LITMIR.BIZ

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feel like that oughtta be scaring the bejesus out of me. Yet somehow it doesn’t.” Instincts insisting that it was wrong, wrong, wrong to be attracted on a physical level to a man she disliked on a personal one, she raised her hand to erase the admission right out of the air. Even her instincts seemed conflicted, however, for she terminated the motion with a jerky movement that gave her a flashback to her gawky pubescent days. That was an age she’d just as soon not revisit.

      Blowing out a breath, she dropped her hand to her side and gave her friend a wry smile. “It was easier when he just annoyed me. But lately it’s as if all my senses are in this warped heightened state whenever he’s around. And I honest to God don’t understand what that’s all about.”

      “Maybe simply that there’s more to him than you first thought.”

      “I doubt that very much.” Then a beautiful arrangement of exotic flowers on the counter at her station caught her eye. “Hey, would you look at that?” she demanded, raising her voice. She picked up her pace across the room full of dancers in various states of undress. “Somebody must love me lots.”

      Rude hoots greeted her statement. “Yeah, Carly,” Michelle said from down the row of stools in front of the long lighted mirror. “You’re off on your regular days and rumor has it that you’ve been laid up with a bum ankle. Yet here you are, all hale and hearty and with a rich new Stage Door Johnnie to boot from the looks of things. What’s up with that?” Tipping up her chin, her lower lip drooping open, she leaned into the mirror to align false lashes along her natural lash line. Then pressing them in place while the adhesive dried, she swivelled to meet Carly’s gaze. “He got a brother?” she asked hopefully.

      “Toots, if I had a sugar daddy and he had a brother, you can be damn sure I’d be holding the latter in reserve. It’s been a long, dry spell for me, you know? If the day ever comes when I’m faced with that scenario, I’ll probably need the spare. Just in case I break the first one.”

      That brought a fresh spate of ribald laughter and comments, and she dropped her dance bag on the floor in front of her station to root through the blossoms.

      Discovering a tiny white envelope, she pulled it out and ripped it open. She extracted the card inside. “‘Hope you’re back on your feet and dancing soon,’” she read aloud. There was no signature. “Huh.” She looked up to find several of her sister dancers grinning at her and a lightbulb went off in her head. “Aw, you guys, these are from you, aren’t they?”

      Across the room, Jerrilyn paused in fitting her towering headdress over her slicked-back hair to blow a raspberry. “Yeah, right. When’s the last time you remember us buying flowers for anyone in the troupe?”

      “When Georgia had her baby,” Carly said. “Okay, I know we don’t usually. So what was all the grinning about, then?”

      “Oh, honey,” Michelle said. “A woman getting flowers is always a huge event. And some of us have to live vicariously.”

      She looked at the arrangement again. Okay, that made sense. Only… “So, who are these from if they aren’t from you all?”

      “Did you meet a hot young M.D. in the E.R. Monday night?” Juney asked.

      “Nah. I didn’t even go to the E.R., just limped on home and iced it. Besides, the last time I was at the E.R. the hottest thing I saw was a nurse named Brunhilda who you wouldn’t want to drop your soap in front of in the shower room.”

      “You are so full of it,” Treena scoffed.

      Jo’s head popped up over the mirror that backed Carly’s “Hey, maybe you’ve got a secret admirer.”

      “Yeah, maybe,” she agreed doubtfully. Then she looked at the clock on the wall and headed across the room to collect her costume. “If so, I’ll have to figure out who later. I don’t have time to worry about it now.”

      The wardrobe mistress looked up as she approached. Adjusting the measuring tape draped around her neck, she pushed a frizzy strand of hair behind her ear and selected Carly’s costume from the rack. “Thanks for sending your costume and wig in with Treena yesterday,” she said, and handed Carly the wisp of illusion and glitter that comprised the first act’s attire. She also passed over a headdress of fountaining, white-tipped gold plumes, then pushed her slipping glasses up her nose. “I like it when I’m given time to get them clean, although you are one of the neater ones.”

      Carly returned to her station and quickly stripped out of her street clothes and donned her own fishnet stockings before pulling on the costume. Plopping the headpiece atop a mannequin head, she quickly applied her greasepaint. It looked trashily overdone under the harsh fluorescent lighting, but features tended to disappear beneath the stage lights in ordinary street makeup.

      Her friend Eve strolled into the dressing room a moment later and stopped at her station three places down the row to prop her right foot up on the stool. She smoothed her fishnets up her calf and along her thigh. Glancing up, she caught sight of Carly and smiled. “Hey, girl,” she said. “How’s the ankle?”

      “Back to normal.” I hope, I hope.

      “It better be,” Julie-Ann said in the sugary, upbeat voice she used to slice-and-dice. “I won’t have you messing up my chorus line.” She laughed as if it were all a big joke.

      Carly gave the young dance captain a neutral look. “Yeah, I’d sure hate to have my injury ruin your night.”

      “Haven’t you heard, Carly?” Treena asked, deadpan. “It’s all about Julie-Ann. Your comfort doesn’t enter into it.”

      “Sure, it does,” Eve disagreed. “You heard her—it could mess up her line.” She cocked a brow at the dance captain. “And when did this become your dance troupe again? I thought we functioned as a unit.”

      “Oh, for God’s sake,” Julie-Ann said in exasperation. “Lighten up! It was a joke.”

      Uh-huh. The three dancers exchanged brief gazes. Then without further comment they went back to getting ready for the show.

      But Carly turned and, reaching between her shoulder blades, gave her back a pat. “Do you see a knife sticking out anywhere?” she asked Treena sotto voce over her shoulder.

      The redhead gave her a crooked smile. “Amazing how she does that, isn’t it?” she said equally quietly. “It will forever remain a mystery to me how one woman can smile so angelically while poking her busy little fingers into another woman’s wounds.”

      “And if anyone would know how that feels, toots, it would be you.” Treena had come under Julie-Ann’s fire the past several months while she was fighting to get her dancing back up to speed so she could pass the annual audition after an absence of almost a year away from the troupe. Instead of lending support, their dance captain had undermined her friend every chance she got.

      Treena’s smile turned into a full-fledged grin. “She has so lost the power to bug me.”

      “You’ve definitely decided this will be your last year, then?”

      “Yeah. You know it’s time for me. I’m getting too old for this and it’s just plain getting tougher physically. Jax and I have been talking over some of my options.”

      “I’ll wager you have quite a few, too,” Carly agreed. “And I’m happy for you, toots. For myself, though, I’m going to miss working with you. What’s it been, a decade we’ve been dancing together?”

      “Yes, can you believe it?” Propping her heel on the countertop, Treena bent over her straight leg, stretching out her hamstrings. Slowly straightening, she gave a nod to the bouquet on the counter between their stations. “So who do you think the flowers are from?”

      “You got me.” She paused in tucking her hair beneath the turban portion of the headpiece to look at her friend. “I might check with the hotel florist tomorrow to see if anyone remembers anything. Because I honestly don’t have a clue.”

      “Hey,

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