Billionaire Erotic Romance Boxed Set: 7 Steamy Full-Length Novels (133 page)

Sophie tucked the phone back in her pocket and headed back to Main Street. She do a little more wandering and study her mirror. Maybe there was a warning she was missing.

Chapter Eighteen

It snuck up on her. She wouldn’t have thought it could, given how much time she’d spent there as a girl. But then it hardly resembled the cheerful place she’d come to every week for dance lessons. Body In Motion had been a sanctuary away from home for Sophie. Now the glass windows that looked in on the front room, where all the pictures of the kids in their leotards had hung, were boarded up. The sign was missing almost all of its letters, leaving only Bo—n—on.

Some delinquent with more daring than brains had broken the second n. The sign now read Bo—n—or. Sad to think of her childhood refuge as a crash pad for punks whose idea of humor was misspelled penis jokes. There was graffiti on the boards too, though it was too layered to make any of it out. It just looked like random swirls in various colors.

Compared to the elegant building of glass and plaster full of classical music and Miss Clara’s firm repetitions of “
One
, two, three,
one
, two, three,” the place was now a broken shell.

“We used to be great once, huh old girl?” Cold sorrow filled her chest. Sophie knew, intellectually, that she still had a perfectly good life. Great, compared to a lot of people. But she didn’t feel great. She felt... derelict.

She pressed a hand against the splintered wood where the front door had been. It too was boarded up. Still, maybe...

Sophie glanced at the shops to either side of the boarded up building. To the left was a bar, not yet open. To the right was a florist. She bit her lip, slipping down the alley on the left hand side of the old studio. Surely the vandals had figured out a way in. She’d just take a peak.

Behind the studio was a small grass lot, the space shared with the florist. The owner of the flower shop was using part of the area for a small greenhouse, but no one was outside. Sophie picked carefully through the small bit of refuse, mostly broken boards, near the back wall of the studio. As she’d suspected, there was a door hidden beneath the wood propped against the wall. It hung crooked, unable to shut completely. She tugged hard, and it popped open with a dull thunk.

She entered carefully, not sure what she might find. It actually wasn’t as bad as she’d feared. It was dusty and littered with broken glass and cobwebs, but she didn’t see any rats, or condoms, or paraphernalia of partying kids. The room she’d entered had once been the office, she thought. There was a discoloration on the grey wall in the shape of a filing cabinet and another that might have been shelves. She’d never been in here when she was little.

Only kids that were in trouble were sent to sit in Miss Clara’s office. Sophie was never in trouble. She had wanted to be there, loved being there. Time in Miss Clara’s office would have meant time not dancing.

“And to dance is to be alive, children,” she echoed softly in Miss Clara’s dreamy sing-song. Her childhood dance instructor had been something of a cross between a strict disciplinarian and bohemian philosopher. It was an odd, incongruous combination that had somehow worked.

Sophie stepped gingerly over some crumbled plaster as she moved out of the office and into the back classroom. The big classroom, they’d called it. There were two more small ones up front, the bathroom, and then the front room with cubbyholes for parent pick-up. Unlike Sophie’s studio, which catered to people of all ages, almost every class Miss Clara had been for children. Or teens.

She’d offered one adult level class every 3 months, and that was it. Usually a beginner course for people who just wanted to learn the basics. “People get too old, they lose the joy of movement. They’d rather stay still. I’d rather teach children. They know how to move. You know what they say... a body at rest...” Newton’s first law was a favorite thing for her to quote. It’s where the name of the studio had come from.

Maybe that was her problem. Maybe she was just too old. Too wounded. Her body wanted to remain at rest.

The mirrors were all gone, of course, either taken when the place had closed or broken. Sophie had watched herself for endless hours in their silver surfaces, reveling in the twist and turn of her body, in seeing the muscles tighten and bulge as she bent and flexed.

She scuffed a shoe against the dusty floor. It was still the same, at least, if a little worse for wear. It was these floors that had made her go with the springy wood for the classrooms in her studio. She had fond memories of the way it gave beneath her feet, the sound of her ballet slippers sliding over it. Sophie pictured the room as it had once been.

