The Risk, page 14
Thinking about burlesque dancing made me think about Sebastian, which I still did far too often. And I might have known, without a shred of doubt, that I’d made the right decision. That I wouldn’t change anything if I could.
But that didn’t make me miss him any less.
My mother had come down to the city for some or other charity thing today. She knew perfectly well this was my day off, so I’d had no option but to agree to meet her for lunch when I would have preferred to work on my audition routine.
I walked into the restaurant, saw her at once, and started weaving my way to the tables toward her. She looked as she always did. Perfectly put together, her hair elegant, her expression haughtily serene.
I couldn’t help thinking about the odd ties that held us together. Mother and daughter. Obligation and disappointment, love and hope. I understood how those things moved as one and made a whole when it was a dance company. Why did I think a family was so different?
When she looked up and saw me, a faint frown marred her smooth forehead. I knew she did not approve of what I had chosen to wear for our lunch. My favorite boots, clunky and a little bit motorcycle-y. Leggings without a tunic covering them up, making them the pants she abhorred. And the cropped leather jacket that showed off entirely too much of my body without even attempting to conceal any of it. I could hear her objections from across the room.
But she said nothing as I sat down opposite her and we exchanged greetings.
I waited until we’d ordered our food, a sensible salad for her and a grilled cheese for me, because I liked to live dangerously. These days, anyway. Then I sat back in my chair and smiled at her.
“I’m glad you wanted to have lunch, Mom,” I said, before I lost my nerve. “I have something to tell you.”
Up went that brow. But I refused to be cowed.
“I’m leaving the Knickerbocker,” I said.
My mother stared back at me, her face frozen. “I beg your pardon?”
“I understand that you don’t appreciate other forms of dance the way you do ballet,” I said as diplomatically as possible. “But I’m going to join a contemporary dance company. It actually has quite a sterling reputation, though of course it doesn’t have the Knickerbocker’s grand history. Anyway, it’s time to move on and that’s what I’m doing.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t need to understand this, Mom.” My voice was harder than it needed to be, maybe. But I wanted to get my point across. “I hope you’ll support me either way.”
My mother blinked. “Darcy.”
I braced myself for the lecture, but she only shook her head as if I was a mystery to her. It made my heart hurt.
“Of course we’ll support you,” she said, with that cultured certainty that had always made me feel grubby and unhinged in comparison. “You behave as if you think your father and I don’t know how difficult it is to be a professional dancer. But of course we do. We see exactly how hard you work. If you see any hesitation on my part it’s because I thought you loved ballet to distraction. Why else would you dedicate your life to it?”
“I do love ballet.” Though I felt unsteady, suddenly. As if I’d never seen my mother before. As if I’d broken my own heart. “But it doesn’t love me back, Mom. It never will. And I think there’s only so long you can live with that.”
Maybe I wasn’t talking about the ballet anymore. Not entirely.
“I know it’s the fashion to tell young people that they should do what they love, damn the torpedoes, and so on,” my mother said, after a moment. “But you’ve done that. And you’ve always combined your passions with intense discipline. It’s why you’ve made it as far as you have.”
“But not far enough,” I finished for her. Before she could get the jab in. “Not a soloist.”
“Will you be a soloist at your new company?”
“Yes.” It was amazing how much satisfaction it gave me to say that. “I believe I’ll come in—assuming I nail the addition—as a principal.”
“It’s what you’ve always wanted,” my mother said. “It doesn’t surprise me, Darcy, that having gone so far down one road without getting where you wanted to go, you decided that you might prefer another. You were the most determined child I’d ever encountered. While my friends’ children were getting into trouble, with drugs and sex and all the rest of it, you never wavered. Ever.”
“I’m wavering now.” Though really, the only thing wavering was my voice. “I guess if professional ballet is a game of chicken, I lost.”
“Nonsense.” And this time, when my mother’s brow rose, I felt that she was doing it for me, not at me. “Ballet might be rigidly hierarchical, but love is not. Or it isn’t love. It expands. It changes when necessary—that’s called growth. And so will you.” She even smiled. “I will look into season tickets for your new company at once.”
And in case I thought that she had been body snatched, when my tears welled up she looked aghast, produced a tissue from her bag, and told me to pull myself together.
I couldn’t remember ever feeling so at peace after an interaction with my mother before. I walked back to my apartment afterward, feeling...solid. Connected. I would dance out the rest of my contract at the Knickerbocker. I would nail my audition. And I would start a whole new chapter of professional dancing.
I would grow. This was growth. It was good.
The only thing stranger and more dizzying than not getting what you wanted, I was discovering with every step, was actually getting it.
I was going to have to figure out a way to be all right with center stage for a change.
I thought of Sebastian then and sighed. But I refused to let myself dwell on the things I couldn’t change. On the man who loved me—because I knew he loved me, so far as he was able—but couldn’t admit it.
