Page 70 of Always You (A Lilac Bay Novel)

She grinned. “Seriously. If you ever want to talk about job opportunities, give me a call. I’d be happy to give you a reference.”

“Wow.” I couldn’t seem to close my mouth properly. Did she have any idea how long I had dreamed of working in television? I couldn’t believe I was hearing this.

“Well, you certainly make my job easier,” she said, laughing. “So thank you for that.”

“Thankyou,” I managed to get out. I shook myself, determined not to ruin her impression of me by acting like a bumbling idiot now. “Hey, you don’t have any food! You should eat. David is an amazing chef.”

“I will.” She squeezed my arm and then disappeared off into the crowd, leaving me to shake my head in disbelief.

She thought I could work in TV. An actual TV producer thought I could work in her field. I had to tell Andrew.

As if my thoughts summoned him, I heard Andrew come up behind me.

“Looks like you have a hit on your hands,” he said.

I turned to him, ready to tell him about the conversation with Gina, but found the words stuck in my throat.

Sometime in the last half hour, Andrew must have gone home to change. He was wearing a dark suit, the crisp white of his dress shirt contrasting with the tan skin of his neck. He had already loosened the tie and the top collar, but that only made it look better.

I could count on one hand the number of times I had seen Andrew Powell in a suit. His grandfather’s funeral. His cousin Greg’s wedding. Our senior prom. But I didn’t think I had ever seen him look quite so handsome.

“Wow, Andrew,” I blurted out. “You clean up nice.”

Something unknown flashed in his eyes, and he did that smirky grin thing—but somehow, I didn’t feel the need to tease him. Let his ego take the compliment. He looked fantastic.

“You don’t look so bad yourself,” he said. “Can’t remember the last time I saw you in a dress.”

I looked down at the gauzy black fabric, shrugging a little. By some stroke of luck, I’d had the perfect dress in my closet—me, the girl who never wore dresses. Rebecca had talked me into buying it a few years ago in one of her many attempts to get me to live a little. It was a straight black shift dress with a pattern of tiny beads all across the gauzy fabric. With my mandatory feathered headband, I could almost pass for a twenties girl myself. But now, looking down at the dress, I felt stupid, unable to come up with an answer. Since when did I have trouble finding a comeback for Andrew?

“Hey,” he said, his voice a little lower than normal, and I somehow felt physically compelled to look up at him. He wasn’t smiling, and his eyes were doing that flashing thing again. I swallowed. “Dance with me.”

That broke the strange spell that had fallen over me. “Dance?”

He rolled his eyes. “We’re at a dance, Riley. It’s what people do.”

“It’s not whatwedo,” I shot back. “Do you even know how to dance?”

His eyebrow arched. “Is that a challenge?”

“No, it’s—”

But before I could tell him what it was, he was grabbing my hand and pulling me over to the dance floor. Ella Fitzgerald was softly crooning from the speakers, and Andrew was pulling me up against him, one hand holding mine, the other on my lower back.

“There,” he said. “That’s not so bad, is it?”

I shook my head, my throat too dry to talk. What in the hell was wrong with me?

He held me like that for a long moment as we swayed slightly on the dance floor. It seemed to stretch on and on forever, us not talking, just standing there, way too close together. Close enough that I could smell his Old Spice, that I could see the individual stubble of his red beard, could feel the heat radiating off his body.

Oh, God, it wasawful. I couldn’t be this uncomfortable aroundAndrew.

“Hey,” he said, shaking the hand he held in his. “Loosen up, Riley.”

“I don’t like dancing.”

“Well it would be rude to ditch me now, so you’re going to have to deal with it.” Was he laughing at me? I glared up at him and saw that his eyes were dancing, too, that the smirk back on his face.

“Shut up, Andrew.”