Dance With Me

E
VERNIGHT PUBLISHING ®

www.evernightpublishing.com

Copyright© 2016 Hazel Hughes

ISBN: 978-1-77233-937-6

Cover Artist: Jay Aheer

Editor: Karyn White

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal.  No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

DEDICATION

For B and B. And always, for D.

DANCE WITH ME

Hazel Hughes

Copyright © 2016

Chapter One

Sherry was seconds from journalistic brilliance when her boss dropped the photo onto her keyboard.

“Just a sec, Frank,” she said, brushing it to the side. “‘Three Mutilated in Toaster Fire’,” she muttered under her breath as she typed the headline, deleted and typed again. “‘Toaster Maims Family’. Yes.” She ran a hand through her silky black hair and smiled up at him.

Maybe maim was too strong a word for a few second-degree burns, but she knew Frank would rewrite it anyway. That was what old-school editors did, and Frank was as old-school as they came. It had been a slow news week in the city. When Sherry got bored, she got creative. Well, that was what she called it anyway. Frank had a different word for it.

Frank read the headline over her shoulder and shook his head, fighting a smile.

“That’s what I thought.” He pushed the photo into her hand. “This’ll keep you busy ‘til things pick up again.” He started walking back to his office, his faded blue shirt tucked into chinos so old the outline of his wallet was permanently etched into the back pocket.

Sherry glanced down at the headshot. Nice-looking, whoever he was. Clear green eyes like sea-glass stared back at her from beneath hooded lids and a tousle of copper-colored hair. Add to that high Slavic cheekbones and a smile that was ten percent sugar and ninety percent spice. But what was with that jewel-crusted satin shirt?

“What the hell is this, Francis?” she called to her boss’s retreating back. He didn’t love it when she called him that, but he let her get away with it as long as she kept delivering stories that generated clicks and sold papers. So far she hadn’t let him down.

He turned and walked back to her through the jumble of desks that was the newsroom of
The New York Sun
. Most of them were empty at this time of morning, but Sherry could almost see the handful of stringers and interns swivel their ears in her direction.

Frank put his hands on her desk and leaned in, too close. Sherry smelled Marlboros and stale coffee. “Alexi Davydenko. Your next assignment,” he said with a cold smile.

“Ha. Funny. You know I don’t cover the arts. That’s Kim’s beat.” She flicked the photo off her desk with one short-nailed finger. At least she’d stopped biting them. It had been a hundred and seven days, but she didn’t dare let them grow past her fingertips. That would be too tempting.

He crossed his arms, his eyes hard. “Kim’s on emergency leave. She fell down the stairs at 28th this morning. Broke her leg. She’s at Bellvue, getting it set.”

“Well, I’m sorry for Kim,” she lied, knowing Frank didn’t believe a word. It was no secret that she and Kim were far from besties. Kim’s pronouncements about the “it” show of the season made Sherry want to slap the smug grin off her highlighted and contoured face. Kim’s not-so-subtle digs at Sherry’s utilitarian style didn’t help either. “Maybe one of the interns would like a crack at it. I’m working on…” she started.

“You’re working on this,” Frank said, picking the photo up and slapping it on her desk. The sound made the intern at the next desk flinch. “Interview’s in an hour. American Ballet Company. Broadway and 19th.”

“You can’t be serious,” she said.

“Am I ever anything but?” He flashed her a humorless smile and started walking away. “Check your email. Kim sent you the interview questions from her phone. All you gotta do is show up.” He stopped in the doorway to his office. “I want it filed by four. This is breaking news.”

She wove her way through the desks toward him, waving the photo. “This is breaking news? A man in tights? Whole villages are being wiped out in Nigeria and this is what makes the headlines?”

“Hey. I am literally giving you Prince Charming.” His eyes twinkled. He was enjoying this way too much. “Only you would complain about that.” The door swung shut.

Sherry looked around the newsroom for support, but everyone had their heads down, tapping away at their keyboards. Peter’s desk was empty. Her one friend and ally was in Queens covering a shooting. He got news. She got tutus.

Tempting as it was to hand the assignment off to an intern, she wouldn’t. Frank took a lot of crap from Sherry, but they both knew when he drew a line in the sand, she would keep her toes on the right side of it. With the digitalization of the news industry, a job that covered the rent on her Brooklyn studio wasn’t worth risking for the sake of her journalistic integrity, whatever that meant anymore.

