Romance Classics (124 page)

“I suppose so.”

“Now if only you can dance,” he said, and his tone indicated that he was by no means sure she could. “Can you?”

“Would I have come for an audition if I couldn’t?”

“You’d be surprised how many do,” he drawled. “For two solid weeks, with time wasting away, I’ve auditioned girls who had two left feet and a tin ear. Girls who were either too short or too tall; girls who were so thin I wanted to run out and buy them a meal, or so fat that trying to lift one would have wrenched my back.”

He released her, walked to a portable record player in a corner, set it in motion. When the music swelled out into the room, he came back to her, once more took her into his arms, and they glided out on the floor in an intricate, brief dance.

The man nodded, released her, stopped the music and said curtly, “You’ll do. First rehearsal tomorrow at eight.”

“P.M., of course.”

“P.M., my eye—A.M., my girl! We’ve got a terrific amount of work to do and very little time to do it in. We leave for Martinique exactly fourteen days from today!”

“For Martinique?” she gasped incredulously.

He looked at her, frowning.

“It’s an island in the Caribbean.”

“Don’t be silly! I know where it is,” Kristen cut in. “I just didn’t know that that would be where we’d open. It’s rather a long way, isn’t it?”

“A very short step to the top of the heap, which is where you and I are going if you’ll string along,” Leon told her. “Look; come on, and I’ll buy you a dinner and tell you all about it. There won’t be much time for chit-chat after we start working.”

“But I’m afraid—”

“Got a date?” Leon scowled. “Well, break it—if you want the job. There’s no time for such foolishness as dates. I want you to be in bed by ten o’clock every night; no drinking, no gaining weight. I’ll help you work out a diet.”

“I applied for a job as a dancing partner, not as a servant.”

In a tone of weary patience, as though he spoke to a five-year-old who wasn’t very bright, Leon said, “Now look. I’ve been saving up for four years to buy an act that would knock ’em dead. Maybe I’m not a very gracious sort of a guy. I can’t make with the ‘sweet talk,’ and if you’re a girl who demands that sort of thing, we may as well say quits to the whole business. I’m prepared to make you a really great star, but only if you’re willing to work as hard as I am, beginning now! You have to undertsand what all this means to me and what I propose to do
for
you, and what I expect
from
you. But like I said, there’s no time to waste. Now do you want the job, or don’t you?”

“I do.” Kristen sounded a trifle subdued.

“Then let’s get going,” ordered Leon, and turned toward the door.

She told herself, as she followed him out of the building and along the street to a brightly lit, crowded, noisy cafeteria, that she had never met anybody like him before. And privately, she wasn’t quite sure she wanted the job. And then she remembered the all but empty purse she carried, the fact that her room rent was due, that she wouldn’t ask her mother and father to send her any more money, now that her sister Carol had entered college.

She drew a deep, hard breath as she walked along the serving line. At a table, Leon eyed her selection, nodded and said approvingly, “Good girl! I can’t have you putting on pounds, not with all the lifts I’ve worked into the act.”

“I’ll try to remember,” Kristen said through her teeth.

Leon studied her intently.

“You don’t like me worth a cent, do you?” he asked so unexpectedly that color poured into her lovely face.

“Is that required?” she demanded.

“Well, no, I suppose not,” he agreed thoughtfully, “as long as it doesn’t show up in the dancing. Spoils the romance and glamour if the two dancers are enemies. Hostility toward each other is bound to show.”

“I’ve danced with partners I loathed and it didn’t show.”

“Possibly.” He seemed completely unconvinced. “Anyway, if I’ve offended you, I’m sorry. But frankly, I can’t see how. I’ve asked you no more questions, made no more statements
than any prospective employer would, in order to make a situation quite clear.”

“I suppose not,” Kristen admitted reluctantly. “I’m sorry.”

“You needn’t be,” he dismissed that carelessly. “After all, it’s just as well to get everything nice and clear right at the beginning. Saves bother later on.”

He seemed to remember the food before him, ate for a moment, his eyes never leaving her face, and suddenly asked, “What did you say your name was?”

“Kristen Dillard.”

