Barefoot at Sunset (Barefoot Bay Timeless Book 1) (13 page)

“Told you. I lie for a living.”

“You’re not just lying.”

She laughed. “I’m superlying?”

“You’re making sure I don’t have to handle conversations I’d rather avoid.”

“Wasn’t that the price of my villa in paradise?”

He gripped her hand a little tighter. “I didn’t think we’d be seeing people like…that. Damn near family.”

“Well, you grew up here, Mark. You’re bound to see people you know well.”

He’d planned to avoid any of that, too, including his old house…and Julia’s. He’d stayed in touch with Julia’s mother, but she’d died a few years after her daughter had. Mark had sadly lost touch with Julia’s father after that. The last time they’d talked, Wayne Coulter sounded down in the dumps. Talking to a sad old man who’d lost his only daughter and then his wife was just another thing Mark preferred to avoid.

“The real problem is going to be the next time you have to face Carla and tell her we broke up,” Emma said. “But don’t worry, you can tell her it was all my fault. Don’t slip off that pedestal on my account. Just say I dumped you.”

He hesitated on the next step. “That sounds…” He looked to the side, and his gaze fell on the church, the kick to his chest almost stealing his breath. “Sad.”

“The story of our breakup or the sight of the church where you got married?”

He looked at her, astonished. “How did you…”

“Am I right?”

Of course she was. “Julia and I went to the mainland and got married by a Justice of the Peace, but her parents wanted a wedding, so we had a small one here.” He blew out a slow breath. “And had her memorial service in the same church.”

“Oh.” She touched his shoulder, a gentle, sympathetic pressure that actually helped. “So why did you want to come here today?”

He smiled at her. “You made me forget.”

For a long moment, she looked at him, then she lifted their joined hands. “Why don’t you come with me now?”

“To the car?”

“To the church.”

He stepped in the opposite direction. “Why would I do that?”

“Face your fears, coach. And since I’m nicer than you, I’ll only make you do it once.”

Slowly, he shook his head. “This isn’t the same as a little tube that pops when you hit the counter.”

She squinted her eyes to challenging slits. “I thought you were fearless, Mark Solomon.”

“I…I…” He looked at the church doors. Not
that
fearless.

“You don’t have to, but I’d like to see the church. And…” She held his hand close to her mouth and pressed the lightest kiss on his knuckles. “It might help you.”

“I don’t need help,” he said. “Let’s just go learn how to dance. That, I need help with.”

She shrugged off the joke. “Your call. I understand.”

Maybe she did. He wasn’t at all sure how he felt about that.

Chapter Ten

Twenty minutes at Allegro, the dance studio that was upstairs from the local florist, and Emma decided that Mark had effectively squashed the emotions and memories that had plagued him when he’d seen the church. And while she’d love to take credit for that, she knew the real reason was the next challenge in their brief courtship: a whirlwind of a dance instructor named Jasper Vonderleith.

If Jasper were a product and Emma had to sell him, she’d be digging through the thesaurus for more ways to say
big
. Because he was larger—brighter, louder, and bolder—than life.

Hovering somewhere in his mid-twenties, the wiry, heavily tattooed dance instructor sported hair like a yellow cockatiel, multicolored fingernails, and a gold tooth that glinted when he smiled, which was often.

“We’re going to tell a story,” Jasper announced not long after they settled into a warm studio where sunshine poured through oversize windows along one wall and bounced off three mirrored ones. “One these people will never forget.”

Leaning against one of the mirrors, Mark crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes at their instructor. “Just so we’re clear, this is for a high school reunion,” he said. “Not a reality TV show.”

Jasper sucked in a noisy breath, shocked. “We are in competition, my friend. With…” He flipped his hand and pointed toward the mirror on the other side.

“With ourselves?” Emma guessed.

