Читать книгу Modern Romance June 2016 Books 5-8 - Мишель Смарт, Tara Pammi - Страница 21
ОглавлениеSHE WAS FORGIVEN for her brief absence when they all met in the foyer the following morning and her colleagues greeted her warmly when they found out she had moved back to the hotel.
Anya, though, could not forgive them.
Always she gave her dance her all, and she was angry at her troupe for their doubt in her, and it showed in each rehearsal.
Nothing was working.
Her body, usually fluid and flexible, felt brittle and like hardening wax.
‘It will come together when we get to the theatre,’ the choreographer reassured her.
And Anya held onto that as she suffered through frustrating days when her body refused to yield, and she ached through lonely nights.
She always gave her dance everything, yet she felt now as if she had nothing to give.
Always she had danced for Roman.
For the solider she grieved for or to the memory of them.
Now it felt as if she had removed herself from her source.
How she wept for him and loathed that he had let her go back to the hotel without a fight.
He had.
Unlike Anya, Roman was patient.
He set about the renovations.
His dream was not a gym in memory of his brother. Instead mirrors were put in and a barre ran the length of the wall. The floors were polished.
He avoided walking near the hotel or the theatre as he did not want to upset her.
He knew, though, when the dance company had moved there, because there was a small piece on the news.
Mika and Anya were being interviewed and, of course, he watched.
‘Are you excited to be back in Paris?’
‘I am thrilled,’ Anya answered through a translator. ‘I have such fond memories of the last time I was here.’
And she smiled, and so too did Roman, for he could taste the vinegar in her smile from here and knew that it was aimed at him.
‘How are rehearsals going?’
It was Mika who answered, again through a translator. ‘We have a full dress rehearsal tomorrow.’
‘The chemistry when you two perform—’ the interviewer started, but Roman flicked off the television.
He did not want to know.
And yet they had to face these things so he turned the television back on and got the end of Mika’s response to the question.
‘To dance,’ Mika said, ‘is to love. Without love you cannot dance.’
Mika was right, it would seem, for without love Anya could not dance.
She hated that she could not speak of Celeste and she loathed her own jealousy.
She felt flushed in the face with the hurt of it all and cross, most of all, with herself.
She loved him so much.
She was teary and fragile as they prepared for full dress rehearsal on the day before opening night. Anya raised her arm as her costume was done up and she remembered Roman carefully pulling the zip down.
It would not do up by a fraction.
But that fraction had the costume manager tutting. Really she had only put on a couple of pounds but it meant that her costume would have to be let out.
She was scolded for the weight gain. She sat in the dressing-room on the edge of tears and took out her phone and again resisted calling him.
Instead she looked up a song.
A song from the French foreign legion named ‘Monica’, or ‘La Monique’, and as it played she read the translation.
The lyrics were so beautiful that tears spilled from her eyes as she found out that Roman had thought of her all along.
She needed him, more than she ever had, and the temptation was too much. With the phone in her hand and those words on the screen, she called him. As he answered, just hearing his voice pulled her back to the vortex of them and Anya let out a sob, hung up and turned off her phone.
She needed to focus for her performance tomorrow and whenever they were together they argued.
The costume manager came in with the spare costume as it was a little larger to allow for seams being taken in or let out. It didn’t add to her confidence as she dressed.
She stood at the edge of the stage and waited to go on, but this afternoon she felt wooden.
For this rehearsal they would not dance properly. It was too exhausting and that energy would be saved for the audience. They would walk through all the steps and do some jetés, though not at peak, and Mika would perform some lifts on her.
The whole rehearsal from start to finish went terribly.
It was the worst final rehearsal that Anya had ever had. She did not feel light in Mika’s arms and it would seem the trust in each other was gone.
Once she leapt and Mika mistimed things but as he caught her he could not correct and, embarrassed by his own clumsy performance, he put her down.
‘Christmas must be coming early,’ Mika said nastily, and she could hear a few sniggers as he continued. ‘Because Firebird is getting fat.’
The rest of the rehearsal was just as hellish, and when it ended, the choreographer did not offer the platitude of it all coming together for opening night.
Instead she was in a huddle with the director and Anya felt sick, for she knew she wasn’t the only one with doubts about her suitability for tomorrow night.
She could feel the panic starting to build. Tomorrow was opening night and not one single rehearsal had gone well.
