Theo cleared his throat, and Kelsey risked a glance his way. She could have sworn she saw a fleeting look of guilt on his face. Jason covered her hand with his. “Wait, Kels. Just listen.”
Mr. Lemaitre watched all this with his sharp gaze. After a pause, he indicated the two strangers at the table. “Let me introduce Guy Benoit and Mariette Duval. Mr. Benoit is the director of our new Marseille show, currently in development--Cirque du Minuit. Have you ever been to Marseille, Miss Martin?”
Kelsey shook her head, regarding the shaggy-haired, middle-aged man sitting across from her. His deep-set hazel eyes held a kind of wildness. Typical Cirque visionary. Mr. Lemaitre was known to choose his directors based on the amount of risks they were willing to take.
“Ah, but Marseille is a lovely city on the Mediterranean coast,” Lemaitre went on, “with superlative weather and pretty scenery. A cultural capital, a melting pot. An ideal venue for a permanent show. Ms. Duval is Minuit’s talent scout.”
Mariette Duval was younger than Guy Benoit, with close-cropped black hair and liquid brown eyes. She nodded at Kelsey with a warm smile.
“And now,” said Lemaitre, “I suppose you wonder what this has to do with you.”
Kelsey nodded. She couldn’t talk.
Lemaitre looked over at Theo. “Mr. Zamora tells me you are interested in pursuing aerial work. That you expressed an interest in partnering with him.”
Jason glared at her. Kelsey ignored him for the moment, focusing on the owner of the company. “We--uh--may have talked about it in passing. He led me to believe he wasn’t interested in working with me.”
Lemaitre and Theo exchanged a look. “Well...” Lemaitre said quietly. “Mr. Zamora is not exactly in a position to pick and choose his partners. If you’re curious about aerial work, Ms. Duval and Mr. Benoit are seeking one last act for their show. An act of darkness and angst, passion and drama. A aerial spectacle in dark scarlet silks. The final act of le Cirque du Minuit. For this act we will need someone strong--and someone fearless.” Lemaitre glanced at Theo, then back at her. “I’m told you are the fearless type. Are you interested in this opportunity?”
Aerial silks? Holy hell. Any relief she felt at not being fired was replaced by panic about doing an act with Theo. Sure, Kelsey had offered. It had made sense to her at the time, in a general way. But Theo had shot her down and she’d filed the whole episode away as a what-the-fuck-were-you-thinking moment. She had a nice, comfortable act to do right here at the Cirque Tsilaosa. How the hell had they found out about that conversation?
There was only one way they could have found out.
Kelsey turned to Theo. “Why did you change your mind?” she asked bluntly.
He frowned and scratched beneath his bottom lip. “I have worked with Guy before. I respect him. I spoke to him about doing a solo aerial act and he said no, he was looking for a grand finale. I thought of you.” Theo shrugged, as if it was a matter of no import. “It would be challenging work, but you are hard-headed. Stubborn. I told him this.”
Lemaitre and Guy Benoit chuckled softly. Jason still scowled.
“You don’t have to do it,” Jason said. “It’s just an offer on the table. As I told them, you’re a gymnast with no aerial experience.”
“But she learns fast, I think,” Theo interjected. “And she has the strength of an aerialist.” The two men faced off against each other. Lemaitre looked at Kelsey.
“The choice is yours, Miss Martin. What do you think?”
Choose wisely, girl.
Theo sat straight and still, not looking at her. He was back to his haughty, disinterested act. She felt the urge to throw it back at him, his decision to work with her after all. I changed my mind, she wanted to yell. You’re an asshole.
Theo smiled then. She could swear he knew her thoughts. His look was idle but she sensed the turmoil underneath. If he was trying to get her as a partner that meant he was desperate. All the eyes in the room were on her, but only one pair communicated such secret depths of despair.
Choose, now. You want?
God help her, she wanted. Kelsey turned to Michel Lemaitre and met him gaze for gaze. “Yes. I suppose I’m crazy enough to do it. I’ll work as Mr. Zamora’s partner. When do we start?”
