Dance to the Piper

by Nora Roberts

  "He made the finals for that play off-Broadway." When she smiled, her young, hopeful face glowed. "If he makes chorus he can quit waiting tables at night He says prosperity's just around the corner."

  "That's great, Angie." She didn't add that prosperity was always around the corner for gypsies. The roads just kept getting longer. "I've got to run. Somebody's coming for dinner."

  On the third floor she heard the wailing echo of rock music and the thumping of feet. The disco queen was rehearsing, Maddy decided as she chugged up the next flight of steps. After a quick search for her keys, she let herself in. She had an hour.

  She switched on the stereo on her way to the kitchen, then dropped her bag on the twelve-inch square of Formica she called counter space. She scrubbed two potatoes, stuck them in the oven, remembered to turn it on, then dumped the fresh vegetables into the sink.

  It occurred to her vaguely that she might tidy the place up a bit. It hadn't been dusted in… well, there was enough clutter on the tables to hide the dust, anyway. Some might call her rooms a shade messy, but no one would call them dull.

  Most of her furnishings and decorations were Broadway surplus. When a show closed—especially if it had flopped—the markdown on props and materials was wonderful. They were memories to her, so even after the money had started to come in regularly she hadn't replaced them. The curtains were red and dizzity ornate—a steal from Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. The sofa, with its curvy back and dangerously hard cushions, had been part of the refuse of a flop she couldn't even remember, but it was reputed to have once sat on the parlor set of My Fair Lady. Maddy had decided to believe it.

  None of the tables matched; nor did any of the chairs. It was a hodgepodge of periods and colors, a tangle of junk and splendor that suited her very well.

  Posters lined the walls, posters from plays she'd been in, posters from plays where she hadn't gotten past the first call. There was one plant, a philodendron that hovered between life and death in its vivid pot by the window. It was the last in a long line of dead soldiers.

  But her most prized possession was a hot-pink neon sign whose curvy letters spelled out her name. Trace had sent it to her when she'd gotten her first job in a Broadway chorus. Her name in lights. Maddy switched it on as she usually did and thought that while her brother might not often be around, he always made himself known.

  Deciding not to spend too much tune picking up when it would only be cluttered again in a couple of days, Maddy cleaned off a couple of chairs, stacked the magazines and the unopened mail and left it at that. More pressing was the task of washing out her dance clothes.

  She filled the tub with warm water and soap, then added the lights and leotard she'd worn to class that morning. With them she added her rehearsal clothes. For good measure she dropped in sweatbands and leg warmers. With the sleeves of her knee-length sweatshirt rolled up, she began the monotonous job of washing out, rinsing and wringing. Using the makeshift clothesline she'd fashioned in the tub, Maddy hung every piece up to dry.

  The bathroom was no larger than a closet. When she stood up and turned, she faced herself in the mirror over the sink. Mirrors were an intimate part of her life. There were days when she danced in front of them for eight hours, watching, recording, assessing every muscle and move of her body.

  Now she looked at her face—fairly good bones, satisfactory features. It was the combination of pointed chin, wide eyes and glowing skin that won those awful accolades like 'cute' and 'wholesome' Nothing earth-shattering, she thought, but she could give them a hand.

  On a whim she swung the mirrored door open and grabbed two handfuls of makeup at random. She bought it, stored it, even hoarded it. It was almost an obsession. The fact that she rarely used it unless she was performing didn't make her hobby seem odd to her. Whenever she wanted to play with her face, she had all the tools handy.

  For ten minutes she experimented, putting on, creaming off, then putting on again, until the result was simply a bit of exotic color on her eyes and the faintest hint of warmth on her cheekbones. Maddy put the pots and tubes and pencils back into the cabinet, then shut the door before anything could fall out.

  Was she supposed to chill that wine? she thought abruptly. Or maybe she should serve it at room temperature—which was now hovering around eighty degrees.

  * * *

  She must have given him the wrong address. Reed didn't doubt his memory. He'd been taught early the importance of remembering names, faces, facts, figures. When your teacher was your father and you adored your father, you learned. From years of practice rather than from natural inclination, Reed could hold three columns of figures in his head and tally each of them. Edwin Valentine had taught his son that a smart businessman hired the best accountants, then made certain he knew as much as they did.

  He hadn't forgotten the address or mixed up the numbers, but he was beginning to believe she had.

  The neighborhood was tough and seedy and rapidly getting seedier as he drove. A broken chair, with its stuffing pouring out the side, sat on the sidewalk. A group of people was arguing over ownership. An old man in an undershirt and shorts sat on a grimy stoop and chugged a can of beer. He eyed Reed's car owlishly as it passed.

