Ballet Shoes and Engine Grease (21 page)

He
watched in fascination as Crimson grabbed a handful of her
hair and used the ends to tickle his naked chest. “I had a big
crush in ballet school,” she told him, protesting when he tried to
slap her hand away. “He joined a dance company in Canada and we
lost touch. Since then, nothing major. It’s difficult on tour. You
never stay long enough in one place. If you date civilians, it’s
like a string of holiday romances. If you date other dancers, you
know things may get awkward if you break up and they start dating
one of your friends.”

“
Real little
femme fatale
,
aren’t you? A lover in every town.”

“
In some of them. Rio is always good. And
Paris…and Tokyo…and—”

He
silenced her with a kiss. Just as he was getting into the
spirit of things, his hand sliding up to cup her breast, his mind
busy considering the best ways to enjoy each other without the
benefit of protection, a massive crash rattled the windows, making
them both jump. Instinctively, he threw his body over hers as a
protective barrier, but there was no debris flying through the
air.

“
What the hell was that?” Nick asked as he
scrambled up and hastily dressed in the formal dinner suit, wishing
he hadn’t left his jeans down in the showroom.

“
I don’t know.” Crimson got up, hurried out
to her office. She returned wearing a pair of snug cotton pants and
carrying a pink sweatshirt and pants. She tugged the garments on.
“Sounded like someone drove at full speed into the
building.”

“
Let’s go and take a look. Bring your
phone, and don’t forget your inhaler.”

Nick
led the way down the stairs, turning on the lights as they
proceeded. In the lobby, he paused to peer out through the main
entrance. Nothing unusual in the parking lot, but an edgy sense of
danger niggled in his gut. The wind had picked up, howling around
the corners of the building. Autumn arriving with a
vengeance.

They jogged
down the glass walkway toward the factory, past
the silent row of racing cars. No glow of flames through the
windows, Nick noted with relief. The canteen was equally peaceful.
He shouldered his way through the swinging double doors to the
lobby and then into the production hall. Orderly rows of equipment
and half finished vehicles stood in the shadows. He snapped on the
ceiling lights, blinked against the brightness. Everything seemed
fine.

“
Nothing here. Let’s check the other way.”
He pulled Crimson back by her arm and swung past her, edging ahead,
first in the line of fire, should there be some kind of a threat.
They returned to the dark walkway and took the left fork toward the
showroom.

Nick pushed the door open. He knew
something was wrong even before the lights came on. Instinct of a
dozen car crashes had imprinted on his brain the smell of twisted
metal, the vapors of spilled gasoline. Although the brand new
Panthers had never been on the road, each had a liter or two in the
tank, allowing the engines to be started and the cars moved easily
around the floor.

“
Dear God,” he whispered when light fell on
the carnage.

The cables had snapped a
t one end of the plate of reinforced glass
that held the antique Spur in the air. The platform had swung down
in a great arc, smashing two of the five brand new Panthers waiting
to be collected by their new owners. The other three Panthers
appeared intact but probably had some damage to the
bodywork.

Beside him, Nick
could hear Crimson gasp. “Oh my
God…how…”

He curled his hand over her elbow to halt
her. “Don’t go inside. We don’t know if the remaining pair of
cables is sound. They too could snap, and the whole thing could
come crashing down.”

Crimson
craned her neck, surveying the destruction in the
showroom in fascinated horror, but Nick noticed that she had
already turned on her phone. “Call Hank,” he ordered. “He’ll get
people out to take the Spur down safely. It’s lucky both cables
went at the same time so the platform didn’t tip sideways. The
glass is shatterproof and the car is bolted onto the base, so the
Spur will be fine, as long as we bring it down
carefully.”

Outside the showroom, the night security
guard came up running. Nick roared out
a warning, caught the man’s attention. It was the
short, burly one, the guy on steroids he’d spoken to before. Nick
gestured, making a big circle in the air.
Go around to the front
entrance
. The guard
waved his hand to confirm his understanding and set off walking
into the night.

“
We work our butts off to make enough
profit but we keep getting hammered with bad luck,” Crimson said in
angry mutter as she continued to study the wreckage.

“
Bad luck?” Nick frowned at her, relief
mixing with his distress. “This is bloody
good
luck. It’s just money. A couple of Panthers that
need rebuilding. Do you realize that if we hadn’t been filming here
last night, the vintage racing cars would have been beneath the
Spur? They are irreplaceable. A piece of history. This is just a
hassle. An inconvenience.”

They made the call
to Hank, getting him out of bed. Next,
they used the plastic chairs from the cafeteria, and coils of rope
from the factory, to make a barrier to keep people away from the
showroom in the morning. While they were busy stringing the ropes
between the chairs, the night security guard hurried in through the
walkway from the office block.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

Nick shot him an irritable glance. The man
was a trained professional, and he had peered in through the glass
wall. It should have been bloody obvious to him what was wrong, but
perhaps it had been difficult to see into the showroom from the
darkness outside.

“
The cables holding up the car on the glass
platform have snapped,” Nick informed him, impatience in his voice.
He pointed at another coil of rope on a chair. “Can you take that,
and a couple of these plastic chairs from the cafeteria, and put up
a barricade outside the rear entrance, to make sure nobody tries to
get in that way?”

“
Sure,” the man replied, but he didn’t
leave at once. He merely stood watching them, his hazel eyes
narrowed, his puffed face in a scowl as he stared at Crimson, who
was busily darting about in her pink sweats, her hair flowing free
around her shoulders.

