Billionaire Erotic Romance Boxed Set: 7 Steamy Full-Length Novels

by Priscilla West

  “Listen to the music. Let it flow through you. Ballet is the lyrical expression of human movement, Sophie. You are the music. Relax your fingers. Good!”

  It had been good. She’d left Body In Motion every other day after school feeling like she’d been reborn. Back then, dancing had never failed to put a smile on her face. She felt it now, hovering around her lips. Her scalp prickled with sweat in the slightly stuffy room, cheeks flushed with heat. Her chest rose and fell with each deep breath. The muscles in her thighs and calves tingled and burned.

  Not painfully, the sweet burn of exercise. As just like she remembered, there was the hushed sound of her shoes sliding over the hardwood floor. Sacred, like the clack of rosary beads. Rhythmic, like a prayer. Places like this were Sophie’s church.

  Inside these walls, there had been no missed questions on a pop quiz, or teenage fights with her parents. The bad stuff, the stressful things of everyday life, got tucked into the cubby hole with her jacket and backpack. She did it now, tucking Christian and Henry and the media and Nicole and the cancellations all into a cubby in the front room.

  She focused on her feet. Pas de bourree, pas de chat. Her heart echoed the leap, soaring in her chest. Sophie landed lightly on the balls of her feet, breath rushing out of her, arms to her sides.

  Phantom clapping, the three, hard, curt claps that Miss Clara gave at the end of a routine done well, seemed to echo through the room. Sophie stared at the wall where the mirrors should be. What did she look like now, she wondered? Wisps of light hair stuck to her sweaty cheeks and neck, face flushed, panting.

  A silly woman in slacks and a t-shirt dancing in an abandoned studio. Sophie relaxed, breath whooshing out of her, and dropped her arms. There was no going back. Only forward. Or standing still. And she knew what Miss Clara would say about that.

  “A body at rest...” she murmured into the stillness of the dusty room. She palmed sweat from her forehead and picked her way gingerly back toward the rear door. However full of joy her past was, she wasn’t going to be one of those people who wallowed there. She was no Miss Havisham, wandering around in her old wedding dress. She wouldn’t be bitter.

  That’s what this trip was about, wasn’t it? Putting all the craziness of the last few weeks behind her. Moving on. “A body in motion tends to stay in motion,” she quoted Newton, via Miss Clara. And Sophie intended to keep moving.

  The air smelled fresh after the close confines of the old studio. Sophie took a deep breath, tilting her face up to the sky and briefly enjoying the warmth of the sun on his skin. She shoved the door back into place, leaning hard against it to pop the crooked hinge. She covered it with the leaning wood again, and brushed her hands free of dust.

  The rasp of a lighter’s ignition wheel made her jump a little. She turned toward the small patch of back lawn behind the florist. A woman stood there, her back to Sophie, dark hair tied up in a messy bun. She wore a green apron tied around her waist, and puffed on one of those tiny, slim cigarettes that were marketed just to women.

  “Excuse me?” Sophie asked, stepping further away from the back of the decrepit building. The woman turned slowly, puffing on her smoke. Her face was lined, she was older than Sophie had first thought, but she smiled kindly enough.

  “Well, you don’t look old enough to be one of the ruffian’s mothers. Sister?”

  Sophie stared at the older woman for a moment, uncomprehending. Then she shook her head and smiled. “Oh. No. I’m not looking for anyone. I was just wondering... I used to come here as a kid, you see. Do you know what happened to it? I mean... the woman who owned it...” She bit her lip, suddenly not sure if she wanted to know what had happened to Miss Clara.

  “The lady who owned it retired down to Florida. Still there as far as I know, but the kids are in charge of her assets. They just let the place sit.” She shrugged, sucking on her cigarette.

  “I didn’t realize Miss Clara had any kids.” But then, she’d been young and awfully absorbed in her dancing.

  “Don’t think the relationship is real close. At least, that’s the impression I get.” She picked a flake of tobacco off her tongue. “But hey, if you’re interested in the place, I can get you in touch with them.”

