The Ballerina's Secret

by Teri Wilson

  He cursed himself for letting the trumpet player get to him as he climbed on the 1 train. The guy was just an old man. A nobody.

  A nobody who can still play the horn.

  Right.

  He sank into the last open seat in the subway car, which happened to be directly behind the woman who’d dropped a dollar in the old man’s bucket. No, not one dollar. Two. And unless Julian had been imagining things, she’d only pulled out the second dollar bill after she’d noticed his disapproval of the musician’s performance.

  “He wasn’t that good, you know.” Julian aimed his comment at the back of her head.

  Hers was a quite lovely head, actually. Piled with waves of strawberry blond hair, pinned up to expose the curve of her graceful neck. She was pretty. There was something poetic about the way she moved. Lyrical, almost. He’d noticed it straightaway on the train platform. And Julian wasn’t prone to noticing such things lately.

  His gaze lingered for a moment on a silky, wayward curl winding its way down her back, and he suppressed the urge to twirl it around one of his fingers.

  God, what was wrong with him? Had he been shut up in his penthouse for so long that he’d forgotten the rules of simple social interaction? Yeah. He supposed he had.

  He cleared his throat and spoke to her again. “I mean, it was nice of you to tip the man. Very nice. All the same, his sense of rhythm was severely lacking.”

  Why, oh, why was he explaining himself to a woman he didn’t even know? A woman who didn’t care to know him, apparently.

  She didn’t budge. She just sat, staring down at something in her lap, while her dog fixed its gaze at Julian over her shoulder. Cute little dog. Copper and white, with plumed ears that seemed almost comically large in proportion to its dainty head. The dog blinked at Julian, cocked its head and swiveled its huge ears forward so they looked even bigger.

  “Anyway.” Julian sighed. “Like I said, it was nice of you to help the guy out.”

  He waited a beat, and when she didn’t respond—again—he turned back around. The two of them spent the rest of their journey back-to-back, mere inches apart.

  In silence.

  Chapter Two

  The sound erupted at rehearsal the next day, and it was nothing like Tessa remembered.

  She remembered soft, lilting melodies. The winsome whisper of violins. She remembered the patter of balletic feet and the rhythm of her own labored breath during allegro work at center. In, out. In, out. In, out.

  She remembered what the swish of a velvet curtain sounded like on recital night, the deafening roar of a standing ovation and the way roses being tossed onto a stage floor sounded so much like heavy snowfall against a windowpane.

  And she remembered music. Of course she did. Even now, she could still hum every theatrical flourish of the Swan Lake score from memory. Sometimes she thought she heard songs in her sleep—adagio dreams on good nights and jarring Stravinsky nightmares more often than she cared to admit.

  Why shouldn’t her subconscious cling to the songs of her youth? Why wouldn’t her dreams be set to music? Since the moment she’d slipped on her first pair of ballet slippers, Tessa’s life had become a dance. It still was, long after she’d stopped hearing the music.

  She could hear it now, though. She didn’t know how or why, but she could. Music like nothing that had touched her ears before. Jarring. Bigger than a symphony. Bigger than sound itself. She felt it, too, much like she always did, but without an ounce of the concentration it normally took. The notes rose up from the wooden planks of the rehearsal room floor, hummed through the soles of her pointe shoes and into her body like an electrical current. She felt alive with it, almost manic.

  Maybe she was crazy. Maybe she’d pulled a Natalie Portman and gone full-on Black Swan nuts. God, she hoped not. She’d lost enough since the accident, without adding her sanity to the list.

  What in the world was happening, though? Could she be cured? Was it possible for an injury like hers to reverse itself?

  Possibly.

  The doctors had told her this could happen. But so much time had passed that she’d given up on ever hearing again. She’d made peace with the silence.

  The noise in her head was anything but peaceful. She couldn’t focus on what her body was doing. She could barely hear herself think.