She pushed the photo aside and clicked open her email. “Ballet Hottie”, the subject heading read. She opened it, scrolling through the list of questions, stopping when she hit Kim’s ornate purple signature. “From the desk of Kimberly Clarkson”, it read, the loops of the font as OTT as the bows on the chiffon blouses Kim favored. And as vacuous as her so-called interview questions.

Opening another tab, Sherry typed Alexi Davydenko into the search box. “‘Royal Ballet Bad-boy Bites the Hand that Feeds Him’,” she read.
Daily Mail
. Not surprising.
The Daily Mail
could turn a tea-party with the Queen into shocking scandal. She clicked on a link to the
Guardian
. “‘Royal Ballet Loses Rising Star’,” it read. Much more sensible.

She scanned the article, but there weren’t many hard facts. The Ukrainian dancer had broken his contract for unspecified reasons a year ago. Between then and now, he hadn’t been in the news much. A solo at the Vail Dance Festival. Some commercial work for Dior. She clicked open the link to the video. Black and white. Artsy. Verging on homoerotic.

Not her type, of course. She didn’t go for the self-involved artsy-fartsy creative types. When it came to men, she skewed intellectual. And married. They didn’t make so many demands.

“And how’s that working out for you, Sherry-baby?” she muttered under her breath. She looked down at her unbitten nails. One hundred and seven days. And counting.

Sighing, she opened the email tab again and reread Kimberly’s questions, hoping to find something she could sink her teeth into. So he was signing with American Ballet Company. This was breaking news? She shook her head, wishing Peter was there to commiserate with her.

Leaving the photo on the bare surface of her desk and tucking her laptop into the worn leather messenger bag she always carried, Sherry headed for the stairs. Forty-five minutes to get to from Brooklyn to Midtown. She was taking a cab and billing the paper. God help Frank if he didn’t sign off on it.

Chapter Two

“19
th
and Broadway,” Sherry said to the cabbie as she slid into the back seat. “890 Broadway. ABC.”

“Ah. American Ballet Company. You a ballerina?” he asked, leering, like he was asking if she was a stripper.

She ignored his question. “Don’t take the Brooklyn Bridge.” She knew he was checking her out in the rearview mirror, and she ignored that, too. It didn’t seem to matter that she wore Doc Martens, a utility jacket, and nothing but a slick of mascara. Men always looked.

“Exotic,” Glenn had called her the first time he had peeled off that utility jacket and the Ramones tee she was wearing under it. He loved that she had inherited the delicate China-doll features of her Singaporean mom and the lean height of her Caucasian dad.
Jesus.
Why was she thinking of Glenn when what she needed to do was bone up on everything ballet?

“One hundred and seven,” she said through gritted teeth and curled her fingers into her palms. She had given up Glenn and nail-biting at the same time. For Lent, she told Peter. Forever, she hoped.

Googling furiously on her phone, she realized the sum total of her ballet knowledge could fit in a Tic Tac. She was going into this interview more unprepared than a freshman at pledge week. In fact, the first and only time she had ever seen a ballet was ten years ago, when she was a sophomore at Columbia.

It had been an early Christmas present from her parents—tickets to the
Nutcracker
when she would have preferred cold, hard cash—but of course she couldn’t tell them that. She had put on a smile and her one decent dress and gone, because that was what a good daughter would do. That was when she was still trying to be a good daughter and they were still pretending that she was one.

By the time the cab pulled up to the corner of 19
th
and Broadway, Sherry still didn’t know the difference between a grande jeté and a pirouette. What she did know was that ABC was seconds from declaring bankruptcy, hemorrhaging money from a massive financial wound. And Alexi Davydenko was the bandage.

Her curiosity was piqued. Maybe she could turn this puff-piece into real news.

890 Broadway wasn’t much different from its neighbors. Exhaust-blackened concrete studded with rows of dark windows. An ornate arch curved over the mirrored glass door. She pushed it open, narrowly avoiding two girls in their late teens whose sinewy limbs and turned out feet marked them as ballerinas. As if the cabbie could have mistaken her for one of them. Sherry watched as they moved out onto Broadway like sleek minnows flitting between plodding frogs and turtles.

ABC was located on the third floor, so Sherry opted for the stairs. She didn’t do elevators when she could avoid them, especially in old buildings. In the lobby, she gave the receptionist her details and leaned against the wall, scrolling through the links she had pulled up in the cab ride over, honing in on the ones about Alexi himself. Despite the volume of articles, there wasn’t a wealth of information. Born in Ukraine. Moved to Kiev for formal training from the age of six. Divorced parents. No siblings.

