he seem so annoyed all the time?
Tessa forced her gaze away from his mouth and found him watching her. He lifted a single, accusatory brow, which probably meant he recognized her as the horrible ballerina who’d dared to dance off beat with his playing. Tessa promptly looked away.
She needed to pay attention to the ballet mistress, not the rehearsal pianist.
“Dancers, your attention, please.” Madam Daria clasped her hands in front of her as her gaze swept the room. The front of the room, technically. The ones who mattered most.
Even the company members were being forced to audition for Ivanov, though. Technically, no one was safe. The auditioning dancers weren’t stars, though. Not like the company members. But that was fine. Tessa was lucky she could still dance at all. And maybe, just maybe, since she was a nobody, the ballet mistress had already forgotten she’d fallen out of her turn.
There were advantages to being invisible.
Daria gestured to the man standing beside her. “Please join me in welcoming Alexei Ivanov. As all of you know, we’re honored to have him as the guest choreographer for the Manhattan Ballet’s opening program this season. He’s agreed to make a new ballet especially for us, which you will begin learning today. Three days from now, twenty of you will be cast in this ballet...if you’re lucky.”
Tessa clapped along with the rest of the dancers. She didn’t realize her gaze had drifted back to the rehearsal pianist until she found him glaring at her. Again. Maybe she wasn’t so invisible after all.
Her face grew hot.
Pay attention.
Could this day get any worse? Or more strange, for that matter?
“Everyone take a break. Get a drink of water, but stay warmed up. Be back in your places, ready to go, in exactly ten minutes.”
So the great Ivanov didn’t plan on deigning to speak a word to them? Fine. Tessa actually preferred it that way. The less talking, the better.
“Auditioning dancers will be up first.” Daria’s gaze zeroed in on Tessa. Great. Her mistake hadn’t been forgotten after all. “The new ballet begins with a large group number, and it’s very intricate. You all need to be on your A-game. Let’s not waste Mr. Ivanov’s time.”
Tessa swallowed around the lump in her throat, and like clockwork, her mother’s voice echoed in her consciousness.
You’re a great teacher, Tessa. The children love you, and the Wilde School of Dance is your home. There will always be a place for you here. It’s easier this way.
Tessa didn’t want to take the easy way out. She didn’t want to be a ballet teacher for the rest of her life. Teaching would mean giving up. Teaching would mean the accident had stolen the one thing she’d loved most. Ballet.
She wanted to dance. Not teach.
Dance.
Dance was all she had left. It was all she’d ever wanted, and she’d worked too hard, for too long, to mess everything up now.
She’d do better. She just had to figure out a way to ignore the racket in her head.
She sneaked another glance at the piano player, and sure enough, the noise she heard matched the movement of his elegant hands as they moved across the keys in a series of warm-up scales. He had such lovely hands. They danced across the piano keys with a grace that made her chest ache.
Or maybe that ache was just the realization that this strange man’s music had been the first thing she’d heard in over a year.
* * *
Don’t ogle the dancers.
It had been the main rule Julian had been given when Chance passed along the job offer. The only rule, in fact. And therefore, the most important.
“No problem,” he’d said.
And he’d meant it. Julian had known Chance long enough to lose any romantic notions he might have had about the ballet world. In the ten years they’d been friends, Julian could count on one hand the number of times Chance hadn’t been a foul, sweaty mess. Ballet wasn’t art. It was work. Messy, fanatic work.
Besides, Julian had no interest in a roomful of underfed women who considered him invisible. He had no interest in being here at all, frankly.
He should have saved his money. He should have planned or invested. Something. Anything. He’d had a good run. A stellar run, actually. How could he have possibly known it wouldn’t last?
He wasn’t even a piano player, for crying out loud. He’d told Chance as much. What was it that Chance had said in response? We don’t need Mozart. We need a body. You’re good enough.
Good enough.
Oh, how the mighty had fallen.
He sighed, crossed his arms and waited for Madame Daria to finish her big speech. She’d actually asked him to call her that. Madame. Like they were in nineteenth-century France or something. Not happening.
She droned on about the new choreographer, some Russian hotshot. Julian glanced at his watch. He’d been on the job for less than an hour, and already he was bored out of his mind. This whole thing had been a mistake. If he managed to get through the day without falling asleep and knocking his head on the piano keys, it would be a miracle.
Five more hours. That’s all.
He could last five hours. Then when it was over, he’d quit. Chance would understand. Probably. If he didn’t, too damn bad.
Julian sighed. Then he looked up and found one of the dancers staring at him. The only one who’d managed to capture his attention in the entire hour and a half he’d been banging away on the Steinway. The dancer who’d made the mistake.
The girl from the train.
Truth be told, he’d noticed her even before she’d wobbled out of her turn. Before he’d even recognized her. He couldn’t help it. Until his hands had touched the keys, she’d been just another whisper-thin girl in a wraparound leotard and tights.
But then he’d begun to play, and she’d transformed right before his eyes. One note. That’s all it had taken. Her eyes had grown wide, and she’d flung herself into the dance. If Julian hadn’t known better, he would have thought she’d never heard music before. Maybe because there was something different about the way she moved. Desperate. Like she was running from a demon.
Madame had been right, though. The girl had been dancing off beat, which should have annoyed him. It didn’t. Much to his irritation, he found her intriguing. Probably because Julian was no stranger to demons himself.
The ballerina’s gaze lingered on his lips. Or more probably, his scar.
Of course.
Every muscle in Julian’s body tensed as his fascination with her morphed into something closer to disdain. Not that he was surprised. Or even disappointed. He was grateful, actually. He’d learned a long time ago not to mix business with pleasure.
Of course he had no intention of sticking to this gig, but still. Knowing Chance, he’d probably already bedded the ballerina since he seemed to make it his mission to sleep his way through every ballet school and company in Manhattan. Which made his advice all the more ridiculous.
Don’t ogle the dancers.
Right.
Julian wasn’t ogling. He absolutely wasn’t. If anything, the pretty ballerina was ogling him.
Her gaze drifted upward, and their eyes locked. When she realized she’d been caught staring at his scar, her cheeks went pinker than her ballet shoes.
Julian lifted a brow. Go ahead, sweetheart. Look your fill.
She looked away, her