The Billionaire's Ballet: A Contemporary Billionaire Friends to Lovers Romance (Friends with Benefits) (13 page)

“They weren’t taken,” he said. “They basically gave the second one to me.”

He rummaged around in the fridge. “Oh good, they do have whisky rocks. This will do until the packs freeze.”

“Whisky rocks?”

He returned to the sofa with what looked like two gray blocks in a bag. “You chill them to put in drinks you want to be cold but not watered down with melting ice.”

“Crazy,” I said. I rolled my ankle, testing it for pain. Other than the discomfort of the cold on my skin, it seemed okay.

Bennett reached for my shoe. “May I?” he asked.

I nodded. He carefully slipped the ballet flat off and set it on the floor. “Might as well do the other,” he said, and removed that one as well.

Now the other brother was undressing me!

Chapter 15

Bennett set my other shoe on the floor, and I took that moment to scoot a little bit away.

He must have recognized my withdrawal, because he stood up and walked toward the bank of windows. “I can get a specialist here to look at you if you want,” he said.

“I don’t really think it’s necessary,” I said. My ankle was cold, so I moved the whisky rocks.

The Dallas skyline was lit behind Bennett, twinkling lights and the slow cross of an airplane headed for the airport. His pale shirt was stark against the night sky, and his pants were perfectly fitted.

Another tendril of interest unfurled in me, but I tamped it down. Wrong brother.

“I’ve only been to Dallas once,” I said, rolling my ankle and realizing it felt pretty fine now. I set it on the floor to test putting a little pressure on it.

“When was that?” he asked. He continued to stare out the window.

“Mom brought me here when I was about twelve, I think. She wanted to go to a dance exhibition of some friend of hers. Something with a lot of scarves and tambourine music.”

“Did you like the city?”

 
I scooted forward on the sofa to exert a little more force on my ankle. It twinged slightly, so I backed off again.

“I didn’t see a lot. A little dance studio. Eating burgers at some greasy diner. We didn’t really explore. I asked to go to Six Flags and she said the roller coasters would destroy my spine.”

Bennett laughed. “Mothers can be like that.”

I sat with my back against the arm of the sofa and elevated the injured ankle on the back. RICE. Rest. Ice. Compression. Elevate. As I arranged my skirt to avoid showing too much thigh, I realized Bennett wasn’t looking at the window but at my reflection in the glass.

“Bennett?”

The note of wistfulness in my voice put him on guard. I could see it in the way he squared his shoulders. He turned around and sat on an armchair near the window, a good distance from me.

“Juliet?” His voice was harder, almost a dare, as if he knew what I would ask.

“Why are you still so angry at your mother?”

His whole body became like granite, as if Medusa had changed him to stone. But I didn’t care. I wanted to know what made this man into the ruthless person he had become.

Maybe I cared too. There were too many damaged things.

My ankle.

His heart.

“The five women who agreed to my father’s ridiculous ploy to have children for money were selfish, vain, and heartless. They didn’t even think about the babies they were relinquishing.”

“I doubt that.”

“You didn’t meet Pearl’s and Rose’s mothers. God. What a crock. They jumped at the chance to get back on the estate. They had already gone through their cool two million and thought they could get more if the girls liked them.”

“Did they? Rose and Pearl?”

“Of course. They got into clubs, drank, partied. There isn’t a mother bone in either one of their bodies.”

“They didn’t have other children?”

“Rose’s mother did. She ditched them with their father to get a chance at more Claremont money.”

I sighed. How could I convince the man that mothers could be good when he had so much evidence to the contrary?

“My mother sacrificed her career to have me,” I said. “She could have ended the pregnancy. She didn’t know the dad very well, and he wasn’t interested in me.”

“Who was he?”

“Some flamenco dancer on tour. I met him once, when I was five. He was very strange. When I see his pictures now, I think my mother must have had very odd taste in men.”

Bennett stifled a laugh. “Sorry, I’m just picturing a tall guy in a fitted pantsuit with hot pink stitching.”

“You aren’t that far off the mark.” I relaxed against the arm of the sofa.

