On the Line (Special Ops) (2 page)

Chapter Two

“A
re you ready
for the show this weekend?”
 
Zahara sat down on the red velvet covered fainting sofa.

“I’m always ready. The question is,” Ariana smiled; “are you ready?”

“I’m nervous. I know I have done a show here and there, but this one is a little bigger and I don’t want to mess up. You have taught me so much, but…”

“You’re still afraid?”

“Yes.” She laughed and shook her head. “Is that crazy?”

“No,” Ariana pushed the paperwork on her solid mahogany wood desk aside. “I still get nervous too, and I have been dancing since I was five years old. You would think there wouldn’t be any butterflies left in my stomach by now.” She laughed. “I was your first,” she winked. “And even though you spent several years in Alaska learning from somebody else…”

“Not really,” Zahara said. “I mean I went to classes. I tried to get into her teaching style, but she wasn’t you. I ended up being really busy so I didn’t go to classes as much as I probably should have.”

“You’re still really busy, Zahara. You’re a professor at the university and you just got funding for your research on one of our undocumented heavenly bodies…you’re busy. I think the problem was that you didn’t connect with your instructor so you chose not to make the time for dance.” She watched as Zahara nodded in agreement. They both knew she would have found a way to make every class if she really wanted it. That was the thing about dancing, there were many different styles and techniques and students had to find the best fit for their taste. Ariana knew she didn’t fit everybody’s ideal when it came to dancing. The ones who didn’t like her style faded away and by the end of a few weeks of class she had those who were serious about learning. She liked the serious ones to stay because she could move them up the class grade ladder and some of them were even good enough to join her troop. With the yearly extravaganza show that she put together all of her students performed, some did solos, some did group dances. Her first and second semester beginning belly dance students were all on group dances. They were all still too afraid to do solos. Normally Ariana allowed them to go at their own speed, but she wouldn’t do that for Zahara. Zahara was ready. She was a much stronger dancer than she gave herself credit for. Ariana knew by next summer she would be ready to attempt Morocco for the amateur level—maybe even higher. Zahara could dance like she had been born to dance instead of study the stars. She just needed to have confidence in herself.

“You’re ready,” she told her. “You’re going to take their breath away just as you take mine away when I watch you move.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it. I’m in awe of your passion and skill and talent. You’re an amazing dancer, a brilliant woman and you’re beautiful. Have a little faith in yourself.”

Zahara laughed. “I don’t know how beautiful I am, but I will try to have faith in me.”

“Is this still about the guy who got away?”

Zahara nodded. “Maybe a little. I’m average, Ariana. I’m not tall; five-five is not tall. I don’t have big breasts,” Ariana watched as Zahara looked down to the b-cup breasts she sported. “I’m a little curvy, but not super curvy or anything. I’m just me and I don’t think “just me” attracts the right kind of man.”

Ariana nearly doubled over with laughter. The girl was a knockout beauty. She was a delicate and exotic mixture of Hawaiian with white and a hint of Japanese. Her mother being full blooded Hawaiian and her father being white with a hint of Japanese in his bloodline on his father’s side of the family came together to create exotic beauty. The slight angle to Zahara’s eyes told of her mix, the long silky hair she had pointed to the Polynesian in her, and those striking blue eyes against her tanned features and raven hair was amazing. She had more admirers than she knew. Ariana had seen the way men looked at her when she passed them by, or when they passed her by. Every Thursday they had brunch at their favorite café on Plaza and every Thursday Ariana watched how men nearly tripped over their feet trying to get a better look at the woman.

“You are so in denial,” she finally said. “You’re gorgeous. Men notice you; trust me on that. They just keep going because you never give them the impression that you’re interested in having them notice you. The ones who approach you and keep bugging you, the type you don’t want, are the ones who aren’t waiting for a sign that you’re interested and aren’t quick to leave once they find out you’re not.”

“Yes oh wise one,” she put the palms of her hands together in front of her chest and bowed her head. Ariana laughed.

“You’re young still. You’ll find the right man. But first you must find your confidence in yourself. I see it in you when you dance. I see it in you when you speak at conferences for your profession. I see it in you when I look at the woman who won a research grant away from older men with far more acceptable years in the field listed on their resume.”

“Yeah, but I have been studying the heavens with my father since I was a little girl. I was two and he would take me out to Anini Bay Beach Park or up into the Na Pali cliffs to study the stars. My mom worked with the observation of the rainforest…that’s how they met actually, but I already told you about that. My point is I’m comfortable and confident with my career because I have technically been training for it since I was two years old. I know more than a lot of these guys who didn’t start studying about the stars until they got their first telescope at the age of twelve. I had an expert teaching me about the stars and an expert teaching me about the rainforest and the earth.”

“True and you have an expert teaching you about dance.” She reminded her.

“I know, but I haven’t been doing it as long. Maybe in another twenty years I’ll feel like a pro.”

