Dancing With the Devil

Chapter 20

Dedication is to a reader that commented and made me smile! Thanks! :)

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 “Where are we going?” I asked as Eva led me down the hallway.

“You’ll see,” she sang, throwing a mischievous grin over her shoulder that reminded me of my mother when she had something up her sleeve. My eyes were drawn to her bouncing blonde hair, the way the sun glinted off of it as if in jealousy. Her dress swooshed around her ankles softly, and her hips swung unconsciously. Her step was confident and suave. She really was a walking body of pheromones.

“That’s Elena and Colton,” she pointed to a door, and I peeked inside curiously to see a gorgeous girl and an equally stunning guy cooing over her growing baby bump. The girl had a dark complexion and wide, doe-like brown eyes. Her hair, thick and silky, flowed down her back and hung around her shoulders like a brunette Rapunzel that got a haircut. Her boyfriend—fiancé, actually, I corrected myself as I caught sight of her shimmering ring—also had brown hair and warm chocolate eyes. I sighted tears in his eyes, foretelling he was sensitive to the little miracles in life.

“They’re expecting,” I noted out loud.

Eva grinned coyly, but her responding “yup” was flippant. I tried to see her expression to uncover her obvious secret, but she turned around and continued leading me down the hall.

“Cassie and Cody,” she called out, waving at another room a couple of steps later. “Also expecting,” she said before I could. Cassie’s swelling stomach was less noticeable than Elena’s, but with her in a stunning aqua bikini looking like she was ready to go for a swim, her midsection was on full display and the protruding curve couldn’t be mistaken for anything else.

She continued to lead me, forcibly, towards yet another door. She gestured towards the one next to it before we entered. “That’s the room Seth and I share, in case you were curious. Don’t know why you would want to or have to go in there, but just so you know. This,” she gripped the handle of the door we stood in front of with a secretive glint in her eye, “is the room I want you to see.”

She thrust the door open proudly while my jaw dropped.

A dance studio.

The wooden floors gleamed enticingly with the rays of the sun bouncing off of them through the high, high windows that were nearly to the ceiling. The mirrors stretched around three of the walls for a perfect view of the movements no matter the angle you looked at them from. The room itself was enormous with surplus space to dance in, and the top of the room reached into the very heavens so that the melody would bounce throughout the room with a resounding echo that, when I danced, the music didn’t sound right without. She observed my expression hopefully, and beamed at my smile that tipped the corners of my mouth more and more until I was positively grinning like I was the cat that ate the canary, teeth and all.

“I knew it! I knew it!” she gloated. “I could tell by your walk and your posture, Ivy.”

“You could tell what?” I asked mindlessly, still totally captivated by this room that was any dancer’s dream come true.

“You’re a dancer, you sneak. And I intend to distract you from this terrible situation by helping you lose yourself to the music. Name a song and I’ll play it.”

“What?” Her words were clearing the fog my head had entered, and I wasn’t liking what I was comprehending. “You want to dance with me? You dance?”

“Absolutely, every day of my life since I was four years old,” she responded proudly. “Come on! Let’s get dressed so we can start. The guys never take long enough once I start dancing, and I’m assuming you’re the same way. The music makes me lose myself, you know?”