The faint pain in her right wrist, the result of a fracture that had never quite healed properly, dragged her back to reality. She tightened her hand on her backpack, silently centring herself on what was important.
Ben deserved her loyalty. Always.
‘Goodbye, Mr Christofides.’
For a taut few seconds he didn’t answer. Then, ‘Goodnight, Miss Woods.’
There was no inflexion in his response, no indication that they would ever meet again. But as she walked away Sage couldn’t stop the tingling at her nape or the premonition that the billionaire hotelier boss her brother had griped about for several months was far from done with her.
* * *
It was that premonition that kept her awake long into the following six nights, even though she continued to reassure herself he had no power over her. She’d refused his demands and walked away. End of story.
Except she’d spent long hours frantically calling her brother’s phone with frustrated tears brimming her eyes when her messages filled his inbox and she finally had to give up. Sleep was a snatched few hours before she had to be up and ready to head to her day job as a barista in the coffee shop attached to the Hunter Dance Company.
Sage had been lucky to land the job after another dancer had won a coveted full-time job as one of the Hunter Dance Company’s performers, although it was a bittersweet one since her ultimate ambition was to win that same place as a Hunter contemporary dancer.
She didn’t make the cut at the last auditions but since then she’d put in an extra five hours of training per week. She would be ready for the auditions next month. She had to be. Her meagre savings had dwindled to almost nothing, with everything she made from working in the coffee shop going to pay for food and her exorbitant rent. She needed to land a proper full-time job soon.
Because the alternative didn’t bear thinking about. She had to succeed because going back home wasn’t an option. She’d closed that door. Until her parents accepted her it would stay shut. After three years the painful memories remained as sharp as ever. But to stay in Virginia, waiting to take over the reins of the generations-old hotel and B & B business they ran, would’ve been to give in and then suffer a slow withering of her spirit.
Thoughts of her parents threatened to induce the despair she’d fought so hard to suppress. So instead she turned her thoughts to her brother.
And again her heart dipped with alarm. Thankfully, Xandro Christofides hadn’t made a return visit to the Performance School. Although that had surprised her a little, her paramount emotion was relief.
Now all she needed was to hear from Ben and get his side of the story. Hopefully he’d have an acceptable explanation so they could put this incident behind them.
‘Morning, sunshine—uh, scratch that. I feel like that should be Morning, rain clouds. Everything okay?’ Michael, her co-worker and a fellow dancer, stepped behind the counter and stared at her with a frown.
Sage slipped her phone into her apron pocket and summoned a smile. ‘I’m fine. Thanks,’ she tagged on when he continued to stare at her sceptically.
‘I’m not sure I totally believe that, but anyway, what I’m about to tell you will put some happy in your step. Guaranteed!’
‘Okay, I’m all ears,’ she responded, simply because she needed something to take her mind off worrying about Ben, and whether the enigmatic Greek tycoon she’d wasted time Internet-searching had found her brother yet.
‘You know we were told there were only three places for the audition spots next month?’
Her heart dipped and she clenched her belly in preparation for bad news. ‘Yes?’
‘Well, I hear there are six spots now!’
Sage gasped. ‘Really? How come?’
‘Because we have a new patron.’
She refused to let hope soar. Not when this might be second or even third-hand gossip. ‘Are you sure?’
Michael shrugged. ‘It’s all hush-hush, but the director’s been locked in meetings off-site for the last two days. I hear she’s contorting herself into the godmother of pretzel positions to accommodate this new patron.’
Sage frowned, the hope she didn’t want to entertain, dimming a little. ‘How could you possibly know that?’
Michael looked a little hurt. ‘Because I trust my source. If they say Hunter has a new patron waiting in the wings, then I believe them.’
She sighed under her breath. ‘I’m not doubting you, Michael. It’s just that we’ve been down this road before and—’
‘Yes, I know. Sure, last time my intel that we had a new patron turned out to be false. But this came straight from the top.’
Sage nodded but kept her scepticism to herself. Even with six spots instead of three the odds were tough, considering there were twenty dancers vying for the positions.
If Michael was right, they’d find out soon enough.
At the Washington Performance School after her shift, she practised and tweaked her seven-minute routine for three hours before she took her first break.
When the faint tingling in her wrist started again, she suppressed the familiar unease that came with it.
‘If you can’t stand a little schoolyard competition, how will you make it on the big stage you so selfishly crave?’
She pushed her father’s heavy, condemning voice away and reminded herself how far she’d come. She was good enough. Her wrist was strong enough. Ultimately, she had Ben to thank for her healing too, because he was the only one who’d believed her.
A little desperate to hear his voice, she sent him another frantic message. Then, with an hour to burn until she was allotted another training slot, she found herself returning to the Internet search for Xandro Christofides.
The man was richer than Croesus, with a touch more potent than Midas if the financial media was to be believed. Coupled with dark, brooding, drop-dead gorgeous looks, it was no wonder there were reams of articles written about him. Except most of them only went back to his early twenties, when he’d graduated from Harvard with a business degree in finance and hotel management and a business plan that had seen him become a multimillionaire within two years.
Now thirty-three, Xandro Christofides had taken that same plan and turned himself into a casino and hotel magnate, providing first-class luxury and decadence to the richest of the rich.
Before twenty-one, nothing could be found on the man, save for the rumour that he’d grown up in the roughest suburbs of New York. That explained the layer of hard ruthlessness that clung to him despite his designer clothes and feline grace.
A layer that attracted beautiful women to the enigmatic man. Picture after picture showed him with dazzling females smiling up at him, clinging to his arm, their possessiveness blatant. All while he stared stony-faced into the camera.
Xandro Christofides was a stranger to the art of smiling. Sure, their encounter so far hadn’t lent itself towards affable banter, but she doubted he smiled at any other time. He didn’t seem the type. In fact, he seemed impervious to anything besides making money and dating beautiful women.
A quick look through his company history also showed he was one hundred per cent owner of every venture, with no collaborations or business partners. He’d even stated as much during an interview.
‘I prefer complete control. I don’t like to share. What is mine belongs only to me.’
Apprehension danced down her spine. The man was addicted to control. It spoke volumes that he had travelled from the West Coast