  How could she live here? Or more to the point, he thought, why would she live here? Maddy O'Hurley had just come off a year's engagement in a solid show that had brought her a Tony nomination. Before that, she'd had another year as the second lead and understudy to the star in a successful revival of Kiss Me, Kate.

  Reed knew, because he'd made it his business to know. His business, he assured himself as he pulled to the curb in front of the building that corresponded with the numbers Maddy had given him. A woman who was about to embark on her third major Broadway show could afford to live in a neighborhood where they didn't mine the sidewalks at night.

  As Reed stepped out of his car he spotted a young hood leaning against a lamppost, eyeing his hubcaps. With a quiet oath, Reed approached him. He'd dressed casually, but even without tie and jacket he looked as if he belonged at the country club.

  "How much to watch it?" Reed began bluntly. "Instead of strip it?"

  The boy shifted his position and smiled with practiced arrogance. "Pretty elegant wheels you got there, Lancelot. Don't see many BMWs cruise through here. I'm thinking of getting my camera."

  "Take all the pictures you want. Just don't take anything else." Reed slipped a twenty out of his wallet. "Let's say you're gainfully employed. There's another ten if the car's intact when I come out. You won't get more by hocking the hubcaps, and this way all you have to do is take in the evening air.''

  The boy studied the car, then its driver. He knew how to size up an opponent and figure the odds. The flinty eyes were direct and calm. If he'd seen fear in them, the boy would have pushed. Instead, he took the twenty.

  "You're the boss. I got a couple hours to kill." He grinned and showed a painfully crooked front tooth. The twenty had already disappeared before Reed started toward the front door.

  Her name was on a mail-slot in what might loosely have been called a foyer. Apartment 405. And there was no elevator. Reed started up the steps to the accompaniment of squalling kids, ear-splitting jazz and the sweating Gianellis. By the time he reached the third floor, he was doing some swearing himself.

  When the knock came, Maddy was up to her wrists in salad. She'd known that he'd be on time just as surely as she'd known she wouldn't be. "Hang on a minute," she shouted, then looked around fruitlessly for a cloth to dry her hands with. Giving up, she shook what moisture she could from them as she walked to the door. She gave the knob a hard yank, then grinned at him.

  "Hi. I hope you're not hungry. I'm not finished yet."

  "No. I—" He glanced back over his shoulder. "The hall…" he began, and let his words trail off. Maddy stuck her head out and sniffed.

  "Smells like a cow pasture," she said. "Guido must be cooking again. Come on in."

  He should have been prepared for her ap
artment, but he wasn't. Reed glanced around at the vivid red curtains, the shock of blue rug, the chair that looked as though it had come straight out of a medieval castle. It had, in fact, come from the set of Camelot. Her name in pink neon glowed brilliantly against a white wall.

  "Quite a place," he murmured.

  "I like it when I'm here." Overhead came three simultaneous thuds. "Ballet student on the fifth," Maddy said easily. "Tours jett. Would you like some wine?"

  "Yes." Reed glanced uneasily at the ceiling again. "I

  think I would."

  "Good. So would I." She walked back to the kitchen, which was separated from the living room by a teetering breakfront and imagination. "There's a corkscrew in one of these drawers," she told him. "Why don't you open the bottle while I finish this?"

  After a moment's hesitation, Reed found himself searching through Maddy's kitchen drawers. In the first one he found a tennis ball, several loose keys and some snapshots, but no corkscrew. He rifled through another, wondering what he was doing there. On the fifth floor, the ballet student continued his leaps.

  "How do you like your steak?"

  Reed rescued the corkscrew from a tangle of black wire. "Ahh… medium rare."

  "Okay." When she bent down to pull the broiling pan out of a cupboard, her cheek nearly brushed his knee. Reed drew the cork from the bottle, then set the wine aside to let it breathe.

  "Why did you ask me to dinner?"

  Still bent over and rummaging, Maddy turned her face upward. "No concrete reason. I rarely have one, but if you'd like, why don't we say because of the hairbrush?" She rose then, holding a dented broiling pan. "Besides, you're terrific to look at."

  She saw the humor come and go in his eyes and was delighted.

  "Thank you."

  "Oh, you're welcome." She brushed away the hair that fell into her eyes and thought vaguely that it was about time for a trim. "Why did you come?"

  "I don't have any idea."

  "That should definitely make things more interesting. You've never backed a play before, have you?"

  "No."

  "I've never cooked dinner for a backer. So we're even." Setting the salad aside, she began to prepare the steak.

  "Glasses?"

  "Glasses?" she repeated, then glanced at the wine. "Oh, they're up in one of the cupboards."

