The Ballerina's Secret Read online

  He’d traded his customary dark, conservative suit for something on the opposite end of the fashion spectrum. He wore a slim-cut suit jacket, in a piercing navy blue. His necktie was just a slim strip of navy silk with a bright red heart in the middle, framed by a white zigzag design.

  A heart. Tessa could hardly believe her eyes. Brooding, pensive Julian Shine was wearing a heart in the center of his chest. The heart was merely part of the pattern on his tie, but it was such an uncharacteristically hopeful symbol that she couldn’t wrap her head around it.

  She swallowed, and her hand started shaking. Champagne sloshed over the rim of the glass.

  Tessa wasn’t sure what to make of this new Julian. She blinked. Hard. Were those spectator wingtip shoes on his feet? Yes. Yes, they were. He looked like Don Draper, with a dash of Fred Astaire. Dapper. Charming. And just rakish enough to send a shiver of remembrance down Tessa’s spine.

  She stood still as stone while Julian’s gaze swept the crowded ballroom. Her breath grew shallow. Every cell in her body tingled with awareness. Tessa had known for years that memories were every bit as physical as they were mental. Remembrance could live and breathe in flesh and bone.

  Muscle memory, dancers called it.

  Her body remembered his touch. It remembered the sensual brush of his fingertips and the sweet, wet warmth of his mouth. She could feel it now, as real as if he’d crossed the room and kissed her while he lifted the hem of her dress and trailed his hand up the inside of her thigh.

  She shouldn’t feel this aroused. She definitely shouldn’t. He hadn’t even made eye contact with her.

  Zander waved and called Julian’s name. He turned, gave Zander a curt nod and then locked eyes with Tessa as he approached.

  She pressed her thighs together and took a generous gulp of champagne. Her head spun a little. Damn Zander and his plentiful trays of Dom Pérignon.

  “Mr. Shine, so glad you could make it.” Zander beamed and shook Julian’s hand.

  “Good to see you again.” Julian nodded. His gaze slid to Tessa and back to Zander again.

  Tessa’s stomach did a little flip, and when Julian bent to kiss her cheek in greeting, she realized why.

  It felt like a date. She still knew it wasn’t, but it felt like one, all the same.

  He hadn’t even brought Chance. Just himself.

  Tessa took a deep breath while Zander launched into an explanation of Big Band Night—what it was and the reasons he’d originally thought it would be a good fit for the Bennington. He’d wanted to honor the hotel’s rich history with Lawrence Welk and Guy Lombardo, both of whom had performed at hotels like the Bennington, in a way that would bring a glamorous ambiance back to the building. It had been a phenomenal success. So phenomenal that once a month, Zander’s hotel was one of the hottest spots in Manhattan.

  Julian nodded and actually smiled a few times during Zander’s monologue. He seemed genuinely impressed. But his gaze kept darting back to Tessa, and she felt the heat in his sapphire eyes down to her toes.

  “I want to take Big Band Night a step further and really cater to the jazz crowd. Real jazz, with altered chords, modal harmonies, progressions...that kind of thing,” Zander said.

  Julian gave him a crisp nod. “Free jazz.”

  “Exactly.” Zander grinned.

  Tessa knew precisely where he was headed. So did Julian, if the sudden stiffness in his posture was any indication.

  Sure enough, Zander went in for the kill. “That’s what The Circle Club is all about.”

  He was going to offer Julian a job. A job that Julian didn’t want to discuss in any way, shape or form.

  Tessa wanted to strangle Zander all of a sudden. The night had been lovely so far. She didn’t want it to end with an awkward job offer that would remind Julian of all that he’d lost.

  She had to stop what was happening.

  Zander’s smile widened. “I think you’d be a great fit...”

  “Dance with me.” Tessa grabbed Julian’s hand.

  His fingers, warm and strong, closed over hers. Her head swam with images of his hands flying over black-and-white keys, making music. Piano hands.

  Zander cast her a hard glance. “We’re in the middle of a conversation.”