It had been a little dark, the three walls not lined with mirrors a dove grey. She would have put in a skylight. Or some high windows to let in the sunshine. There were none in the back classroom, and only small slits in the front ones.

Come to think of it, perhaps that had influenced her decision to go along with Darren’s suggestion for the enormous glass window wall that lined the front of her own studio. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She could almost hear the faint strains of Vivaldi, or maybe Chopin, floating through the big room. Miss Clara had been fond of both.

Sophie hummed to herself, stretching her arms up over her head. The way she had felt here! Like she was discovering a whole new world, this beautiful place of such peace. Ballet had eventually become tedious to her, which is why she had left the company for competitions. A lot of dancers thought you only competed if you couldn’t cut it as a ballerina.

But Sophie had stopped feeling that peace, the sweet joy that had flowed through her as she danced. She’d found it again with tango, and spent the next five years in a whirlwind of joyousness like nothing she’d felt since her first few years here, in this place.

She flexed her feet, moving up onto her toes. Not quite on pointe without the shoes, but close enough. She wasn’t a dancer anymore, after all. Just a broken woman in an abandoned building. Eyes closed, she moved through several beginner routines, her arms moving smoothly out to her sides as her feet slid along the floor.

Sophie bent and swayed, humming, feeling the warmth seep into her muscles. The abandoned studio around her dissolved away, replaced with the floor polish smell and soft music of Miss Clara’s big classroom.

The movement of her body grew quicker. She spun, arms up in a graceful arc. The names all came back to her as she moved, ron de jambe, eleve, plie, pirouette. Step, step, spin. Her lungs expanded and contracted. Dust tickled the back of her throat as tingles of warmth moved along nerve endings.

Here she had felt young and beautiful and free and full of joy. The ghosts of those things swirled around her as she executed a soft leap, toe pointed, sweeping her leg. A fine sheen of sweat broke out on her forehead, between her shoulderblades. The fabric of her pants tightened around her thighs as she lifted her leg. Developpe.

Sophie’s tendons stretched as she imagined Miss Clara’s voice in her ear.

“Listen to the music. Let it flow through you. Ballet is the lyrical expression of human movement, Sophie. You
are
the music. Relax your fingers. Good!”

It had been good. She’d left Body In Motion every other day after school feeling like she’d been reborn. Back then, dancing had never failed to put a smile on her face. She felt it now, hovering around her lips. Her scalp prickled with sweat in the slightly stuffy room, cheeks flushed with heat. Her chest rose and fell with each deep breath. The muscles in her thighs and calves tingled and burned.

Not painfully, the sweet burn of exercise. As just like she remembered, there was the hushed sound of her shoes sliding over the hardwood floor. Sacred, like the clack of rosary beads. Rhythmic, like a prayer. Places like this were Sophie’s church.

Inside these walls, there had been no missed questions on a pop quiz, or teenage fights with her parents. The bad stuff, the stressful things of everyday life, got tucked into the cubby hole with her jacket and backpack. She did it now, tucking Christian and Henry and the media and Nicole and the cancellations all into a cubby in the front room.

She focused on her feet. Pas de bourree, pas de chat. Her heart echoed the leap, soaring in her chest. Sophie landed lightly on the balls of her feet, breath rushing out of her, arms to her sides.

Phantom clapping, the three, hard, curt claps that Miss Clara gave at the end of a routine done well, seemed to echo through the room. Sophie stared at the wall where the mirrors should be. What did she look like now, she wondered? Wisps of light hair stuck to her sweaty cheeks and neck, face flushed, panting.

A silly woman in slacks and a t-shirt dancing in an abandoned studio. Sophie relaxed, breath whooshing out of her, and dropped her arms. There was no going back. Only forward. Or standing still. And she knew what Miss Clara would say about that.

“A body at rest...” she murmured into the stillness of the dusty room. She palmed sweat from her forehead and picked her way gingerly back toward the rear door. However full of joy her past was, she wasn’t going to be one of those people who wallowed there. She was no Miss Havisham, wandering around in her old wedding dress. She wouldn’t be bitter.

