Hot Christmas Nights (14 page)

Here, though, her presence wasn’t so much necessary as it was complementary. The students she worked with in Las Vegas didn’t need her to be their confidant or their counselor, they didn’t laugh at her walking stick and they certainly didn’t care about her reasons for being late. They just needed her to help them learn how to dance.

“Okay,” Wendy called out when only five minutes of class time remained. “We’ll stop here today. Tomorrow we pick back up with pointe work, so remember to bring your pointe shoes, all right?” She paused to accommodate the round of muffled agreement that rose up in the air. “Good work, everyone. Be safe out there and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She waited until all of her students were gone to release the long, shaky breath that she’d been holding in all day. Walking on legs that suddenly felt like they were made of rubber, she went into the small office at the back of the classroom and closed the door behind her.

For the first time since early that morning, she was completely alone with her thoughts and the quiet wasn’t entirely welcome. It was the very thing she’d been avoiding all day and now she couldn’t escape it.

As if somehow connected to her thoughts, Wendy’s cell phone rang. She reached across the desk for it reluctantly and pressed a button to take the call when she saw that it was her mother calling.

“Hi, Mom,” she said, tucking the phone between her head and shoulder, and dropping into the chair behind the desk heavily. “How are you?”

“Never mind about me,” Selena said. “I don’t like the sound of your voice, Wendy. I think a better question would be, how are you? Is everything all right?”

Wendy didn’t know what it was about her mother’s concerned voice that brought everything back to the surface. Earlier, she’d used the time she spent riding around the city in a taxi to get her mind right and, until now, she thought she’d done a pretty good job of it.

Coming to terms with the results of her pregnancy test was harder than she’d thought it would be, but by the end of her two-hour-long tour, she was confident that she’d done it. Now she didn’t know what to think or to feel.

According to the doctor she’d seen that morning, her iron levels were low and she was moderately dehydrated, but she wasn’t pregnant.

She had sat in the examination room for several minutes after the doctor was gone, waiting for the news to settle in and happiness to take over. But it hadn’t. Instead, the news made her incredibly sad and she’d been feeling sick about it all day.

“Wendy, are you still there?”

She sucked in a shaky breath and squeezed her eyes shut against the tears welling up there. “Yes, Mom, I’m still here. I’m so glad you called.”

“So am I, baby. Now answer my question, please. Are you all right?”

Wendy opened her mouth to say something reassuring to her mother, something about how much she was enjoying her new job and the weather in Las Vegas, but a sob came out instead. She pressed her fingers to her lips to keep more sobs from slipping out. “No, Mom, I’m not all right,” she finally managed to get out. “Everything is a m-mess and its all m-my f-fault.”

“Okay,” Selena said cautiously, stretching the word out over three syllables. “Is this about Frazier? Because if it is—”

“Oh, my God, you cannot think that this is a good time to lecture me, can you?” She found a tissue and blew her nose noisily. “I can’t take a lecture right now, Mom.”

“No, sweetie,” her mother crooned softly. “I don’t think this is a good time to give you a lecture. Okay? Calm down. Tell me what I can do to help you pull yourself together. Whatever it is, you know I’ll do it.”

“That’s just it, Mom. Everything is coming together for me right now. My own dance studio is practically running itself and here I am in Las Vegas, working with the Greeley Dance Company. Do you have any idea how huge that is?”

There was a hint of impatience in Selena’s voice when she asked, “Then what’s the problem, Wendy? If it’s so huge, why are you crying? If you’re upset because Frazier has moved on and started dating...well...honey...what did you expect? He probably wants to give
his
mother grandchildren while he still can.
I,
on the other hand, should be so lucky.”

This was news. Bad news. “What? Why is he dating someone else?”

“I don’t know, Wendy. I suppose you’ll have to ask him yourself.”

She should’ve seen that little zinger coming. Her mother had never kept her feelings about Wendy’s and Frazier’s friendship secret. Left up to her, they would’ve been married years ago and working on their third child by now. “You’re not on my side at all, are you, Mom?”