Chapter Four: Ascent
Brave, stupid Kelsey. Theo had known she would do it. Or hoped, anyway.
Her American coach was angry. He’d had some choice words for Theo before the meeting, and some choice words for Kelsey afterward. Michel Lemaitre, however, was impressed and amused by her. Theo knew it was a good thing for her career to catch his eye, an even better thing to impress him with her presumed courage. Michel Lemaitre loved only one thing more than abject submission, and that was courage. Balls.
Ballsy little gymnast. Theo could see the oh, shit crawling over her like a rash as soon as Michel offered her the job. She’d almost turned it down, struggling to reconcile her attraction and simultaneous hatred of him.
In a perverse way, he wanted her rage. He deserved it. He’d lingered afterward, eavesdropping on her clipped argument with her trainer, in hopes she would seek him out and stand up to him again, eyes flashing and arms crossed over her chest in a show of bravado he recognized as patently false.
When people crossed their arms over their chests, it was a protective gesture.
One week. They were leaving in a week.
They had a lot of work to do. A mountain of work, starting with a bus ride to beautiful, warm Marseille. New apartments, new friends. Theo knew Marseille, had traveled there as Michel Lemaitre’s guest, had worked with Guy on other shows and concepts. Twenty-two years he’d been in the circus, since he was twelve. As for when he would stop, he just trusted he’d know. He’d tried to stop after Minya. It would have been a natural stopping place. Maybe if Kelsey hadn’t come knocking on his door and nagging him, he’d be done right now. Settling into some aerial school somewhere, or some gym, or retiring on a farm. Growing his own food and living off the grid.
Theo hated people. Most people. Kelsey...he loved and hated her just as she loved and hated him. For this reason, they would have a perfect partnership. Minya...she had loved him too much.
Don’t think about her. Don’t think about it. If he was going to keep performing, he needed his mind clear, his focus unwavering. For Kelsey’s safety and his. But he still wasn’t sure what to do about...the other thing. The reaction Kelsey triggered in him. The hot lust and violence he felt every time she followed him with her eyes. The impulse to grasp her wispy white hair in his fist and force her to her knees, only to feel her fight back and then submit to him.
He was no better than Michel.
But Kelsey would not be Michel Lemaitre’s, not while Theo had life in his body. He’d seen the flicker of interest there, the speculation. Theo had communicated with a look that she was his, and not available. She would be under his protection in Marseille, because he knew just what kind of perverts and degenerates were there. Cirque du Minuit indeed. Midnight Circus, dire and dangerous. Michel had chosen the theme and many of the cast members himself. Theo knew Michel considered him the final victory of casting, the fallen artist resurrected to haunt them all. If Michel wanted a midnight circus, he’d get it, but not at Kelsey’s expense.
Kelsey, blonde and wide-eyed, like Little Red Riding Hood without her cape. Theo stayed to watch her in the show that night, earnest and energetic in her acrobatic routines. He studied her body--where she was strong, where she was weak. Where she was beautiful. He remembered her under him that night, writhing and moaning, all her uptight posturing fallen away.
Theo would have her again. It took his breath away to think about it. Not tonight, but soon, she would scratch and cling to him again, and that would only be the start of what they would do together.
He left before curtain call, ambling over toward the dormitories. He knew which one was hers. He also knew she wouldn’t go out with the others after the show, or stay backstage to talk and smoke cigarette
s. She didn’t smoke or drink, only eat candy, long striped straws of sugar. He’d seen her with them and, curious, bought some at the store and tried one. Only one. Disgusting.
He lingered outside her residence hall and smoked half a cigarette. Not long after ten she came along, all alone, just as he’d expected. “Kelsey,” he said, stepping out from the shadows near her door.
She screamed, a shrill piercing noise that set his hair on end. Not one other door opened. No one at Cirque du Monde came home right after the show. Only Kelsey, who had stopped screaming and was looking at him in chagrin.
“Thanks for scaring me shitless,” she snapped.
“Thanks for bursting my eardrums,” he replied. “I want to come in.” He gestured toward her door.
