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  The place needed to be scrubbed, organized, and dusted, top to bottom, and as the new guy, lowest on the totem pole, this particularly arduous client fell to him to deal with. He had set out to prove himself worthy of the trust his boss, Marcello Penza, had placed in him. He’d let enough people down in his life already. And now, Marcello was going to freak when he found out—Dusty touched his lips.

  The front door of the studio opened. “You’re going to get soaked. Come inside.”

  Dusty looked up into Conrad’s blue eyes, peering at him from beneath an overhang of shaggy bangs.

  “Come on.” Conrad held open the door. “Get in out of the rain.”

  Dusty swallowed a knot of nerves and hurried up the steps, because as long as Conrad stood holding the door, he was also getting wet. So Dusty jogged through the door to stand dripping on the threshold between the office entrance and the bottom of the stairs leading to Conrad’s apartment above the studio.

  The warmth inside made his glasses steam over, so he took them off, sliding the arm of his hoodie over his face to dry off. Nestling the glasses on top of his head for safekeeping, he dropped the heavy duffle he had brought with him onto the floor. It landed with a muffled clatter, and he toed it onto the mat so it wouldn’t leave a puddle on the tile.

  “Better,” Conrad said, smiling wide enough to show a dimple. “Give me your coat—oh, well, hoodie, then.” Rather than wait for Dusty to comply, he proceeded to peel the soaked sweater from Dusty’s shoulders. “Take your shoes off. Do you want tea? Coffee? Hot chocolate? Soup?”

  “I’m—”

  “Shoes.” Conrad pointed. “I’ll take them up and put them over a vent so they can dry while you work. Gimme.”

  Dusty blinked at him but bent to obey, untying and slipping them off. The big toe of each foot poked, pink and cold, from the tears in his socks. He curled them under as heat flooded his cheeks.

  “Oh dear. Better give me those too. Your feet are soaked.”

  “It’s fine,” Dusty said, finally finding a breath of space to speak. “I’ll just—”

  “Socks,” Conrad ordered. “You always have to have warm, dry feet. Every dancer knows that. Hand them over. I’ll find you a clean pair and toss those—” He made a slight face. “Well. I’ve got plenty to spare.”

  “I am not taking your socks,” Dusty protested, moving out of the cramped space into the office proper.

  “You cannot walk in the studio with wet feet.”

  Which made no sense, because in a minute, he would be mopping the floor with a wet mop, but Conrad was all but glaring at him. Suddenly, overlaid on the squeamish man who had screamed about a spider, the compassionate man who hauled him in out of the cold rain, and even the pliant one who had let him take that scalding kiss… was the man whose reputation as a hard-assed dance teacher preceded him.

  “Socks.”

  Dusty swallowed his objections and peeled the socks from his feet.

  Conrad took them between a thumb and forefinger and dropped them into the trash can. “I’ll bring you a clean pair down after I’ve put your sweater and shirt into the dryer.”

  Dusty plucked at his damp T-shirt.

  Conrad lifted an eyebrow.

  “Uh. What will I—”

  Conrad pointed to a stack of T-shirts. Dusty had to squint and lean close to see the Sale $10.00 a shirt sign tacked to the wall above the pile. They had the studio’s logo on the front.

  “You can change in the kitchen if you prefer.”

  “I prefer not to take one of your shirts,” Dusty said. “I—”

  “Please.” Conrad’s gaze was so pleading, Dusty couldn’t ignore it. He stripped off his shirt, nearly losing his glasses, which he had forgotten were on his head. Conrad snagged the garment the second it cleared Dusty’s head and grabbed the top shirt from the pile. When Dusty pulled it on, it turned out to be two sizes too large, but there was no way he was changing. “Thank you.” He slid his glasses into place and the world came back into focus.

  Conrad smiled, and it was dazzling. His eyes cleared and brightened, and both cheeks sported deep dimples. “I’ll be right back. I’ve got the kettle ready to put on, and the coffee is brewing. If you’d like something to warm up, help yourself. I’ll be back in a jiff.” He stopped in the doorway leading to the stairs. “I like the glasses. Make you look”—he tilted his head, deepened his grin—“bookish.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  But Conrad was gone in a flash of long legs and flying curls.