The most revealing thing she found was a BBC video interview done when he was still with the Royal Ballet. The questions weren’t much different than Kim’s, the interviewer insipid and almost fawning. It was the dancer’s body language that gave away so much. The arm wrapped across his chest, fingers gripping a hard bicep. The slow smile and eyes that slid off to the side when answering a question. The one word answers. It was clear that however much he commanded the spotlight, he did not love the mic. Getting him to talk was going to be work.

“Excuse me, Ms. Wilson-Wong,” the white-haired receptionist said, hovering over her. “Alexi’s just finishing up. They’re marking scenes with Sergei,” she continued with a roll of her eyes, as if she thought Sherry knew who Sergei was and what the hell marking scenes meant.

Sherry nodded, rising. “Well, should I come back later?” she asked.

“Oh, no.” The receptionist waved a dismissive hand. “Just go ahead in. When Sergei sees you, he’ll cut it short. He’s such a media whore. Straight down that hall, fourth door on the left.”

The fourth door at the end of the corridor was half open. Several girls in blush-colored tights and black leotards crowded in the opening, their whispers a hum of barely repressed excitement.

“Excuse me,” Sherry said in her business voice, nudging them out of the way.

“Bitch,” she heard one of them say
sotto voce
.

Turning to face the girls, she smiled her sweetest smile. “You know it,” she said and shut the door in their shocked faces.

Three of her apartments could fit in the space that held nothing but an upright piano and a stereo tower. A row of floor-to-ceiling mirrors ran along one of the lengths and a row of windows on the other. Two men and a woman stood near the windows, engaged in a heated discussion in what had to be Russian. “Ovs” and “skis” peppered the air around them.

She leaned against the door, taking them in. Alexi stood with his hands on his hips, his hair a disheveled mass of copper, wearing a t-shirt and mid-calf tights that skimmed the curve of his buttocks and the long muscles of his thighs.
Very nice,
Sherry thought, observing him objectively, as she would a work of art. The other man had to be Sergei. He had the same wild sweep of hair, but his was stark white. A sweater was tied at his neck, the knot threatening to slip as the so-called media whore drew circles and arcs in the air with his arms.

The woman stood with her feet turned out and her arms crossed, staring out the window while the men argued.
Probably thinking about what she’s having for lunch,
Sherry thought. Her eyes traveled over the woman’s size zero frame.
Or what she’s not having.

As if she had heard Sherry’s thoughts, the woman turned abruptly, her head whipping around before the rest of her body in that
Exorcist
way that ballerinas had.

“Oh, hi,” she said. A smile stretched skin that already seemed pulled too tightly over her fine-boned face. She walked toward Sherry, apology in her eyes. “Sorry. When they get started it’s like a forest fire. It has to burn itself out.” She held out one delicate hand. “I’m Katerina. Kat.”

“Sherry Wilson-Wong,
NY Sun
.” Sherry shook the dancer’s hand. It was cold and scaly, like a malnourished lizard. “I’m actually here for…”

“Alexi,” Kat finished for her. The look in her eyes was accepting disappointment. “Everybody wants a piece of the bad boy. Much better news than bad girls. They’re a dime a dozen here. And as for good girls…” She brought her hand to her mouth, faking a yawn. “We don’t sell papers. Meanwhile, Alexi changes his profile picture or gets a new tattoo, he’s beating the press away with a stick.”

“Pain in the ass to work with, but he sells tickets.” Sherry nodded, opened an app on her phone and tapped record.

Kat laughed. “Alexi? Hard to work with? That’s the joke. Of course, the boys don’t like him. Jealous little bitches, most of them. And he loves to wind Sergei up.” She tilted her head in the direction of the men. “But that’s just for show. Sergei is the one who lobbied hard to bring him here.”

Kat focused on her reflection in the mirror as she continued. “Perfect gentleman. Gets everything on the first take but never loses his cool, however long it takes some of the girls to get it, and believe me, some of these girls need dozens of takes, especially if they’re trying some new cleanse or something.” She raised her arms to shoulder height and sank into a graceful lunge.

“Not you, though. You don’t need dozens of takes,” Sherry said, nodding.

Kat sprang into an impossible balance on the tip of one foot, the other extended behind her, watching herself in the mirror, critical.