“Of course, I’m on your side. I’m your mother, I love you. I just think your problem is—” Wendy’s long-suffering sigh was loud and heartfelt, but Selena was undeterred. “No, really, Wendy, hear me out now. I think your problem is that you’re confused about what you really want.”

“I refuse to choose between dancing and Frazier.” Just thinking about it made Wendy well up all over again. “I love them both.”

Now it was Selena’s turn to sigh long and hard. “Then why do you have to choose one or the other? You love dancing and you always have. You love Frazier and, believe it or not, you always have. The two of you have been dating since the day you met, you just didn’t know it. But, trust me, everyone else did. I’m glad you both waited until you were adults to finally consummate the relationship, because as much as I want grandchildren, I’m happy you didn’t give them to me while you were still in school. But, honey, do you know what you were doing all the time you were pseudodating Frazier? You were dancing, too. You’ve done both all these years, so why the hell can’t you figure out how to do both now? Why in the world do you have to choose one or the other? Why can’t you have both? Other women do it all the time. What makes you so special that you can’t?”

After a lifetime of lectures and screaming matches, Wendy understood that her mother’s questions weren’t just mostly rhetorical, they were entirely rhetorical. She’d learned a long time ago not to interrupt Selena Kincaid when she was on a roll, so she didn’t even think about going there this time. With Selena, if you stuck your neck out, she had no qualms about chopping it off.

“You know, sweetie, when your father and I met, I was a third-year lawyer and, even though I was still considered a newbie, I was already on my way to making associate partner. Then I fell in love with your father and I decided that I wanted to marry him just as much as I wanted to be partner. So...you know what I did? Don’t answer that because I know you already do know what I did. If I hadn’t done it, you wouldn’t be here, would you? But I’m going to tell you again right now, because I don’t think you were truly old enough to appreciate it back then. Something tells me that you’ll appreciate it fully now, though. I got married, sweetie, and then I had you. Yes, I had to rearrange some things and I missed out on a lot of sleep, but that was mostly because you hardly slept the first three years of your life and I insisted on attending every one of those awful softball games your father used to play. I didn’t choose one or the other, because I didn’t have to. I wanted them both, so I figured out a way to have both and still make partner. Honey, you just have to ask yourself if you want it badly enough.” Several seconds of silence passed before Selena added, “Well, do you?”

Did she want it badly enough? Wendy honestly didn’t know. But what she did know was that, while the position with the Greeley Dance Company would look great on her résumé, there was no telling when she’d actually get around to updating the damn thing. She worked for herself and it wasn’t as if she was going to interview herself.

And, even though she liked the idea of working with students who had a natural affinity for dance because they were ready, willing and able to be molded, she couldn’t quite get over their elitist attitudes.

She liked Las Vegas well enough, but she missed her temperamental, street-smart kids, and she especially missed introducing them to their very first experience with the language of movement.

Then there was Frazier...

As if sensing her train of thought, her mother’s insistent voice broke into her thoughts to probe one last time. “Well, do you?”

She tried to muffle the sob that slipped out of her mouth, but Selena heard it, anyway.

“Oh, sweetie,” she cooed. “Don’t cry.”

The endearing tone, coming from her mother, touched Wendy’s heart in a way that only her mother’s words could, but if it was meant to comfort, it had the opposite effect. The second her mother beseeched her not to cry, that’s exactly what she did. She laid her head on the desktop and cried until she was empty.

Then she burst out crying all over again, for the baby that she hadn’t even known she wanted, until the moment she learned that she wasn’t pregnant.

The Finale

Chapter 7

T
here was a short knock on Frazier’s office door, and then it swung open and a stylish woman in her mid-fifties strode in. All business during work hours, Marilyn Bowman, his new receptionist, came to a stop in front of his desk and handed him the day’s mail and two client files that he had asked for less than two minutes ago. He set the bundle to the side and turned back to his computer screen. “Thank you, Marilyn,” he said, glancing up at her briefly.

