Chapter Six

Topside: Manhattan, New York, same day, EST 2:00 pm

Faith Teague edged her computermouse sideways until the arrow on the screen hovered over the email entitled new ballet company. She double-clicked it. How many times had she read this email today? A dozen? More? She read it again as the subtle aroma of cucumbers and tomatoes wafted around her.

"So what're you going to tell him?" Her sister, Kacie, glanced at the computer screen from behind the kitchen counter, where she stood chopping salad fixings.

This Soho apartment Faith shared with her sister was quaint, but small, and space needed to be maximized. Hence the kitchen table where Faith sat doubled as an office desk. "What do you think I'm going to tell him?" Faith replied. "A huge and enthusiastic yes."

Kacie grabbed a handful of mushrooms, but paused before slicing into them. Two small lines appeared between her brows.

It was an expression Faith knew well—on her own face. In family photos, it was always Faith who looked out at the world with the practicality those two small forehead creases represented, while Kacie usually wore a big, vivacious grin. But since her identical twin sister possessed the same face as Faith's, the expression was hauntingly familiar.

"He's asking me to serve as Artistic Director of his new ballet company." Faith shoved the hair pins deeper into her bun, a task she probably performed a hundred times a day. Her copper hair was unusually thick and rebelled against all attempts to contain it. Something her theatre hairdressers had lamented fervently over the years.

Kacie fingered a mushroom, still not chopping. Not speaking.

"And he wants you to join his troupe as well. Insists on it, in fact." Faith swept out her hand in a gesture that encompassed her sister. "Why wouldn't we both want to say yes to this opportunity?"

Kacie's amber-gold eyes—that arresting color which had earned them both so many comments over the years, second only to the extraordinary happenstance of their identicalness—filled with skepticism. "It doesn't make sense, for one. I'm a nobody. A dancer in the corps de ballet."

"Oh, twaddle. Don't say that." Faith smiled supportively. "You're a beautiful dancer."

Her sister exhaled. "And what about you? You can't do it, Faith. Your knee hasn't fully recovered. This man"—she gestured at the open email with her kitchen knife—"does he even know that?"

"My knee is all but sound," Faith responded firmly, her back going stiff.

Kacie hacked a plump mushroom in half with a single stroke of her knife. "Don't try to pull the wool over my eyes, Faith. You know I can tell it isn't."

Faith and Kacie enjoyed—or suffered—the identical twin oddity of sometimes being able to feel each other's pain. Many days her twin's healthy knee ligament probably twinged as much as Faith's unstable one.

Faith's eyelashes twitched as she was suddenly reliving the sequence that had devastated her life. Chassé, coupe jeté en tourné—and clunk. She'd torn an inner knee ligament coming out of that turn.

Air leaked past Faith's lips as her stomach iced, same as it did when the doctor had told her that her Medial Collateral Ligament, or MCL, had been severely damaged. Besides being told both of her parents had died from E. coli poisoning when she was ten years old, she'd never received worse news. Maybe that made her small-minded. How many people in the world were worse off than she was? But dancing and performing on stage were the only dreams she'd ever had, and now they were…put on hold.

How long and hard had she fought to become a success? At the prestigious Joffrey Ballet, she'd studied dance 24/7 while Kacie had bounded off to NYU to enjoy a normal university experience. After four years of grueling work at Joffrey, Faith had thankfully been discovered by a choreographer from New York City Ballet during a summer intensive program. That next spring, at the age of twenty-two, she'd joined their company. Which naturally had led to more punishing work, first as an apprentice, then in the corps de ballet, then as a demi-soloist, a soloist, and finally she'd reached the pinnacle so many ballet dancers aspired to but few achieved, that of prima ballerina. She'd enjoyed the spotlight as a star for one year before she hurt her knee—one. Not nearly enough. Not at only twenty-six years old.

She stiffened her spine another notch. "I can dance, Kacie."

"Only with a brace on," Kacie reminded her with a levelheadedness Faith should've celebrated in her flighty sister.

Except she didn't particularly care to hear anything logical right now.

"You can't wear a brace onstage," Kacie added unnecessarily.

"Well, I'm not ready to quit."

Kacie dropped her gaze to the mushrooms.

Why wasn't Kacie agreeing with her? Their opinions matched as inevitably as their appearance. "So here's what we'll do," Faith said in the matter-of-fact tone that always got Kacie hustling along in the right direction. "We'll fly out to San Diego next week and meet with this man. I'll tell him about my knee and we'll hear what he has to say. After that, we can travel to Los Angeles for Christmas with Aunt Idyll. We haven't seen her in a long time, and we owe her a visit."

Kacie chewed on her bottom lip.

Faith pushed to her feet, impatient now. If Kacie wouldn't go, Faith certainly couldn't. Her sister needed to stop hemming-and-hawing. Because Faith needed to go. "What harm could it do just to talk to this"—Faith glanced at the name at the end of the email—"this Raymond Parthen?"

"I guess it couldn't hurt," Kacie finally conceded. Looking up, she smiled tentatively. "Okay, let's go."