Read In the Zone (Portland Storm 5) for Free Online Page A

was fairly certain it was because he was pretty to look at and not necessarily because of his expert dancing skills that they were trying to run each other over to partner with him. Of course, he might yet surprise me and have a few moves. Anything was possible. Too bad for those women he was far more likely to be interested in one of the other guys in the room for anything beyond a dance partner. He took one of the ladies by the hand, and the other two practically ran over each other again in an effort to be the first to get in front of me, only further confirming my earlier assumption.
    I held out a hand to one of them, a blonde, and she smirked at the brunette she’d been racing. Then we took our positions.
    “I’m Jenni,” she said breathlessly.
    I barely spared her a glance. I couldn’t seem to rip my gaze away from Brie since she was here, in the flesh, and I’d never expected to lay eyes on her again. “Keith,” I finally replied.
    Standing in the center of the room, Brie clapped her hands for our attention. “We’re going to be working on the waltz again today,” she said once we’d quieted down. “Why don’t we start off with just a basic box step so we can refresh our memories, all right? And since we have a few people who are new to the class, let’s have a couple demonstrate what the box step is. Cole and Alexis?”
    Colesy and his partner took up a hold and waited for Brie to count them off to the music being piped in.
    “Keep going until I ask you to stop, please. All right, and one, two, three, one, ready, go,” she said. “Gentlemen, watch Cole’s feet, and ladies, watch Alexis’s. Note the way their weight shifts from foot to foot. When you move forward, use a heel lead. Moving backward, your toe should hit the floor first. You see how it’s a rocking motion, going from foot to foot?” After a couple of times through the box, Brie stepped up behind Colesy, adjusted his hold a bit, and whispered something in his ear.
    As soon as she did that, he straightened his posture and seemed to bring his hips up under his shoulders better. Yeah, if he had to think about things like that, these classes would definitely help his core strength. Maybe Bergy was onto something with telling him to take dance. Who would have thought it?
    “All right. Any questions?” Brie asked while she moved behind Alexis and made similar adjustments to her posture and hold.
    A few murmurs spread throughout the room, but no one spoke up and asked anything.
    “Okay, you two can stop then. Everyone get into closed hold with your partners. We’re all going to try it together before we move on to something more complicated.”
    Even though I’d watched Garrett dance for years, I’d never done it myself. Still, I knew enough to have a pretty basic idea of how to get into hold. I put my left hand up for Jenni to take and settled my right hand on her shoulder blade. Then I let my gaze travel around the room again.
    There were the perfect number of men and women in today’s class—something that Colesy had told me not to expect. He’d said there were always more women than men, that sometimes the women had to pair up together, with one of them leading the other. Not today, though. There wasn’t a single person in the room without a partner except Brie, and she was the one I kept staring at. I couldn’t help but wish I were dancing with her. I wanted to get my hands on her again, even if it was in a waltz hold and not at all the way I’d held her before.
    “You need to lift your arm up,” Jenni hissed at me, bringing my attention back to her. I looked at her curiously, and she rolled her eyes. “So mine can rest on top of yours.” She flapped the arm in question.
    I lifted my elbow into what I thought was the appropriate position, at least according to what I remembered from watching Garrett, and turned my attention back to Brie.
    “Everyone ready? Gentlemen, you’ll be stepping forward with your left