Authors: Karen Swan
‘Yes.’
‘When’s she back?’
‘She’ll be back in time for the show tomorrow night,’ she replied factually, like the good PA she was.
Adam dropped his head again.
‘How do you think she manages these hot-blooded, full-blown affairs, and we don’t?’ he asked.
‘We?’ She stopped drawing and looked back at him, one hand on her hip. ‘You’re bracketing me in with you? Last time I looked, you were perfectly able to afford to jet
round the world to hook up with a lover too. Me, on the other hand? I’d have to take the bus.’
Adam grinned at her sarcasm. He liked it. The girl had fire. He held her gaze for a moment. ‘Or just not leave the room.’
‘Huh?’ she frowned, baffled but feeling the tension between them suddenly build.
‘You don’t need to take the bus. You just need to take your clothes off.’
Sophie swallowed hard as he got up and walked towards her.
‘Why should she have all the fun?’ he asked, looking straight into her eyes. Usually she towered over most men and felt anything but girlish in their arms, but Adam, although he was
only fractionally taller than her, was twice her size, and as he snaked an arm around her waist and pulled her into him she felt just like one of the sylphs he so ardently chased around the stage
each night.
‘I mean, if Pia’s away till tomorrow night, and I’m not on stage till tomorrow night –’ he began sliding a hand up under her jumper – ‘that means
we’ve both got twenty-four hours to play with,’ he said, kissing her lightly on the lips. ‘And you know what? I really want to spend them playing with you.’
Pia had packed her bags and checked out of the Little Nell – not bothering to pick up the tab like she usually did – before Andy was over the finish line. She took
his call on the way back to the airport, but she wasn’t interested in his excuse, if you could even call it that.
‘It’s not what you think,’ he said, before she could get in first. ‘It’s all above board.’
‘Oh. So you’re not married with a kid, then?’ she said, her accent thickening, as it always did when she got emotional.
‘Well, yeah. But we have an arrangement, my wife and I.’
‘An arrangement?’ she bristled, hating hearing the words ‘my wife’ coming from his mouth.
‘When the snow’s on the ground and I’m away from home in tournaments, I can – you know . . . play away. As long as I go back during the grass seasons, then it’s all
cool. You know, “what happens on tour, stays on tour . . .”’ She could hear the grin in his voice. As if it was his
wife
’s tacit approval that made it okay. What
about hers?
‘Listen, babe,’ he hushed, as her silence grew, ‘I’m sorry. I thought you’d be cool with it. After all, she is, and she’s the wife.’
‘Well, more fool her,’ Pia spat. ‘She should have more self-respect. Besides, do you really think I’m going to
share
myself around?’
There was a pause as Andy realized his mistake of playing it easy with the proudest woman he’d ever met. He realized too late that Pia didn’t give a damn about his
‘arrangement’. He’d been a fool to treat her like all the other groupies.
‘Pia, listen, I—’
‘Your son idolizes you, do you know that? You’re his world.’
‘And he’s mine.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Hey, I’m out there risking my neck to bring money home for th—’
‘Don’t patronize me,’ Pia cut in, rolling the R thickly. ‘You’re out there because you love it. You love the thrill, the danger, the excitement. And you love the
freedom it gives you – away from them, your responsibilities. You love all the women it allows you to have.’
‘Well, like I said,
she
’s cool with it,’ he said testily, unable to refute her claims. ‘I don’t see why you have to play the role of the jealous
wife.’
‘Let’s get one thing straight, Andy. I’m beautiful, rich, talented and famous. I can and do have whoever I like in my bed and I don’t need some other woman’s
leftovers, do you understand? Your arrangement might be good enough for you and her, but it’s not good enough for me.’
She looked out of the window and saw that the car was pulling onto the tarmac. They were out of time and there was nothing more to be said.
‘Look, we had fun together, Andy, but don’t ring me again. It’s over,’ she said flatly, as the driver got out and opened her door.
With her biggest shades on, she swung her legs out of the car and huddled herself into her usual seat on the plane. She’d managed to get on the first flight to Denver, but there she
stalled. Where to now? She had no job to go back to – at least not for another three weeks; no lover to stay in bed with; no family to visit; no friends. She stood at the check-in desk, her
trademark defiance conspicuously absent. Tossing her hair over her shoulder, she rang the only person who’d know what to do.
