Stripped
silence, listening to the chatter around him—his coworkers in English, several of the nearby tables in Spanish. His attention drifted to the dance floor, where Fiona was doing the merengue with a new partner. She was easy to watch—necessary, even. Every step she made spoke of confidence, every turn and twirl controlled both by her and by the man who guided her through the moves.  
    Eventually, he glanced around the pushed-together tables, noting the faces. “Am I the only cast here?”
    Rick drained his margarita. “You are.”
    “Because?”
    “You like my daughter.” It wasn’t a question.
    “I like your daughter,” Declan confirmed solemnly, lifting the pitcher to refill his glass.  
    “Guys always like Fi, but she doesn’t seem to like them back.” Rick moved his own empty glass toward Declan for a refill, choosing a chip from the basket between them. “Can’t say I mind her approach to dating.”  
    “And that approach is?”
    “That she doesn’t date.”
    “Ah.” He found Fiona on the dance floor again, spinning gracefully away from a man’s outstretched hand, her limbs loose, her turns liquid smooth. “What about Wes?” he murmured, dropping his voice so the man in question wouldn’t hear.
    “What about him?”
    “He and Fiona seem…close.”
    There was a sharpness to Rick’s amusement as the older man studied Declan. “He’s been coming around to our place since Fi was a kid. Wes is family.”
    Declan shifted in his chair, fighting against the desire to squirm. It was a gentle set-down, but a set-down nonetheless, and he was both embarrassed and relieved. Mostly relieved. He couldn’t help glancing in the direction of the dance floor, and Fiona. “She doesn’t lack for partners.”
    “And she never will.” Tipping back in his chair, the older man laced his fingers behind his head, gaze focused on the battered tabletop. “All she ever wanted to do was dance. We put her in classes starting at age three. By the time Fi graduated high school, I was driving her across the western United States for competitions almost every weekend. College came, and she still had her ballerina dreams. And then…” Rick shook his head, his expression momentarily distraught. Then furious. Then pensive once more. “Someone said something. Someone important to her, about how she looked and how she danced, like she was wrong . Next thing we hear, she’s in Vegas, and we don’t see her for two years.”
    Wrong ? On the dance floor, Fiona threw her head back and laughed as her partner caught her, one of his hands at the small of her back, the other lightly gripping her fingers. Her ponytail bounced playfully, her smile wide and open, and a hot finger of need poked Declan in the sternum.  
    No, there was absolutely nothing wrong with that woman—not how she looked, not how she laughed, not how she tied his chest in knots. He absently rubbed the heel of one palm over the abused spot. “She wanted to dance as a career?”
    “Ballet. She was good enough to make it, too.”
    Good enough to dance professionally, and yet Fiona had given up on that dream because of something someone said, if Rick was to be believed. There had to be more to the story than that, though he’d rather hear that story from Fiona herself.
    Convincing her to share that story with him was another matter entirely. Conversations between the two of them could become commonplace, in the makeup chair and outside of it, depending on how tonight turned out.
    Declan knew how he wanted tonight to turn out, and it involved shouldering Latin Dude to the side. He watched her move, sleek and strong and sexier than he’d ever expected, given her tendency to blanch the vibrant colors he was seeing now—the vibrant colors he knew must be the real Fiona. “Are you worried about her gettin’ involved with me?” No use in tiptoeing around the understatement of a fact that Fiona’s father knew of Declan’s interest in her.
    Rick appraised him

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