That’s what this trip was about, wasn’t it? Putting all the craziness of the last few weeks behind her. Moving on. “A body in motion tends to stay in motion,” she quoted Newton, via Miss Clara. And Sophie intended to keep moving.

The air smelled fresh after the close confines of the old studio. Sophie took a deep breath, tilting her face up to the sky and briefly enjoying the warmth of the sun on his skin. She shoved the door back into place, leaning hard against it to pop the crooked hinge. She covered it with the leaning wood again, and brushed her hands free of dust.

The rasp of a lighter’s ignition wheel made her jump a little. She turned toward the small patch of back lawn behind the florist. A woman stood there, her back to Sophie, dark hair tied up in a messy bun. She wore a green apron tied around her waist, and puffed on one of those tiny, slim cigarettes that were marketed just to women.

“Excuse me?” Sophie asked, stepping further away from the back of the decrepit building. The woman turned slowly, puffing on her smoke. Her face was lined, she was older than Sophie had first thought, but she smiled kindly enough.

“Well, you don’t look old enough to be one of the ruffian’s mothers. Sister?”

Sophie stared at the older woman for a moment, uncomprehending. Then she shook her head and smiled. “Oh. No. I’m not looking for anyone. I was just wondering... I used to come here as a kid, you see. Do you know what happened to it? I mean... the woman who owned it...” She bit her lip, suddenly not sure if she wanted to know what had happened to Miss Clara.

“The lady who owned it retired down to Florida. Still there as far as I know, but the kids are in charge of her assets. They just let the place sit.” She shrugged, sucking on her cigarette.

“I didn’t realize Miss Clara had any kids.” But then, she’d been young and awfully absorbed in her dancing.

“Don’t think the relationship is real close. At least, that’s the impression I get.” She picked a flake of tobacco off her tongue. “But hey, if you’re interested in the place, I can get you in touch with them.”

“Oh, I —”

“I’d move fast if I were you. I know it doesn’t look like much, but you’re the second person to come look at it in the last few weeks. I guess the market’s heating up. I’ve got that contact info back in the shop if you want it.” She jerked her head back toward the florist.

Sophie swallowed her protest. Maybe this was her way forward? Here, at home? “Someone else was looking at it?”

The lady nodded, waving her hand and drawing elaborate figures in the smoke that wafted up from her cigarette. “Yeah. She was an odd duck, I’ll tell you. She wanted to know the building’s whole history. Asked if there were any records left, photos, that kind of thing. Then she wanted to know how long I’d lived here. When I told her it was only the last couple of years, she said she needed someone who’d lived here for at least twenty years. Someone who could tell her about one of the students. Guess someone famous went here once?”

Sophie opened her mouth, but her voice caught in her chest. She tried again, clearing her throat first. A knot of suspicion began to tighten in her stomach. Whoever had been poking around here had been asking about her. Twenty years ago was when she’d been here. And while she wouldn’t call herself famous, she was well known in the dance world. Had a reporter come sneaking around, drawn here by the stories about her and Henry? Or worse…

“What’d she look like? The woman who was interested in the place?”

“Tall, leggy, blonde. Fancy clothes. Way too fancy for poking around abandoned buildings. Ice blue eyes. She had the narrowest nose I’ve ever seen. I’d bet a million dollars she had work done on it. Why? She from a rival company or something?”

Sophie swallowed, hard. She knew a tall, leggy blonde with ice blue eyes and a too narrow nose. One who’d recently had more information about Sophie’s past than she should have. Bile burned in the back of her throat.

“Something like that.”

“Well, she took the contact info. You want me to get it for you?” The woman dropped her cigarette and ground it beneath her sneaker, raising her brows. Sophie shook her head.

“No, thanks. I’ve got everything I need. You have a nice day, now.”

She spun on her heel and stalked through the narrow alley, digging in her pants for her cell phone. She needed some answers, but she wasn’t about to call Henry again. Not after their last disastrous conversation. Still, there was someone she could call who seemed intent on getting involved in this whole mess. Her fingers jabbed at her cell harshly. Carl answered on the second ring.

“I’m willing to hear you out.”

“Sophie. I’m glad you called. Look, it’s not what you think.” She could actually hear Carl shove his hand through his hair. It rasped against the phone.