A Dangerous Dance Read Online Free PDF Page A

good to a point, that point being when they stopped being comfortable or easy to care for. Probably because of her less-than-vintage upbringing, she thought.
    In a distant sort of way, she wondered who had decorated the room. It had been like this when she arrived in Oz and when she left it wearing mourning black. The colors were good, with her favorite green dominant. Had Magus known or was it just luck?
    There was so much she didn't know and wouldn't ever know. It would have been easy to recreate him as the perfect father, to set him on a high pedestal and imbue him with any trait or motive she wanted. She could even make up her own reasons for why he didn't come near her for eighteen years. He wasn't around to dispute anything. Fantasy father would have been a much more comfortable ghost to deal with the past ten years. Unfortunately, or fortunately, her mother had taught her to keep her feet firmly on the ground, to keep her fairy tales in the pages of childhood books and out of her life.
    Those feet had come off the ground a bit when Remy revealed his plan. Even now, fantasy thoughts, straight out of the pages of a romance novel, whirled in her head. She stared at herself, then slowly and carefully began to debunk each one.
    Remy didn't love her. He wanted Magus's power and access to the money to fuel his campaign. It wasn't personal. How could it be when he didn't know her?
    She didn't know him either. There was a huge difference between the infatuation of a seventeen year old and the real, grown-up love she was capable of now.
    Attraction wasn't love either.
    If she wasn't careful, she could screw up both their lives. She had to keep her mind on her goal, which was to expose the man who contracted Magus's murder and quit living in Magus's shadow. She wanted her life, not Magus's life. Remy wanted Magus's life, or at least what Magus had wanted. That meant they were on different paths, moving toward different things. And if she looked into the future, she couldn't see Remy giving up what he wanted for a life of obscurity. Nor could she see herself ever being happy in the limelight. Opposites might attract, but they were both grownups and didn't have to act on that attraction.
    She almost felt the thump as her feet connected with the wooden floor under the vanity. Only then did she allow herself to consider Remy's proposal. Even without the rosy glow of fantasy, it had merit, or was that despite it? Being attracted to him was a definite complication, but was it insurmountable?
    In some ways, it would be like dancing on the head of a pin. She'd have to pretend she liked him, while not letting on she actually did like him. A single misstep in one direction and the plan failed, possibly fatally. A misstep in the other and she got her heart broken.
    Okay, those were the risks.
    On the other hand, Remy's plan had more potential for a successful outcome, even weighted with all those emotional components. If she was able to be cool and logical, which she granted, she wasn't in a position to know for sure, it had the potential to apply the most pressure—if Magus had been killed for political reasons. And if he hadn't?
    Dorothy considered that possibility again, though she'd done it thousands of times before—and come to the same conclusion. It had to be political. Or why choose that time? Why wait until Magus was rising in the polls? Why wait until pundits were beginning to call him unstoppable?
    She'd gone through his businesses with the proverbial fine tooth comb, looking for another motive and had come up empty. Magus, despite his ruthlessness, had pursued his businesses with an almost fanatical sense of ethics. Maybe he's always known he'd go into politics and didn't want to give anyone any fuel for scandal. After the breakup of his marriage, he'd lived the life of an esthete as far as she could tell. There'd been no bimbo eruptions on his entry into the political field or after his death.
    Within his businesses, he'd