She put her hands on her hips, another Kelsey-ism. “Oh, really? You want to come in? After the way you treated me last time we...talked?”
“I’m sorry.” He wasn’t really, but his quick, curt apology seemed to confuse her into silence, which was a good thing. “Do you have your key?” he asked.
She pursed her lips and shoved the key in the lock. She opened the door and for a moment he thought she’d close it in his face, but then she stepped back and let him enter.
He remembered the Cirque dorms from many years ago, before he’d bought his own place. White and bland, boxy and suffocating. He looked around and found Kelsey’s apartment as organized and neat as he’d expected it to be. No clutter on the counters, no dirty dishes in the sink. A small TV and a futon with a hot water bottle and heating blanket draped over the arm. His eyes narrowed on her.
“Are you injured?”
She shook her head. “Just different muscles getting exercised. What do you want? I’m tired.”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “A ‘thank you’ might be nice. For getting you a new job. A finale act.”
“I didn’t ask you to get me anything.”
“You said you wanted to work with me.”
Hands on her hips again. “And then you made me feel like shit and I decided I would rather chew asphalt than work as your partner.”
He chuckled softly, turning away. “Ah, yes. You despise me. Then why did you tell Michel yes?”
“I don’t know why, but I did. God give me the strength to carry it through.”
He looked up at her sharply. “Are you religious?”
She shrugged. “When I need help I start spouting prayers, but in general, no. What does it matter?”
“You must get your strength somewhere.” He meant it as a compliment, but she still seemed perturbed.
“What do you want, Theo? There’s no fucking way I’m sleeping with you again, so if that’s why you’re here, you might as well leave.”
“I just came to tell you we practice tomorrow. You and me. Try the silks out.”
Kelsey put her fingers over her eyes and pressed. He watched her, puzzled, and then she flung her hands out at him, making him jump. “Cirque du Minuit? I don’t think this is healthy, Theo. This is not an appropriate way to mourn.”
“What do you mean? I’m not mourning.”
“Midnight Circus? Darkness and angst? Passion and drama?”
“Michel chose the theme. It has nothing to do with Minya. This has been in pre-production for months.”
“Yes, and now he wants you in it. Is this a good thing for you right now?”
“Yes, a good thing,” he answered stubbornly. “For you and for me. Tomorrow, ten in the morning, you be ready. I’m going to come get you.”
“How did you even know where I lived?”
He glared at her without answering, and then he spun to go. He had to get away from her. She asked too many questions. Impossible girl, and now his aerial partner. Mon Dieu.
Theo knew how to pray too.
*** *** ***
Theo came for her at ten, as promised. His clean-shaven, respectable sheen of the day before had already disintegrated, leaving behind a night’s worth of stubble and an epic case of bed head. And those sweats riding low on his hips again. Damn him.
But this was work. They were going to start training, and there was certainly no reason for her to be obsessing over those neat indentations on either side of his waist, or the way they disappeared into a perfectly lickable “v”. No, no! Not lickable. Nothing about him is lickable. Just stop, Kels.
They drove about an hour out of Paris in Theo’s little Renault, to a forested suburban park. For Kelsey, it was her first trip out of the city since she’d arrived a few months before. They didn’t speak on the trip, not once. Theo wasn’t into small talk, apparently. He also ignored her pointed coughs and throat clearing when he lit up a couple cigarettes along the way. Kelsey was thankful to find him a cautious driver, at least. Driving out into the country made her miss her home in California, even though this looked nothing like California.
Theo finally pulled into a clearing at the end of a long rutted path. The grass was rough and thick, but recently mowed. There were no cabins or tents, just a cluster of forest three quarters of the way around. Theo grabbed a duffel bag out of his trunk and headed over to the center edge of the clearing, to a massive, thick-limbed tree. He dropped his bag near the base and unzipped it, then pulled out a dingy white bundle of folded material. He shoved it under his arm and turned to the tree, and started scaling the trunk.
Kelsey stared in amazement. Really? It wasn’t like Theo labored up carefully or slowly. He climbed it like a monkey, pushing with his knees, pulling himself up with his arms. His arm. One arm. The other still had the bundle underneath.
