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A quiet studio was not what Jasmine needed right now. The silence encouraged thinking, and sifting through the questions in her head was not productive...not when she had to focus on work. She stood at the barre, rolling her ankle around in a slow circle. The joint protested, the tendons tugging sharply as she pushed herself to flex or point a little more. If only she could push it a little farther each time...
Years of stretching had given her a perfect curve en pointe, but now she could barely rise up onto the balls of her feet. They refused to stretch, refused to flex and curve as they once had.
Gritting her teeth, she attempted a few moves from an old routine. Her feet thumped against the floor, clumsy in their poor imitation of how she had once danced. She wanted so badly to be able to go back to the way she’d been before the accident, before she’d stranded herself in this horrible place known as dancer’s limbo—where you were too broken to move forwards, too proud to go backwards and too engrained to go anywhere else.
She missed dancing with an ache that felt as if it split her chest wide open every time she failed to flex her feet properly. There were times when she feared that her soul might wither up and die if she went much longer without dance.
Voices from the waiting room pulled her out of her dark thoughts; she whipped her head around.
Grant stood in the waiting room, talking to her best friend and owner of the studio, Elise Johnson, but his eyes were undeniably on Jasmine. Even from a distance she could see the fire burning in their ice-blue depths. He nodded in response to something Elise said but he didn’t tear his gaze from her...not even for a second. Stomach fluttering, she crossed the studio. Their muffled voices became clearer as Jasmine reached the waiting room.
‘How come your girlfriend doesn’t come and watch you practise?’
Elise batted her eyelashes at Grant as Jasmine poked her head into the waiting room. She bit down on her lip to stop herself from groaning; the girl was as subtle as a sledgehammer.
‘No girlfriend.’ Grant shook his head, catching Jasmine’s eye and winking.
‘Wife?’
‘Definitely not.’
‘Interesting.’ Elise cocked her head to one side and smiled at Jasmine conspiratorially as she turned to grab her coat and bag. ‘Well, I’m off. Enjoy your lesson.’
Her smile was sweet as a cupcake piled high with frosting. Jasmine stifled a laugh at Grant’s get-me-out-of-here expression. Elise was full-strength girlie—none of that watered-down diet stuff. As Grant came forwards Elise shot Jasmine a thumbs-up behind his back. Her face sparkled.
Despite the fact that Elise was single herself, she’d made it her mission to try and set Jasmine up, no matter how many times she protested.
She held open the door to the waiting room. ‘Shall we get lesson number two over with?’
‘It’s going to feel even longer if you count down every single lesson,’ Grant said, walking past her, close enough that she could smell the faint aftershave on his skin.
‘You were the one who wanted to speed up the results,’ she said, focusing her attention on the mirrored wall as they walked over to the barre. Each breath had to be forced in and out of her lungs, as though she might forget to breathe if she were near him for too long.
‘Do I need to wear these stupid things every lesson?’ He pulled at the fabric of his sports tights and allowed it to snap against his thigh. ‘At least at footy I can wear shorts over the top.’
‘Are you worried about your modesty?’ She raised an eyebrow.
‘It’s not me I’m worried about.’
She put on her most serious teacher voice. ‘I need to see how your muscles work while we’re going through the exercises.’
Heat crawled up her neck and she forced her eyes to stay on his face. She would not look down. She would not look down.
‘My muscles? Right.’ He drew the last word out, barely containing his laughter.
‘I think you should consider taking these lessons a little more seriously, Grant. Preventing injury is no laughing manner.’
‘God, you sound like an insurance commercial.’
He was pushing her on purpose, and he seemed to be getting an immense amount of pleasure out of it. Since this was her lesson, she could pay him back.
‘Why don’t we get started with some calf raises?’
He rolled his eyes and groaned, as though she’d told him he needed to climb a mountain with one hand.
‘Suck it up, Grant. If there’s one thing you should know about people who’ve studied ballet it’s that we have discipline beyond anything you could imagine.’ She sounded smug, sure, but he totally deserved it.
He shook his head and laughed. ‘You’re not selling the ballet ideal very well.’
‘You don’t think you’ve got what it takes?’ She cursed herself. She shouldn’t be baiting him. No doubt he’d be the kind of guy to enjoy a little verbal sparring. But the words had slipped out before she could stop them. It was too...fun. And she needed a little fun right now.
He grinned at her, confirming her fears. ‘If I want something, there ain’t a force in the world that will stop me from having it.’
Jasmine gulped. His pointed look sent liquid fire through her veins. There was no doubt in her mind that she was on his list of things to want. She had to remind herself that this was business and—fun as it might be, she was only after a pay cheque. But that grin...the crooked, self-assured way he smiled...it was like a fist through her stomach.
No, this would not work on her. She wasn’t another airhead groupie, ready to fall at his feet.
‘You can’t have everything you want. That’s not how the world works.’ And didn’t she know it.
He raked his eyes over her. ‘Watch me.’
Awareness tingled on her skin. She could feel his gaze so keenly that it might as well have been the brush of his fingertips or the rasp of his tongue for what it was doing to her insides. She bit down on her lip, trying unsuccessfully to blank out the flickering reel of R-rated images in her mind.
‘Since you’re so strong of mind, why don’t you focus some of that energy on this lesson?’
After Grant had made his way through the warm-up she moved them on to a new exercise, facing him at the barre.
‘We’ll start the tendu à terre in first position. Watch me.’ She extended her right leg forwards until only the tips of her pointed toes touched the ground.
Looking as out of place as one would expect from a footballer in a ballet studio, Grant struck an angled version of first position with his working arm, his shoulders bunched up around his neck.
Jasmine rested her hand on the tense muscle. ‘You have to loosen up from here or you’ll never relax into
