Chapter Three

A Little Less Conversation

The Cha Cha

"You have to feel the rhythm before you can move," John directed, putting a pounding Latin rhythm on the sound system. "Listen."

Salsa, Mambo, Rumba, Cha Cha – they were all Latin dances. And Jordan had danced Latin many times before. At clubs. Free style. Not under the watchful and critical eye of a ballroom dance teacher.

"What you've got to do is forget everything you know about Salsa or any other Latin dance until you've mastered what we're going to teach you. We're going to start with Cha Cha because in all honesty? That one's pretty easy to learn and it has the most variations."

Jordan shook her head. "Somehow I get these pictures of Lucy and Ricky in my head…"

John laughed. "In a way, you're right. The Cha Cha is actually a hybrid from the Mambo. A bunch of Americans got tired of dancing the Mambo down in Cuba years ago and created the Cha Cha out of it. If you can do this dance, then the Mambo, the Salsa, and the Rumba should come easy."

"Uh-huh." The look Jordan shot him clearly told John there was some disbelief there.

"First, we're going to deal with Latin motion. Your hips and knees have a lot of potential. Latin motion is simply breaking the ankle," John demonstrated by rolling his foot to the side on the floor so it bent out at the joint, "and keeping the same leg bent at the knee and the other leg straight. That's the definition of real Latin motion – broken ankle, bent leg, straight leg. You want your hips to go back and forth, not side to side."

"Like a washing machine?"

"That's right. Just like the spin cycle on a Maytag."

Jordan snorted. Easier said than done.

Jordan had come to realize a lot of this ballroom dance stuff was easier said than done, and easiest watching on TV. It was hard work and required concentration. Both Mike and John told her that eventually her muscles would just "do it from memory." Jordan was pretty sure her muscles had Alzheimer's.

As time passed, she did find out that with the lessons and a bit of practice back home in her Pearle Street apartment, that things did come more naturally. The local competition came and went and she did well. She didn't place, but she didn't expect to. However the judges did give her a good critique and told her to keep up the hard work. It was paying off.

But keeping her sudden departures at five o'clock from her co-workers was getting harder. Jordan had always been known for working past the clock and often off the clock when a case was pressing. Now as soon as her shift was up, she made a bee-line for the exit.

Which raised more than a few eyebrows more than a few times. No questions were asked, but Garret was seriously thinking about asking Woody to have an unmarked follow her after she left work for a few days to make sure she wasn't moonlighting at some off-the-wall detective agency or something.

"You know what would really help," John said, as he snapped her back into frame and back into the reality of her Cha Cha lesson.

"Umm….ballroom shoes with microchips in them that automatically knew all the steps and would program your feet to follow?" In a spare moment of ballroom fantasy, Jordan had toyed with the idea of asking Nigel if he possibly could invent something along these lines.

"No. Then I'd be out of a job and this," John pointed to the ballroom floor and her feet, "would come all too easy. And what comes too easily isn't truly appreciated." He took Jordan by her hand and led her to one of the tables to sign off on her practice notebook. "No, what would be a big help is if you could get one of your male friends to take lessons with you. That would give you someone to practice with all the time and if he came to the social dances with you, you'd end up dancing all the time. Both of you would benefit by getting better and better. And competitions favor amateur/amateur parings. It would be a win-win situation."

Jordan quickly went down her short list of male friends that were still speaking to her. None of them seemed likely candidates. And it showed on her face.

"Come on…it'd be great for them," John coaxed.

"Really? How?"

He ticked off the reasons. "It's great cardiovascular exercise. It helps you lose weight and keep it off. And if any of them have back problems? Ballroom especially works the back muscles. Flexibility and strength in the back and legs are a bonus in ballroom."

The back muscles…

"Plus, they'd get to hold a very lovely lady in their arms for an hour, at least three times a week. What other reason could they want?" John finished, a teasing note in his voice. And in a way he was joking with Jordan, not that John didn't find her attractive. However, like Mike, John was engaged to his partner, Karen. They had danced together since they were in high school and all through college, waltzing their way into a professional career together. One day John looked across a competition ballroom at Karen dancing with another male competitor – for fun. John had never been a jealous man, but he had felt a double dose of the emotion that day. By the end of that weekend, he and Karen had an understanding. She was his and he was hers, on and off the ballroom floor.

"So, think you could come up with any takers?" John prodded again.

Jordan shook her head. "I don't know. But I'll try."


The approach would have to be careful. The delivery? A sales pitch like Jordan had never delivered before. Which ever "male friend" she decided to approach, he had to be sold on the idea, not necessarily her.

And in the end it only came down to one out of her three closest male friends.

Garret? Too short. With Jordan in the three-and-a-half inch ballroom shoes, she would tower over him. Besides, the man was far too busy to think about putting in a minimum of three hours of practice a week in a ballroom.

So that left two choices: Nigel and …Woody.

Jordan had casually left a ballroom dance clothing catalogue out on her desk, hoping to intrigue the clothing-conscious Brit into a conversation. That part worked, but when approached with the reason for the bait, Nigel had backed off.

"I've got two left feet, love."

"So did I when I started."

"No, you don't. I've seen you dance. You're grace and sensuality rolled into one." He sat down on the corner of her desk and thumbed through the catalogue one more time. "Although I must say, some of these outfits…" He held up a page for her perusal. It showed a picture of a male dancer's see-through rhythm shirt. "Tell me, do they have the same sort of outfits for the ladies? If they do, I just might be persuaded." A wicked grin flashed across his face.

"Nigel! I'm serious."

"And I am, too, love." He set the catalogue back down on her desk. "I do have two left feet. I can't dance. I go to my Goth clubs to hang out and drink. Not to shimmy with the ladies. And I don't think I can be taught because no matter how intriguing ballroom dancing would be with you, I can't see us getting 'down and dirty' on the ballroom floor."

"Nigel…it's not like that…" But her mind flashed back to what Melody had told her about ballroom months ago…When done properly, it's like making love in public with your clothes on…

Nigel harrumphed. "Yeah, right. I've seen Dancing with the Stars, Jordan. Tell me another one." He reached out one bony finger and traced a pattern on the clothing catalogue. "So why don't you kill the two proverbial birds with one stone?" He caught her brown-eyed gaze with one of his own.

"Two birds?" she asked.

"Yes." Nigel stood up and took her by the shoulders. "Ask Woodrow. A little persuasion and he'd do it. Just give him the same sales pitch you gave me. Include the fact about strengthening the back muscles and spending three uninterrupted hours with you a week outside of work…in his arms." Another wicked grin.

"I don't know, Nige. Things have been…awkward between us since I got back from DC."

"All the more reason, love." Nigel turned and opened the door to leave. "It will help his back and make things right between you two. Right as rain."

And with that, the Brit turned and left, leaving Jordan alone with her thoughts and rehearsing the sales pitch she was going to give to Woody.