“Well, your mother is one of the good ones,” Bennett said. “There’s no doubting that.”

“I really pray that her follow-up news is good,” I said. My voice caught. The cancer just had to be gone.

“She’s in good hands,” Bennett said. “I chose the oncologist myself.”

 
“You’ve been really good to her. I wish I had known to be here.”

“This is what she wanted. The idea of you not dancing was the hardest thing for her.”

“I can’t stand to lose her,” I said quietly. “I think that’s what your father felt too. The fear of going through all that again.”

Bennett’s jaw got tense. I wanted to soothe him somehow. I dropped my legs to the floor and was about to stand up when he leaped from the chair. “No!” he said. “Your ankle!”

I had forgotten.

“I think it’s all right,” I said. “Maybe we can test it.” I stood up on one leg, gingerly setting the other foot down.

His arm came around my waist. “Lean on me for balance. I don’t want you falling on it again.”

His body was warm and muscled. I wrapped my arm around him and lightly set my toe on the floor, then flattened my foot slowly and gradually.

My heel came down without pain, and I carefully, gently, shifted some weight to it.

I felt a small twinge, but it settled it quickly. Then I stood on both feet.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I think I’ll be walking easily by tomorrow. I’ll just warm up first.”

“You want to stay here tonight, then? The helicopter is waiting either way.”

I looked around the sumptuous room. I’d never seen anything like this. White rugs on a deep red-brown wood floor. Carved furniture and paintings that ran from floor to ceiling.

And the view. I moved as if to take a step toward the glass, but Bennett scooped me up again. “I can show you around. Walking is for tomorrow.”

This time I relaxed into his embrace. It felt good to be carried, cared for. I folded my hands together in my lap rather than wrapping them around his neck.

“All right, pack mule. Show me around.”

Bennett laughed and shifted me in his arms so I was more upright. My dress was too short in the back to cover me in this position, and I felt his hand on my thigh, holding me in place. Thank goodness for boy shorts.

We walked across the living room to the door closest to the elevator. “This is a bathroom,” he said, bumping it open with his shoulder.

The light turned on automatically with the swing of the door. I gasped. This was no ordinary bathroom with a toilet and tub. An entire room opened up with a hot tub–sized bath in the center, raised on a platform with marble stairs leading up to it.

“Hell’s bells,” I said. “Now
that
is a place for a bath.”

“I’d be happy to serve as your personal assistant for one if you’d like,” Bennett said.

I smacked his shoulder. “I bet.”

“It would be good for your ankle. Contrast bath.”

I realized I was feeling tempted by him. I could feel the muscles and hard planes of his body as we moved together. Desire unfurled in my belly.

“You’d better show me the other rooms before I take you up on that,” I said.

His eyebrow quirked. “Friends only, of course.”

“Of course.”

His smile was infectious and I could only return it.

The bathroom had a second door and we moved through it. The light did not pop on for this room, so Bennett bumped a switch with his elbow.

My throat tightened. A bedroom. It was majestic, gold and cream, an enormous four-poster dominating the space. The bedspread gleamed.

“You’ll like this,” Bennett said. He took me straight to the bed and for a moment my heart skipped, imagining him laying me down on it and having his way with me.

But he left me sitting there and picked up a remote from the side table. With the press of a button, a large wooden chest at the end of the bed slid open and a flat-screen television rose from inside it.

I scurried to the edge of the bed. “How is this possible? The TV is taller than the box!”

“It’s sunken into the floor,” he said. “I was flummoxed by it myself last time I was here.”

We peered together into the guts of the mechanism that lifted the television, grinning like kids.

“The stuff they put in hotels these days,” I said.

“It’s crazy,” Bennett agreed. He turned the TV on. “I’m pretty sure there is a channel devoted to the arts,” he said.

“You were watching an arts channel?” I asked. This was actually sort of charming, and a relief from picturing him on the gold bed with some other woman.

“I had it on in the background while I worked,” he said. He flipped through the guide, then a classical concert with a full orchestra came on.

“They’re playing
La Traviata
!” I said excitedly. “This is our next ballet.”