“With Tiffany Jones, a child—a mere babe in the dancing woods, I tell you—who arrived here not two months ago, rented the next studio, and has her eye on my client base. Especially the ones I, you know, scare a little.” His eyes grew wide as he gestured to his Crayola box self. “At this very moment, Tiffy is on the other side of that mirror teaching a couple from the
sixties
.” He leveled steely gray eyes at Mark. “So they’re not only from the sixties, they are
in
their
seventies
. And they live locally and are part of her
borrrring
ballroom classes she started on Wednesday nights, so this is one big advertisement for her business.”

“Are we your only couple?” Emma asked, hoping Jasper wasn’t going to put all his competitive energy into them.

“I have the eighties and the whatever you call those unfortunates born in the oh-somethings.”

“Millennials?” Mark suggested.

“Aughts?” Emma added.

“Pains in the butt,” Jasper said. “Tiffany has the sixties and seventies and, like it or not, the precious old factor is going to be in their favor.” He sighed as though not happy with the dance draw. “The know-it-all nineties folks are choreographing their own, of course.” He looked Mark up and down. “Are you sure you’re in your forties?”

“Quite.”

“Well, at least we have the beauty factor with both of you,” Jasper said. “
You
didn’t graduate in the eighties,” he said to Emma, his tone accusatory.

“Know-it-all nineties,” she quipped. “And I didn’t go to Mimosa High.”

“That’s okay. If you’re with him, you qualify. Let’s dance and win that ten grand. You get to keep it all, and I get bragging rights.”

Emma let out a low whistle. “That’s a decent prize. Who put up that much money for a dance competition, anyway?”

Jasper rolled his eyes. “One of the Mimosa High alum is a hedge-fund billionaire, and he proposed to his dream girl, who was a maid at the resort, at the first reunion on the beach.”

“Really?” Emma asked. “What a romantic story.”

“So
Pretty Woman
, don’t you think?” Jasper asked. “Anyway, those two put up the cash as a nice gesture, promo for the resort, and to get more people to come and be excited for the event. And you could win it! If you can dance, that is.”

Emma and Mark shared a look, but Jasper was studying his clipboard.

“Now, we are required by rules to play seven different numbers from—”

“We’re dancing to seven songs?” Mark practically gagged on the question.

“Not the whole song!” he assured them. “Just enough to get the message and tell the story. And here’s the story.” He held out his clipboard like he was presenting the Hope Diamond. “Would you like to read it, or shall I tell you?”

“Just tell us,” Emma said.

“Well, I understand you two are recently engaged—muchas congrats, by the way—and so who better to tell the story of meeting, courtship, and forever love…eighties-style?”

Who better indeed?

“We open with Blondie.
Call Me
,” Jasper said.

“Wait,” Emma said. “We have a list. We came up with songs.”

Jasper somehow managed to lift one brow while the other tilted down in the most hilarious
you’ve got to be kidding
look she’d ever received.

“I’m the choreographer.”

“We’re the talent.”

“You’re the dancers,” he corrected. “We’ve yet to decide if there’s any real talent involved.”

Once again, she glanced at Mark and somehow knew what he was thinking. No talent, and if they used Jasper’s playlist, maybe they could blame their loss on him.

Jasper checked his clipboard. “Okay,
Call Me
will kick it off with a little something fast and furious and—get this—we use one of those giant brick cell phones and Mark can strut across the stage like Michael Douglas in
Wall Street
. Won’t that be
fabulous
?”

“My dad had one of those phones,” Mark said. “It was…cool.”

“Well, now it’s a museum piece, so don’t drop the one I managed to find,” Jasper said. “We’ll start with a little back and forth, really using your jazz hands—”

“Our what?” Mark asked.

Emma stepped forward. “We probably aren’t your top-level jazz hands…types,” she said. “Maybe something a little less technical.”

“When those antiques across the hall will be doing the Twist?” Jasper waved off the protest. “You’ll learn. Then we move into
Your Kiss Is on My List
, Hall & Oates. You know what that means.”

