Save the Last Dance (11 page)

Allegra grinned back. ‘No,' she said, scolding him good-naturedly. ‘I mean it would be nice to be spur-of-the-moment, spontaneous…creative.'

Finn looked shocked. ‘You're a ballet dancer! Of course you're creative!'

She shook her head. ‘I don't make up the moves. I just dance them. I don't have the luxury of
choosing
my steps. I just follow instructions.'

Finn pressed his lips into a grudging smile. ‘Nah, don't buy it. I've seen you dance.' His gaze shifted to the starry sky again as he pulled the memory from its filing place, and then he looked back at her. ‘I saw you dance Juliet—Nat dragged me along.' He gave her a look that reminded her of a naughty schoolboy. ‘That sounded awful. Sorry.'

She tried not to smile back, and failed. ‘Forgiven.'

‘But you're wrong when you say you're not spontaneous and creative. You took that choreography and filled it with life. You made it something unique.'

Allegra's whole body began to tingle, warmed by Finn's praise, then as suddenly as the pins and needles had started, they vanished.

‘That was a long time ago.' She looked at the mattress beneath her fingers, played with a thin leaf. ‘Don't you read the papers? I've burned out since then. Lost my spark.'

Finn didn't say anything and her stomach went cold, fearing his silence, but when she found the courage to meet his gaze she discovered he'd been waiting for her to do just that. He dismissed her comment with a word that shouldn't be repeated in polite company.

‘I don't believe that. Not from what I've seen of you in the last two days. But it really doesn't matter what the papers think. It's what you think that counts.'

Allegra raised her eyebrows. What a novel concept.

Finn continued. ‘I think you need to stop waiting to see if ballet has finished with you and decide if you have finished with
it.
It's your choice, Allegra. Yours alone.'

Neither of them said anything for a long time after that. Finn left her to digest what he'd said in peace, and digest it she did. Who knew if it would agree with her?

I don't know about ballet,
she silently told him,
but you're my choice. That one was easy. Took no effort at all.

When she sneaked a look at him again his eyelids were closed, and seeing him give in to drowsiness pulled her own lids down, too. She let them slide closed as she rolled over, but before sleep took over she whispered, ‘Thank you, Finn.'

‘No problem' was the mumbled reply.

And then Allegra wasn't aware of anything any more.

‘Doesn't this make you wish we had a packet of marshmallows?' Finn was enjoying the contrast of the warmth from the fire on his face and front and cool night snaking up his back under his shirt. With a million childhood campfires swirling in his head he turned to Allegra, who was sitting on a log they'd pulled close to the fire for a bench, looking at him with blank eyes. He poked the fire with the stick he'd been holding before dropping it into the flames.

‘You never went camping as a kid?' he asked, almost wondering if such a horror could be true.

She shook her head.

Wow. A deprived childhood indeed, despite her obviously cultured and privileged background.

‘Not even once?'

She bit her lip and shrugged. Finn tried hard to find the silver lining. He liked silver linings; they protected a man from the depressing facts of life. His gaze roamed to the shelter, the fire, the moonlit beach and then he turned back to her. ‘At least this week should go some way to making up for that.'

She smiled at that. ‘Apart from the marshmallows,' she added quietly.

Right then and there, Finn decided to send a whole crate of marshmallows to Allegra when he got back to London. Then she could use her fire-making skills to roast them whenever she liked—if she ever managed to get the knack of it, of course.

‘Who did you go camping with?' she asked. ‘Your parents?'

Finn nodded. ‘Sometimes. But I used to spend a huge chunk of my summer holidays with my grandfather at his home on Skye. We'd go camping and fishing and hill-walking…'

Allegra sat up a little. ‘And marshmallows were always essential kit?'

‘Always,' Finn replied, grinning. ‘Grandad would eat the pink ones and I'd eat the white.'

She laughed. ‘Why no pink ones for you? Too girly?'

Finn drew breath, intending to give a lengthy, and completely fictional, account of why pink sweets would never threaten his masculinity; but then he saw her gaze sharpen with intelligence and he just gave up and nodded. That made her laugh even harder.

‘I can relate to that,' she said, sighing. ‘My whole childhood was a rhapsody in pink. Pink tights, pink shoes, pink leotards… It got to the point where I would positively avoid it unless I was in class or on stage.'

He watched her as she trailed off and gazed into the fire. Pink was okay. Beautiful in a sunset or a rainforest flower. But life was made to be full of colour. Surely that amount of uniformity couldn't be good for a soul?

They really came from two different worlds, didn't they? He was always on the move, always filling himself up with new experiences from one day to the next, and yet she had got where she was by
staying.
By doing the same thing over and over until she reached perfection. How did she do it without going stark raving mad?

She leaned forward and rested her chin on her fist. ‘He must be really proud of you.'

Finn sat down on the opposite end of the log. ‘Who?'

She smiled gently. ‘Your grandfather.'

He found he couldn't look at the softness in those blue eyes any more and turned his attention back to the crackling logs. Why had he dropped that stick? He really needed to prod those logs with it and now he had nothing to hand.

‘He died when I was fifteen.'

She didn't say anything for a moment, but Finn could feel her sympathy radiating towards him along the log. He knew she'd suffered worse, knew she'd understand, but he still didn't want to share it with her. Letting her in meant he'd have to visit that place himself, and he'd boarded it up and marked it ‘no entry' a long time ago.

