Dancing with Danger

Now, Finn wasn’t an unsympathetic man, but he didn’t have time to puppy-walk this girl. The helicopter needed to be well out of range by the time the storm hit. He just didn’t have the time to spoon-feed her the confidence she needed. The only course open to him was one of tough love.

‘Undo your buckle,’ he yelled, miming the action with his fingers. She hesitated, but he couldn’t have that. He yelled again, even as compassion tugged at him—told him to ease up. He batted it away, knowing from his days in the army that if he showed any kind of sympathy she might waver. Or freeze. Or panic.

He couldn’t have any of those things. The lives of the chopper crew could depend on it.

Fear was still swirling in her eyes, and she didn’t tear her gaze from his, but her fingers fumbled with the buckle and eventually it came free.

Good girl.

He shut that thought down before it showed on his face. He’d tell her later, when it was over. He used the same method of walking her through all the steps ready for their insertion as they hurtled towards their destination. He yelled; she obeyed. It was all good.

It seemed like an age before the helicopter was hovering only ten feet above the beach they’d be making their home for the next week. He jumped out of the open-sided helicopter without thinking, letting his knees bend, and rolled before standing up again. A Dave-sized thud beside him told him there was only one passenger left to disembark.

He turned back to the helicopter. She was standing in the doorway, her knuckles whitening on the edges. She didn’t look as if she was in a hurry to let go. Too bad.

‘Jump!’ he yelled, and thrust his arms up and forwards.

Almost instantly he was hit full-force by a flying ballerina. She must have flung herself out the moment he’d spoken, and he’d expected to have to yell at least once more. It took him totally by surprise, causing him to lose his footing, and they both went crashing to the ground. He was only half aware of the blurred shape of the helicopter moving away and the roar of its blades quietening.

He lay there, breathing hard. Damp sand cooling his back and a shaking ballerina warming his front.

‘S-sorry,’ she stammered. She didn’t move, though. Must be too shocked. Or mortified.

She needn’t have worried. Finn liked surprises. They produced a delicious little cocktail of adrenalin and endorphins that he’d decided he rather liked. Even when surprises came in the shape of flying ballerinas. He suddenly saw the funny side, and chuckled deep down in his torso.

‘What did you say your name was?’ he asked the unblinking pair of azure eyes just centimetres from his own.

‘Alle—’ she croaked out. And then she tried again. ‘Allegra.'

Finn grinned at her.

‘Well, Allie—Allegra—whoever you are …’ He lifted her off him with surprising ease and dumped her on the sand beside him. He really would have to anchor her to a tree if the wind picked up, wouldn’t he? Then he jumped to his feet and offered her his hand, grinning even wider. The sky was steel-grey and from the taste of the wind now whipping her long dark ponytail into her face he knew torrential rain was only minutes away.

‘Welcome to paradise,’ he said.

CHAPTER TWO

Forty-eight hours earlier

ALLEGRA stood rigid in the wings as the corps de ballets rushed past her and onto the stage of the Royal Opera House. Breathe, she reminded herself. Relax. You’ve done these steps a thousand times in rehearsal. Your body knows what to do. Trust it.

Too late for more rehearsal now. She’d be on stage in a matter of minutes.

Even so, she couldn’t stop herself marking the opening sequence on the spot, her arms and legs carving tiny, precise arcs in the air as they mirrored the full-blown sequence of turns and jumps in her head.

Frustrated, she stopped herself mid-movement, pulled her cardigan off and dumped it somewhere she’d be able to find it later before resuming her position in the wings. As she listened to the orchestra and watched the corps de ballet set the scene, she arched one foot then the other, pressing her shoes into the floor until there was a tight but pleasing stretch in her instep.

Pretend it’s just the dress rehearsal. Just another run-though.

She tried very hard to do just that but the adrenalin skipping through her system called her a liar.

Not just a rehearsal, but opening night.

No familiar role, either. Neither for dancers nor audience.

This was a brand new role created just for her. Created to prove the child prodigy, the ‘baby ballerina’ hadn’t lost her sparkle after seven long years in the profession. This new ballet, The Little Mermaid, was supposed to silence the critics who’d been prophesying for years now that Allegra Martin would burn brightly and then, just as quickly, burn out.

They’d been saying that since she’d turned twenty and now—three years past that sell-by date—she was sensing the creeping inevitability of that prediction every time she put on her pointe shoes. She almost dreaded sliding her feet into them these days.

Not tonight. It couldn’t be tonight. Her father would be devastated.

To distract herself from these unwanted thoughts, she checked her costume. No stiff tutu for this role. Her dress was soft and flowing, ending just below her knees. Layers of chiffon in deep blue, aquamarine and turquoise. And her dark hair, instead of being pulled into its habitual bun, was loose and flowing round her shoulders; only two small sections at the front were caught back to keep it off her face. She resisted the urge to fiddle with the grips, knowing it would probably only make things worse.

The orchestra began a new section of music. It wasn’t long now. She should try and focus, slow her butterfly-wing breaths and let her ribs swell with oxygen. She closed her eyes and concentrated on pulling the air in and releasing it slowly.

Behind her eyelids an image gatecrashed her efforts at calm and inner poise. A pair of dark masculine eyes that crinkled at the corners as an unseen mouth pulled them into a smile. She snapped her own eyes open.

Where had that come from?

Now her heart was beating double speed. Damn. She needed to get her thoughts under control. Less than a minute and she’d be making her entrance. She shook her head and blew out some air.

And then it happened again. With her eyes open.

But this time she saw the smile beneath the eyes. Warm and bright and just a little bit cheeky.

It must be the stress.

Weeks of preparing for this moment had finally got to her. She’d heard other dancers mention the strange random thoughts that plagued them before a performance, but it had never happened to her before. No sudden musings on what she was going to have for dinner that evening or whether she’d remembered to charge her mobile phone.

But why was she thinking of him?

A man she didn’t even know.

What was he doing here, invading her thoughts at such a crucial moment? It was most unsettling. The last thing she needed right now. And she really meant right now. The violins had just picked up the melody that signalled her entrance.

Thankfully, her body had been rehearsed so hard the steps were almost a reflex and it sprang to life and ran onto the stage, dragging her disjointed head with it. There was a moment of hush, a pause in the music, and she sensed every person in the audience had simultaneously and unconsciously held their breath.

They were watching her. Waiting for her.

It was her job to dazzle and amaze, to transport them to another world. And, just as she lifted her arm in a port de bras that swept over her head, preparing her for a series of long and lilting steps across the diagonal of the stage, she wished that were possible. She wished that she could escape into another world. And maybe stay there. Somewhere new, somewhere exciting, where no one expected anything of her and she had no possibility of failing to make the grade.

But tonight, while she made the audience believe she was the Little Mermaid, while they saw her float and turn and defy gravity, she would know the truth. She would feel the impact of every jump in her whole skeleton. She would hear the knocking of her pointe shoes on the stage even if the orchestra drowned out the noise for the audience. She would feel her toes rub and blister inside their unforgiving, solid shoes.

No, she knew the reality of ballet. It might look effortless from the outside, but from the inside it was hard and demanding. It was beautiful, but it wasn’t pretty or nice. A fierce kind of beauty that asked for your very soul in return for greatness, and then devoured it without compunction.

She had chosen this path and there was no escape. There was no other world. It was all an illusion.

But she would fool them all. She would dance like a girl who was full of sadness, trapped in a state of endless longing, wishing for a reality that could never be hers. And she would dance it well. She wouldn’t even be acting, because it was the truth. Her truth.