Dance to the Piper: The O'Hurleys

by Nora Roberts

  “About what?” He grinned and kissed both her cheeks. “God, what a face you’ve got. Still look like my little turnip.”

  “Flattery will get you a punch in the nose.” She drew him back behind the stage manager’s desk as a group of stagehands wheeled out a crate. “You stop pumping Reed that way, Pop. It’s so … so obvious.”

  “What’s obvious is that you’re my baby girl and I have a right to look after you—when I’m around to do it.”

  With her arms folded, she tilted her head. “Pop, did you do a good job of raising me?”

  “I did the best job.”

  “Would you say I’m a sensible, responsible woman?”

  “Damn right you are.” Frank puffed out his chest. “I’d punch the first man who said different.”

  “Good.” She kissed him hard. “Then butt out, O’Hurley.” She gave his cheek two sharp pats, then walked out onstage again. “I know everyone has things to do this afternoon.” She answered her mother’s wink. “I’m going up to the rehearsal room to iron out a few kinks.”

  * * *

  She warmed up slowly, carefully, stretching her muscles one by one to insure against injury. There was only her. Only her and the wall of mirrors. She could hear the washing machine humming in the wardrobe room across the hall. In the little kitchen down the hall, someone opened and slammed the refrigerator door. Two people from maintenance were taking a break just outside the door. Their conversation ebbed and flowed as Maddy bent to touch her chin to her knee. There was only her and the wall of mirrors.

  It had been Macke’s idea to put in the dream sequence, with its balletic overtones. When she’d mentioned that she hadn’t been en pointe in six months, he’d simply suggested that she dig out her toe shoes and practice. She had. The extra pointe classes every week had added hours to her schedule. She could only hope they paid off.

  She’d worked, she’d rehearsed, and the moves and music were lodged in her head. Still, if there was one number that gave her the jitters, it was this one.

  She’d be alone onstage for the first four minutes. Alone, the lights a filmy blue, the curtain behind her glittering and shimmering. The music would come up … Maddy pushed the button on her tape recorder and set herself in front of the mirrors. Her arms would cross her body, her hands would rest lightly on her own shoulders. Slowly, very slowly, she would rise en pointe. And begin.

  The bustle outside the door was blanked out. A series of dreamy pirouettes. She wasn’t Mary now, but Mary’s most private dream. Jeté, arms extended. It had to look effortless, as if she floated. The bunching muscles, the strain, weren’t allowed to show here. She was an illusion, a music-box dancer in tutu and tiara. Fluidity. She imagined her limbs were water, even as the strength rippled through them for a series of fouette turns. Her arms came over her head as she went to an arabesque. She would hold this for only a few seconds, until Jonathan came onstage to make the dream a pas de deux.

  Maddy let her arms come down, then shook them to keep the muscles limber. That was as far as she could go without her partner. Moving to the recorder, she pressed the rewind button. She would do it again.

  “I’ve never seen you dance like that.”

  Her concentration snapped as she glanced over and saw Reed in the doorway. “Not my usual style.” She stopped the squawking tape. “I didn’t know you were still around.”

  “You’re a constant amazement,” he murmured as he came into the room. “If I didn’t know you, I would have looked in here and thought I’d walked in on a prima ballerina.”

  Though it pleased her, she laughed it away. “A few classic moves isn’t Swan Lake.”

  “But you could do it if you wanted, couldn’t you?” He took the towel she held and dabbed at her temples himself.

  “I don’t know. I’d probably be in the middle of Sleeping Beauty and feel an irresistible urge to do a tap routine.”

  “Ballet’s loss is Broadway’s gain.”

  “Keep talking,” she said with a laugh. “I need it.”

  “Maddy, you’ve been in here nearly two hours. You’re going to wear yourself out before curtain.”

  “Today I have enough energy to do the show three times.”

  “What about food?”

  “Rumor has it the stagehands are fixing goulash. If I pick at some about four or five, I should be able to keep it down during the first act.”

