Page 16 of Lovers' Dance

“Shut up, Matt,” Nathan interrupted brusquely. “I am not in the mood and you have some serious explaining to do.”

“Pardon me?” Matt was surprised at the sharpness of Nathan’s tone. His attitude since barging through his front door spelt trouble. Matt had no idea what had riled him.

“Madison DuMont,” Nathan ground out, trying to shake his coat over his shoulders. He grunted impatiently, then shoved the file and bottle at Matt, who awkwardly managed to grab it before everything fell on the floor.

“Nathan, leave it alone—”

“I will not,” he practically shouted as he removed his coat and flung it to the floor.

“Are you going to pick that up? George isn’t here at the moment and I’m not going to.”

Nathan glared at him before storming off towards the kitchen. Matt rolled his eyes and followed. When Nathan got like this, it was better to let him rant. For a thirty-seven-year-old man, he could act childishly. Matt tucked the file under his arm and sedately made his way to the kitchen. Nathan had two glasses out and was scowling at the countertop surface.

“Read the file,” he ordered, without preamble.

Matt walked over and laid the file on top the island. He silently opened the bottle of Scotch and poured two equal measures out before saying, “You’re perilously close to being tossed out of here on your ear, Nathan.”

“Just read the damn file.”

Matt drank his whiskey, sighed loudly and opened the file. His eyes widened, then he threw a laser stare at Nathan. “What in the world is this?”

“I looked her up, Matt. I found her for you.”

“Did I bloody ask you to, you insufferable twat.”

“Don’t you call me a twat. Are you out of your mind? She’s black. I understand now why you got your knickers in a twist that day on the yacht, why you were worried about whether you had racist tendencies. For the love of God, Matt, are you insane?”

Matt had tuned out Nathan’s tirade. He was busy reading what could only be called a dossier about Madison. His grey eyes flickered to the picture stapled on the first page. How could he have forgotten how beautiful she was? Those brown doe eyes of hers that lit up when she smiled. Her mouth, that perfectly kissable mouth of hers, he longed to feel against his skin.

“Are you listening to me?” Nathan slammed a hand down on the counter. Matt ignored him, scanning the pages, learning as much as he could about her.

“Oh, poppet,” he murmured softly when he read about her parents’ untimely death. “Jesus, Nathan, she was only six when her parents died.”

“I read the file. I know all about her, and did you fucking call her poppet?”

Matt ignored him, as his cheeks flushed with embarrassment. He picked up the file, reading it and walked out of the kitchen. A clink of glasses came from behind him. Then an irate, “Twenty-six-years-old? You’ll be thirty-seven next month. That’s a whole decade, Matt. When you were kissing girls at twelve; she was probably still in nappies. You’re mad, mad.”

“Shut up,” Matt murmured, completely engrossed in the file as he made his way to the study. There were newspaper clippings about the accident which had claimed her parents’ lives. They were on their way out of London, a family trip to the Lake District up north, when a drunk truck driver had swerved into their lane, colliding head-on with their car. It was a miracle she had survived.

“I won’t allow this, Matt. How do you expect your family to react—”

“If you don’t shut up this instant and let me read this, I will escort you off my property,” Matt said tersely, while sitting behind his desk. There were two pages detailing her schools attended, childhood activities, part-time jobs, three on her extended family in New York. Matt raised an eyebrow. Aunt Cleo? What sort of name was that? There were photographic copies of her British passport, her American passport, her social security number.

“I can’t believe she’s British. She didn’t tell me that.”

“Well, from what you said, you didn’t do much talking,” Nathan chastised as he pulled out a chair across the desk and sank into it, the bottle of Scotch and two glasses in front of him.

“She attended the School of American Ballet. They’re quite well known,” Matt mused to himself.

“Matthew, it doesn’t matter if she attended…Look, get to the bit when she turns eighteen. Look at her net worth then. It’s page eight.”

“What does that matter?” Matt groused, flicking over a few pages. He wanted to go over in fine detail every bit of info about her, not fast forward. “She inherited almost two million pounds? Well, that’s good.”

“Look at her net worth now, page ten.”

Matt tore his gaze from the sheets of paper on his desk to level Nathan with a venomous scowl. “I don’t care what she’s worth on paper.”

Nathan’s mouth fell open, he filled his glass, tossed it back, then began to berate Matt. “Are you hearing yourself? She’s in debt, owns a dance studio in Greenwich which she put most of her money into and has a mortgage on those premises. At least she owns her house outright, a pokey little terrace—”

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