“This is amazing,” I said, laughing and going farther inside the greenhouse, stretching out my arms and spinning. Moving toward the window, I pressed my hands against the glass, the raindrop sliding down between my fingers on the opposite side.
“Theo, really, this is beautiful.” I turned back, and his eyes were fixed solely on me as he leaned against one of the beds of roses. “What?”
“I was just thinking how beautiful you are when you smile and how much I enjoy having you here.”
“It feels like you’re the only person who gives me things to smile about anymore,” I said, stepping in front of him.
He cupped my face. “The feeling is mutual.”
Each time he had been the one to kiss me, so I kissed him. His hands slid my down face, to my waist, then into the back pockets of my jeans. I undid the top of his shirt.
“You said you didn’t want to do anything,” he said.
“I lied.” I undid my shirt, allowing it slip off my shoulders to the floor before taking off my bra, followed by my jeans and underwear until I was standing in front of him completely naked. I shrugged a little awkwardly. “This is me, scars and all.”
His gaze traveled up all of me, and he pushed up off the rose bed, resting his hands on my hips. Gently, he pushed me up against the glass. I shivered at it on my skin. His lips hovered over mine. I finished unbuttoning his shirt.
“I’m not just going to fuck you and let you run away from me again,” he whispered, kissing up my neck to my ear.
“I think I love you—” His lips were on mine before I could finish, his tongue in my mouth, my arms wrapping around his neck.
He wasn’t rough. He didn’t try to control me. He wanted to feel me as much as I wanted to feel him.
I guess that’s why it was called making love.
2:13 a.m.
“You really need to sleep.” He kissed the back of my hand as we lay in the middle of the master bed.
Lying on his chest, I listened to his heartbeat, his chest rising and falling with each breath he took.
“What if I fail? What if I fall and embarrass myself, or worse, you?”
“You won’t.”
I sat up. “But what if I do?”
“You won’t,” he replied, and I wanted to smack him. “And if you do, then guess what? It’s only a moment before something else takes over the spotlight. This is Hollywood. You get fifteen minutes of fame or shame and then people move on.”
Frowning, I put my head down. “That doesn’t make me feel better. Urgh, this is going to be bad—”
“Felicity, I’ve seen you. You’re amazing. I know it, the team knows it, and at the end of the night, everyone will know it too.”
“How can you be so calm? It’s a huge night for you too.”
“It’s the sex.” He grinned.
“It was that good, wasn’t it.” I grinned too before laughing. “Let’s say everything goes off with out a hitch tonight. What happens next?”
He pretended to think before grabbing my ass.
“Theo!”
“What happens next? Well, sex is always on the list.”
Rolling my eyes, I moved his hand from my ass to my waist. “Fine. After the sex, what’s going to happen with us?”
“Oh, there is an us now.” He grinned. I tried to spin out of his arms, but he rolled on top of me, holding my arms down beside my head. “After you take everyone’s breath away, and then after I make you scream my name at least a good dozen times, then we do whatever the hell we want to. You want to keep dancing with us, you can. It’s up to you. I’ll date you for a few more weeks before getting you to move in with me and then maybe in a year—you’re panicking.”
“I am not,” I lied.
He shook his head at me. “This is why you shouldn’t ask about what comes next and just worry about what’s happening now.”
“Did you say all that to freak me out?”
He rose off me. “Go to sleep, Felicity.”
I was afraid to sleep. What if the nightmares came back? I didn’t want him to see that side of me. I honestly did wonder if I had any good points at all.
1:10 p.m.
“That’s your speech?” I asked, taking a bite of my oatmeal in the middle of his bed.
“What’s wrong with it?”
I shrugged, taking another bite. “You don’t think it’s kind of, I don’t know… uptight? Especially since you’re trying to get people to donate?”
“That’s Ellen’s job as the host. Mine is to represent Darcy Entertainment.”
“It’s your gala,” I muttered, stuffing my mouth.
He rolled his eyes and handed me the papers. “Fine, genius, since you seem to be able to do everything, you rewrite for me.”
“Me?”
“What? It’s easy to criticize, isn’t it?”
My eyes narrowed before putting the bowl down and taking the papers from his hands. He lay back on the bed, resting against the pillows, arms crossed, watching me.
“Make me want to donate to you.” He reached my bowl.
I outstretched my hands and put on the worst British accent I could muster. “Please, sir, can I have some more?”
“Funny.” He smiled, taking a bite.
“Seriously, start off with what the arts mean to you or something. Like ‘Hello, my name is Theodore Darcy’—”
“And although I’m a billionaire, there are kids out there somewhere who are suffering lack of funding to the arts?” He jumped in sarcastically.
“Yeah, but cut out the billionaire part. It makes you sound pretentious.” I reached over to him to take my bowl back.
“You haven’t written my speech yet.”
“Whatever, I was wrong. I have no idea what you should say. Just make it sound real, like you really need to raise money instead of showing of your company’s talent,” I said, taking a seat beside him. Picking up my cell phone, I checked but still didn’t see any text from Cleo. We always tried to settle our fights quickly, or it got out of hand and neither of us would cave in nor speak to each other until Mark finally jumped in.
