Ballet Shoes and Engine Grease (11 page)

“
Thank you, Soames,” he said. “That’s
all.”

The butler retreated in silence.
Nick ate. Tuna and chicken.
With a small flash of humor, he recalled Soames remembering
that
boeuf
bourgignon
had been his
favorite dish. Thankfully, the man had guessed that at thirty-two
his top choices for a light supper might no longer be peanut butter
sandwiches and hot chocolate.

Nick
finished the brandy, put the tray out in the corridor, and
settled down for an early night. For endless hours, he tossed and
turned, unable to sleep. Finally, he switched on the bedside lamp.
The clock said 1.34. He piled pillows high against the headboard
and got up to fetch his laptop from the table by the window.
Slipping back beneath the warm quilt, he balanced the slim machine
on his knees, and started working.

It took him a moment to hear the soft
tapping. A few seconds longer to recognize the sound as knocking on
the door.

Then he heard
a muffled whisper. “Nick? Can I come
in?”

“
Come in,” he replied, every nerve on
alert.

The door inched open. A figure clad in red
silk pajamas tiptoed inside, closing the door behind her. The
reaction in Nick’s body—or, more accurately, the lack of
reaction—told him it wasn’t Crimson, even before his brain
registered the ample shape and the straggly mane of blond hair that
belonged to Esmeralda Mills.

She advanced toward the
bed
. “Can we
talk?”

Utter horror gripped
Nick
, trapping the air
in his lungs. Was he going to have to deal with some kind of a Mrs.
Robinson moment? Accosted by a woman almost twice his age, who, for
God’s sake, was—technically speaking—his stepmother?

H
e recovered the ability to breathe. “Let’s wait until
morning.”

“
No. It’s important, and I saw the light
under your door.”

She had a point. With the
lamp burning, the laptop on his
knees, he could hardly claim she was depriving him of sleep. Nick
bent his legs, lifting the laptop higher, as if to form a
protective barrier. Esmeralda settled to perch on the edge of the
bed. The mattress dipped. Nick felt his body slide a few inches
toward her.

He wasn’t totally naked
, he remembered as panic swamped him.
Beneath the covers that came up to his waist, his boxers covered
the essentials. For an instant, he considered asking Esmeralda to
pass him a shirt from the back of a chair where he’d flung his
clothes, but he dismissed the cowardly thought. He tried to tug the
covers higher, but Esmeralda was sitting on top of them, and her
weight trapped the fabric in place.

She twisted to look at him.
“I want to tell you about my
marriage to your father.”

Nick cleared his throat.
“There is no need. It’s none of
my business.”

“
I want you to know,” she replied, her tone
unexpectedly sharp.

For a second, Nick could see in the older
woman the same determination Crimson evidenced when under pressure.
Leaning across the bed, away from her, he deposited his laptop on
the nightstand. The long reach, combined with a covert wriggle of
his hips, allowed him to increase the distance between them by at
least four inches.

“
First of all.” Esmeralda raised a plump
forefinger. “I never tried to use my position for financial
benefit. Not for myself. Not for my daughter. I had nothing to do
with Stephan putting Crimson in his will. I didn’t even know about
it. If I had, I’d have told him he’d gone stark raving
mad.”

Nick shifted one shoulder.
“I believe you.”

“
Secondly, my marriage to Stephan was not
real. He discovered he was dying. He didn’t want to die alone. We
were friends when we were children. He asked me to see him through
the end. He insisted on marriage in case he went into a coma and
needed someone to make sure the doctors followed his wishes. As his
wife, I would have a legal right to make that kind of decisions for
him.”

“
I understand,” Nick said.

“
He wanted to…” Esmeralda slanted him a
glance. To his surprise, Nick saw tears brimming in her eyes.
Without the pancake makeup, she looked fresher, younger. “Stephan
desperately wanted to reconcile with you, but pride stopped him.
First, when Tamara and Bobby died, he was out of his mind with
grief. Six months later, he found out that he had cancer, quite
advanced, and he didn’t want you to forgive him out of
pity.”

Looking down, she fiddled with the edge of
the bedspread. “Then…he got worse so quickly…in the end he said he
that wanted you to remember him the way he was when you were young.
Strong and vigorous. He didn’t want you to remember him as a
shrunken invalid who puked up most of his meals and needed support
to stand on his feet.”

“
I see.” Nick gritted his teeth. A sense of
loss unfurled inside him, a sense of having been robbed of
something important. He spoke bitterly. “Life didn’t just start two
years ago when…” He hesitated at the names “…when Bobby and Tamara
died. I was fifteen when he cut me out of his life. He had ample
time to repair the rift.”

Esmeralda
swiped away a tear and made a helpless gesture
with one plump hand. “He didn’t know how to go about it. He had
betrayed you and your mother. Broken up the family. How could he
ask you to forgive him? He knew he’d done a terrible
thing.”

“
He could have started by saying he was
sorry.”

“
He tried, he really did. But first you
refused to see him or talk to him, and then you were away, racing
in Europe, and Bobby needed him so much…”

T
he last conversation with his father echoed through Nick’s
mind.

I need
ed you to be there.

But Bobby needed me more.

“
Yeah,” he said, and feigned a bored yawn.
“Bobby needed him more.”

“
You—” Esmeralda’s gaze shot up. “You knew
about Bobby, didn’t you?”

“
Knew what about him?”

The blu
e eyes, bright with emotion, grew even wider. “I can’t do
this,” Esmeralda said. “Not now. Not without a stiff drink to
fortify me. Not without talking to Myrtie first.” Nick watched as
his uninvited visitor slid down to her feet, red silk pajamas
rustling against the covers, and stood still, dabbing tears from
her cheeks.

