Page 16 of Daredevil Lady and the Mysterious Millionaire (The Hidden Hearts Collection #3)

The night breeze tickled the curls alongside her flushed cheeks. She was a little tipsy from the wine at Delmonico’s. If he had any conscience at all, he would take her home right now, but the thought of doing so caused him to feel strangely empty.

Instead he tucked her arm through his, tightening his grasp as though she was some wayward Cinderella who might disappear at the stroke of twelve.

He led her beneath the striped awning and into the dance hall.

The restaurant on the lower floor was already closed up, the waiters upending chairs upon tables.

But up on the second floor the sound of thumping feet could be heard, a band blaring out a polka.

As Zeke ascended the stairs with Rory in tow, he wasn’t prepared for the wave of nostalgia that washed over him.

Stepping across the threshold, he felt he could have closed his eyes and still mapped out that room.

He’d been in dozens like it before with its bare-board floor, a little bar tucked at one end, the platform for the band.

No, they weren’t exactly Landers orchestra, but they could belt out a tune that set Rory’s toes to tapping.

Beyond the couples prancing across the floor, making the rafters shake, were a group of young lads lined up along the wall, trying to look smart in their straw hats, their slickly shined shoes, their best coats cleaned and pressed.

Zeke had held up the wall in that same fashion himself once, ogling the pretty girls, casting contemptuous glances at the swells in the black tailcoats who sometimes came downtown to see how the lower orders went on.

Only now, he was one of the stiff-necked swells and the scornful glances were for him.

“Zeke?” Rory cut into his reflections. “Hadn’t we better dance before we get trampled?”

With a start, he realized he had led her out so far they were interfering with the dancers.

“Yes, I’d guess we’d better,” he agreed with a laugh, clasping her hand, placing his other at her waist. As they circled the room, Zeke felt awkward, even though some of the movements were coming back to him.

As for Rory, she was poker stiff in his arms. It amused him to note her intense look of concentration as she counted out the steps. Amused him and opened the floodgates of another memory as well, a rainy afternoon in the sitting room of the old apartment on Pearl Street.

All gangly arms and legs, he had been trying to master the polka under the tutelage of his youngest adopted sister, Agnes. So sweet, so patient, lisping out the count in her childish treble while the eldest sister, Caddie, plunked out the song on the old piano, badly out of tune.

The middle sister, Theresa, had been reclining on the sofa, critical as always. “Ha. You’ll never get the hang of it, Johnnie. You’ve got two left feet.”

But Sadie Marceone had hushed her daughter, encouraging him. “You never mind what Tessa says, Johnnie. You just keep trying. You’ll learn.”

And so he had, going at it with that same dogged determination he threw into achieving every goal he set.

“Ow!”

An outcry of pain from Rory snapped his attention back to her. It would seem he hadn’t learned so much after all.

“Sorry,” he said, apologizing for having stomped on her foot. He paused a moment to let her rub her ankle. When they attempted to resume the dance, they were more miserably stiff than before.

“Aw, the hell with the steps,” Zeke said. “Let’s do it our own way.”

Rory glanced up at him, surprised at first, then flashing an answering grin. Surprisingly enough, they fared better bounding across the room in their own style. Rory matched him step for step.

By the time the music ended, their mad romp was accorded a smattering of applause from the other dancers. Rory’s cheeks flushed a bright pink. Breathless and laughing, Zeke led her over to the bar for a drink.

Zeke tried to order a lemonade for her, but the bartender looked at him as though he thought he’d lost his mind. He had to settle for two champagne cocktails instead. He watched in some alarm as the thirsty Rory gulped hers down as if it were water.

“Hey, take it easy,” he said.

“It’s all right. We Irish have ‘credibly hard heads,” she assured him and then hiccupped. He smiled. Taking the glass from her, he prepared to lead her back out onto the floor as the band struck up a waltz.

It was then that the inevitable happened. He spotted someone from the old neighborhood. He could hardly pretend he didn’t know her, for he nearly walked dead-on into the woman. She was one of Sadie Marceone’s neighbors, living in the house on the opposite corner.

“Good evening Mrs. Jiannone,” he said, suppressing a grimace. “And how have you been?”

She stared straight into his eyes. There was no doubt but what she knew him, but she turned and walked away without a word.

