It's been a while since I started a new story. This one is a little different. I seem to have picked up a bad case of the fluff bunnies. I'm not sure if I caught them from Jo (jmkw/cjfann) or if my own little hutch of bunnies finally came home. I cleaned out their cage just in case they decide to stay.

Some of you know my passion for ballroom dance. It's really my second career. It seemed inevitable that eventually I would project my hobby on my two favorite characters. A lot of what happens on this ballroom floor comes from my personal experience. And as the story progresses, you'll see why dancers will tell you that ballroom dance is a little like making love with everyone watching. So it's also inevitable that this is a Jordan/Woody saga

Oh, by the way. I don't own anything. But like my friend Nyn, I'm willing, able, and ready to stage a takeover.

Sway wth Me

Chapter One

It's Kind of Like Going to the Movies

Another Monday morning...another work week, Jordan thought as the elevator doors opened and spilled her out into the busy hallway of the morgue

Another work day that would bleed into another work week, complete with doubles and night shifts. She shook her head. Her life was now predictable, orderly, nearly scheduled since she had gotten back to Boston after her DC hiatus.

Okay, it wasn't exactly a hiatus. She had been on the run. But now JD's real killer had been found, the DA had backed down, and Jordan's name had been cleared. That was all that really mattered… or so she kept telling herself. She had her job back.

Now if she could just get her life back. She walked down the corridor to her office and opened the door, dropping her pocketbook down on her desk. There was a neat pile of mail on its surface, presumably left by Emmy after the ME had gone home yesterday.

Forensic Journal, bill, bill…a card? Jordan felt her breath catch in her throat as the sight of the familiar handwriting tugged at her memory. She had talked to him briefly after she had returned to Boston. As a matter of fact, he had somehow heard of her plight and phoned Garret to make sure she was okay while she was on the run. They had a longer phone conversation last week. A glance at the clock on her desk told her it was time to go to work, that the card really needed to wait, but she tore it open anyway.

Hi Sweetheart,

You've been on my mind since we talked the other night. It sounds like you've been working too much. And after what you've been through, that's not a good thing. So here's a little something that I hope will make you feel better. I understand this is quite a popular past time now, since there are several TV shows about it . Go out and have a good time on your old man.

Love,

Dad

Jordan fingered the gift certificate before she tucked it away inside her pocketbook. Max was right. She had been working too many hours, but work had always been the way she coped in the past. It had been her panacea and in many ways the cure-all that righted her world.

For some reason this time it wasn't working. So maybe her father's gift made sense. Maybe it was what she needed….

"Jordan, autopsy room one? We need you, love," Nigel called from the doorway.

"Be right there."

Resolutely she decided to put the gift certificate into play at lunch.

The Millington Ballroom Dance Studio wasn't hard to find. Its gleaming brick and copper façade stood out in the afternoon sunlight. And even if you could overlook that, the beat of the music reverbing on the outside was another dead giveaway. Jordan pushed opened the doors of the building.

"Can I help you?" A British accent from woman at the desk immediately caught her attention.

"Um. My dad gave me this…I wanted to set up a time…." Jordan handed off the gift certificate to her.

The woman glanced at the piece of paper. "Your dad must love you a lot. It's for six months worth of lessons with the option to re-up after that if you still want to…" Her face broke out into a grin. "My name is Melanie. Have a seat, and I'll give you the form to fill out."

"I guess no job is finished until the paperwork is done," Jordan joked as she took the clipboard with the form from Melanie and sat down in one of the chairs in the reception area.

"Nope. I think goes for every job, too," Melanie answered. "But here, we keep it pretty brief."

And the form was short. Name. Address. E-mail. Phone. That was the easy part. But at the end was a list of dances….Jordan had to circle the ones she was most interested in. Some of the names were familiar. Others….weren't. She held the form up for Melanie to see and pointed to the last question. "What if I don't know..."

