Total pages in book: 166
Estimated words: 157273 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 786(@200wpm)___ 629(@250wpm)___ 524(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 157273 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 786(@200wpm)___ 629(@250wpm)___ 524(@300wpm)
“That’s me,” Anne answered with a practiced smile, then glanced at Eva and me. “I’ll meet up with you two afterwards. We have to talk about summer plans for the beach house.”
“I can’t—” Eva started.
“You can and you will.” Anne leveled a look on our little sister that meant business. “We’re not losing the house just because you won’t take a vacation.” She whipped those hazel eyes at me. “And that goes for you too. See you after.”
She left without another word, disappearing into an ocean of costumed dancers in the hallway.
“The house in Haven Cove?” Vasily asked me as we started toward the stage, dancers moving from his path like rushing creek water around a boulder.
“Mom put the house in a trust last summer and made a ridiculous condition that we have to sell it if all three of us don’t provide proof that we spend time there together every year,” Eva answered before I had the chance to.
“Doesn’t sound like Sophie.” Vasily blinked. “She hated that house, and the fact that your father made her take you girls there in the summer. So many missed opportunities for trainings at summer intensives, but at least the Classic came of it.” He glanced at his Rolex. “Oh, Alessandra, I spoke with Isaac. He wants to meet next week about including the new ballet he’s choreographed in the fall schedule.”
My heart leapt. “Equinox?”
“Is that what you’re calling it?” His mouth quirked into a bemused smile. “Lovely.” He clucked his tongue at a young corps de ballet member who’d scurried into the hallway, and the dancer immediately slowed at the rebuke.
“I’ll make myself available if you need to see any of it performed,” I promised, struggling to keep the excitement out of my voice. Vasily admired comportment above all else.
“I’d appreciate that.” He nodded as the hallway split into two, each path leading to a different side of the stage. “Make me proud, Alessandra. You, too, Eve. Ah, Maxim, there you are.” He headed down the other hallway toward his pain-in-the-ass choreographer of a son who looked like every picture I’d ever seen of Vasily at thirty years old.
“It’s Eva,” Eva hissed once he was out of earshot. “He’s completely oblivious to me. But I’m excited for you.” She wrapped her arm around my waist.
“Thank you.” I leaned the side of my head against my sister’s. “And he’ll know your name by next season. You shine brighter than any other corps dancer, and he’ll see that.” Years of discipline were all that kept me from shouting in absolute glee. If we put Equinox on the fall program, I’d have a role created just for me.
We walked into the welcoming dark of the wings for our preperformance ritual, and I felt the years evaporate with every step as we passed a dozen other dancers and a few stagehands. By the time we reached the very edge of the curtain, where a few precious inches of light separated us from the crowd, I was six again, peeking to see if Mom and Dad were in the audience.
Except there were two of us where there had been four.
“I see her,” Eva whispered, using her extra inches to look over the top of my five-foot-five frame.
“Me too.” Heat stung my palms and my heart started to race as I looked up at the family seats—right mezzanine, box seven—spotting Mom and her best friend, Eloise, immediately.
Damn it. She was already in a mood.
To the outside world, the legendary Sophie Langevin-Rousseau was Metropolitan Ballet Company royalty, the height of sophistication and elegance, but I saw a powder keg with a lit fuse. She sat with her shoulders straight, her chin lifted, her silver-streaked dark hair pinned into a flawless french twist, but it was her manicured fingertips drumming impatiently on the railing that gave her away as she peered down at the orchestra. She wasn’t watching, she was hunting imperfections. Sure enough, her perfectly painted lips pursed in disapproval as a flute player scurried in, obviously running late.
Anne reached the box, taking her seat beside her pinstripe-suited husband, and I could have sworn she shot a look our direction before opening her program.
“Eloise looks good,” Eva whispered. “So do the men she’s brought with her.”
“Eloise has always had impeccable taste,” I agreed, a cool breeze lifting the hair on the back of my neck as Eva backed away, leaving me alone at the curtain’s edge.
I fought the impulse, but it won—it always did—and I glanced back at the very last row of the floor section. The seat in the center remained unoccupied, as my contract stipulated. That ache erupted in my chest again, just like it had every night this week.
The only time I’d ever truly nailed the variation, he’d been—
Stop it.
I did it once—danced the routine perfectly—and I would do it again tonight. Ripping my gaze from the empty seat, I headed back into the wings for my place.