Wes set his glass of scotch down on the bar with a clunk. “Excuse me if this sounds cocky, but I’ve never had trouble in that area. I don’t need to lure anyone with false promises.”
“That does sound a little cocky.”
He leaned forward, bracing his arm on the bar and closing the space between them. “Something tells me you would have come without me dangling a carrot.”
“I take it back. It’s not cocky—it’s arrogant.” The twitch of her lips belied the stern tone of her voice.
“I’ve been called worse.” He brushed a strand of hair from her cheek. “And I notice you’re not in a hurry to deny it.”
“I’m not.” She matched his moves, leaning in and planting a hand on his thigh. Her touch was confident and sure—this was a girl who knew what she wanted and had no qualms in taking it. So why on earth was she resisting him? “I would be more than happy for this date to go somewhere more intimate, so we could get to know each other better. But the second I cross that line, that’s it. I can’t be both business and pleasure, Wes. I won’t do it.”
Her statement sounded more like a question, like she was asking him to choose: ballerina or bedfellow? “Which one do you want more?”
She leaned back and drained the rest of her wine, the action exposing the long column of her neck. “I don’t know,” she said after a pause. “I told myself I was done with auditions.”
“Why?”
Her gaze drifted across the bar, over the room teeming with well-heeled Manhattanites, over the clusters of people deep in intimate conversation and the chic modern art on the walls. “Do you ever get that feeling that some things aren’t meant to be? That your life is on a course out of your control?”
“No, I don’t.” Wes had been luckier than most with his upbringing, but that came with its own pressures and limitations. “There’s a reason I don’t have dancers lining up to audition.”
Remi cocked her head. “Why’s that?”
“My mother doesn’t want me doing this show. I’ve had a few dancers turn down the chance to audition because they’re worried they’ll be cut out of her social circle, that they’ll lose any advantage a relationship with her might have.” It was the one time people weren’t faking interest in him in order to get access to his parents.
Remi blinked. “Why would she do that?”
“Because she wants me to come back to the family business. She thinks the idea for the show is weird, and she’s furious that I’ve gone out on my own, instead of doing the traditional thing, because it might damage her reputation.”
“Do you think she’s trying to sabotage you?”
“Sabotage is a strong word.” He rolled his empty glass between his hands. “All the dancers I know, bar a small handful, are too afraid to join me. I had a lead dancer lined up and she pulled out last week because my mother helped her get a contract with the Cincinnati Ballet.”
“So if by some chance my audition is successful, I’d be shooting myself in the foot when it comes to the rest of the ballet world in New York?”
“Probably the whole country, if I’m being honest. But that’s only a problem if the show fails,” he replied with a grin. “And I don’t intend to let that happen.”
Remi bit down on her lip, emotions rolling and shifting like a kaleidoscope over her face. Her temptation was palpable, like a something he could grasp with both hands. It was tangible and real. He almost had her.
“If I say yes, then I’ll walk out of this bar immediately,” she said. “No good-night kiss. No taking this someplace else.”
“Deal.” Without hesitation, he stuck his hand out and her eyes tracked the movement. He couldn’t tell if she was relieved or disappointed. “If you agree to audition, then we’ll pretend this was a business meeting and nothing more.”
“Promise?”
“You have my word, Remi. And you don’t know me yet, but I take that very seriously.”
An excited smile lit her whole face, making her deep-brown eyes sparkle. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“I’ll audition.” She clasped his hand, and he had to force himself to ignore the energy that sparked at her touch.
It would be hard burying that feeling, but he’d do it. Out of Bounds was his number-one priority. And Remi, while intoxicatingly gorgeous and sexy, was too valuable for him to blow the opportunity to see what she was made of. His gut told him they were a match made in Broadway heaven. Sex could wait; his show couldn’t.
* * *
Remi stood in front of the small theater that Wes was using for the auditions, holding her jacket closed to ward off the blustering fall wind. She’d awoken to miserable, gray skies and the screech of branches thrashing against her window like some omen from the gods—Stay inside. Don’t go to the audition.
“That’s your inner coward talking,” she said to herself.
Knowing that didn’t help her feet feeling like lead balloons. With each step toward the theater’s entrance, she’d get another flash of memory. It was like being haunted by the ghost of her failed dreams.
Her first audition in New York had been a complete disaster. It was for a smaller ballet company and should have been an opportunity to boost her confidence, not to mention possible leverage with some of the larger companies later on. But she’d tripped in the first part of the audition class, which had made her so nervous that she’d forgotten her steps and made a mess of things. Remi never forgot her steps. She might have a terrible memory for birthdays and anniversaries, but when it came to choreography, her mind was a steel trap.
But on that day, everything had come to a head—her regret over screwing things up back in Australia, her anger at Alex for using her, and her grief over the life she’d lost.
Emotion was good for dance; it could be cultivated and shaped, manipulated to pull something special out of a performance. But the type of emotion she’d experienced that day—that molten self-loathing and doubt—was a disaster waiting to happen. The company director had been as stunned as she was when the music stopped. Needless to say, she hadn’t been successful.
