Dancers in the Dark and Layla Steps Up Read online

  “Did you have brothers or sisters?” he asked, his voice quiet.

  “I have a brother,” she said, her eyes closed as she felt her thighs stretch to their limit. She hadn’t talked about her family in over a year.

  “Is your brother a handsome man?”

  “No,” Rue said sadly. “No, he isn’t. He’s a sweet guy, but he’s not strong.”

  “So you didn’t win every pageant you entered?” Sean teased, changing the subject.

  She opened her eyes and smiled, while rising to her feet very carefully. “I won a few,” she said, remembering the glass-fronted case her mother had bought to hold all the trophies and crowns.

  “But not all?” Sean widened his eyes to show amazement.

  “I came in second sometimes,” she conceded, mocking herself, and shot him a sideways look. “And sometimes I was Miss Congeniality.”

  “You mean the other contestants thought you were the sweetest woman among them?”

  “Fooled them, huh?”

  Sean smiled at her. “You have your moments.” The sweetness of that downturned mouth, when it crooked up in a smile, was incredible.

  “You knock my socks off, Sean,” she said honestly. She was unable to stop herself from smiling back. He looked very strange in his costume: the flowered loincloth, ankle bracelets made of shells and the short black wig. Thompson was the only one who looked remotely natural in the get-up, and he was gloating about it.

  “What does that mean?”

  She shook her head, still smiling, and was a little relieved when Denny knocked on the door to indicate that Jeri, the party planner, had signaled that it was time for their appearance. Karl lined the dancers up and looked them over, making a last-minute adjustment here and there. “Stomach looks good,” he said briefly, and Rue glanced down. “Julie and Megan did a good job,” she admitted. She knew the scar was there, but if she hadn’t been looking for it, she would have thought her own stomach was smooth and unmarred.

  After Karl’s last minute adjustment of the bright costumes and the black wigs, the six barefoot dancers padded down the carpeted hall to the patio door, and out across the marble terrace into the torch-lit backyard of the Jaslow estate. Rick and Phil loped past them on their way inside, burdened with the things they’d used in their act. “Went great,” Rick said. “That backyard’s huge.”

  “It’s probably called the garden, not the backyard,” Thompson muttered.

  Karl said, “Sean, is this the sort of place you grew up in?”

  Sean snorted, and Rue couldn’t tell if he was deriding his former affluence, or indicating what he’d had had been much better.

  Since Rue was shorter than Julie, she was in the middle when the three women stepped out across the marble terrace and onto the grass to begin their routine. Smiling, they posed for the opening bars of the drum music. Julie looked like a different person with the black wig on. Rue had a second to wonder if Julie’s own mother would recognize her before the drums began. The routine began with a lot of hulalike hip twitching, the three women gradually rotating in circles. The intense pelvic motion actually felt good. The hand movements were simple, and they’d practiced and practiced doing them in unison. Rue caught a glimpse of Megan turning too fast and hoped the torchlight was obscuring Megan’s haste. In her sideways glance, Rue caught a glimpse of a face she’d hoped she’d never see again.

  All the years of training she’d had in composure paid off. She kept her smile pasted on her face, she kept up with the dance, and she blanked her mind out. The only thought she permitted herself was a reminder—she’d thought even Julie’s family wouldn’t recognize her, in the costume and the wig. Neither would her own.

  Maybe Carver Hutton IV wouldn’t, either.

  Chapter Four

  The music was mostly drums, and the beat was fast and demanding. While Megan, Julie and Rue held their positions, the men leaped out, and the crowd gave the expected “Oooooh” at how high the vampires could jump. Sean, Karl and Thompson began their wild dance around the women. It was a good opportunity for her to catch her breath. Without moving her head from its position, she looked over at the spot where she’d seen him standing. Now there was no one there who reminded her of Carver. Maybe it had just been an illusion. Relief swept through her like sweet, cool water through a thirsty throat.