  “I wanted to take you out.”

  “Oh, Reed, I couldn’t, not before opening night. After.” She reached out her hands for his. “We could have a late supper after.”

  “All right.” He felt how cool her hands were even after her dancing. Too cool, too tense. He didn’t know how to begin to soothe her. “Maddy, are you always like this before an opening?”

  “Always.”

  “Even though you’re confident that it’s going to be a hit?”

  “Just because I’m confident doesn’t mean I don’t have to work to make it a hit. And that makes me nervous. Nothing worthwhile happens easily.”

  “No.” His eyes grew more intense on hers. “No, it doesn’t.”

  But they weren’t talking about opening nights or about the theater now. His fingers were tense when he spoke again. “You really believe that if you work at something hard enough, believe strongly enough, you can’t miss?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Us?”

  She swallowed. “Yes, us.”

  “Even though the odds are against it?”

  “It isn’t a matter of odds, Reed. It’s a matter of people.”

  He dropped her hands and moved away. Just as he had on the paint bridge, he’d felt that quick fear of falling. “I wish I could feel as optimistic as you. I wish I could believe in miracles.”

  She felt the hope that had ballooned inside her deflate. “So do I.”

  “Marriage is important to you.” He could see her in the glass, small and standing very straight.

  “Yes. The commitment. I was raised to respect that commitment, to understand that marriage wasn’t an end but a beginning. Yes, it’s important.”

  “It’s a contract,” he corrected, speaking almost to himself. “A legal one, and not particularly binding. We both know about contracts, Maddy. We can sign one.”

  She opened her mouth, then very slowly shut it again before she attempted to speak. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I said we’ll sign one. It’s important to you, more important than I had realized. And it doesn’t really matter to me. We can get blood tests, a license, and it’s done.”

  “Blood tests.” She let out a staggered breath and braced herself on the little table behind her. “A license. Well, that’s certainly cutting out the romantic nonsense, isn’t it?”

  “It’s only a formality.” Something was moving uneasily in his stomach as he turned back to her. What he was doing was clear. He was closing his own cage door. Why he was doing it was another matter. “I’m not sure of the law, but if we have to we can drive into New York on Monday and take care of it. You can be back for the evening show Tuesday.”

  “We wouldn’t want it to interfere with our schedules,” she said quietly. She’d known he would hurt her, but she hadn’t known he would quite simply break her heart. “I appreciate the offer, Reed, but I’ll pass.” She slammed down the button again and let the music come.

  “What do you mean?” He took her arm before she could set into position.

  “Just what I said. Excuse me, I have to rehearse.”

  Her voice had never been cold before. Never cold, never flat, as it was now. “You wanted marriage, and I agreed to it. What more do you want, Maddy?”

  She jerked away to face him. “More, much more than you’re willing to give. God, I’m afraid more than you’re capable of giving. I don’t want a piece of paper, damn you. I don’t want you to do me any favors. Okay, Maddy wants to get married, and since I don’t really care one way or the other, we’ll sign on the dotted line and keep her happy. Well, you can go t
o hell.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” He would have taken her by the shoulders, but she backed away.

  “I know what you meant. I know it too well. Marriage is just a contract, and contracts can be broken. Maybe you’d like to put an escape clause in this one so it can be neat and tidy when you’re tired of it. No, thank you.”

  Had it sounded that cold, that … despicable? He was out of his mind. “Maddy, I didn’t come up here knowing we’d get into all of this. It just happened.”

  “Too spontaneous for you?” This time there was sarcasm, another first. “Why don’t you go punch up your lines, Reed?”

  “What do you want, candlelight and me down on one knee? Aren’t we beyond that?”

  “I’m tired of telling you what I want.” The fire went out of her eyes. They were cool again and, for the first time, aloof. “I have to be onstage in a few hours, and you’ve done enough for now to make that difficult for me.” She pushed the recorder to take the tape back to the beginning again. “Leave me alone, Reed.”

