For one heart-stopping moment, I felt sure he would draw me against him like he had Charlotte, but he stopped short, keeping a middle-school-dance distance from me instead.

“The basics go like this,” he said. “Take your right foot and step back, then rock back onto your left again.”

My head swimming from his nearness, from this delicious trap I’d somehow fallen into, I did as I was told.

“Good,” he said, the scent of his good-boy Dial soap and whatever styling gel he used to get his hair to do its all-American thing washing over me. That, along with his heated touch, made my blood simmer under my skin.

“Now,” he continued, “take three steps to the right. Then repeat to the left.”

Smiling in spite of how ridiculous I felt, I again followed his lead.

“One, two—one, two, three, one, two, three,” he said, marking our time until we had a rhythm going. And then, suddenly, we were dancing. To a Buddy Holly song. With Lucas now giving me the subtlest and sexiest of practiced pushes whenever we returned to the rock step.

“See?” he said. “I told you everybody dances.”

“You’re giving me way too much credit,” I managed. “We’re pretty much just doing the same thing over and over.”

“That’s how it starts with everything you learn,” he said.

He raised his arm, gave another one of his expert pushes, and spun me. The world blurred for a second, the sun and the stairs and Lucas all whirring by until he stopped me, bringing us together, his arm now wrapped most of the way around me.

Never before had I been given the opportunity to examine a bow tie so closely.

“Ope,” he said, releasing me. “S-sorry about that. Force of habit.”

He stepped back, straightening his glasses with the hand that had all but burned its imprint into my back.

The silence pulsed between us, filling the space that, a moment before, hadn’t existed. A space I wished had stayed nonexistent, if only a moment longer.

“Uh, listen,” said Lucas at last, his hands delving into his pockets again, his gaze falling to the floor. “The bell’s going to ring, but while I have you here, I want to ask you something.”

Holy crap. Was he legit about to ask me out? I should let him. I totally needed to. I really wanted to. So then why was I ready to head him off at the pass to be sure I understood fully his relationship with Charlotte?

“Armand!” came Wes’s familiar voice to my left, causing me to jump and Lucas’s jaw to jut with sudden annoyance. “Come to this barn dance competition thing on Saturday.”

“What?” I eyed him where he now stood in the middle of the vestibule leading to the gym.

“Yeah,” said Lucas, surprising me when he cut in. “You should come. There’ll be food. And, of course, dancing.”

“But . . . I’m not really a dancer.” And Charlotte hated me.