‘Sophie, I’m in Denver,’ she said crossly, as though it was Sophie’s fault.
‘What?’ Sophie asked, panicked, disentangling herself from Adam’s muscular arms. Pia was supposed to be in Aspen for another night.
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Pia said curtly. ‘Where shall I go?’
Sophie frowned down the line as Adam began kissing the back of her shoulders. She’d never heard her boss sound . . . vulnerable before. Pia always had a game plan. Her movements were
booked two years in advance. She couldn’t suddenly have
a day and a half
going free. She wouldn’t have the first idea what to do with herself.
‘Uh . . . uh,’ Sophie stalled, panicking again. ‘Why don’t you come straight back to New York, then? You were due back tomorrow anyway.’
Pia yawned dramatically. ‘No matter now. Three weeks off.’ She didn’t offer any explanations for that either.
Three weeks? Just like that? No Andy, and now no work? She wondered if it was anything to do with the Victoria’s Secret show. Perhaps Badlands had come down hard on her, after all.
‘Well, uh . . . take a holiday, really rest for a bit. Barbados is good at this time of year.’
‘No,’ Pia said dismissively. ‘I need to keep my fitness up.’
‘Okay, well, if you want to perform, the Royal Ballet in London’s been on the phone again. They’ve got a guest spot they want to—’
‘As if that’s a good idea!’ she snorted. ‘What would that do to my negotiations with Milan if they found out I was even talking to the Royal, much less dancing for
them?’
‘It’s just that they’re very persistent,’ Sophie said with understatement. Word had clearly got out to the powers that be in London that Pia was in talks with La Scala
Ballet in Milan, one of the most prestigious classical ballet companies in the world, and their fierce rivals. Pia wouldn’t even table a meeting with anyone else, and yet Paris Opera and the
Royal were still calling with ever higher financial packages and perks every few weeks. Sophie was doing her best to get Pia to at least meet up with them, but she was on a hiding to nothing.
Getting to Milan had been Pia’s lifelong ambition and a fancy salary, cars or apartments held no sway with her because all she really wanted was a title – that of Prima Ballerina
Assoluta – and it was in La Scala’s gift to bestow it upon her.
‘Whatever,’ Pia mumbled down the line, inspecting her nails.
Damn. Sophie racked her brain. She was clutching at straws. This was not what she needed right now. Pia Soto with nowhere to go and no one to do was not a good proposition. In the three years
Sophie had worked for her, she had never had to cater for downtime before. If Pia wasn’t working, she was seducing. There wasn’t anything else. Not even shopping.
‘Oh!’ Sophie said, sitting bolt upright and just about knocking Adam’s teeth out, as a thought came to her. ‘What about St Moritz? The snow polo’s on. Cartier asked
you as a guest of honour. They offered you a suite at the Black, that fabulous new boutique hotel. I turned it down because you were already booked in at Aspen with Andy, and it’s slightly
dodgy territory being seen with them when you’re under contract to Patek Philippe but . . .’
‘Hmm,’ Pia narrowed her eyes, looking suspiciously around the airport. There were always photographers hanging around here, wanting to catch those celebrities en route to Aspen who
didn’t fly by private jet – yet. She needed to get out of there. Word would get around quickly about her suspension and she would make headline news again.
‘Okay. I’ll go to St Moritz,’ she said petulantly, as though she was doing Sophie a favour. ‘But it has to be discretionary, and they’re picking up all costs, and I
want private use of the gym and a
barre
put in the suite. Plus all the usual.’ She stopped for breath. ‘And I want you to come out too.’
She hung up without bothering to say goodbye and walked over to the United Airlines priority check-in desk. She kept her shades on to buy the ticket, and before it was even in her hand a manager
had appeared to escort her personally to the first-class lounge. A few photographers, who had taken up almost permanent residence in the airport, clocked the deference around her and began snapping
away, their fingers triggering faster and faster as they realized their quarry.
Pia tossed her hair haughtily as she strode past, the crowd around her growing quickly, and airport security anxiously brought over a buggy to whisk her away. In all the excitement, nobody
noticed the man who went up to the check-in desk after her and asked for a ticket on the same flight.