  Tessa felt a tap on her shoulder as she fell out of a turn. Her legs were moving far too quickly. She could see the other dancers out of the corner of her eye, each with a number pinned to the back of her leotard, just like Tessa. Unlike Tessa, they moved in perfect unison. It was mortifying. Tessa spent extra hours in the classroom at the Wilde School of Dance every night to guard against this very thing. She squeezed in extra practice whenever she could. Perfection would never be within her reach. Other girls might have higher arabesques or nicer feet, but Tessa was determined to keep time with the music as well as, or better than, all of them.

  It was just so hard to concentrate with the sudden commotion in her head. She’d wished for her hearing to come back for thirteen long months, but she’d never imagined how overwhelming it would be. Or frightening. She wasn’t even sure it was real.

  Why did it have to happen now, in the middle of her audition? Why was she losing her mind today of all days? She stumbled to a stop and found the company ballet mistress, Madame Daria, standing directly in front of her. Frowning.

  “Number twenty-eight?” She stared at Tessa.

  Tessa nodded. The number twenty-eight had indeed been assigned to her when she’d shown up bright and early for auditions. It was to be her number for the full three days of tryouts.

  If she lasted that long.

  “You’re off. Count.” Madame Daria ticked off her fingers. “Five, six, seven, eight.”

  Beyond her gesturing hands, her mouth moved. A fuzzy, indecipherable sound came out of it. Tessa had to read the woman’s lips, just she as always did.

  She nodded and wiped the sweat from her brow. “Yes, ma’am. I’ve got it.”

  This was getting weirder by the minute. She could hear, but nothing sounded right. Everything was too loud, too confusing. Too much.

  She wanted to clamp her hands over her ears. Instead, she readied herself to begin again at the next eight count, but Madame Daria’s hands abruptly clapped together, and suddenly the music stopped. Tessa’s ears rang with melodic echoes.

  Thank God. She needed a minute to regroup. She tried inhaling a few deep yoga breaths, and thankfully, everything grew quiet once again. With any luck, it would stay that way.

  Still. Silent. Normal.

  The other dancers paced or bent over with their hands on their knees, catching their breath, eyes flitting to the studio door in anticipation. Tessa’s heart skittered, and she pressed the heel of her hand against her breastbone. This was it. The moment they’d all been waiting for. The arrival of the great Ivanov, the man who could—and often did—make or break a dancer’s career on a whim.

  And Tessa had just fallen out of a simple piqué turn.

  Plus, she was suddenly hearing things. Marvelous.

  The dancers rearranged themselves—company members near the front, and those who were auditioning crammed in the back of the room. It was less than ideal for Tessa, more difficult to read lips from a distance. She could have asked to move closer to the front, but she didn’t dare. She’d never once asked for special treatment, and she certainly wasn’t going to start now.

  She fell in line with the others and leaned against the barre beside Violet.

  “Are you okay?” Violet pinned back a wisp of hair that had escaped from her ballerina bun.

  Tessa shrugged and did her best to feign nonchalance. “Just a little off today. I’ll get it together.”

  “Good.” Violet gave her a firm nod, designed, no doubt, to remind her of the importance of the occasion. As if Tessa could forget
.

  For a moment, she thought about confiding in Violet. But what could she possibly say? She wasn’t even sure what was happening herself.

  Besides, there was no time. If things didn’t go back to normal, she could always talk to Violet after the audition. Then she would make a beeline to her doctor’s office.

  For now, Tessa scanned the mirrored walls, searching for the best possible angle. She’d become an expert at using the mirrors to her advantage. Out of necessity, of course.

  She’d learned to rely almost solely on her sight. As her gaze swept the room, she tried to remember every detail about the space. Until her gaze snagged on the vaguely familiar, scowling man sitting at the piano in the corner.

  Him.

  She blinked a few times, just in case she’d started seeing things in addition to hearing them. But it was most definitely him—the rude man from the subway station—and he was sitting at the company piano.

