by Strong, Mimi
Two to Tango
A NOVEL
© 2014 Mimi Strong
Genre: Contemporary Romance / Erotic Romance
Length: Full-length novel of 72,000 words or 250 pages
This is a complete, stand-alone novel, not part of a series.
Due to sexual content, this book is not intended for readers under the age of 18.
Chapter 1
Charlie
Because of my family, I was surrounded by beautiful, wealthy girls. Dating club members was against the rules, but I didn’t mind. I could break the rules to date a girl, and when the inevitable relationship problems came up, I could suddenly care about the rules and break up with her. Problem solved.
My twenties were all about working hard and playing hard. I never saw the point in settling down with just one girl, but then again, I’d never met a girl like Skye Evans.
She stomped into my life on a pair of long, lean, dancer’s legs. She wore a red dress, killer heels, and a whole lot of attitude.
I fell for her immediately.
But she had a complicated past. People had let her down, and the time she’d spent as a stripper made her distrustful of guys, especially rich ones. Like me.
Chapter 2
Skye
The two girls standing before me wore the same costumes, but couldn’t be more different.
Adele was only ten, but in her stage makeup, she looked like a full-grown woman. A woman of power and influence. Adele. What a name. In my notes from the first day of dance class, I’d marked next to her name, “A as in Alpha.”
Little Adele also belonged to the group of Level A students—Level A on our sliding scale, because both of her parents were doctors. Her family paid the top rate for classes.
The other girl, Bianca, slumped in her pink leotard. Dressed in the exact same costumes, you shouldn’t be able to tell the rich girls from the poor ones.
But you can always tell.
“Sweetie, roll your shoulders back,” I instructed Bianca. I rolled mine back proudly to demonstrate.
Adele got behind Bianca and jerked the girl’s arms back playfully. “Like this!” Adele commanded.
Bianca straightened right up, the obedient Beta to Adele’s Alpha.
The wrinkles on the front of Bianca’s leotard smoothed out, and for an instant they were just two happy girls, horsing around to manage pre-performance jitters.
I had been as oblivious and carefree as them, once.
The stage manager, Roger, tapped me on the shoulder.
“Time,” Roger said.
He was a man of few words, so when he spoke, people listened. I wished I could be more like him, minus the bald head and round belly.
I gathered Adele and Bianca, along with the other thirteen students in their group, and put them in order of size. One of the older girls must have had a growth spurt, because when I looked across the row of heads, something was wrong. One dancer head, with its tightly-twisted bun of hair, stepped down instead of up.
The music changed and the girls filed out onto the brightly-lit stage. They pretended not to care about the welcoming applause. Such little professionals, my students. I beamed proudly.
The applause kept going. For an auditorium filled only with dance judges and parents, the applause was much louder and went on longer than I’d expected.
I couldn’t hear the music, which meant they couldn’t either. The girls missed the first bars of the song, and all but three started late. I clenched my jaw, held my breath, and tried to will them into harmony. The late starters caught up, and I let myself breathe.
The only thing ruining the performance for me was the eleventh girl, whose head went lower instead of higher.
The tenth girl, dancing to her left, was the one who’d sprouted up in height overnight. Of course she was one of the Level A students. That was so like one of them to change.
Rich people don’t fear change. There’s little that life can throw at them that can’t be solved with the liberal application of cash, lawyers, and more cash. They welcome change, calling it opportunity.
It’s the poor who fear change.
It was me who feared change. Me, who loved her job but barely got by from month to month. Me, who saw change for what it was: another step down.
~
After the performances of all three of my student groups, I gathered the costumes in a box.
My mother called, and I made the mistake of answering the phone.
“Everything’s coming together for me!” she said between puffs off her cigarette.
I tried to sound upbeat. “That’s great, Mom. You’re almost finished taking that night school course, right? What’s the subject?”
“Accounting.”
I held the phone away from my mouth so she wouldn’t hear me snort.
“I’m really good at it,” she said.
“That makes me happy. Sorry, but I have to go. I’m working tonight and the girls just finished their recital.”
She sighed. “I wish they paid you more. When are you coming to visit?”
Uh, when hell freezes over?
“Soon,” I lied. We said goodbye, and I picked up the box of dance costumes.
We turned off the green room lights and I followed Adele out to her mother’s vehicle.
My mind wandered to thoughts of the chocolate-covered pretzels I had waiting at my apartment.
“There’s Mom,” Adele said, skipping ahead of me clumsily in her sheepskin boots.
Adele’s mother, Mrs. Winfield stepped out in her high-heeled boots. The vehicle was one of those things you could go to war in. Of course.
I tried to hand her the box of costumes, but she wrinkled her nose and jumped back, arms fluttering at her sides.
“Those costumes reek to high heaven,” she said. “You need to put them in the back. Not the front. And I suppose I’ll have to drive with the sun roof open.”
It was only March, and dark out already—not sun roof weather. Whatever. Mrs. Winfield could go ahead and freeze her ass off to make a point about her superior sense of smell.