His fingers had been flying across the keyboard for at least sixty seconds when he glanced up again and noticed that she was still standing there. “I’m sorry, Marilyn. I didn’t know you were still here. Was there something else?”

“Yes. This just came by special messenger for you.”

He waited until she was gone to break the envelope’s seal and slide the white card out.

You are cordially invited to attend

Wendy Elizabeth Kincaid’s
one-woman production of...

TWO TO TANGO.

One night only at the

Wendy Kincaid Dance Studio
Suite C on the lower level.

Wednesday at 8 p.m.

Let yourself in, take a seat anywhere you like,
and I’ll find you.

See you there?

What in the world? Intrigued, Frazier sat back in his chair and considered the invitation.

He hadn’t even known that Wendy was back in town, let alone that she was putting on a dance recital. A one-woman show, the invitation said, and he was cordially invited. He was half-tempted to call her right now, but he decided against it. They hadn’t spoken in weeks, but Wednesday was just a couple of days away. He’d find out what was going on soon enough.

* * *

Suite C was one of three small auditoriums on the lower level of Wendy’s dance studio. They were cozy rooms, just big enough to seat around fifty people in rows of seating that fanned out into a wide arc and faced a performance platform at one end of the room. Usually, Wendy used them to host in-house recitals for small groups of students but tonight she was using Suite C to host an in-house recital for herself. And, Frazier discovered, when he let himself into the studio and she locked the door behind him, he was the entire audience.

He picked up the lone program booklet that was sitting on a wooden table by the auditorium door and scanned it as he walked inside. The photo of Wendy
en pointe
printed on the front cover caught his attention, mainly because she looked beautiful and serene, but also because he had taken the photo himself years ago.

He chose a seat down front, center stage in the dimly lit theater and loosened his tie. He’d come straight from work and he was exhausted, but he wouldn’t have missed her show for the world. Tonight was about more than just watching her perform. It was about simply watching her...seeing her with his own eyes and finding out for himself that she was happy.

He sat back in his seat when the lights dimmed even more and the room was a shade away from being completely dark. A spotlight switched on, illuminating the performance platform, and there was Wendy. In profile, dressed in a soft pink leotard and ballet skirt, matching tights and pointe shoes, with her head thrown back and her arms extended toward the sky, she stood perfectly still until the music began—Mozart.

Ballet was her specialty and she was very skilled at it. Her movements were feminine and graceful, mesmerizing and weightless. His gaze followed her every move, until the concerto ended and, once again, she was completely still. She held her position for a few seconds, allowed him to clap for that long, and then she relaxed, faced the audience and laced her fingers together in front of her.

“Welcome, Frazier. Thank you for coming tonight and I hope you enjoy the show,” Wendy said through a wireless headset microphone. Her voice floated in the air around him, courtesy of the speakers mounted in all four corners of the ceiling. “What you’ve seen was the prelude to the opening act, a reminder of when we first met. I was a little girl and ballet was my world. Then I met you and my world got a little bigger. Sit back, relax and let me show you how much bigger.” The spotlight switched off and the room went almost completely dark again.

He smiled even though she couldn’t see him and wondered what the hell she was up to.

When the spotlight switched on again a couple of minutes later, she had exchanged the pink outfit for a white leotard and a flowing, multicolored, ankle-length skirt. Soft-soled, leather dance shoes replaced her pointe shoes. This time, she was seated on the floor. “Whenever I had problems that I needed to talk through with someone or secrets to share or I just needed a shoulder to cry on, you were always there for me, Frazier. I don’t think I could’ve made it through high school
or my mother
without you. But the funny thing about being your friend back then was that I was always so confused about my feelings for you.” She giggled softly, coyly. “We always said we’d never keep secrets from each other but I did keep one secret from you. I was the one who sent you all those anonymous love poems back in high school. I used to slip them in your locker after school so you’d find them first thing the next morning and I could watch you read them.”