  Bookish. That was definitely a new one for Dusty, and the last thing he was, ever. He shoved at his slipping glasses and scowled. Conrad would figure that out soon enough.

  He was back very quickly with warm, dry socks and a green woolen sweater that probably cost more than Dusty’s entire wardrobe. Dusty opened his mouth to protest, but the look on Conrad’s face vetoed anything he might say. He donned the socks and sweater and couldn’t help but pet his wool-clad arms. “So soft.” He’d expected it to be scratchy.

  “You like it?” Conrad peered at him. “Because it does really good things for your eyes.”

  Dusty’s face heated again. “Yeah?” He pushed at his glasses. “Thanks.” He ran a hand over the sleeve again. “It’s great.”

  TORN BETWEEN routine and the precarious stacks of empty CD cases and loose CDs piled on the stereo table, Dusty decided to sweep and mop the floor first. Routine had a way of soothing him, and besides, the floor needed plenty of time to dry. He’d tackle the shelves later. Halfway through the dry mop of the floor, a task that had warmed him enough to remove the sweater and tie a knot in the T-shirt to keep it out of his way, Conrad reappeared.

  “So that’s done,” Conrad announced. “Clothes should be all dry before you have to go. Coffee is almost ready. I’ll just plug in the kettle. What would you prefer?” As Dusty opened his mouth to respond, however, Conrad was already exiting the room, headed for the kitchen.

  Dusty chuckled. And he’d thought his nerves were bad.

  “—have a few different kinds,” Conrad said as he reentered the room. It sounded as though he hadn’t stopped talking all the while, and he now carried a stack of small cardboard boxes and was reading off the labels. “I have peppermint, Sleepy Time—no, that wouldn’t do right now, Conrad—rose hip, apple and ginger—” He screwed up his face and dumped the boxes on the table, plucked up a pale green one, and tossed it into the garbage bin. “Apple tea.” He shook his head. “No. There is also Earl Grey, Irish breakfast, though I guess it’s after lunch now, so that’s out.” He looked up at Dusty. “Isn’t it? Does one drink breakfast tea for lunch? But then why would it be called breakfast tea?”

  The kettle whistled from the other room, and he jumped, then laughed. “Right. Kettle. Have you decided?” He swept an arm toward the pile of boxes.

  “Coffee is fine,” Dusty said, smiling at the startled look on Conrad’s face.

  “Of course, of course. And how do you take it? Cream? Milk? I have brown sugar, white sugar, honey, I think, and probably some sort of sweetener if—”

  “It’s fine,” Dusty said, holding up a hand. “I don’t want to put you out.”

  “You’re not, I was making the coffee for myself, anyway. I’ll just fetch that for you.” And he disappeared again, this time for only a beat, then he was back, gathering up the tea boxes with a twitching, pink-cheeked smile.

  “Be right back,” he said again as he left.

  In a moment, he returned, this time only poking his head through the door to avoid the now-wet floor as Dusty worked. “How did you say you wanted that?”

  Dusty couldn’t stop the chuckle, and Conrad’s cheeks flushed even deeper. “I didn’t shut up long enough for you to say, did I? I run off, sometimes. Well. All the time. I talk—coffee.” He closed his eyes for a heartbeat and opened them, gazing at Dusty, and his expression was more eloquent than words in how it pleaded for Dusty’s understanding.

  For a moment, Dusty was almost overcom
e with the desire to tell him to shut up and come closer so Dusty could kiss him. He was almost sure Conrad would do it too. Then the moment passed as Conrad blinked, straightened, and ran a nervous hand down his side.

  “Some sugar and a touch of cream, please,” Dusty replied, keeping his tone soft, his smile in place.

  Conrad nodded and disappeared without so much as parting his lips.

  Dusty went back to mopping and was done with the far half of the room by the time Conrad returned with his travel mug, explaining the rules about open cups of liquid and the hardwood floor, and the number of teenagers going through the room on any given day. His chatter was endless, breathless, exhilarated, and Dusty let it swirl around them as he worked.

