“You are a kind young woman. Gregory’s lucky to have you.” He patted her arm in paternal fashion. “Let me give you a piece of advice. Don’t be an old lady on her deathbed, wishing she’d had the courage to do what she longed to do. Go out and reach for what you want. Even if it doesn’t pan out, you won’t regret that you didn’t try.”
“That is some of the best advice I’ve ever had.” She touched his hand so he knew she had listened. Then she took a step back. “Maybe you should listen to it.”
He barked a laugh. “I’m an old man.”
“But not on your deathbed.” She flashed a grin at him. “Vivian, by the way, wakes up at eight in the morning. By nine, she’s quite ready to take calls, and she loves receiving letters and cards in the mail. She also likes yellow roses.”
One of Randolph’s eyebrows arched. Hanna inclined her head, then turned to rejoin Gregory at the edge of the area cleared out for dancing.
Gregory kissed her cheek, lips warm against her skin, and crooked his arm for her to hook her hand onto. “You have that look that says you’ve been making trouble. What were you and Randolph talking about?”
“Robert, who has studiously avoided me tonight, may I note, and when he started speaking against you. That was about the time you pulled the financial data for the company. Randolph also had interesting information about your grandfather. Henry apparently talked about leaving the company to Robert up until the end. Then Henry started fading, and started pondering his regrets in life. You were his choice to take the company after that.”
“That’s interesting. He and I never really talked about it.”
“Apparently Henry and Randolph were good friends.” Hanna smirked. “Then I started trying to set him up with your grandmother.”
Both of Gregory’s eyebrows headed for his hairline. “You’re matchmaking my grandmother?”
“Call it payback for matchmaking us.”
“I can’t argue with that.” He eyed the dance floor as the string ensemble played the opening refrain of the next song. “You realize they’re going to want to see us dance. If you don’t know how, I can fend them off.”
“As it happens, Mister Pierce, Idoknow how to dance,” Hanna teased. “At one of my previous assignments, I had lessons so one of my employers had a practice partner. He wanted to surprise his wife by learning how to dance.”
“Then perhaps I could ask you for this dance.” Her heart skipped a beat as he bowed from the waist and held his hand out to her.
“I would love to,” she said, her own hand shaking with excitement as she placed it in his.
Then he swept her onto the dance floor, and she had no time for nervousness. Only elation as his other hand settled on her waist and he pulled her against him. Her muscles remembered the steps she’d practiced so many times and took them without a need for her to think, leaving her free to enjoy the feel of his body pressed to hers. Subtle squeezes and gentle, silent commands guided her backwards, to the left, through a turn or a spin, and left her mind in a whirl of thoughts and fantasies.
She couldn’t help but imagine them so close in the dim light of his bedroom, his hands on her as he directed her to do all the things she had wished she could. Dancing with him, she couldn’t help but wonder why the fairytales left out how those whirling, romantic dances left the princesses aching for more. More dances, ones in private where they could pause to touch each other, more nights after the ball spent remembering the look in his eyes as he gazed down at her, full of heat and adoration and need.
Unfamiliar faces ringed the area where they danced, watching with surprise or calculation, or even jealousy. Yet those faces fell away as she focused on Gregory, on the way they moved with each other. They knew the steps, but that was only the start. They knew each other, worked well as a team, and he was just as surely her prince as she felt like his princess, worthy of his love. Not a distant prince, too perfect and too shallow to keep in her heart.
No fairytale talked about how the prince ate peanut butter from the jar. This was a prince she could hold. A man before he was moneyed, a good soul before his coronation elevated him. He was so much more than the fairytales ever made possible, and she knew she had fallen hard. He was her love, and in his eyes, she saw that mirrored in him.
Perhaps the music ended. Hanna didn’t notice. She knew only that his hands brought her to a halt, that the one on her waist slipped to the small of her back to draw her into him. His other hand cupped her cheek even as she reached up to cup his. Moving together as they had throughout the waltz, she leaned up, and he leaned down, until their lips met.
Nothing existed but the touch of his lips and the fire it ignited in her. She slipped her hands into his coat to rest one on his hip, while the other flattened against his back, as much to touch him as to hold herself upright. This moment, this embrace eclipsed every daydream she had ever entertained of the first time she kissed the love of her life.
Applause broke out. The swell of sound pulled them out of the kiss, though it had begun to fade anyway, and left them blushing in the center of the crowd. Even then, she couldn’t look away from him. He was flushed, beaming with the same joy she felt, and the firm pressure of his hand at the small of her back promised more kisses later. When the crowd had gone home, and they could savor them in private.
A sharp chill blew past her. Goosebumps prickled on her arms at the sudden cold, though her tattoo burned hot on her back. Hanna took a quick step back to glance around. She didn’t have to look far.
All eyes had turned to the double doors at the entrance of the room. Darlene stood, clad in an expensive dress that did not flatter her form or complexion, face twisted into a sour pucker. She stomped across the room, heedless of her slender-heeled pumps, to the dance floor. The crowd parted to allow her through.
Gregory took a step forward. As he did, he gently pushed Hanna back behind the protective barrier of his arm. “Mom? I’m glad you could join us.”
Darlene’s mouth opened. What emerged was a distressing, confused snarl of sound. Then Darlene keeled over to collapse motionless on the floor.
* * *
“Darlene? Darlene, can you hear me?”Darlene’s skin was cold as ice as Hanna gently shook the fallen woman’s shoulder. No response. Hanna grabbed Darlene’s arm to pinch her wrist and check for a pulse.
Nothing. When Hanna put her hand on Darlene’s chest and watched carefully, she did not see the rise and fall of respiration.
“You. Call 999,” she told one of the women, who scrambled in her clutch purse for a cell phone. “Gregory, get Laura down here from upstairs.”