If he reached out his arm just a fraction more, he’d be able to touch her, to see if that hair in all shades of dark blonde and light brown was as soft as he’d imagined. He placed the palm of his hand a couple of inches above her head and could feel her heat radiating. She was as warm as he was cold. But he couldn’t bring himself to make contact with her, to sully her with the invisible dirt that had always covered his skin.
As Lexi began to move, he snatched his hand away quickly. She sat back on her knees elegantly and looked at him, breathing deeply. Neither of them moved or said a word. He couldn’t remember a time he’d ever held eye contact with another person for so long.
“Are you married?” Lexi asked, and he started to cough.
He shook his head. “Shit, no.”
“In a relationship?”
“Definitely not.”
She placed her hand on top of his, and he jumped a bit in his chair. The pads of her fingers were smooth, her nails trimmed and painted in a pretty pale pink color, but he couldn’t bring himself to open his hand and take hold of hers.
“But you’re a father, right?” she added.
He shook his head again.
“But the baby the other night.”
Ettie.
“Not mine. Lexi, I know fuck all about dance, but you were . . . breathtaking.”
Her cheeks pinkened, making the color of her eyes even more like bluebells. Or whatever the fuck those flowers were. Jesus Christ on a bike . . . next he’d be writing sonnets.
“Thank you,” she said, looking at him. She was staring at his eyes too intently. Their odd coloring had scared his mother. “Did you play all of that?” she said, tilting her head in the direction of the speakers.
He nodded. He felt mute. She’d stop asking questions if he didn’t start answering, and he couldn’t wait to hear the quiet lilt of her voice a moment longer. So fucking talk.
“Yeah. The site’s private.”
Wow. Don’t overdo it, chatterbox.
“The music was so inspiring. Did you write it?”
“Yeah. That one,” he said, lifting his chin in the direction of the space in which she’d danced it. “I wrote it the night I first saw you.”
“I love that you wrote it for me to dance to, but I’m sorry,” she said.
“For what?” he asked, confused.
“For whatever it was that happened to you. That kind of . . . depth . . . it can only come from personal experience,” she said, sliding her hand between his until he had to no choice but to take hold of it.
Sympathy had no place in his life. It had served him no purpose. But his breath caught at Lexi’s genuine delivery and guileless eyes. Those eyes were going to kill him.
He turned her hand between his, studied her palm, and clung to it for one last moment. After today, he wouldn’t walk by again. After today, the only connection between them would be the website.
Before he stood, though, he would take one last liberty. He lifted her hand and pressed his lips to her knuckles. Lexi gasped, her eyes flaring with an arousal he’d never be allowed to satisfy.
“Good-bye, Lexi.”
He strode quickly out of the room, knowing full well that he’d just left a huge part of himself with her.
CHAPTER THREE
“Anatoly’s grandfather was a fabulous choreographer at the Kirov. I met him once,” Lexi’s father said as he passed her the bowl of vegetables she’d cooked for their guest.
Dutifully, Lexi took it from him, though she had no intention of eating any. Yams were over one hundred and seventy-seven calories per cup, and she was trying to stay well below a thousand calories per day. She’d seen the costumes for an upcoming ballet and they left little to the imagination, leaving her no choice but to stay vigilante with her food intake.
Earlier in the day, the gilded and highly ornate Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Church had been packed full of people celebrating. “Seasonal Christians,” her father had gruffly mumbled when they’d sat through the morning service. Women old and young had been dressed in their finery, most with their heads covered the way hers had been.
After service, she’d dashed over to the Walter Carsen Centre for rehearsals. Sophie, the wonderful scheduler, had offered to figure out a way for her to have the day off to celebrate, but in truth the schedule gave her a good reason to get away from her father. He’d been furious that she’d missed the Christmas Eve Royal Hours and Vespers at the church, yet she found it hard to care. She smiled politely at Anatoly, the man sitting opposite her. She should have smelled the ambush when her father had repeatedly texted her throughout the afternoon’s rehearsal about coming straight home, trying to pin her down on timing, but she’d just assumed he was pissed that she’d come home late the previous evening.
