That didn’t mean it had to mean something though. It was a small token of how happy Volkov Ballet was to have Prima. There was certainly no extra meaning there.
But would she see it that way? All of a sudden, doubt coursed through me. Would Clara see this gift as a, “welcome to the theater” gesture or as something that held some hidden meaning?
Forget that. What would Yuri think if he found out? Knowing my brother, I could easily picture him arching his eyebrow and stating without actually speaking a single fucking word that he knew I was attracted to the one woman he’d practically been ready to forbid me to even hire, much less draw her into our lives.
To hell with Yuri. He might be in charge of the choreography, but he wasn’t in charge of me. It didn’t matter what he thought, but it did matter what Clara would think. For a second, I held the pink satin shoes out in front of me, examining them, trying to see what she could misconstrue from the gift, before changing my mind all over again. It was only a pair of shoes for fuck’s sake. She might take the gift for what it was — a meaningless item worn by every single female dancer from the time they bought their first pair of ballerina slippers. I was definitely overthinking this.
I walked down into the main room to try and catch Clara at the end of her first rehearsal as an official member of the theater to give the welcome gift to her. A small part of me also wanted to see if she was all right, and if she was being treated well by the other dancers.
I passed Yuri in the hallway giving Bella an ass chewing for being a bitch to Clara in the dressing room. He’d told me about the incident and had seemed surprised to discover Clara hadn’t said a word about it when we’d met to go over her contract. I normally tried to tone Yuri down, but, this time, I wanted every dancer in the company to know there would be consequences if they fucked with Clara. I didn’t want her to go through a real life upheaval to get back into the craft she loved, just to find herself faced with all kinds of crazy bullshit from inside the theater.
Once it became known she’d returned to the ballet, she would have to face it from the outside world, as it was. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot I could do about that fact, however much I wanted to. But I hated drama and didn’t want shit within the theater. Not only would that affect everyone’s mindset, it might push Clara away before she’d really had the time to settle back in.
But as I entered the theater, I quickly realized I was too late. The rehearsal was already over, and most of the dancers had dispersed.
I walked toward the dressing room, smiling and acknowledging the others as they filed out, freshly showered and dressed. Because I was pretty sure I’d seen every other person, except for Clara, I had no hesitation with walking in there to see her. If everyone else was dressed, then she must be as well. And to catch her alone was absolutely the best way for me to do this.
I grinned as I imagined how her face might light up when she saw the shoes. They were like the ones she’d worn during her audition, though these were definitely far newer, the pink satin unblemished by wear and tear, the ribbons pristine and unfrayed waiting to be wrapped around strong, slim ankles that led to firm slender calves that led to thighs that begged to be… whoa, I truly needed to stop with the visual aids. They were shoes, not a piece of sexy lingerie.
“Clara,” I called out, voice echoing around the empty room. “Clara, are you still in here?”
When she didn’t answer me, I started to think I might have missed her, and maybe she’d actually gotten dressed quicker than everyone else and had already left the theater. I turned to walk away, and that was the moment I heard a clattering from the other side of the room where the door to the showers was slightly ajar.
Entering the tiled room, I called out again. “Clara, I have something for you. I wanted to give it to you now before—”
Holy fuck!
My voice cut off, and I found myself standing dead in the middle of the room like a statue when I finally saw her as she stepped out of the shower stall. It was as if my limbs had completely iced over, freezing me in position, even while all of me heated up painfully. My brain screamed at me to move, but my body wasn’t paying any attention.