“That’s right.” She collapsed back down onto two feet. “Not that it helped me make principal. Or score Juliet. Mere talent isn’t enough for Sergei.” Her eyes met Sherry’s in the mirror, sliding down to Sherry’s phone. “All off the record, of course,” Kat said, sweetly.

Sherry looked into the dancer’s faded-denim eyes, noticing the faintest ghost of what would become crows-feet beside them. “And on the record?” she asked.

“I’m so lucky to have him supporting me in my role as Juliet,” Kat said, all but batting her eyelashes. “Katerina O’ Gorman. Katerina with a K. Ask PR for a photo of us. We did the promotion shoot last week. They turned out amazing.”

The dancer picked up a worn leather duffel bag big enough to carry a good-sized basset hound in and opened the door. “Got to go to the chiropodist. Good luck with Alexi.”

“Good luck? I thought he was the perfect gentleman,” Sherry said.

Kat wrinkled her tiny pert nose. “With the press, not so much.” She wiggled her fingers at Sherry and disappeared, closing the door behind her.

Sherry glanced over at the men, whose argument didn’t show any signs of burning out. Taking a deep breath she walked toward them, the soles of her Docs squeaking on the parquet floor.

“Hi there. Sorry to interrupt,” she said, her voice louder than she had intended it to be. A memory of her mother haggling loudly with a shoe-salesman flashed through her mind, strident and shrill.

The two men looked at her. Sergei’s expression was shocked, as if he was wondering who would dare to speak when he was so clearly occupied. Alexi’s face was meant to appear neutral, she knew. Eyes hooded, forehead smooth. But she had seen this expression before. It confirmed that she was in for a fight.

She held out her hand to Sergei first. “Sherry Wilson-Wong,
The Sun
.”

Shock was replaced with delight. “Ah, of course. Hello, my dear. I know the press release went out last week, but I wasn’t expecting a personal visit.”

Alexi muttered something in Russian under his breath. The older man’s smile froze. “You’re here for this one.” His gaze slid from her face to the door, and he started moving toward it, spine straight, gliding almost. “I wish you luck.” The door clicked shut behind him.

Sherry laughed. “Well, that’s two people who wished me luck interviewing you, Mr. Davydenko.” She was trying for harmlessly winsome but got something closer to ironic. “Why would that be?”

Alexi’s guarded eyes didn’t change, but a small smile tilted the corners of his lips. He shrugged, leaning against the barre. Sherry was suddenly aware of how alone they were. Of how close they were. Of how near to naked he was in his dance tights and t-shirt that clung to every contour of his body.

As if he had read her mind, Alexi pulled his t-shirt over his head, revealing a lean, muscled torso splashed with black tattoos, several of which disappeared beneath the waistband of his tights. Her eyes strayed to the enormous bulge below. She knew there had to be a cup under there, but did it have to be so big?

She focused on keeping her gaze on his face, waiting for him to speak. It was Journalism 101. Ask a question and shut the hell up. Silence made people so uncomfortable, they rushed to fill the void, often revealing things they hadn’t intended to. But Alexi barely seemed to register her presence. He ran a hand through his hair and tossed his t-shirt lay-up style at the duffel bag that lay beside the piano. Then he turned his back on her and walked toward it, slowly, as if he were alone in the studio.

Time to try a different tack,
she thought. “Well, you look like you want to do this interview as much as I do. How about this? Let me buy you breakfast. I ask a few questions. You give me a few quotes. We call it a day.”

He turned his head to look at her, making direct eye-contact for the first time. Surprise lit his pale green eyes briefly before the curtain of his calculated neutral expression came down again.
Gotcha,
she thought. He was used to people like Kim falling all over themselves to get a sound bite.

“I’m not hungry,” he said. He crouched beside his bag, rummaging around inside it.

“Okay,” she said. “Coffee.”

He had found a rumpled sweatshirt and was pulling it over his head. “Beer.”

“Deal,” she agreed. It was barely noon, but as her father liked to say, “It’s got to be five o’clock somewhere.” Besides, a little alcohol might help loosen his lips.

Alexi stood up, a pair of jeans in his hand. He dropped them on the barre beside him. Looking at her, he tucked his thumbs under the waist of his tights and started to lower them. Sherry stared transfixed for a moment before she realized what was happening. “Oh,” she said and brought her hand up to shield her eyes, spinning on her heel simultaneously.

“I’ll wait outside,” she said, walking toward the door.