  He normally worked alone. Cleaning schools and offices was what he had done with most of his time since he’d dropped out of high school at sixteen. Those places were deserted when the cleaning companies descended with their mops and buckets. He generally managed to find space and time to work alone, even when he was on a crew. Random chatter often got on his nerves, confused him, and distracted him until he forgot what he was supposed to be doing. But as he listened to Conrad prattle, he found himself smiling, humming, and enjoying the rise and fall of the other man’s speech patterns.

  “I’ve talked your ear off—here, let me get the door—you must be sick of listening to me.” Conrad pushed at the crash bar on the studio’s back door and held it open as Dusty rolled the bucket out and tipped it over the stones behind the garden fence. “Most people get tired of listening to me go on.”

  The crash of the door behind them punctuated his comment as they came back in.

  “Hmm,” Dusty said, dropping the mop into the bucket and picking it up. “Most people are too busy in their own heads to know better.” He smiled at Conrad. “I don’t have a lot going on up there, so….”

  Conrad scowled at that but said nothing as he followed Dusty to the kitchen. He worked to refill their empty mugs as Dusty cleaned the bucket and put the tools away.

  “I thought I would take all the CDs down from the shelf and table and sort them, and rearrange the shelves to fit everything better as I dust. Would that be okay?”

  “What does that mean?” Conrad asked.

  Dusty blinked. “Which part? The organizing? The dusting?” He wasn’t sure what part of his question had been confusing. He rarely had a thought or question complicated enough to confuse anyone but himself.

  “You don’t have a lot going on up there.” Conrad pointed to Dusty’s head. “What does that mean?”

  “Oh! That.” Dusty shrugged. “I don’t think a lot of heavy thoughts,” he admitted. “It doesn’t take a great thinker to clean things or put CDs in order or stuff, you know?”

  “No,” Conrad conceded. “I guess it doesn’t.”

  He looked disappointed, and Dusty barely held back a sigh. Good he’d gotten that one inappropriate kiss in when he had, then. There was the look he got so often when people figured out he didn’t have a lot to say not because he was quiet or reserved, but because he literally had nothing to say about the few intelligent thoughts knocking around in his head.

  Silence descended, and Dusty busied himself getting out rags, all-purpose cleaner, and dry dusters. “Is that okay?” he asked again. “About the shelves?”

  “Yes.” Conrad seemed preoccupied suddenly, and Dusty forced the disappointment away. “Of course. Whatever you need, just say.” He handed Dusty his coffee.

  “Well, do you have boxes? I think if I move the CDs to the office, I can move the shelves around to hold them better and then dust the stuff that’s left before classes start. Then I can organize the CDs in the office while you’re conducting classes. Once everyone leaves, I can put them back….”

  Conrad was rummaging under the sink, clearly no longer listening. When he straightened, he handed over a roll of packing tape and some flattened boxes. “Will these work?”

  “Yes, sure.” Dusty forced a small smile. “Thanks.”

  “Of course.” Conrad offered a kind smile, but if he was going to say anything else, it was lost with the influx of the first students arriving off the school bus.

  Chapter 4

  AS HIS kids arrived and changed out of their street clothes to begin their warm-ups, Conrad watched Dusty efficiently construct the boxes and stack the mess of CDs and broken cases into them. His movements were spare and quick. He had twisted the end of the way-too-big T-shirt up around his waist, and he looked like one of the more petite dancers, his pert ass and slim waist the only glimpses of the body hidden by the drape of fabric.

  It was a moment before Conrad realized Eliza, one of his senior students, was standing in front of his desk awaiting his attention. He blinked at her and she smiled. Her lips quirked up fast and brief before settling back into her habitual pinched frown. Her eyes flashed to his face and away. She rarely made eye contact with him or anyone else. It was a problem when she partnered, and the guys found it frustrating to work with her. On her own, she was one of his very best, most promising students, but if she couldn’t find her courage and self-confidence on the stage, she would never make it in the business.

