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

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    The music nudged Melanie, pushing her one way then another. She liked to imagine the rhythm as a flesh-and-blood partner. She played with it, and teased it. She felt it engulf her, moving her hips, her feet, her arms, her chest. At the end of the slow melody, the taksim , she struck a pose, bent into a bow, and felt the last ounce of energy drain away from her.
    The music continued to fade, slowly, slowly, until it melted completely into silence.
    The sound of clapping broke the spell. She snapped her head up, and Taz was there, casually leaning against the open doorway, as though he had been there awhile. Spike noticed him, too. The dog yipped, jumped, and ran to his owner’s black leather boots.
    “You’ve met Spike?” Taz said, smiling. He bent down to scratch behind the dog’s perked-up ears. “I didn’t know if you were a dog person, so I left her in the garage until we sorted things out. Right, Spikey? Right?”
    Something dopey and adorable happened to people when they were around small, cute animals. Apparently it happened to world-famous drummers, too.
    “I think Spike had other ideas,” Melanie said. She stared at the red polish on her toenails. “I want to apologize for what I said yesterday. Sometimes my brain takes a vacation while my mouth is still moving. I didn’t mean—”
    His hand shot up, and he shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. I know people talk.”
    He looked like he wanted to say more, but he didn’t.
    She changed the subject before she could say anything else she’d regret. “How long have you had Spike? She’s so cute.”
    “A couple years,” he said, scratching the dog’s belly. Spike had rolled onto her back and nipped at the air in what looked like complete and utter euphoria. “She used to be Gina’s. She left her behind when she moved to New York. Her building doesn’t allow pets.”
    “She must miss her. I mean, look at her. She’s the definition of cute.”
    The little thing was wiggling and preening now, like she knew she was being praised.
    “She’s pretty smart, too. Watch.” Taz flipped his finger in a circle, and the dog rolled over. He clapped and the dog sat up, straight as a razor. Taz made a gun with his thumb and forefinger. “Bang!” he said, and Spike rolled onto her side and played dead.
    When Taz said, “Okay,” Spike bounced up and wiggled again.
    “Good girl,” Taz said and rubbed her ears.
    “Guess you aren’t the only one with talent in this house,” Melanie said. “So I’ve been getting acquainted with the house, and I have to ask, what’s with all the white? This place is like a museum. I’m afraid to touch anything.”
    He chuckled. “You’ll get over it. Right now you see white, but after a while, you’ll notice the colors. In the morning, it’s yellow. Around noon, it’s more blue. At sunset, you get the warm orange, then violet. Eventually, we get all the colors of the spectrum in here. That was my dad’s plan, anyway.”
    “I didn’t think of it that way,” she said, chastened. There she went, sticking her foot in her mouth again. “I guess I’m just not used to it. I’m used to tiny, dingy apartments. Tiny, dingy trailers. Tiny windows, if I’m lucky. All this wide-open, airy space, I’m just not used to it.”
    She thought she saw him shudder. Compact spaces had never bothered her. She kind of preferred them. She had lived in larger places—nothing as large as his house—but the house where they had lived before Dad left was a two-story, four-bedroom house with a pool in the backyard. It was what some people probably considered a suburban dream home. What she remembered most about living there, though, was the hours spent cleaning it. Every Saturday morning she had her list of chores: vacuum, dust, clean the windows and mirrors, and sweep. Between her and her mother, they cleaned that house every weekend, from the floorboards to the ceiling corners, until it practically sparkled. Her mother would