a distant look on his face. “Hey,” she said, suddenly shy. What if he had changed his mind? What if she had misinterpreted the situation?
What if he just wanted to get the hell out of there because she was a flaky actress with a family that disapproved of her rather than a together professional with a happy childhood?
Shaking his head slightly and blinking, he said, “Sorry. Not sure where my brain wandered off to there. Very ungentlemanly of me.”
Oof. Gentleman. Was he going to use that to shy away from what they had started out on the lawn? Disappointment twisted Kathleen’s gut even as she realized it was the adjective she’d applied to him more than once.
“You all right?” he asked. Probably just being polite.
“Of course. Probably time for bed.” Kathleen infused the line with every confident moment she had ever had, acting her ass off.
“What’s wrong?”
So much for my acting skills.
Kathleen swallowed the last of her wine, her throat convulsing. Might as well be perfectly honest if this evening was going to go down in flames. “Your mind wandering…your insistence on being a gentleman. Kind of at odds with what we talked about on the lawn after the ceremony.”
Russell’s eyebrows lifted. “Good grief. You made that conclusion? From me woolgathering for a minute and mentioning that I have a code of conduct I try to adhere to?”
Kathleen shrugged extravagantly and put her glass down. “What can I say?”
He looked at her for a moment, then huffed a laugh. “You’re…imaginative. I’ll give you that.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “I’m an artist. It’s kind of what we do.”
“Do you want me to back off?”
Panic fluttered in her belly. “Do you want to back off?”
Russell’s eyes bored into her. “Let the record reflect that the witness didn’t answer the question, but merely offered one of her own.”
Kathleen sagged helplessly against the arm of the settee. “Fine. No. I don’t want you to back off.”
Russell set his glass on the table next to hers and shot his cuffs in a businesslike motion. “Good. I don’t want to back off either.”
“So, what’s next?” Kathleen fought the absurd urge to giggle.
Russell stood and extended a hand. “To risk ‘trafficking in clichés’ again, your place or mine?”