Page 18 of Fraud
I had little to go on, except for hair color and dress. She’d said the woman who was with the pushy New Yorker had long blonde hair and was wearing black.
That narrowed it down to a couple dozen females.
It didn’t take much time for me to realize something was going on in the center of the dance floor.
A dance-off?
No, this wasn’t high school.
As I got closer, it appeared to be a couple entertaining the crowd with their dance moves, causing the cheering and ear-piercing whistling I’d heard earlier.
Finding an empty spot, I decided to melt into the crowd and watch the pair for a while. It gave me time to scan everyone without awkwardly bumping into anyone by trying to move through everyone.
“She’s amazing, huh?” a female voice said from my right.
My eyes narrowed in on the two dancing in the middle of the circle. The guy was huge, obviously someone who spent a lot of time in the gym. His biceps were probably double the size of mine, and I wasn’t a scrawny guy by any means. He lifted his partner with ease, high above his head, making the women in the crowd all squeal with envy.
I noticed the black dress almost immediately.
And the mile-high legs.
“She is,” I answered, not bothering to turn my head.
“She’s always loved to dance. Ever since I can remember. The first time we went out dancing in college, she joked, saying she’d come out of the womb like this.”
I was barely listening to the woman as she shouted her nonsense next to me. I was too busy checking out the hot blonde in front of me.
She checked off every box. Long platinum-blonde hair, sexy black dress, and damn if she didn’t fit the personality of a woman who could write scorching-hot love scenes.
She somehow had everyone around her mesmerized. There were still stragglers on the edge of the dance floor, doing their own thing, but almost every set of eyes was fixated on the couple dancing in the middle. The sexual tension between her and her partner was enough to ignite a match in a rainstorm.
Wait, had that woman said something about knowing her?
Looking to my left, I saw nothing but a short guy staring hungrily at the woman in black. Turning to my right, I found her.
Dressed in a plain black business suit, she was pretty in an understated way—natural with hardly an ounce of makeup on, her long blonde hair pulled into a ponytail at the back of her neck. She smiled fondly rather than open-mouthed, like most of the people standing around.
“So, you know her?” I asked, knowing it was now awkward to try to strike up a conversation, considering I’d all but ignored her before.
Her eyes darted over to mine. “Um, yeah,” she replied, her voice a few degrees chillier than before.
What did she say? What did she say?
“College, huh? Did you attend locally?”
“Yes.”
Man, I’d screwed this up. My one in, and now, she was giving me the cold shoulder. I assumed this was the literary agent, keeping tabs on her crazy client and apparently friend.
Now, wasn’t that an interesting twist?
She turned away, her arms going squarely across her chest, effectively ending our short conversation.
Damn, I needed a miracle to break through that armor.
And, at that moment, as if God himself had heard my plea, my miracle was delivered—in the form of one large drunk guy.
As the music ended and the crowd began breaking apart—some making a sprint toward the bar while others made space on the floor—a big, hairy man, holding a beer the size of my head, turned suddenly, looking for his girlfriend as he called out for her, and knocked the adorable literary agent off her heels.