  When Sean came to lift her above his head, she gave him a brilliant smile. As he circled, stomping his feet to the beat, she held her pose perfectly, and when he let her fall into his waiting arms, she arched her neck back willingly for the bite. She was ready to feel better, to have that lingering fear erased.

  He seemed to sense her eagerness. Before his fangs sank in, she felt his tongue trace a line on her skin, and her arm involuntarily tightened around his neck. As the overwhelming peace flooded her anxious heart, Rue wondered if she was becoming addicted to Sean. “Hi, I’m Rue, and I’m a vampire junkie.” She didn’t want to become one of those pitiful fangbangers, people who would do almost anything to be bitten.

  The audience gave them a round of applause as the women stood up, the men sweeping their arms outward to mark the end of the performance. The crowd goggled curiously at the two dots on the women’s necks. Rue stepped forward with Julie and Megan to take her bow, and as she went down she thought she saw Carver Hutton again, out of the corner of her eye. When she straightened, he wasn’t there. Was she delusional? She pasted her smile back onto her face.

  The six of them ran into the house, waving to the guests as they trotted along, like a happy Polynesian dance troupe that just happened to (almost) all have Caucasian features. They were expected back out on the terrace in party clothes in fifteen minutes. Meanwhile, Denny James would be dismantling their sound system and loading it into the van, because an orchestra was set up to play live music.

  When they were scrambling out of the costumes, Rue made her request. “Julie, Megan…do you think you could leave your wigs on?”

  The other dancers stopped in the middle of changing and looked at her. Julie had pulled on some thigh-high hose and was buckling the straps of her heels, and Megan had pulled on a sheath dress and gotten her “native” skirt half off underneath it. The male dancers had simply turned their backs and pulled everything off, and now all three were in the process of donning the silk shirts and dress pants they’d agreed on ahead of time. Rick and Phil were helping Denny gather up the costumes and all the other paraphernalia, to store in the van.

  But they were all startled by Rue’s request. There was a moment of silence.

  Julie and Megan consulted with each other in an exchanged glance. “Sure, why not?” Julie said. “Won’t look strange. We’re all wearing the same outfit. Same wig, why not?”

  “But we won’t be wearing ours,” Karl said, not exactly as if he were objecting, but just pointing out a problem.

  “Yeah,” Megan said, “but we look cute in ours, and you guys look like dorks in yours.”

  Karl and Thompson laughed at the justice of that, but Sean was staring at Rue as if he could see her thoughts if he looked hard enough. Phil, who never seemed to talk, was looking at Rue, with worry creasing his face. For the first time, Rue understood that Phil knew who she was. Like the girl in the library, he’d matched her face to the newspaper photos.

  The black wig actually looked better with the shining burgundy sheath than Rue’s own mahogany hair would have. She would never have picked this color for herself. Megan was wearing a deep green, and Julie, bronze. The men were wearing shirts that matched their partner’s dress. Burgundy was not Sean’s color, either. They looked at each other and shrugged simultaneously.

  Out on the terrace, minutes later, the three couples began dancing to music provided by the live band. After watching for a few minutes, other people began to join them on the smooth marble of the terrace, and the professional couples split up to dance with the guests. This was the part of the job that Rue found most stressful. It was also the most difficult for her partner, she’d no
ticed. Sean didn’t enjoy small talk with companions he hadn’t chosen, and he seemed stiff. Thompson was a great favorite with the female guests, always, and Karl was much admired for his sturdy blond good looks and his courtesy, but Sean seemed to both repel and attract a certain class of women, women who were subtly or not so subtly dissatisfied with their lives. They wanted an exotic experience with a mysterious man, and no one did mysterious better than Sean.

  John Jaslow, the host, smiled at Rue, and she took his hand and led him to the dance floor. He was a pleasant, balding man, who didn’t seem to want anything but a dance.

  Men were much easier to please, Rue thought cynically. Most men were happy if you smiled, appeared to enjoy dancing with them, flirted very mildly. Every now and then, she danced with one who was under the impression she was for sale. But she’d met hundreds of men like that while she was going through the pageant circuit, and she was experienced in handling them, though her distaste never ebbed. With a smile and a soothing phrase, she was usually able to divert them and send them away pacified.