She went to try on her altered costume before heading back to the hotel, but as she stepped in she saw Lula, her understudy, trying the firebird costume on.
She was, Anya was sure, about to be cut.
She fled to her dressing-room and usually she would shower and change but instead she just wiped off her make-up and dressed.
And then, as she left, she picked up all her useless, stupid trinkets and stuffed them into her bag.
They weren’t working.
Nothing worked without Roman.
She didn’t know what to do. She held it in and left without saying goodbye as she often did, but as Anya pushed open the exit door she could hold it in no more and she started to sob.
But there, waiting for her, was Roman and she fell into his arms and wept into his chest as he told her that it would all be okay.
Roman, having answered her call and heard her small sob, had rung straight back but Anya, being Anya, had turned off her phone.
He did not want to disrupt the rehearsal and so he had waited outside.
‘I’m going to lose the part...’
‘You’re not.’
‘I am.’
‘Anya, you’re not.’
‘You don’t know that. I can’t dance, I’ve been rehearsing over and over and I can’t do it and I’ve just seen Lula, my understudy, trying on Firebird—’
‘Today was dress rehearsal?’ Roman checked, and Anya nodded into his chest. ‘Doesn’t everyone try on their costumes today?’
‘Yes, but Mika and I are fighting. He said...’ She closed her eyes. She was too humiliated to repeat what Mika had said.
Roman closed his eyes too. Of course she and Mika were fighting. He could hardly stand to hear about their rows, or Mika’s reaction to Roman’s arrival.
He would listen, though, if it made things easier for her.
‘What did he say?’ Roman asked.
‘I don’t want to tell you.’
‘Come home,’ he offered.
‘No, I’m going to go to the dance studio and go through it alone.’
‘How many times have you done that?’
So many times, Anya thought.
‘Whatever you’re doing isn’t working,’ Roman pointed out.
‘No.’
‘So why not try something different?’
They walked and they could go the long way and avoid the square where she had seen them kiss, but she had avoided so much and it was getting them nowhere so they walked through it.
And his arm was around hers and it hurt less and less.
‘I’ve made you a light supper—’ he started, and Anya turned in surprise.
‘You cook?’
‘Yes,’ Roman said. ‘Josie and her husband are coming back tonight. I’ve sent my driver to pick them up this time. You can have a nice bath and then something to eat, then sleep.’
He calmed her—he always had.
Oh, he enthralled her and made her burn but he was so strong and so measured that with him she felt safe with her wild emotions.
They arrived back at the apartment and again Anya felt soothed as she stood in the entrance hall.
It felt good to be home.
‘Why don’t you go and have a bath?’ Roman suggested.
‘Do I smell?’ Anya asked.
‘Just a bit.’ He smiled and he made her smile.
She ran the deepest bath and peeled off her clothes and the scented, oily water was relaxing to her aching limbs so she lay there for a generous while.
And then she felt the pull of her body to be with him. She put on her robe and walked through to the kitchen.
His back was to her and he was wearing black jeans and no top and his scars were becoming familiar to her now.
She went up behind him and kissed his shoulder and then looked at what he was making.
He was turning out a crab tartare, one of several, and she dipped her finger in a dish filled with red and tasted that it was hren, a horseradish relish, and one of her favourite foods from home.
It was what she had ordered at the restaurant that terrible time.
Yet now he had made it.
‘I love hren,’ she said.
‘I remember.’
She watched as he sautéed wild chanterelles, and the scent of the mushrooms made her stomach growl.
It really was the perfect supper for the night before such a performance and, had she eaten out tonight, this was what she might well have chosen.
And it was also the perfect company to be in when your nerves were in shreds.
Some considered Roman to be lacking in emotion.
Anya had always known different.
The emotions were there, and she felt them. His calm presence tonight was for her.
‘Did you learn to cook in the legion?’ she asked him.
‘The only thing I learnt about cooking there was to open cans.’
‘Was the food awful?’
‘It did its job.’
‘So, when did you learn to cook like this?’
‘Anya,’ Roman said ‘let’s not do this tonight.’
‘Celeste?’ Anya asked, and said her name without venom.
Roman nodded. ‘Let’s go through.’
There were so many parts of his life still missing. Her dancing had suffered since his return, not because of Roman, she was starting to realise, but because of her own dark thoughts and fears.
They ate at the table, and it had been beautifully laid, with silver and candles, which Roman lit.
