Ballet Shoes and Engine Grease (8 page)

With that, he snatched up his blueprints and
stormed out of the office.

C
rimson remained standing. Her eyes blurred with impotent
tears. Her brain buzzed, as if a machine about to explode. She
turned to Nick. “I thought the idea was for you to help me.” Her
voice came out strained as she stared at him sitting unperturbed
behind the desk. “Why are you here?” she demanded to know. “Just
for the morbid fascination of watching me come apart under
pressure?”

Slowly, deliberately, Nick closed the lid
on the computer
, got to
his feet and walked over to her. He laid his hands on her
shoulders. She could feel his heat, his strength through the fabric
of her pink jacket and white silk blouse, and desperately wanted to
lean into it. To beg him to take over, to make the nightmare go
away. She tilted her face up toward him and watched him through a
haze of tears.

“
I can’t do this without your help,” she
told him.

“
And I’ll help you.” His dark eyes locked
with hers, making her heart jolt. “But you have to give the
impression that you’re in charge. I
was
listening. When I was typing on the computer, I wasn’t
surfing websites. I was making notes. Listing ideas, suggestions.
I
will
help.” His
fingers tightened over her shoulders, steadying her. “Crimson,
you’re close to collapse. Are you fit to drive home?”

She almost lost i
t then. One more shortcoming to shock them all
with, that she didn’t know the gas pedal from the brake, the
indicator from the wiper switch. Hysterical laughter gathered in
her belly, bubbled there for a moment, then mercifully died without
bursting free.

“
The limo driver is picking me up,” she
told him.

“
You have a limo on call? The business
can’t afford it.”

“
Your mother hired a driver to bring us up
from New York, and when she decided to stay a few days with me and
my mother at Longwood Hall, she arranged to keep the limo on. The
driver is staying in the staff wing.”

“
I see.” Nick withdrew his hands from her
shoulders. Irritation flickered across his handsome features. “Do
me a favor, will you, and send the driver away after he drops you
off this evening. I’ll call my mother and tell her that she can
take the train back to New York. She doesn’t seem to understand
that with my father dead her alimony is finished.”

“
Fine.” Crimson exhaled a sigh. “What
should I do with all this?” She waved a hand at the reports, plans
and proposals waiting for her attention.

“
Nothing, for now,” Nick said
firmly.

Her brows edged up.
“Nothing?”

“
Go home. Rest over the weekend. I’ll come
back on Wednesday.”

“
Wednesday?” A sense of abandonment soared
inside her.
Stupid, stupid, stupid
, she told herself.
He is not going to be here full
time
. And yet, in her
mind she’d seen them working together, side by side—like a
pas-de-deux
, him
lifting her, providing the strength and support she needed. She
gave him a tired glance. “What will I do on Monday and Tuesday when
people hassle me for answers?”

“
Tell them to wait. You’re the boss.” Nick
leaned over the table and extracted three organization charts from
the scattered papers. “On Monday and Tuesday, you’ll walk around
the offices and get to know everyone. Ask them to describe their
jobs. Be friendly. Put on a pair of overalls and tour the factory.
Smile. Tell them something about you as a person. Be human.
Approachable. There’s nothing more demoralizing for the employees
than an invisible leader. Your first job is to get to know them and
let them get to know you.”

He held the organization charts out to
her, then flicked hi
s
wrist to check his slim gold watch. “I’ve got to go. I have an
appointment tonight. With heavy traffic, it can take up to three
hours to get to Manhattan.” He moved away from her and picked up
the leather briefcase he’d deposited on the floor by the
desk.

“
I’m not the enemy,” he told her, not
looking at her as he snapped the case open and tossed his notepad
inside. “I have much to gain from helping you. Keeping my mother
off my back, acquiring forty percent of the business, ensuring the
continuity of the Constantine name in motor industry. I’ll help
you, but you’ll have to be the figurehead of the company. Strong
and poised, able to deal with pressure.” He closed the briefcase
and raised his gaze to her. “Are you up to it? Because if you are
not, you’re wasting my time, and yours.”

You bet I am
, Crimson wanted to tell him, but her
mouth refused to form the words. In silence, she watched as Nick
stood quietly by the desk, waiting for a reply. When she didn’t
speak, he shrugged his shoulders and walked away without saying
anything more, not even goodbye.

“You bet I am,” she muttered after him, but
she truly didn’t know. She had the determination but she lacked the
skills. Would one be enough without the other?

Back to Contents

Chapter Five

Nick waved a greetin
g to Anna who was talking on the telephone
as he strolled past her workstation toward Crimson’s office at half
past eleven on Wednesday morning. The door was open. Good. She was
making herself accessible. Approachable. On Monday and Tuesday,
he’d resisted the temptation to drive out but keeping away hadn’t
stopped him from thinking about Crimson, wondering how she was
getting on.

The sight of her
small frame swamped behind the huge desk and the
stacks of paperwork that cluttered the top hit him in the chest.
She looked a wreck. Pale as a ghost, with dark shadows under her
eyes. If he hadn’t thought it impossible for anyone to drop half a
stone in four days, that’s how much weight he would have guessed
she’d lost—or was it just that the neat beige suit was too big for
her?

“
Are you ill?” he blurted out without
thinking.

“
Jesus.” She jerked up so hard the swivel
chair beneath her rocked. “You startled me.”

“
What’s wrong? You look like
hell.”

“
I…” She ran her fingers along the edge of
the document she was studying. “I haven’t been sleeping
much…there’s such a lot to learn…I’ve been trying to read all these
reports.”

He walked up to her
. “I told you to mingle. Speak to people,
let them see you.”