Mark kissed the air in Emma’s direction, and she tapped her face as if it hit the mark.

“Yes!” Jasper snapped his fingers and pointed at Emma. “Playful! That’s what I want. Playful, romantic, sexy, and fun. That’s what the eighties were!”

“They were?” Emma laughed. “I thought they were all about shoulder pads and the Rubik’s Cube.”

“No,” Mark said, shaking his head and getting them both to turn. “They were playful. And fun. And…romantic.”

Damn. They were also the ten years when he met and married his soul mate. Immediately, Emma stepped closer to him, feeling protective and determined not to let this little stroll down memory lane take him to a place that hurt. Not after seeing how his expression changed when he saw that church.

“We’ll just dance and have fun,” she said.

He gave her a warm smile. “I always have fun with you,” he assured her, the compliment surprising her.

“Okay, lovebirds,” Jasper said, clapping. “Focus. After Hall & Oates, we’re going into something a little slower and waltzier. I want to know what love is…” He started to sing.

“I want you to show me,” Emma finished.

“Excellent,” Jasper nodded. “Then, the eighties anthem.”

“
Livin’ on a Prayer
?” Mark suggested, lifting his hands in a classic air guitar pose. “We had a band in my garage.”

That earned him a look of sheer disgust from the dance instructor. “
What a Feelin’
.
Flashdance
. Leg warmers and torn shirts, remember?”

“I may have slept through that one,” Mark said, making Emma laugh.

“Three left,” Jasper continued. “And this is where it gets even better.”

“Don’t know how it can,” Emma said dryly.

Mark slipped his arm around her and gave a gentle hug. “There’s at least one bottle of wine waiting for us as a reward.”

“Wine? I’m going to need to swim naked in a vat of tequila.”

His smile grew. “We can arrange that.”

Her whole body weakened at the sexy promise.

“Do you mind?” Jasper demanded, getting their attention, though they both fought a laugh. “We shall then, if you two aren’t busy planning your evening activities, move into the big crescendo. We have Huey Lewis doing
The Power of Love
, then a slow, sexy ballad with
Endless Love
, and then, the
ultimate
eighties dance song,
The Time of My Life
—”

“No.”

Emma startled at how sharply the word came out of Mark’s mouth. Jasper looked up, too, already exasperated, but Emma instantly read the change in Mark’s expression.

“No,” she agreed immediately. “Not that one.”

It had to have been their song. She just knew it. And she’d take this colorful bird down with one hand if she had to, but they weren’t putting Mark through that.

“What?” Jasper practically screamed. “First of all, you don’t have a say, no matter what you were told by some planning committee. Second of all, it’s
Dirty Dancing
, you two. This is the
eighties
. This is the essence of the eighties! Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze and…” He started moving his hips and running his hands down the back of an imaginary partner. “You can’t
not
have
Time of My Life
in an eighties homage celebrating dance!”

Mark just stared at him, silent, but Emma was already gearing up for battle, her hands fisted as she stepped forward, her mind whirring.

“I have a better idea,” she said quickly. “A perfect idea, guaranteed to get a win.”

Both men stared at her, and she suddenly felt like she was in the middle of a brainstorm session at the agency and everyone had a good idea but her. She had nothing.

A quick look at Mark and she dug deeper. “The way to win is to get the rest of the place involved,” she said, giving her hands a confident clap.

Jasper scowled. “You’re the ones on the stage dancing.”

“That’s what everyone else will do,” she scoffed. “We need a song that makes everyone emotional and…and…happy.” Especially Mark.

“Patrick Swayze doesn’t make you happy?” Jasper countered.

“That song is not right,” she said, grabbing his clipboard. “How about…” She scanned the page and then smashed her finger on it. “Oh my God, this is the song, Jasper. Right here
. That’s What Friends Are For
.” She shoved the clipboard back at him. “Can you imagine? Everyone will stand. Sing. Sway with their arms around each other.”