"Then circle them all. You've got plenty of time."

One bold pencil mark later, the deed was done. Jordan was enrolled in classes.

"Let me explain how we operate," Melanie continued when she took the form from Jordan. "Once a week, you'll have a private lesson with your primary instructor. After about three months, you'll get what we call a 'buddy' instructor. While both of your teachers are proficient in smooth and rhythm dances, one's strength will be the smooth and the other's strength will be rhythm. At that point, you'll alternate teachers. One week you'll have the smooth guy and the next week you'll have the rhythm.

"Meanwhile, on Mondays and Fridays we have what we call social dancing times, when you'll come with the other students and for an hour you get to dance with all the teachers and some of the students. On Tuesday nights we have a salsa class and Wednesday we have a minors class….." Melanie prattled on for the next five minutes before she realized she had totally lost Jordan. "You have questions…"

"What's minors?"

"Those are the dances your teachers won't get to emphasize so much in your lessons…Samba, West Coast Swing, Bolero, Viennese Waltz…."

It still sounded like a foreign language to Jordan, but she nodded like she understood. "Then I guess I need to make an appointment for my first lesson?"

"Do you have thirty minutes now?"

Another nod.

"Good. Have a seat. Mike will be with you in a minute."

"First thing you have to do is relax," Mike instructed as he steered Jordan's stiff frame around the first turn in the main ballroom.

"Sorry…I've just never done this before…"

"It's easy. Really. You just have to learn to listen to the music and let your body respond. Have you ever danced before?"

"Ballet. When I was a kid. Then the typical club scene when I was in college."

Mike stopped. "Okay. This is a little different. But it is kind of like going to the movies."

Jordan gave him a skeptical look as she glanced at another couple that appeared to be gliding across the floor with little effort. "Really?"

Mike grinned. "It is. All ballroom dance is composed of basically four steps." He took Jordan's arm. "First, we're going to have to go to the theater. For the sake of things, let's pretend it's not too far away. So we'll ….?"

"Walk?"

"Exactly." He began to walk around the ballroom with her. "That's the first step in ballroom dance. The forward walk. Now we're here at the movie." He stopped. "But it's so crowded, we can hardly move. There's a man with a woman in a wheelchair that needs to get his wife inside before it starts raining, but the line is so crowded we can't turn around and give him room. In order to get out of his way, we have to back up." He began walking backwards with her. "That's the second step. A backward walk.

"Now," he continued. "That's over and we're inside and found our seats. But we have to walk past several people to get to them." He started walking to the side. "That's the third step. The side step. It's also called the chasse'." Mike stopped and slapped his forehead with his hand. "How could we forget popcorn? It's not a movie without popcorn…" He moved sideways the other way, pretending to get back out into the theater aisle to go to the concession stand. "The side steps can go left to right or right to left.

"See ballroom dance is just like going to the movies…." He grinned at Jordan.

"Um. Yeah. But it looks a little more complicated than that."

Mike nodded. "But all dances contain those three steps and one more, the rock step. And this will be one I just have to demonstrate, because I haven't figured out a way to work it into going to the movies." Right foot in front, bent, left foot behind, and a slight shift of the weight gave it the appearance of rocking the weight from foot to foot. "All dances have a rock step, but in smooth dances, it's called a 'check'."

Jordan nodded. The terminology was getting to be a bit much. Forward walk…backward walk…rock step…side step….smooth…rhythm.

Evidently her confusion showed on her face and Mike chuckled. "It'll come. In two weeks, you'll know them like the back of your hand."

Another skeptical look.

"You will. I promise. Now let's try a few of these to music…."

To Jordan's surprise, the remaining thirty minutes flew by. An even bigger surprise was that Mike had been right. It wasn't long before she was comfortable with the steps and combining them. She was just a little bit disappointed when he told her the lesson was over and he'd schedule her for another one at the end of the week.

The biggest surprise of all?

She was looking forward to it.