Prima Donna (3 page)

‘Yuh?’ said a deep easy voice, as they knocked on the door. Andy opened it, wrapped in just a towel, his long dirty-blond hair looking – amazingly – like it had just been
washed. But the stubble on his chin was reassuringly established and no amount of scrubbing would shift the freaky tan marks on his face from his helmet visor.

‘Babe! What’re you doing here?’ he grinned, as Pia launched herself effortlessly into his arms, knocking off his towel. Andy didn’t care. He had no modesty. He just
turned around and carried her into the bedroom, his white retreating butt signifying that the porter could leave. ‘You said you were in New York.’

The door clicked shut.

Andy threw her down on the vast bed, and grabbed her ankles, pulling off one boot and then the other.

‘I know,’ she giggled as he pushed up her hips and pulled off her jeans, her knickers sliding down with them. ‘But we’ve got a couple of days off and I figured you might
need some moral suppor—’

He clasped her head in his hands and kissed her deeply.

‘Damn right,’ he grinned again, pulling her jumper over her head. She wasn’t wearing a bra. She rarely bothered, what with the amount of changing she had to do.

He dropped his head and took one of her luscious, world-famous breasts in his mouth. They were like her, able to defy gravity magnificently. She tipped her head back and moaned as he used his
tongue on her, probing and teasing. She’d been thinking about this all the way over.

He scooped her up again and marched across the room, kissing her as he opened the doors onto the verandah. The shadowy mountains pulled around them like black curtains.

‘Aaaaah, let me go,’ she squealed as the freezing night air bit at her naked body.

‘Not if you’re going to carry on doing that,’ he laughed, feeling her wriggle against him as he stepped down into the hot tub, steaming and bubbling below.

He felt her body go limp as the hot water warmed her up and eased her muscles, which were always so sore. If he ever thought his sport was tough, he just had to look at what she did for a
living. When he’d surprised her coming off stage one night, she’d been more bloodied than a boxer.

She stretched out, away from him, her arms holding on to the other side, her head bobbing as she lay back in the water and looked up at the mountains.

‘D’you wanna beer?’ he asked.

She shook her head.

‘I will, if you don’t mind,’ he said, cracking open a bottle. Pia floated happily, aware of his eyes on her, on her breasts rising out of the water so tantalizingly. She felt
Andy move forward, putting a hand under her butt, pushing her up so that she came out of the water, and then a soft, warm fizzing in her groin. She looked down. He was pouring his beer . . .

She closed her eyes in ecstasy as he began to drink. The man was wild! She bit her lip and held her breath.

The papers called her his Snow Angel. They both knew she was anything but.

It was 9.47 a.m. Aspen time (an hour later in New York) when Pia’s mobile rang. Usually she would still be asleep. She didn’t like rising before ten, not after a
performance (and last night definitely counted as a performance – with three encores), but Andy’s event started at ten and he had got up early to work on his bike, doing some
last-minute tweaks.

‘Hi,’ she said in her best sing-song voice, as though she was picking up to a lover, although she already knew who it would be. The only people who ever rang her were Sophie, Andy
(for the moment) and Badlands. ‘Oh hi, Monsieur Baudrand.’

‘What do you have to say for yourself, Pia?’ the Frenchman growled down the line.

‘About last night? I know. I am
so
furious. I mean, was I the
only
person doing my job?’ she sighed wearily. ‘Let’s face it, everybody knows I’m
immersed in the role; leg warmers are the last thing on my mind. I can’t even
feel
my legs. I’m just
spirit
by then. But I can’t believe no one mentioned
anything. Or Raymond! What’s he there for – just to raise the curtain up and down?
Must
I do everything myself?’ She dropped her voice confidingly. ‘You know
it’s just like the company,
monsieur
. They’re always so jealous of me. It’s just the kind of petty pleasure they take in trying to humiliate me,’ she purred.

‘
Non!
’ growled Baudrand, exasperated by his protégée’s silky attempts to wriggle out of the firing line. ‘
That
is not why I am
calling.’

She heard the flutter of newspapers being swept off the desk and onto the floor.

‘Why do you do this?’ he said darkly down the line. ‘I said to you:
Non
.
Non
. Not this, Pia. It brings the ballet into disrepute.’

