Dancing on a Moonbeam (Bedford Falls Book 1) (10 page)

"I met Charles. It was him or dancing, and I chose him."
 

"Why?" Max asked.

Blinking, she stared at him. "Excuse me?"

"Why did it have to be one or the other? You shouldn't have to choose between two things you love. I'd never give up music, I'd just find a way to make it all work."

She lowered her cup mid-sip. "It's not that simple."

"Sure it is." He reached for another piece of muffin. "If he'd loved you, he wouldn't have let you give up something that was obviously part of who you are."

"You don't know what you're saying." She stood so quickly the cup in her hand sloshed. "Have you been married before?"

"No." He thought about the one time he'd been close and felt relief that he hadn't done something stupid like follow her. He liked his life and where he was. Even when he was in a funk, like now.

"Then you can't understand." She waved her hand, storming out of the kitchen with his mug. "Relationships aren't that easy. There's a give and take."

"But the giving and taking needs to be equal," he said, following her. "Life isn't about compromise. People who say that don't know anything."

She whirled around, her tea water barely missing him as it arced out of the cup. "You don't know anything either."

"Maybe. Maybe not." He shrugged. "I know one thing."

"What?"

"You want my muffin."

She shoved the cup at him. "I thought maybe I was wrong, but you're still a bastard," she said, storming out.

He winced at the door slamming. Then he looked at the teabag label dangling from the side of the mug. He knew it—that tea's marketing was false advertising. It was far from calming.

Chapter 13

Robbie read the filed complaint. "His name is Amadeus Ravel Massimo?"
 

"Of all the things to ask, that's what you choose?" she said as she snipped wheatgrass from her window box.

"Well, yeah. It's the most interesting thing."

She could have argued that. There were a dozen things about him that were more intriguing.

Her best friend set the complaint aside. "I'd give you anything if you go up to him and say 'Ooo, rock me, Amadeus'."

That was the last thing she needed to say to him, because she knew he could. She crammed the wheatgrass in the juicer and turned it on.
 
She wasn't blind—she and Charles may have had a lackluster sex life, but she knew attraction when she saw it.

She saw it in Max's eyes.

Worse, she felt it tingle all through her body when she thought of him, which was much more often than she would have preferred.
 

"So what are you going to do about this?" Robbie asked.
 
"And are you really going to drink grass? I'm a landscape architect. I love grass, but I don't drink it."

She downed the wheatgrass shot, making a face. "I'm going to get the permits and finish the dance studio. Did you think I was going to let some guy who doesn't even live here stop me?"

"You never let anyone stop you. It's one of your most admirable traits."
 

She frowned at him. "Are you teasing me?"

"I give you a compliment, and you ask if I'm teasing you? Nice." He tugged her hair. "Since you don't appreciate me, I'm going back to the salt mines."

"Come back when you can't stay so long," she called after him.

"I love you too," he called back.

She heard the door close, and she smiled. She loved that man. He'd always been by her side, and he always would be.

Taking out her laptop, she set up office on the kitchen table. She needed to do something to feel productive, to take her mind off the delays. So she started making a plan for the coming year and attracting new students.

She wasn't delusional; she knew that her background only carried a certain amount of caché. In town, people knew her story well enough, but Bedford Falls by itself couldn't support a dance studio. She needed students from all over Westchester. She just wasn't sure how many people would find her interesting. She'd given up dancing close to twenty years before.
 

But she could ask a current star to come talk to her classes or guest teach, and she knew who to ask.

Taking her cell phone, she dialed the number for the Joffrey Ballet's administrative offices. She chatted with the woman on the other end, asking to leave a message for Anya Rusakova. She left her phone number and hung up. Anya would call her back—she was positive of that.

She hadn't figured her old dance friend would call her back so quickly, though. So when her phone rang with an unknown number less than an hour later, she was shocked.

"Eleanor Westwood," Anya exclaimed from the other end of the line. "I don't know what I can't believe more, that you called me or that you went for so long without calling me. You really are terrible, you know."

"I really am," she replied, the same way she always had when Anya used to say she was terrible. She smiled, her heart warm at the familiarity. "You aren't, though. I saw the reviews on your ballet last winter."

"I know, it was a smashing success," her old friend said without vanity. "I had to do something. I'm getting old, Eleanor."

"Choreographing and starring in your own show was a brilliant decision." She'd gone to see the show by herself, and it'd been stunning. Emotionally moving. She'd cried, though she knew some of the tears were for herself and the longing for dance.
 