And when I came around the corner of my street, I was so busy not dwelling that I almost slammed into the person standing there. Standing still in the middle of the sidewalk, as a matter fact, which should be illegal on New York City streets. Everyone knew that.
“Sorry—” I began.
But I knew that blue gaze, bright and beautiful.
And this time it was real, not a dream.
It was Sebastian. Live and in person and in the glorious flesh. And he took my breath away as surely as the periodic gusts of frigid wind rushing in from the East River. He cut through me that easily. He turned me inside out without laying a finger on me or saying a word.
“You can’t come back here and do this to me again,” I threw at him, hoping I sounded fierce enough to hide the sharp kick of longing inside.
“Quiet,” he told me, bossy and stern the way I liked him, though he wore an expression on his face I’d never seen before. “This time, little dancer, I’m going to do it right.”
And then, to my astonishment, he sank down onto his knees. Right there on the dirty, frigid February street.
It took me a long moment to realize that he’d reached into his pocket and pulled out a box. A small box in a recognizable shade of blue. He cracked it open, momentarily blinding me with the manic sparkle of the ring within.
A ring.
“Darcy James,” he said, dark and certain and still delightfully bossy. “I’m an idiot. I don’t deserve you, but I can’t seem to manage without you. I can’t think of a single reason why you should marry me, but I’m hoping you will all the same.”
I wasn’t sure my heart could take it. It was the hope that about killed me, swelling up inside and making my eyes tear up.
“I already told you why I can’t.” I wanted to touch him. I wanted to love him, forever. It was possible I already would. And did. But I wanted everything. Everything. I couldn’t stop loving myself, the way I knew I would if he didn’t love me back. “I just can’t—”
“I love you,” he said, low and urgent. “Of course I love you. You electrified me the moment I laid eyes on you in Paris. I would have paid six times what you took from me for another taste. I love you, Darcy. Madly. Impossibly. There’s no point to any of this without you. You don’t just make me wish I was a better man, you’ve already made me one.”
“Sebastian...” I whispered.
“Marry me, because I’ve never loved anyone else,” he urged me. Ordered me. “And I have the feeling I have a lot to make up for. I can’t promise you that I won’t drive you crazy. I’m sure I will. But I can promise you that the makeup sex will always be fantastic.”
“I love you,” I said helplessly. “I can’t help it. And I love that you keep showing up here and making these sweeping pronouncements. But a big, dramatic showstopper isn’t real life. If you want a ballerina doll of your very own, you should know that I can’t do that anymore. I’m not that person. I’m quitting the Knickerbocker.”
“I don’t care if the only place you dance is naked, for me,” he growled at me. “In fact, I encourage it. You look fierce and happy, and that’s what I want our life to feel like. You don’t have to be ready to marry me today. Just give me someday, Darcy.”
He took the ring out of its box and slipped it onto my finger.
A key into a lock.
It fit my finger the way we fit together. Perfectly.
“I want it all,” I whispered. “I want everything. With you.”
His smile broke my heart again, smashing it into pieces, then knit it back together again.
“Then everything is what you get,” he promised me.
He rose then, pulling me into his arms, and it was like coming home at last. I was vaguely aware that we’d drawn a crowd, but I didn’t care about them. I couldn’t even see them.
What mattered was Sebastian. He was all I could see. All I wanted. The two of us together and the life we would build, one brick at a time.
It was most important dance of my life, and it started now.
And unlike every other dance I’d ever learned, this one would last forever.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Sebastian
THE THEATER WAS FULL. There were the sounds of soft conversations, programs rustling in people’s hands and the orchestra—or perhaps, more properly tonight, the band—tuning their instruments.
I couldn’t remember the last time I had allowed myself so much as the faintest hint of nerves, but this was different. This wasn’t something for me to win or lose. This was Darcy’s debut in her new company.
I was a wreck, though I would die before I’d show it.
Darcy’s parents sat to one side of me, cool and polite, as ever. We had gone up to Connecticut to celebrate our engagement with them, after a fashion. It had been restrained, but still far more loving than any family dinner I could recall. And I really didn’t care how ferociously manicured and distant they both were as long as they were kind to their daughter.
On my other side was my mother, which I would have told the world would never happen. And had. She wasn’t sober all the time, but she was sober tonight. We weren’t exactly bosom friends. I wasn’t sure that was possible or even desirable.
But when my mother didn’t drink, she was a different person. One, I was surprised to discover, I might actually like. We’d spent the last month or so being very, very careful with each other.
Still, I couldn’t help being optimistic.
To my great surprise.
It was one more gift my beautiful dancer had given me.
These had been the best months of my life. The hardest, in many ways. I might have discovered my heart and handed it over to Darcy on a winter street in New York City. But that didn’t mean I knew how to use it.
She’d moved into the penthouse with me, if not quickly enough to suit me. She told me she’d set a wedding date in a year’s time, assuming things continued to grow and bloom.
