“What do you think?”

“It can’t be.”

The square angle of his jaw was right above her eye level. He was clean-shaven, his skin firm and tan. His head was bent over hers. Her eyes wandered the flat planes of his cheeks, the high curves of his cheekbones, the thick, dark brown eyebrows, the elegantly carved nose. His glinted down at her, impossible to read. But there was something in their depths that told her he was every bit as aware of her as she was of him.

That he could feel her, too.

Her heart was beating too fast still, but not because of Holly now.

“There you go, then,” he replied, and swung her around in a movement of the dance. Refusing to be distracted by an action she guessed was deliberately designed to do exactly that, she narrowed her eyes at him with quick suspicion.

“I’m dreaming this, right?”

He sighed. His hand gripped hers more firmly. She could feel the thickness of his palm, the slight roughness of his fingertips. She could feel the texture of his soft cotton T-shirt and the tensile flexing of his shoulder beneath it. She could feel how big and muscular he was, how absolutely, unmistakably male, and whether it was a dream or not her pulse went all tremulous and her stomach began to quiver.

Real. This feels real. He feels real.

“Jesus, Doc, relax for once. Go with the flow. Just dance with me,” he said, which wasn’t really an answer at all. But she didn’t argue, because she didn’t feel like arguing anymore, and because she discovered that she liked being in his arms, in a major way, and because this had to be a dream, which meant she could relax and enjoy it because none of it mattered. Now that she thought about it she knew for sure it was a dream, as they were still on the dance floor at the Sanderling, dancing politely while the band played. The same couples as before were dancing all around them, and the same spectators crowded the edge—and while Garland was wearing his jeans and boots and T-shirt, she was out on the dance floor, in the midst of everything, in her flimsy shortie nightgown and bare feet, which wasn’t even remotely possible.

I can feel the texture of the floor beneath my feet. I can smell … What can I smell? Slow-roasting meat, and the citronella from the torches, and plants and flowers and a hint of perfume from the woman in the black dress who just danced by. I can smell Garland. He smells like the sea.

His hips cradled hers. His thighs moved against her thighs. She could feel the roughness of his jeans against her bare legs. She could feel the pressure of his hand splayed possessively across the small of her back.

The music was that same torchy love song that had played before, with its slow, throbbing beat.

We’ve got tonight.…

Dancing with him, swaying to the music, the tough leather of his boots sliding alongside her bare feet, she felt her body start to pulse with that same slow, torchy rhythm.

Earlier, when she’d been dancing, first with Tony and then, for that brief, infuriating moment, with Garland, her body hadn’t quickened and started to go all warm and liquid inside. It hadn’t softened, and it hadn’t wanted.

But this time, in Garland’s arms, in her dream, it did.

“Where’s Tony?” she asked, because if this was some kind of semi-skewed re-creation of her evening, Tony should be in it, too, along with Crane and Kaminsky, although she hadn’t seen them yet, either.

A muscle twitched at the corner of his mouth.

“Fuck Tony,” Garland replied coolly, which made Charlie smile because it sounded so exactly like something Garland would say that her dream suddenly felt way real again.

Only it wasn’t, because it couldn’t be.

But it felt real enough when, without warning, his thigh moved between hers, rough and solid, pressing against her, sliding hard against her silky panties. The effect was electrifying. Her body instantly tightened. It instantly burned.

“What …” Her eyes shot to his face in instinctive protest, but then she was distracted by the realization that there was now a ceiling above them as they danced. Dark and metallic, it glittered with a thousand brilliantly colored stars thrown by a disco ball that hung spinning high above her head. Charlie gaped at it, gaped at the crowd, which as quick as a blink had turned rougher and younger, and at the packed tables crammed in around the dance floor. The smell had changed, too: it was now popcorn and beer. Cool smooth wood lay beneath her feet. The couples dancing near them looked like bikers and their babes. The bar stretching along the far wall was packed with revelers. The vibe was low-class and raucous, the decibel level off the charts. The music was hotter, wilder, with a different, pulsing rhythm. The song—she knew that song. What was it?

Adele’s wailing “Rolling in the Deep.”

“… just happened?” she finished, because the transformation was so mind-boggling she forgot that she had been meaning to conclude with a starchy “… do you think you’re doing?”

Holding her close, swaying with her to the pounding music, moving that long, powerful thigh between her legs to devastating effect, Garland smiled into her eyes. She could feel every muscular inch of him. The combination was enough to send a fresh infusion of heat rushing through her veins.

Forget starchy. This was its opposite.

“Don’t know. But this is more my kind of place.”

“How did we get here?” Foolish question. How did anyone get anywhere in a dream?

“Beats me.” The music was so loud that he had to speak right in her ear. “Whatever you do, don’t let go of me, Doc. Wouldn’t want to lose you.” She felt his warm breath against her skin, and then what she thought were his lips, nuzzling the outer curve of her ear. A delicious little shiver ran along her nerve endings. She didn’t pull away.

“Do you think that’s possible?” The thought was faintly worrisome. He lifted his head to look down at her. Charlie frowned at him.

“Who knows? This is one screwy dream. I vote we don’t test it.” His voice took on a husky note. “Put your arms around my neck, Doc. Both of ’em.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Garland lifted the hand he was holding and guided it around his neck. Charlie didn’t resist. Instead her arms encircled his neck while he wrapped his arms around her waist. He was holding her so tightly now that it was hard to know where she ended and he began.

Because of his height and her lack of shoes, hanging on to his neck pulled her up onto her toes. She was practically glued against the warm, taut wall of his chest while his body moved suggestively against hers. The pleasurable throb inside her intensified until it was something way hotter and more liquid.

This is sexual foreplay to music, she thought. This baddest of bad guys was heating her up. Turning her on.

He was doing it deliberately, too, she was sure, and she—face facts—was reveling in it.

“I don’t know how to dance like this.” She sounded faintly breathless to her own ears. Sad to realize that she had never given herself the opportunity to learn. From the time she was seventeen, her life had been all about accomplishing one goal. She hadn’t played, she hadn’t partied, and unless a social occasion she was attending had called for it, she hadn’t danced. And even when she had, those had been country club dances. Nothing like what was going on around her now.

“Just hang on and trust me. You trust me, don’t you, Doc?”

“No.” She shook her head, and he laughed.

She was plastered so close against him that she was able to feel every bulge and sinew and belt buckle and zipper, moving with him like he was her lover, like he was her man. She had never in her life danced the way they were dancing now, swaying and sliding and turning and writhing in a sensuous give and take that made her feel like someone she didn’t even know.