“I’m going to throw you around my back.”
She shook her head, but asked, “You are?”
“Yes, I am,” Ty answered. Without missing a beat or step, he hooked one arm around her waist and lifted her up, flipping her horizontal with the floor. “Just pretend you’re an airplane.” She stretched her arms out, no doubt having seen the move. “Ready?” he asked, still tapping to the music.
“Ready,” she responded.
With a quick twist of his hips, he flung her sideways around his back.
In the split second that he didn’t have a hold on her, the crowd went silent. Time seemed to stop, too, except for the pounding of his heart echoing in his ears. He wouldn’t let her down. Wouldn’t fail her.
His catch was as smooth as the rest of their dancing had been. He savored the relief deep down and flipped her upright to land on her feet.
Without missing a beat, she tapped backward and then forward again. “That was perfect,” she said, catching one of his hands for another graceful pirouette.
“Time!” Dac Lester shouted. “Time’s up!”
She finished her twirl and Ty once again grabbed her waist, tossing her straight up into the air. Norma Rose grabbed his shoulders, and as she started her descent, he caught her by the hips, stopping her before her feet touched the floor.
Holding her there, her head slightly above his, his heart stopped beating. Her eyes were so full of stars he could hardly see any of their wonderful blue, and her lips held a smile that would have made the Mona Lisa jealous.
The crowd roared and cheered, and Ty, unable to resist, gave in to the one desire he’d tried to bury since he’d first laid eyes on her.
He kissed her.
Chapter Twelve
Norma Rose clung to Ty’s shoulders, lost in a different world, one that was far more vibrant and effervescent than anything she’d ever known. He tasted as good as he smelled, and she tilted her head, so nothing was in the way of their lips connecting.
If the roaring in her ears would stop, she’d have nothing to distract her from completely, fully, enjoying the connection. If whoever was shouting her name—
Wrenching her lips off his, Norma Rose blinked, several times, trying to make sense of the wild vibrations still racing through her body while trying to recall where she was.
Someone was saying her name, and she was...she was kissing Ty.
Oh, Lord.
“You won!”
Twyla’s voice was now recognizable, so was the gleam in Ty’s eyes.
Norma Rose’s entire being experienced a flood of disappointment. They’d won. Which meant the dance was over. She swallowed and, gathering a few more bits of reality, pushed at his shoulders. “Put me down.”
“I have,” he said.
She wiggled her toes, testing if the floor was indeed beneath her shoes.
It was.
Sliding her hands off his shoulders, she pressed her feet harder onto the floor and locked her knees, afraid that without his hold, she’d collapse. Norma Rose begged and pleaded, silently, for that not to happen.
It didn’t.
Perhaps because Ty still had hold of her waist, and twisted her, pulling her against his side. She shouldn’t allow that. If she trusted her legs, she might not have. Between the dancing and his kiss, she didn’t trust any part of her body right now.
Her thinking wasn’t overly lucid yet, either.
“You won!” Twyla repeated.
Norma Rose’s vision cleared, enough to see the crowd that had descended upon them. Twyla and Josie were in the lead. One holding a bottle of whiskey, the other her snow globe, and both looked happier than she’d seen them in years. She wasn’t sure who handed what to whom, but she ended up with the snow globe and Ty had the whiskey bottle.
“Your winners, ladies and gentlemen,” Twyla said, stepping aside to wave a sweeping hand at both of them. “Nightingale’s own Ty Bradshaw and my sister Norma Rose!”
For the first time in her life, finding a smile to plant on her face was beyond her, until Ty grabbed her hand and forced her into a bow.
Head down, he hissed, “Smile.”
She did, partly because he sounded as flustered as her. They lifted their heads simultaneously, smiling at the exuberant crowd.
People moved in with congratulations, hugging her and patting Ty on the back.
“I haven’t had this much fun in ages,” Scooter Wilson said. “You gotta have dance-offs more often.”
She nodded, but Ty spoke. “I don’t know that I can handle more than one a year,” he said. “That was a heck of a lot of work.”
Laughter filled the room again.
“We’ll step aside now,” he continued, taking Norma Rose’s elbow to guide her forward. “And let others take a turn at dancing.” He waved at Wayne. “That’s one electric piano player.”
