Dance With Me Read Online Free PDF Page B

Laurie's performance peak. The few who knew that time doubled as his salad days could be counted on to spin his youthful indiscretions appropriately enough to suit their hostess. And as Laurie had suspected, not one of the dancers knew him personally. In fact, they were all so young that they could only have heard of him as some kind of legend, some of the tales good, some bad, but all dulled with distance and time. And all that was important, Laurie knew, because this entire evening was one great orchestration in Caroline Parker's ongoing attempt to return her once nearly famous son to the stage and the honor and renown she believed he deserved.
    “Just mingle,” she murmured in his ear as she led him toward another cluster of people in the dining room. “Mingle and smile. I'll take care of the rest.”
    Laurie smiled, but it was fixed and tight. There was no point in telling his mother he didn't want anything taken care of. She wouldn't argue with him, not in front of everyone, and there was no way she'd step into the study and indulge him either. She also had him neatly trapped, because he'd been fool enough to come through the door and be seen. He couldn't leave now without causing a scandal, and this guest list, however accepting they might be, had to be at least partly expecting such a scene from him.
    He could see it in their eyes as he clutched at his champagne glass and made mindless small talk with the parade of guests who came up to poke at him and see what happened. None of their attempts worked, of course. If they were too pointed, his mother deflected them, and if they didn't take the hint, his father was drawn in to shift the subject to business or sports. But neither did Caroline let her son look like a puppet. She would direct the conversation—"Tell them about your studio, darling. It's so charming. Such a clever plan"—and she'd toss out hints that he might open up chains across the cities, which he had no intention of doing, but that hardly mattered to his mother. There was no point in arguing with her. If he did, she'd just dismiss his protests as him being cagey.
    So Laurie told them about his Eden Prairie studio, downplaying his mother's descriptions because she had inflated them, but that was her game. She embellished, and he downplayed, and between the two stories, his accomplishments looked greater than they were, and he looked humble. It was the same routine she'd used since he was ten, but it still worked. By the time dinner was served, several of the guests had sneaked business cards in his pocket, either because they wanted to invest in his franchise or because they had a niece they wanted to put on the new waiting lists.
    He supposed he should thank his mother, but all he could think of right now was how much he wanted to take her out to her precious stables and string her up by one of the beams.
    She seated him beside Oliver.
    Oliver Thompson was a longtime family friend, Laurie's godfather, and an influential member of the Hennepin Theatre Trust. And though Caroline never much cared for Laurie's “flaunting” of the few male companions he'd brought to her parties, Oliver was here with his longtime partner, Christopher, and Laurie's mother treated both of them as if they were royalty deigning to pay her a favor of their attendance. This wasn't because they'd known each other since high school or that they'd dated before Oliver had decided he wasn't interested in pretending he was straight. This wasn't even because Caroline was probably closer to Oliver than she was to her own husband. This was because, in addition to being heinously rich, Oliver was even more influential and manipulative than Caroline.
    Tonight, Laurie knew his mother intended Oliver to target him.
    “I keep asking your mother when you're going to let us book your comeback show,” he teased Laurie as the first course was cleared away. He scrubbed his graying mustache discreetly with his napkin before returning it to his