Dance to the Piper (5 page)

"Hi. I hope you're not hungry. I'm not finished yet."

"No. I—" He glanced back over his shoulder. "The hall…" he began, and let his words trail off. Maddy stuck her head out and sniffed.

"Smells like a cow pasture," she said. "Guido must be cooking again. Come on in."

He should have been prepared for her apartment, but he wasn't. Reed glanced around at the vivid red curtains, the shock of blue rug, the chair that looked as though it had come straight out of a medieval castle. It had, in fact, come from the set of
Camelot.
Her name in pink neon glowed brilliantly against a white wall.

"Quite a place," he murmured.

"I like it when I'm here." Overhead came three simultaneous thuds. "Ballet student on the fifth," Maddy said easily.
"Tours jett.
Would you like some wine?"

"Yes." Reed glanced uneasily at the ceiling again. "I

think I would."

"Good. So would I." She walked back to the kitchen, which was separated from the living room by a teetering breakfront and imagination. "There's a corkscrew in one of these drawers," she told him. "Why don't you open the bottle while I finish this?"

After a moment's hesitation, Reed found himself searching through Maddy's kitchen drawers. In the first one he found a tennis ball, several loose keys and some snapshots, but no corkscrew. He rifled through another, wondering what he was doing there. On the fifth floor, the ballet student continued his leaps.

"How do you like your steak?"

Reed rescued the corkscrew from a tangle of black wire. "Ahh… medium rare."

"Okay." When she bent down to pull the broiling pan out of a cupboard, her cheek nearly brushed his knee. Reed drew the cork from the bottle, then set the wine aside to let it breathe.

"Why did you ask me to dinner?"

Still bent over and rummaging, Maddy turned her face upward. "No concrete reason. I rarely have one, but if you'd like, why don't we say because of the hairbrush?" She rose then, holding a dented broiling pan. "Besides, you're terrific to look at."

She saw the humor come and go in his eyes and was delighted.

"Thank you."

"Oh, you're welcome." She brushed away the hair that fell into her eyes and thought vaguely that it was about time for a trim. "Why did you come?"

"I don't have any idea."

"That should definitely make things more interesting. You've never backed a play before, have you?"

"No."

"I've never cooked dinner for a backer. So we're even." Setting the salad aside, she began to prepare the steak.

"Glasses?"

"Glasses?" she repeated, then glanced at the wine. "Oh, they're up in one of the cupboards."

Resigned, Reed began another search. He found cups with broken handles, a mismatched set of fabulous bone china and several plastic dishes. Eventually he found a hoard of eight wineglasses, no two alike. "You don't believe in uniformity?"

"Hot really." Maddy set the steak under the broiler, then slammed the oven door. "It needs a boost to get going," she told him as she accepted the glass he offered. "To SRO."

"To what?"

"Standing room only." She clicked her glass to his and drank.

Reed studied her over the rim of his glass. She still wore the oversize sweatshirt. Her feet were bare. The scent that hung around her was light, airy and guileless. "You aren't what I expected."

"That's nice. What did you expect?"

"Someone with a sharper edge, I suppose. A little jaded, a little hungry."

"Dancers are always hungry," she said with a half smile, turning to grate cheese onto potatoes.

"I decided you'd asked me here for one of two reasons. The first was to pump me for information about the finances of the play."

Maddy chuckled, putting a sliver of cheese on her tongue. "Reed, I have to worry about eight dance routines—maybe ten, if Macke has his way—six songs, and lines I haven't even counted yet. I'll leave the money matters to you and the producers. What was the second reason?"

"To come on to me."

Her brows lifted, more in curiosity than shock. Reed watched her steadily, his eyes dark and calm, his smile cool and faintly amused. A cynic, Maddy realized, thinking it was a shame. Perhaps he had a reason to be. That was more of a shame. "Do women usually come on to you?"

He'd expected her to be embarrassed, to be annoyed, at the very least to laugh. Instead, she looked at him with mild curiosity. "Let's just pass over that one, shall we?"