‘I'm sorry,' she said.

There it was. That beguiling compassion made into words. It made him feel as if a thousand spiders had just started climbing his legs.

He stood up. ‘Don't worry about it,' he said, not looking at her.

She shouldn't. He never did.

Why buck the trend? He hadn't thought to worry at all that Christmas they'd spent the whole week at Grandad's. Hadn't paid a lick of attention when his grandfather had hugged him goodbye and said, ‘See you in the summer'. On the next visit to Skye, only a few short months later, hiking boots and waterproofs had been traded for a dark suit and smart shoes. Wild heather and open skies had been replaced by wreaths and the claustrophobic stillness of a tiny chapel.

He
should
have worried, though.

He should have realised how much his only living grandparent had been an anchoring point for him throughout his childhood. Should have realised how set adrift he'd feel once the old man was gone.

People thought the wilderness was empty. They were blind. It was full of life—plants, trees, creatures big enough to swallow you whole or so small they were almost invisible to the naked eye. Absent of human interference, yes, but not empty.

No, emptiness was standing at a graveside and not even being able to look at the coffin because all you could see was the hole. All you could
feel
was the hole. Blackness so complete that it wiped out all life before it.
That
was emptiness.

Not a place he ever planned on visiting again, thank goodness.

Allegra stood up. For a moment he thought she was going to move closer and hug him. He was very glad when she didn't.

‘Some people leave big spaces when they go,' she whispered, almost to herself rather than to him. ‘Shoes you can never—'

She paused for a moment.

‘Sorry. I meant
holes
you can never fill, no matter how hard you try.'

Finn walked over to a bush and broke a decent-looking branch off it, then he stripped it of all its smaller twigs and plunged it into the licking orange flames. He didn't say anything because he didn't want to agree with her. That would be lying.

He'd filled in all his holes a long time ago. You could hardly tell they'd been there in the first place. Anchors made holes. Roots made holes. But he'd learned since then that if he moved fast enough he could avoid those kinds of cavities entirely. As a result, his life was always full, never empty.

But then he made the mistake of glancing up at her. Just the look in her eyes ripped something inside of him. And he couldn't have that. Those tiny breaches in the shell were how it started.

He glanced towards the shelter. ‘I don't know about you, but I'm ready for sleep,' he said and, before Allegra could answer he dropped his stick, clambered over the log and headed for the palm leaf mattress.

Something was gently nudging Allegra's shoulder. She rolled over to escape it and crashed into something solid. Something warm. Something that was whispering her name…

She slowly heaved her eyelids open and tried to focus on the shape directly in front of her face. She thought it might be Finn. Her racing pulse told her it was but, instead of having two eyes, this Finn had one large fuzzy one in the middle of his face.

‘Good morning,' the eye said.

Allegra tried to answer, but the only thing that escaped her lips was a string of consonants, none of them logically connected to the previous one.

‘I take it you slept well.'

More consonants. Ones that were supposed to string together to mean: ‘Maybe not
well,
but
better.
'

Some part of Allegra's brain that had still been dozing suddenly decided to sit up and take notice. She was nose to nose with Finn McLeod in the semi-dark! How had that happened?

‘It's time to catch breakfast,' he said.

‘Smoked salmon bagel and a cappuccino, please,' she said in a scratchy voice, not quite ready to pull away from him.

‘Funny lady,' he said, and the eye grew smaller and clearer and separated into two.

Come back,
Allegra wanted to whisper.
Come back and place your lips close to mine again. Let me believe they were just about to touch.

She didn't, of course, despite the fact her sleep fog was making her want to do things she wouldn't normally do. Or wouldn't normally
admit
to wanting to do.

‘You were right about the fish part, though,' Finn said. ‘This is a good time of day to catch them hiding in the shallows.'

Allegra's brain told her to say,
Stuff the fish!
and hold out for the bagel. Her stomach, however, mounted a rebellion and made her push herself up to sit cross-legged on the mattress of ferns and palm leaves.

‘Come on,' Finn said, and reached across to ruffle her sleep-styled hair further. And then he launched himself out of the shelter and started coaxing the still-glowing embers from the previous night back to life.

She closed her eyes and resisted the urge to howl in frustration.

He sees me as a kid sister!
she wailed inside her head.
Nothing more.

And why should he? You're far too young for him. And he has a fiancée.

Allegra squeezed her eyes closed harder and clenched her teeth.
I know, I know. Shut up!

Then she opened her eyes and saw Finn striding down the beach, spear in hand. It felt as if her foolish heart jumped straight out of her chest and scurried on down the beach after him, like a waggy little dog.

Silently, she called it back, even though she knew it was no use.

She sighed and buried her face in her hands. She'd thought she'd known what longing was before she'd reached this island, had she?

Wrong!

So totally, totally wrong.

And now she recognised that emotion for what it was, knew its depths, she had the feeling it had the power to turn this island paradise into a living hell.

Allegra had never known damnation could be so sweet. Despite the rigorous physical work it took just to eat and drink and live on this island, she pushed herself to stay awake as long as possible in the evenings, because that was when she and Finn would talk about anything and everything. And she forced herself to consciousness early in the mornings, just so she could snatch a few extra minutes with him before the crew arrived. And he seemed to enjoy her company as much as she enjoyed his.