Last night. Why had Jordan walked away from her again? She couldn’t figure it out. Never had she felt so connected to another person while dancing. Perhaps it was the combination of the music he’d written from the depths of his soul and the way he gazed at her like she was the most incredible dancer on the planet. He’d held her hand with such reverence as he’d kissed her knuckles. She rubbed her hand over the spot absently. He’d turned out to be such a quiet man, not at all the intimidating antihero she had constructed in her head.
“Have you been there?” Anatoly asked her.
“I’m sorry.” She shook her head. “What did you say?”
“Russia. I was asking if you had ever been?”
“Aleksandra, pozhaluysta.”
She eyed her father snidely, then smiled brightly as she turned to Anatoly. It wasn’t his fault that her father assumed only Russian men of a certain pedigree were worthy of his daughter’s attention.
“I’m sorry. I haven’t, no. Have you?”
“No, my grandfather defected in 1975, but father had to wait until 1989 to leave. With perestroika, my mother and father escaped through Hungary into Austria. I grew up just outside of Albany.”
Lexi decided to play nice to make up for the fact that her father was a busybody. “So how come you’re in Toronto?”
“It’s somewhere I’ve always wanted to visit, and I’m in the middle of moving from the Colorado Ballet to the American Ballet Theatre. You know how it is. It’s hard to fit in travel with our dance schedules so I—”
“I remember when Mikhail moved there,” her father interrupted. “Such a classical ballet company was a good fit for him. No?”
Anatoly smiled politely as if her father hadn’t just cut him off and been remarkably rude. “It was. And his ten years with the company were invaluable to its development. He left a very rich repertoire behind him.”
When they’d finished their food, her father stood to clear the table, something he wouldn’t dream of doing normally. “I leave you to talk,” he said gruffly.
Lexi rolled her eyes at Anatoly, and he grinned. “Yeah. That meddling-Russian-parent thing. You get that too?”
“I’m not sure whether it’s worse because I’m Russian or I’m in the ballet industry,” Lexi said with a laugh.
“I’m sure it’s incrementally worse when you are both.” Anatoly had a nice smile, but his features were boyish, pretty even. With his looks, he’d be a hit as any of the classical princes. If you’d asked her two weeks ago what her type was, she’d have picked a young Brad Pitt, but now . . . her type had tattoos over the backs of his hands and up the side of his neck, and wore leather, and had something she now knew was called sectoral heterochromia. She’d never seen eyes quite like his. The bottom half of each eye was blue and the top halves were a brilliant brown, almost a dark amber.
And the way he’d—
“Has your father been back at all?” Anatoly asked.
“I’m sorry, again,” Lexi said. “I’m not usually this scatterbrained, but I’m feeling unusually tired today.”
“Of course. I should probably get on my way, anyway. I have an early start on the morning,” he said sympathetically.
“I should
be a better hostess, and it is Christmas,” Lexi said. “Please don’t let me chase you away.”
Anatoly stood. “It’s fine, Lexi. Sometimes I think only another dancer can understand how exhausting this life can be. But maybe we can take a rain check the next time I’m in town?”
Lexi nodded briefly out of politeness.
No sooner had the door shut than her father grabbed hold of her by the shoulders, spinning her roughly to face him.
“Why do you disrespect me so?” he shouted.
Not this again. Lexi shook her head, her gut clenching in response to the brewing fight.
“Don’t shake your head at me, Aleksandra. I am the head of this family.”
When you aren’t depressed, or drunk. “I’m going to my room,” she said, stepping toward the converted basement. She might be the one paying the mortgage, but to keep him happy her father was the one in a large bedroom with an en-suite bathroom. It was always better to diffuse than fight. If he became really angry, it would take him days to calm down.
