Page 34 of No Offense

“Not so great,” he said. “It turns out I only need to know a very specific dance for the performance. A very specific dance that goes to a very specific song by a very specific performer you might have heard of—Beyoncé?”

Molly’s red lips pressed inward, as if she was trying to keep herself from smiling. “I’ve heard of her. What very specific song of hers are you dancing to?”

“‘Single Ladies.’” He tried not to show how uncomfortable the dance made him, although he enjoyed the song. “I’d never heard of it.”

Molly’s lips curled into a smile. “You’re not exactly the target demographic. Do you want me to help you learn it?”

He was surprised. “You know the dance to ‘Single Ladies’?”

“Oh, you wouldn’t believe the things I’ve had people ask me to teach them in my capacity as a librarian. The ‘Single Ladies’ dance is the least of it. Come here.”

The next thing he knew, she’d slid from the booth and taken hold of both his hands. Then she was gently pulling him from his own seat and toward the center of the room. He let her, because the feel of her skin on his was so magical, and also because there was no one else in the room except a few servers, and they were paying no attention to the librarian teaching the bumble-footed sheriff to dance. They were bustling around, putting glassware away. All of the party guests were outside on the now night-darkened beach, drinking and laughing in the red-orange glow of the tiki torches.

“Stand up tall like this,” Molly commanded, and put her hands on his shoulders to straighten them. When she stood close to him, he could smell the fresh flowery shampoo sheused on her shiny dark hair, and something else—something fruity. It took him a minute to recognize it. It was the key lime–coconut signature scent the Lazy Parrot inn housekeepers sprayed everywhere. It must have sunk deep into all of Molly Montgomery’s belongings by now.

He’d never smelled anything as intoxicating.

“Now put your feet about shoulders’ width apart,” she said, inserting her foot, still bare, between his feet and giving them both a dainty little kick until he widened his stance. “That’s it. Now put this hand on your hip—no, this hand—”

He did as she asked, looking down at her bent head, her narrow brows furrowed with concentration, and wondered how they ever could have argued when she was so adorable.

“Perfect. Now put your other hand in the air, like this—” She manipulated his left arm so it bent at the elbow. “Remember when you sang ‘I’m a Little Teapot’ with Katie? You two sang that together, right?”

“I did.” He couldn’t take his eyes off her.

“Well, your arm should look a little like that.”

She stepped back to observe her handiwork, and John didn’t even care how ridiculous he might appear to whoever might happen to come strolling in from the beach. Randy Jamison or even Pete could walk by and laugh all they wanted. John had Molly Montgomery all to himself, and right now, he couldn’t think of anything he wanted more.

“Good,” she said, after giving him a critical once over. “That looks good. Though it might help if you could maybe... loosen up a little.”

“Loosen up?” He glanced down at himself. He felt plenty loose. “How do you mean?”

“Well, you just look kind of... tight. The whole point of this dance is to have fun, and you look like you’re on the way to the guillotine.”

He gave her a sarcastic look. “That’s just my face. I’m a cop. I have to be ever vigilant for would-be miscreants.”

“No.” She shook her head, still studying him critically. “It’s not your face. It’s your body language. You need to loosen up in here.” She stepped forward, her gaze on his face, but her hands in the air. “May I?”

“Um... sure.” What was she going to do with her hands?

He supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised when she placed them on his hips. This was a dance lesson, after all.

“You need to loosen uphere,” she said, pressing firmly on his hips, and then swaying her own in front of him to illustrate what she meant—while not releasing her hold. “Do you see what I mean? You’ve got to feel the music. If they were playing Beyoncé, I mean, and not this—”

What they were actually playing was jazz. Coltrane, to be exact. John liked Coltrane and listened to him quite a lot in his car on the streaming channel that Katie had set up for him. The combination of the Coltrane and Molly Montgomery’s hands on his hips, plus her own hips swaying so suggestively in such close proximity to his own, plus the sweet scent of her hair and coconutty smell of her clothes in this darkened room, with the ocean breeze blowing in from the beach, was doing something to him. Something he hadn’t felt in a long time.

Something he liked a lot.

Still, he wasn’t sure what he should do about it. He hadn’t dated in so long. And this was the librarian. Up until this very moment, he’d been fairly sure she hated him.

But would a woman who hated a man be holding him by the hips and encouraging him to loosen up while also smiling up at him with such enticingly red lips?

He didn’t think so.

Still, his heart pounding as nervously as it had the time he’d asked his first-ever girlfriend—Lori MacNamara, seventh grade—to couples skate at the long-since-demolished Little Bridge Skateland, he lowered both hands to her hips.

“Molly,” he said, in a voice that had gone suddenly hoarse.