  Rue and John Jaslow were dancing next to Megan and her partner, who’d introduced himself as Charles Brody. Brody was a big man in his fifties. From the moment he’d taken Megan’s hand, he’d been insinuating loudly that he would be delighted if she went to a hotel with him after the party.

  “After all, you work for Sylvia Dayton, right?” Brody asked. His hand was stroking Megan’s ribs, not resting on them. Rue looked up at her partner anxiously. John Jaslow looked concerned, but he wasn’t ready to intervene.

  “I work for Blue Moon, not Black Moon,” Megan said, quietly but emphatically.

  “And you’re saying you just go home after one of these affairs, put on your jammies and go to bed by yourself?”

  “Mr. Brody, that’s exactly what I’m saying,” Megan said.

  He was quiet for a moment, and Rue and Mr. Jaslow gave each other relieved smiles.

  “Then I’ll find another woman to dance with, one who’ll give a little,” Brody said. Abruptly, he let go of Megan, but before he turned to stalk off the terrace, he gave the small dancer a hard shove.

  The push was so unexpected, so vicious, that Megan didn’t have time to catch herself. She was staggering backward and couldn’t catch her balance. Moving faster than she’d thought she was able to move, Rue got behind Megan in time to keep her from hitting the ground.

  In a second, Megan was back on her feet, and Mr. Jaslow and Sean were there.

  The gasp that had arisen from the few people who’d watched the little episode with Brody gave way to a smattering of applause as Megan and bald Mr. Jaslow glided across the terrace in a graceful swoop.

  “Smile,” Rue said. Sean had gotten everything right but that. As he two-stepped away with her, his lips were stiff with fury.

  “If this were a hundred years ago, I’d kill him,” Sean said.

  He smiled then, and it wasn’t a nice smile. She saw his fangs.

  She should have been horrified.

  She should have been scandalized.

  She should have been mortified.

  “You’re so sweet,” she murmured, as she had to a thousand people during her life. This time, she meant it. Though Sean had defused the situation, she had no doubt he would rather have punched Brody, and she liked both reactions.

  In five more minutes, their hour was up, and the six dancers eased themselves out of the throng of party guests. Wearily, they folded and bagged the costumes for cleaning and pulled on their street clothes. They were just too tired to be modest. Rue saw a pretty butterfly tattoo on Megan’s bottom, and learned that Thompson had an appendectomy scar. But there was nothing salacious about knowing one another like this; they were comrades. Something about this evening had bonded them as no other event ever had.

  It had been years since Rue had had friends.

  Denny was waiting at the side entrance. The van doors were open, and when Rue scrambled into the back seat, Sean climbed in after her. There was a moment when all the others stared at Sean in surprise, since he always sat in front with Denny, then Megan climbed in after Sean. The middle row was filled with Karl, Julie and Thompson; Rick and Phil clambered in the front with Denny.

  It was so pleasant to be sitting down in circumstances that didn’t require polite chatter. Rue closed her eyes as the car sped down the long driveway. As they drove back to the city, it seemed a good idea to keep her eyes closed. Now, if she could just prop her head against something…

  She woke up when the car came to a stop and the dome light came on. She straightened and yawned. She turned her head to examine her pillow, and found that she’d been sleeping with her head on Sean’s shoulder. Megan was smiling at her. “You were out like a light,” she said cheerfully.

  “Hope I didn’t snore,” Rue said, trying hard to be nonchalant about the fact that she’d physically intruded on her partner.

  “You didn’t, but Karl did,” Thompson said, easing his way out of the van and stretching once he was on the sidewalk.

  “I only breathe loudly,” Karl said, and Julie laughed.

  “You gotta be the only vampire in the world who takes naps and snores,” she said, but to take any sting out of her words, she gave him a hug.

  Rue’s eyes met Sean’s. His were quite unreadable. Though she’d had such a good time with him before they had danced at the Jaslows’, he was wearing his usual shuttered look.