“Kristen! Kristen.” He said it thoughtfully, as though tasting something strange to his tongue, and then he said, “We’ll call you Amber—Amber Leigh. Leon and Amber—how does it sound?”

“We’ll call me Kristen,” she told him firmly. “Kristen and Leon—how does
that
sound?”

His dark eyebrows went up slightly, and for the first time she caught a glint of laughter in his brown eyes.

“That should put me properly in my place, I’m sure you’re thinking.” He chuckled. “Kristen and Leon! That’s not bad, now that I think of it. Not bad at all.”

“I’m so happy you’re pleased,” Kristen purred.

“It will look well in lights,” he mused as though he had not heard her.

“Oh, it’s going to be up in lights?” she asked with pretty surprise.

That seemed to sting him, and now his eyes held no glint of anything save anger.

“If you don’t think so,” he began sharply, “then maybe you aren’t the girl I’m looking for after all. I know the name of my act will be in lights all over the world some day. I’ve wanted to be a really great dancer since I was a kid; in the Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, even José Greco style—only, of course, better.”

“Oh, of course.”

His jaw set hard.

“You think I can’t make it?” he asked.

“Be reasonable. I’ve never seen you dance!”

“That’s true, of course.” He relaxed ever so little. “I
know
I can. Nothing’s going to stop me. Of course, I have to have a partner who can dance, too. So if you’re willing to work hard—”

“I am, Leon, truly. And I’m sorry I was catty.”

He eyed her curiously, without warmth, obviously untouched by her shame-faced apology.

“That’s unimportant.” He shrugged it off. “The point is that if you are going to join my act, I have to have your assurance that you won’t suddenly walk out on me.”

“I’ve been in show business five years, and I’ve never yet walked out on a contract,” she protested heatedly.

“But you won’t have a contract with me.”

She stared at him, wide-eyed.

“You expect me to go off with you to Martinique without a contract?” she gasped.

“Oh, you can have one, if you like,” he answered coolly. “But it won’t hold you if you want to leave. It
will
hold me up to a point: I will be responsible for all your expenses; I will not be allowed to fire you except for gross negligence of your job, and all that. But if
you
want to be free, all you have to do is say so. I’d never hold a dancer against her will. There would be friction which would show up in the act.”

“You really are amazing,” she admitted.

He was still studying her.

“I
had
thought of marrying you,” he began.

“What?”

“Oh, not you in particular; the girl I finally select for my act,” he assured her kindly. “But I finally decided that a marriage contract nowadays is not much more binding than one signed by an agent and his client. There are always ways to wiggle out of contracts, whether they’re drawn up by a lawyer, or by a minister. So I gave up that idea.”

She drew a deep, hard breath, and beneath the table’s edge her hands were clenched tightly. But she managed to keep back the angry, sarcastic retort that tried to rise to her lips.

“Oh, by the way,” it seemed to be the first time he had thought of it, “do you have a family?”

“Doesn’t everybody?”

“I don’t.” He didn’t seem at all disturbed, until sudden alarm touched his eyes. “You aren’t married?”

“Of course not!”

“Or engaged?”

“No!”

He seemed enormously relieved.

“You said you had a family. Where are they?”

“My father and mother live on a farm in Wisconsin.”

“You were born on a farm in Wisconsin?”

“I’m afraid so. Do you mind?”

“But how did you ever become a dancer?”

“I began taking lessons when I was six and doing all the things kids that age do—recitals at the dance studio, amateur performances, that sort of thing.” She dismissed it with an airy wave. “Instead of going to college, I went to Chicago for more professional training. And I came East to New York looking for the ‘big break.’”

He nodded in complete understanding.

“My parents were nightclub dancers, and I made my first stage appearance when I was two,” he told her, smiling reminiscently. “And from that day until now I’ve never given up the ambition of being a really great dancer. I discovered that you don’t just latch onto a ‘big break’; you create it. And that’s what I’m doing. I’ve worked in chorus lines, understudied a few good dancers, and saved every penny I could. Now I’m ready! And
how
I am ready!”

Somehow, his intense earnestness touched her. Here, she sensed, was a man as truly dedicated to his chosen profession as any doctor or lawyer.