The second audition hadn’t been quite so dramatic, but it was a total flop nonetheless. Still shaken from the first failure, she’d pushed herself to get right back out there. But perhaps she should have waited until her bruised ego had healed, because the doubt monsters sank their claws in, and she hadn’t been able to shake them. Nerves had caused her to give a soft performance where she couldn’t feel the music properly and her limbs were like petrified wood. She’d wanted to shout that she was capable of so much more, especially when a look of disappointment streaked across the director’s face, telling Remi the woman had had high hopes that weren’t met.
“That was then,” Remi said, craning her neck to look up at the theater’s entrance.
She’d purposely avoided telling Annie or Darcy about the audition to make sure that, if this happened to be failure number three, then at least she could lick her wounds in private. Her friends would no doubt be supportive, but sometimes it was easier to deal with the difficult stuff alone.
Sucking in a breath, she marched up the stairs, her ballet bag bumping against her hip and the breeze ruffling her ponytail. The second she’d walked out on Wes at the bar three nights ago, she’d slipped back into her old way of doing things. Getting up at the butt crack of dawn to go for a run, monitoring everything that went into her mouth. Her old audition routine had come back to her the second she’d started the music, like the steps had been lying there, dormant, waiting patiently for her to call on them.
She nudged the door open with her shoulder and shut it quietly behind her. Music floated into the foyer where a young woman sat at a trestle table, playing on her phone as her dark hair hung in a curtain around her face. An audition sheet was displayed in front of her. Only a few names were printed.
It certainly wasn
’t what she’d expected. Normally, an audition for a show like this would be teeming with dancers. They’d clog the foyer and street, sizing one another up and mentally comparing turnouts and posture and figures. Those who did the circuits together might swap notes or critique one another, but the Manhattan dance scene could be cutthroat. Getting into the right company could mean the difference between having a foothold in the ballet elite versus squandering your good years in the back of the corps at a small company that wasn’t going anywhere.
“Hello?” Remi ventured, her voice feeling too loud in the quiet foyer.
The young woman looked up and offered a smile. “Here for the Out of Bounds audition?”
Was she supposed to mention that Wes had invited her? Give some hint that she was here on his request? She decided against it. No matter how long she stayed away from home, there was some deeply rooted cultural quirk that prevented her from doing anything that might appear as though she were big-noting herself.
“Yes.” She nodded. “I’m Remi Drysdale.”
“Put your details down here.” The woman pushed the sheet of paper forward and indicated the next blank line.
Remi didn’t recognize any of the other names on the sheet, but that wasn’t entirely surprising—she was hardly up-to-date with stuff like that. It should have been ignorant bliss. But Remi’s imagination was on the manic side of active, and by the time she’d signed her name, she’d convinced herself the other dancers auditioning were world-class professionals that would make Wes wonder why in the hell he’d asked her to come in the first place.
Unfortunately, catching the tail end of another dancer’s audition didn’t do anything to quash that fear. Most auditions she’d attended were run like a class to ensure they could see all dancers within the allotted time. But smaller productions often had solo auditions.
In the center of the stage, a willowy brunette performed a textbook-perfect arabesque with exquisite extension. Then the dancer performed a bourrée across the floor, her arms moving like delicate wisps of smoke, almost as if she were some ethereal being instead of a mere mortal.
“Shit,” Remi muttered under her breath. What little confidence she’d mustered plummeted through the floor.
Wes probably pulled the whole “you defy words” schtick on all the dancers he met. If it was true that his mother was trying to cut him off at the knees by luring prospects away, then the guy was likely doing whatever he could to get bodies into the theater.
But you felt that connection. You can’t fake that kind of chemistry.
Yet he’d picked his side without hesitation, forgoing sex for her to be here today. Surely that meant something.
Maybe he wants you for a bit part. A filler role. Someone in the background.
Had she let his supposed attraction go to her head? Had she read too far into the seductive words and heated glances?
Her thoughts continued to swirl while she changed into her pointe shoes and warmed up. When brunette dancer finished her audition, Wes and the woman next to him asked her several questions, and it was clear they all knew one another. By the time the room grew silent, Remi’s body was ready but her head was as calm as a bag of squirming kittens.
Relax. You can do this.
Even her inner voice couldn’t pep talk her way out of this mess. Oh God, it was going to be a complete disaster. The third time might be the final nail in the coffin.
“Remi?”
Wes’s voice snatched her attention back to the present, and she responded with an automatic smile. Her mask. This wasn’t the time to be flying full-throttle into a doubt spiral. He’d seen her, so she had to go through with it.
“Hi.” The rest of her words evaporated before she could wrap her lips around them. She was a hundred times more nervous now than she had been at the bar.
“I’d like to introduce you to my partner, Sadie. She’s also our choreographer.” Wes motioned to the woman beside him who had funky blue and purple hair. She had a gold spike through one ear and wore a shredded pair of fingerless gloves.
