#scenebreak
A few minutes later, the three of us walked into the dance studio. Officer Friendly’s petulant persona returned. “You think we didn't try the studio? It was locked and empty.”
“Did you check the whole thing or just the ballroom?” I crossed the floor to the storage closet. “Tango?” I opened the door to her inner sanctum.
She sat on the floor with a mountain of toilet paper rolls stacked around her like a castle. She saw me and her face lit up. She jumped to her feet but stopped when Officer Friendly poked his head through the doorway. The distinct lack of red eyes and running mascara told me she hadn't been crying. She was pissed.
“Tango?” Corey called from behind me.
Ever hear the saying about Hell and a woman scorned?
Yeah. Not even close.
She exploded past me, planted her hands on Corey’s chest and shoved him. “You son of a bitch,” she shouted, and that was the nicest thing she called him. “I saw you fucking Monika through your bedroom window!” She shoved him again. “You don't ever step foot in my studio ever again!”
Warren made a move like he was going to intervene.
“Really?” I asked quietly. “You really think getting in the middle of that is a good idea?” She wasn't hitting him or anything, just yelling a lot and shoving. I almost felt bad for Corey.
“How'd you know she was here?” Officer Friendly asked while Tango shouted.
I sighed. “Tango came to talk to me. I told her not to break up with Corey, which, in hindsight, almost guaranteed that she would. She is not someone to put things off, so she went directly to Corey's, where she looked through the window and saw Monika visiting. . .”
“For milk and cookies,” the cop completed for me.
“For milk and cookies.” I shrugged. “Once you get that far, it's only logical that she'd head for the one really safe space she knows.”
“A broom closet?”
“You've never worked in a dance studio.” I jabbed a thumb at the room. “Most studios don't have an actual break room, so the pros hide out in the storage closet when they need a quiet moment to detox.”
Tango wound down finally. “And to think I felt guilty about one stupid kiss when you were screwing her brains out.”
“Kiss?” he asked, glaring at me as if I were a traitor.
Oops.
“No!” Tango pulled the rug out from his anger with a very pointed finger. “You do not get to even think about resenting him for that.”
Corey shrank.
“I kissed Foxtrot. I kissed him and he stopped me and told me not to break up with you.” She glanced at me. “Still glad about that?”
My super power is a blank expression.
Corey's brow squinched up. “So is he gay or not?”
She made a noise that defied spelling. It sounded something like “Argh” but went on a lot longer and had a Mexican accent. She shoved him out of the studio with a hearty, “And stay out.”
As the door slammed, I swear Warren and I had the same idea: “Please God, let her not spew forth her fury at me!” How did we end up on the same team about anything?
Tango strode toward me and caught up after I'd only taken about three terrified steps backward. She threw her arms around me and latched on. “I am so glad you're a gentleman.”
She kissed me.
Hard.
Ow, since I’d just been punched, but, oh well. . . no complaints.
She looked me square in the eyes. “Still glad you were loyal to him?”
Back to terrified. There was no right answer to that question.
Fortunately, she turned to Officer Friendly. “Why are you still here, Warren?” She did a double take. “Why were you here in the first place?”
He froze like a dancer his first time in front of the judges.
“Just go,” I whispered.
He took off like a shot. Speaking of which, he stopped at the edge of the dance floor and turned to me briefly. “Sorry I almost killed you, Foxtrot.” He dashed out.
Tango didn’t say anything. Her eyes darted across my features as if seeing them for the first time and trying to take in every single detail.
I held her face in my hands and relaxed my body forward to hers.
We kissed.
My hands slid into her hair. It fell out of her pony tail in smooth, silky waves. My fingers travelled to the bottom edge of her blouse and ran across the skin of her waist, bringing a breathy little gasp. She pulled me even closer and chewed on my neck.
It sent chills all the way down to my toes.
That whole butterfly thing happened again.
Clack. Clack. Clack. Clack.
Seriously? Monika? Here? Now?
“Hope I'm not interrupting anything.”
“Seriously, Monika?” I said. “Here? Now?”
Tango kept an arm around my waist. I had no idea how this was going to go down, but just how damned would I be if I thought a cat fight between them might be a tiny bit sexy?
“Why Corey?” I asked Monika. “You had to know that would leave a door open for me and Tango. Doesn't that actually hinder your plot for world domination?”
She played with a stray hair. “The best laid plans blah, blah, blah.” She smiled at the innuendo. “Turns out he doesn't have a twin, and I really wanted to find out if what Tango told me was true.” She winked and flashed Tango a thumbs up.
Tango covered her face with a hand but made no move to fulfill my cat fight fantasy.
I squeezed her. “Not going to lay into her?”
Tango rolled her eyes at the stupidity of all males. “She didn't do anything wrong.”
Confused, I had to ask. “She slept with your boyfriend and that doesn't bother you?”