For a moment he had been lost in thought, and then, as though suddenly he remembered her presence, he reached for her check and thrust back his chair.

“And now, home to bed with you,” he told her firmly. “Tomorrow’s going to be a tough day. Maybe I should warn you that I’m a perfectionist, and I expect you to be willing to work as hard as I do. If tomorrow about this time you decide it’s going to be too much for you, all you need do is say so and I’ll start looking for another girl. O.K.?”

“O.K.,” she told him curtly.

She reached the grimy little rehearsal studio at five minutes before eight. Even as she approached the door, she heard music and the brisk tapping of feet.

Leon opened the door to her knock, looking spectacularly handsome in ancient gray flannel slacks and a thin T-shirt. Despite the chill of the morning, his face was beaded with
sweat, but she noted that he was not even breathing hard. Obviously he kept himself in superb condition.

He gestured toward the door that opened into a cubbyhole for a dressing room, where she changed from her street clothes to her slacks and shirt, and came out to find him waiting for her.

Within the first few hours, she discovered that he had told the simple truth when he had said that he was a perfectionest. She worked as she had never worked before. And when at last he called a halt for a brief rest, he studied her with a curious intentness.

“You’re pretty good,” he admitted grudgingly. “You’re a little stiff, of course, but then I expected that. Don’t worry about it. That’s because you aren’t used to me as a partner.”

“Thanks, you’re much too good to me,” she mocked wryly.

He eyed her sharply.

“I despise sarcasm, especially in a woman. If you’re so sensitive that you can’t accept, in the proper spirit, a little constructive criticism, then what are you doing in show business?”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re not, of course,” he cut in. “You dislike me so much that anything I say to you ruffles your feathers. And that is something I cannot tolerate, because of what it will do to the act.”

“Is it required that every dance team be madly in love with each other?” she wanted to know, her eyes angry.

“It’s required that they give that impression when they dance,” he pointed out grimly. “It’s what the public wants to believe. A team like ours is supposed to look romantic, glamorous, exciting; and it can’t be if the two members of the team are constantly jibing at each other off-stage.”

“Then perhaps it might be better if I gave up the job here and now.”

“That’s something for you to decide. But it must be before the day is over, because I can’t waste any more time,” he told her curtly. And then he studied her, frowning. “What’s with you, anyway? I thought you wanted to be a big dancing star. Or are you just killing time until some hapless male comes along and slips a ring on your finger?”

Kristen bit down hard on the angry retort that rose to
her lips and managed to say thinly, “You don’t think much of marriage, do you?”

“Oh, that’s where you’re wrong,” he assured her. “It’s a very fine and worthy institution and quite necessary and all that— for other people. I just don’t want the act busted up by any sudden romance.”

“For you—or for me?”

“For either of us,” he told her flatly. “I’d like you to give me your word of honor that you will stay with the act for at least one year.”

“Well, of course! I certainly wouldn’t work this hard and go flying off to a place like Martinique just for a year’s engagement!”

“The engagement in Martinique, my pretty, is for exactly six weeks,” he pointed out dryly. “Of course, if we are as big a hit as I’m confident we will be, the chances are very good that we’ll be held over, maybe for the whole season. I’m hoping for that, but I’m not counting on it.”

Suddenly, to her surprise, he chuckled.

“I only wish Mom and Pops could have lived long enough to see the act,” he said. “They were killed in a train wreck when I was sixteen.”

“Oh, I’m sorry!”

His nod accepted her sympathy.

“It wasn’t so bad, since they went together,” he said quietly. “I’ve often wondered what it might have been like if only one had been killed and the other left alone. They’d been married for so many years, they were like two people who had become one. I never could imagine Pops managing without Mom—or Mom managing without Pops.”

“That must have been a pretty fine marriage.”

“It was,” he agreed. “Oh, they fought like the cats of Kilkenny off-stage, but they were really devoted to each other.”

“And fighting off-stage didn’t affect their act?” Kristen probed.

“How could it? That was the kind of act they had onstage: squabbling, arguing, bickering, trading insults. The audiences loved it.”