“Well I would suggest you feel like a pro by Friday night,” she laughed. “You always feel the music when you dance. That’s not something I can teach it’s something you’re born with. Embrace it.”

She fell onto her back on the fainting couch in a mock over dramatic fainting move with the classic damsel meets diva fainting spell yell. Ariana laughed. “Don’t dramatize it silly.”

Zahara laughed as she sat up. “I’m going to try to rock it out. I have a great costume. I have a great song to dance to. I’m mostly improvising so if I mess up I’ll just keep going like you always tell us to. That’s the great thing about the solo and not the group. If I mess up on a group routine then everybody knows.”

“So true,” she nodded. “So, how are you really doing with being back in Texas? I know you have been here for a little while but you seem to miss Alaska sometimes.”

She shrugged. “I love Hawaii and would have moved back there if I could have gotten on at the university. Alaska was okay. It wasn’t horrible. The sky is beautiful to watch, but it’s cold.” She put the emphasis on cold. “I guess what I miss is that it’s so far away from here.”

“You were never happy here were you?”

“I was. I mean when my dad told us we were all moving to Texas I nearly had a stroke. I was twelve, had the best friends, was living in the best place in the world, and he wanted to move to Texas. Why? But then I got here and on my first day of school I met somebody great. I found out that I liked boys in ways I never thought I’d like them. I met a nice girl and she got the guy. That was killer because I was right there in front of him and he chose her. They started dating our junior year of high school when I had been in love with him since I was twelve. They dated all the way through high school and pretty much was on the fast track to marriage. I couldn’t take it. It hurt too much. So I…”

“Ran away?”

She nodded sheepishly. “Coward that I am.”

“Well that makes me one too in a way,” she said.

“Your situation was different, Ariana.”

“Yes, it was. Preston was the love of my life. He saved my life. But he also broke my heart. I thought we had something until he was packing his bag one day and he said to me,
Air Force all the way, that’s who I am, what I am, and it’s the most important thing in my life right now
. What was I supposed to think about that? Our marriage should have been the most important thing in his life. I should have been important in his life. I never asked him to give up his career. I never asked him to ask for modified duty—if he could even get it. I never asked him to give anything up and in that one sentence he told me just where I stood in his world…I was the mistress and his career was the love of his life. I didn’t want that. I wasn’t the woman for him—his career was. So I filed for divorce and sent the papers. I guess it was perfect for him because he signed them the same day he received them. He didn’t even call to ask me why or if we could work on it. If he had I would have known I meant something to him…that we meant something to him…but we didn’t, I didn’t. Whatever,” she pushed her curls back out of her face. “I have moved on. He has moved on. Everybody is happy.”

“Liar,” Zahara said. Ariana knew the woman was too close to her. She never got this close to any of her students but she had with Zahara. Zahara knew more about her than anybody did, and far more than any student should know, but Zahara seemed a lot like a sister to her and that made her more than just a student. She was twenty-seven years old now. She had worked hard to get where she was and she had gone far for a young woman of her age. She had defied the odds and proved that age really was just a number. She finished her PhD studies in six years instead of eight and she didn’t look back. Ariana admired her. She was a woman who knew what she wanted. Maybe that’s why they got along so well. Ariana was the same way. She didn’t have a PhD under her belt, but she did have several world championship belly dance trophies. She had won in Morocco for six years straight until she stopped going over there for competitions—her hotel blowing up kind of put a damper on going to compete. Plus she got married and she decided to stay in the states to compete. She had been in Hollywood blockbuster movies, interviewed more times than she cared to keep count of, and had built her dance school and troop. She was forty-six now and her empire was established. She still danced and would probably dance until the day she died, but she spent more of her attention on training the next of the American based belly dancers than she did performing across the nation.

“You’re right,” she finally admitted. “I still miss him. I still miss him and that makes me such an idiot because clearly he doesn’t miss me. It’s been eighteen years. Eighteen! And I still can’t get over the way he used to look at me—like I was the sun rising in the east in the morning and the moon guiding him through the dark at night. And the way he made me feel when he touched me…heaven.” She smiled.

“That good huh?”

“That spectacular,” she admitted. “You know how it is.”

“Uh…no. We haven’t really broached this conversation but I’m still a virgin, Ariana.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really,” she said with a hint of annoyance.

“There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Thanks. I can’t tell you how many idiots I have to set straight when they think just because I’m twenty-seven I should have fallen in the bed with a man by now. Their life is their choice. My life is my choice. When I do it I’m doing it for love. It’s going to be special. It’s going to be right. It’s going to mean something to me—something more than just a quick fix.”

“Smart woman. Preston was my first, my only and my last,” she admitted something to Zahara that she hadn’t admitted to anybody else. “Thank God for vibrators.”

Zahara laughed. “You so should reach out to Preston. Look him up and see where he’s at and what he’s doing now.”

“I already know. He’s living in Austin. He’s moved since he bought his first place there. He has something bigger with more land now. He runs his own company. He has a search and rescue company called the Squadron.”