away from tennis in nearly three months. Even the off-season—December—had been spent at Delacourt Academy in Florida. She’d spent Christmas Day doing footwork drills. She clenched her fist under the water. She would not spend another evening with Anatoly listening as he picked apart her game, her tennis skills, her fitness, and then, invariably, he would focus on the personal—her looks and what she needed to do to gain better sponsorship. No. Anatoly could go hang himself.
“I have a date. Mikhail and I are going for dinner.” It wasn’t true, but she was sure she could talk Mikhail into it. His first-round match wasn’t until late the following day.
Anatoly grunted. “Be back early. I’ve reserved a practice court for 6:00 am.”
She didn’t reply, simply sank lower so that the ice water circled her neck. It was as frozen as her heart.
Mikhail was predictably delighted when Alina asked him to dinner. Men. She snorted to herself. A tiny hint of flirtation, the barest insinuation that this time he wouldn’t be going home alone, and he fell into her palm like vending machine candy. As the number eight seed, he was expected to cruise through his match. No doubt a sexual dalliance the night before wouldn’t put him off his game.
She tightened her lips. That was never going to happen.
One advantage of the Australian grand slam being held in Melbourne was that there was no shortage of fantastic restaurants. Mikhail’s choice though, was as plain as could be. A steakhouse, where she already knew he would order the largest steak on the menu, cooked well done, and served with a mountain of green salad, no dressing.
She arrived first, and was shown to a prominent table in the centre of the room. The restaurant was almost full and there was a background buzz of chatter and the subdued chink of cutlery. Alina fixed a smile to her face and strutted to her seat. It seemed the room fell quiet as she walked past. Every eye in the room was on her: assessing, caressing, lusting, scathing, dismissing. The world number one, dumped out like a rank qualifier. The censor in the gazes cut her like grains of sand on a windy beach.
She sat, ordered a sparkling mineral water, and pretended to study the menu. Mikhail was late. Where was he? She took a swift glance around the room under the guise of summoning the waiter. No Mikhail. Most of the patrons had returned to their meals, except for one woman who, like her, sat alone. Her black hair hung loose in an asymmetrical bob, and her copper skin was set off beautifully by the cream-coloured dress she wore.
The woman was, quite simply, stunning. She sipped a glass of wine and glanced around the room as if she, too, was waiting for someone. Her gaze caught Alina’s and stopped. The woman’s mouth tipped up at one corner and she raised her glass to Alina.
Alina looked away. Suddenly it hurt to breathe through the tightness in her chest. Caught looking. Her nerves jangled and she resisted the urge to glance around the restaurant to see if anyone else had noticed the interest in her gaze. Instead, she looked back at the menu, flicked a page, and studied food choices she had no interest in eating. Fillet steak or chicken in mushroom sauce? She didn’t care. Food was fuel for her body, seldom more. She ate the nutritionally balanced diet that her health and fitness coach recommended. Years of lean meat, protein, salad, and platefuls of pasta the night before a match. No dessert. No wine. Even her mother’s pierogies were a distant memory. Except for the other night, when she’d woken from a dream of potato and chive pierogies and sour cream sauce. The hunger pangs had made it hard to sleep after that. Other players went out to dinner together. Sometimes, by chance, Alina ended up in the same restaurant and she’d seen them: a group of laughing girls, drinking wine, ordering lavish desserts even. Alina’s lips compressed. That had never been something she’d done. Maybe that was why she was number one in the world and they were not.
When she looked up again, the black-haired woman was still staring at her. She smiled and it seemed as if she might rise to her feet to approach Alina. Then another woman hurried up to the table and bent to kiss the woman’s cheek. The moment passed.
Alina looked down at the tablecloth, at the heavy silver