  She picked up the count and began. She continued to dance when she was alone and the tears started to fall.

  Chapter 12

  As Reed came down into the corridor, he met his father.

  “Maddy still upstairs?” Edwin clapped his arms around his son’s shoulders. “Just finished talking with the general manager. Seems we’re sold out for tonight’s performance. In fact, we’re sold out through the week. I wanted to tell her.”

  “Give her a little while.” Reed dug his fists into his pockets and struggled against a feeling of utter frustration. “She’s working on a routine.”

  “I see.” He thought he did. “Come in here for a minute.” He gestured toward the stage manager’s office. When they were inside, he shut the door behind them. “You used to tell me when you had problems.”

  “You get to a point where you’d better know how to solve them yourself.”

  “You’ve always been good at that, Reed. It doesn’t mean you can’t run them by me.” He took out a cigar, lighted it and waited.

  “I asked Maddy to marry me. No,” he went on quickly before the pleasure could dawn in Edwin’s eyes. “That’s not quite true. I laid out the arrangements for a marriage to Maddy. She tossed them right back at me.”

  “Arrangements?”

  “Yes, arrangements.” Reed was defensive, and his voice was sharp and impatient. “We need blood tests, a license; we have to fit it into our schedules.”

  “It?” Edwin repeated with a slight inclination of his head. “You make it sound very cut-and-dried, Reed. No orange blossoms?”

  “She can have a truckload of orange blossoms if she wants them.” The room was too small to allow him to storm around it. Instead, he stood where he was and strained against the enforced stillness.

  “If she wants them.” Understanding too well, Edwin nodded and lowered himself into the one chair. “Reed, if you put marriage on that sort of level with a woman like Maddy, you deserved to have it tossed back at you.”

  “Maybe I did. Maybe it’s for the best. I don’t know why I started the whole business.”

  “It might be because you love her.”

  “Love’s a word that sells greeting cards.”

  “If I thought you believed that, I’d consider myself a complete failure.”

  “No.” Outraged, Reed turned to him. “You’ve never failed at anything.”

  “That’s not true. I failed at my marriage.”

  “Not you.” The bitterness rose up, too huge to swallow.

  “Yes, I did. You listen to me now. We never talked about this properly. You never wanted to, and I let it go because I felt you’d been hurt enough. I shouldn’t have.” Edwin looked at his cigar, then slowly crushed it out. “I married your mother knowing she didn’t love me. I thought I could keep her bound to me because I could pull the strings to give her what she wanted. The more strings I pulled, the more she felt hemmed in. When she finally broke free, it was as much my fault as hers.”

  “No.”

  “Yes,” Edwin corrected. “Marriage is two people, Reed. It’s not a business, it’s not an arrangement. It’s not one person wanting to keep the other indebted.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Reed said. “I don’t see any reason to get into this now.”

  “You know there’s a reason. She’s upstairs right now.”

  Reed stopped even as he gripped the handle of the door. Slowly he let it go again and turned back. “You’re right.”

  Edwin settled back. “Your mother didn’t love me, and she didn’t love you. I’m sorry for that, but you should know that love isn’t something that comes just from giving birth or just from duty. It comes from the heart.”

  “She betrayed you.”

  “Yes. But she also gave you to me. I can’t hate her, Reed, and it’s time you stopped letting what she did run your life.”

  “I could be like her.”

  “Is that what this is about?” Edwin heaved himself up and took Reed by the lapels in the first gesture of violence he’d ever shown his son. “How long have you been carrying this around?”

  “I could be like her,” Reed repeated. “Or I could be like the man she slept with, and I don’t even know who he was.”

  Edwin loosened his hold and stepped back. “Do you want to know?”

  Reed combed both hands through his hair. “No, they’re nothing to me. But how can I know what’s inside of me? How can I know that what they were wasn’t passed on?”

