Katherine Garbera - Taming the VIP Playboy / Promoted To Wife? - Taming the VIP Playboy

And that meant staying away from Nate Stern.

“You okay?” Alison asked, joining her in the hallway.

“Yes. I’m just trying to catch my breath before we go on.”

“You and Nate …”

“I know. We have dance chemistry.” “In spades. I think you should capitalize on it,” Alison said.

Sure, it was easy for her to say. She didn’t have to go out there and dance a sensual dance with a man who was all wrong for her.

“How?”

“Have him come back every night.”

“I doubt he has time for that. He’s a busy man,” Jen said. “Are you ready?”

“I am. Are you going to hang around and wait for XSU to perform?”

“Probably. You?”

“Yes. My boyfriend is meeting me here.”

“How’s it going with him—Richard, right?”

She nodded. “Pretty good. It’s not a forever thing, but we have fun together.”

Jen wanted that. Some guys she could have fun with and not lose her heart to. But she’d never been able to do it. Maybe it was simply the way she was wired but she didn’t do casual. That’s why Nate worried her.

If she could be like Alison and just have fun with him … why couldn’t she?

She was starting over—why not start over with her attitude toward men? Why not have some fun?

“How do you keep from caring too much?” Jen asked.

Alison shrugged. “He’s not the one so it’s just fun. I don’t think about anything except having a good time with him. If he’s too busy to make it to something I’m doing, I call someone else.”

Jen didn’t know if she could do that. She wanted to.

“Why?”

“I … I wish I could be like that.”

“You don’t even date,” Alison said. “We’ve known each other for eighteen months now and you haven’t met a guy for coffee.”

“I know. I’m just not into the casual scene but maybe I should be. I mean, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life alone.”

Alison smiled. “Want to come and hang with Richard and me tonight?”

Jen shook her head, then realized that she needed to do something different. “Okay. I’ll do it.”

“Good. Richard always has his posse with him and there are at least two guys I know who will be interested in you.”

She swallowed. “What if I can’t do it?”

“Then it’s no biggie. They aren’t exactly looking for a commitment.”

She reentered the rehearsal room. Nate was standing off to one side, talking on his cell phone and she stared at him. And it hit her.

She didn’t want to just learn how to lighten up and have fun with any friend of Richard’s. She wanted to do it with Nate. He was the only reason why she was even considering changing her ways.

She wanted to spend more time with him but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to know that Nate wasn’t a long-term dating kind of guy. He always had a new woman on his arm and he was always in the papers. He was an arm-candy kind of guy and she’d never been an arm-candy kind of girl.

Wanting to be with him was understandable. He was hot and flirty. He made dancing feel the way she wanted it to. And he had the kind of dark eyes that she could lose herself in. But that didn’t mean that she should pursue this any further than on the dance floor.

Hell, for all she knew he didn’t want her for anything other than publicity for the club. Shaking her head, she put on “Mambo No. 5” and got the class ready to conga out into the crowd as she heard Manuel, the deejay for the open-air room, start warming them up.

“Everyone get ready.”

“I know I am,” Nate said. She felt his hands on her hips and she stumbled over her first step. She stumbled! That never happened.

But Nate caught her, and his hands on her hips as she led the way into the main room were all she thought of. She knew whether it was wise or not she wasn’t going to deny herself the chance to get to know Nate better.

Because he was exactly her kind of man.

Nate glanced around the crowded balcony club area and spotted just enough A-listers to make the party interesting. Leaning forward, he whispered in Jen’s ear.

“That’s Hutch Damien over there. Let’s get him in this conga line.”

“I don’t know him.”

“I do. Head over that way,” Nate said.

He directed Jen as the line snaked through the tables. She had no microphone on, the deejay did all the talking in this club getting patrons on their feet. She left the conga line and approached the velvet ropes.

“Wanna dance?” she asked in that flirty way of hers.

“I never turn a pretty lady down,” Hutch said with a grin. He hopped up and Nate moved back in the conga line to make room for him. The music swelled and Jen snaked through the room gathering up many of the people who all wanted to say they danced with Hutch Damien.

Hutch was a bona fide Hollywood superstar who’d started his career as a teenage rapper, but not with that hard-edged gangster rap—more of a sophisticated and fun sound that had him climbing the pop charts. He had movie-star good looks that he capitalized on to make films that people loved. And he was a genial guy.

Nate and he went way back to before his playing days when they’d both been rich boys at prep school. Since that image didn’t jibe with Hutch’s public persona of a rapper who made good, they seldom mentioned that fact to anyone.

Jen led them into the middle of the dance floor and then moved off to the side as the music ended and the deejay played “Hips Don’t Lie” by Shakira.

Nate left T.J. and Hutch on the dance floor as a group of women came up to dance with them and probably grab a picture or two on their cell phones.

Jen was nowhere to be seen forty-five minutes later. He sent a message to Cam checking in to see if there was anything he needed from him. Then he tweeted about the club, talking up Hutch and T.J. on the dance floor.

He pocketed his phone and sought out his friends in the VIP section. He quickly found Hutch and T.J. and sat down with them. But Nate couldn’t stay up here all night; he needed to make sure that there were celebrities throughout the club.

Nighttime was his busiest time but he loved it.

“Where you going?” Hutch asked him when he got up.

“We have a band performing downstairs.”

“Not until ten,” Hutch said, glancing pointedly at his watch.

Nate grinned sheepishly at his friend.

“There’s a girl …” T.J. said.

“There’s always a girl for our Nate.”

“Yes, there is always a girl. I think you’ll like her.”

“So she’s for me?”

“No,” Nate said. “She’s mine.”

“Fair enough, who is she?” Hutch asked.

T.J. took a sip of his rum and Coke and leaned over the edge of the table, his eyes skimming the dance floor. Jen was in the middle doing a flamenco dance. “There she is. The dark-haired one dressed in red.”

“Nice,” Hutch said. “She works here?”

“Yes,” Nate said, leaning back against the padding of the banquette. “Dance teacher.”

“What’s her name?” Hutch asked.

“Jen,” Nate said.

The fact that he was going to bring her up here said more than he wanted it to. His friends understood that he rarely invited someone who wasn’t a part of their group to join them. They were the same way. But Jen was different.

“I like her,” T.J. said. “She’s funny and knows how to move her body. And this one got jealous when she touched me.”

“I am not jealous of you,” Nate said.

That was one thing he’d never been. Even when he had been injured and had to quit playing ball he’d never envied those who still played. He didn’t waste time dreaming about what might have been. He lived his life to the fullest and if that sometimes meant he had to course correct then he did it.