“What’s wrong?”
“Huh?” I put the phone back in my pocket.
His eyes shot to it, then back to me. “You look like you’re hiding something.”
“It’s nothing. I just got into a fight with my roommate.” I reached for my plate though I was no longer hungry. “She was upset I came to see you.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. She thinks we’re moving too fast, and I’m depending on you too much.”
“Depending on me? You haven’t depended on me for anything other than sex.”
The corners of my lips turned up. “She meant emotionally.”
“It feels like you’re just now starting to do that.”
“No,” I said, staring at my food. “I have nightmares, and I wake up in a cold sweat. Sometimes it feels like I’m paralyzed, and then I get a bad headache and feel nauseous—”
“Are you okay? Do you need a doctor?” He sat up.
“See, this is what she’s talking about. For some reason, I feel I can tell you everything about me. I couldn’t sleep last night until I came here.”
He put a hand on my leg. “Is that really such a bad thing?”
It would be when he left.
“I’m just hoping she’ll come tonight to see me, since I had to beg Walt for those tickets. Mark said he would be there, but Cleo hasn’t texted me back.”
“If she doesn’t come, that says more about her than it does about you.”
He was right. If she didn’t want to see me on one of the biggest days of my life, then she was the one with the problem, not me. I was moving on and rebuilding myself. I was one step closer to doing something I hadn’t done in years.
I was going to dance for an audience, and I was not going to fail.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Storm
Theo
I became CEO of Darcy Entertai
nment six years ago, making this my sixth gala where I opened the show. I could remember each speech. I never questioned what my speechwriters prepared, and I sure as hell didn’t stick around for the whole thing. Anywhere was better than here, but today there was no place I’d rather have been. My tie was straight and my hair combed. I stood on the corner of the stage, fixing my cuff links. I wanted to give a good speech, and in the back of my mind, I heard Felicity telling me not to bullshit it. This morning we had done nothing but talk. It had been completely uneventful yet satisfying, leaving me even now going over what she thought I should say. Part of me wondered what the hell had happened to me? Who I’d been a few weeks ago, and who I was at this very moment, felt light years apart. And it was all because of Felicity Harper.
“Ladies and gentlemen, Darcy Entertainment CEO and Hollywood director, Theodore Darcy,” the announcer said, and on cue, I walked onto the black-and-gold stage.
The lights were so bright I could barely see the people in the audience or the teleprompter, but I didn’t care. Stepping up to the microphone, waiting for the thundering round of applause to lessen, I stood with my hands behind my back and leaned forward to speak.
“It was Plato who said that music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything. Aristotle believed the aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things but their inward significance. My grandfather, who most likely stole this from some other wise man, said to me the greatness of the arts come from its ability to move even the coldest of hearts. Hearts like mine. I grew up in Hollywood, saw everyone and everything imaginable. So moving me is damn near impossible, or at least I believed so until I met a young musician and dancer who, just a few short weeks ago, spent her mornings pouring coffee, her afternoons as a janitor for high school students, and her nights as a credit card call operator. Tonight she dances for all of you and serves as reminder that talent lurks in the most common and unexpected of places, that what we do and create is not just for ourselves but those around us. That the arts are undoubtedly beautiful.”
The applause I got now made the applause I’d received at the beginning seem almost pitiful. The lights dimmed as I walked offstage, the camera no longer focused on me.
“What happened to Violet?” my mother hissed, taking my arm in shock and confusion.
No one but the dancers knew about what had happened with Violet. Everything was riding on this one moment. I never got nervous over anything, yet for the first time in my life, my palms were sweaty.
Felicity
9:45 p.m.
“Felicity, breathe!” I was in the wings, and Walt was holding on to me.
“I’m going to screw this up. Go get Melrose—”
He shook me. “Please don’t make me smack you right now.”
“Walt, I can’t do this. It’s crazy—”
“My brother just went on camera and told the world you moved his heart, and if you back out now, he’d be completely embarrassed. Hell, someone people will call him a flat-out liar.”
I knew he was saying it to get a rise out of me, but it was also true, and I didn’t want that. But I also didn’t want to screw up in front of everyone.
“Dance for yourself, Felicity. Screw everyone. If you mess up, fuck it—just dance again,” he said as if he could read my mind.
Dear God, it’s Felicity. I know I don’t talk to you, like ever, but please, please, do not let me screw this up. When the lights dimmed, I took a deep breath, fighting the urge to puke. Hands shaking and head spinning, I inhaled deeply. Melrose came up beside me, her red hair pulled back. She gave my hand a tight squeeze before letting go and running out onto the dark stage.
There was no going back now.
Theo
It looked like the dancers were caught in whirlwind, they glided so easily over the stage. The women were dressed in long, flowing white dresses, while the men’s pants were made to be loose as well. Felicity’s music opened up the scene like the calm before a storm. The sound of the wind pushing the dancers on their tip toes from one edge of the stage to the other. Over and over their bodies spun, as if they were caught up in the wind and being lifted off the ground. Two dancers met in the middle, and they leaped into the air hand-in-hand, legs together to the other side of the stage.
