For once, Quin wasn’t tuned to Tony’s wavelength. “Expert?” he queried.
“The dancing teacher,” Tony supplied, raising his eyebrows in arch surprise. “You’re slipping if you didn’t find that much out about her.”
Quin frowned. Tony wasn’t making sense. Nicole had been in banking before going overseas. Armed with a top level business degree, she’d worked her way up to the key division of sales, making the most of big investors’ money. One of the great things about their relationship had been her understanding of his work on the trading floor.
Though she could certainly dance like a professional—a natural at Latin American. Even so, Tony must have mistaken her for someone else. A woman with Nicole’s brain for clever commerce had to be earning big bucks somewhere in the workplace and that would not be in a school for dancing.
“I think you’ve got it wrong here, Tony,” he mocked his friend who prided himself on getting everything right.
One eyebrow lowered. The other was cocked higher. “Were you or were you not chatting up Nicole Ashton?”
Her name sent a shock wave up Quin’s spine. Alert signals shot along his nervous system. He eyed his friend very sharply, seeking urgent entry into his mind. “What do you know about her?”
Tony’s mouth formed a curious little smile. “Did she give you the flick?”
Quin tensed as he realised there was definitely some personal previous acquaintance here and he didn’t like it. Tony would be unaware of his own past relationship with Nicole. It was before his time, so the flick question couldn’t relate to that. Which meant it had to come from Tony’s own experience with her.
“You have a good reason for asking that?” he said coldly, hating the thought of his friend having intimate knowledge of Nicole.
“Oh, just that I failed to get anywhere with her beyond the dancing lessons I paid for,” he answered with a shrug. “That doesn’t happen very often. I might not have the pulling power of your physical assets, but when I set out to charm a woman, I usually win her.”
Quin knew that was true, which was why his gut had suddenly been in knots. “But you had no luck with Nicole Ashton,” he pressed.
“Not one flirtatious spark from her,” came the reassuring reply. “Always pleasant but her focus was fixed on feeling the dance, not feeling anything else. Not with me, anyway.”
Relief coursed through Quin. His mind lifted out of a storm of black possessiveness and honed in on getting information. “When was this, Tony?”
“Two years ago. You know me, Quin. I hate not being ahead of the game, and Latin American dancing was becoming popular. I took a month of lessons from her to get all the moves under my belt.”
“At a dancing school.”
“Yes.”
“Evening lessons?” He couldn’t believe it was Nicole’s day job.
Tony nodded. “Three times a week. Personal tuition, not a class. And all I ever found out about her was she helped run the school for her mother who owned it. Oh, and she’d won a lot of dancing competitions when she was a kid. Had photos and trophies on show to prove it. Like I said…an expert.”
She’d never told him this. But then, he’d never told her about his childhood, either. He’d wanted her to accept him as he was at the time—no probing into the past—and having cut off the subject of family several times, insisting that their backgrounds were totally irrelevant to how they felt together, Nicole had given up on trying to change his attitude.
“Where is this school?” he asked, wondering if Nicole had actually gone into business with her mother.
“Burwood.”
The suburb was reasonably close to the inner city where he lived and worked but far enough away for their paths to stay apart, given that Burwood was where she lived, as well as worked.
“So you didn’t even get that far with her,” Tony observed.
“I was just touching base, Tony, feeling for an opening.”
“Any crack of encouragement?”
“None. But that was only the initial foray.”
“From which you retreated in good order so you could take the fight to her again,” Tony dryly deduced.
Quin smiled at his shrewd reading of the situation. “I do not accept that all is lost.”
“Well, good luck, my friend. Nicole Ashton looks hot but she’s one cool lady.”
Not in bed, Quin thought.
“Ah, here’s Nina and Amber back from the powder room,” Tony announced, looking over Quin’s shoulder and holding out an inviting arm for Nina Salter-Smythe—his current love interest—to be gathered in to his side.
Quin swung around to greet the two women’s return, surreptitiously using the opportunity to glance back to where Nicole was seated, wanting to catch her looking at him, hoping for another chance to prove that her show of disinterest was not sustainable.
She wasn’t there.
His heart thumped with the shock of finding her place vacant.
Had she left the club, intent on doing another runner before he could catch her back?
His gaze jerked to her friends who still occupied the table. Jade Zilic and her partner, Jules, had their heads together as though plotting something. Surely they would have accompanied Nicole out, at least to see her into a taxi, if she had gone.
Quin told himself it didn’t matter, either way.
He had enough information to find her.
CHAPTER FOUR
WHEN Nicole emerged from the powder room, the dance floor was once again crowded, couples throwing themselves into the cha-cha with much energetic panache. This left an easy passage for her back to the table where Jade and Jules remained seated, watching the action.
“Got to say Quin Sola is a superb dancer,” Jade immediately commented, pointing to where he was partnering the brunette in red from the powder room. “Did you teach him, Nicole?”
She shook her head. “It’s natural to him. He once told me dancing is an expression of life in South America. He grew up with it.”
“Where in South America?” Jules asked, his curiosity piqued.
“I don’t know. He would never say.”
“Ah! A mysterious past,” Jade pounced, waggling her highly mobile eyebrows.
“Whatever…” Nicole waved dismissively. “He became an Australian citizen and left the past in the past. Now why don’t you two go and dance? I’m happy to sit this one out.”
She didn’t want to talk about Quin.