Free Romance: Dance with Me (California Belly Dance Romance Book 2) by DeAnna Cameron

through her hair and pulled it back in a ponytail. The easiest and quickest remedy for a terrible case of bed head.
    When she emerged from the guest room with her purse slung over her shoulder, she paused in front of the door to the music room, stunned by the sight of him in the chair in front of the mixing board and computer screen.
    “When you pull an all-nighter, you really pull—”
    A soft, gentle snore interrupted her.
    “Taz?” she said as she inched into the room. His elbows were on the table, and his chin was cradled in his hands. His chest rose and fell with each breath, but otherwise he was completely still. “You awake?”
    She took another step. He snored softly again.
    She bent her head to see his face, his eyes closed, his dark lashes resting against the rise of his cheeks. He looked… peaceful.
    She smiled to herself and backed out of the room.
    The first thing she saw when she stepped off the elevator at the office was her boss going through her inbox.
    “Good morning,” she said warily. It wasn’t often that she found him thumbing through her things. “Are you looking for something?”
    “Well, of course I’m looking for something,” Carl Deffner blasted back. His face was flushed around his temples, and his nostrils flared.
    “Okay,” she said more cautiously as she set her purse down on the desk corner. “If you tell me what it is, maybe I can help.”
    He’d already tugged a stapled stack of white papers out of the pile. “This is it. The budget forecast. I forgot we have a department review today. I need the report by one.”
    She stared at the stack. “That’ll take hours. It’ll take all day, at least a day.”
    He shrugged and walked back to his office. “I have to have it for the meeting. I know you’ll make it work. You always do.”
    You always do. Yeah, because she worked her butt off. She came in early, worked through lunch, and stayed late. All so Deffner could look good to his boss. Sure, he’d saved her a few times from the layoff list, but lately she was beginning to wonder if it was even worth it.
    Four hours later, her eyeballs felt like they were covered in starch from staring at the computer so long, but at least Deffner was happy. He’d been so relieved when she handed him the finished report, he hadn’t even balked when she said she was going to take the afternoon off.
    “Not feeling well, Drake?” he asked, pulling on his worn brown blazer, his typical attire for an executive-floor meeting.
    When she didn’t answer right away, he added, “It’s not one of those female complaints, is it? Wait, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”
    That wasn’t exactly the excuse she’d come up with, but it would do. She sucked in her lips and stayed silent.
    “Just forward my phone to voice mail before you leave.” And he was gone.
    When she’d packed up, she checked her to-do list to be sure she hadn’t forgotten anything. Everything was checked off. Everything but one thing: the audition registration. The thing she thought about every day but still hadn’t done.
    She couldn’t tell herself there wasn’t time. She had all afternoon.
    She couldn’t tell herself she’d do it later. How much later could she wait?
    If she was going to do it, it had to be now.
    It was going to be now.
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
    | 15
     
    Whatever complaint Taz had about the dance room’s acoustics was not evident to Melanie as she twisted and twirled through her choreography. It was a glorious dance space, a perfect dance space. She could hardly believe it was all hers, at least for a while.
    She was still trying to wrap her mind around it. It felt like a dream, like at any time, she could wake up and discover she was back in that room in her mom’s trailer, listening to the whir of cars zipping over the freeway overpass.
    It was heaven, dancing here with the lights low and the music loud, with no one watching but Spike in the corner, who it turned out was a girl after