“Apparently, you don't know girls as well as you think you do,” Monika interjected. “He cheated on her. I didn't cheat on anybody. . . last night, anyway. If it hadn’t been me, it would’ve been someone else.” She stopped in that feet-too-wide-apart stance. “It'd be stupid for her to get mad at me when Hung-like-a-horse made up his own mind, such as it is.”
Girls. are. really. complicated.
Wait a minute. “What do you mean you didn't cheat on anyone last night?”
She waved away my concern as if it didn't matter. “The past is dead, Foxtrot. I'm here to talk about your future.”
Not quite able to pretend I wasn't fuming about the idea that she might have cheated on me, I held Tango a tiny bit closer. “What do you want, Monika?”
She smiled like the cat who’d just eaten a pound of Alaskan Salmon. “There’s been an. . . interesting development.”
“Seriously? You screw Corey and think I give a shit about anything you have to say?”
She fiddled with her nails, way too nonchalant for my comfort. “I think you’ll want to hear this, no matter who I fuck.” That was her act when she was confident she could do anything and still win. “There's another deal on the table.”
“I'm not interested,” I shot back.
Her confident smile scared me. “Oh. . . I think you are.” She drew an envelope out of a jacket pocket. “If we take first at Blackpool?” She extended the envelope. “We're both guaranteed spots on the next season of Dancing with the Stars.”
Tango squeezed me tighter, but that wasn't the reason I couldn't breathe.
How could I say no to that? The offer was too good to be true, but she wouldn't be here for a hoax. That wasn't her style. But she must have known about the deal last night. LA still slept at whatever stupid early hour it was. When she screwed Corey, she’d known it would free Tango and me to be together. She’d also known it would make my skin crawl every time I danced with her, with Monika, I mean. She knew all three of us, Tango, Corey and me, would be hurt tremendously.
And she’d done it, anyway.
Her eyes narrowed as she focused her complete attention on Tango while holding the envelope out to me. “Who's first
place loser now, bitch?”
Holy shit. “You had sex with Corey to score points?” I asked. “This was a contest for you?”
She waved the envelope at me. “I like to win. You know that.” When I didn’t accept it, she placed it on a nearby table. “National television.” She walked away. “It’s worth thinking about.”
Tango didn’t speak until the door closed. “How does a real human being even get that evil? Has she always been like this?” What she really wanted to know was if I’d known my ex was an evil bitch while we were dating.
“She’s the only girl I’ve ever dated, so what do I know from evil? I figured all relationships were like ours.” I stared at the envelope. “She was always driven, competitive. But so was I.” I wandered off the dance floor. “In hindsight, it’s been worse the last year or so.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you really want to talk about my ex?”
“No. Not right now.”
We stared down at the envelope that contained a letter of intent from a major TV network.
“Wow,” Tango said. “Dancing with the Stars. That’s like, the Holy Grail for ballroom.”
“It is.”
“How soon do you suppose you have to decide?”
“I don’t know. I’m afraid to read the letter.”
“Why?”
“I’m afraid it’ll be too hard to turn down.”
She took my hand. “It’s sort of a damned if you do, damned if you don’t thing, isn’t it?”
“I do this, I lose all self-respect and probably my immortal soul along with it, so, yeah, damned if I do.”
“But opportunities like this don’t come along very often.”
“So I turn it down, I likely live a life filled with regret.”
She sighed. “Remember when Monika first showed up and I told you not to throw away something you’d later regret?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s my mom’s life in a nutshell.” She pulled me to chair. “She was a great dancer. Well, she still is, but when she was younger she was beautiful and sexy and she lucked out. This guy saw her dance. He owned a company producing a tango show in LA. He begged her to join the cast. It wasn’t a huge part, but it was a foot in the door, right?” She sighed again. “But Nana got sick and couldn’t run the studio on her own. Long story short, my mom turned him down. The show went to Broadway and they even made a DVD version.”
She looked at me. “She would never show it, but I hear her crying sometimes, and I know what it is.” She squeezed my hand. “I would hate to see you end up like my mom. . . especially if I’m part of the reason you’d give it up. I don’t want to do that to anyone. . . ever.” Her eyes grew moist. “So if I’m the reason you’d give this up, then, for my sake, you have to take it.”
Okay. . . wrap your head around that shit.
nine
Twist watched the feed from the camera on Fox’s backyard privacy fence. Nothing he’d ever record. Seriously. That boy needed to learn how to wear a swimming suit. It was disgusting.
The entire alley that ran behind the house was fenced off, so he’d been able to work there completely undetected. He filed the information away for future reference and tapped over to another feed. He needed to find a girl’s locker room before his eyes were permanently scarred.
The new offer from the slut was a bonus. It had to be the result of his green candle spell. It had to be. Maybe the magic was helping after all. He kept the women’s locker room at the gym open in one window while researching a spell to force Fox to accept the TV deal.