Sophie’s heart sank as she heard the line go dead. It was her first day off in four months, and she and Adam had just started on their lost weekend together. And now she
had to spend it on a transatlantic flight?
She dropped the phone into her bag and looked at Adam, who had got out of bed to inspect his teeth.
‘Was that Pia?’ he asked into the mirror.
‘Who else?’ She rested her head on her hand idly, her eyes appraising his naked form, the stupendous physique she’d been trying to encapsulate in charcoal only forty minutes
before. The etchings lay scattered like pieces of confetti, forgotten beneath the heap of clothes on the floor. She bit her lip as she scrutinized the carved hollow of his glutes.
‘Everything okay?
Sophie hesitated. She didn’t want to tell him she thought Pia and Andy had broken up – not yet. She suspected Adam was only here because it was seduction by proxy. After all, she was
Pia’s closest ally, her keeper, the nearest Pia got to a friend – Sophie might be the closest he could get.
‘Yes. Just a change of plans. I’ve got to meet her in Switzerland tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow?’ He whirled round.
She shrugged, knowing his concern was about the performance schedule rather than their curtailed love-in. ‘Reading between the lines, I think Baudrand may have suspended her.’
‘Oh great,’ he said, hands on hips. ‘Well, I guess that explains his temper earlier.’
‘Yeah,’ she muttered disconsolately.
There was a long pause and she fell back on the bed, staring up bleakly at the ceiling.
‘Of course, you know what this means, don’t you?’
‘You’ll have to dance with Ingrid.’
He shook his head. ‘We’ll need to make hay while the sun shines.’
She looked over at him in surprise and giggled, diving back under the sheets as he ran athletically back towards her, a devilish grin on his lips.
Pia slept for fourteen hours straight when she got to St Moritz, and by the time she awoke her body was stiff with sleep. She didn’t function like other people. Her body
only seemed to relax under strain.
She called down for black coffee and toast, and lay back on the bed, stretching long, feeling the deep muscle fibres across her stomach reinvigorate themselves. She counted back the days since
her last performance. Travelling yesterday, Aspen the day before that, New York the day before that. Coming into the third day, then; no wonder she was seizing up. It was true what they said
– one day off class and you notice; two days and your colleagues notice; three days and the audience notices.
She got up and moved into her sitting room to do some
barre
work. She couldn’t afford to lose form. Regardless of her suspension from the tour, Dimitri Alvisio, the legendary
choreographer, was submitting his new ballet,
The Songbird
, to Baudrand in the next few weeks and she needed to be ready for it. After all, he had written it especially for her – one
of the highest accolades to be bestowed upon a ballerina – and that was something even Ava Petrova couldn’t boast.
Alvisio was the resident choreographer for La Scala and he had written this ballet as a gift to his old friend Jean Baudrand, who was spearheading the ChiCi’s centenary with a year-long
programme of the company’s old favourites and a series of specially commissioned new works.
Pia knew she needed to sparkle and shine like never before in
The Songbird
, not to flatter Baudrand’s tribute, but to flatter herself – for this ballet was a test. If she
interpreted it to Alvisio’s vision, she knew he would bring her to Milan and the end of her rainbow.
La Scala was the birthplace of the Prima Ballerina Assoluta ranking and although a couple of other companies had awarded the title in the past hundred years, it tended to be as recognition for a
lengthy and prolific career, and was regarded as an honour rather than an active rank. But Pia had no time for such vaingloriousness. She intended to win her status at the beginning of her career,
not the end. For her, the Prima Ballerina Assoluta ranking was alive and
pirouetting
, and to prove she was the very best dancer in the world she had to go there to get it.
Ava Petrova was the only other ballerina of her generation who was ever even suggested as a possible rival in this frame, but for once Pia felt she had the edge. The brilliant execution that
usually won Ava first prize in competitions was only a starting point for becoming an Assoluta; the other defining criteria, which were less easy to pin down or possess and which had elevated Pia
as the bigger box-office draw – exquisite grace, fluidity of line, ethereal lightness and joyous spirit – were hers in abundance. This was going to be the year she achieved greatness
– she just knew it.