I breathed deeply and audibly over the box of costumes. “That’s the smell of hard work and winning,” I said. “There’s nothing wrong with sweat.”
We circled around to the back of the truck, where the glowing tail lights cast our faces in red light.
Adele did an impromptu twirl before us, nearly tripping over her own boots. I had to laugh. So what if I didn’t get paid much in my new career? I loved every minute of my job.
Adele kept dancing. “The clapping was too loud,” she informed her mother. “You guys out there in the dark almost ruined everything.”
Mrs. Winfield laughed—a dismissive sound.
Adele’s face crumbled.
I dropped the box on the pavement and grabbed Adele in a hug, tickling her armpits through her light jacket to make her squeal. “Don’t you blame the audience. You have to take responsibility for yourself, because no one else will. And as for tonight, you girls were perfect.”
“Really?” She gazed up at me with wide eyes.
“Perfect,” I said. “Nobody fell down, or tooted. You were perfect.”
Even without looking up, I could feel Mrs. Winfield’s disapproving glare. The Level A parents didn’t view coming in third place as perfect, and they didn’t like the instructors giving hugs. What had they called it on the formal complaint? Over-familiarity.
Adele’s mother opened the door at the back. The cargo area of the pseudo-military vehicle was already full of boxes. She let out an exasperated groan.
“We should have gone with the other costumes,” I said, because I couldn’t help myself. “Everyone could have thrown them
in the washing machine, instead of having it all trucked over to your special dry cleaner.”
“Skye, I’ve heard more than enough about the costumes. Not everything has to be second-rate out of fairness. We’re not living in Cuba.”
She grabbed two boxes from her vehicle and tossed them to the ground. She hoisted the box of sweaty costumes into the new space with equal annoyance, then brushed imaginary dust off her hands onto her coat. Her camel-hued wool jacked probably cost more than my car.
Ignoring the boxes now on the ground, she said, “At least come this fall, everything is going to smell much, much better.”
I studied the grin on her face as my heart sunk.
“You mean…?”
“Yes,” she said triumphantly. “Adele is already pre-enrolled at The Cedars. They’re bringing in a very prestigious instructor.” She looked me up and down, from my well-worn sneakers to my three-seasons-old jacket. With the force of a final blow, she said, “An instructor from New York.”
Adele, who’d been twirling while listening, began to whine. “Not The Cedars! I don’t want to dance at the stupid club! Everyone there is mean, and they yell, and they’re always washing the floors so they’re slippery! Mom-I-don’t-wanna!”
Mrs. Winfield gave her daughter a stern look. Through clenched teeth, she said, “Are you ten, or are you two?”
Adele shook her clenched fists and pursed her lips.
“That’s what I thought,” Mrs. Winfield said.
“Are you sure about The Cedars?” I stammered. “I thought their dance program was still years away. Aren’t they renovating?”
She waved a hand. “The new wing is cancelled. City bylaws, whatever, who cares. The dance program is starting this fall.”
“I hope you’ll consider keeping Adele here at the Center. She gets along so well with the other girls.”
“I’m sure half of them will come over.”
“But… the funding …”
She rolled her eyes. “Have a bake sale. A car wash. I don’t know. I can’t solve the world’s problems.”
Adele stomped her foot. “I won’t go.”
I mouthed a silent thank-you to Adele.
Mrs. Winfield seemed to be waiting for something from me. What? For me to beg? Get down on my knees and beg her to write a check, so the girls whose families had nothing could still have their dreams? My throat closed against my words.
The woman in the pristine wool coat jingled the keys to her giant vehicle and fixed me with a look that said change was coming. Whether I liked it or not.
Change was coming.
Adele whined, “Mom, I want Skye. You know Skye is the best teacher. Everyone knows that.”
Ignoring her, Mrs. Winfield said to me, “They’re having an Open House at The Cedars tonight. That’s why everyone rushed out of here so quickly after the recital.”
“What’s an Open House?” I asked.
“That’s where they allow the public to come inside. It’s supposed to be for recruiting new members, but there’s food and wine, and you know what a town of lookie-loos this is. I’m certainly not going, since I’m already a member.” She gave me a casual nod. “You should go. It would be like Cinderella, at the ball. You might meet a nice young man of means, who’ll take care of you.”
I made an involuntary grunting noise. “I can take care of myself.”
“You’re twenty-nine,” she said. “Your expiration date is coming up.”
My jaw dropped open.
Mrs. Winfield slammed the cargo door shut and prodded her daughter around to the passenger side.
I stood and watched as they pulled out of the parking spot and circled around me on their way to the road. As they passed by, I could see Adele’s rosebud lips sticking out, tears glistening on her cheeks. My heart broke for her, being ripped out of the group she belonged to.
The truck drove away, two red eyes in the night, leaving me in the deserted parking lot.