  Tessa frowned. How had she failed to notice the rehearsal pianist? Particularly this rehearsal pianist?

  Maybe because you were distracted by the full-scale orchestra in your head?

  She stared at the piano player and wondered if he could possibly have something to do with what was happening to her. It was an absurd notion. She was experiencing some kind of medical phenomenon, and the pianist was nothing to her. No one.

  He was handsome, though. Quite handsome, actually, with that strong chiseled jaw and those piercing blue eyes that seemed bluer than ever in contrast to his dark hair. And then there was the rather intriguing scar that she’d noticed before by the corner of his lips...it drew her gaze straight to his mouth. His perfectly shaped, perfectly scowling mouth. Why did he seem so annoyed all the time?

  Tessa forced her gaze away from his mouth and found him watching her. He lifted a single, accusatory brow, which probably meant he recognized her as the horrible ballerina who’d dared to dance off beat with his playing. Tessa promptly looked away.

  She needed to pay attention to the ballet mistress, not the rehearsal pianist.

  “Dancers, your attention, please.” Madam Daria clasped her hands in front of her as her gaze swept the room. The front of the room, technically. The ones who mattered most.

  Even the company members were being forced to audition for Ivanov, though. Technically, no one was safe. The auditioning dancers weren’t stars, though. Not like the company members. But that was fine. Tessa was lucky she could still dance at all. And maybe, just maybe, since she was a nobody, the ballet mistress had already forgotten she’d fallen out of her turn.

  There were advantages to being invisible.

  Daria gestured to the man standing beside her. “Please join me in welcoming Alexei Ivanov. As all of you know, we’re honored to have him as the guest choreographer for the Manhattan Ballet’s opening program this season. He’s agreed to make a new ballet especially for us, which you will begin learning today. Three days from now, twenty of you will be cast in this ballet...if you’re lucky.”

  Tessa clapped along with the rest of the dancers. She didn’t realize her gaze had drifted back to the rehearsal pianist until she found him glaring at her. Again. Maybe she wasn’t so invisible after all.

  Her face grew hot.

  Pay attention.

  Could this day get any worse? Or more strange, for that matter?

  “Everyone take a break. Get a drink of water, but stay warmed up. Be back in your places, ready to go, in exactly ten minutes.”

  So the great Ivanov didn’t plan on deigning to speak a word to them? Fine. Tessa actually preferred it that way. The less talking, the better.

  “Auditioning dancers will be up first.” Daria’s gaze zeroed in on Tessa. Great. Her mistake hadn’t been forgotten after all. “The new ballet begins with a large group number, and it’s very intricate. You all need to be on your A-game. Let’s not waste Mr. Ivanov’s time.”

  Tessa swallowed around the lump in her throat, and like clockwork, her mother’s voice echoed in her consciousness.

  You’re a great teacher, Tessa. The children love you, and the Wilde School of Dance is your home. There will always be a place for you here. It’s easier this way.

  Tessa didn’t want to take the easy way out. She didn’t want to be a ballet teacher for the rest of her life. Teaching would mean giving up. Teaching would mean the accident had stolen the one thing she’d loved most. Ballet.

  She wanted to dance. Not teach.

  Dance.

  Dance was all she had left. It was all she’d ever wanted, and she’d worked too hard, for too long, to mess everything up now.

  She’d do better. She just had to figure out a way to ignore the racket in her head.

  She sneaked another glance at the piano player, and sure enough, the noise she heard matched the movement of his elegant hands as they moved across the keys in a series of warm-up scales. He had such lovely hands. They danced across the piano keys with a grace that made her chest ache.

  Or maybe that ache was just the realization that this strange man’s music had been the first thing she’d heard in over a year.

  * * *

  Don’t ogle the dancers.

  It had been the main rule Julian had been given when Chance passed along the job offer. The only rule, in fact. And therefore, the most important.

  “No problem,” he’d said.