And Celeste must have taught him this also, Anya thought, for there was no silver service at the orphanage, she knew for sure, and she guessed it was the same at the foreign legion.
There was a burn of jealousy, but she breathed through it.
Roman drank wine, Anya water, and she looked over as he loaded his plate.
And she tasted the crab, so fresh that she knew it must have been prepared from scratch after she had called him.
And all this would not be possible without Celeste, Anya knew.
They would not be sitting having such a romantic meal, Roman, his top half naked, she in a robe, and eating this sumptuous dinner that he had prepared for her, without the years they could not speak of.
Celeste was a part of his complex journey and not knowing a part of his life felt worse than the jealousy that choked her.
‘Tell me about her,’ Anya said.
‘No,’ Roman said. ‘Tonight you need calm.’
‘I’m ready to hear. I need to know, Roman, I know I get jealous...’
‘I don’t want to hurt you Anya,’ he said. ‘And I don’t want you speaking badly of her.’
‘I will try not to.’
Roman nodded. He did not want to upset her further tonight, but maybe the decks needed to be cleared.
‘What do you want to know?’
‘All of it,’ she said. ‘I want to know why you were looking for a wife.’
‘Just as I was about to leave, some friends showed me an advert. It was a joke at first...’
‘What did the advert say?’
‘Just that she wanted company—someone to go to the theatre with and things like that.’
‘And to share her bed?’
‘Yes.’
‘I want to know what the advert said.’
‘She said that her father was dying and he had wanted to see her married. Celeste had given up on love but she wanted to make her father happy. She hoped the marriage would last for two years. She spoke of the ballet and theatre, and that she liked to cook but preferred to eat out.’
‘Roman?’ Anya pushed.
‘She wanted someone good looking, preferably younger than her...’
‘Roman?’ Anya pushed again. ‘Did the advert imply sex?’
He told her but he was not cruel.
She had a performance tomorrow and to mention adventurous would provoke the screams of Firebird being plucked alive.
‘She said that as well as all that, she wanted a sexual partner.’
‘So you were just a sex toy.’
‘Yes,’ Roman said, and he could leave it there but it would be a lie and a cop-out and Celeste deserved better than that. So too did Anya. They needed the truth if they were to survive so he amended, ‘At first.’
His words cut like a knife, because him as a sex toy she could almost, almost, deal with, but never his affection for another woman, never that it might have turned to love.
‘Do you want to hear this?’ he checked. ‘Are you sure you need to hear this tonight?’
Anya nodded and then shook her head. ‘You could have come to Saint Petersburg and been with me,’ she said. ‘You say you were rich by then, whereas I was barely making ends meet...’
‘Anya, if you want to hear this then you need to listen properly. I never intended to come and find you.’
‘But why not?’
‘Pride,’ he said.
‘Foolish pride.’
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘I would do it all again because the man I was would not have sat back and let you do what you had to to get by in the dance world. Celeste taught me patience.’
‘No, that was me,’ Anya said, and she remembered the burn of their first time, how he would have had her in a moment and that she had slowed him down.
‘She taught me manners,’ Roman said.
‘No,’ Anya refuted. ‘That was also me.’
‘I’m not talking about please and thank you in the bedroom...’ Roman countered.
Anya was.
‘And what else did Saint Celeste teach you?’ she asked with a sneer, but her face soon crumpled and she knew he would terminate the conversation. ‘I am trying...’ she pleaded.
‘I know,’ he said, and instead of telling her off he took her hand.
Roman had known this would be a difficult conversation, which was why he hadn’t wanted to go there tonight. His reaction would be just the same if Anya spoke of Mika or another lover she’d had.
Soon it would be his turn, to sit lacerated as she told him about Mika, and so for now he kept it at Celeste.
‘She taught me how to hold a fine china cup and how to sit in a restaurant...’
And she winced because their last night had been spent in a restaurant.
‘Remember how I embarrassed you.’
‘You did not.’
‘But I did,’ Roman said. ‘Decorum was part of your curriculum...’
‘I could have shown you,’ she pleaded.
‘But I didn’t want you teaching me.’
‘You let her, though!’
‘Because I did not care for her then. Celeste and I had a deal, two years together, and I intended to use them wisely.’
‘So you answered the ad...’
‘Yes.’
‘And you made love to her.’
‘Sex,’ Roman said.
