Save the Last Dance

by Fiona Harper

  This was easier territory now. He started to relax.

  ‘I thought it would be a pity if all that expertise was lost to the modern world, so when I left the army I started up my own centre teaching survival skills. Then a couple of years ago Simon came on a team building weekend while he was still employed by a big TV company as an assistant working his way up the ranks. He came up with the basic idea for Fearless Finn, set up his own production company to make it when no one else was interested, and it just sort of went from there.’

  They reached their camp and planted their torches in the sand. Close enough to give a bit of extra light, but not too close to the shelter. Allegra sat down on the log next to the fire pit, rested her forearms on her thighs and clasped her hands together.

  ‘I see. So the TV programme came out of what you were doing already.’

  He joined her on the log. ‘I was very firm about the educational side of the programme. I only agreed to do it if it was going to be more than vicarious viewing. They’re all very keen for me to do bonkers things, like eating weird insects or jumping into ice-cold water with next to nothing on. But while people are gasping at their TV screens they’re hopefully learning something that could not just save but also enrich their lives.’

  Allegra thought about that for a while. When she watched Fearless Finn on TV, he always seemed mind-bogglingly ready to jump into dangerous situations head first, but there was so much more to him than that. Why didn’t he let people see that? It was odd, because he’d seemed so open and friendly right from the first moment she’d met him, and yet, even after almost four days together, constantly in each other’s company, she was only just feeling as if she was starting to get to know him.

  ‘You’re really passionate about what you do, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘It’s not just about the adrenalin rush, is it?’

  Finn’s answering smile was softer and sadder than his usual wide grin. ‘I never pretended it was.’ And he started getting ready for the chill of the night, putting his shirt on over his T-shirt, pulling his socks on over his feet once he’d shaken the sand off, and then he climbed into the shelter.

  No, he didn’t pretend, thought Allegra. But he hid behind other people’s preconceptions of him just the same, and she’d only just seen a hint of what lay behind it. She’d seen the loneliness he’d been trying to hide when he’d talked about his childhood, had sensed, just for a split second, that some of that bravado was hollow.

  And it was this knowledge that rang the death knell for the teenage crush. Crushes were all about surface appeal, a pretty canvas you could customise to meet your own fantasy. Now she didn’t care about the canvas at all. It was the man underneath who had her spellbound, who tugged at her heartstrings. And she hadn’t thought this crazy situation could get any worse.

  She quickly got into the shelter and lay down. For some reason she felt all shaky and her pulse was skipping along.

  Stop it! she tried to tell her body. You’re wasting your energy. Save it for someone who’s interested.

  But her pulse didn’t listen; it just skipped all the harder. She lay on her stomach, folded her hands on top of each other and rested her chin on them. There. That would stop the quivering.

  It had been nice while it had lasted, but it really was time to face facts about Finn McLeod, wasn’t it? She had to cut this silly…infatuation…dead. And there was only one way she could think of to start that process.

  She tilted her head and looked at him. ‘And what about the future for Fearless Finn?’

  Finn was lying on his back with his ankles crossed and his hands tucked behind his head. He stared at the shelter roof and made a tiny one-sided movement with his mouth. ‘I think the new format will secure the future of the show for at least another few years.’

  Allegra smiled. ‘I wasn’t talking about the show. I was talking about you.’ And then she looked away. ‘You’re getting married, aren’t you?’

  Finn didn’t reply immediately, and the quivering spread from Allegra’s hands up her arms and into her shoulders. She hoped the bamboo was lashed tightly enough not to jiggle. She knew she had to ask the next question, knew she had to stab her adolescent dreams in the heart. That would be her act of survival this week.

  ‘What’s she like? Nat?’

  Finn went very still. When he answered he was staring at that palm thatching as if he could bore a hole through it. ‘Dedicated. Ambitious. Driven. She understood not to cage me in. She let me be who I am.’

  The quivering crept into Allegra’s stomach and set up home there.

  See? There was the problem. There was the reason she was all wrong for Finn McLeod.

  If he was hers, she’d want to do exactly that—cage him in and keep him all for herself.

  So now it was time to ask the question that really would knock the last nail in the coffin of her crush on Finn McLeod.

  ‘So…how did you propose?’

  She really didn’t want to hear this. Knowing Finn, he’d have repelled out of a helicopter to surprise the lucky lady with a lump of diamond he’d carved from an African mine, or sky-written the question above her house—driving the plane himself, of course.

  Finn coughed. ‘You don’t really want to know, do you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied. Maybe didn’t want to know, but she needed to.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  FINN cleared his throat. ‘It was one of those rare periods when we were both in London together for more than a few days, and we were at my flat one evening, watching a documentary about dung beetles—’

  Allegra almost choked on a laugh. ‘Dung beetles?’

  Finn ignored it. He didn’t want to talk about this, but girls liked this kind of stuff, and Allegra wasn’t to know that it had all been for nothing. Best thing was to give her the facts as quickly and cleanly as possible.