  And he’d meant it. Julian had known Chance long enough to lose any romantic notions he might have had about the ballet world. In the ten years they’d been friends, Julian could count on one hand the number of times Chance hadn’t been a foul, sweaty mess. Ballet wasn’t art. It was work. Messy, fanatic work.

  Besides, Julian had no interest in a roomful of underfed women who considered him invisible. He had no interest in being here at all, frankly.

  He should have saved his money. He should have planned or invested. Something. Anything. He’d had a good run. A stellar run, actually. How could he have possibly known it wouldn’t last?

  He wasn’t even a piano player, for crying out loud. He’d told Chance as much. What was it that Chance had said in response? We don’t need Mozart. We need a body. You’re good enough.

  Good enough.

  Oh, how the mighty had fallen.

  He sighed, crossed his arms and waited for Madame Daria to finish her big speech. She’d actually asked him to call her that. Madame. Like they were in nineteenth-century France or something. Not happening.

  She droned on about the new choreographer, some Russian hotshot. Julian glanced at his watch. He’d been on the job for less than an hour, and already he was bored out of his mind. This whole thing had been a mistake. If he managed to get through the day without falling asleep and knocking his head on the piano keys, it would be a miracle.

  Five more hours. That’s all.

  He could last five hours. Then when it was over, he’d quit. Chance would understand. Probably. If he didn’t, too damn bad.

  Julian sighed. Then he looked up and found one of the dancers staring at him. The only one who’d managed to capture his attention in the entire hour and a half he’d been banging away on the Steinway. The dancer who’d made the mistake.

  The girl from the train.

  Truth be told, he’d noticed her even before she’d wobbled out of her turn. Before he’d even recognized her. He couldn’t help it. Until his hands had touched the keys, she’d been just another whisper-thin girl in a wraparound leotard and tights.

  But then he’d begun to play, and she’d transformed right before his eyes. One note. That’s all it had taken. Her eyes had grown wide, and she’d flung herself into the dance. If Julian hadn’t known better, he would have thought she’d never heard music before. Maybe because there was something different about the way she moved. Desperate. Like she was running from a demon.

  Madame had been right, though. The g
irl had been dancing off beat, which should have annoyed him. It didn’t. Much to his irritation, he found her intriguing. Probably because Julian was no stranger to demons himself.

  The ballerina’s gaze lingered on his lips. Or more probably, his scar.

  Of course.

  Every muscle in Julian’s body tensed as his fascination with her morphed into something closer to disdain. Not that he was surprised. Or even disappointed. He was grateful, actually. He’d learned a long time ago not to mix business with pleasure.

  Of course he had no intention of sticking to this gig, but still. Knowing Chance, he’d probably already bedded the ballerina since he seemed to make it his mission to sleep his way through every ballet school and company in Manhattan. Which made his advice all the more ridiculous.

  Don’t ogle the dancers.

  Right.

  Julian wasn’t ogling. He absolutely wasn’t. If anything, the pretty ballerina was ogling him.

  Her gaze drifted upward, and their eyes locked. When she realized she’d been caught staring at his scar, her cheeks went pinker than her ballet shoes.

  Julian lifted a brow. Go ahead, sweetheart. Look your fill.

  She looked away, her deepening flush the only evidence of their nonverbal exchange.

  Julian sank onto the piano bench and flipped through the sheet music Madame had thrust at him upon his arrival. The score for the audition was Debussy. He was to open with Rêverie, which he rather liked. It was a vast improvement over the repetitive chords he’d had to play for the morning barre exercises. Debussy’s Rêverie had also been the inspiration for the melody of “My Reverie,” a favorite of Julian’s. He owned recordings of both Sarah Vaughan’s and Ella Fitzgerald’s renditions. On vinyl.

  He let his hands hover over the keys and played the melody silently, in his head, if only to keep from seeking out the interesting ballerina at the back of the room again. Even so, he found himself watching her more often than he cared to admit. It came as a relief when Daria rapped her hand on the piano and ordered him to play. Not asked, ordered.