Save the Last Dance Read Free

hopes and expectations of not just a parent but also her manager and her mentor.
    She didn’t say anything, of course, but smiled softly in what the woman probably took for gracious agreement, then used the excuse of her fabulous father to make her departure.
    Of course, the press loved the father-daughter angle—devastated widower conducts as ballerina daughter tops the bill, just as he’d done for her tragic mother when she’d been alive. They ate it up.
    In her darker moments she silently accused him of loving it, too, of wanting double the glory. Double the adoration. But it wasn’t that, really. He just wanted things to be the way they’d been before, wanted to claw back time and resurrect the dead. Impossible, of course, so he’d had to settle for second best. Even so, Allegra hadn’t failed to see how he’d come back to life when she’d grown old enough to fill her mother’s shoes, dance her mother’s old roles.
    But not tonight. This one was all hers. No comparisons could be made. She would stand or fall in her own right when the reviews came out in the morning.
    She supposed that since she’d used her father as an excuse she’d better go and say hello, so she forged through the crowd, ignoring the people who tried to catch her eye. And there were plenty. She was the star of the show. It was her evening, after all.
    But she didn’t want to talk to them. Not the ones she knew in the company who either envied or idolised her, nor the ones she didn’t know, who saw her as some strange creature imbued with magical powers. Gifted—or should that be cursed?—with a talent they daren’t even dream of having. They looked at her as if she was somehow different from them. As if she were an alien from outer space. Something to be studied and discussed and dissected. But not human. Never human.
    What she wouldn’t give for one person on this planet to see past the tutus and the pointe shoes.
    More than once she had to change direction when a gap between bodies closed up. Eventually, she just stood still and waited. Chasing the holes in the crowd was impossible; she would wait for the tide of bodies to shift once again and let the gaps come to her. Her stillness, however, was just another way to mark herself out from the other guests.
    All around her people were celebrating. It had taken an army of people months to prepare for this night, and now they’d pulled it off their relief and joy was spilling out of them in smiles and laughter and excited conversation.
    But Allegra felt nothing.
    No joy. No bubbling. Nothing inside desperate to spill out of her.
    Except, maybe, a desire to scream.
    It was funny, really. For a few years now she’d wondered what would happen if one day she did exactly that. What would they all do if the habitually reserved Allegra Martin planted her feet in the centre of the room and split the hubbub with a scream that had forced its way up from the depths of her soul?
    The look on their faces would be priceless.
    She treasured this little fantasy, because it had got her through more stuffy cocktail parties, lunches and benefits than she cared to count. Only it didn’t seem quite as funny any more, because tonight she felt like making the fantasy a reality. She really felt like doing it for real. In fact, the urge was quickly becoming irresistible, and that was scaring her.
    She had to start moving again, keep walking at all costs, even if she ended up momentarily heading away from her father, because she feared that if she paused, that if her two feet stayed grounded for long enough, she might just do it.
    Despite her meandering progress across the Floral Hall, she had almost reached her father now. He hadn’t noticed her silent zig-zagging approach, however, because he was deep in conversation with the Artistic Director. She heard her name mentioned briefly above the din of the party. Neither man looked