Love Is a Dangerous Dance novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Trunk

Portia patches the wounded assassin and hides him from Victor's guard.

I did not scream.

I had spent seven years learning to land a jump in front of a thousand people with a smile on my face.

My body knew how to stay still.

"Take your hand off my wall," I said.

He took it off.

"Put the gun in the trunk by the radiator and sit on it."

"That's a costume trunk."

"It's mine, and it's the only place nobody looks."

He studied me for a second, and then he did something I did not expect.

He picked up the pistol with two fingers and set it in the trunk himself.

The blood had soaked through his coat to the shirt underneath.

I shoved the coat off his shoulders and pushed him down onto the lid.

The cut ran along his left ribs, long and shallow, ragged at one end.

"Knife," I said.

"Letter opener," he said. "Off Victor Ashworth's desk."

My stomach turned over.

"You were in the chairman's office."

"Forty minutes ago, while you were reading page nine."

I pulled my sewing kit out of my dance bag, because every dancer carries one for ribbons.

The needle was curved and the thread was heavy cotton.

"This will hurt," I said.

"I know."

"I'm not a doctor."

"You sew four hundred ribbons a season," he said. "Your hands are steadier than a doctor's."

That was true, and it irritated me that he knew it.

I cleaned the cut with the vodka in my bag, which I kept for blisters, and he did not make a sound.

His jaw tightened once on the fourth stitch.

I was pulling the fifth tight when someone knocked on the door.

"Miss Marceau?"

It was a man's voice, flat and heavy.

"Mr. Ashworth's security. Someone broke into the executive floor. We're checking every room on this level."

Alec looked at me.

He did not reach for the trunk or the door.

He just waited.

That was the moment I decided I hated him.

"Give me ten seconds," I called. "I'm changing."

I pointed at the trunk and mouthed, in.

He raised an eyebrow.

I pointed again, harder.

He folded himself into the trunk with a grace that had no business belonging to a man bleeding through his shirt.

I threw the grey coat in after him and dropped the lid.

Then I kicked off my shoes, stood at the barre, and dragged my hair out of its bun just as the door opened.

The guard was wide as the doorframe, with a radio in his fist.

His eyes went over the room, the rack of tutus, the mirror, the vodka bottle.

"You're stretching," he said.

"I just got engaged," I said. "I'm having a very strange afternoon."

He looked at the trunk.

I started breathing like I was bored, because dancers learn to do that on stage when a shoe comes untied.

"Mind if I open that?"

"Yes," I said. "It's full of my underwear."

The door banged behind him and Roxy Brennan sailed in with a cup of coffee in each hand.

She wore her tool belt over a black tee.

She was my roommate and my dresser, twenty-eight, red hair cut short, and she had the best timing in the building.

"Hey, Sugarplum, why is that guard standing in your doorway looking like he saw a ghost?"

The guard turned, saw a woman with a hammer in her belt, and decided he had somewhere else to be.

He left.

Roxy closed the door with her hip and handed me a coffee.

"You look pale," she said.

"I'm engaged," I said.

"I heard. Congratulations, I hate it. Is the ring real?"

"It's real."

"Show me." She stopped. "Why are you sweating?"

"I need you to go and get me a sandwich," I said.

"A big one, and a bottle of water, and I need you to not ask me anything."

Roxy narrowed her eyes at me.

Then she looked at the trunk.

I could hear the faintest creak as the man inside shifted his weight.

Roxy looked back at me.

"Ham or turkey?" she said, very calmly, and she left the room.

I stood there with my heart going.

The lid lifted.

Alec Kerrigan sat up with my sewing needle still hanging from his side, and he looked at me with something close to approval.

"Underwear," he said.

"Shut up."

"You lie well."

"I've had practice." I put the needle back in his skin and tied the sixth stitch so tight he flinched. "Who are you?"

"A man with a problem and a woman who's going to solve it."

"I don't solve problems for strangers who bleed on my floor."

"No," he said, and he smiled for the first time.

"But you'll solve this one, because on Saturday your new fiance is throwing an engagement party at the Ashworth penthouse."

He took my wrist before I could cut the thread.

His hand was warm and his grip was careful.

"Saturday night," he said. "You get me in."

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