There was crash of thunder, then darkness, and when the light appeared, so did Felicity, dressed in the same flowing dress as everyone else, only black, her honey-brown hair down. She took one step forward, then two, then ran to the front of the stage, the back of her dress rising in the simulated wind, the music quickening.
She spun and spun and spun, to the point where I couldn’t even see her face clearly. She had become the storm.
“Wow,” my mother said beside me, clapping her hands along with a few others. “She’s good.”
She wasn’t just good, she was amazing. She was the only one I could see. The whole point of the dance was that she was the storm terrorizing the other dancers. A dark smirk crossed her lips as she leaped beside them while they danced. She mirrored their steps perfectly, better than them, and in the process pushed them slowly toward the edges of the stage so she could command the middle. Each time a dancer came close, she circled around them, getting in their faces, as if to taunt them, and each one of them would back down. It was all part of the villain she was playing on stage. The rivalry in dancing, the sport of it all, was all part of the piece Walt had put together.
Finally having the center to herself, she performed better than I had ever seen her. But most of all I couldn’t look away from the smile on her face. It was all about her until the rest of the dancers came rushing back, surrounding her. She spun one way and they spun another. They closed in on her like walls trapping her in the middle. She stopped glancing around them as they slowly creeped up on her with no escape… but to jump over.
It was the hardest move in the whole piece. I found myself sitting up. Come on, Felicity.
She backed away slowly, almost fading into the background, then charged the line, throwing herself over their heads.
Shit. She’s too high. She’s not going to make it down well.
Even my mother gasped, because for split seconds, it looked like she was flying. But she came down perfectly.
My jaw dropped, and everyone applauded as if it were over, but they kept going.
“Did she have a wire?” Arthur whispered, leaning over Lorelai to talk to me.
I shook my head. No, it had been all her.
Finally, all the dancers were behind her, and their feet moved so fast it was hard to believe. Like a swarm of bees or a parade of drums, they were all in sync.
The music stopped once again, and Felicity held her position, smiled for the audience, and then ran to the back of the stage with one final leap before disappearing for a few seconds. When she returned she had changed, now wearing shorts, a black shirt, and another shirt around her waist. On her feet were sneakers and thigh-high red socks.
She walked upstage as if she were on a catwalk. Then she clapped twice for the music to change. Two of our R&B and hip hop artists came out from the sides of the stage. The dancers behind her had changed as well.
I’d had no idea she was doing this number.
All the soft gracefulness was gone. Now she danced hard and fast. She shook her shoulders, bending down to the music, her waist twisting at the same time.
Holy shit was all I could think when our eyes locked and she gave me a small wink. I wanted nothing more than to grab her and take her in every possible way. She and a few of the other dancers even jumped into the audience. I didn’t even realize how strongly I was fixated on her until someone accidentally stepped on my shoe. Everyone was up on his or her feet. Even my parents.
She’d done it.
Getting up, I squeezed past my parents. Buttoning up the top of my jacket, I headed toward backstage. I grinned when I saw how alive everyone was, cheering her on. Shaking my head at them, even though I
couldn’t help the smile from my face, I met up with Nolan, who gave me the large bouquet of roses and a bottle of water.
“Am I a genius or am I genius, brother?” Walt clapped his hands together over his head, dancing his away over to me with the fattest grin on his face. “We did it!”
“No, Walt, you did it. You are a genius,” I admitted, giving him his five minutes of praise.
“I wish I could say it was all me.” He smiled. “But it was all her.”
The routine came to an end. I wished she’d get a chance to stop and accept applause, or have people throw roses at her feet, but it wasn’t that type of event. So she wouldn’t get them on stage, but the moment she stepped behind the curtain, everyone applauded.
Her eyes filled with tears.
“Thank you,” she gasped between breaths, standing straighter. “Thank you all so much.”
She put her hands on her face the moment she saw the flowers and cried so hard her body shook.
“You were amazing,” I said, giving her a small hug.
She pulled her hands from her face, her eyes red, taking a deep breath and accepting the flowers from me. “Thank you, Theo. For everything, thank you.”
“Didn’t I tell you? You never have to say thank you to me.”
Before they could speak, someone clapped even though everyone else had stopped by then.
We both turned to see Violet standing there in a dark purple dress, her dark hair pulled back. “You were great, Felicity—”
“Thank you, Violet.” Felicity turned to face her. “Coming from you, it means a lot.”
“You have to forgive me. I just never thought someone like you could ever pull something like this off, but then again your mother was Amelia Ford.”
I didn’t know who that was, but a few dancers seemed to. They gasped, their heads snapping to Felicity, who stared at Violet in shock.
Violet took another step forward. “Your real name is Felicity Harper Ford, isn’t it? Daughter to New York Governor Daniel Ford.”
“Stop,” Felicity said, glaring at her.