At my feet were the two cardboard boxes Mrs. Winfield had left behind. I pulled out my key chain and shone the tiny flashlight on the boxes. Written on the top was the name of a local charity, and the word DONATION.
I flipped open the lid and found a gorgeous pair of stiletto heels. The soles were barely scuffed, and the shoes were my size. Beneath the shoes were neatly-folded clothes.
Looking around to make sure no one saw me, I picked up the two boxes and walked them over to the only car left in the parking lot of the community center.
These clothes were for charity?
I had barely enough money saved up to make it through the summer, during which my hours at the community center would be cut to part-time. If a person were to look at my bank account, they’d consider me charity.
I promised myself that I’d bring the clothes into my apartment, and if they didn’t fit me absolutely perfectly, I’d drop them at the charity the very next day.
For the drive home, I tried not to think about the dance program losing its biggest sponsors. I would get home, put on one of my favorite movies, and eat my chocolate-covered pretzels. Life would continue exactly as it was, and nothing would change.
I would not consider going back to stripping.
I was a good girl now, and I didn’t do those things.
Chapter 3
Charlie
Things always go wrong on Open House night.
I swear, it’s as if everyone gets so tense and worked up over getting things perfect, they mess up worse than usual.
The tenth problem of the day took me to the kitchen of the club’s restaurant.
We didn’t have nearly enough champagne for the event. Someone must have missed a decimal point on the previous week’s liquor order, and we were short.
What we did have, however, was a less-expensive sparkling wine.
“But it’s not champagne!” everyone in the kitchen said. “And it’s not chilled!”
I walked into the giant walk-in freezer and grabbed a bag of frozen organic raspberries. “Here,” I said. “They’ll probably think this is better than champagne. Put three frozen raspberries in each glass.”
The kitchen staff got to work, grumbling, but accepting my solution.
It seemed to me like they made such a huge production over little glitches, just to make their jobs seem more difficult. When I solved their problems, they didn’t seem grateful.
I had to wonder if some people identified too strongly with being a person with problems. Did they get some sense of self-importance from always being at the center of some kind of drama?
Why did other people insist on being so difficult and illogical?
My phone buzzed with an incoming message. I pulled it from my pocket and gave it a shake to get the screen working. The phone had suffered a mishap with a wet puddle outside, and hadn’t been the same since. I really needed to get it replaced, once I was done with everyone else’s problems.
I groaned when I read the message.
One of the waiters caught my eye, grinning. “Girl troubles?”
“Not unless the irrigation system is a girl,” I said.
So much for getting out of there at a decent time and going to a party with Duncan.
So much for getting laid that night.
Chapter 4
Skye
The boxes of clothes were heavy, and I was already sweating as I walked up the porch to the main door. I set the boxes down, opened the common door with the big key, and shoved the boxes through the threshold with my foot. Even with my strong dancer’s muscles, my inner thigh cried out in protest.
I picked up the boxes, proceeded up the old steps to the third floor, and struggled to get the apartment key into my door. The tall, skinny house I lived in was split into five apartments, and from the hallway, I could smell the lingering cooking smells of everyone’s dinner.
In my eagerness to get to my post-recital treats, I loosened my arms and nearly lost my grip on the boxes. I caught them, but realized with horror that I’d als
o snapped my apartment key off in the lock of my door.
After a few nasty words, I tried to get the broken key out of the lock.
It was no use. Nothing I had was going to get the door open.
I pulled out my phone and called my landlord.
He grumbled, but said he would drive over as soon as he could, in a few hours.
“But I’m locked out,” I said, grating at the desperation in my voice. “Should I call a locksmith instead?”
He gasped in horror. “Outside business hours? Emergency call rate? You know I can’t keep the rent low if we’re calling in tradesmen at emergency rates.”
“I understand. Thank you.”
I ended the call and slumped down to sit on the floor next to the boxes. I was hungry, but the nearby coffee shop was already closed for the day.
I opened the boxes and started checking out the clothes.
“Cinderella,” I snorted to myself, recalling Mrs. Winfield’s suggestion I go to the Open House to catch myself a rich man.
There was NO way I’d ever date someone rich, let alone let them take care of me.
I could, however, eat free food and drink free champagne.
I took off the clothes I’d been wearing, and started trying on the donations. My apartment was in the attic of the house, and it was the whole floor, so even the hallway was private. I settled on a sleek, red dress, paired with the stiletto heels. My muscular calves turned soft and feminine in the shoes. I didn’t need a mirror to tell me the clothes were flattering. I topped the dress with a matching jacket, and transferred half the contents of my patchwork denim shoulder bag into one of the designer purses from the box.
“Cinderella,” I said again, only this time I meant it as a compliment.
Using the makeup in my purse, I gave myself a rich-person makeover. Instead of the blue eyeliner and bright eyeshadow I usually wore, I applied the never-used neutrals, and red lip gloss to match the dress.
My naturally stick-straight brown hair looked exactly the way it always did. Straight and boring.