Page 73 of Forbidden Dance
“Not that I can tell.”
“If she follows you, then she saw the Tweet?”
His lips pinch together. “Yeah. Hers was the only call I took the next day.”
“What did she say?”
“That I would get through this.”
“And your dad?”
He laughs, a bitter sound that startles me. I’ve never heard Blitz sound that way. “He thought it was a riot. He’s never been fond of my dancing. He’s one of those ‘men should be men’ sort of fathers.”
“I remember you saying he didn’t allow you to take ballet.”
“Yep. Good ol’ Dad. I swear half the time I say something disgusting on the show, it’s a phrase I learned from him.”
“But he’s proud of you now, right?”
We pause at a red light. “I guess. He definitely approves of my carousing. He always asks ridiculous questions about…” He falters. “Stuff he doesn’t need to know.”
I can imagine. “Well, you could tell him my bra size, but I’m not currently wearing one.”
He sucks in a breath. “Princess, you’re tempting me sorely, and my intentions are strictly honorable tonight.”
They are? I press my knees together. Why is it I wear panties when we’re being crazy, and I skip them when he’s being a gentleman? I need an instruction manual for torrid relationships.
For the uninitiated, Blitz Craven is a crash course in sexy.
We pull up in front of a towering hotel. A man in a uniform dashes out and opens my door. “Come inside, Miss,” he says.
Another man heads around to the driver’s seat.
I’m escorted into a posh lobby, warm and cozy, the lights dimmed for evening. The man heads back to the doors as Blitz makes it inside. I can finally take him in, the long gray wool coat he wrapped me in earlier, black jeans, a thick corded sweater in steel blue.
He takes my hand as we cross the lobby to the elevator bank.
“Just so you know, I didn’t book the room we’re about to go to,” he says. “I tried to pick something ordinary, but the staff upgraded me anyway. For my privacy, allegedly. Probably they are worried I’ll throw a party.”
He takes me to an elevator away from the grouping in the center. Blitz extracts a card from his pocket and passes it in front of a sensor. The elevator doors open smoothly.
“You need a special pass to ride this one?” I ask. I haven’t been in a hotel in years, since the time before. And even then, they were always motels with stairs on the outside of the building.
“Keeps out the riffraff,” Blitz says as we go inside. “Or perhaps in my case, prevents access to the riffraff.”
There are no buttons, and a display screen reads “Good evening, Mr. Craven.”
“How does it know?” I ask. I’m like a child in a toy store, looking around. The back of the elevator is glass and provides a view of the atrium.
“The card tells it,” he says. “So it knows what room to send you to.”
“What if you want to go somewhere else?” I ask.
He laughs. “I don’t know, actually. Maybe nobody ever does.”
I punch at the screen. A menu comes up. One of the choices is “Override destination.” I hit it. The elevator smoothly glides to a stop.
“There you go,” Blitz says.