‘With affection?’ she asked, and then changed her mind. ‘I don’t want to know.’
‘You do need to hear this, Anya,’
Roman had decided.
It was time.
‘I was locked in the secure unit for four years. I had no social skills, it is not a part of the orphanage’s curriculum.’
His words were cutting and she nodded her understanding that it still hurt him to recall those times and Roman continued.
‘I remember when I went first to her home. I had never been inside one, not a proper home.’
And she thought how bleak his life had been at the bedsit that he had tried to make presentable for her.
‘Was that the first time you saw her?’
‘Yes, we had exchanged photos and spoken on the phone, but that was our first meeting. Celeste too was shocked,’ Roman recalled. ‘She said, “You look like your picture...”’
And Anya smiled for the first time about the subject.
‘Did you sleep with her that day?’
‘No,’ Roman said, and he held her angry glare. ‘That night.’
‘And?’
‘I would never discuss what went on in the bedroom with you and I shall extend the same courtesy to Celeste. All I shall say is that affection grew. Anya, when I turned up at Daniil’s Libby embraced me. When I turned up at Celeste’s door and she did the same I recoiled.’
Anya could not speak.
‘I wanted to improve myself. Which I did. If you don’t approve of my methods, that is up to you.’
‘I don’t approve...’ she said, and then she closed her eyes. ‘I don’t know.’ She looked at him. ‘It was supposed to last only two years, yet it went on for longer?’
‘Celeste found out that she was dying. I chose to be with her till the end.’
And how could she hate him for that?
‘What is your new name?’ she asked.
It was the only question he wasn’t prepared for.
‘Roman?’ Anya begged. ‘Surely you can tell me that.’
It was so hard to, though. ‘I wanted to give my brother a chance of a life without his poor relation on his back. I wanted you to have the life you deserved. I couldn’t turn my back on it all, though.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I was given a new identity—we all are for that first year. Then you get a choice, retain the new one or go back to the old. If I kept my new one, I could never look you up, I could never see my brother again. And I couldn’t do it. I am still Roman Zverev.’
‘So why have you stayed away all these years?’ she asked.
‘Because I never felt ready, because I still thought I would be a strain...’
‘So, what, you had to change before you could find me?’
‘I didn’t do for you, Anya, I did it for me.’
Anya sat there as he stood.
‘I am not going to apologise for Celeste. Get used to that,’ he said. ‘Anya, had we stayed together we would have been as poor as church mice and I tell you now...’ he made a gesture with two fingers to the back of his throat, and her own throat closed as he touched on a painful subject ‘...I could not have put up with that. I would have held you back.’
He was done explaining, and left the table and went through to the bedroom.
He lay on his back with his hands behind his head. He loathed sharing his feelings, he loathed to admit that need for Anya that had clawed at his heart.
And Anya came to the door and she remembered a time many, many years ago.
Flu had swept through the orphanage. In an effort to contain it, all the orphans had been confined to their dormitories and rooms.
Katya too had been ill and Anya had been asked to work in the kitchen. She had taken suppers around on a trolley without the perpetual guard of her mother.
As she’d looked in she had seen Roman, lying on his bed, his hands behind his head.
He hadn’t been sick but had been confined.
The guard had opened the door and she had gone in.
Roman had stared up at the ceiling and had not turned to look, for he’d expected it to be Katya bringing him his meal.
‘One day you will get out of here and do great things,’ Anya had said, and his face had turned towards her.
Anya smiled at the recollection.
He was out of there and had done great things.
He’d done them in his own unique way, and she was proud that he had.
‘How did you get the chocolate?’ she had asked as she had walked towards him, carrying his tray.
He hadn’t answered.
Instead he had smiled.
She had walked into his room utterly innocent, but he had stripped her bare with his eyes. She had walked over, her eyes on his crotch, watching him harden.
His eyes had been on her breasts, which had ached.
‘What time are lights out?’ she had asked.
‘Ten.’
‘Anya.’ A worker had called for her to hurry, but their love had been born by then.
And at ten that night she had lain in her own bed and thought of him, and Roman had done the same as her.
‘You did get out of there, Roman,’ Anya said, and he turned and looked. ‘And you have done great things.’
‘I had to do it by myself, for myself.’
Anya nodded, even if she did not quite understand.
Now, though, she could do as she had wanted to back then. She walked towards him, and he smiled as she stripped herself of her robe.