  “You can’t. But you can look in the mirror and think about who you are and have been, rather than who you might be. And you can believe, as I do, that the last thirty-five years that we’ve had together is more important.”

  “I know it is, but—”

  “There are no buts.”

  “I’m in love with Maddy.” With the words came a slow shattering of defenses he’d lived with since childhood. “How do I know that won’t change next month, next year? How can I know I’m capable of giving her what it is she needs for the rest of our lives?”

  “That’s something else you can’t ever know.” Why couldn’t the answers be simple ones? It seemed to Edwin that there had never been simple answers for Reed. “That’s something you have to risk, something you have to want and something you have to work at. If you love her, you will.”

  “I’m more afraid of hurting her than I am of anything else. She’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  “I don’t suppose you mentioned all this when you were outlining the arrangements?”

  “No.” He rubbed his hands over his face. “I made a mess of it.”

  “I’d be more concerned if you’d been too smooth.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that. I pushed her away because I was afraid to reach out for her.”

  Smiling, Edwin rocked back on his heels. “I’ll tell you this. No son of mine would let a woman like Maddy O’Hurley slip through his fingers because he thinks he might not be perfect.”

  After running a hand over his face, Reed nearly laughed. “That sounds like a challenge.”

  “Damn right it is.” Edwin put his hands on Reed’s shoulders. “And my money’s on you. Remember that game in your senior year? Ninth inning, two outs, the score was tied. You worked the batter to a full count.”

  “Yeah, I remember.” This time he did laugh. “I threw a knuckleball and he knocked it over the fence.”

  “That’s right.” Edwin grinned at him. “But it was a hell of a pitch. Why don’t you buy your old man a drink?”

  * * *

  With her hair pulled back by a thick band and the rattiest robe she owned tied loosely at the waist, Maddy sat at makeup mirror and carefully attached false lashes to her own. Her makeup was nearly done, and even with one eye lashed and the other naked, she’d already captured the exotic look that was Mary’s. Just a little too much color on the cheeks. Just a little too much sparkle on the eyelids, and a ri
ch ripe red for the lips. As she fastened the other lash, she waited for the knot in her stomach to untie itself.

  Opening-night nerves, just opening-night nerves, she told herself as she carefully adjusted the liner on her left eye. But there was more than that rushing around inside her, and she couldn’t get away from it.

  Marriage. Reed had spoken of marriage—but on his terms. The part of her that was always open to hope had waited for the moment when he would accept the fact that they should be together. The part of her that was always willing to see the best of things had been certain that moment would come. Now that it had, she couldn’t take it. What he offered wasn’t years of joy but a piece of paper that would bind them together legally, leaving nothing to the emotions.

  She had too much of it, Maddy told herself. Too much emotion, not enough logic. A logical woman would have accepted Reed’s terms and made the best of it. Instead, she was ending things. Maddy stared at her reflection in the lighted mirror. Tonight was a night for beginnings—and a night for endings.

  She rose and walked away from the mirror. She’d seen enough of herself.

  Outside in the corridor, people were rushing by. She could hear the noise, the nerves, the energy that was opening night. Her dressing room was packed with flowers, dozens of arrangements that doubled themselves in the mirror and crowded the room with scent.

  There were roses from Chantel. White ones. Her parents had sent her a clutch of daisies that looked wild and lovely. There was a bowl of gardenias that she had known had come from Trace before she’d looked at the card. It had merely said “Break a Leg.” She’d wondered briefly how he’d known where and when to send them. Then she’d stopped wondering and had appreciated.

  Other arrangements sat here and there, but there were none from Reed. She hated herself for overlooking the beauty of what she had in the quest for what wasn’t there.

  “Thirty minutes, Miss O’Hurley.”

  Maddy pressed a hand to her stomach at the call. Thirty minutes left. Why did she have to have Reed dragging at her mind now? She didn’t want to go on. She didn’t want to go out there tonight to sing and dance and make a theater full of strangers laugh. She wanted to go home and pull down the shades.