arm. “You can ask some lovely young woman to dance, or if you prefer, I can do it for you.”
“Angie put you up to this, didn’t she?”
“I do have an occasional idea of my own, but Angie did mention, several times in conversation, that you’re a wonderful dancer and shouldn’t be allowed to pretend otherwise.”
“How about I pretend I was adopted?”
“Too late, I’m afraid. You’ll just have to face your fear of rejection and ask someone to dance. It won’t kill you.”
“Oh, nicely put, Mother.” He guided her toward the terrace doors and the sounds of the orchestra playing an overblown version of “The Way You Look Tonight.” “So…are you going to tell me who you want me to ask or do I have to go through a painful process of elimination?”
“I saw that lovely Miranda Danville talking to you across the buffet line. Why don’t you ask her?”
“She used to date Nicky.”
“Yes, but I think we should forgive her that lapse. She was very young then.”
“And I was married and a new father.”
“And now you’re not.” Charleigh nodded, decision made. “You’ll ask Miranda. After we’ve tested the cake and had some wine.”
The idea of dancing with Miranda was undeniably appealing. Also a trifle intimidating. She was beautiful. Not that dogs howled maniacally at his approach, but he knew his face was more character actor than soap opera star. And Miranda was also young. Not that he was old, but Mark had just told him that women like her looked at men like him as…well, older. Not that age mattered. Angie would be the first to point that out if she were here. Which, of course, she wasn’t.
Which brought him right back to the question of how to ask a young and beautiful woman to dance.
He was still pondering the how of it when his mother eventually pushed away her cake plate, dotted her mouth with a napkin and lifted her eyebrows expectantly.
“More cake?” he asked hopefully.
Her smile told him the grace period was over even as her attention moved past him and up. “Why, Miranda,” she said graciously, “how lovely to see you.”
A long, slow tingle slid the length of his spine as he pushed back from the table and stood, turning to see the woman, who’d occupied most of his thoughts since she’d hit him in the chest with her salmon, standing at his elbow, a bottle of club soda clutched in her hand.
“You remember my son Nathaniel?” Charleigh said.
“Oh…yes, of course,” Miranda answered, clearly not remembering until that very second. “Nate.”
“I’m Nicky’s older brother.” He couldn’t believe he’d said the O word first thing. Way to go, Nate. “But I hope you won’t hold that against me.”
She smiled a little uncertainly. “I, uh…no. No, I always rather liked Nick. Although I haven’t seen him in some time. A long time, actually.” Her smile hesitated, turned from him to his mother. “How is Nick?” she asked as if she thought, perhaps, she ought to ask.
“Still wildly attractive and unattractively wild. From a mother’s standpoint, anyway.”
“Oh.” Miranda’s lovely eyes—blue with an intriguing touch of gold—flickered to Nate’s, returned to Charleigh. “I see his picture on the newsstands occasionally.”
Charleigh smiled, proud of her youngest child despite his shortcomings. “He’s very popular at Soap Opera Digest.”
Mainly because his private life was as full of bizarre intrigues as his alter ego’s, Daxson Darck, on Sunset Beach. But Nate didn’t feel the need to point that out. Nor did his mother.
Miranda hesitated, then turned to Nate. “I got some club soda,” she said, offering him the bottle. “For your shirt.”
Nate took the bottle from her hand with no intent of touching her except in the most casual way. But she had a grip on the club soda, almost as if she was reluctant to let it go, and his fingers lingered for a moment on hers. The spark of recognition flared, instantaneous and erotic. And he pulled back from the exchange almost as quickly as she.
“It’s so interesting that you should walk up just now, Miranda,” Charleigh was saying with a conversational smile. “Because Nate was just talking about you.”
“He was?”
A soft touch of color bloomed on her cheeks and despite every effort to stay unaffected, Nate was charmed to the core. She had felt it, too, that moment of awareness. It might have been a long time since he’d shared that first recognition of electric attraction, but it wasn’t the sort of thing a man forgot.
“Was he explaining how I ruined his shirt? I still can’t believe that happened.”
“Our tongs collided,” Nate informed his mother, pointing to the stain, which until that minute he’d forgotten was there. “It was fate.”
Charleigh glanced at his shirtfront. “Fate?”
“I was hungry. She was tossing salmon.”
“How serendipitous.” Charleigh’s smile turned to Miranda. “No, actually he was wondering aloud if I thought you might dance with him. If he asked. I was just telling him I was sure you would when, suddenly, here you are.”
Miranda looked surprised, but she didn’t seem appalled by the thought of dancing with him. Nate considered that a positive sign. Below the drape of the tablecloth, his mother’s foot nudged his. “Miranda,” he asked obediently, “would you like to dance?”
“Um, sure,” she replied doubtfully, her gaze flickering to his chest, then back to his face. “Unless you’d rather get some club soda on that stain.”
“Probably best to let the dry cleaners treat it,” Charleigh said, apparently believing he’d take any excuse to get out of dancing.
But even mothers were wrong on occasion. And although he might be on the shady side of forty, he was a long way from passing up the opportunity to hold a beautiful woman in his arms. “The club soda will wait for me,” he said. “The music won’t.”
He took her hand, seeking, and finding, that shiver of electric response, and led her to the dance floor, where he drew her into his arms. The song was as soft as the night air around them. And Nate felt like a young man at his first formal dance. Expectant. Excited. Uncertain.
“I hope you don’t mind,” he said. “It’s been quite a while since I was in this position.”
She held herself rather stiffly, not exactly melting against him, but she looked up at that and smiled. And his heart skipped a beat. Maybe he was too old for this. “What position?” she asked. “Dancing?”
“Having my mother kick me in the instep until I asked you to dance. She thinks I’m backward with women.”
Miranda’s eyebrow arched prettily.