Zeke didn’t like to admit it, but the snub hurt more than any slight Mrs. Van H.

’s fancy friends could have dealt him. Perhaps the pain came from knowing what Mrs. Jiannone must be thinking.

It’s that worthless boy, the one poor Sadie Marceone took into her home, the one everyone said would turn out bad, the one everyone predicted would break her heart.

They had been right. He had.

“Is anything wrong, Zeke,” Rory asked. She wasn’t so tipsy that she hadn’t noticed what had happened. Her eyes were wide with concern.

“No,” he said. “I just made a mistake, that’s all.” He swept Rory into his arms and into the movement of the dance. After the abandon of their previous romp, she seemed shy, dancing at this slower, more seductive pace.

She tried to keep him at a safe distance, but as the dance wore on, she let him draw her closer and closer, until if he had bent down, he could have laid the velvety curve of her cheek against his own.

He was aware of nothing but how soft and warm she felt, the scent of her hair sweet and fresh even in the hall’s stifling atmosphere.

He wanted to bury his face against the silken strands, lose himself in her, lose all past memories as well.

As her slender frame swayed in perfect rhythm with his, she roused fierce desires, and a gentler emotion he refused to examine more closely.

He only knew he could hold her like this forever.

He didn’t want this night to end. But why did it have to?

He had sacrificed a great deal on the road to accumulating his riches, lost the respect of the only people he had ever cared about, lost the only real home he had ever known.

If being wealthy couldn’t get you what you wanted, then what was the good of it anyway?

And he wanted Aurora Rose Kavanaugh. A voice inside him cautioned him to go slow, to take it easy. But he had never been a patient man. If life had taught him one thing, it was that nothing was given freely. If you wanted something, you had to go after it, take it.

Rory was too caught up in the magic of the music herself to be aware of the tension coiling in Zeke. She hummed along with the band. As Zeke whirled her in a circle, a warning sounded in her mind that she should not let him hold her so close, but the warnings were getting fainter all the time.

Zeke’s arms were so sure, so strong, the only secure place in a world that spun giddily before her eyes.

They might have been alone, dancing together in the dark, everything else so far away, the other couples, his mansion on Fifth Avenue, her balloon company.

Only this moment seemed real, this man who held her so tight.

Tipping back her head, she stole a glance up at him. Even in the dim light of the dance hall, she could tell he was smiling at her. The lines about his eyes crinkled, the eyes themselves dark pools of mystery.

Rory stumbled a little, then giggled. “I’m awfully sorry. I guess my head’s not so hard after all. You must think I’m a fool.”

“What you are is a breath of fresh air.”

“Pooh,” she said. “More like a big wind, flattening your lawn.”

He laughed and the rich deep sound seemed to echo through her heart. “No, you are the best thing that has happened to me in an age.”

“You didn’t think so at first. You wanted to toss me into the streets, remember?”

“That was because I was getting stuffy, as stuffy as those swells mincing about my lawn.”

She laughed and when he spun her about in another slow, languorous circle, she felt absurdly happy. She scarce knew when the band finished up its last melody, or how Zeke guided her from the dance hall back to the street.

To her astonishment the sky over the city was already lightening to a hue of pearly gray.

“The sun’s up,” she crowed. “Zeke, we made it. We danced all night.”

“So we did.” His voice was laced with indulgence as he handed her up into his awaiting carriage. The landau was one of those open sporting vehicles, but Zeke had the folding top raised into position.

Rory settled back gratefully beneath its shadowy depths.

Zeke vaulted inside, but he did not sit decorously opposite as he had earlier.

He squeezed beside her, and she was glad of the warmth emanating from his long, muscular frame.

Even with her cloak, the morning air was chill and her head suddenly felt so heavy.

Zeke’s shoulder was just the right height for nestling, and she didn’t even try to resist. As she settled against him, he wrapped one arm about her.

The carriage sprang into motion, and swayed by the gentle rocking, Rory closed her eyes. She sang snatches of My Wild Irish Rose, only stopping to murmur, “Dawn comes too soon over New York.”

“Yes, it does,” Zeke agreed. He gathered one of her hands into his own. “Rory, there is something I want to say. I have a proposition to make to you.”