“You will listen!” her father yelled loud enough for Mrs. Lasiuk next door to hear them.
“To what, Dad?” She couldn’t help herself.
“Why you could not be nicer to Anatoly?” he said, his accent becoming more pronounced, his words muddling as they often did when he became angry. “He was a nice Russian boy. You have much things in common. And family is important.”
“Yeah, family is so important to you that you haven’t lifted a finger to keep it together. I’m twenty-six, Dad. I pay the mortgage on this house. I put food on the table that nine times out of ten I have cooked. I hold down a crazy job and would much rather be living on my own. I don’t have time to date, and even if I did, I would want to pick the person I want to be with. Please stop playing these stupid matchmaking games like a meddling babushka.”
She hurried to the stairs and unlocked the door to the basement. Thankfully, it had once been a separate rental accommodation, so the door had a lock. Only she had a key to it and to the one that led out to the side of the house. “Take your pills,” she called over her shoulder as she flicked on the lights and closed the door behind her.
Safe in her own space, Lexi could breathe again. In contrast to the oppressive wooded accents, dark flooring, and gilded furniture upstairs, her small apartment was bright. Light-wood flooring ran through the space and there was underfloor heating, which was glorious in winter. Her very soul felt lighter as soon as she stepped inside. She’d designed every inch of the space herself. From the ivory-colored sofa and its palest of pink cushions in the living area to the white minikitchen to the rose-colored wall at one end with her white desk in front of it, it was all hers.
Her favorite photograph of her and her mother sat in a simple silver frame on the desk. Her mom’s curls were all over the place, and bits of hair whipped from Lexi’s braid, but they both wore enormous smiles. The picture had been taken on Toronto Island the day before her very first day at the National Ballet School. They’d been so happy.
Things had finally been looking up. Her mom had gotten promoted, her dad had found a construction job after bouncing despondently from one minimum-wage job to another, and she was about to dance every day, her greatest wish.
Lexi sighed and ran a finger along her mother’s cheek, the same way Oksana had done to her before she was killed. People who’d known Oksana always commented how alike she and Lexi were. It was hard to believe her mom had been gone for more years than Lexi had even known her. Even as she tried to resist it, guilt seeped through her like a drop of blue ink added to water.
She glanced to the ceiling, where she could hear her father’s heavy footsteps as he paced. He’d taken the death hard, mainly because he was then thirty-nine, widowed, and left alone with a girl on the cusp of her teenage years that he didn’t know how to care for.
Sitting down at her laptop, she flipped open the screen. The bills needed paying, so she started the process, trying not to fixate on how little there was. There had been compensation from her mother’s death, but her father had dreamed of a more luxurious life, one that had provided riches and fame, and the lure of the money was just too great. He’d spent it all. Even the money that was supposed to have been held in trust for her had been spent before Lexi had turned eighteen. He’d lost the house in Little Moscow, and she’d bought them a smaller home in Riverside. He yelled at her as if he were the proud man of the house, when in truth, everything was hers. Yet somehow only her father was allowed to be angry and bitter.
Being around Jordan last night, though, had made her think about the kind of life she wanted. She couldn’t imagine building a life with someone new while her father was so dependent upon her. And while she couldn’t see herself living with her father forever, she couldn’t just toss him out onto the street. She couldn’t afford two homes, and he’d alienated himself from everyone in his past. Every way she looked at it, she was stuck.
She paid the bills and then opened the website from Jordan. There was a new piece titled “The Darkness of Light.”
Multiple guitars blasted through her speakers. It was loud, almost too much. Notes flew over her in all octaves. High and low. Up and down. And terrifyingly fast. The underlying emotion was anger.
And for once, angry was perfect.