Frazier’s eyebrows shot up and shock sat on his face for a moment. He remembered those poems clearly, and the fact that he’d never found out who sent them...until now. He felt his face flush with heat and was glad for the cover of darkness.

She stood and positioned herself. The music, when it started, was slow and bluesy, rich in wailing saxophone and sweeping piano notes. Wendy’s body flowed with the rhythm of it, bending and twirling fluidly in a song of movement that stole his breath and aroused him beyond belief. As the song came to an end and she relaxed into a loose-limbed stance, facing her audience, she said, “That’s when I first admitted to myself that I was in love with you.”

The spotlight switched off and Frazier released the breath he was holding in one long whistle of pent-up frustration. Two months’ worth. He sat completely still in his seat, waiting to see what she would do next and wondering if whatever it was could possibly make him love her any more than he already did.

A hard-core instrumental rap beat blared through the speakers next and, after a few seconds, his head bobbed in time to it. Her soft voice curled around him in the darkness. “I was on top of the world in college. I was at the top of my game, in the best shape I had ever been in and probably will ever be in. I saw myself becoming a superstar and dancing on Broadway, but then a horrible accident stole that life from me and I had to build another kind of life for myself. I was angry and hurt and cynical about life...feeling something like this.”

The spotlight switched on and she was in the center of it, dancing. Now she was wearing a billowing white T-shirt that was knotted at her waist over her leotard, a studded red baseball cap on her head, and red leather dance shoes on her feet. Her movements were efficient and perfectly timed, angry and vibrating with intense emotion. Her feet hit the floor simultaneously with the bass and the expression on her face was stoic throughout the entire hip-hop number.

She danced her heart out until the track drew to a close, glistening with perspiration and favoring her right leg toward the very end. When it was over, her chest was rising and falling with rapid breaths that tapped against her microphone forcefully. When her breathing had calmed down, she spoke again.

“You helped me rebuild my life, Frazier, and I have never been able to imagine a time when you wouldn’t be in it. These past two months, being away from you and pretending like what we shared didn’t matter, like being with you didn’t matter, have been the worst two months of my life. I was so busy chasing the life that I thought I should have that I wasn’t paying attention to the fact that the life I have right now is pretty damn great just the way it is. I finally figured out the reason I was so unhappy in Las Vegas and it was because I wasn’t here...with you. I guess you could say I had an epiphany, Frazier.”

Darkness took over again, but her voice kept him company.

“You’ve always known that I love dancing. It’s who I am, what I was born to do. And you’ve seen me do a lot of dancing—ballet, contemporary, hip-hop, all kinds. But I don’t think you’ve ever seen me dance the Tango. I’ve never really cared for it because it requires one person to lead and the other to follow, and I’ve never been good at following.” She giggled seductively. “I think you’ve always known that, too.”

The air around him shifted and he knew immediately that she was standing behind him. Her name sprang to the tip of his tongue, but he held it in and sat still, waiting. If they were about to make any new moves together, then she was going to have to be the one to initiate the dance.

“I always thought I didn’t like the Tango because it meant that I would have to give the best parts of myself over to another person, even if it was only for a few moments. But I know now that it wasn’t the giving over part that I was unsure about. It was the fact that I hadn’t yet found the right partner to lead.” Her hands landed on his shoulders softly, sliding down onto his chest just as she hung her head over his shoulder and whispered in his ear. “Until now.”

“Wendy,” he said, turning his head and feeling her soft lips near the corner of his mouth. Whatever else he’d been about to say flew right out of his mind.

“We’ve been circling around each other for years. Now I think it’s time for us to choose partners for the dance of a lifetime and I choose you. Tango with me, Frazier.”

“I thought you’d never ask,” Frazier replied as he turned his head a little more and met her open mouth with his tongue.