The Billionaire's Ballet: A Contemporary Billionaire Friends to Lovers Romance (Friends with Benefits) (5 page)

I would not turn around.

“I have to see if my mother is home,” I said and untied Jezebelle from the tree. My boot slipped as I missed the stirrup. I tried again and this time got my leg over the horse.

Quinn stepped aside. “Hey.”

I didn’t trust myself to look at him. I tugged on Jezebelle’s reins and said, “I’m sure I’ll see you around.”

“Juliet,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t write you. It was crappy of me.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I survived.” And with that, I pushed Jezebelle into a light run. I couldn’t get away fast enough.

Bennett was right. I had already been pricked by the thorns.

Chapter 6

Sawyer took Jezebelle to her stall for a cool down and I raced back to Mother’s house. Quinn didn’t chase me down. I didn’t even see him on the trail. Probably he was having to walk his horse due to his silly choice to wear shorts to ride.

It seemed romantic at the moment, but now I wondered if the man had a lick of common sense.

The house was quiet and still. I pulled off my boots and wondered if I would have time for a shower before Mom showed. I jerked the pins out of my braids and began unraveling them. My hair was impossibly long and all one length to keep it easy to tie up for shows.

I rarely ever let it down. The cascading waves of black fell past my shoulders, kinked from the braids. I ran my fingers through it.

The pictures in the hallway were arranged the same as always. Me as a baby. Me and Mom. Riding Jezebelle. My graduation.

Except.

A picture of me and Quinn by the barn had been replaced by one of me onstage. I frowned and took the frame off the wall.

The back opened with a flick of the latch. Sure enough, beneath the image of my role in
The Nutcracker
was the old one.

I was about nine. Quinn would have been twelve. He was lanky and awkward, but still handsome in that cute way confident boys could be. We were sitting on the ever-present bales of hay outside the barn. Quinn held a pitchfork as if he was actually going to spread out the hay. Maybe he did. In his younger days, he liked working out at the barn. He was always looking for an excuse to escape the difficult atmosphere of the estate.

Next to him, I sat skinny and happy in jeans and a plaid shirt that tied at the waist. My ponytail was off to one side, making me look sassy.

I pulled the picture out of the frame before hanging the new one back on the wall. It could come with me if Mother wasn’t able to handle looking at it.

I’d just tucked it in one of my bags when I heard the front door open. Time for the surprise.

My footsteps were silent as I headed up the hall. Mom moved toward the kitchen with a grocery sack. Then she saw my purse on the coffee table and paused.

She looked up, quizzically, and saw me standing at the entrance to the room. She almost dropped the bag, but caught it and set it on the floor.

“Juliet!” Her hand came to her mouth.

As I moved closer, my concern began to grow. She wasn’t well. Her head was wrapped in a scarf even though it was ninety degrees out. And she was thin. More than thin.

“Mom?” I took her hand. She wore a fluttery shirt that came down below her elbows. When she moved, I saw the bruises on the inside of her arm. I touched her wrist. “What is this?”

She pulled away. “Just some treatments I was getting. It’s all done now.”

I touched her head. “You have cancer?”

Her watery eyes met mine. “I was going to tell you.”

My panic rose into a flood of emotion. “When?”

“I couldn’t affect your dance season. I wanted to see how chemo would go.”

“How is it?” I wasn’t sure why my voice was even working, except through sheer adrenaline. The drumbeat of fear banged in my skull.

“It went just fine,” she said. “I mean, as fine as something like that goes. I’m just waiting on the tests to see how well it worked.”

“Where? How? When?” I couldn’t move. My whole world had narrowed.

“Let’s sit down,” she said. “Let me put the milk away.”

She picked up the bag again and took it to the kitchen. Her movements were pained and slow. My heart hit the floor. She was sick, and she hadn’t even told me.

I sank onto a cushion on the sofa, trying to breathe. My chest felt so tight.

Mom returned with a glass of water. “Drink this. One thing I’ve learned when the going gets tough is to stay hydrated.”

I accepted the cool glass and took a sip. It did help calm me.

She sat beside me. “I was diagnosed about three months ago.”

“Three months!”