  Resigned, Reed began another search. He found cups with broken handles, a mismatched set of fabulous bone china and several plastic dishes. Eventually he found a hoard of eight wineglasses, no two alike. "You don't believe in uniformity?"

  "Hot really." Maddy set the steak under the broiler, then slammed the oven door. "It needs a boost to get going," she told him as she accepted the glass he offered. "To SRO."

  "To what?"

  "Standing room only." She clicked her glass to his and drank.

  Reed studied her over the rim of his glass. She still wore the oversize sweatshirt. Her feet were bare. The scent that hung around her was light, airy and guileless. "You aren't what I expected."

  "That's nice. What did you expect?"

  "Someone with a sharper edge, I suppose. A little jaded, a little hungry."

  "Dancers are always hungry," she said with a half smile, turning to grate cheese onto potatoes.

  "I decided you'd asked me here for one of two reasons. The first was to pump me for information about the finances of the play."

  Maddy chuckled, putting a sliver of cheese on her tongue. "Reed, I have to worry about eight dance routines—maybe ten, if Macke has his way—six songs, and lines I haven't even counted yet. I'll leave the money matters to you and the producers. What was the second reason?"

  "To come on to me."

  Her brows lifted, more in curiosity than shock. Reed watched her steadily, his eyes dark and calm, his smile cool and faintly amused. A cynic, Maddy realized, thinking it was a shame. Perhaps he had a reason to be. That was more of a shame. "Do women usually come on to you?"

  He'd expected her to be embarrassed, to be annoyed, at the very least to laugh. Instead, she looked at him with mild curiosity. "Let's just pass over that one, shall we?"

  "I suppose they do." She began to hunt for a kitchen fork to turn the steak with. "And I suppose you'd resent it after a while. I never had to deal with that sort of thing myself. Men always came on to my sister." She found the fork, squeaked open the oven door and flipped the steak over.

  "There's only one," Reed pointed out.

  "No, I've got two sisters."

  "Steak. You're only cooking one steak."

  "Yes, I know. It's yours."

  "Aren't you eating?"

  "Oh, sure, but I never eat a lot of red meat." She slammed the oven door again. "It dogs up the system. I figured you'd give me a couple bites of yours. Here." She handed him the salad bowl. "Take this over to the little table by the window. We're nearly ready."

  It was good. In fact, it was excellent As he'd watched her haphazard way of cooking, Reed had had his doubts. The salad was a symphony of mixed greens in a spicy vinaigrette. Cheese and bacon were heaped on steaming potatoes, and the steak was done precisely as he preferred. The wine had a subtle bite.

  Maddy was still nursing her first glass. She ate a fraction of what seemed normal to Reed, and seemed to relish every bite.

  "Take some more steak," he offered, but she shook her head. She did, however, take a second small bowl of salad. "It seems to me that anyone who has as physical a job as you do should eat more to compensate."

  "Dancers are better off a little underweight. Mostly it's a matter of eating the right things. I really hate that." She grinned, taking a forkful of lettuce and alfalfa sprouts. "Not that I hate the right kind of food, I just love food, period. Once in a while I splurge on thousands of calories. But I always make sure it's a kind of celebration."

  "What kind?"

  "Well, say it's rained for three days, then the sun comes out. That's good enough for chocolate-chip cookies." She poured herself another half glass of wine and filled his glass before she noticed his blank expression. "Don't you like chocolate-chip cookies?"

  "I've never considered them celebrational."

  "You've never lived an abnormal life."

  "Do you consider your life abnormal?"

  "I don't. Thousands would." She propped her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her hands. Food, so often dreamed over, could always be forgotten when the conversation was interesting. "What's your life like?"

  The fight from the window beside them was dying quickly. What was left of it gleamed darkly in her hair. Her eyes, which had seemed so open, so easy, now glowed like a cat's, tawny, lazy, watchful. The neon was a foolish pink shimmer that curled into her name. "I don't know how to answer that."

  "Well, I can probably guess some of it. You have an apartment, probably overlooking the park." She poked into the salad again, still watching him. "Ming vases, Dresden figures, something of the sort. You spend more time at your office than in your home. Conscientious about your work, dedicated to the business. Any responsible second-generation tycoon would be. You date very casually, because you don't have the time or inclination for a relationship. You'd spend more time at the museum if you could manage it, take in a foreign film now and then, and prefer quiet French restaurants."

  She wasn't laughing at him, he decided. But she was more amused than impressed. Annoyance crept into his eyes, not because of her description but because she'd read him so easily. "That's very clever."