He turned it up a few notches so we could catch the nuances of the music. I swung around on the bed to lie on my belly, watching the violinists racing along the beat of an up-tempo section.

Bennett watched me with a bemused expression. “It’s a great opera.”

“I’ve been studying it,” I said. “It’s one of those tragic stories.”

“Yes,” Bennett said. “I’ve always found it fascinating, all the different takes on the star-crossed love affair.”

“They never figure it out, do they?” I asked. “The poor girl never gets the rich boy.”

Bennett hesitates at my question. “Well, in this case, they find a way, but it is too late.”

“Right. Consumption. Till death they did part. Everybody loves a tragic love affair.”

I watched the conductor passionately wave his baton.

“Did you ever have one?” Bennett asked.

I tore my gaze from the screen to look at him. “Have one what?”

“A tragic love affair.”

My cheeks warmed. “Not really.”

He kicked off his shoes to sit more naturally on the bed. “What? The famous ballerina hasn’t had an admirer sweep her off her feet?”

I kept my eyes on the television, unable to meet his gaze. “I found having relationships with other dancers was messy. And patrons were even worse.” I shrugged. “So all casual. Nothing heartbreaking. Nothing tragic.”

I didn’t mention how none of them had been Quinn.

The longing refrain moved from the full orchestra down to a few mournful instruments.

After a moment, I stole a glance at Bennett and could see the emotion on his face.

“I can see that you have had one,” I said gently.

He shook himself, as if shedding a memory. “Yes and no. I was engaged. She left me for another man. Probably for the best.”

I swung my legs around and sat up. This conversation wasn’t about me at all. It was about him. “How is that for the best?”

“She didn’t really want me. I thought she did. But she was like the others.”

“After money?”

“Maybe. It wasn’t me she wanted. Not in the end.”

“What happened?”

Bennett unbuttoned his sleeves and rolled one of them up. “Nothing so tragic as dying of consumption. She moved on.”

“Do you see her anymore?”

He moved on to the other sleeve. “She was around for a while. I quit going to our parties to avoid her. Quinn’s parties, I guess.”

“Is she still around?” I wanted to smack her smug little face.

“No,” he said. “I think she’s off in Florida now.”

We sat for a moment, listening to the violins slide up and down the sorrowful notes. Our hands were just inches away on the gold bed, both sitting up, our bodies cast blue from the screen.

We breathed in time with the music, in time with each other. I thought of the various men in my life in New York. I’d tried, really tried, to open up to them and abolish Quinn. But the emotions I’d grown up with were tenacious. And the relationships felt so doomed. Even the young dancer I’d given up my virginity to could not hold me.

But this moment.

It was different.

I turned to Bennett and realized he wasn’t watching the television, but me.

The colors flashed on his face. He didn’t look so hard now, or so cold.

My hand crossed those bare inches and touched his. He didn’t move at first, but looked down at our fingers. Every part of me longed to connect with him in some way.

His hand turned and took mine. A woman came onstage to sing with this portion of the music. The words were in Italian, but you could hear the sorrow in them, the regret.

Emotion overwhelmed me. So much sadness in the world. So hard for people to find each other and be loved. I gripped Bennett’s hand more tightly, as if it were my tether to the world.

He reached for me and wrapped an arm around my waist, sliding me across the bed to rest against him.

Still, we only held hands by the barest of fingertips, watching the singer. She was arrestingly beautiful, dark hair, perfect eyebrows. When she sang, her face expressed the emotion with wonder and pain.

When the song finally came to its tragic conclusion, tears rolled down my face. Bennett lifted the remote and shut it off. The room darkened, lit only by the side lamps he’d turned on when we entered the room.

I wanted to say a lot of things. That this was how it felt to do ballet. That I was sorry for his heartbreak. And his father’s.

When I looked at him, it was as if I was seeing him for the first time. He wasn’t closed off, hard-shelled. He was a Bennett I’d never known, not even as a girl. I’d never bothered to really try, always enchanted by the charming, effusive younger Claremont son.

My face turned up to him as his turned down. When our lips met, it was like two lost souls touching, realizing we were still afloat in a dark silent sea.