She held up a hand. “I know. But you had just started rehearsals for
La Bayadère
. No one should ever miss the opportunity to perform the Kingdom of the Shades. And you would have.”

I took another drink of water. She was right. I would have come down. And lost my spot.

“I’m doing fine,” she said, patting my leg. “I wouldn’t have you miss your big moments over my little malady.”

“How bad is it?” I asked.

“Just a simple lymphoma,” she said. “Perfectly treatable.”

I didn’t know much of anything about cancer beyond the pink ribbons. “So you will be all right?”

She managed a smile. “I will be perfectly all right. So tell me why you are here.”

“It’s the season break,” I said. “And you didn’t come to see
La Bayadère
. You missed the Shades.”

She nodded. “I know. I wasn’t well enough to fly to New York.”

“And you still wouldn’t tell me.”

“It seemed like you wouldn’t need to know.” She straightened the fluttery sleeve. “I thought I would be fine by the time I saw you and could show off my chic short haircut.” She touched the scarf. “It’s coming back.”

I leaned back against the cushion. “Does the staff know? Amelia? Sawyer?”

“Yes,” she said. “And Bennett, since I wasn’t always able to work with Pearl.”

I sat up. “Did Quinn?”

Her lips tightened. “I don’t know. We don’t exactly cross paths. Bennett comes to see me and asks about Pearl’s lessons. And he oversees the health plan for the staff. So he knew.”

“Is it expensive? Can you manage?” I thought wildly about the meager contents of my bank accounts. But I could get a loan. Reduce expenses.

“Juliet, it’s fine. I’m fine. The estate has taken care of me.”

Thank God. I wanted to go track down Bennett and throw my arms around him. But the way he had acted on the trail…maybe not.

This was all so confusing.

She reached for a long lock of my hair. “So lovely. You so rarely have it down. I didn’t think much of mine until it was gone.”

I tried to imagine the glossy black strands falling out in her hands. I felt queasy and set the water on the coffee table.

“How long do you plan to stay?” she asked.

“I have a month of leave.”

“That’s quite a while!” She tucked her arm around mine, sitting close on the sofa. “What should we do?”

“Are you still dancing?” I asked. I was afraid of the answer. Who was my mother without her dance?

“I am,” she said. “Should we head to the studio?”

I nodded, holding back tears. Dancing together would help. I would see she wasn’t lost. And maybe I could let go of some of my fear.

Chapter 7

Mom and I moved with slow synchronicity in the studio. The floor had been resurfaced, glossy and smooth with new wood planks.

I knew this space well. The placement of the barre, the lines between the panes of mirrors on the wall. Light poured in from overhead windows that ran the full length of the building on two sides.

I felt at home here.

The song ended and Mother dropped her ankle from the barre. “I don’t get out here as much as I once did,” she said.

“Is Pearl dancing at all?” I asked.

“No, not really.” She wrapped a towel around her neck and walked over to the stereo system to shut off the music.

“But they keep you employed here?”

“Bennett still takes lessons,” she said.

“Bennett?” I tried to picture him in tights and almost fell off the barre.

“He likes ballroom dancing,” she said. She sank onto a chair in the corner.

I looked away. She was painfully thin in her leotard. We had only done barre work, stretches and arm positions. I sensed she wasn’t up for much more.

“I remember him doing Cotillion,” I said. “He thought it was torture.”

“Young boys don’t like being forced to learn to dance,” she said. “But men realize it is the easiest way to draw a woman close.”

“So he’s keeping you on here just to teach ballroom?” My concern hadn’t abated. I couldn’t have my mother be both sick and unemployed. I moved to the floor to continue stretching.

“I also do yoga for the staff. And two of the former Mrs. Claremonts stayed on-site for a few months a year or so ago. They wanted to do dance workouts.” She got up to press on my back to deepen the stretch.

“Really?” The Claremont patriarch had been married six times. The first woman had been a dancer, I knew. She had died during an emergency C-section, along with the child.

After that, Claremont had seemed to want to ensure such a tragedy never hit him a second time. He would find a socially climbing woman, marry her with an iron-clad pre-nup, have a child, and then divorce her. Each one had to choose between the child and the money, and each one had chosen the money.

By the time he died, just a few years before I left, he had five motherless children.

