Because of course he’d even timed the sway perfectly so that as he swept her up and out into a dizzying spin, the music ended.
She knew she ought to be pleased that after all these years her perfect partner was back when she needed him most, but it galled her to realise how much he’d moved on. He’d learned so much, while she’d plodded through medals classes and workshops and danced the old familiar routines with partners who were never quite as good as Redmond had been.
She wanted to be furious with him, but she didn’t have the luxury. She needed him too much.
“Not bad.” He nodded. Lisa could see him assessing their performance, working out what needed to be done to bring it up to scratch for competition. Not too much, she thought — they were pretty nearly as good as they’d ever been, but then the opposition at Blackpool was pretty good too. Fritz and Kathrin especially, but David and Caroline were solid performers too. She and Red would be battling it out as part of the top three, she thought. Well, a top three place would be great, but if she knew Red he wouldn’t settle for anything less than first.
“Another dance?” This time she got in first.
Red checked the clock above the door and a frown flitted across his face. “Sorry, I’ve got to go. I’ve got a call to make. Same time tomorrow?”
A call? Big deal. How important a call could you have to make at eight in the evening? And if he really had to make it, couldn’t he do it here, in the café or a spare practice room, and then get back to practice? But no, as always, everything of his came first, and she had to fit into the gaps. Damn him.
“Sure,” she murmured through gritted teeth.
Chapter 2
When five-thirty came around, Lisa was sitting in a client meeting, fuming. She was supposed to be at the studio in half an hour, which would be possible — if she left now. But the client, Gary, had been talking for an hour and showed no signs of stopping. Even more annoyingly, so far he’d come up with nothing that couldn’t have been handled in a one-page email. Just more and more suggestions for improving the three mailshot mock-ups she’d given him. He was supposed to be choosing one, but it didn’t look as if it was happening. She’d given up being discreet about looking at her watch, but he still didn’t seem to notice. She deliberated slipping out to call Elaine and ask her to tell Redmond she was running late, but that would only delay things further, and surely Gary would get to the end soon.
Or not.
At quarter to six he was still rambling on, and they were no nearer a conclusion. Desperate measures were called for.
“I tell you what,” she said, in her best brisk, hurrying things along voice, “why don’t I take your suggestions on board and send over the revised versions tomorrow, and then you can let me know which you prefer?”
He looked as if she’d snatched the rug from under his feet, but after a moment he capitulated.
“Shall we have a call at two-thirty?” She had meetings from three till five, and she’d need the morning to make all the changes. Now she’d landed herself with three times as much work, but at least she was out of the office for the time being.
She showed him down to reception and breathed a sigh of relief. If she was quick, she’d only be a few minutes late to the studio, and it wasn’t as if Redmond had never been late himself. In fact, she half expected to rush in panting and find the studio still empty. It wouldn’t be the first time. Still, that didn’t stop her fidgeting fretfully as she stood at the bus stop.
Ten to six ticked by, then five to.
Two buses came past, but didn’t stop.
She rummaged in her bag for her mobile and failed to find it. For a moment she thought she’d lost it, but then a vivid image flashed into her mind of her desk as she hurried past to show Gary out. A flash of silver peeked from under a pile of papers. The phone. She hadn’t even checked for messages to make sure the practice session was still on.
Finally, when she’d more or less given up hope and decided to go and find a payphone, the bus turned up. Two minutes to six.
It was six exactly when Lisa fell into a seat as the bus pulled out into the heavy traffic of West London in rush hour.
She pulled out a book and tried to read, but the words swam in front of her eyes. In her mind, her feet were dancing through their old routine, and a thousand Lisas and Redmonds swept and spun their way gracefully around a mirrored hall. They looked so right together. But then, who was she kidding? He was so stunning, he’d make anyone look good. It didn’t mean anything … except that she had a better chance of winning at Blackpool, and maybe even the TV competition, with him than anyone else.
Maybe that was enough.
She almost believed it, until she hurried into the studio shortly after quarter past six and the door banged shut behind her with an empty echo. Then the lurch she felt in her stomach betrayed her. His absence was like a blow. She’d lost him once already, if you could call it losing him when she’d never had the nerve to do more than hint at her feelings for him. It had always been impossible to tell whether his casually flirtatious manner towards her hid a deeper attraction, or was just the habit of an attractive man far too used to having women fall over themselves when he snapped his fingers. Maybe there had never been anything to lose, but it had felt like a loss just the same when he left, and Lisa couldn’t bear to let herself start hoping again.
“Looking for Redmond?” Elaine asked from the doorway. Her voice was casual, for which Lisa was grateful, but there was a trace of sympathy in her eyes.
Lisa steeled herself for whatever was to come.
“Has he been here?” she asked, willing her voice not to sound desperate.
Elaine nodded, her eyes wide and expressive. Once again Lisa wondered how much Elaine knew, or guessed. Elaine had never asked, but now and again there was a hint in her manner: the diffidence when she suggested Redmond as a partner, the sympathy when, yet again, Lisa arrived to an empty practise room. Lisa had so hoped that he’d have developed some consideration over the years, but apparently that was too much to expect.