"I suppose they do." She began to hunt for a kitchen fork to turn the steak with. "And I suppose you'd resent it after a while. I never had to deal with that sort of thing myself. Men always came on to my sister." She found the fork, squeaked open the oven door and flipped the steak over.

"There's only one," Reed pointed out.

"No, I've got two sisters."

"Steak. You're only cooking one steak."

"Yes, I know. It's yours."

"Aren't you eating?"

"Oh, sure, but I never eat a lot of red meat." She slammed the oven door again. "It dogs up the system. I figured you'd give me a couple bites of yours. Here." She handed him the salad bowl. "Take this over to the little table by the window. We're nearly ready."

It was good. In fact, it was excellent As he'd watched her haphazard way of cooking, Reed had had his doubts. The salad was a symphony of mixed greens in a spicy vinaigrette. Cheese and bacon were heaped on steaming potatoes, and the steak was done precisely as he preferred. The wine had a subtle bite.

Maddy was still nursing her first glass. She ate a fraction of what seemed normal to Reed, and seemed to relish every bite.

"Take some more steak," he offered, but she shook her head. She did, however, take a second small bowl of salad. "It seems to me that anyone who has as physical a job as you do should eat more to compensate."

"Dancers are better off a little underweight. Mostly it's a matter of eating the right things. I really hate that." She grinned, taking a forkful of lettuce and alfalfa sprouts. "Not that I hate the right kind of food, I just love food, period. Once in a while I splurge on thousands of calories. But I always make sure it's a kind of celebration."

"What kind?"

"Well, say it's rained for three days, then the sun comes out. That's good enough for chocolate-chip cookies." She poured herself another half glass of wine and filled his glass before she noticed his blank expression. "Don't you like chocolate-chip cookies?"

"I've never considered them celebrational."

"You've never lived an abnormal life."

"Do you consider your life abnormal?"

"I don't. Thousands would." She propped her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her hands. Food, so often dreamed over, could always be forgotten when the conversation was interesting. "What's your life like?"

The fight from the window beside them was dying quickly. What was left of it gleamed darkly in her hair. Her eyes, which had seemed so open, so easy, now glowed like a cat's, tawny, lazy, watchful. The neon was a foolish pink shimmer that curled into her name. "I don't know how to answer that."

"Well, I can probably guess some of it. You have an apartment, probably overlooking the park." She poked into the salad again, still watching him. "Ming vases, Dresden figures, something of the sort. You spend more time at your office than in your home. Conscientious about your work, dedicated to the business. Any responsible second-generation tycoon would be. You date very casually, because you don't have the time or inclination for a relationship. You'd spend more time at the museum if you could manage it, take in a foreign film now and then, and prefer quiet French restaurants."

She wasn't laughing at him, he decided. But she was more amused than impressed. Annoyance crept into his eyes, not because of her description but because she'd read him so easily. "That's very clever."

"I'm sorry," she said with such quick sincerity that his annoyance vanished. "It's a bad habit of mine, sizing people up, categorizing them. I'd be furious with anyone who did it to me." Then she stopped and caught her bottom lip between her teeth. "How close was I?"

It was difficult to resist her frank good humor, "close enough."

With a laugh, she shook her head back so that her hair flared out then settled. She brought her legs up into the lotus position. "Is it all right to ask why you're backing a play about a stripper?"

"Is it all right to ask why you're starring in a play about a stripper?"

She beamed at him like a teacher, Reed thought, whose student had answered a question with particular insight. "It's a terrific play. The trick to being sure of that is to look at the script without the songs and the dance numbers. The music punctuates, emphasizes, exhilarates, but even without it, it's a good story. I like the way Mary develops without having to change intrinsically. She's had to be tough to survive, but she's made the best of it. She wants more, and she goes after it because she deserves more. The only glitch is that she really falls for this guy. He's everything she's ever wanted in a material way, but she really just plain loses her head over him. After she does, the money doesn't matter, the position doesn't matter, but she ends up with it all anyway. I like that."

"Happy ever after?"

"Don't you believe in happy endings?"

A shutter clicked down over his expression, quickly, completely. Curiously. "In a play."

