"Is that..." he cleared his throat. "Is that what Dad and Adam want?"
Silence responded to his question.
"They don't even know you're talking to me about this, do they?"
"No," his mum said after another pause. "But they'll be grateful for the help. Your dad will be grateful." She paused again. "Adam doesn't know how bad things are."
"Mum!" Luc snapped.
He hadn't meant to sound so pissed off. What right did he have to chastise his own mother? But at the same time, he couldn't be anything less than angry that she was keeping things from his dad and Adam. That both his parents were hiding the state of the business from his stepbrother.
"I can't just drop everything and come home," he said.
Except that wasn't true. He had plenty of holiday time he could take. There was no reason he couldn't go home. Only he didn't want to. He wanted to help his parents, but he didn't want to be around Adam. He couldn't be near Adam. Even after all these years, the thought of his stepbrother stirred something he didn't dare name inside him.
"I wouldn't be asking if we weren't desperate," his mum said. "I know you've got your own life, but I don't know what else to do, Luc. If we lose the business, we lose everything."
Luc could hear the tremor in her voice. Was she trying not to cry?
"Are things really that bad?"
"Yes," she sniffed. "Your dad thinks we might have to close the school down by the end of the year if business doesn't pick up. Luc... we re-mortgaged the house last year to keep the business afloat. We really thought we'd just hit a rough patch and that we were going to come out the other side. But we haven't and we don't see it happening any time soon."
Luc dropped his head into his hand. "Okay," he breathed.
"Okay? You'll help us out?"
"Yeah." He couldn't let his parents' business fail just because he was too chicken to face his stepbrother. "I'll need to talk to my boss to arrange some time off."
"You're going to come here?" Disbelief dripped from his mum's voice.
He didn’t blame her for being incredulous. It wasn’t as if he’d made much of an effort over the past four years;anyeffort, if he was being completely honest, which made him feel a deep sense of shame. He’d been a pretty crappy son of late, but now he had a chance to make it up to his parents.
"I told you, there's not much I can do from here. I need to get a feel for the business again and the local community. I need to know why people are choosing the other, newer dance schools over you. I need to know what you guys can offer that no one else can."
"Thank you," his mum breathed. "You don't know how much this means to me. How much it'll mean to your dad."
"Yeah... about that." Luc breathed in slowly. "You need to tell Dad and Adam that I'm coming. If I turn up and they're shocked to see me, I'll head straight home again. Is that clear?"
"Yes."
Seeing his stepbrother again was going to be hard enough for both of them. But things would be a hundred times worse if Adam didn't know he was coming.
Chapter Two
Adam
For Adam, dancing was like breathing: it was something he couldn't live without; couldn't imagine himself not doing. He was alone in the studio. The class he had been teaching had finished almost an hour earlier, but he had remained behind, dancing. He'd worked up a sweat as he moved around the studio. The collection of music he'd selected loaned itself to dancing inallegro, which had jacked his heart rate up and really got his blood pumping.
He was tired, exhausted even, but he kept dancing because it made him feel alive. But he also knew his limits. Knew that he was reaching them and that soon he'd need to stop and cool down or risk serious injury. As that thought entered his mind, the music reached a loud crescendo. He grinned, slid his feet into fifth position and dipped into ademi-plié. He glided forward intoglissadeenavant, which he used to transition into a series ofjetésenmanège, travelling around the room as he leapt. With each leap, he threw his legs at ninety degrees to his body, one forward, the other back, his arms stretched wide to mirror them.
By the time he stopped, his breathing was laboured. He paused, resting forward onto his knees as he caught his breath.
The sound of clapping from the doorway jerked his attention up and round, his heart hammering even more loudly in his chest.
"Dad." Adam rolled his eyes. "Don't do that. You almost scared the crap out of me."
"Sorry. I thought you'd realised I was here."
