“I didn’t ask you to get me anything.”
“You said you wanted to work with me.”
Hands on her hips again. “And then you made me feel like shit and I decided I would rather chew asphalt than work as your partner.”
He chuckled softly, turning away. “Ah, yes. You despise me. Then why did you tell Michel yes?”
“I don’t know why, but I did. God give me the strength to carry it through.”
He looked up at her sharply. “Are you religious?”
She shrugged. “When I need help I start spouting prayers, but in general, no. What does it matter?”
“You must get your strength somewhere.” He meant it as a compliment, but she still seemed perturbed.
“What do you want, Theo? There’s no fucking way I’m sleeping with you again, so if that’s why you’re here, you might as well leave.”
“I just came to tell you we practice tomorrow. You and me. Try the silks out.”
Kelsey put her fingers over her eyes and pressed. He watched her, puzzled, and then she flung her hands out at him, making him jump. “Cirque du Minuit? I don’t think this is healthy, Theo. This is not an appropriate way to mourn.”
“What do you mean? I’m not mourning.”
“Midnight Circus? Darkness and angst? Passion and drama?”
“Michel chose the theme. It has nothing to do with Minya. This has been in pre-production for months.”
“Yes, and now he wants you in it. Is this a good thing for you right now?”
“Yes, a good thing,” he answered stubbornly. “For you and for me. Tomorrow, ten in the morning, you be ready. I’m going to come get you.”
“How did you even know where I lived?”
He glared at her without answering, and then he spun to go. He had to get away from her. She asked too many questions. Impossible girl, and now his aerial partner. Mon Dieu.
Theo knew how to pray too.
*** *** ***
Theo came for her at ten, as promised. His clean-shaven, respectable sheen of the day before had already disintegrated, leaving behind a night’s worth of stubble and an epic case of bed head. And those sweats riding low on his hips again. Damn him.
But this was work. They were going to start training, and there was certainly no reason for her to be obsessing over those neat indentations on either side of his waist, or the way they disappeared into a perfectly lickable “v”. No, no! Not lickable. Nothing about him is lickable. Just stop, Kels.
They drove about an hour out of Paris in Theo’s little Renault, to a forested suburban park. For Kelsey, it was her first trip out of the city since she’d arrived a few months before. They didn’t speak on the trip, not once. Theo wasn’t into small talk, apparently. He also ignored her pointed coughs and throat clearing when he lit up a couple cigarettes along the way. Kelsey was thankful to find him a cautious driver, at least. Driving out into the country made her miss her home in California, even though this looked nothing like California.
Theo finally pulled into a clearing at the end of a long rutted path. The grass was rough and thick, but recently mowed. There were no cabins or tents, just a cluster of forest three quarters of the way around. Theo grabbed a duffel bag out of his trunk and headed over to the center edge of the clearing, to a massive, thick-limbed tree. He dropped his bag near the base and unzipped it, then pulled out a dingy white bundle of folded material. He shoved it under his arm and turned to the tree, and started scaling the trunk.
Kelsey stared in amazement. Really? It wasn’t like Theo labored up carefully or slowly. He climbed it like a monkey, pushing with his knees, pulling himself up with his arms. His arm. One arm. The other still had the bundle underneath.
He passed the first few branches until he got to a thick one arching out over the clearing. He levered himself up to straddle it and scooted across until he came to a fork in the branch. This was a tree, not some Cirque structure with a bunch of safety wires on it and a mat underneath. He was probably forty feet up, if not higher. If he fell...
The muscles in his forearm flexed as he untwisted the bundle and began unraveling yards and yards of aerial silk. The fabric was wide, tissue-like, blowing in the soft breeze like a sail as he kept unwinding it. He was still straddling the branch, holding on with nothing but his knees. One of the silk tails flew over to where she was standing. Kelsey grabbed it and gathered it up in her fingers. It felt so soft and delicate.
“So...” She yelled up at Theo, balancing above her. “You’re allowed to bring their silks out here? What if they get dirty or ripped?”
He leaned back, bracing his hands on the branch. “These are my silks, not Cirque silks. These are my practice silks, and they don’t rip. Made special, yeah?” Kelsey gasped as he leaned forward to put both hands on the silk and jerk the material hard between his fists. “You see? Strong. Silks don’t break. Ever.” He glared at her a moment before rigging the material into an elaborate knot at the intersection of two branches.
Silks don’t break. Ever. Only human error could send her plummeting to the earth. Kelsey let go of the fabric and closed her eyes against the unwanted flashback, the streak of yellow and orange. When she looked up again, Theo launched himself from the branch, one arm extended, and she thought she was trapped in the flashback. She gasped until she realized he was only sliding down the silks. He fell fast until he caught himself with a jerk near the bottom. She watched the muscles of his arm and shoulder bunch up into a sculpture-worthy landscape, then relax as he let go. She released a soft breath.
He ignored her alarm, lazily removing his shirt and tossing it into his duffel bag. She stared at those muscles, at that body that could seemingly do anything. Climb forty feet into a tree and balance like some exotic bird on a branch, then swoop down in an effortless descent. He wasn’t even winded.
The hanging tails of fabric undulated between them now, obscuring him and then revealing him again. “Why do you have your own silks when you’re a trapeze artist?” she asked.
“Before trapeze, before tightrope, I did silks.”
Kelsey gawked. “You did tightrope too?”
; He waved an arm. “Anybody can do tightrope. I started tightrope at four years old. It was play time. Easy.”
“Do you come from a circus family?” There were families at the Cirque du Monde who were already introducing their children to the rudiments of their art. For many families, circus was a tradition. She could imagine Theo being raised like that. How else to explain his uncanny talent and strength? He shrugged and went back to his bag, rummaging around and coming up with some rosin.
“My family was circus, yes. More like...how do you say? Carnival? Traveling to perform.”
“Like gypsies?” Kelsey hinted.
He scowled at her as he handled the rosin bag. “My family is not gypsies. We are French and Algerian. Not so romantic, I know.”
Kelsey’s face flamed in embarrassment. Why the hell had she said that about gypsies? “Are you close to your family?” she asked.
“No.”
Well, that curt answer didn’t do much to further the conversation. He threw her the rosin bag and crossed his arms over his chest.
Kelsey rubbed the bag between her hands. “So why did you stop aerial silk and go to trapeze?”
“Same reason you stop acrobatics to do aerial. To work with a certain person.” He busied himself putting the rosin away.
“Minya?” she asked.
“Oui,” he answered curtly. “She was very talented. Her family, they were all famous trapezists. I wanted to work with her.” He seemed about to say more, but then he clamped his mouth shut and turned his back on her to tug at the silks again. Kelsey had a thousand questions about him and Minya, but she knew it was pointless. When he finally turned back to her, he gave her a little nudge.
“Go on. Climb up. Up to the top, as far as you can go.” Theo gestured carelessly into the towering treetop and held out the silks.
Kelsey hesitated. The branch looked awfully high, and she knew for a fact the ground would feel hard if she fell. “This is stupid. There’s a perfectly good practice facility back in Paris.”