  “Not anymore.” Heart hammering, she thrust her empty glass at him and then leaned closer to Julian, as if he was her partner and they were about to dance a pas de deux.

  Except it wasn’t at all like that. She never felt this breathless, this electric when she was about to dance with Chance. Or anyone else. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  Julian’s gaze fixed unwaveringly on Tessa’s supple spine as she led him by the hand to the dance floor. The ballroom could have been crumbling down around him in a pile of gold leaf and crimson velvet, and he’d have never noticed. Her dress draped into a low dip right at the small of her back, and the sight of her porcelain back mesmerized him. So lithe, so graceful. He was transfixed.

  And more than a little tempted.

  He shouldn’t be there. He shouldn’t be sliding his arm around Tessa into a dance hold, with her supple, bare back against his fingertips. He shouldn’t be pulling her so close against him that he could feel the heat of her body through the diaphanous fabric of her satin dress.

  Yet here you are.

  “I’m sorry about my brother.” Tessa peered up at him through the thick fringe of her lashes.

  Something deep inside Julian shifted, as if clicking into place. God, how much champagne had he consumed?

  He cleared his throat. “It’s fine.”

  She rolled her eyes. “It’s not. Please tell me you have relatives who annoy you sometimes, too.”

  Julian stared at her for a beat. He didn’t want to talk about his family. Not now. He just wanted to dance with her. A part of him had probably been waiting to dance with her since the moment he’d first seen her gliding across the ballet-studio floor.

  But the last time he’d shut down on her, she’d fled. With good reason. So he exhaled a tense breath and shifted his gaze someplace else. Anywhere other than her sympathetic emerald eyes. “I don’t have much family. My mother died when I was nineteen. My father left when I was a kid. He resurfaced briefly, but after my accident, he pulled a disappearing act again.”

  After my accident...

  It was the first time he’d mentioned the car crash to Tessa...or to anyone, for as long as he could remember. The words felt rusty coming out of his mouth. But there they were, hanging in the air like dark clouds.

  “No brothers or sisters?” Tessa asked softly.

  “No, but Chance is like a brother. We’ve known each other since we were kids. And he certainly qualifies as annoying at times.”

  Tessa’s eyes glittered. He drew her closer as the music changed. “Did you just make a joke, Mr. Crankypants?”

  He was tempted to make another one, possibly about turning her over his knee and spanking her if she kept calling him that. But he refrained. “I’m not all bad.”

  Her lips curved into a coy smile. “I know you’re not.”

  Julian was suddenly overly aware of the hotel key card tucked into the front pocket of his suit jacket. The concierge had handed it to him when he first arrived.

  Compliments of Mr. Wilde.

  Zander was courting him. Pulling out all the stops. Julian was certain that Tessa’s brother hadn’t paused to consider that Tessa herself might end up in that room...in his bed.

  Julian hadn’t considered it either, because it wasn’t going to happen.

  But the way Tessa was looking at him right then made the key card impossible to ignore. It was like a stick of dynamite in his pocket.

  “You and Zander seem close,” he said, by way of distraction.

  Still, the concierge’s words as he’d slid the key across the marble counter, towa
rd Julian, echoed in his consciousness.

  The Duke Ellington Suite, sir. Featuring floor-to-ceiling windows, sweeping views of Central Park and a baby grand piano.

  “We’re close.” Tessa nodded. The copper highlights in her hair shimmered beneath the ballroom’s crystal chandelier. “I had an accident a while back, too. I fell.”

  “I know,” he said, his voice raw and rusty again.

  It would have been dishonest to pretend they lived in a vacuum. She hadn’t acted as if she’d been unaware of his past. He owed her the same.

  “Zander has been very protective of me since then. My whole family has. Sometimes it gets a little...”

  “Stifling?” Julian lifted a brow.

  “Exactly, which is why I haven’t told them I can hear.” She bit her lip, and Julian made a Herculean effort not to look at her mouth. He failed miserably. “I can sort of hear, anyway.”

