Free In the Zone (Portland Storm 5) by Catherine Gayle Page B

to look at me, before I’d gained all the weight. Before my entire life plan had been ripped like a rug from under my feet. And it didn’t seem as though Keith was putting on an act in order to do it, which was really screwing with my head. No man had looked at me the way he did in almost four years now, but every time he turned in my direction, I could feel it.
    Like now.
    He’d parked near the pavilion, and Keith winked at me as he opened the trunk. He took out a blanket and we walked away from the car. The whole area was fairly well lit, and he guided me through the crowd, heading toward the riverbank—a realization that had me dragging my feet.
    “I don’t know what everyone’s here for, but there’s not a chance you’re going to get me in the water.” The temperature had to have dropped down into the thirties while we were at dinner.
    “Okay,” he said, and I could hear the smile in his voice. “I like the idea of taking you skinny-dipping at night sometime, though. Maybe in the summer, when it’s warmer. There’s a private place up near my house in Nova Scotia—”
    “Not in this life,” I cut in. Private or not, I wasn’t going skinny-dipping with anyone, anywhere, anytime. And what was he doing, trying to talk about us doing things together in the summer? We hadn’t even gotten through this date yet.
    “Never say never. I’m really persuasive. You might end up eating your words.”
    An odd sound came from my mouth, something along the lines of, hmph , and he reached for my hand. I took it, not thinking about how he might interpret my readiness to resume contact. He tugged me close to him, and the heat of his body warmed my side so much that I had to fight the urge to get even closer.
    When we got to the bank, everyone was spreading out on the lawn, finding places to sit and look out at the water. Okay, so that had me curious. I couldn’t imagine what we were watching for since it was already fully dark out.
    Keith found an empty space without too many people in front of us to block our view of the river, and he spread out the blanket. Once he had it settled, he took a seat and tried to ease me down to join him. There was one—big—problem, though. There wasn’t a graceful way for someone my size to get down to the ground while wearing a skirt. I ignored the help he was attempting to give me and situated myself as best I could, keeping a little space between us.
    “You’ll be warmer if you move over here with me.”
    “I know that.”
    “Are you scared of me?”
    “No.”
    “What are you scared of then?”
    Only everything he made me feel and the fact that at every turn, he continued to challenge everything I’d come to believe about myself. “What are we here for, Keith?”
    “You’ll see soon enough.” He squinted up the river.
    I turned my eyes in the same direction, but I couldn’t make anything out. “All right, be that way.” I sighed, tucking my skirt around my legs and drawing my coat tighter over my chest before zipping it all the way up to my neck. I might as well try to get him to talk because Lord only knew how long we’d be sitting here waiting for whatever mystery was yet to be unveiled. “So how is it that you understand as much about dance as you do? For someone who’s never danced before, you took to it well.”
    He didn’t answer me right away, so I craned my head around to look at him. He shrugged. “Garrett, my younger brother, was a dancer. I picked up on a bit of it, I guess, from watching him.”
    “You really never danced, though?” That was what he’d claimed during my class, but it was still difficult for me to believe. Cole Paxton had picked up on the movement about as quickly as any student I’d had in four years of teaching ballroom dance, and the speed Keith had learned it made Cole seem like a slow and plodding learner.
    “Nah,” Keith said. “Our younger brother, Shane, and I were too busy playing hockey to mess with that. We just