  “Oh, I —”

  “I’d move fast if I were you. I know it doesn’t look like much, but you’re the second person to come look at it in the last few weeks. I guess the market’s heating up. I’ve got that contact info back in the shop if you want it.” She jerked her head back toward the florist.

  Sophie swallowed her protest. Maybe this was her way forward? Here, at home? “Someone else was looking at it?”

  The lady nodded, waving her hand and drawing elaborate figures in the smoke that wafted up from her cigarette. “Yeah. She was an odd duck, I’ll tell you. She wanted to know the building’s whole history. Asked if there were any records left, photos, that kind of thing. Then she wanted to know how long I’d lived here. When I told her it was only the last couple of years, she said she needed someone who’d lived here for at least twenty years. Someone who could tell her about one of the students. Guess someone famous went here once?”

  Sophie opened her mouth, but her voice caught in her chest. She tried again, clearing her throat first. A knot of suspicion began to tighten in her stomach. Whoever had been poking around here had been asking about her. Twenty years ago was when she’d been here. And while she wouldn’t call herself famous, she was well known in the dance world. Had a reporter come sneaking around, drawn here by the stories about her and Henry? Or worse…

  “What’d she look like? The woman who was interested in the place?”

  “Tall, leggy, blonde. Fancy clothes. Way too fancy for poking around abandoned buildings. Ice blue eyes. She had the narrowest nose I’ve ever seen. I’d bet a million dollars she had work done on it. Why? She from a rival company or something?”

  Sophie swallowed, hard. She knew a tall, leggy blonde with ice blue eyes and a too narrow nose. One who’d recently had more information about Sophie’s past than she should have. Bile burned in the back of her throat.

  “Something like that.”

  “Well, she took the contact info. You want me to get it for you?” The woman dropped her cigarette and ground it beneath her sneaker, raising her brows. Sophie shook her head.

  “No, thanks. I’ve got everything I need. You have a nice day, now.”

  She spun on her heel and stalked through the narrow alley, digging in her pants for her cell phone. She needed some answers, but she wasn’t about to call Henry again. Not after their last disastrous conversation. Still, there was someone she could call who seemed intent on getting involved in this whole mess. Her fingers jabbed at her cell harshly. Carl answered on the second ring.

  “I’m willing to hear you out.”

  “Sophie. I’m glad you called. Look, it’s not what you think.” She could actually hear Carl shove his hand through his hair. It rasped against the phone.

  “First things first. Nicole Rossi was in my home town the other week, Carl. Asking about me. I need you to tell me the truth... You’re friends with Henry, you must know her well enough. Is she the type of woman who’d try and mess with my business to get at me?”

  Carl sighed. She heard a creak as he leaned back in his chair. “She’s exactly that type of person. Especially if she thought it would get her Henry back. Who, by the way, she doesn’t have. I’m pretty sure she’s the ‘anonymous source’ most of these papers are quoting. She’s feeding them the stories.”

  “And the pictures?” Icicles were forming in Sophie veins.

  “Oh, hell, Sophie. You know how they can make something look, out of context. I’m telling you, it’s not what it looks like. I know Henry, and he’d never go back to that viper. He didn’t even like her very much to begin with. He was mostly seeing her for his father’s sake.”

  Sophie’s fingers tightened on her phone. She rubbed frantically at her forehead with her free hand. “Why does any of this matter t
o you, Carl? Why are you leaving me messages begging me to hear you out when Henry’s the one who screwed up? Again.”

  He sighed and drummed his fingers on what sounded like a wooden table. Maybe a desk? “Honestly? I’ve known Henry a long time, Sophie. Long enough to know that he’s got issues. Long enough to know that he’s unhappy. And then you come along... You’ve made him happier than I’ve ever seen. I want that for him. You don’t know what he was like before, but I do. And you’re good for him.”

  “You’re a good friend, Carl. He’s lucky to have you.” She stared at the blue of the sky and tried to blink away the fresh tears that pricked her eyes. She clenched her teeth against the anger and pain that welled in her chest. “But I don’t think this is going to work. I don’t think Henry’s very good for me.”