  “Sort of. What does that mean?”

  “I can only hear out of my right ear, not my left. It just started happening a little over a week ago. During auditions.”

  That explained her astonished expression and the freedom in her dancing. Julian remembered thinking that Tessa’s body moved as if she’d never heard music before. It had been truer than he’d realized.

  “Your family would probably be thrilled if they knew.” They seemed like the real deal, unlike Julian’s father, who’d only turned up in Julian’s life once he’d gotten his first gold record.

  Still, Julian had wanted to believe his father was back to stay. Right about the time he’d convinced himself it might be true, Julian had climbed into a car with Chance after the Grammy Awards. His career was gone overnight, and so was his father.

  “My hearing isn’t like it was before. Everything’s so loud. Distorted. It might not even last. My doctor advised me to stay home for a month or so to try and get used to it.”

  He was beginning to understand. “But if you did that, you’d have to give up your part in the ballet.”

  “Precisely. I can’t do that. I won’t. My mom...even Zander...would insist on it if they knew. They care, and I love them for it. Sometimes they just care a little too much. I’ve been waiting a long time for something wonderful to happen. And now it is. I don’t want to wait anymore.”

  They weren’t just talking about ballet anymore.

  The flicker of heat in Tessa’s gaze gave her away. She was thinking about the night they’d almost spent together. He was thinking about it, too. Every touch, every taste, every sigh. Julian remembered them all. He couldn’t look at her anymore without longing to recapture what had happened in that empty ballet studio. Night and day, he wanted her.

  More than wanted...he ached for her.

  “I have to live my life.” Tessa’s voice dropped to nothing more than a hoarse whisper. Her gaze dropped slowly, sensually, to Julian’s mouth.

  He went instantly hard.

  If her family hadn’t been watching from just a few feet away, he would have kissed her again, then and there. They were swaying to the sounds of another era, in a ballroom that had witnessed generations of life’s celebrations and sorrows. Maybe it was the magic of their surroundings, or maybe it was the fact that Julian was dressed in a suit he’d once worn onstage, but he felt himself being pulled into the past. Back to a time when he wouldn’t have hesitated to take Tessa to bed, to lay her down on the crisp white sheets that waited upstairs and bury himself inside her until the sun came up over Central Park.

  I have to live my life...

  How long had it been since Julian lived? Really lived? Chance would have had the answer at the ready. He’d been harping on it for months now, and he was right. Julian hadn’t lived since the night of his accident. Shutting himself up in his apartment wasn’t a life. He’d been existing, not living.

  For a while, it had been enough.

  It wasn’t anymore.

  He knew that now. Deep down, in a place that Julian seldom allowed himself to acknowledge, he’d probably known it all along. But the night he’d kissed Tessa—the night he’d watched her come so blissfully apart—had changed things. For a few breathless moments in a darkened dance studio, he’d lived.

  If he could get that moment back, he might have done things differently. He might have let her see him. All of him. He might have focused on her and her alone, instead of the mirrors that had surrounded them on every side. He might have given into the unrelenting desire to be inside her, scars be damned.

  Turning back the clock wasn’t possible, though. Julian knew that better than anyone. But Tessa’s parted lips and the look in her eyes said otherwise. That look slayed him, and it had a name...

  Bedroom eyes.

  He needed to leave...now, before he did something they’d both regret. The mirrors had stopped him before, but they weren’t at the ballet anymore. They were in a luxury hotel, full of fizzy champagne and music that made him feel like something other than what he was. It was like a fever dream, vivid and lush.

  The song they’d been dancing to wound to a close, and the band’s horn section launched into a brash intro of something new. Julian recognized the tune before the lyrics started. They were playing “Dance, Ballerina, Dance” a somewhat obscure song, performed first by Vaughn Monroe and later by some of jazz’s greatest. Nat King Cole’s version had always been Julian’s favorite.

  He swallowed hard. Ballerina. Why did it seem like the universe was trying to tell him something?

