Ballet Shoes and Engine Grease (3 page)

“
Shit,” Crimson heard her mother mutter
again. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

So do I
,
Crimson thought
.
Uncle
Stephan had been fond of practical jokes, the kind that ended up
with someone sprawled face down in a puddle of mud. Her palms grew
damp, and she discreetly rubbed them against her cotton
pants.

“
Who gets to decide what charities?” she
asked.

“
Stephan Constantine has already stipulated
that,” the skinny little man behind the mahogany desk replied. “He
is aware how strongly you feel against discrimination of women in
sport. Women are particularly underrepresented in boxing. The
entire hundred and fifty million dollars will go to funding boxing
academies for women.”

Her stomach churned. Nausea, jetlag,
stress. Her windpipe seemed to close up.
“My bag...” Crimson doubled over, rooting in the
canvas tote by her feet. She found her inhaler, sat straight again,
tipped her head back and squirted a spray of medication into her
mouth.

“
What is it, baby?” Her mother jumped out
of her seat, bouncing up and down, crowding her, making the choking
sensation worse. “Crimson? Honey?”

“
It’s...asthma...I’m...okay.” She drew a
few wheezing breaths, one arm stuck out to keep her mother at a
distance. “Sorry. I was going to tell you. That’s why I had to quit
dancing. The ankle injury was just an excuse. I didn’t want you to
worry.”

“
So, not telling everything is
fine…provided it’s you doing it.” Myrna Constantine’s cool comment
rose above Crimson’s panting gasps. She slanted a glance toward the
woman and saw one elegant eyebrow rise in a mocking
arch.

She didn’t care. All Crimson could think
of was that unless she became an instant business wizard and an
expert in luxury cars, one hundred and fifty million dollars would
be spent on teaching women how to beat each other’s brains out in
front of an audience.

She could not let that happen.

Whatever it took, she had to run the
company
, and
succeed.

Back to Contents

Chapter Two

Nick Constantine fumbled at the alarm
cloc
k by his bedside.
The noise didn’t cease but it went on and on, like a bell going off
inside his head. It took him a full minute to realize it was the
doorbell. Why hadn’t the porter downstairs called to check with him
before letting anyone up?

He slithered out of bed. Finding his
balance, he adjusted the thin cotton pants that rode low on his
hips. In an unsteady slouch, he made his way through the hall, to
the front door. On every step, nausea lurched in his throat. His
head threatened to implode.

What day was it? Yesterday? Tomorrow? Damn
if he cared.

His fumbling hands managed to release the
lock. While he waited for his eyes to adjust to the bright light in
the corridor, the familiar scent of perfume hit him in the face. Of
course. His mother. She lived in the same building and could accost
him any time she chose.

“
Nicholas.” Her mouth puckered with
distaste as she studied him.

So, he’d fallen
out of favor. Normally, she called him Nick,
unless she wanted something, when it was Nicky. Without a word, he
stepped aside to let her in. She was wearing beige Chanel, but that
didn’t mean it was still the day it had been when he’d left her in
the lawyer’s office. His mother had a wardrobe full of designer
outfits in neutral colors.

“
Say your piece, and then leave me alone,”
he grumbled.

“
You look terrible.”

“
Then don’t hang around watching
me.”

“
This is no time to be difficult, Nicky.”
She spun him around and started to propel him back toward the
bedroom. “She is up on her way. That girl, Crimson—what a
ridiculous name—Mills. She is using the bathroom in my apartment,
and then she is coming up here to see you. You’ll have to help her
to run Constantine Motors.”

His feet stopped moving. His mother kept
pushing, her nails digging into his side until he flapped her hands
away.
“Mom, what the
hell are you talking about?” he growled. “I have no intention of
marrying her.”

“
Or course not.” She laid her palms flat
against his back and started pushing again. “She doesn’t know about
that part. Don’t tell her. Rejection is not a good basis for
teamwork. It’s the other provision in the will. My twenty percent.
If you had remained to listen, you would have learned that I won’t
get anything unless Crimson Mills runs Constantine Motors until the
end of the year without a decline in profits. You’ll have to help
her. Otherwise I’ll be broke. You’ll have to support me. I’ll be a
millstone around your neck till the day I die.”

Her panicky voice,
so different from her usual smooth tones,
penetrated the hangover that fogged Nick’s brain. His mother’s
forceful shoving had brought them to the living room archway.
Through the huge picture windows, the setting sun gilded the New
York skyline.

He braced his heels against the hardwood
floor
. By the look of
it, it was the evening. He’d opened a bottle of Scotch as soon as
he got back from the lawyer’s office. He knew he’d been drunk for
more than a few hours. It had to be the day after. He raked both
hands through his disheveled hair and peered at his mother through
gritty eyes.

“
What the hell are you going on about?” he
asked.

“
Your father’s will. The conditions that
you refused to stay and listen to. That girl must run the company
until the end of the year and make a success of it. Otherwise she
gets nothing. I get nothing. Everything goes to
charity.”

Nick
stared at his mother as the facts took shape in his mind.
By refusing to marry Crimson Mills, he might have said goodbye to
the family fortune, but that didn’t get him off the hook. For his
mother to inherit, he would have to step in and help the stripper
run the business. It there was one person in the world he cared
about, one person he would struggle to say no to, it was his
mother, and his father had understood how he felt.

An odd sensation bubbled up in
Nick’s gut. At first, he
thought he was going to be sick. Then it burst out. A deep, roaring
laughter that rocked him on his feet. On and on it went, rippling
through him, spilling out of his lungs in an endless
stream.

Son-of-a-bitch.

Even in death,
his father knew how to pull people’s
strings.