  Behind her, people filed in and out of the office, but he paid no attention to them.

  “Eliza?” He lifted an eyebrow at her.

  “I—I—here.” She held out her arm, a many-times folded check wavering at the end of her grip. “Mom said to give you this. I know it’s late, but—”

  “It’s fine. I talked to her.”

  Eliza’s arm remained outstretched, waiting for him to take the slip of paper.

  “Eliza, look at me.”

  Her gaze focused on his chin, as near as he could tell. “Eliza.” He waited.

  It took her three tries to meet his gaze, and when she did, he nodded curtly. “Better.” He plucked the check out of her fingers. “Take the girls to the far end of the studio and lead a quick warm-up. I’m going to help Dusty get the CDs squared away so he can work.”

  Eliza stared at him, eyes wide.

  He clapped his hands, making her blink. “Go! Go, go.” He waved her away toward the studio door, and she hustled, practically fleeing before him. “Run the third stretch combo, then the second, and finish with the fifth.”

  “Wha—what about Adam?” Eliza glanced to where Adam was watching them, his face pale, his lips clenched tight, clearly listening in.

  “Adam is a big boy. He can do his own warm-up. He needs to spend some time on his hips.” Conrad watched the young man’s reaction. He barely held back a sigh when those big brown eyes, fixed on him, grew bright. Adam looked away and hurried from the room to the farthest corner of the studio, behind a huge cardboard-and-tissue-paper tree, where he began to loosen up alone, his back to the rest of the room. The girls already assembling tittered as he passed, but no one stopped him or spoke to him.

  Eliza blushed. “Y-yes, sir.” She pressed her lips together, glared at him a moment, then hurried off.

  They all knew Adam had issues with his turnout. Conrad had gotten into it with the boy’s previous teacher about the way Conrad singled him out over the issue. She didn’t think it helped Adam any to be embarrassed in front of his peers for the way his body was built. If the kid couldn’t take the truth stated plainly, he would never survive the cutthroat world of professional ballet. Conrad believed in cultivating thick skins in his students. They would need the backbone if they wanted to work. He would never agree that coddling them would help them.

  “You don’t think that was a tad harsh?” Dusty’s quiet voice startled Conrad, and he glanced from Adam to him as Dusty deposited a box of CDs on the office floor in front of the couch.

  For an instant Conrad flushed with an old, familiar wish to please, but he shook it off. He was the director here, he made the rules, and that was his place. He had accepted that. He liked that about his job. And dammit, Dusty worked for him. He ignored the pinch of disappointment over that and faced the cleaner.

  “Lif
e is harsh,” Conrad said. “People are cruel. The world of professional ballet is filled with very many people coveting a very few jobs. If he can’t face the truth and deal with it, how will he handle it when people try to undermine him with rumors and innuendo and backstabbing?”

  Dusty had straightened from setting down the box, and he looked at Conrad with sad, deep eyes. “If it’s so terrible, why do you send them out into it?”

  “They want to dance.”

  Dusty smiled. “So let them dance.”

  “They do. Most of them quite well.”

  “Then let them enjoy being good at it.” Conrad followed as Dusty returned to the studio for a second box of CDs he had already loaded. “Don’t steal their passion because the world is a scary place. It doesn’t matter what they end up doing; the world will always be scary. Maybe, I don’t know, let this corner of it not be scary for them.” He looked up at Conrad, arms full of the box of CDs, and smiled again.

  Conrad stared at him. He made it sound very simple, but then lots of things were simple in theory, weren’t they? Maybe mopping floors and organizing CDs were very straightforward ways to make the world a brighter place. Turning out dancers who could hold their own in a world that would only ever judge them was not so plain a task.

  “Out in the world, these kids will dance for people who haven’t known them their whole lives. People who don’t know their strengths and don’t care about their shortcomings. People who can hurt them trying to make them do the impossible. It’s my job to make sure my kids are prepared. It’s not so simple or easy to strike the right balance.”

  It wasn’t. And making a corner of the world safe only made it hurt more when a man was thrust out of that corner and reality knocked him on his backside.