Love Is a Dangerous Dance novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Terms

Alec threatens to expose the paid engagement; Portia sets her own terms and learns his target is Victor.

"No," I said.

Alec let go of my wrist and reached for the grey coat.

"You haven't heard what it costs you to say no."

"I don't need to. I just watched you walk out of the chairman's office with a letter opener in your side."

"Then you also know the chairman's guards will be in every room of this building tonight."

"They don't know I'm hiding you."

"Not yet."

He stood up slowly, one hand on the radiator, and I realized how tall he was.

He towered over me in my stocking feet.

"Here is what I know about you, Portia Marceau," he said.

"Seven years in a company that doesn't pay a living wage."

"A father who fell off the fly gallery in this building."

"And a contract that pays you a soloist role for pretending to love a man you met last week."

My mouth went dry.

"The engagement is a paid arrangement," he said. "It's on page four, paragraph two. The board has been told the romance is real."

"The board wrote it."

"The press hasn't read it."

"Are you threatening me?"

"I'm informing you." His voice stayed even.

"If the engagement turns out to be a purchase, the papers will call you a fraud.

"Meridian will drop you by Friday."

"Victor Ashworth doesn't keep a dancer who embarrasses him."

I thought about that.

I thought about Lena's face in the doorway.

I thought about the girl who had wobbled at the hops in Act Two for three months because nobody would pay for her heel.

Then I did the thing that made me feel like myself again.

I picked up the pistol out of the trunk and pointed it at his stomach.

My hand didn't shake.

"I am going to give you three minutes," I said.

"You're going to explain why a man who wants me to open a door doesn't just buy a ticket and use the front one."

He looked at the gun.

Then at me.

"That's the safety," he said, and flicked it off with one finger. "Hold it like that if you mean it."

"I mean it."

"Good." He did not step back. "Because I'd like you to mean it, when the next person comes through that door."

I kept the gun up and said nothing.

"I can't get into the penthouse," he said.

"Victor hired a building crew who know my face."

"The only person who can walk through the lobby with a plus-one this weekend is the girl wearing his son's ring."

"Why not ask Geoffrey?"

"Because Geoffrey tells his father everything."

I thought of the way Geoffrey had laughed in the board room, short and tired, and I wasn't sure he did.

"What do you want inside?"

"A drive, in a safe, in a study."

"For what?"

"For what Victor Ashworth did."

He said the name without heat.

My father had told me once that the quietest men on the crew were the ones you watched.

"And what do I get?" I said.

"You get to walk away from this room and never see me again."

"That's not a price."

"It's a gift."

"Then I want something else."

"Name it."

I lowered the pistol, because I had already decided and wanted my hands free to say it.

"One," I said, counting on my fingers.

"Nobody dies on my watch."

"Not Victor, not a guard, not a waiter."

"If you kill someone in that apartment, I scream, and I tell them everything."

"I'm not there to kill anyone on Saturday."

"Two. You tell me the truth about what's on the drive when you have it. Not a story, the truth."

"Done."

"Three." My voice cracked a little, and I hated that.

"My father fell from the gallery downstairs eleven months ago."

"If anything about that is on your drive, I see it first."

For the first time his face changed.

It was not pity.

It was something quieter.

"Your father was a Marlowe stagehand," he said.

"You know his name."

"I know a lot of names. His wasn't on my list." He took a breath and let it out. "I'll show you the drive."

"All right."

"You agree?"

"I agree to the favour," I said. "I don't agree to you."

He nearly smiled again.

"That works for me."

I dropped the pistol back in the trunk and sat down on my own stool, because my legs had decided to stop being brave.

Somewhere in the hall, Roxy was arguing with a guard about a sandwich.

Alec shrugged into his coat.

At the door, he turned and spoke so softly that I almost didn't catch it.

"You asked who I am. I should tell you who I'm after."

"Victor."

"Victor," he said. "I'm not here for Geoffrey, and not for you."

Then he opened the door and was gone down the corridor, one hand pressed against his side.

I did not know that I'd just been lied to.

I only knew that the room felt colder, and that the emerald on my finger had begun to feel like a collar.

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