Dancing for the Lord The Academy - By Emily Goodman Page 0,60
and gasped.
“Nick! What have you been doing?” she demanded worriedly.
“Dancing.” He was massaging his bad shoulder, but it wasn’t helping. Actually, he was pretty sure that the pressure of his fingers was only increasing the pain.
“You look like someone dragged you through the wringer!”
“I’m glad someone besides me has trouble finding the distinction,” he muttered.
“Who?” There was a terrible anger in Danni’s warm brown eyes.
“Who do you think?” he snapped back before he thought about it.
Danni didn’t even have to consider it. “Allie.” She shook her head. “I thought we had managed to get around her.”
“She wouldn’t take no for an answer,” Nick explained bitterly.
“You didn’t consider explaining to her that you’d hurt your shoulder, so you couldn’t handle spending the entire morning going through your dance together?” she demanded.
“Did I mention the refusal to accept the word no?” He knew his temper was too sharp, and he was treating Danni to some of those edges. It wasn’t intentional; he just didn’t have any self-control left.
Please, Lord, just let her forgive me when this is all said and done. It’s going to be a miserable night if I’m fighting with both Allie and Danni.
She looked deep into his eyes for a moment, and Nick had the uncomfortable feeling that she saw not only the pain but the desperate longing, as well. “Come on,” Danni said gently. “We’ll get that shoulder iced and start praying that you’ll be functional tonight.”
“You believe in wishful thinking, huh?” he demanded irritably.
“No—I believe in the power of prayer.” Danni slipped her hand into his, squeezing reassuringly. “Your place, or mine?”
“Is Kat at yours?” He regretted the words the moment they were out. How was Danni supposed to know whether or not Katarina was home?
“Probably. We’ll head to your place.” She kept his hand in hers as they walked there, a gentle reassurance that reminded him that even though he was hurting now, everything would be all right.
They had two hours before they had to report to the theater to get dressed, and Danni insisted that Nick spend all of them resting. She would have appreciated one last run-through; but looking at him now, she didn’t even suggest it.
It wasn’t possible that Allie had missed his increasing pallor, that she hadn’t seen how hard he was fighting to keep from flinching every time he moved his arm. She could be dense all she wanted to be, but she wasn’t stupid.
That meant that she’d had her own reasons for pushing him anyway—and Danni had the sneaking suspicion that those reasons had a great deal to do with Katarina. Determined to ruin the dance any way she could, she had gone to Allie—who, as far as she could tell, had once been a friend of hers—and begged her to keep him busy for the morning. She’d willingly hurt Nick as a jab against her—or maybe a jab against both of them.
Danni’s jaw tightened. Katarina could insult her all she wanted. She would even hold her silence while the other girl ran Nick’s reputation into the ground, because the best defense they as Christians had was to keep quiet even when someone was being nasty to them.
She couldn’t just keep quiet while Katarina did something that would get Nick hurt.
Of course, even as she worked herself up into a righteous fury, Danni didn’t know the half of it. Katarina hadn’t just asked Allie to keep Nick busy. She’d asked her to keep him busy—and then she had “warned” her that if he didn’t want to keep up the practice session, he would start complaining about some ailment or another.
“His shoulder doesn’t really bother him as much as he claims it does,” she’d told the other girl—in absolute confidence, of course. “Push him. You’ll see: one way or the other, he’ll manage to do it even after he insists that there’s no way.”
And Allie had believed it. Worse—she had eaten up every word of it. It had been bad enough that Nick had closeted himself away with Danni over the past several days. That had been insulting, as far as Allie was concerned. He spent a lot of time scooping her up and swinging her around; and the fact that she hadn’t been able to practice with him for an entire week had infuriated her.
Nick piled his pillows into the familiar configuration and eased down on the bed. Danni had headed for the kitchen, instructing him to relax while she alerted his house mother that she was there and grabbed