  ‘Nat had just zoomed to the other side of town to pick up a few more of her things and when she got back she flopped down on the sofa beside me and said something about preferring downtown Kampala to London traffic these days. And then she said, “Maybe we should just move in together. It would save so much hassle.”’

  Allegra closed her eyes. Finn frowned but carried on.

  ‘So I said, “Why don’t we make it official, then?” and Nat thought about it for a minute and then said that was a good idea.’

  ‘And then you went back to watching the dung beetles?’

  ‘Yes,’ Finn said, slightly puzzled. ‘It was a very interesting programme.’

  Allegra giggled loudly. What was wrong with her tonight?

  ‘You old romantic,’ she said, when she could finally speak again.

  Finn folded his arms and scowled at her. ‘Nat and I aren’t the sort of people who need grand gestures.’

  Well, he still didn’t. Who knew about Nat any more? She’d certainly never been interested in chocolates and flowers when she’d been with him. And those sorts of things didn’t come naturally to him. He’d never had the urge to do it spontaneously, so when he’d tried to be romantic, as Allegra put it, he’d had to plan and leave himself reminders. Even so, the gesture had always fallen flat when the vital moment had arrived.

  He rolled onto his back again and folded his arms across his chest. ‘I take it you like all of that nonsense?’

  Allegra sighed, breathing out the last of her laughter. ‘Yes. Now that I think about it, I think I do. So when my time comes for a proposal, I think I want a grand gesture. It’s only supposed to happen once, so it might as well be spectacular.’

  ‘Spoken like a true prima donna.’

  Allegra pursed her mouth. He had a suspicion she was trying to stop herself from smiling. ‘Prima donnas belong to the opera. I’m a ballet dancer.’

  Finn just snorted. Allegra shook her he
ad gently and then rolled onto her back. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I just thought that someone like you might have come up with something a little more…exciting.’

  He rolled onto his side, facing away from her and muttered, ‘Well, Nat didn’t mind, so I don’t see why you should.’

  That sobered her up pretty quickly.

  ‘No, no. You’re right,’ she said softly. ‘I’m sorry. I’ll shut up now.’

  The silence that followed was definitely not comfortable and, as Finn’s irritation cooled, he started to feel awful. He didn’t know why he’d reacted so badly. Or why his ability to be friendly with everyone had suddenly deserted him. Maybe the whole Nat thing was getting to him finally.

  He rolled over to look at Allegra. She’d turned her head to look at him, eyes glistening, but when he moved she quickly looked away.

  He thought about Allegra, how contained she could be, how little she actually said about what she was feeling, even if he knew by reading her face. It had taken her a lot of guts to make that confession this evening. She deserved his honesty, too.

  ‘Allegra?’

  He thought he heard a tiny hiccup, and then she rolled her head to look at him.

  ‘What?’ she said quietly.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s just it’s a sore point at the moment, that’s all.’

  Her eyebrows lifted slightly and Finn took a deep breath.

  ‘Nat asked me not to tell anyone yet, so I didn’t really want to say anything…’

  She propped herself up on her forearm and leaned forward a little. ‘Finn?’

  He shrugged with one shoulder. ‘We broke up. We’re not engaged any more. Her decision.’

  A whole flurry of emotions passed across Allegra’s features, none of which Finn could label because there were so many and they moved so fast.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said finally, and her voice was a little wobbly. ‘Are you okay?’

  This whole conversation was getting far too morose for Finn, far too close to that fenced off area of himself he tried not to think about, never mind go near. He decided to backtrack into safer territory. ‘I’ll survive,’ he said jokingly and flashed her a grin.

  She smiled back, but she was about as convincing as he’d been. ‘Good.’

  They both stared at each other. Finn felt he should say something, but his head was empty of words. In the end he cobbled something easy together.

  ‘Goodnight, Allegra.’

  She blinked. ‘Goodnight, Finn.’

  And then he rolled over and looked at the shelter wall. He daren’t look back. There was something about those eyes of hers. Maybe she was a mermaid. Or a siren of some kind. Because sometimes, when he looked into them, he felt as if he was being sucked into their depths. And Finn McLeod didn’t want to be sucked anywhere he couldn’t escape from.

  Allegra knew she ought to copy him and roll away, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to do that. She was weak. She rolled onto the opposite side and stared at his back. Just a few minutes, she told herself, and then I’ll turn over or close my eyes.

  Forty minutes later she saw the movement of his ribs slow and soften as his breathing changed, indicating he’d drifted off to sleep.

  Finn isn’t getting married. He’s free.

  Those two sentences had been running round her head on a loop since he’d made the revelation.

  Although the night was still and the sky clear tonight, she couldn’t help thinking of him crouching by the edge of the shelter as the storm had raged above them on their first night. He’d seemed so energised. His face had practically glowed with excitement.