"It was necessity," Anya said. "If you were still dancing, you'd do the same."

But she wasn't. "I'm opening a dance studio," she said in a cheery voice.

"Ballet?"

"And ballroom," she improvised. Because why not? She loved all the dances, and it'd broaden her clientele.
 

"Why would you want to do that?" Anya asked in her usual matter-of-fact way.
 

"Because, like you said, I'm getting old and I can't go back to ballet myself," she said just as bluntly.

"Yes, but
teaching
?"

She felt a moment of doubt, because she knew Anya understood in a way no one else would: dancing was her first love.
 

But then a voice in her head that sounded very much like Charles's reminded her how old she was, and how long it'd been since she'd danced. "Where would we have been if we didn't have teachers?"
 

"On top of the dance world, still, darling, because that's how we are."

She rolled her eyes.
 

"Eleanor, you have too much talent to teach little brats."
 

"Did you forget the part where I haven't danced in almost twenty years?" Saying it out loud hurt. Badly.

Ignoring her, Anya gasped. "And the mothers! Don't you remember the stage mothers who were more cutthroat than their daughters? I
shudder
, Eleanor. I shudder."

"With all the drama in you, no wonder you produced such a hit."

Anya gasped again. "That's it. Come and produce a show with me."

"That's crazy." She shook her head. "I haven't danced in so long—"

"What does that matter? Have you forgotten everything you know? Of course not, because dancing is in your soul. I know you can't perform like the ballerina you once were, because you're too old—"

"Thanks," she said with a roll of her eyes.

"—But that doesn't mean you can't create. You always had the best musicality of us all, and you could weave all the styles of dance into a coherent movement. I always envied that." Anya's voice firmed. "Yes, you'll choreograph for me."

"No, you'll come guest teach for me."

"When pigs fly, darling." Her friend snorted. "It's not my destiny to wipe snot from babies in leotards."

"And mine isn't to choreograph."
 

"How do you know?" Anya pushed. "You haven't tried. You'd be brilliant at it. I can already see it."

She shook her head. "You need glasses then."

Anya laughed. "You're still the same, Eleanor, and that gives me hope. Because the Eleanor Westwood who I knew had dance in her soul. I'll find her again.
You
want me to find her, or you wouldn't have called me."

She frowned. "I called you to help me."

"And that's what I'm going to do," Anya said before she hung up.

"Why did that sound like a threat?" Eleanor mumbled as she put her phone down.

Chapter 14

Max sat at the piano, staring at the blank sheets in front of him. All morning, there'd been the most perfect absolute silence that he'd ever heard in his entire life.

He couldn't concentrate worth a damn. What was wrong with him?

What was wrong with him was that his guilt was magnified in the echo of the silence.

He set his pencil down and raked his hair. Maybe if he apologized to Eleanor, he'd be able to go back to writing his music.

Except the only apology she'd take was him withdrawing his complaint, but having the noise start up again wasn't in his favor.
 

The other thing that wasn't in his favor: time. He was running out of it. The score was due in a little over two weeks, and he had a big, fat nothing done.

What if he couldn't write this piece?

Well, that was easy—he'd be out the opportunity to work with Duggan Richter.
 

He shook his head. Not going to happen. He'd worked too hard to let it all fall apart.
 

So what was he going to do to get on track?
 

He had no idea.

Getting up, he put on shoes and went out the back door. He started out toward the pond, but then a rustling in the bushes between Liam's house and Eleanor's made him pause.

A small animal?
 

He saw a flash of sunlit hair and an excitement rose in him. It was Eleanor.

Without thought, he walked toward her.

Her head popped up as he approached, and her beautiful eyes narrowed at him. "Shouldn't you be reveling in the quietude?" she asked with a sarcastic bite, yanking something from the ground.

"What are you doing?" he asked, eyeing the pile of uprooted plants next to her.

"Not a Mensa candidate, are you?" She tugged on another one.
 

He watched her struggle with it. It fought her, clinging to the ground for dear life. She grunted softly as she tried to work it out of the ground.
 

He listened to her exhalations, trying not to let his imagination run away with him. Only it didn't help that her cheeks were flushed and there was a fine sheen of sweat in the valley at the opening of her top.

Like she was being thoroughly pleasured in bed.

He felt the desire rise up, but he swallowed it back. He would not think of his gorgeous neighbor that way, even if she sounded like his most lusty dream.
 

Besides, she was Liam's gorgeous neighbor, not his.

She made another sexy sound, leaning forward so her shirt fell away from her body, giving him a view of the swells of her breasts…