Playing by the Rules by Imelda Evans

dance!’
    With a flair for play-acting that Kate couldn’t admire as much as she had earlier, Josh smothered his surprise at this interruption and rose gracefully to accompany her. Kate was sober enough to know she was being rude but drunk enough not to care. And she was mad enough to positively revel in the filthy look she got from Crystal as she dragged Josh away from her clutches.
    By the time they made it to the dance floor, it was already packed. Someone had briefed the DJ, and he had started with a medley of number-one hits from their final year at school, which was drawing people from their chairs to the dance floor like ants to a picnic. Pulling Josh into the crush, Kate put her hands on his shoulders and pulled herself up so she could whisper into his ear.
    ‘We need to talk.’
    In reply, he plucked her right hand off his shoulder with his left, put his right hand on her back and pulled her into what a dim memory of dance lessons past told her was a tango hold. Although in dance class it had never been quite this . . . tight. In Josh’s version, they were plastered chest to chest as though they were sharing one skin.
    Kate tried to put her sudden breathlessness down to the air being knocked out of her. But she knew he hadn’t pulled her that hard. It was the feel of him, hard and warm, soaking through her dress and into her libido that was making breathing suddenly an act of will rather than something she could take for granted.
    He leaned the tiny extra distance it took for his mouth to be near her ear and spoke.
    ‘What do you want to talk about?’
    For a moment, as his warm breath goosebumped its way down her neck and strayed into her cleavage, she quite forgot. Then he spun her into a theatrical, back-bending dip, people nearby clapped and she remembered.
    ‘Is everything a performance for you?’
    It was more breathless than she would have liked, but he must have heard the undertone of anger. He snapped her upright so he could look her in the eye – although he still had to look down to do that. It would have been easy to look away without being at all dramatic. Their difference in height was such that all she had to do was look straight ahead and she’d be looking at his shoulder, not his face. And if he’d looked straight ahead, he would be looking over her head at whoever was behind her. But she held his gaze and he hers. Until he slid his hand up her back and pulled her upper body closer so he could speak into her ear again.
    ‘It is when I’ve been asked to play a part. Is that a problem?’
    Yes. Yes, it was, when it messed with her head, her body and her heart. But how could she explain that on this crowded dance floor, with so many ears flapping? And how could she even think straight enough to try when he was holding her so close?
    The answer came when he twirled her out of his arms into a spin almost as dramatic as the dip. It was as if he was showing off deliberately, to bait her. But that just made her more determined to get some answers from him. She didn’t normally seek confrontation, but nothing about this night was normal. She hadn’t completely forgotten that she had decided not to be alone with him, either. But she was angry enough – and, frankly, drunk enough – to make neither of those considerations seem important. She had to have this out with him and, at the furthest stretch of her arm, just before he swung her back to land on his chest again, she spotted something that might help her do that.
    Behind the DJ, out of sight of most of the room, but accessible with a little manoeuvring, was a door she remembered from her stage crew days.
    Pulling away from him, she reversed her hold on his hand and started boogieing her way towards the DJ, towing him behind her.
    If anyone asked, she intended to say that she was going to request a song. But by then the dance floor was so crowded that they were able to reach her destination more or less unnoticed, except as another bump