* * *
“So, it’s going to be done in time, right?” Ryan, their manager asked them. The speakerphone in the office crackled as he spoke. Jordan was only half listening. He never really paid much attention to their business meetings. Dred and Nikan were so all over that shit, and he trusted them implicitly. Instead his mind was on his dancer and the snow that was falling in swaths across the back garden. He grabbed Lennon’s phone and looked at the time. Why he was wondering how the fuck she was going to get home from the dance studio instead of focusing on things that actually involved him, like this endless meeting, he wasn’t sure. Never had a woman been on his mind like this. He couldn’t shake her.
“Yeah,” Elliott chipped in. “The music is recorded. It’s all preproduction now.”
“Okay. Good. Good. So cover photography next week. Will send you details. Next up, Europe. The dates for the tour have been nailed down, and the test stage is being built for you in a warehouse out by the airport. Bit of a trek, but hands down the best space for the job. You start full rehearsals in four weeks.”
Touring was Jordan’s nemesis, but it was a necessary evil. Given the impact of downloads and piracy and streaming, concerts and merchandising were one of the few reliable forms of revenue. All of which made great sense if the idea of sleeping alone in a hotel room didn’t scare the shit out of you. It wrecked his nighttime habit of walking through the house to confirm everybody was where they should be. And then, too, there was the stuff. All the fucking stuff they put into those hotel rooms to make them feel like homes—crap paintings of bowls of fruit and cheap clock radios—was creepy and reminded him too much of psychologist’s offices that were filled with impersonal shit meant to put you at ease.
“We’re starting with Serbia, through Sweden, Germany, France, Spain, and England, ending in Ireland. If you guys want to tack a couple of days onto the end just to go see the sights, let me know. Then equipment will come back by ship, and I put four months onto the calendar before the Canada tour starts so that you guys can start to play around with new songs on your own time rather than having to rush through it because of commitments that were previously made on your behalf by someone else.”
“Is the label still interested in another album from us after the mess we left them in by bailing on the tour and album release?” Jordan asked.
“I spoke to the head of the label, John Ferrica, at an industry thing last night. They’re not happy about the situation in general, but they get it, and don’t hold you accountable for your ex-manager’s fuck-ups. Your former manager is likely to end up in prison, so Ferrica’s cool, and hopefully our chat went some way to putting his mind ease that you guys are being properly take
n care of now.”
“That’s a relief,” Dred said, flopping back in his chair.
“So we went through the mini-dress-rehearsal tour, the European tour dates, merchandise plans, album release plans. Anything else on your minds?”
“Nope. All good,” Nikan said. “Anyone else?”
Jordan shook his head. There were mumblings of agreement before they said their good-byes and hung up the phone.
Jordan rubbed his hand across his chin as he thought about their former manager. “Anyone else kicking himself for holding on to Sam for so long? Or why we didn’t notice what was going on sooner?”
Dred played with the thumb ring Pixie had given him for Christmas. The others murmured agreement, likely lost in their own thoughts about the way their former manager had fallen apart. Desperation had played a huge part, an emotion Jordan understood. But it didn’t make it right that Sam, who wanted to be as close to them as they were to each other, had tried to have Pixie killed and ruin their careers when they’d made the decision to fire him.
“Everything that happened with Pixie aside, I guess I’d always thought Sam was doing a semi-decent job,” Nikan said, standing. The guy had real trouble sitting still. “I mean, he had his flaws, but then all that shit that went down, the mess of the album, the tour.”
Elliott closed his notebook. “We just didn’t know what we didn’t know. We can’t beat ourselves up too much for not seeing it sooner. But it’s great the label has been so flexible. And Ryan is kicking ass. Can’t fault the guy.”
“I disagree. We just assumed Sam was looking out for us,” Nikan said. “We stopped paying attention to the details.”
“Yeah,” Dred said. “I guess I felt that since we’d already had so many shitty people in our lives, we couldn’t be so fucking unlucky again. I really didn’t want to believe that Sam could be pushed that far. I’m sorry, guys. I feel like I should’ve called it sooner.”
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