Ballet Shoes and Engine Grease (15 page)

“
I don’t think so, Nick.” She spoke in a
cool tone, free of emotion. “I’m cautious by nature. When I was a
kid, people looked down on my family. I learned to be defensive.
Then, at ballet school, and on tour, the setup is competitive. It’s
hard to trust anyone when the people who are your closest friends
might stab you in the back.”

His eyes held hers, dark and
burning.
“A thousand
times, I’ve thought of that day in the boardroom. Can you really
tell me that you don’t think about it, wonder what it would be like
between us if we made love again?”

“
That’s just it.” She slid down from the
counter. “You were angry at me that day. What will happen if we
have an affair and it’s over before the end of December? Will you
no longer want to help me because it’s too awkward to hang around?
Or will you try to humiliate me, like you did on that day, making
me feel that I paid for your time with sexual favors?”

“
Do you think I bear a grudge against
you?”

“
You bore one a long time with your
father.”

Nick flinched
at the words. A grim, stony expression settled on
his face. “You really don’t trust me, Crimson, do you?” he
asked.

“
No, I guess I don’t,” she
replied.

“
And you think it’s not worthwhile to take
the risk to find out?”

“
No, I guess I don’t.”

Nick gave a small, surprisingly nonchalant
shrug, as if to say,
c’est la vie
, that’s life, you win some, you lose some. He started
walking away, then paused, halfway to the kitchen door, and turned
back to look at her. His face showed signs of exhaustion, but there
was an arrogant twist to his mouth as he raked his gaze over her,
up and down, and then said, “Don’t be too proud to let me know when
you change your mind.”

Crimson was left staring after him,
irritation crawling all over her.

Why did it seem that in every argument
someone else got the last word?

****

Nick
couldn’t sleep. He’d drunk half a bottle of the best
Napoleon brandy money could buy—or cognac, as Soames called the
stuff—but his turbulent mind refused to settle. Was he really the
bastard Crimson had made him out to be? Did he bear a grudge
against the whole world? Should he have crawled back to his father,
begging to be loved?

Something niggl
ed at the back of his mind. The raspy, tearful
voice of Esmeralda Mills.
Did you know about Bobby?

Kno
w what?

I need a
stiff drink
, Esmeralda had said when they talked two
nights ago. Fine. He’d supply one. Nick lifted the bottle from the
bedside table, sloshed contents inside to check the level. Plenty
left, even for two people. He swung down his legs, got to his feet
and picked up the solitary glass before heading out. At the door,
he turned back, put the bottle and glass down while he pulled on a
pair of jeans. Better safe than sorry, in case he had to live
through a Mrs. Robinson moment after all.

He saun
tered down the corridor to the Sunrise Room, so called
because of the wide balcony that opened up to the east.
“Esmeralda,” he said in a loud, theatrical whisper. “Are you
decent?” He wasn’t exactly slurring his words, but his voice was
thick. “Can I come inside?” he asked, and then barged into the room
without waiting for an answer.

The curtains were not drawn, and
m
oonlight spilled in
through the French doors that led out to the balcony. On the bed, a
long shape huddled beneath the covers. It didn’t stir. “Esmeralda,”
he chanted. “Wake up.” He crashed to sit on the bedside, located a
safe place to pat and tug—a crest beneath the covers that he was
pretty sure was a shoulder—and proceeded to ruin someone else’s
restful night.

“
Uh…hmm...” In the faint light of the moon,
a pair of blue eyes blinked furiously at him. The round face
crumpled into a confused frown. “Nick?” The eyebrows that had been
plucked into thin arches rose to high heavens. “What are you doing?
What time is it? Is Crimson all right?”

“
I’ll be damned,” Nick said softly. “I
believe you’re a good mother, Esmie.”

“
Of course I’m a good mother,” she replied
with a good natured outburst. “But I’m too old to take you on.
You’re stuck with Myrtie. Although…” Esmeralda scooted up to a
sitting position, leaning against the headboard. “…I believe she’s
a good mother, too.”

“
So she is,” Nick agreed. “But she likes to
hide it.”

Esmeralda opened her jaws in a massive
yawn
that she made no
effort to disguise and choked out muffled sounds,
“
Whah can I
do foh you, young Nicholas
?”

He lifted the bottle.
“I’ve brought you a drink.”

“
That’s very generous of you, but…” She
glanced at the bedside alarm. “It’s a quarter past two in the
morning.”

He lowered the glass with a clink to the
nightstand and sloshed a few fingers of brandy inside. “I want you
to tell me about Bobby.”

“
Damn.” Something flashed in Esmeralda’s
eyes. “Now?”

“
Now,” Nick said.

Esmeralda pointed at the glass. “I’ll need
more than that.”

Nick filled the glass to the brim, watched
as
Esmeralda took it and
downed the contents in a few determined gulps. A shiver racked her,
making her ample frame shudder and jiggle. She expelled a noisy
sigh, then simply said, “Bobby was LD. Learning disabled. I thought
you knew.”

“
No.”

“
It was a secret, of sorts. Bobby’s
mother—”

“
Tamara,” he cut in, somehow compelled to
say it.

Esm
eralda glanced up, held out the empty glass. “Yes. Tamara.
Her family belonged to some kind of an ultra strict religious sect.
Hellfire and damnation and all that. Tamara was only eighteen when
she had an affair with a married man. Her parents claimed that
Bobby was the way he was because he’d been conceived in sin. That
almost crushed poor Tamara. Her family didn’t throw her out on the
streets when she fell pregnant, but they insisted that his
condition was her fault. She had sinned, and Bobby paid the
price.”

“
Jesus,” Nick muttered. Marcela had been a
devout catholic, so he’d had his own brush with the power of
religion, but Marcela’s faith had been positive. God loves you. The
Lord forgives you. It had not been about punishment for sins, real
or imagined.