I’m a ruin of a man, I’d shouted at her in one of our fights. They came like storms, flaring up hot and blowing themselves out again.
Ruins are where the flowers grow, asshole, she’d hurled right back at me. Try that, for a change.
And I’d kept my promise about the makeup sex. It was blistering, always.
Day after day, together, we worked it out.
Just as, slowly and carefully, I thought Ash and I were working it out, too. At long last.
My life was unrecognizable from the one I’d had when I’d walked into the club last fall.
There was love. There was hope.
And in the middle of it, making it all possible, there was Darcy.
I got a life of her smiles. Her occasional silliness and her iron discipline. I got her dancer friends, and their camaraderie that sometimes baffled me as much as I admired it. I got that body of hers and all the ways she could use it. I got to care for her and protect her and let her do the same for me.
She understood my drive because she had her own. She supported me in ways I’d never really understood a partner could. And should. She listened. She felt for me and with me. She made things I would have said were only mine brighter because I told her about them.
And every once in a while, when I greeted her at the door dressed in a suit with a credit card in my hand or a stack of crisp bills in any currency, I got to buy her for another night, too.
We would marry when the time was right. And then, forever, I would get to do this thing with the one person who made it all matter.
If I could just survive opening night.
As if on cue, the lights in the theater went down.
I heard an ear-piercing whoop of joy and support and knew it was Annabelle, Darcy’s irrepressible best friend, from her favorite seat in the first row of the balcony with a group of other dancers.
Then everything was silent.
A spotlight punched through the inky dark, lighting up the figure who crouched in the center of the stage.
For a moment she looked like the doll she’d never been, not to me.
She moved in a sudden, liquid rush, from that crouched-down position into a bold, impossible leap—as if she was scaling a wall only she could see—
Then she was flying, with those wings of hers that I could always see on either side of her. Tonight, it wasn’t only me who could see them.
And I knew they were feathered bright and pure, made entirely of joy.
Pure joy.
But then, to me, she had never been anything else.
I let out the breath I’d been holding as the music kicked in. Then I sat back and watched my little dancer do what she loved, as if she was doing it just for me.
The way I would insist she do later, for my eyes only, naked and flushed.
And, best of all, mine.
* * * * *
If you enjoyed The Risk by Caitlin Crews,
look out for the other stories in
The Billionaires Club continuity,
The Debt by Jackie Ashenden
available now
The Proposition by JC Harroway
The Deal by Clare Connelly
coming soon from Mills & Boon!
Dare to read more sexy stories!
Check out our other Mills & Boon titles,
available now:
Friends with Benefits by Margot Radcliffe
In Too Deep by Taryn Belle
Matched by Kelli Ireland
Keep reading for an excerpt from Friends with Benefits by Margot Radcliffe.
Friends with Benefits
by Margot Radcliffe
CHAPTER ONE
ALEXA LAWSON STEPPED OUT of the plate glass elevator onto her casino floor. While her uncle was out of the country on business she was the head bitch in charge at Halcyon, the newest and hottest den of decadence in Las Vegas. She was known in town for running all three of her uncle’s casinos, but this one was her baby because she’d designed it on her own.
Halcyon was the only casino in Vegas with a true woman’s touch. Twinkling fairy lights draped sensuously from the ceiling like long ropes of iridescent pearls, their reflection dancing across the lavish white marble floors. Gold finishes and furniture glittered like starbursts under brushed-brass chandeliers, and luscious greenery with exotic cream and peach blooms burst from the walls as reminders of the earthly pleasures one could find when people lost their inhibitions.
Designed after a wedding Alexa had been to in Athens, the casino was old-world romance with a touch of new-world naughtiness.
On her way out the door for the day, she snagged a chocolate-covered fig from the tray of a passing waiter. Wearing nothing but a pair of beige linen pants and a leather wristband with Halcyon embroidered in gold on it, this new waiter with his chiseled abs was a customer favorite.
His name tag read Apollo, but she doubted that was his real name.
“I see you’re taking the casino’s theme seriously,” Alexa told him. She glanced down at the tag hanging from the gold chain around his muscled neck and back up again to his sexy grin.
“Yes, ma’am,” Apollo returned, giving her a jovial wink that made her smile.
“Are you flirting with your employees?” a familiar voice said from behind her. His voice was deep with just a little grit in it, like a rich and chalky cabernet sauvignon.
Her best friend, Carter Hayes, appeared beside her looking supremely amused.
She thanked the waiter and he left to spread the wonder that was his abdominal region to the paying customers.
“Hey there, darling,” she said, biting into the fig. She met Carter’s eyes as she caught a smear of chocolate in the corner of her mouth with her tongue. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”
He shook his head at her deliberate provocation. Teasing him was one of her favorite pastimes. He could be so uptight. It was one of her responsibilities as best friend to make sure he lightened up sometimes.