‘Oh
that
.’ Pia chuckled. ‘You don’t need to worry, Monsieur Baudrand, they’re a lingerie company, not sex traffickers. Headlining the Victoria’s
Secret show is considered a great accolade.’

‘Not in ballet, it’s not!’ he stabbed. ‘I said,
Non
! Why do you never listen? Why must you always push me so? Is not like you need the money.’

‘Well, I didn’t do it for the money,’ she snapped, irritated that he thought that was what motivated her. She’d rather strip for the hell of it than for money.

‘Then why? It’s bad enough we have headlines all the time of you with that druggie skier.’ She heard him exhale impatiently.

‘He’s not a skier and he doesn’t do drugs,’ she sighed, checking her nails. ‘If you must know,
monsieur
, I did it for the charity they were
supporting,’ she retorted. ‘They’re helping homeless kids in Manhat—’

‘You? Did it for charity?’ he interrupted. Now it was his turn to laugh. ‘Tell me, did you waive your fee, then? Or did your rush of generosity only come after a little
sweetener?’

Pia’s nose flared indignantly. ‘I gave it to the charity actually,’ she huffed. Only to get rid of the arrogant financier of course, but giving was giving, right?

‘You leave me with no choice, Pia,’ he said quietly. ‘You are in breach of your contract and you knew it when you chose to walk down that catwalk wearing little more than a
porn-star tutu and some diamonds. I have already had the Board complain to me, and I have their full support in this. You are suspended for all remaining performances of
Giselle
in New
York. You need not bother coming back to Chicago until we begin rehearsals for
Le Corsaire
next month.’

‘What? But you can’t do that,’ Pia shouted, outraged. ‘I
am
Giselle. You can’t honestly think that . . . that girl . . .’ She paused. What was her
understudy’s name? ‘She’s not up to the job of filling my shoes. She’s not even up to the job of
tying
my shoes.’ She’d spent two months in rehearsal
for this, damn near busting her lower back perfecting that killing sequence of tiny jumps at the beginning of the second act. Besides, the critics had loved her, lauding her vulnerable naivety and
fluidity of line.

‘Actually, we’re not using your understudy. And her name’s
Ingrid
, by the way.
Non
. The tour has become too high-profile now. We need a star, not just a
dancer.’ He paused for a beat. ‘We’ve asked Ava Petrova to guest.’

‘What?’ Pia shrieked again, outraged. ‘No! You can’t be serious.’

‘But I am,’ he said, quietly delighted to have scored a victory for once. ‘The Bolshoi was happy to accommodate our request when we explained you were indisposed.’

‘
Filho da Puta!
’ she swore furiously.

Ava Petrova had been her most avowed enemy all through ballet school. If Pia had been the darling of the Escola do Teatro Bolshoi no Brasil, Ava was the uncontested star of the Bolshoi’s
‘mother’ academy in Moscow, and the two girls had been forever pitched against each other in ballet competitions. Usually it was Ava who came out on top. What thrilled audiences left
judges cold – not to mention there was a prevailing mood among the ballet world’s dignitaries that young Soto needed to be kept in check – and if Pia was the bad girl of ballet,
showing off with her gymnastic
ballon
and ethereal grace, Ava was its head girl: tiny, terrifying and technically, clinically brilliant.

‘This will come back to bite you on the ass. Everybody’s only coming to see
me
. She’s like a tin robot compared to me. They’ll demand their money back. The
ticket office will be so overwhelmed they’ll . . . they’ll go on strike.’

‘Pia, you exaggerate your importance to this ballet and to this company,’ Baudrand said solemnly. ‘Your flagrant flouting of the rules cannot go on. You may be an exquisitely
gifted dancer, but you are still not bigger than this company. I hope you will use this time to reflect and come back wiser and humbler.’ He put the phone down to Pia, who was still huffing
and puffing like the big bad wolf.

She was right of course. Even with Ava Petrova standing in, Pia Soto’s withdrawal from the prestigious New York tour would be a PR fiasco. But the girl had to learn her place. The Board
had insisted he take her to account on this. For all the youthful vigour and cool new profile she had brought to ballet’s stuffy image, it was still very much a world run by staid
traditionalists for whom even a diagonal arm position was considered radical.

