“You’re moving too fast,” she muttered.
“I told you there was urgency. Let’s find the clincher.” He set his elbows on the table and laced his fingers together, imposing his iron will upon her. “If you could have anything you wanted in the world, right now, what would it be?”
“I don’t know.” She couldn’t imagine a life without all these stressors and obligations that had been accumulating for years.
But as she sighed and looked into the flickering flame on the candle, her heart wrenched with yearning toward the one thing she’d been pretending she was okay with losing. The thing she sought and found, in a watered-down form at least, whenever she walked onstage and grasped the pole. The one place where she had always felt she belonged.
The words came out of her like an incantation. “I want to dance.”
His brows shot up.
“To finish my degree,” she clarified crossly. “I want to perform with musicians and artists.” For a real audience, not a bunch of men looking to scratch their own itch.
She’d lost so much time on that aspiration. It broke her heart to consider where she might be if she hadn’t let Todd derail her. Dancing at Martini’s had been as much about regaining the condition of her body and rejuvenating her skills as filling the coffers because, deep down, she secretly dreamed of returning to dance. Somehow. Even though it seemed impossible.
Axel picked up his phone. “I’ll put Heskel onto researching academies.”
“No. It’s…” Against her best judgment, her heart lifted with anticipation. Hope.
She hadn’t allowed herself to feel that emotion in so long, it brought a sting of tears into her eyes. If she had a chance to train again, she should take it. Shouldn’t she? Before age and all the other vagaries of life made it even less likely that she could?
“What about the wedding itself?” he asked as though she’d agreed. “I’d prefer simple, but if you have your heart set on something bigger—”
“For a fake marriage? No,” she scoffed.
But there was one girlish dream she had all but abandoned. One that she saw could still come trueifshe acted soon. Oh, he was cruel to offer this to her when it meant everything to her and their marriage would mean nothing.
Still.
“I want…” She had to swallow the thickness from her throat. “I want my father walk me down the aisle. My real one. Paul.”
“Of course. Let me relay that to Heskel.” He tapped his phone.
She was still reeling from how easy he made all of this sound when his phone pinged.
He read the reply. “Heskel says we can marry twenty-four hours after we purchase the license. We’ll do that first thing tomorrow morning, so we can marry Thursday. We’ll fly overnight and meet Otto on Friday morning.”
“Wait. What?” Her heart nearly came out her mouth. “I haven’t even told my father that Otto reached out.” She rose, truly needing to run away from all of this. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be.
“Would you like me to speak to him with you?”
The way he was capable of railroading a person? Her poor father wouldn’t know what had hit him.
“No.” She hurried across to pick up her jacket and pushed her arms into it. “This will hurt his feelings. His condition has taken a downturn lately, and he’s not rich like Otto. I don’t want him to feel like he failed me or anything.” She needed a couple of tries to close the zipper on her jacket. “I don’t care about the money.” She lifted her face and looked him in the eye as she said it, so he would know it was the absolute truth. “I want to meet my birth father to satisfy my curiosity about where I came from. I don’t have to marry you to do that.”
It was a reminder to him and herself that she still held agency in this situation.
“True,” Axel agreed, picking up her hat and all the documents from the table, bringing everything to her, including the credit card. “Read the contract, though. Otto expects you to marry me if you want to inherit from him. If you go to him without me, I will refuse.”
She felt struck by that bluntness. There was such a lethal finality in his voice, it emptied her chest while opening two paths before her. She had the same feeling she’d had when she had dropped out of school. She had known she would regret it. She had known she wouldn’t be able to go back to that moment and take the path shereallywanted.
Which path did she really want today?
“If Otto sees that you’re no use to him, he’ll discard you. You’ll be back in the cabaret within the week,” Axel warned in that dispassionate tone.
“I’m not afraid of that,” she claimed, even though she wished every day that she didn’t have to be there.
“Then don’t be afraid to accept a bigger payout for an easier gig,” he said tersely.