"I should tell you about my sister."

"The one the men came on to?"

"No, my other sister. Would you like an éclair? I bought you one, and if you have it you could offer me a bite. It would be rude for me to refuse."

Damn it, she was getting more appealing by the minute. Not his type, not his speed, not his style. But he smiled at her. "I'd love an éclair."

Maddy went into the kitchen, rummaged noisily, then came back with a fat chocolate-iced pastry. "My sister Abby," she began, "married Chuck Rockwell, the race driver. Do you know about him?"

"Yes." Reed had never been an avid fan of auto racing, but the name rang a bell. "He was killed a few years back."

"Their marriage hadn't been working. Abby really had been having a dreadful time. She was raising her two children alone on this farm in Virginia. Financially she was strapped, emotionally she was drained. A few months ago she authorized a biography of Rockwell. The writer came to the farm, ready, I think, to gun Abby down," Maddy continued, placing the éclair on the table. "Are you going to offer me a bite?"

Reed obligingly cut a piece of the pastry with his fork and offered it to her. Maddy let the crust and cream and icing lie on her tongue for a long, decadent moment. "So what happened to your sister?"

"She married the writer six weeks ago." When she smiled again, her face simply lighted up, just as emphatically as the pink neon. "Happy-ever-after doesn't just happen in plays."

"What makes you think your sister's second marriage will work?"

"Because this is the right one." She leaned forward again, her eyes on his. "My sisters and I are triplets, we know each other inside out. When Abby married Chuck, I was sorry. In my heart, you see, I knew it wasn't right, that it could never be right, because I know Abby just as well as I know myself. I could only hope it would work somehow. When she married Dylan, it was such a different feeling—like letting out a long breath and relaxing."

"Dylan Crosby?"

"Yes, do you know him?"

"He did a book on Richard Bailey. Richard's been signed with Valentine Records for twenty years. I got to know Dylan fairly well when he was doing his research."

"Small world."

"Yes." It was full dusk now, and the sky was deepening to purple, but she didn't bother with lights. The ballet student had long since stopped his practicing. Somewhere down the hall, a baby could be heard wailing fitfully. "Why do you live here?"

"Here?" She gave him a blank look. "Why not?"

"You've got Attila the Hun on the street corner, screaming neighbors…"

"And?" she added, prompting him.

"You could move uptown."

"What for? I know this neighborhood. I've been here for seven years. It's close to Broadway, handy to rehearsal halls and classes. Probably half the tenants in this building are gypsies."

"I wouldn't be surprised."

"No, chorus-line gypsies." She laughed and began to toy with the leaf of the philodendron. It was a nervous gesture she wouldn't have begun to recognize herself. "Dancers who move from show to show, hoping for that one big break. I got it. That doesn't mean I'm not still a gypsy." She glanced back at him, wondering why it should matter so much that he understand her. "You can't change what you are, Reed. Or at least you shouldn't."

He believed that, and always had. He was the son of Edwin Valentine, one of the early movers and shakers in the record industry. He was a product of success, wealth and survival. He was, as Maddy had said, devoted to the business, because it had been part of his life always. He was impatient, often ruthless, a man who looked at the bottom line and the fine print before changing it to suit himself. He had no business sitting in a darkening apartment with a woman with cat's eyes and a wicked smile. He had less business entertaining fantasies about what it would be like to remain until the moon began to rise.

"You're killing that plant," he murmured.

"I know. I always do." She had to swallow, and that surprised her. Something in the way he'd been looking at her just now. Something in the tone of his voice, the set of his body. She could always be mistaken about a face, but not about a body. His was tensed, and so was hers. "I keep buying them, and keep killing them."

"Too much sun." He hadn't meant to, but brushed the back of her hand with his fingers. "And too much water. It's as easy to overlove as underlove."

"I hadn't thought of that." She was thinking about the tremors that were shooting up her arm, down her spine. "Your plants probably thrive with the perfect balance of attention.'' She caught herself wondering if it was the same with his women. Then she rose, because her system wasn't reacting as she'd expected it to. "I can offer you tea, but not coffee. I don't have any."