Pia stared at the phone in fury. She couldn’t believe he was reacting like this. She’d got back in time, hadn’t she? She hadn’t forfeited her contract with
him
.
And what about all the money that had been raised for the charity? She’d helped raise nearly a million dollars for homeless kids! How could he ignore that?

A cheer welled up from the crowd below. She was sitting up in the VIP stands, along with the other competitors’ wives and girlfriends, and she looked down at the banks of spectators lined
up. Very few of them, it seemed, owned hairbrushes.

The roar from the lined-up machines (like quad bikes on skis) was deafening, as the finalists revved their engines manically, giving voice to the gallons of testosterone pumping through them.
The crowd cheered even harder, urging them to bring it on.

Pia covered her ears with her hands as she checked out the line-up. Andy was in the middle, dressed in his favourite ‘lucky’ black and yellow suit. His helmet was already on but he
still had the visor up. He looked up at the stands to wave at her, his hand stalling in mid-air. Pia thought he looked uncharacteristically nervous.

She blew him kisses back, encouragingly, and he nodded at her before slamming his visor down. Her hands flew back up to her ears as the flag came down and the race began. There was a mad
scramble for space as the line-up immediately converged into a fiercely contested arrow, everyone clamouring for pole position. Four competitors were off their bikes before the first bend, and as
much as she tried to be cool, she couldn’t help her hands from flying to her mouth anxiously.

‘They’ll be okay, you know,’ said a voice near her. She looked around. A little blond boy, no more than six, was sitting in the row behind, looking earnestly at her. ‘My
daddy’s down there. He’s the best.’

Pia smiled widely, her indignation with Baudrand abated by the boy’s cute freckled face. ‘Yeah? You must be very proud of him.’

The boy nodded. ‘You bet. I don’t usually get to see him compete, ’cos I have to go to school an’ all. But Mom said this was special ’cos it’s the X Games. We
drove through the night to get here this morning as a surprise.’

‘Really? Where did you drive from?’

‘Saskatoon.’

‘In Canada? Wow. You must be tired.’

The little boy beamed. ‘Nah. I’m too excited.’

‘So are you going to be a snocross rider when you grow up?’

‘Yeah. Daddy’s already teaching me. He got me a scaled-down version of his bike for Christmas.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. It’s a Polaris XC120 and it’s got the Sno-X running boards fitted already. Plus he got Oakley to make me some smaller stickers specially to put on my bike. They’re
his sponsors. It looks just like his now.’

Pia nodded, charmed by his enthusiasm. ‘It sounds great. Really special.’

The little boy looked back down to the track. ‘Yeah, it is.’

‘What colour is it?’

He sighed, watching his dad proudly. ‘His lucky colours. Black and yellow.’

Sophie checked the room one last time, like a nervous dinner-party hostess, before she went and opened the door.

‘Hi,’ she smiled nervously, letting him in.

Adam bent down and kissed her on each cheek. He was fresh – or rather, not so fresh – from class and the smell of dried sweat drifted off him. She closed her eyes, savouring the
smell of athleticism. The company’s tour along the east coast – and currently concluding in New York – had been gruelling, with a full-on repertoire of
Giselle
,
Sleeping Beauty
,
The Nutcracker
and
The Snow Queen
, and Adam Bridges, as one of the male principals and, most pertinently, Pia Soto’s partner of choice, had only
one day off performances in every four. Today was that day, coinciding with Pia’s brief sojourn to see Andy in Aspen.

‘Wow! Nice place,’ he beamed, taking in the view of the car park on the next block. ‘Pia’s really knocked herself out for you this time, hasn’t she?’

Sophie giggled. As the stars of the company both Pia and Adam had suites on the top floor, eighteen floors up, with commanding views over Manhattan. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she
shrugged good-naturedly. She had no ego about that sort of thing. She’d spent the first fifteen years of her life chasing through fields in southern Ireland, helping her mother milk the cows
and collecting the eggs for breakfast. The tallest thing on her horizon back then had been the six-foot-three-inch sunflower she’d grown for a school competition. Power skylines meant nothing
to her. Big city life, whatever its guise – be it in New York or Chicago, the place she now called home – was intoxicating enough to her. And frankly, having grown up with three little
sisters in a two-bedroom cottage, she was just happy not to be sharing.