"Nick, that is so awesome for you, man!" Greg exclaimed from the other end of the phone connection.

"Don't you mean 'humiliating?'" Nick replied as he took a seat on the bed in his hotel room and offed his shoes.

"No. I mean awesome. Just think about it, Nick. You and Sara will be getting very close to one another. I mean, have you ever seen a ballet before?"

"Not really," Nick admitted, "My dad took us to see The Nutcracker once, but I didn't pay attention because I thought that ballet was for girls."

"Well the men and women get very close when they dance. You'll get to touch Sara all over, man! Not to mention getting to see her daily in a leotard and tights! You have a camera phone, right?"

"Yeah. I upgraded last month. Why?"

"Please send Archie and me some pictures. Sara is so hot!"

"Greg! I will do no such thing!" Nick scolded, "We're doing this exercise to build trust. It would go over like a lead balloon if I sent you secret pictures of Sara. I could probably even lose my job--just because you and Archie want to beat yourselves off to the vision of Sara as a ballerina? No way, man."

"Cool it, man," Greg said, laughing, "It was a joke."

"Well…since you were only joking, I'll tell you this: we're going to do a recital in two weeks where we'll share what we've learned through our experience and perform our dance. It's open to our co-workers, so you and Archie can feast your eyes when you see Sara in person a week from Friday."

"I will mark my calendar. I am so there, man! I'll even mark Archie's, too. I do not want to miss this."

"Whatever, man." Nick paused. "Look, I'd better get some rest. We have three hour-long ballet classes every day this week--and if ballet is what the woman who spoke at the conference said that it is, I'm going to be half dead by Tuesday."

"I'll talk to you later, then."

"Bye, Greg."

"Bye."

Nick flopped onto his bed and let out a pregnant sigh. Ballet! He simply couldn't put away that thought.

There was a knock on his door.

"Hi, Nick," Sara said after Nick had opened the door to his hotel room, "I hope I'm not bothering you."

"Not at all," Nick said as he gestured for her to enter his room, "What brings you up here?"

Sara took a seat on the bed and crossed her legs. The bathrobe she was wearing opened slightly to reveal a long and slender thigh. Nick couldn't help looking at it.

"You know me," Sara said, smiling, "I can never sleep. I thought I'd sneak up here and see if you were awake, too." Sara started laughing and laid back onto the bed. "It's really funny, how thrilling the experience of sneaking up here was to me. When we would go on field trips in school, I'd always fantasized about what it would be like to sneak up to the boys' floor. Did you ever wonder about that?"

"I knew what it was like. Us boys always tried to peep in on the girls in their rooms. We were hoping to see them in bathrobes, but we only ever saw them in pajamas. I had never actually gotten to go inside a girl's room, though."

"Now you have a girl inside your room wearing a bathrobe!"

"Yes, I do," Nick said with discomfort.

"Can you believe how great these rooms are?" Sara asked as she rolled over onto her stomach and propped her chin on her hands.

"They are pretty cool--especially since we're not investigating a death in one of them."

Sara laughed heartily. "So do you think anyone has died in either of our rooms?"

"Wow," Nick stated plainly and then laughed, "Now I'm really not going to be able to sleep here."

"Nick," Sara said, feigning shock, "Are you afraid of ghosts?"

"A little," Nick said as he turned away from her, "I only feel nervous if I'm staying in a place where someone died."

"I can make you forget your fears," Sara said as she stood and approached him from behind. He turned to see her wearing only her bra and panties with the bathrobe bunched next to her feet.

"What are you doing?" Nick exclaimed. His eyes darted uncontrollably from one part of Sara's body to another. He couldn't believe how good she actually looked. She had always worn form-fitting clothing, but he couldn't see her creamy skin underneath those clothes.

"I'm seducing you," Sara said slyly. She grasped the back of Nick's neck and pressed her lips against his. He was unable to resist Sara. He wrapped his arms around her waist and deepened the kiss.

Sara moaned softly. She broke this kiss and began removing his clothes, kissing his bare skin as she exposed it.

Nick gently pushed Sara away from himself and laid her on the bed. He lowered himself on top of her and began kissing her neck and the exposed portion of her breasts.

"Oh, Nick," Sara said breathily, "I want you right now."

"You've got me, baby," Nick said as he unfastened her bra, "You've got all of me." He removed her panties and began kissing the inside of her thighs.

Sara ran her fingers through Nick's hair. She leaned forward to kiss him. Then, he pulled himself away and went for the kill.

Nick awakened, panting. That was his third sex dream about Sara in that week. He got out of bed and paced the floor, waiting for his erection to subside.

He had always found Sara attractive, but he had more respect for her than to treat her as a sex object as he had in that dream.

Isn't a sex dream really just symbolic of love? He asked himself. He knew that Freud's interpretations of dreams weren't worth the paper they were written on, but he did believe that, in much less convoluted ways than those outlined by Mr. Freud, his dreams did tell him what his waking mind was unable to admit. In this case, he was learning that he was falling in love with Sara.

Author's Note: I just wanted to say "thank you" to those who have already reviewed my work. I am honestly surprised by how encouraging a few reviews can be. Be on the lookout for chapter three (hopefully coming relatively soon)!