Dancing in the Dark

He was right. Wendy had been born to ski. She was quick, graceful, a joy to watch. At eight, she’d won her first junior medal. At ten, she was taking winter vacation trips with Howard to Aspen. By the time she was twelve, skiing was all she lived for.

She was bright, thank goodness, so she did well in school, even though she didn’t pay much attention to her studies. As for dances and parties and the sweet silliness young girls enjoy—those things didn’t interest her. Gina closed her eyes, remembering how she used to long to be able to make the same complaints as other mothers of teenage girls, but Wendy didn’t spend hours tying up the phone, or plaster her room with posters of rock idols and giggle over boys.

And then, when Wendy was seventeen, she’d met a boy on the slopes. She was practicing; Seth was running the lift. Gina didn’t know what had happened that day, except that her daughter came home with high color in her cheeks and excitement in her eyes.

“A good day at Brodie, huh, punkin?” Howard said at dinner.

Wendy nodded. “Yes...terrific.”

Something in the way she said it, or maybe in the quick rush of color that climbed into her face again, told Gina the truth.

Wendy had met a boy.

Gina kept her thoughts to herself. The phone began to ring with calls for Wendy, all of them from the same polite young man. Sometimes she came home a little late from school, and in the evenings, when she sat at the kitchen table doing her homework, Gina caught her staring into space with a dreamy look in her eyes.

Gina was glad. It had begun to trouble her, seeing Wendy lock everything but skiing out of her life. Her daughter still loved to ski, still skied almost all weekend, but for the first time, she balked at Howard’s rigorous practice schedule.

Howard was perplexed.

“What’s gotten into her?” he mumbled one evening when Wendy said she wasn’t in the mood for a drive to Brodie for an hour’s work.

“She’s a teenage girl,” Gina answered. “She just needs time for other things.”

“Not if she wants to make it to the Olympics, she doesn’t,” Howard said, and not for the first time, Gina wondered whose goal that really was, his or Wendy’s.

One evening at dinner, Wendy asked to be excused before dessert.

“Apple pie,” Gina said. “Your favorite.”

“I know, Mom, but...” She blushed. “I have a date.”

Gina smiled. Howard stared.

“A date? With a boy?” Howard spoke in the same tone he’d have used if Wendy had announced she had a date with a Klingon warrior.

“Yes.” Wendy’s blush deepened. “His name is Seth Castleman.”

From that night on, everything revolved around what Seth said or did. Gina thought she’d never seen her little girl so happy. Howard thought he’d never seen her so distracted.

“She’s going to lose her edge,” he grumbled late one Friday night when he and Gina lay in bed, listening to the clock chime eleven and knowing Wendy had yet to come home.

Gina sighed and put her head on his shoulder. “She’s in love, Howard.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“The signs are all there.”

Howard had snorted. “Puppy love, maybe. That’s all it is.”

Gina had been sure it was more than that—until the accident, when Seth flew to Norway to be with Wendy and Wendy wouldn’t even see him. When she’d sent him a note that cut him out of her life.

The doorbell sounded. Gina glanced at the clock. Howard was the reading coordinator at the school where they both worked. He was meeting with the principal and she expected him home for lunch, but it was only ten. It had to be the UPS man with the books she’d ordered.

But it wasn’t the UPS man. It was Seth.

“Hello, Gina.”

She stared at him stupidly. Seth hadn’t come to the house in a long time, and now, only minutes after they’d talked about him, he was here. She gaped at the young man before her, snow dusting his dark hair and leather jacket, as if he were an apparition.

“Seth? I didn’t expect... I mean, what are you—”

“May I come in?”

Gina swallowed. “Actually,” she said carefully, “this isn’t a very good time.”

“I know she’s here.”

“Seth.” Gina glanced over her shoulder at the stairs. “I really don’t think—”

“How come you didn’t tell me she was coming home?”

There was anger in his voice, but she thought she could detect pain, too. “Oh, Seth...”

“You should have told me,” he said gruffly.

The snow was coming down harder. And Mrs. Lewis, out walking her dog, had paused on the sidewalk and was watching the scene with frank curiosity. Gina swung the door wide and moved aside. “Come in, then. But only for a minute.”

