Learning Curves - By Elyse Mady Page 0,32
Just lots of science fair trophies and three consecutive “Young Reader of the Year” awards from their local library. She’d longed for the same close, unconditional relationship that her friends seemed to share with their mothers. Jokes and teasing and easy, open affection.
For three brief weeks, they’d overcome their differences, her mother showering her with the love and attention she’d always secretly craved. Every waking moment had been spent rehearsing their duet and practicing the elegant runway walk her competition-savvy mom deemed essential for success. They’d bought their matching dresses from an exclusive boutique that specialized in pageant wear. Even the news that Gillian was competing couldn’t dim her enthusiasm and she’d dreamed secret, silly dreams of winning the crown and basking in the adulation of her mom and all her high school friends.
Unfortunately, none of Leanne’s elaborate daydreams had accounted for the paralyzing wave of stage fright that overtook her like a tsunami. It only took a few endless moments for her dreams to descend into a nightmare of missed cues, stumbling feet and a duet so painful that, more than a decade later, still made her shoulders tense with shame.
Her mother, who’d spent twenty years on the pageant circuit and never failed to place in the top ten, hadn’t even made the first cut.
The hurt had only been compounded when Gillian and Aunt Barbara were awarded first runner-up.
As soon as they’d gotten home, Leanne ran up the stairs, eager to reach the sanctuary of her room. But the sound of her mother crying had rooted her to the spot. Her mother, elegant shoes discarded, makeup tearstained, sat on the bottom step as her father rubbed her back.
“Didn’t she know how important this pageant was to me, Larry? Does she really hate me so much that she couldn’t have tried, even for a few hours? For me?”
Those words, spoken so softly Leanne knew she was never supposed to have heard them, hurt the most. Because, when it came down to it, Leanne had tried. Her best just hadn’t been good enough.
By final curtain, Leanne put the shock of her father’s revelations behind her. Losing herself in the performance helped. She’d never been a fan of modern dance for the same reason much avant-garde literature left her cold—its circularity and heavy metaphors left little room for elements like plot or character.
But tonight’s show was unlike anything she’d ever seen. Moving, graphic, intense, the dancers moved across the stage in fantastic, undulating patterns, their fluid movements merging with the music.
Brandon’s fingerprints were all over it.
His distinctive choreography, the intimate and emotional space he’d created bore the same hallmarks as his dancing at the Foxe’s Den. His love of music, of movement, of form. His dedication, obsession even, with beauty and the physical form counterbalanced with joy, care.
Leanne learned more about Brandon sitting in a darkened theater with five hundred strangers, than she’d known about Steven during the entire seventeen months of their relationship.
And it terrified the life out of her.
Yes, he could reduce her to a quaking, trembling mass of nerves with a touch. The heat his simple caress evoked scorched her skin. Yet despite the intensity he aroused in her, it was still only physical.
But this?
This was something else entirely.
It made him so much more than just a one-night stand. Besides being dangerous to her equilibrium, it made him…real.
Real was exactly what she couldn’t handle right now.
She’d sacrificed so much to reach this point in her. Her academic success. Her degrees. Her reputation. She had resigned herself to the demands they exacted because she knew they were necessary to achieving her dreams. Now, less than a week from reaching the most important goal of all, she couldn’t allow Brandon to distract her.
The Walters Prize would give her true professional freedom. Harvard. Yale. Oxford. She could have her pick, settle into a tenured appointment and travel, research the first of many books, teach. She’d made the short list, beating out dozens of other candidates. Only a final interview separated her from the ultimate prize. She could ace it.
The only thing standing in her way was her own irrational desire.
Professor Armstrong was right. She was destined for a life of the mind. It was where she fit in. Yet a small sliver of her being regretted denying herself the possibility of more.
She knew as if he had blazoned it across the dancers’ sculpted Lycra costumes, that Brandon was no more interested in taking their mutual distraction any further than she was.
He wanted