“
What is it, Esmeralda?” he asked with a
small ray of concern.

“
It’s Esmie. Call me Esmie. I’ve got to
go.”

She plodded acros
s the carpet, almost tripping over the edge of the
Turkish rug, and hurried out of the door. Nick was left staring
after her. That strange
Alice behind the looking glass
sensation that had taken hold of him
earlier welled up inside him again, now even stronger than
before.

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Chapter Seven

Demi-pli
é. Plié
. Crimson clutched the back of a chair and
bent her knees, again and again, sweeping one arm gracefully in the
air. She’d ordered the maintenance crew to release the lock on her
office window, and now the scents of summer rain and wet grass
drifted into the big, glass paneled room.

Soon she would
discover if she had developed sensitivity for
pollen. The doctors she’d consulted when she fell ill during the
South American tour had warned her that some people had to hide
indoors several weeks every year, but the general practitioner
she’d registered with in Longwood to renew her prescription had
been more optimistic.

The phone on her desk rang.

“
Anna, can you take that?” Crimson called
out. She finished the exercise, rolled down the white linen skirt
she’d bunched up at her hips and slipped her shoes back on. Her
muscles had started to stiffen. From now on, she’d make sure to
incorporate an hour or two of exercise into her schedule every
day.

“
It’s Nick,” Anna called back.

“
I’ll take it.” Crimson hurried to the
desk.

In the morning, when they drove
out to work, Nick had been
oddly silent. She’d never realized how narrow the seats in the
Panther were. Each time he changed gear, his arm brushed against
hers. She’d felt the heat of his body next to hers, had been able
to see the dark pinpricks of the heavy growth of beard on his
freshly shaven jaw.

On arrival
in the office, he’d dropped her off at the
entrance, saying he wanted to take the car over to the factory and
tune up the engine. At lunchtime, she’d seen him in the cafeteria,
dressed in a pair of stained overalls, sitting with the
mechanics.

“
There’s a problem with the new electronics
supplier in Japan,” he told her now on the telephone. “Hank needs
to have a video conference with them, but the manager will only get
in at midday. Eleven o’clock in the evening our time. I’ve offered
to join them. I speak a smattering of Japanese, which might help.
Do you want to stay late, or shall I find someone else to drive you
home, or get Anna to have a rental car dropped off for
you?”

“
I’ll stay,” she told him promptly. “I want
to look through the old advertising materials. There are boxes and
boxes full of brochures, going back all the way to the twenties.
Too much to take home with me, and I want to get started on it
today.”

“
Good,” Nick said. “I’ll pick you up around
midnight.”

Crimson smiled wistfully as she put down
the phone.
Midnight. Pumpkin time
. In truth, she was starting to feel a little bit like
Cinderella. Living in a mansion. Being driven in a car worth more
than a suburban home. Spending her time with a handsome
prince.

Her resentment toward Uncle Stephan for
putting her in this s
ituation was quickly fading. In some way, she was starting
to enjoy the challenge. It meant that instead of moping around,
grieving the end of her dancing career, she had something to focus
her energies on.

But
she must not lose sight of reality. Whatever happened,
whether she succeeded or failed, New Year would be her pumpkin
time. Either Constantine Motors would be sold, or Nick would take
over and she would have to find something else to occupy her
time.

****

Men in dinner
jackets. Women in flapper dresses. Cigarettes
smoldering in long holders. Crimson squatted on the office floor,
glossy brochures from the twenties box spread around her. The
Gatsby era. The First World War was over, the stock market booming.
Electricity, telephone, mass market production of the Model T Ford.
Art Deco, which had given the Constantine Spur the distinct lines
the Constantine Panther sported even today.

Her imagination soared. She could almost
hear th
e jazz. Could
almost smell the cigarette smoke. See Rudolph Valentino, Charlie
Chaplin, and Buster Keaton, their imagines flickering on the silver
screen in the early talkies.

Hold on.

Smell the cigarette smoke.

Sniffing like a bloodhound, Crimson got to
her feet.
The smell was
not a figment of her imagination. The place was strictly—and that
meant
you’ve-been-fired
strictly—non-smoking, all the way to the property line
beyond the parking lot. Who could it be? No employee would dare to
break the rule. It had to be the night security guard from the
company that covered the hours from ten p.m. to six in the
morning.

Crimson
hurried out, past Anna’s immaculate desk. Thank
heavens she’d changed into her pink sweats when she started with
the dusty archive boxes. In her sock feet, she pounded down the
steps, gripping the handrail. Half-landing. Turn. The lobby. No one
there. She hurried across the empty space, her socks slipping on
the slate floor.

People liked to light up when
they had something to eat,
didn’t they? She might find some evidence of the culprit in the
cafeteria. The security company must have sent some idiot who
didn’t understand the danger of smoking in a building that
contained flammable materials.

T
he instant she entered the glassed-in walkway, she knew
something was wrong. Ahead of her, the factory windows lit up the
night, a row of glowing squares. It looked like a color chart, with
a deep, flaming orange at the far end, and paler shades near to
her. She raced through the silent cafeteria, past the plastic
chairs and tables, past the steel counter, through the first set of
double doors. The vintage racing posters on the walls of the lobby
that separated the factory from the cafeteria blurred as she
hurtled by.

No!
The word exploded in her mind the instant she’d
slammed her palms against the second pair of swinging doors to
fling them open. There was something called back draft, wasn’t
there? It could send a ball of flames bursting out with enormous
force when one opened the door to a fire.