Esmeralda sighed. “Tamara left home when
Bobby was t
wo. She got a
job as an office cleaner, working at night while her little boy
slept at a neighbor’s house. That’s how she met your father. He was
working late and she came to dust his desk. They got talking. He
said he fell in love with her because he’d never met anyone who
needed him so much. Your mother never really needed him the way
Tamara did.”

She did
, Nick wanted to say.
She just didn’t know how to
show it.

Esmeralda continued
to talk. “That’s why Stephan wanted to
keep Bobby’s learning difficulties a secret. To make sure those
horrible comments would never reach the boy’s ears. They took Bobby
to lots of specialists, Switzerland, England, but not even
Stephan’s money could buy a miracle. They hired tutors for him.
Even then, there was no gossip. You father had the knack of
inspiring loyalty.”

Except
in his own son
, Nick thought grimly.

Esmeralda wiggled the glass in the air,
inviting him to refill it
once more.

“
Are you not drinking?” she asked as he
poured.

“
I only brought the one glass.”

“
I won’t hold it against you if you swig
from the bottle.” She took a sip and studied him over the rim of
the glass. “You’ll need it. It gets worse. Much worse.”

Nick felt a jolt in his gut. Last time
he
’d heard those words,
it had been the lawyer, Adam Andrews, and his father’s will. Then,
the warning had been true. He expected the same to apply now.
Tipping back his head, he took a deep pull from the bottle. The
liquid burned down his throat, smooth, fortifying, but somehow he
already knew it wouldn’t be enough.

“
Tell me,” he said roughly.

“
Bobby…Bobby developed a fixation on you.
His big brother Nick. A brave racing driver. He spent hours looking
at pictures of you in racing magazines. Stephan got a special TV
system to see European channels, and Japanese. They’d stay up all
hours to watch you race. It was not often those races were on TV.
Sometimes Bobby would watch IndyCar races and pick a car he liked
and say,
that’s my brother Nick
.” Esmeralda gave a little choking sob and dashed a tear
from her cheek with the back of her hand. “He never said just Nick.
It was always
my brother Nick
.”

“
Dear God,” Nick muttered. Guilt settled
like a stone in his gut.

“
There’s more.”

He glanced across at
Esmeralda. The moonlight softened her
features. Nick could see some of Crimson in her now. The same
enchanting combination of vulnerability and determination, or, in
the older version, of coarseness and sensitivity.

“
Why don’t you draw your curtains?” he
asked, postponing the next moment.

“
I like to see the stars at night when I
can’t sleep.”

“
Go on,” he said in a low voice. “I’d like
to hear the rest.”

“
Stephan told me how you fell out with him.
It was Bobby’s first day at Longwood Hall, and he was confused by
the new surroundings, so your father was distracting him with a
ball game. He forgot all about your racing trials. And then he felt
so bad about forgetting that he fobbed you off.” Esmeralda gave a
watery smile. “You remember how Stephan was? He never could
say
I’m
sorry
.”

Nick took another sw
ig of brandy, this time swirling the
liquid in his mouth, savoring the mellow taste. “Yeah,” he said
finally. “I remember.”

“
For a few months, he tried very hard to
reach out to you, but you refused to come to the telephone, or see
him. Then he was busy travelling to clinics abroad, taking Bobby to
see doctors. And then you went to race in Europe and
Japan.”

“
I came back after my accident.”

“
God, Nick. I can’t do this.” Esmeralda
held out her glass again.

Nick tipped the last of the brandy into
it. “I’m a big boy. I can take it.”

“
Bobby was frantic. He was fourteen at the
time, but he had the mental age of a younger child, eight or nine.
He wanted to visit you in hospital. He’d stay up all night,
screaming his head off.
I want to see my brother Nick
, he kept yelling. Stephan and Tamara were
at their wit’s end. They didn’t know what to do. You were in Japan,
and your mother was at your bedside, and they didn’t want to stir
up trouble. They considered setting up an actor in a hospital room
to play you, but decided it would be too tacky. In the end, Bobby
solved the problem himself. He decided you had died. That’s why
they were not taking him to see you.
Is my brother Nick dead
, he asked his mother. And poor Tamara, at
a loss how to best protect her little boy from hurt said
yes, your brother
Nick is dead
.”

Esmeralda peered
into her empty glass. “That’s why Stephan stopped
trying to reconcile with you after you came back to America. He’d
either have to tell Bobby that they had lied to him, or make up
some new lies to explain your resurrection.”

Nick said nothing. His mind refused to
work.

“
There is a…memorial for you.” Esmeralda
spoke softly, as if exhausted by the experience. “That maze at the
far end of the formal gardens…Bobby had an uncanny skill of finding
his way through it. Stephan put a little stone marker in the
middle, with your name engraved on it. Not many people go into the
maze, and it doesn’t exactly look like a gravestone. Bobby would
sit out there for hours in the summer, talking to his big brother
Nick.”

In a purely maternal gesture,
Esmeralda reached out and
stroked Nick’s cheek. “Don’t beat yourself up over it, Nicky,” she
murmured. “You gave Bobby pleasure, simply by giving him something
to cheer for, something to get excited over and dream
about.”

Nick
merely shook his head. His throat felt too tight to
speak.

“
I know,” Esmeralda said. “It’s hard to
want to change the past, and not be able to. I…when we were young,
your father asked me to be his girlfriend. I refused. I was too
afraid of not fitting into his world. Of being laughed at, being
looked down upon. Sometimes…” Esmeralda paused, and then she spoke
in a low voice, a mere rustle of a sound. “Sometimes I fear that I
exaggerate my blue collar roots, my lack of sophistication, just to
convince myself that I was right, that I could never have acquired
enough polish to make it work.”