“Did I miss him by much?” She forced her voice to stay level, to betray neither annoyance nor desire. She wasn’t sure it had worked, but if Elaine saw anything she knew better than to acknowledge it.
“Ten minutes.”
So he’d left only minutes after the time they’d agreed to meet.
She thought back bitterly to the times he’d kept her kicking her heels on an empty dance floor for half an hour or more.
“Nice of him to wait.”
Elaine gave a wry smile. Lisa could see she was thinking, as everyone always had, that Redmond was a law unto himself. He arrived or he didn’t. He stayed or he didn’t. Never according to any rule that anyone else could figure out — in fact, as soon as you thought you’d worked out what he was going to do, he’d do the opposite, even if you’d already taken into account the fact that he’d do the opposite of what you expected.
“He said he had to make a phone call. Get some dinner and he’ll meet you in the café at half past.”
Lisa nodded. It could have been worse. He hadn’t actually abandoned her for the evening. He was coming back. Still, it set her teeth on edge the way he assumed she’d be at his beck and call, sitting there waiting for him when he chose to join in. For a moment she was childishly tempted to plead a phone call of her own, or a forgotten prior engagement, and rush off into the night, leaving him to sit and wonder.
What prevented her was not an absence of spite, but an excess. There was no point in trying to wind him up, because it never succeeded. There was always a queue of pretty girls waiting for him to beckon them onto the dance floor. If she vanished, he’d probably never even notice.
Lisa bowed to the inevitable and picked up her handbag.
“Shall I bring you back a coffee?” she asked.
�
�No, I’m fine, thanks. Anyway, I don’t drink coffee,” Elaine said, smiling. She often teased Lisa about the way she used “coffee” to refer to hot drinks in general, even though neither of them drank it.
Lisa switched her dance sandals for outdoor shoes and walked round the corner to the small café where the dancers tended to congregate between classes.
She leaned on the shiny chrome counter and pondered the menu. She normally ate after practice, but then she’d normally had a decent lunch. Thanks to Gary’s volubility, she’d only managed to grab half an egg mayo sandwich for lunch, and now she was ravenous. She ordered soup and a roll, and sat down to wait.
As she waited, the door opened and Jerry came in, wobbling slightly on crutches. She waved him over and he sat down, propping the crutches in the corner of the booth.
“How’s the walking wounded?” she teased. She didn’t make a habit of joking about injuries, but with the grin on his face she guessed it was safe enough.
“Wounded,” he answered, pulling a long face but with a twinkle in his eye.
Lisa smiled. Jerry was so effortlessly likeable. At that moment she’d have given anything to have him back as her partner for the championships. Rehearsing with Jerry had been so easy and lighthearted. He was as different from the prickly, complicated Redmond as a kitten was from a porcupine. Why, oh why, did he have to get injured?
“Guess what?” he added in a loud stage whisper.
“What? Oh no, wait, let me guess. You’ve met the love of your life?”
“How did you know?” Jerry pulled a wide-eyed astonished face, and Lisa laughed. This happened routinely at least once a month.
“Haven’t you always?”
“This is different. I really think he’s the one.”
Lisa shook her head. He always did, right up until the moment they stood him up, took him for a ride, or ran off with one of his younger, cooler colleagues. But it never seemed to sour him. He laughed, shook himself off, and moved onto the next.
Sometimes Lisa wished she was more like him. Easy come, easy go. Life would be simpler that way.
Instead, here she was stuck with an aching longing for the most infuriating man she’d ever had the misfortune to come across.
“What about you?” Jerry asked as he always did. “It’s time you were settling down and thinking about little Lisas.” Jerry loved kids more than anything and, as he was always pointing out, the chances of having any of his own were vanishingly slim. “I want my godchildren,” he demanded petulantly.
“Oh no.” Lisa rolled her eyes. “Here we go again. Anyone would think you were my mother.” Not that she’d had to put up with that for the last few years. Her mother had died of cancer, still believing that Brandon was going to take care of Lisa for the rest of her life. Since then, Lisa hadn’t been allowed to forget about parental pressure, though. Her friends were always saying how their mothers were pushing for grandchildren. Most of them were in steady relationships with nice guys and if she’d been in their position Lisa might have been thinking about kids, but they all seemed to be more interested in their careers. Lisa’s career bored her silly. Dancing was another matter. That would be hard to give up, but then it wouldn’t be long before her kids were in the toddlers’ class themselves …
She rolled her eyes. For a moment, she’d let Jerry get to her. It wasn’t going to happen.
Jerry was watching her closely. She took a deep slurp of soup to hide her embarrassment, only to embarrass herself further by choking on the hot liquid. She coughed and gagged into her serviette. Suddenly strong hands were on her shoulders and an amused voice from close behind her drawled, “What have you been doing to her?”
Jerry gave a stagy shrug. “Wasn’t me, guv.”
Lisa took a hasty sip of water and turned to find herself staring straight into Redmond’s chest. His right hand still hovered protectively over her shoulder and he was gazing down at her with an unreadable expression.
