Dancers in the Dark Read Online Free PDF

look up at her partner’s face. His blue eyes were full of light. He was very angry, livid with rage.
    The dispassionate attitudes of the others had made her feel a bit more relaxed, but seeing his rage, Rue began to feel the familiar shame. She wanted to hide from him. And she couldn’t understand that, either. Why Sean, whom she knew better than any of the other dancers?
    â€œRue,” Sylvia said, “are you listening?”
    â€œNo, sorry, what?”
    â€œMegan and Julie think they can cover it up,” Sylvia said. “You’re willing to take the job if we can get your belly camouflaged?”
    â€œSure,” she told Sylvia, hardly knowing what she was saying.
    â€œAll right, then, two Fridays from now. You all start working on a long dance number right away, faux Polynesian. You’ll go on after the jugglers. Julie and Thompson are booked for a party this Saturday night, and Karl and Megan, you’re doing a dinner dance at the Cottons’ estate on Sunday. Sean, you and Rue are scheduled to open a ‘big band’ evening at the burn unit benefit.”
    Rue tried to feel pleased, because she loved dancing to big band music, and she had a wonderful forties dress to wear, but she was still too upset about revealing her scar. What had gotten into her? She’d tried her best to conceal it for years, and all of a sudden, in front of a roomful of relative strangers, she’d pulled down her jeans and shown it to them.
    And they’d reacted quite calmly. They hadn’t screamed, or thrown up, or asked her what she’d done to deserve that. They hadn’t even asked who’d done it to her. To Rue’s astonishment, she realized that she was more comfortable with this group of dancers than she was with the other college students. Yet most of those students came from backgrounds that were much more similar to hers than, say, Julie’s. Julie had graduated from high school pregnant, had the baby and given it up to the parents of the father. Now she was working nonstop, hoping to gather enough money to buy a small house. If she could do that, she’d told Rue, the older couple would let her have the baby over for the weekends. Megan, a small, intense brunette, was dancing to earn money to get through vet school. She’d seen Rue’s stomach and immediately begun thinking how to fix it. No horror, no questions.
    The only one who’d reacted with deep emotion had been Sean. Why was he so angry? Her partner felt contempt for her, she decided. Scarred and marred, damaged. If Rue hadn’t felt some measure of blame, she could have blown off Sean’s reaction, but part of her had always felt guilty that she hadn’t recognized trouble, hadn’t recognized danger, when it had knocked on her door and asked her out for a date.
    That night, when they both left the studio, Sean simply began walking by her side.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” Rue asked, after giving him a couple of blocks to explain himself. She stopped in her tracks.
    â€œI am going in the same direction you are,” he said, his voice calm.
    â€œAnd how long are you gonna be walking in that direction?”
    â€œProbably as far as your steps will take you.”
    â€œWhy?”
    There it was again, in his eyes, the rage. She shrank back.
    â€œBecause I choose to,” he said, like a true aristocrat.
    â€œLet me tell you something, buddy,” she began, poking him in the chest with her forefinger. “You’ll walk me home if I ask you to, or if I let you, not just because you ‘choose’ to. What will you do if I choose not to let you?”
    â€œWhat will you do,” he asked, “if I choose to walk with you, anyway?”
    â€œI could call the police,” she said. Being rude wasn’t going to work on Sean, apparently.
    â€œAh, and could the police stop me?”
    â€œNot human cops, maybe, but there are vamps on the