Ballet Shoes and Engine Grease (4 page)

“
I don’t know.”

“
Right. As you said, you never asked for
anything.” He straightened, and the slight movement distanced his
body from hers, allowing her to breathe again. She inhaled, deep
and swift, and launched into speech.

“
Look, I know it is—”

He cut her off.
“No.
You
look.” He bent close to her once more. She could see fury
snapping in the dark eyes beneath the level black brows. He spoke
clearly and precisely, suppressing whatever emotions roiled inside
him. “There is nothing you can do to tempt me to help you. I don’t
care if you dance bare ass naked on the boardroom table. The answer
is
no
. Now, will
you please get out of my apartment and leave me alone.”

Clip, clip,
clip
. High heels
clattered in trough the open doorway at the far end of the room.
Crimson watched Myrna Constantine walk up to his son. Embarrassment
flooded her at the thought that the woman had been listening in on
the conversation, hearing Nick’s justified anger and her inability
to defuse the hostility of the situation.

“
Nicky, darling, it’s not that simple,”
Myrna said.

A sh
iver ran through Crimson as she saw Nick rake both hands
through his tangled hair, the muscles on his arms knotting with the
motion. She’d never realized how deep an impact her afternoon talks
by Uncle Stephan’s sickbed had made in her. When she’d stayed at
Longwood Hall, he’d taken her into his confidence.
You’re the only one
I can talk to about my son,
he had told her. She’d been a fool to be such a captive
audience, letting fascination for a stranger to take root in her
mind, based on nothing but a pile of photographs and a dying man’s
reminiscing.

“
Yes, mother
darling
,” came Nick’s mocking reply. “It
is
that simple. She’ll try to run the company. She’ll
fail. The money goes to charity. You can get a job, you can live
off me—on a budget, mind you—or you can find a new husband. Take
your pick.”

A
flicker of resentment drifted across Myrna Constantine’s
elegant features as she glared at her son. “And how do you think
the charity that gets the company is going to go about converting
Constantine Motors into cash?”

“
Sell it to the highest bidder, I guess.”
Nick’s bare shoulders shifted in a small shrug that summed up his
inability to do anything about the situation. “I don’t
care.”

“
I think you will.” Myrna Constantine moved
away from her son, as if anticipating an explosion. “It will be
sold to Ballard Automotive. Your father set it up.”

Nick froze.
Beneath the tan, his face paled. A pulse jumped at
his throat. From the way his chest stopped moving, Crimson could
tell he wasn’t even breathing. She edged toward the archway,
seeking safety from the surge of rage that she suspected might tear
the room apart at any moment.

The outburst
never came. She watched, fascinated, as Nick
struggled to bring himself under control. His chest began to rise
and fall again. His lips moved, and a second later, he spoke in a
quiet, even tone.

“
So, David Ballard gets the company. Well,
well, well. Isn’t that
winner takes all
. I don’t think my father could have sent me a
clearer message. He thought no more of me than he might have
thought of a bug that he quashed under his foot. Rejecting me while
he was alive was not enough. His resentment ran deep enough to
reject me even in death.”

“
Nicky, please.”

A wan smile tugged at his lips.
“It’s all right, Mother. I’ll
live. And so will you.” He turned to Crimson. “Now, ladies, if you
please, run along and leave me alone. I have an appointment with a
bottle of Scotch.” Averting his gaze, he eased past her, into the
hallway, and vanished through an open doorway into what Crimson
assumed was his bedroom.

****

Forget him, ignore
him
, Crimson told
herself as she fled the scene of the confrontation, leaving mother
and son to fight it out. And yet, unwelcome emotions churned inside
her, making her tremble. Her mind clung to the image of Nick
Constantine, bare-chested, dangerously attractive even in his
disheveled state.

When he’d brushed past her,
seeking the privacy of his
bedroom, she’d seen the stony expression on his face, and now it
ate at her conscience. Although he had tried to hide it, she had
seen the glint of hurt in his eyes. To her dismay, she ached with
the need to do everything in her power to make his pain go
away.

Those feelings were best forgotten.

For they would only serve to break her
heart.

She
reached the entrance to the stairwell, flung the door open
and pounded down the two short flights to the next floor below. Her
breath began to wheeze, and she slowed down as she raced along the
carpeted corridor. She found the front door to Myrna Constantine’s
apartment ajar and hurried inside. There was no sign of her
mother.

“
Mom, where are you?” she called
out.

“
In here, honey.”

Crimson
followed the voice, located her mother rifling
through the racks of clothing in an octagonal, marble floored
dressing room lined with full height mirrors.

“
It’s all beige,” Esmeralda said, her hands
busily shunting the designer garments along the rail. “Or ivory, or
gray, or black, or white. Not a single thing in red.” She gestured
with her chin toward the built-in drawers on the opposite wall.
“Not even underwear.”

Crimson
spoke in an angry whisper. “Mom, you can’t snoop
like that.”

“
Oh, Myrna won’t mind.”

“
I’m sure she will.” Crimson seized her
mother by the elbow and hauled her into the living room. Decorated
in muted colors, furnished with dainty, bow legged sofas and side
tables topped with silver framed photographs, it contrasted with
the simple, uncluttered masculinity of Nick’s apartment.

They
were only just in time. With the clip of high heels, Myrna
Constantine breezed in. “Crimson, I’m so glad to see you here,” she
said, a steely smile curving her pink lips. “Nick sends his
apologies. We surprised him at a bad time. He’ll help you run the
business. Of course he will.”

Crimson gritted her teeth. She knew with
utter
certainty that
Nick had sent no apology. If he had his choice, he’d send her
straight to hell. And there was no
of course
about him helping her to do anything at all,
except perhaps jump off a tall building.