She felt herself blushing. The only thing worse than making such a fool of herself in front of him was the thought of what she might have said if she hadn’t choked.
“Of course I want kids,” she’d been thinking. “I just want them with the right man.” What an invitation that would sound! Not that it would occur to him to take it that way. After all the glamorous women on the cruise ships and the young American girls with their siliconed beauty, he would never look twice at Lisa except as a dancing partner.
She looked at the floor and waited for her cheeks to cool. Redmond was chatting amiably away to Jerry, with not a word about her lateness or his disappearance.
Jerry had on his trademark rueful smile and was waving a crutch, so she guessed they were talking about his accident. It didn’t look as if she was going to hear more about the latest love of his life today, but no doubt he’d be back tomorrow to tell her more, if it hadn’t all worn off by then.
The waitress came over with Jerry’s coffee, and he hauled himself to his feet and turned away. Redmond slid into the empty seat beside her.
“Bye,” she called to Jerry’s retreating back, annoyed at his abandonment even though she knew he could have no idea how much she hated to be left alone with Redmond. That was the worst thing about this crazy competition set-up. Now she had to act delighted at his presence even as she squirmed inside.
“You OK?” he asked, still smirking a little. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Great. Now he thought it was his doing.
“Nothing to do with you,” she said brightly. “Just something Jerry said.”
Not that she was going to give him the satisfaction of knowing what.
“You’ve made your phone call?” She knew she sounded a little sharp, but she couldn’t quite resist reminding him how he’d left her waiting. Again.
“Mmm hmm. I hope you didn’t mind. When you were late, I thought you’d probably come straight from the office and wouldn’t have had time to eat, so I suggested to Elaine that you come round and get some tea. Don’t want you turning faint on me while we’re practising.”
“So considerate,” she murmured. It was irritating to know that it only mattered to him because she wouldn’t be such a good dancing partner, but at least he’d thought about it. That was, a nagging little voice told her, more than most men would have done. Jerry, for all his kindness, never troubled his head with concerns about what she did when she wasn’t dancing with him. At least until it came to the matter of godchildren …
Her thoughts were wandering again. She dragged them back to the present.
Redmond was talking, but she’d missed the beginning of the sentence and she wasn’t about to admit to disappearing into a daydream. She tuned back in and tried to pick up the thread of the conversation.
“ … everything’s OK. I wanted to ring early, rather than after practice. Some conversations you need to be at your best for.”
He was excusing the phone call, she assumed. A girl back home? She should have guessed. What was Redmond doing back here after all this time anyway? Family business, Elaine had said evasively, and oddly. Redmond didn’t have family here any more. His father had passed away two years ago. Redmond had flown in for the funeral, and out again the next day. Lisa hadn’t even found out he’d been home until Elaine had let it slip a fortnight later.
Now Redmond was back on the subject of dancing. Safe. She tuned back in with a guilty start.
“Shall we give the tango a run-through?” he asked.
Tango wasn’t until a later round of the show. If they didn’t make it past the waltz and jive, they wouldn’t need to dance it. She supposed that suggested confidence, which was gratifying.
She agreed and got to her feet. Redmond turned away, stuffing a piece of paper into his pocket. She was fairly sure it was handwritten, and bore a stamp. Who on earth wrote letters nowadays? She�
�d have asked, but that would have suggested altogether too much interest in something other than the dancing.
As she followed Redmond out of the café, she found that her smile was beginning to creep back. She couldn’t quite suppress her excitement as she stepped through the studio door and sat down to pull on her dance shoes. That done, she grabbed the first CD that came to hand and popped it into the player.
It was a relief to be back on the dance floor. Even though it meant she could no longer ignore Redmond’s strong, lean body, at least dancing with him occupied all her attention and left her none for brooding. No impossible thoughts of children or unpleasant images of women back home troubled her. There were just the two of them and the music, and after a moment she barely even noticed the irony of the song being played, with its wistful daydreamy quality underlying the insistent rhythm.
It was a song about if onlys. About the dreams that she’d just occasionally dared to dream as a teenager. The dreams she’d buried so deeply that for years it had never even crossed her mind to wonder why she wasn’t interested in any of the pleasant young men who came through the dance school, tried to attract her attention, failed, and drifted off into the night.
It was an odd song, equally at home as a tough-talking tango and a gentle, wistful rumba. Redmond played with that quality, sliding a few slow swivels in among the tango’s earthy rhythms. The complexity of the steps helped to settle her. There was no time to concentrate on anything except the moves and the music (he’d switched it onto an endless loop before joining her on the floor). Time slipped away, and Lisa was shocked when Redmond called a halt and she looked at her watch to discover that it was almost ten. She couldn’t remember the last time an evening had flown by so quickly.
The tiredness hit her, as it always did, when she stopped moving. Sitting down to unbuckle her dance shoes, she wondered how she was ever going to get up again. A blister was forming on her left little toe, and she pulled off her sock and stuck a padded plaster over the sore spot. There would be plenty more of them before the competition, she was sure.
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