Dance With Me: A Dance Off Novel by Alexis Daria

Author:Alexis Daria [Daria, Alexis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Romance, Multicultural & Interracial, Contemporary
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2017-12-12T05:00:00+00:00

26

“You were really good with the kids,” Natasha said in a quiet voice.

Dimitri cut her a quick look as he drove. After they left Little Lilac, she said she had to make a quick stop on the way home, to hand something off to someone who was covering one of her classes.

“This isn’t my first rodeo, Kroshka. My mother owned a dance studio, and I used to help her teach ballet.”

She twisted in the seat to face him. “What does that word mean? Kroshka.”

He raised his eyebrows. “You’re just now asking this? I’ve been calling you that for years.”

Her chin dipped. Half her face was covered by big, dark sunglasses. He wanted to slip them off her face so he could see her eyes, but kept his attention on the road.

“I . . . didn’t want to ask, I guess.”

“Why not?”

She shrugged. “Just tell me what it means.”

“It’s the equivalent of ‘baby.’ It’s a very sweet name, like sugar, or sweetie.”

“Huh.” She turned her head to gaze out the window.

“Why do you call me Macho?”

She smirked. “That should be obvious.”

“So, it means what I think it means?”

“Exacamente.”

The urge to touch her was killing him. He gave in, dropping a hand to her bare knee and squeezing. “You should learn Russian.”

She snorted. “Dude, I had a hard enough time learning English.”

“Me, too. And I bet I was older than you were.”

She shifted in the seat, and his hand slid further up her thigh. “How old were you when you moved here from Ukraine?”

“Ten.”

“Wow. Yeah, you were older.”

“You were born here.” It wasn’t a question. He already knew she’d been born in New York.

“Yes, but we only spoke Spanish at home. I learned English from TV and other kids, and it wasn’t until nursery school that I heard English from an adult. After that, my great-grandfather started speaking English to me at home.” She fiddled with her glasses. “And books. Somehow, the Spanish-English divide didn’t seem so strong when it was written down. I learned a lot about how English was supposed to sound from reading, but since I was a terrible writer, I still got bad grades in school. It drove me crazy. I loved books so much, but I couldn’t express my thoughts about them in a way the teachers could understand.”

He gave her leg another light squeeze. “I get it.”

“I bet.” She rested her head against the back of the seat and turned her face toward him. “Tell me about little Dima.”

“Mitya,” he corrected. “That’s what my family calls me.”

“Right, I’ve heard Nik say it. So why do Roman and Mila call you Dima?”

Roman Shvernik and Mila Ivanova were two Russian dancers on The Dance Off. “Dima is another nickname for Dimitri.”

“Ah.”

He chewed his lower lip as he sorted through the feelings raging through him. Gratitude and love threatened to overwhelm him. The easy conversation, her willingness to tell him about herself, and her interest in him—they had to be signs they were growing closer. Right?

But she wanted to know about his childhood, and it was something he didn’t talk about much.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.