Nick suppressed the sharp remark that
sprung to his lips.
That’s not a way I want you looking at my
girlfriend
, he was about
to say, but then he caught the man’s expression. It was not
lustful, or even admiring, but shifty and malevolent. A second
later, the guard swung his attention around and looked at Nick in
the same way, full of resentment.

Puzzled, Nick returned the man’s angry
glare.
It couldn’t be
that he had a complaint about his pay or benefits. They didn’t
employ him, the security company did. Finally, the guard spun on
his booted heels and marched off, and Nick brushed aside his
thoughts. The young man was probably the envious type and nursed a
grudge against anyone who was richer or better looking or more
successful than him.

With help from Crimson, Nick finished the
barricade and put up a warning sign.
Through the glass, in the light spilling out, they
saw the guard erect a similar rope barrier outside. Then he called
out to catch their attention, pointed at his watch, made a spinning
motion with his forefinger to indicate that he was setting off to
complete his usual surveillance round, and disappeared out of
sight.

Twenty minutes later,
Hank came in and took charge as the
factory crew started to arrive. In two hours, they had a team of
dozen men clearing the showroom in preparation for taking down the
glass platform and the antique vehicle still attached to
it.

“
Go home,” Hank told Nick. “You’ve been up
thirty-six hours solid and you’re jet lagged.

Swamped with fatigue, Nick lacked
the
strength to argue.
He didn’t feel in a fit state to get behind the wheel, so they
asked one of the mechanics to drive them out to Longwood
Hall.

Inside the house, he halted
at the bottom of the curving
staircase. Despite his exhaustion, he managed a rueful smile at
Crimson. “I’d love to wake up beside you in the morning, but I’m
too tired to deal with the hassle of sorting out revised sleeping
arrangements tonight.”

He
saw Crimson’s eyes widen as she caught on to his
meaning—that unless they wanted to sneak around in the night, they
would have to deal with a pair of nosy mothers.

“
Of course,” she hurried to reply. “It
needs careful planning to…minimize the disruption.”

They shared a conspiratorial grin.
Th
e small sign of mutual
understanding completed what would have been a perfect evening, if
it hadn’t been for the accident with the Spur.

Nick
followed Crimson upstairs, gave her a quick goodnight kiss
and went alone into his bedroom, where he stripped naked and
crawled between the sheets. His last thought before he drifted off
to sleep was that tomorrow Crimson would have to learn the true
extent of their problems.

Statistically, two accidents were
unlikely.

And insurance companies lived by
statistics.

****

If Crimson hadn’
t been so full of anxiety, she would have enjoyed
the noisy breakfast in the formal dining room. The maids, Judy and
Martha, bustled about, stacking the heated buffet with dishes that
released tempting aromas. Judy, always on the lookout for a
potential mate, was making eyes at Todd. Kathy wore a vintage David
Cassidy T-shirt, which set her and Martha giggling about their
teenage crush on the seventies pop star.

Outside,
a light autumn mist wreathed the landscape,
casting a white veil over the green lawns and the tall trees that
were turning into vivid hues of red and gold. Nick had informed the
film crew about the accident in the showroom, but he had downplayed
the damage, making it sound a minor mishap, and it didn’t dampen
the rowdy atmosphere.

Todd
glanced at his watch. “Crimson, are you coming with
us?”

“
Damn. I’d forgotten.” She turned to Nick
who sat at the head of the table, looking tired but freshly shaven
and utterly handsome. “I’ve arranged to go down to the film school,
to select footage for the final cut and approve the computer
generated images.”

“
Go,” Nick said. “I have things under
control here.”

She studied him, as she had done covertly
all morning.
Memories
tingled on her skin, curled in her belly.
Had she really…? Had they
really…?
She felt a
blush rise on her skin and closed her mind against the mental
images.

But that opened the door to other
thoughts
, to the doubts
that she hadn’t quite managed to suppress. Was Nick trying to get
rid of her already? Put a distance between them? Or was he just
being diligent, focusing on work?

Last night, he
’d said nothing to her about what he wanted from
the relationship. It was her experience that men didn’t like to
talk about emotions. They just expected you to observe them and
figure out how they felt. And, when they no longer wanted you, they
expected you to sense it and end the liaison, pretending it was you
dumping them so they wouldn’t have to.

“
Sure,” she said. “I’ll go.”

Back to Contents

Chapter Twelve

Nick was
sitting with Peter Tomlinson in Crimson’s office,
the insurance papers spread out in front of them, when the sound of
approaching footsteps made him look up. Crimson stood in the
doorway, dressed in a long raincoat, a dripping umbrella in one
hand, her big tote bag clutched in the other.

“
Crimson.” He pushed up to his feet. “You
should have let me know. I would have picked you up from the train
station.”

She’d been gone for three days. They’d
talked on the telephone, but he’d kept the calls short. He’d told
himself he was dreading telling her the bad news, but in truth he
was scared of where they were headed—scared of removing the armor
plate from around his heart and accepting the tender feelings that
stole over him every time he heard her voice.

“
I’m sorry.” Crimson balanced on her toes,
as if preparing to flee, and gestured for him to sit down again.
“Am I interrupting your meeting?”

“
No,” he told her. “We were just about to
finish.”

“
Do you want me to…?” Peter stood up,
fidgeting, looking uncertain.

Nick
sank back in the chair and lifted a hand in dismissal.
“I’ll tell her.”

He
waited for Peter to walk out and for Crimson to take off
her long raincoat and sit down facing him at the conference table.
She patted her damp hair, tied in a neat ballerina knot at the nape
of her neck.