A sense of despair washed over her.
She hated it all. Hated being
tangled up in a family feud. Hated being used as an instrument of
hurt. Hated Uncle Stephan for his sinister plotting. Hated her
mother for having married a rich man and catapulting them both into
a world where they didn’t belong. Hated Myrna for just standing
there, cool and composed, telling lies with a face as innocent as
the Easter Bunny.

All her life, Crimson had
struggled to maintain dignity.
She’d worn good manners like a suit of armor, attempting to
overcome the stigma of a hard drinking father who couldn’t hold
down a job and a chatterbox mother who dressed like a teenage
cheerleader. Now, her carefully cultivated restraint fell away,
just as it had fallen away at the lawyer’s office earlier in the
day.

“
Don’t bullshit me, Myrna,” she
snapped.

Something flickered
in the older woman’s cool blue eyes.
Respect, it might have been. If possible, Myrna stood even
straighter. “All right,” she admitted. “I was being polite. And
perhaps a touch optimistic. But Nick will come around. You’ll see.”
Her finely shaped brows drew into a frown. “He has to. There is no
other way.”

C
rimson exhaled, letting her shoulders slump. “Yes, there
is. I’m walking away from this mess. Let them spend hundred and
fifty million teaching a bunch of women how to beat the crap out of
each other. If girl power means entering the boxing ring, it’s fine
with me.”

Myrna’s chin rose.
“You will
not
give up without trying, Crimson. I forbid you.”

H
er mother waved her arms like a pair of red flags.
“Crimson, honey, I don’t know why Stephan did what he did but you
can’t let him down by not giving it your best shot…”

Crimson
protested, but they wore away her resistance—Myrna
with steely demands couched in polite words, Esmeralda with
gushing, tearful pleas. They cajoled, they prodded and begged,
until they had extracted from her a reluctant promise to
co-operate.

Then
Myrna tracked down the lawyer at his home, and a telephone
conversation set in motion the arrangements to install Crimson
Mills as the new CEO of Constantine Motors.

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Chapter Three

Crimson sat wedged between Myrna and
Esmeralda
in the limo
that hummed along the rain-slicked highway toward Longwood. Last
night, she had slept in one the twin beds in Myrna’s guestroom,
with her mother sleeping in the other bed, separated from her only
by a narrow gap with a nightstand. Short of chaining her to the
radiator, those two could not have made it clearer that they were
acting as her jailers.

The
limo exited the highway, ran through the center of the
small, bustling town, and slowed down along a short road that ended
in parking lot. Crimson ducked to look out of the window. Green
lawns. A medium sized glass building, very modern, two stories,
sparkling from the light summer shower that had just passed. Behind
it, two industrial looking halls, with rows of cars parked outside.
Here and there, she spotted a low vehicle with big wheel arches and
a long, low hood, a bit like something out of a prohibition era
movie.

Myrna
pointed at one. “That’s a Constantine Panther.”

“
I’ve seen one before,” Crimson
replied.

“
Stephan’s car.” Esmeralda yawned. “It’s in
the garage at Longwood Hall.”

“
That car is vintage. Insured for half a
million dollars.” Myrna smiled at Crimson. “It’s a company asset.
Yours to drive, if you like a manual shift with lots of
power.”

Crimson made a non-committal sound. There
would be time
later on
to reveal that she didn’t know how to drive. “Thanks,” she
muttered, and consulted her notes as the limo came to a halt. “I’ll
be meeting with Peter Tomlinson. Head of finance and
administration.” She checked her watch. “It’s almost eleven
o’clock. I’d better hurry.”

“
Do you want us to come with you,
honey?”

Crimson turned
to her mother, who was dressed in the same red
outfit as yesterday. She’d been able to do marginally better
herself, with a short black skirt, white blouse, cropped black
jacket, and medium heeled leather pumps. Myrna had offered to lend
her something more formal, but she’d turned down the opportunity to
raid the beige wardrobe.

Taking a deep breath,
Crimson shoved the notes into her tote bag
and told Myrna and Esmeralda that she’d prefer going in alone. She
said goodbye, jumped out, took a moment to bend down at the
driver’s window and thank the swarthy young man to whom she’d not
spoken a single word up to now. Then she straightened and marched
into battle.

“
Break a leg,” Esmeralda yelled after
her.

“
Telephone when you need the limo to pick
you up,” Myrna called out.

Crimson forced her feet to move along the
cement path up to the rain-dotted glass door, pushed it open and
entered the building. A tall, lean man with neatly combed brown
hair and a friendly smile hurried toward her, his footsteps
thudding across the stone floor of the lobby. He wore a suit and
tie, but she got the impression that his everyday work attire might
be more casual.

“
Miss Mills?” he asked.

“
That’s me.” She paused, exhaled a sigh.
“Sorry. I’m nervous. The last time I had an office job was handing
out Christmas parcels at the Post Office when I was
sixteen.”

The man’s smile widened
into a grin. “You’ll find this a breeze in
comparison. Being the CEO is easy. You tell us what to do, and if
it goes wrong, it’s our fault.”

Her tension eased a
notch. “I think I can handle that. Apart
from telling you what to do. I haven’t got a clue of what goes on
in here.”

“
We’ll work on it.” He lowered his voice.
“Just to put you in the picture, Miss Mills, I know what your role
in the company will be, but no one else does. I thought you might
enjoy being
incognito
on
your first visit. I’ve organized a staff meeting for Friday
morning. That will give you tomorrow to prepare, but it will break
the news to the employees before the weekend. As you can guess,
gossip is rife, and your visit will start a flurry of speculation
that must not be allowed to sap the morale.”