He passed the first few branches until he got to a thick one arching out over the clearing. He levered himself up to straddle it and scooted across until he came to a fork in the branch. This was a tree, not some Cirque structure with a bunch of safety wires on it and a mat underneath. He was probably forty feet up, if not higher. If he fell...
The muscles in his forearm flexed as he untwisted the bundle and began unraveling yards and yards of aerial silk. The fabric was wide, tissue-like, blowing in the soft breeze like a sail as he kept unwinding it. He was still straddling the branch, holding on with nothing but his knees. One of the silk tails flew over to where she was standing. Kelsey grabbed it and gathered it up in her fingers. It felt so soft and delicate.
“So...” She yelled up at Theo, balancing above her. “You’re allowed to bring their silks out here? What if they get dirty or ripped?”
He leaned back, bracing his hands on the branch. “These are my silks, not Cirque silks. These are my practice silks, and they don’t rip. Made special, yeah?” Kelsey gasped as he leaned forward to put both hands on the silk and jerk the material hard between his fists. “You see? Strong. Silks don’t break. Ever.” He glared at her a moment before rigging the material into an elaborate knot at the intersection of two branches.
Silks don’t break. Ever. Only human error could send her plummeting to the earth. Kelsey let go of the fabric and closed her eyes against the unwanted flashback, the streak of yellow and orange. When she looked up again, Theo launched himself from the branch, one arm extended, and she thought she was trapped in the flashback. She gasped until she realized he was only sliding down the silks. He fell fast until he caught himself with a jerk near the bottom. She watched the muscles of his arm and shoulder bunch up into a sculpture-worthy landscape, then relax as he let go. She released a soft breath.
He ignored her alarm, lazily removing his shirt and tossing it into his duffel bag. She stared at those muscles, at that body that could seemingly do anything. Climb forty feet into a tree and balance like some exotic bird on a branch, then swoop down in an effortless descent. He wasn’t even winded.
The hanging tails of fabric undulated between them now, obscuring him and then revealing him again. “Why do you have your own silks when you’re a trapeze artist?” she asked.
“Before trapeze, before tightrope, I did silks.”
Kelsey gawked. “You did tightrope too?”
; He waved an arm. “Anybody can do tightrope. I started tightrope at four years old. It was play time. Easy.”
“Do you come from a circus family?” There were families at the Cirque du Monde who were already introducing their children to the rudiments of their art. For many families, circus was a tradition. She could imagine Theo being raised like that. How else to explain his uncanny talent and strength? He shrugged and went back to his bag, rummaging around and coming up with some rosin.
“My family was circus, yes. More like...how do you say? Carnival? Traveling to perform.”
“Like gypsies?” Kelsey hinted.
He scowled at her as he handled the rosin bag. “My family is not gypsies. We are French and Algerian. Not so romantic, I know.”
Kelsey’s face flamed in embarrassment. Why the hell had she said that about gypsies? “Are you close to your family?” she asked.
“No.”
Well, that curt answer didn’t do much to further the conversation. He threw her the rosin bag and crossed his arms over his chest.
Kelsey rubbed the bag between her hands. “So why did you stop aerial silk and go to trapeze?”
“Same reason you stop acrobatics to do aerial. To work with a certain person.” He busied himself putting the rosin away.
“Minya?” she asked.
“Oui,” he answered curtly. “She was very talented. Her family, they were all famous trapezists. I wanted to work with her.” He seemed about to say more, but then he clamped his mouth shut and turned his back on her to tug at the silks again. Kelsey had a thousand questions about him and Minya, but she knew it was pointless. When he finally turned back to her, he gave her a little nudge.
“Go on. Climb up. Up to the top, as far as you can go.” Theo gestured carelessly into the towering treetop and held out the silks.
Kelsey hesitated. The branch looked awfully high, and she knew for a fact the ground would feel hard if she fell. “This is stupid. There’s a perfectly good practice facility back in Paris.”
Cirque Du Minuit Page 5