Wayne made a show of bowing before he sat back down to play another tune that had people moving back onto the dance floor.
“Here,” Josie said, handing over a glass. “It’s just water. You look like you could use it.”
“Thanks,” Norma Rose said, glad her voice did still work. She drank the water, all of it; she was thirstier than she’d ever been.
She sat down in a chair that magically appeared. Maybe she had walked to it. Her legs were too shaky to know for sure and the bottoms of her feet stung so badly they were almost numb.
“I had no idea you could dance like that,” Twyla said.
“Me, neither,” Ty, who was sitting with his arm across the back of her chair, said.
Norma Rose tore her gaze off his arm to say, “Me, neither.”
The occupants of the table—Josie and Scooter, Twyla and Jimmy, Dac, her and Ty—all laughed. Norma Rose took another look around the table, and at those filling the chairs. This was all new and she felt completely out of her element, yet comfortable at the same time. So many new things. Crazy things.
The craziest of all was how she trusted Ty. Even to throw her around like that. The idea of not trusting him had never crossed her mind. Not that she’d had a lot of time to think about it. She’d been completely caught up in the moment.
She couldn’t believe it. This wasn’t her, Norma Rose. This was some imposter, sitting here, listening to her sisters and Scooter and Jimmy and Dac, and even Ty, talk about the dancing. How word would spread and soon everyone would want to attend one of the resort’s dance competitions. How it would be the talk of the town tomorrow. How she and Ty had won. How he’d thrown her in the air and—
The sweat on her forehead and the back of her neck turned ice-cold and whatever snapped inside her hurt. Norma Rose jumped to her feet. “Excuse me,” she said, spinning away from the table.
“Norma Rose—”
She moved faster, edging farther away from Ty.
He still caught her by the arm. “What’s wrong?”
“Why don’t you tell me, Agent Bradshaw?”
Sighing, he walked beside her, all the way through the arched ballroom doorway and into the resort’s entranceway before he asked, “So, we’re back to that again?”
Yes, we’re back to that again, she wanted to shout. She didn’t because she should never have forgotten it in the first place. Who he was. It was the only defense she had.
With no real place to go, she marched into her office, fully prepared to slam the door in his face. If he’d been weaker, and slower, and if her reflexes had been faster.
As it was, he was the one to close the door, shutting them both in her office, and he was the one who set the snow globe on her desk.
He grasped her shoulders and spun her around. She was prepared to hate him, but all the fight seeped out of her as she caught the way he looked at her. His eyes still shimmered, but his look went deeper than that and seared her in a most vulnerable spot.
“Something’s happening here, Norma Rose,” he said quietly. “I don’t know what it is. I don’t know how to explain it. I don’t even know if I understand it.” He shook his head slowly. “But I’ll be damned if I can fight it.”
She had no answer, for she knew exactly what he was talking about. If he was feeling anything remotely close to what she was, it was as confusing as hell.
His lips descended toward hers with all the exquisiteness of a snowflake falling from a still and quiet sky. As mesmerizing as the ones in the little glass globe. She had time to stop him, to protest, but not the willpower.
The first swipe of his lips was as dazzling as it had been on the dance floor, and her eyelids fluttered shut as all sorts of wild and outlandish sensations erupted all over again. Instantly transported into the universe she knew nothing about, but wanting to catch a glimpse of it again, Norma Rose wrapped her arms around Ty’s neck and held on as the ride began.
His kiss turned demanding, and Norma Rose accepted the way it called to her very soul. Warm and probing, his tongue parted her lips. She welcomed the entrance into her mouth, thrilled by the feeling and caught up in the vibrations the action sent clear to her toes.
Even as the kiss continued, as her heart raced and her pulse thumped against her skin, as his hands roamed up her back, making her arch deeper against him, thrilled her in ways she couldn’t fathom, one tiny part of her brain remained detached. She shouldn’t be doing this. Shouldn’t want this.
But a part of her, more powerful than that speck of common sense, argued passionately. She wanted more than this. She wanted the excitement. The adventure that being at his side had given her today and tonight. She wanted—