hesitancy in believing me, I assure you this is a serious offer. I want to discuss a possible contract with you. See if we can work toward having you return to where you belong.”
“And where is it you think I belong?”
“Center stage,” he said without a moment’s hesitation.
The nails of the hand not clutching mail bit into my palm in my effort to appear unaffected by the way he’d nonchalantly referred to the one place I’d ever truly felt at home.
The stage.
Before I could formulate a reply, he tilted his head to the side. “If underneath all that”—his hand lifted to gesture at me from my tangled hair to my bare feet—“you still have what it takes, that is.”
Fuck unaffected. I might have walked away from that life, but I’d be damned if I was going to let him judge me in my own freaking driveway. Quite capable of giving my own smirk, I raised my eyebrow and canted my head, allowing what I considered the appropriate pregnant pause before taking the faker down a much needed peg or two.
“You’re not only rude, you’re a liar. Volkov Ballet is owned by Nadia Volkova.” I remembered the beautiful Russian woman known for her incredible precision during her reign as the featured prima ballerina of her generation. She’d taken that dedication to perfection with her when she opened her own company. She had an unshakeable level of expectation in any dancer she accepted into her ballet. Nadia wasn’t only a legend, she had been my role model. I would have cut off the big toe on my right foot to have her notice me. Of course, doing so would have made dancing on pointe virtually impossible, but it was the thought that counted.
“She’s dead,” he said evenly. “I’m her oldest son. My brother Yuri and I are now co-owners of the company.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that. She was an incredible woman,” I said sincerely, momentarily forgetting I was pissed off. How could I not have known she’d passed away at far too young an age? Then again, considering my life had not only gone to hell, but I’d purposely kept my involvement with anything having to do with that past life restricted to giving classes to children who didn’t know how to plié without looking like awkward frogs, it really wasn’t all that surprising.
“She was,” he said, not revealing any further information, but the tone in which he said those two words let me know he was sincere.
Suddenly remembering that I wasn’t interested but was anxious to get this guy out of my driveway, I quickly shot back, “Do you not know my history? Do you not know what I did?”
He didn’t flinch at the anger in my voice. “I’m aware you walked right off the stage in the middle of a production, leaving a company already reeling from the loss of one prima ballerina without their second. That your actions practically destroyed the entire company all because you were a jealous bitch,” he said without so much as a blink of an eye. While I fought not to reach out and scratch that asinine look right off his face, he shrugged. “Or at least that’s what people have accused you of.”
Okay, so this smug bastard had no fucking clue. Volkov or not, it was obvious he hadn’t been in the ballet scene for long, and he didn’t know shit about the world of dance. Maybe his mother had shielded him from everything. Because to me, anybody who knew anything about ballet, especially people who were privy to the exclusive bubble prima ballerinas were kept in, knew every sordid detail.
“That’s the tip of the iceberg,” I said. I wasn’t proud of what I’d done, but I didn’t have the energy to explain why I’d made those choices. He didn’t press for details, as if it didn’t bother him in the least, which had me wondering what in the hell was going on with the company he’d inherited. If he was coming to me, he was either desperate or far too inept to run a successful ballet company. But I didn’t care either way as I was far too jaded and way too exhausted to waste another moment on his problems. “Look, if you don’t know the rest, then you really shouldn’t be coming to me with talks of contracts.” I moved to step around him but was stopped when he shifted to block my exit.
“Then tell me,” he said. “Make me