“
I have.” She looked up at him, her lips
curving into a tired smile. “It was easier than I thought. For the
first time in my life, I was grateful for my name. It’s a good
conversation opener. One of the girls in accounts has a sister
called Ruby. We had a laugh about that. Samantha in IT has two
daughters who take ballet lessons, and Hank’s wife makes dolls’
houses, like my mother. Once I got going, I found something to say
to most people.”

Nick perched
his hip on the edge of the desk, still shocked by
seeing anxiety so clearly stamped on her face. He made an effort to
keep his voice light. “Speaking of mothers, mine hasn’t been
pestering me, like she normally does. You haven’t by any chance
done her in?”

“
No.” Crimson leaned back in the swivel
chair and raked her fingers through the long silvery hair that she
wore loose today. “But not for the lack of wanting. She’s still
staying with us at Longwood Hall. It’s like having a pair of prison
guards watching over me. I swear, at night they take a tour past my
bedroom door to make sure I haven’t bolted. I half expect to hear a
click as they lock me in.”

He
gave her a grin. “You’re their golden goose.”

“
I believe it’s a goose that lays golden
eggs.”

“
Whatever.” He waved aside the thought and
moved on to a practical question. “What are you using for
transport? My father’s Panther, or something more
modest?”

“
I…actually…”

Curious, Nick watched as Crimson
hesitated. Poor thing, she
really looked washed out. Even the blush that fanned up her cheeks
lacked its normal brightness.

“
I’ve been coming in with Charlie, the
morning security guard,” she said after a pause. “And Raymond has
been taking me home. While Uncle Stephan was ill, they got into the
habit of coming by the house. Charlie brought the morning papers,
and Ray delivered the office mail in the evening. Until the end,
your father liked to keep up with the business.”

Nick brushed aside the image of his father
as a sick, dying man
,
and instead focused on what Crimson was telling him. He mulled it
over. “Charlie starts at six in the morning and Ray finishes at ten
in the evening. That means…” He paused to make a quick calculation.
“Are you telling me that you’ve been working sixteen hours a
day?”

Crimson nodded.

“
That’s crazy,” he told her. “You’ll crash
and burn.”

She scowled at him.
“Do you have any idea of the dedication it
takes to be a ballet dancer? Of the hours of practice needed to
make your body bend and twist in ways that human bodies were not
designed to bend and twist? Of the pain involved, aching muscles
and bleeding toes and fractured bones and damaged tendons in the
feet? The discipline with diet? The endless task of learning the
technique, the music, and infusing each movement with artistry and
emotion?” She made an angry, sweeping gesture with one hand.
“Sixteen hours sitting behind the desk is nothing in
comparison.”

Sh
e was getting herself all worked up, Nick could tell. He
could see the escalating signs of distress in her. Her nostrils
flared, and her brown eyes flashed, and she continued to rant. “My
father died when I was nine and my mother worked three jobs to make
ends meet. I was a latchkey kid. Then, at fourteen, I got a
scholarship to a ballet academy and went off to boarding school.
When I graduated, at eighteen, I got a place with a touring company
and lived on the road.”

Taking a moment
to inhale, she leaned forward across the table.
“Everything I’ve done, I’ve done alone. No one has handed me
success on a plate. And, by God, I’ll do this thing alone too, if I
have to. If you can’t be bothered to be here, don’t feel you need
to put in an appearance. I’ve spoken to the lawyer and he’s drawn
up a formal letter to confirm your forty percent share, but I can
tear up the document just as easily as I can sign it.”

She halted, h
er lungs heaving, her body quivering like that a
racehorse crossing the finishing line. Muttering a string of
curses, she pulled open a desk drawer, took out a small plastic
object and lifted it to her mouth.

“
Asthma,” she snapped before he could ask.
“That’s why I had to give up dancing. If my breathing hadn’t gone
up the spout, you wouldn’t see me for the dust.” She gave a small,
almost hysterical rush of laughter. “See me for the dust…get it?
It’s dust that triggered my respiratory problems to start
with.”

“
Crimson,” he said very softly. “Shut up or
I’ll have to slap you.”

She glared at him over the inhaler and
made angry sound of
protest. He held up a hand in a placating gesture. “You’re
cracking up,” he warned her. “You’re not superhuman, and you’re not
alone. But I’m not going to be responsible for you ending up in a
mental ward if you insist on taking the weight of the whole world
on your shoulders.”

For a moment, it appeared
to him as if she might crumble.
A tremor ran over her slender body. Her lips moved without a sound.
Then she rallied. “Fine,” she said. “If I’m not alone in this mess,
will you tell me what to do with these?” She picked up the stack of
documents in front of her and dropped them back on the desk with a
thud.

****

Crimson
tried to hide her agitation while Nick helped her
scoop up the papers and they moved to sit at the circular
conference table by the window. Her entire body was throbbing with
the force of her heartbeat. She shouldn’t have let her emotions
burst free like that. The pressure had been building up inside her
all morning—anger and disappointment, and a deep, cutting hurt at
the thought that Nick might not return to help her.

So
what, she told herself as she rifled through the work with
trembling hands. Why should one more letdown upset her so much?
She’d lived through plenty. How many times had her father promised
to give up drinking? How many times as a child had she wished that
her mother could be more like other mothers, dress in tasteful
clothing and curb her rowdy, uncouth comments in PTA
meetings?

She’d learned not to put her faith in
people, and life had reinforced her caution. At ballet school, and
later on at the Pioneer Ballet Company, the fierce competition for
limited opportunities had overshadowed friendships, making it hard
to trust anyone.

“
Let’s start with this.” She pulled out the
blueprint for the new fuel injection system. “I’ve been studying
the diagram for hours, but I still can’t tell the difference
between it and the New York subway map.”