  “Sophie–”

  “Goodbye, Carl.” She hung up, even though he was still speaking. She’d heard him out. Nicole was the one feeding the stories to the tabloids. Nicole had snooped around her old dance studio, and probably elsewhere in town too. Anger burned like lava in her belly. At Nicole, for her vicious tactics. At Henry for keeping so much from her that she couldn’t bring herself to trust him. At herself for letting them both manipulate and control her emotions. Where was her backbone? She’d had it once. She’d been fiercely independent.

  Seized with a sudden need to do something, to exert her will and change something for the better, anything, Sophie bent and snatched up a chunk of broken concrete about the size of her palm. She took careful aim and winged the hunk of asphalt as hard as she could at the old sign.

  “Yes!” She gave a little hop as the bit of debris struck the broken ‘n’ and knocked it loose. It clattered to the ground with a satisfying thunk. Sophie stood, panting, fists clenched at her sides, staring at the building. The sign now read Bo—n—o.

  Better than nothing. She gave a curt not, pleased with her handiwork, spun on her heel, and headed for her car.

  Chapter Nineteen

  She didn’t remember her bedroom ever being so small. It felt barely bigger than a postage stamp as she paced from one wall to the other. Ever since she’d returned to her parent’s house, adrenaline had tingled through her veins, bubbling through her blood. Her muscles hummed as if she was attached to some low level electrical charge. Sophie had to move. She reached her closet and spun on her heel again, striding back to her dresser.

  On top was a small trophy with a ballerina on pointe. One of the first competitions she’d won. Several more were lined up beside it, tap, jazz, tango, ballroom. All first and second place trophies in gleaming gold and silver, the plaques all carved with her name. Sophie snatched it up. “You never would have let yourself fall for a man you knew next to nothing about.”

  She glared at the elegant, poised figure of the dancer. “You didn’t even care about boys.” If only that was still true now. Sophie grimaced. Her fingers tightened around the smooth, cool surface of the trophy. She had to force herself to relax her arm, which was ready, for all the world, to fling the darn thing across her room.

  Instead, she stomped angrily to her closet and tugged open the door. She was looking for a box, something she could put the trophy in and not have to look at it anymore. She wanted to put them away, all of them, and not have to think about what a failure she was.

  She pushed aside a row of winter coats as she glimpsed the brown of a cardboard box. Sophie curled her fingers over the edge and yanked. It wasn’t as heavy as she’d been anticipating, and it came rocketing out, spilling its contents onto the floor.

  Pictures and papers and ribbons piled around her feet. Sophie groaned in exasperation and squatted, setting the trophy down with a thunk.

  “Another mess. Good one, Sophie. Maybe there’s a market somewhere for someone so good at making messes. You could help people plan for disaster relief just by living your stupid life in their vicinity. Christ!”

  She began shoving the papers back in the box, barely glancing at them, until the words TO DO: IMPORTANT in her own childish scrawl caught her eye.

  Sophie paused, breathing a little uneven, and pulled the paper from the pile. #1, she’d written, Become a Dancer! #2 - Travel the World! #3 - Dance until I’m Too Old (Like 30) #4 - Meet a Handsome Prince! #5 - Get Married, Live in a big Mansion, Have Kids #6 - Happily Ever After!

  Based on the date in the corner, she’d been about six when she wrote this “important” to do list. Five easy steps to the Happily Ever After part. If only life were really that easy. But it wasn’t. Some things just weren’t meant to be, no matter how bad you wanted them.

  Sophie wasn’t at all sure if she was talking about her dance career, or what had happened with Henry. Still, she’d accomplished the first two on the list. Maybe that wasn’t so bad. She had written it almost twenty years ago.

  “Doing a little remodeling, sweet pea?”

  Her father leaned in the doorway, a beer in one big hand, his eyes taking in the scatter of things on the floor and the disarranged trophies on top of the dresser. Sophie shrugged one shoulder, not meeting her father’s eyes. “Just looking through some old stuff.” She scooped more of it back into the box, a handful of award ribbons nearly every color of the rainbow.

  “Here, let me help.”

  “Oh no, Dad, that’s fine. I’ve got it.”