  A very different picture from the Finn who had lain on his back, face expressionless, voice monotone, and had talked about the moment he’d asked the woman he was supposed to love to marry him.

  She tried not to read anything into that, knowing it was probably all in her head—she was only seeing what she wanted to see—but she didn’t have much success.

  He’s probably devastated underneath it all, she told herself. You can’t let it mean anything. You can’t pretend it changes anything.

  How strange. Back home, the walls had been closing in on her and, try as she might, she hadn’t been able to see a way out. There had been one, of course. She just hadn’t had the courage to believe it was there, let alone take it. But this island had changed her already in strange and wonderful ways. Now, when her chances with Finn were slim to non-existent, she couldn’t quite seem to shake the beautiful sense of hope that hung around her in the air.

  Stupid girl.

  Stupid mermaid.

  Allegra woke early the following morning and her first semi-conscious thought was that she was late for something.

  She had to get to class!

  She scooted to the edge of the shelter and then she stopped moving, sat there in a daze with her legs dangling over the edge, wondering what on earth her body thought it was doing.

  There was no daily ballet class here, remember? No reason to stretch and point and make her muscles work until they burned.

  She missed it, she realised. She actually missed it.

  Her body, which had been thrust into this alien environment full of unexpected challenges, suddenly longed for the familiarity of the barre, for the structure of a well taught class. She decided to run through her usual warm up stretches, just to ground herself.

  She looked at Finn, still sleeping in the shelter, watched his chest rise and fall.

  Had she dreamed what he’d said last night? Had she wished hard enough and made it true? He really wasn’t getting married?

  Don’t be stupid, she told herself. Just because he isn’t hers any more doesn’t mean he’s yours.

  She made herself turn and walk a little farther away from the camp, keeping close to the treeline where the sand was flatter before it shelved down to the shore, and found a shady spot to exercise.

  She started by rolling down her spine—oh, it was good—letting each vertebra curl and stretch as she kept her pelvis upright and let her arms dangle down towards her toes. When she reached the bottom she just hung there for a few seconds, letting her arms get heavy, enjoying the gentle pull in the backs of her legs. Then she rolled back up again and repeated the movement a few more times. If her body could have talked it would have let out a contented sigh. So she moved from one stretch to the next to the next…

  ‘I didn’t think it was possible for a human body to do that.’

  Allegra let go of her leg, the calf of which had been gently nudging her ear, and whipped her head round. She had one hand resting lightly on the bark of a palm tree for balance. Just as well, really, if Finn McLeod was going to sneak up on her like that.

  The leg stayed where it was for a second or so and she let it move towards the ground slowly, maintaining control over every muscle until her toes touched the sand.

  ‘You’re right,’ she said, trying not to feel as if she’d been caught red-handed. ‘A human body isn’t supposed to do that. However, every choreographer I’ve ever worked with has paid little attention to what’s physically possible. Sometimes us dancers have to work out a way to do it anyway.’

  Finn’s look of awe was replaced by his customary grin. ‘It’d be a bloody miracle if I could get my leg to do that!’

  The mental image conjured up by Finn’s outburst tickled Allegra greatly. Although she knew the male dancers she worked with were as strong as any Olympic athlete, somehow the thought of Finn doing ballet was all wrong. He had this energy about him—this untameable, masculine, raw energy—that ballet would never be able to contain.

  On the other hand, if Finn ever gave up adventuring and decided to become the next Patrick Swayze, there’d be a global stampede of women wanting to
be his partner.

  She flushed hot at the thought herself, and quickly buried her face in her knees in a pretend hamstring stretch to hide it. When she pulled herself upright again she found Finn sitting cross-legged on the sand looking expectant.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  Finn looked innocent. Well, as innocent as a man with a devil-may-care twinkle in his eye could. ‘I was hoping all that elasticity was preparation for a display, that maybe you were going to dance. I wanted to see if I could tell if you still loved it or not.’

  Allegra crossed her arms over her torso and hugged her own waist. ‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I’m ready for that yet.’

  Though the playful tone in his voice remained, a hint of seriousness darkened his eyes. ‘There’s only one way to find out, you know.’

  She knew.

  But she really wasn’t ready. Wasn’t ready to discover if, when she left this island—and Finn—behind, the only constant in her life wouldn’t be waiting for her when she got home.

  That, and the fact she really didn’t want Finn to see her dance.

  She walked over to where he was and gracefully folded her legs under herself until she was sitting beside him. Not too close, mind you.

  ‘I know,’ she said carefully, trying to scrunch up her toes so he wouldn’t see how ugly her art had made them. ‘Maybe tomorrow.’

  She couldn’t let him see her dance. It would be far too dangerous, far too revealing. It wouldn’t have mattered a couple of weeks ago, because she’d have had nothing to hide then— but now… Now she felt as if every emotion she’d been holding in check would come seeping out of her pores as soon as she began to move.