Naked Angel Read Free Page A

performing.
    “You have to get back onstage,” she’d said. “It’s the only way you will get through this.”
    Mallory was right: Studying burlesque, trying on costumes, and witnessing Mallory and Alec build the club had saved her sanity during the past few months she’d spent in physical therapy instead of in ballet rehearsals.
    So she would never be reviewed by Alastair Macaulay in the
New York Times
. But she could make a name for herself in a different world—a glamorous, fascinating world that was probably more relevant to women today than ballet.
    Knowing that Anna was in the audience made her nervous. Nadia had thought having a friend in the audience would make her feel better, but now she regretted it. She felt all the more pressure—that her performance must justify her choice. She imagined that somehow, if Anna saw her dance a classic striptease, she would change her mind. Anna might agree that Nadia had found the right alternative to her thwarted dance dreams. And she knew that one transcendent burlesque performance could change anyone’s mind, just like watching Mallory had changed hers. Of course, she wasn’t Mallory. But she had the heart of a dancer, and she had to believe that would get her through her début performance. When it came to dance, confidence was key. She couldn’t waver now. “Nadia, three minutes,” Bette told her.
    Nadia took a deep breath. Showtime.

3

    M ax Jasper stretched his long legs under the table. Their seats were close to the stage. A little too close, if Max had had anything to say about it. This whole burlesque thing was making him uncomfortable. He was a man who loved women—and loved women’s taking off their clothes. But he preferred it in the privacy of his bedroom, not in a crowded room surrounded by hoots, hollers, and clapping.
    When Anna had told him that Nadia Grant, the promising girl who’d danced the corps de ballet with American Ballet Theatre, had become a burlesque performer, he could not believe it. Anna had urged him to come to the show.
    “She needs the support of her community,” Anna said.
    “I don’t think you should encourage her,” Max told Anna.
    “That’s what friends do,” Anna said. It was that kind of simplistic thinking that made him uninterested in sleeping with her a second time. He’d warned her about that—that he was a “one and done” kind of guy. But she hadn’t believed him—they never did. And he was sure this outing to support her friend was just a ploy to get him interested in resuming their physical relationship. But if she had known him at all, she would have known that this whole scene was a huge turnoff.
    So why had he gone?
    “Curiosity,” he told Anna. And now he regretted it.
    “This is Nadia’s music,” Anna said with excitement as the curtain parted. The room filled with the song “The Entertainer” made famous by the 1973 Robert Redford and Paul Newman film,
The Sting
.
    Max barely recognized Nadia, and if it hadn’t been for her remarkably long legs and obvious ballet hands, he wouldn’t have believed it was the same girl he had seen dance on some of the most prestigious stages in the city.
    Nadia’s slender form was sheathed in a silver, beaded sleeveless dress, with bands of silver fringe just under her breasts and at the bottom that shimmered when she moved. She wore long black gloves to her elbows. Her hair was covered with a short brunette wig, and she wore a silver sequined headband on her forehead. Her cheeks were heavily rouged, her lips outrageously red and more sensual than Max remembered.
    The kicky, up-tempo song lent a playful edge to Nadia’s dance, and the way she teased off her gloves suggested confidence. Her movements were a classic flapper performance, and if this were as far as the dance were to go, he could live with the idea of a once-promising ballerina carving a path for herself in this arena. But he knew that was not how these things went—and if he’d had any