His partner? Remi’s stomach flip-flopped. Partner was such a broad term—it could mean anything from colleague to fuck buddy to future wife.
He wouldn’t have been propositioning you at a bar if he was with someone else. Calm the hell down.
“Great to meet you.” Sadie stuck out her hand and smiled warmly. “Wes told me he found you teaching barre fitness.”
“That’s right. Wes might be one of my best students yet,” she joked. When in doubt, try to be funny. That was her motto.
Judging by the crinkle around Sadie’s eyes, it landed well too. “Okay, I approve,” she said to Wes. “I like this one.”
“You haven’t seen me dance yet.” The self-deprecating comment slipped out before she could stop it. Stupid subconscious.
“That’s what you’re here for.” Wes motioned to the stage. “Why don’t you show us what you’ve got? We’ll do the pointe piece first and then the contemporary piece second.”
Remi nodded and sucked in a fortifying breath as she headed down the aisle, stopping to hand a USB loaded with her audition music to the guy in the makeshift sound booth down by the stage. She shrugged out of her sweater and left it on one of the seats in the front row before ascending the steps.
You can do this. Pretend you’re in the empty studio at work and no one is watching. No one is judging. Just dance.
The lights blinded her, fracturing and splintering and bathing everything in a haze of silver and gold. The neat rows of seats blurred in front of her as her focus narrowed to her accelerating heartbeat. It pounded in her chest, echoing through her whole body right down to where her toes nudged against the toe box of her pointe shoes.
Don’t lose it. Not now. Not when you finally have another chance.
She found the center of the stage and took her opening position—supporting leg planted, her right knee bent, foot bowing out over her pointe shoe. Her head was down, shoulder blades flexed, her arms outstretched with elbows bent in a crane-like position. She waited there, holding herself rigid.
One step after the other. You know how to do this.
Can you, though? The negative voice had gained strength, chewing on the adrenaline pumping through her veins. She never used to be like this—fearful, doubtful. She never used to be frightened of the stage. For years, it’d been her home, her safe place. Her arena. And now it was like coming back to a mean ex-boyfriend. She wanted to prove she was the better person, that she didn’t harbor any ill feelings. That she’d moved past the nastiness that’d knocked her sideways.
The music started and Remi took a breath, allowing it to flow through her limbs. Softening her. Her body moved with it, sucked it in. When she looked up, she caught Wes’s eye. His expectation was like a knife to her chest.
Not now.
The steps were designed for a non-class audition, where the dancer wasn’t being led by an instructor and had to provide their own choreography. It highlighted her best moves, yet had enough variety to show a company or production her range of jumps, turns, and extensions.
It was like beautiful math. Carefully calculated and thorough. It followed the rules.
Remi jetéd across the floor, ensuring that each jump was high, that her feet were perfectly pointed, that her landings were as soft as feathers. She ran through the checklist in her head, ticking off every item as she danced. Shoulders down, core strong, hands light. She followed the music, letting it guide her through the steps.
The ending contained a series of turns—piques and pirouettes and fouettés—that she made look as easy and effortless as possible. Silence cut into the studio as the music shut off at the requisite point for general audition lengths. There was no applause. Nothing but the creak and groan of the old building. She was almost afraid to look up.
But when she did, she knew it hadn’t been enoug
h. He looked…confused. Sadie’s expression was more neutral as she scribbled something on a piece of paper and handed it to Wes. Ugh, that didn’t look like a good sign.
You have another piece. You can win them over.
But Wes placed a hand on Sadie’s shoulder and then he was on his feet, striding down the steps of the aisle and then up the ones leading to the stage. Was this it? Was he going to let her down with a gentle no…or a brutal one?
Tears pricked the backs of her eyes. What had she done wrong? She’d remembered all the steps, hadn’t missed a single beat of the music. It was a good deal better than the previous two auditions, but still, Wes had that look on his face. The crease between his brows told her this wasn’t going to be good news. She hadn’t wowed him.
“Can we talk for a second?” he asked as he strode over, his dark hair gleaming under the stage lighting.
The man looked so at ease with himself. His gait was fluid and laid-back, his shoulders steady and straight. It would be easy to mistake him as a chill, friendly guy who liked to laugh, but Remi could clearly see he was the king of his domain. So confident he didn’t need to beat his chest about it like other macho douchebags. He commanded attention with only his walk.
“Sure.” She hoped to hell her voice didn’t sound as wobbly out loud as it did in her head.
He motioned for her to follow him to one side of the stage, where they paused in the wings. Here, the light was shrouded, and the darkness hinted at intimacy and a whole bunch of things that shouldn’t have been in her head right now.
Focus, you idiot.
“I know you’re a great dancer, Remi,” he started.
Oh God, this is it. Don’t cry. Don’t make a bloody fool of yourself!
“But I feel like I’m watching you dance by numbers. It was…too perfect.”
“Too perfect?” It wasn’t a concept that existed in ballerina world. Nothing could ever be too perfect.
“For the contemporary piece, I’m going to choose your music and I want you to just go with it.”
Wait, what?
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