I held out my hand, waiting. She slowly put her much smaller one in mine, and I shook it, as if I was meeting a very important business client. Elodie probably had seen her dad shake hands with other people before, because she was shaking mine and giggling in delight. I smiled.
I looked over at Jensen and pulled up short at the look in his eyes. Did I mistake the emotion I saw in them?
Why would he look like that?
Jensen had always been a hard man to read, but this time, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know his thoughts.
I tilted my head to the side in question. Did he make the drive over here just to introduce me to his daughter?
Jensen placed Elodie down on her feet. “Why don’t you go look at the pictures of the pretty ballerina again, sweetheart?”
She nodded. “Okay, Daddy.”
We watched as her little feet tread across the floor to the huge black and white picture I had hung up in the receptionist area. With the lighting, and the vantage point from where the picture was taken, no one could tell that it was me in the picture, in my first leading role in London.
It was at a time in my life when I had felt content with ballet.
“Why did you come here?” I asked quietly.
“I wanted to see how you're doing,” he said, imitating my tone of voice and moving in closer to me. So close to me, I caught a whiff of his scent, something subtle, comforting, and completely different from any other man I had ever come in contact with.
“I’m doing good,” I replied.
“Yes,” he said, looking around the building. There was a glint in his eyes as his gaze moved around the spacious building before landing back on me. I shouldn’t care that he looked proud of me. I didn’t live my life to please Jensen, yet a part of me was ecstatic over the fact. “You’ve done such a good job with the place.”
I looked off to his shoulder, unable to hold his gaze. “Thank you.”
“Did you know?” he asked quietly. I frowned and tilted my head to the side in question. “About Elodie,” he clarified.
My shoulders relaxed. “Oh, yeah. Evelyn told me.”
He nodded, looking off to the side at the small person trying to imitate the pose in the picture. We both smiled when she stumbled a bit before righting herself and letting out a small chuckle.
“She’s adorable,” I told him. “And she looks just like you.”
Something flashed in his eyes, but it was gone before I could fathom what it was. “Thank you. She’s everything to me.”
My eyes softened, and I could feel some of my earlier anger at him for disappearing from my life three years ago thawing.
I knew Jensen didn’t owe me anything. That he wasn’t anything to me, but sometimes, I had caught him looking at me, and I swore I saw the interest in them. I just thought he hadn’t been ready to commit to a relationship at the time, and a part of me was okay with it, because I didn’t think I had been ready as well, considering where my life was at then.
I still waited for him.
Then the accident happened, and he was just gone.
“There is also another reason for my visit,” he said. I tilted my head to the side in question. He cleared his throat. “In case you haven’t noticed, Elodie really wants to be a ballerina.”
I knew where he was going with this before he continued. “Yes, I can see that. But if you’re trying to enroll her in my classes, that’s not possible.”
He frowned. “Why not?”
“She’s two.”
“Yes, I know,” he responded drily. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.
“We usually don’t take students who are under four. The youngest I have in my class is this three-year-old, but she’s turning four next month, and she’s big for her age. She also has a better attention span than most of the other dancers.”
“Elodie’s really good for her age,” Jensen insisted.