“Which Mrs. Claremonts were they?” I asked. “And wasn’t there a rule against them visiting?”

“Numbers five and six,” Mom said. She began moving me through our old floor-stretch routine, her fingers touching my arm or back lightly to remind me which position to take. “Bennett relaxed the rule because Rose and Pearl were doing so badly. Cutting school and not coming home.”

“Did it help?” I exhaled into position, my nose at my knees.

“Hardly. These women are only twenty years older than the girls. They took them clubbing. Bennett sent them packing again.”

Mom tapped my shoulder, signaling it was time to move to the next part of the workout. I smiled at how we fell into it so easily, as if the six years had never passed.

“ONE two three FOUR five six,” she counted as I ran across the floor, executing a grand jeté.

“Glorious,” Mom said, her voice cracking.

I paused. “You okay?”

“You’re so good,” she said. “Seeing you here, where you used to dance, it’s so obvious.” She pressed her hands against her cheeks. “I may have held you back. I should have sent you to school so much sooner.”

I hurried across the gleaming floor and pressed my hands against hers. “Of course not. I did just fine.”

“But you could be a principal by now,” she said.

“Maybe,” I said. “Those roles aren’t just about the quality of the dance. It’s political.”

She nodded. “I never knew. I never got that far.”

I let go of her. “You’re not letting me off the workout hook that easy, are you?” I asked.

Mom shook her head. “Back to position,” she smiled. “Three more.”

I focused back in, intent on pleasing her. Each muscle, each position of my body, each preparatory hold before I unleashed became an acute point of attention.

I went into a series of arabesques, part of the Shades dance that I knew she would recognize, then the door opened with a bang.

“Dump them in here,” a voice said.

I turned to face the source of the noise.

It was Pearl, sixteen and heavily made up. She wore a pair of ripped jeans and three tank tops of varying colors, the top one loose and strategically cut up.

A delivery man in a brown uniform unloaded a stack of boxes from a dolly.

“Don’t block the door, thank you,” Mother said.

The man shifted the boxes over.

“Nobody uses this place anyway,” Pearl said.

My anger rose up like a furnace blast. “What exactly are we doing right now?” I asked.

“Who are you?” Pearl put her hand on her hip. Her long blond hair fell down one shoulder. It had black tips now.

“Juliet,” I said. “And we’re working out in here.”

Her eyebrows went up in shock, taking in my dance outfit and hair.

The delivery man looked unsure now and slid the base of the dolly back under a box.

Pearl kicked it off again. “They are just the help,” she said. “I’ve got a lot more stuff coming and no place to put it.”

“You have an entire mansion,” I said, but Mom placed her hand on my shoulder.

“It’s fine, Pearl,” she said. “When is your party?”

“It’s not my party, it’s Quinn’s,” Pearl said. “For that tennis chick. I just got stuck dealing with the decorations.”

My stomach dropped a little to hear that there was a party. Quinn hadn’t mentioned it on our ride. I remembered again his hand on my arm when he thought I was the tennis instructor.

“I was just wondering how long the boxes would be here,” Mom said. She moved away from me to shift them against the wall. The delivery man took one glance at her frailty and moved forward to help.

“The party’s Friday,” Pearl said.

“It will be fine,” Mom said. “Will you be at your lesson later today?”

“Hardly,” Pearl said. “I’ve got way better things to do.”

She sneered at me, as if to say, “And you don’t.”

I had nothing to prove to her. I turned away to refocus.

Step step step, LEAP. Step step step, LEAP. By the time I was winded, Pearl and her delivery man were gone.

Mom held out a towel and I took it. “Lovely girl,” I said.

“It’s hard growing up without a mother,” she said. “Clarence Claremont really did his children a great disservice.”

“They had a good nanny,” I said, remembering the warm, rotund, friendly faced Mrs. B. She had stayed on with the family until Pearl went to kindergarten.

“Which is probably the only reason they aren’t psychopaths,” Mom said.

This made me laugh. I had never heard her say anything like that.

I draped my arm around her. “Come on,” I told her. “I’m dying for a cheese enchilada from Rose’s Tamale House. You can’t get decent Mexican food in Manhattan, at least not without paying fifty dollars for it.”

“Fifty dollars! An enchilada plate is five!”