“Thanks.” Seth stepped into the entry hall and stomped his boots on the mat a lot harder than necessary. He didn’t give a damn just now about the snow he might track in on Gina Monroe’s slate tiles. Driving here, he’d gone from ticked off to angry to plain furious. It was stupid, he knew, because Wendy didn’t mean anything to him and Gina was under no obligation to tell him anything. Still, stupid or not, his temper was almost at the boiling point.

His anger started to abate as he looked at Gina’s worried face. Calmer now, he wasn’t even sure why he’d come. It was only that it was wrong that nobody had told him Wendy was coming home, warned him so he’d have been prepared for the shock of seeing her again.

“Seth.” Gina looked up at him. “You can’t stay. Really, I wish you could, but—”

“Yeah.” He ran his fingers through his snow-dampened hair. “Look, I’m sorry. I just...I saw her, you know? And it was—it was a surprise. How come you didn’t tell me?”

“Because...because—”

“Because I asked her not to.”

Seth lifted his head. He stared past Gina and saw Wendy coming slowly down the stairs.

CHAPTER FOUR

WENDY CLUTCHED the banister and looked down at Seth.

This was the moment she’d feared, the one she’d known was inevitable ever since her father said it was probably going to take longer than he’d expected to get time alone with Dr. Pommier. The longer she stayed in town, the greater the risk that Seth would learn she was here. It was one of the reasons she’d come up with excuses yesterday, when her father asked her to go with him while he ran some errands.

“Are you concerned folks will ask you questions when they see you? About your plans and if you’re home to stay, things like that?” he’d said, and then he’d answered the question himself. “Well, don’t worry, honey. We won’t tell them a thing until after you’ve seen Dr. Pommier and he’s agreed to do that surgery. Okay?”

What could she have said after that? That she didn’t want people to see her limp, or she didn’t want to risk bumping into Seth? Either answer made her sound like a coward, so she’d smiled and said, sure, she’d go with him, now that she’d had a little time to get used to being back in Cooper’s Corner.

But the thumping beat of her heart gave proof to the lie. She was a coward. She hadn’t wanted to see anybody because she hadn’t wanted to see pity in their eyes. But most of all, she’d been afraid of what she would see in the eyes of the man who’d loved the girl she used to be. She didn’t want his sympathy any more than she wanted his rejection if he ever found out exactly how critical her injuries had been.

Looking down at him, Wendy knew with relief that she’d had nothing to worry about. What she saw in Seth’s face was anger. Cold, controlled anger, and she knew, in that instant, that it was over for him, too.

Good.

So what if her pulse was rattling like a runaway train? That was normal when you saw a man who’d once been your lover

, a man you hadn’t seen or spoken to in nine endless years.

“Seth,” she said carefully. “You’re looking well.”

“Hello, Wendy.”

His voice was lower than she remembered. And he seemed bigger, though he’d always been tall and leanly muscled; standing next to him had made her feel feminine, almost delicate, even though her body was toned and hardened from years of skiing. He wasn’t bigger, she realized. He was mature, a man instead of a boy. A ruggedly handsome man with a strong jaw and a beautiful mouth.

“How have you been?” There. Wasn’t that good? Her voice was steady, her smile pleasant. So what if she left dents in the banister from gripping so hard? He’d never know.

“Fine.” His gaze swept down her body, lingered on her leg, then returned to her face. “And you?”

“Oh, I’m—I’m well, thank you.”

“Last I heard, you’d been putting in long hours at rehab.”

Wendy glanced at her mother, the source, she was sure, of any updates. Gina seemed frozen in place, her hands clasped at her breast, her gaze moving from face to face as they talked, like a spectator watching match point at a tennis game.

“Yes, that’s right. I still do.”

“And it’s obviously paid off. It’s good to see you on your feet again.”

The few people she’d talked with in town yesterday—in the general store, at the gas station—had carefully avoided making any reference to her leg. Did he think he was going to get to her by bringing up the past?

“Thank you. Mom,” she said pleasantly, “if we’re going to get to that mall—”

“Are you happy, living in France?”

“Very happy, thank you for asking.”