****

Crimson tiptoed along the carpeted
corridor toward
Apartment 14B, concerned by the strange rumbling noise that
drifted out through the open doorway. Was someone going nuts?
Should she call the security desk downstairs? When she reached the
entrance, she craned her neck and peered inside. The hallway seemed
peaceful enough. An Oriental rug covered the hardwood floor. A
black leather jacket and a few sports coats hung on the rack on the
left. On the right, a narrow table stood beneath a tall gilt-framed
mirror.

“
Hello!” she called out. “Is anyone
in?”

No reply, but the strange
sounds continued. She ventured
down the hall, where an archway opened up into a big living room.
Through the huge picture windows that gave a view of the Manhattan
skyline, streaks of fading sunlight fell over the stark white walls
and a matching pair of black leather couches arranged around a low
glass and steel coffee table.

A man, clad in nothing
but soft cotton pants that hugged his
narrow hips and long, powerful legs, stood in the middle of the
room, doubled over, laughing like a lunatic.

Crimson stepped forward
. “Excuse me.”

Slowly, t
he lean muscles uncurled and the man turned to
face her. When his eyes fell on her, the roars of laughter died,
and an odd, assessing expression settled on his handsome features.
His gaze raked over her, from the top of her flaxen hair, down to
the toes of her worn Reeboks. The silent, narrow-eyed scrutiny,
combined with the impressive sight of his bare torso, sent her
heart racing.

She’d neve
r met Nick Constantine before, not in real
life.

He looked wilder, even more
devilish than she had imagined.
Black curls fell in a tangle across his forehead, and a thick
coating of stubble covered his square jaw. The dark, thickly lashed
eyes were bloodshot and shadowed with anger, but even that didn’t
spoil the brooding, masculine beauty of his features. The hours she
had spent poring over photographs of him, listening to Uncle
Stephan talk about his estranged son, rushed back into her mind,
making her skin tingle.

“
I’m Crimson Mills.” She stuck out her
hand.

He didn’t move closer. “Crimson,
huh?”

“
Don’t blame me. Blame my
mother.”

Humor flashed
in his eyes. “Yeah. I’ve had the honor of meeting
her.”

A spark of resentment flared
within Crimson. So, her mother
wasn’t exactly cut out from the pages of a glossy magazine, but
that didn’t give anyone the right to belittle her. “In that case,”
she replied tartly, “you know that she is warm, sincere person, and
generous to a fault.”

“
It’s easy to be generous with someone
else’s money.”

Hot color
streaked up to her face. During her visits to
Longwood Hall, where her mother had lived with Uncle Stephan,
Crimson had tasted a life of luxury. At Christmas, she had received
a pair of expensive earrings, and a gift voucher to a department
store.

“
I never asked for anything.” Her voice was
low, and those who knew her well would have heard the warning in
her tone.

“
How about a business valued at a hundred
and fifty million dollars?”

“
In particular, I didn’t ask for that.” She
drew a deep breath. “I’m a dancer. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to
be. All I’m trained for. Why would I want to ruin my life by taking
on a job that I’m not cut out for? Why would I want to throw away
six months of my life trying for the impossible?”

“
You’ve got it.
Impossible
.”

“
I know.” Her fingers curled around the
tote bag that dangled from her shoulder. “But I have to try. Not
for me, but for my mother, and yours. They want their twenty
percent each. If I pull it off, their future will be secure. If I
fail, you’ll end up supporting your mother, and I’ll end up
supporting mine.”

“
I can afford it.”

Her voice fell to a reluctant
mutter.
“But I can’t
afford mine.”

Nick Constantine ambled closer
to her. He appeared relaxed,
but Crimson could see the tension in his big body. It was there, in
the muscles that flexed and bunched beneath the bronzed skin on his
bare chest and arms, in the way he leaned slightly forward, broad
shoulders hunched, arms bent, hands curled into loose
fists.

He came to a halt
a step away from her. Towering over her
five foot six. Crowding her. Intimidating her on purpose. “Why in
hell would I want to help you?” he asked.

Crimson
swallowed, peering up at him. He was standing
close, much too close. She could feel the heat radiating from his
naked skin, could feel the subtle threat in his demeanor. What
could she tell him? It was clear that she had stolen his
birthright, albeit reluctantly. What could Uncle Stephan have been
thinking of? If there was a joke somewhere in this garbled
situation, none of those involved got it.

“
Because you can,” she said, knowing how
lame it sounded. “Your mother told me you’d be happy to offer your
support,” she added. “I’m not allowed to hire a manager, but the
lawyer said you’d be permitted to help on a voluntary
basis.”

“
So…” Thick forearms folded across a bare
chest, covering the smattering of crisp, dark hair. Crimson tried
without success to stop her gaze from drifting down, to where those
hairs tapered into a line that vanished into the waistband of the
soft cotton pants. Flushed with heat, she jerked her attention back
to his face.

“
Let me get this right,” Nick continued,
either unaware of her agitation or choosing to ignore it. “You want
me to invest my time and effort into ensuring that you’ll inherit
my father’s company, and you expect me to do it for
nothing?”

“
Your mother said you’re between
jobs.”

“
I resigned from my interesting, highly
paid position when I heard that my father had died, and I had every
expectation of taking over the family business. Now that things
have turned out differently, I can get another interesting, highly
paid job by making a few phone calls.”

S
ilent, Crimson shifted one shoulder. What could she
say?

He leaned closer still, so close
that she could smell the
alcohol in his breath. “All my life, I’ve prepared for the task of
one day running Constantine Motors. I’ve got an MBA, and an
engineering degree. I’ve spent the last seven years building up
experience. Design, marketing, finance. Big companies. General
Motors, Toyota, Chrysler. Small companies. Morgan, TVR, Ginette.
Before that, I spent ten years on the racing circuit. Now, why do
you think my father would have left the company to you instead of
me?”