  The lead vocalist crooned, “Dance, ballerina, dance...”

  Tessa’s eyes grew wide, and her cherry-red lips curved into a giddy grin. “What is this song?”

  Julian pulled her closer, so that her body was flush against his, and then dipped his head so his lips grazed her ear. “Careful, you’re not supposed to be able to hear, remember? You’re giving yourself away.”

  He pressed a chaste, tender kiss to the spot just below her earlobe. It was meant to be a diversion, just a way to hide the fact that he was talking to her. But it didn’t stop there, because somehow that simple brush of his lips felt like the beginning of something. A prelude, a promise.

  Before he realized what he was doing, Julian’s mouth slid lower to kiss the gentle curve of Tessa’s neck. It was a real kiss this time, decadent and openmouthed. His lips lingered long enough for him to feel the flutter of her pulse and the shiver that coursed through her willowy body.

  Julian pulled back to look at her. Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes had gone deliciously dark. She seemed more than a little unsteady on her feet all of a sudden. Shaken. Weak in the knees.

  The song played on. “Whirl, ballerina, whirl...”

  “Let’s leave. Let’s go somewhere, just you and me. I want to be alone with you again,” she whispered. “Please, Julian.”

  They’d come to a complete stop on the dance floor. Couples spun around them, twirling to the music, and Julian was scarcely aware of any of them. It was all just a blur. Tessa was all he could see, and the impossible things she was asking of him were all he could hear. All he wanted to hear.

  He looked at her long and hard. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  She was offering herself to him, offering him her balletic body and aching grace. He wanted her to be certain. He needed her to promise him that if they went down this road, she wouldn’t change her mind once he undressed and she saw his marred body, his ruined flesh.

  But he couldn’t demand such a promise. He knew that.

  He also knew that if he didn’t take her to bed, the ache of wanting her might kill him.

  “I know exactly what I’m saying. I’m saying I want to see you. I want to touch you, and I want you inside me. Now...tonight.” She was shaking like a leaf, but her gaze was unwavering.

  What must it have taken for her to say those words to him after he’d denied her before? Julian couldn’t i
magine. He didn’t deserve this. He didn’t deserve her. And he couldn’t deny her again if he’d tried. He knew it, and so did she.

  “Tessa.” His voice broke, and something deep inside him seemed to break along with it.

  She placed the palm of her hand against his chest, directly over the red heart on his tie. “I want you, Julian. As you are right now, the man standing in front of me.”

  Without another word, she took his hand again. This time, she led him away from the glittering ballroom. Away from the happy chatter, the swaying couples and starlit ceiling.

  To a place where they could truly dance.

  Live, ballerina, live.

  Chapter Twelve

  A knot of panic gathered in the pit of Tessa’s stomach. She’d never acted this way before. With anyone. She’d never, ever looked a man in the eye and told him she wanted him. Most certainly, never a man who’d rejected her in the past.

  As frightening as it was, there was something empowering about coming right out and saying it aloud. It was as intoxicating as it was frightening. The words had bubbled up her throat. There’d been no stopping them.

  I want to see you. I want to touch you, and I want you inside me. Now...tonight.

  There wasn’t an inch of her flesh that Julian hadn’t seen. Touched. Kissed. But Tessa had never felt so naked, so vulnerable, as when she uttered those words.

  She’d been holding on to them for a while now—resisting her desire for him, trying to tamp it down. But once she told him how she felt, her whole body seemed to exhale. It was a relief to let go, to fully live in the moment, rather than worrying about what might happen a day from now...a week, a month. Tessa knew better than anyone how unpredictable the future could be.

  Whatever happened between her and Julian next would change things. Tessa couldn’t begin to think what it would be like to see him at the studio after tonight, but she didn’t care. Not now. Sometimes change could be a good thing, couldn’t it? Even when that change was altogether unexpected.

  After her fall thirteen months ago, Tessa had been convinced her life was over. Everything she’d wanted—everything she’d dreamed about and worked so hard for—no longer seemed possible.