  “I’m sorry if you were uncomfortable the whole way back,” she said. “I didn’t realize I was so tired.”

  “It was fine,” he said, and got out, holding out a hand to help her emerge. He unlocked the studio door; Karl and Thompson began unloading the sound system and the dancers set the costumes on a bench outside Sylvia’s office. Denny drove off in the empty van.

  The small group split up, Megan and Julie getting in the cab they’d called, Karl and Thompson deciding to go to Bissonet’s, the bar where Hallie worked. “Why don’t you come, Sean?” Karl asked. “You could use some type O.”

  “No, thanks,” Sean said.

  “Showing your usual wordy, flowery turn of phrase.” Karl was smiling.

  “I’ll see Rue home,” Sean said.

  “Always the gentleman,” Thompson said, not too fondly. “Sean, sometimes you act like you’ve got a poker up your ass.”

  Sean shrugged. He was clearly indifferent to Thompson’s opinion.

  Thompson’s fangs ran halfway out.

  Rue and Karl exchanged glances. In that moment, Rue could tell that Karl was worried about a quarrel between the other two vampires, and she took Sean’s arm. “I’m ready,” she said, and actually gave him a little tug as she started walking north. Sean’s good manners required that he set off with her. They took the first two blocks at a good pace, and then turned to stand at the bus stop.

  “What frightened you?” he said, so suddenly that she started.

  She knew instantly what he was talking about: the seconds at the party when she’d thought she’d seen an all-too-familiar face. But she couldn’t believe he’d noticed her fear. She hadn’t missed a beat or a step. “How’d you know?” she whispered.

  “I know you,” he said, with a quiet intensity that centered her attention on him. “I can feel what you feel.”

  She looked up at him. They were under a streetlight, and she could see him with a stark clarity. Rue struggled inside herself with what she could safely tell him. He was waiting for her to speak, to share her burden with him. Still, she hesitated. She was out of the habit of confiding; but she had to be honest about how safe she felt when she was with Sean, and she could not ignore how much she’d begun to look forward to spending time with him. The relief from fear, from worry, from her sense of being damaged, was like warm sun shining on her face.

  He could feel her growing trust; she could see it in his rare smile. The corners of his thin mouth turned up; his eyes warmed.

  “Tell me,” he said, in a voice less imperative and more coaxing.

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sp; What decided her against speaking out was fear for his safety. Sean was strong, and she was beginning to realize he was ruthless where she was concerned, but he was also vulnerable during the daylight hours. Rue followed another impulse; she put her arms around him. She spoke into his chest. “I can’t,” she said, and she could hear the sadness in her own voice.

  His body stiffened under her hands. He was too proud to beg her, she knew, and the rest of the way to Rue’s apartment, he was silent.

  Chapter Five

  She thought he would stalk off, offended, when they reached her place, but, to her surprise, he stuck with her. He held her bag while she unlocked the front door, and he mounted the stairs behind her. While she sure couldn’t remember asking him up, Rue didn’t tell him to leave, either. She found herself hoping he enjoyed the view all the way up both flights. She tried to remember if she’d made her bed and put away her nightgown that morning.

  “Please, come in,” Rue said. She knew the new etiquette as well as anyone. Vampires had to be invited into your personal dwelling the first time they visited.

  Her cat came running to meet Rue, complaining that her dinner was overdue. The little black-and-white face turned up to Sean in surprise. Then the cat stropped his legs. Rue cast a surreptitious eye over the place. Yes, the bed was neat. She retrieved her green nightgown from the footboard and rolled it into a little bundle, depositing it in a drawer in an unobtrusive way.

  “This is Martha,” Rue said brightly. “You like cats, I hope?”

  “My mother had seven cats, and she named them all, to my father’s disgust. She told him they ate the rats in the bam, and so they did, but she’d slip them some milk or some scraps when we had them to spare.” He bent to pick up Martha, and the cat sniffed him. The smell of vampire didn’t seem to distress the animal. Sean scratched her head, and she began to purr.