“I’d like to take Jeanne’s place for Dima’s next performance.”
“Good. I’ll have the promotions team make the change.”
“Please,” she said. “For the first show… I have a lot of ground to make up with him. Hell, he might not even want to after…well, after some things of late. Can we just leave the billing as is?”
“You’re trying to kill me, aren’t you?” He said it with a slight smile. “All right, we’ll leave it for now. Maybe you can knock some sense into him. While you’re at it, make sure he signs that contract I gave him.”
“Contract?”
“He hasn’t renewed his stint here at Devant.”
The floor fell away from Lizzie’s feet. Dima, who booked their travel and their tour dates. Dima, who planned their meals a week in advance. Dima, who’d paid the bills since their first day living away from their parents. He never just forgot. No, his silence on that matter was a choice. He’d left her in the morning without so much as an explanation—another choice by default. Those two facts taken together in such close succession, and coupled with Svetlana’s not-so-coincidental appearance the night before, shot cold chills down to her heels. The room turned stuffy and nightmarish.
“I want to get back to work,” she said quietly, turning to go.
She’d made the right call in trying to step into this world with him, because the alternative was losing him forever. She only hoped she wasn’t too late.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Even in the clinging, plastic dry cleaning bag, the dress was a menace. Dima hung it on the back of Lizzie’s bedroom door and stepped back. He crossed an arm over his chest, held his chin with the other hand and simply stared at the dress.
Tiny. Red. Lots of spangles and beads and other adornments Dima had never bothered to learn. What he knew was that the dress barely covered her breasts. It arrowed down to satisfy the barest decency standards. In repose, the dress didn’t look like all that much.
On her, though, it would be entirely different because of the way she moved. The ruffle that started at the ass would dangle down to her knees, as she shimmied hot enough to rival an open flame.
He walked backwards until his knees hit the stool she kept at her dressing table. His elbow hooked on one of the few empty spaces among the bottles and pots and sprays. The walls wheezed as the pipes strained and hissed to a quiet hum.
Dima ought to leave. They’d had three days. Three days without directly seeing each other. He hadn’t even been sure it was possible.
After sleeping in every morning, she ran out the door with her dance bag over her shoulder. At night when she came in, she went straight to her room again. She didn’t ask him to cook, didn’t greet him beyond the bare necessities.
Not that he volunteered, nor sought her out in turn.
Because Christ, what would he say? Sorry I fucked you and abandoned you the next morning. What he’d been imagining for their future was impossible. She didn’t see him as anything more than he’d been for the duration of their partnership. He just figured he’d beat her to the punch, before she realized what crazy, extreme places his head had gone.
However, there was no getting out of today, no matter how much he might wish.
He scented her first. That sugary wash of fragrance followed her out of the bathroom along with the warm, humid air. The door pushed open next, and there she was.
He held himself still, like posing on stage before unleashing the first step, but that didn’t mean he was calm on the inside.
Lizzie wore only a towel.
A good-sized bath sheet, it concealed her from breasts to hips, even covering her perfect ass. Her exposed skin gleamed with dampness, and suddenly he knew in a visceral, taste-and-scent memory of having his mouth on her cunt, of thrusting his cock inside her.
For only a moment, she’d gazed at him as if the sun and moon dangled from his fingertips.
She wasn’t looking at him like that now. She stopped dead, her eyes going wide. She reacted more like he’d laid a nest of rattlers in her room. “Dima…”
“I knew you’d forgotten, so I had your favorite competition dress cleaned.” He nodded toward the door.
Confusion scrunched up her nose. She shut the door, eyed the dry cleaning bag and dropped her jaw. “Oh no. The thing for Lionel’s foundation.”
He leaned his chin against his fist. The charity event in memory of late choreographer Lionel Woodruff drew luminaries from the entire dance community, not just in New York but around the world. To receive an invitation to perform was a marvelous honor. He and Lizzie had celebrated with a night on the town upon learning the news.