  But he’d already crouched beside her and began straightening papers and untangling ribbons. He flipped over a photograph of Sophie in her tutu, arms over her head.

  “You’d have slept in that thing, if your mother had let you.”

  Sophie lips quirked a little. “Probably. I remember thinking other clothes were completely boring in comparison.”

  Her dad tucked the picture back into the box and lifted a stack of papers. Order forms, Sophie saw, for tap shoes. “We could probably throw those out.”

  “Your mother would kill me.” He folded them into the box.

  “They’re likely fifteen years old. I doubt I could still get them for that price.”

  “Seemed like a lot then. You were always needing new taps.”

  Sophie ducked her head. “I would bring them over to friend’s houses and tap there too.”

  “Knew it.” He snorted, lifting a handful of second place ribbons.

  He pulled one out of the batch. It was slim and red. Or it had been. It was so faded it was now merely a washed out pink, and the ends were frayed and loose. Whatever words had been on it were almost completely worn away, except for a shimmery gold P near the top.

  Participation ribbons were what they gave out to all the people who didn’t win at the competitions Sophie had gone to as a kid. Her dad chuckled, running his big, rough fingers over the worn ribbon. “I remember this one.”

  Sophie blinked, surprised. It was hardly distinguishable from the others, except that it was slightly more faded than some of the rest. “You do?”

  He nodded, grunting a little as his knees popped when he stood, and crossed to sit on her bed. He carried the ribbon on his palm, still stroking it with a gentle fingers.

  “You don’t?”

  She studied it again, cocking her head, trying to place some sort of significance on it. But she had a ton of ribbons. Sophie had danced in any and every competition in the tri-state area as a child. That particular ribbon held no special meaning for her. “No.”

  “You couldn’t have been more than eight. You’d just started expressing an interest in dance a year or so before, and your mom signed you up for Miss Clara’s. You were doing the ballet, and some tap, I think.”

  Sophie nodded, setting the box aside to sit on the bed beside her father. “I remember that part.” Her dad nodded, smiling fondly down at the little ribbon.

  “There was a ballroom competition in Verona. It was the first time you participated doing tango. Your partner was that boy... the one with the stutter?”

  “Frankie Blondell!” Sophie remembered the slim, bird-like boy whose mother had signed him up for dance lessons hoping to boost his confid
ence and help with the speech impediment. The first several years had been torture for him, teased not only about his stammer but also because he danced. But Frankie had stuck with it and become a really good dancer.

  By the time he reached the age when girls became a thing of interest, Frankie had, in fact, grown comfortable and confident in his body. He’d also been sleekly muscular and knew how to dance. Girls responded to that. The other boys stopped laughing at him. Frankie had quit competing in dance competitions in high school, and gone on to become a software engineer and marry a model. The memory brought a smile to Sophie’s face.

  Jim Becker sipped his beer. “Frankie Blondell, that’s right.”

  “We lost,” Sophie said, plucking the ribbon from her father’s palm. She was beginning to recall the competition, vaguely. “We were the youngest competitors in that category and we were both still so new.” She chuckled a little ruefully. “I’m pretty sure we were awful. Is that why you remember it?”

  “No, sweet pea.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “That’s not why I remember it. Goof.” He squeezed her a little. “I remember it because it was your first big loss. Your mother and I were both worried about how you were going to take it.”

  Sophie frowned down at the ribbon, trying to remember. She would have thought it would be clearer. Her first big loss. But she barely recalled it at all, even now that she was trying hard to draw the memory out.

  “Was I upset? I don’t remember.”

  Her dad chuckled, shaking his head. “No, not at all. That’s why I remember it. Your mom and I were sitting on the sidelines as you walked off the floor, waiting to see if you were going to scream or burst into tears or... what. We didn’t know. And you strode right up to us with your little chin in the air. I said ‘You did very well, sweet pea,’ trying to head off the explosion.”

  He took another sip of beer, snorting a little. Sophie laid her head on his shoulder. “And I didn’t explode.”

  “Not a bit. You looked me right in the eye and said ‘Next time, I’ll do better.’” He rubbed his chin over her hair. “You could have knocked your mother and I over with a feather, we were so surprised.”