  "I'm sorry," she said with such quick sincerity that his annoyance vanished. "It's a bad habit of mine, sizing people up, categorizing them. I'd be furious with anyone who did it to me." Then she stopped and caught her bottom lip between her teeth. "How close was I?"

  It was difficult to resist her frank good humor, "close enough."

  With a laugh, she shook her head back so that her hair flared out then settled. She brought her legs up into the lotus position. "Is it all right to ask why you're backing a play about a stripper?"
r />   "Is it all right to ask why you're starring in a play about a stripper?"

  She beamed at him like a teacher, Reed thought, whose student had answered a question with particular insight. "It's a terrific play. The trick to being sure of that is to look at the script without the songs and the dance numbers. The music punctuates, emphasizes, exhilarates, but even without it, it's a good story. I like the way Mary develops without having to change intrinsically. She's had to be tough to survive, but she's made the best of it. She wants more, and she goes after it because she deserves more. The only glitch is that she really falls for this guy. He's everything she's ever wanted in a material way, but she really just plain loses her head over him. After she does, the money doesn't matter, the position doesn't matter, but she ends up with it all anyway. I like that."

  "Happy ever after?"

  "Don't you believe in happy endings?"

  A shutter clicked down over his expression, quickly, completely. Curiously. "In a play."

  "I should tell you about my sister."

  "The one the men came on to?"

  "No, my other sister. Would you like an éclair? I bought you one, and if you have it you could offer me a bite. It would be rude for me to refuse."

  Damn it, she was getting more appealing by the minute. Not his type, not his speed, not his style. But he smiled at her. "I'd love an éclair."

  Maddy went into the kitchen, rummaged noisily, then came back with a fat chocolate-iced pastry. "My sister Abby," she began, "married Chuck Rockwell, the race driver. Do you know about him?"

  "Yes." Reed had never been an avid fan of auto racing, but the name rang a bell. "He was killed a few years back."

  "Their marriage hadn't been working. Abby really had been having a dreadful time. She was raising her two children alone on this farm in Virginia. Financially she was strapped, emotionally she was drained. A few months ago she authorized a biography of Rockwell. The writer came to the farm, ready, I think, to gun Abby down," Maddy continued, placing the éclair on the table. "Are you going to offer me a bite?"

  Reed obligingly cut a piece of the pastry with his fork and offered it to her. Maddy let the crust and cream and icing lie on her tongue for a long, decadent moment. "So what happened to your sister?"

  "She married the writer six weeks ago." When she smiled again, her face simply lighted up, just as emphatically as the pink neon. "Happy-ever-after doesn't just happen in plays."

  "What makes you think your sister's second marriage will work?"

  "Because this is the right one." She leaned forward again, her eyes on his. "My sisters and I are triplets, we know each other inside out. When Abby married Chuck, I was sorry. In my heart, you see, I knew it wasn't right, that it could never be right, because I know Abby just as well as I know myself. I could only hope it would work somehow. When she married Dylan, it was such a different feeling—like letting out a long breath and relaxing."

  "Dylan Crosby?"

  "Yes, do you know him?"

  "He did a book on Richard Bailey. Richard's been signed with Valentine Records for twenty years. I got to know Dylan fairly well when he was doing his research."

  "Small world."

  "Yes." It was full dusk now, and the sky was deepening to purple, but she didn't bother with lights. The ballet student had long since stopped his practicing. Somewhere down the hall, a baby could be heard wailing fitfully. "Why do you live here?"

  "Here?" She gave him a blank look. "Why not?"

  "You've got Attila the Hun on the street corner, screaming neighbors…"

  "And?" she added, prompting him.

  "You could move uptown."

  "What for? I know this neighborhood. I've been here for seven years. It's close to Broadway, handy to rehearsal halls and classes. Probably half the tenants in this building are gypsies."

  "I wouldn't be surprised."

  "No, chorus-line gypsies." She laughed and began to toy with the leaf of the philodendron. It was a nervous gesture she wouldn't have begun to recognize herself. "Dancers who move from show to show, hoping for that one big break. I got it. That doesn't mean I'm not still a gypsy." She glanced back at him, wondering why it should matter so much that he understand her. "You can't change what you are, Reed. Or at least you shouldn't."

  He believed that, and always had. He was the son of Edwin Valentine, one of the early movers and shakers in the record industry. He was a product of success, wealth and survival. He was, as Maddy had said, devoted to the business, because it had been part of his life always. He was impatient, often ruthless, a man who looked at the bottom line and the fine print before changing it to suit himself. He had no business sitting in a darkening apartment with a woman with cat's eyes and a wicked smile. He had less business entertaining fantasies about what it would be like to remain until the moon began to rise.

  "You're killing that plant," he murmured.