At the end of the dance, Daniella and Gabriele were both on their feet, whispering urgently to each other. Neither of them seemed happy, especially Gabriele, who kept raking his fingers through his hair and gesticulating with his hands. Shit, had it really been that bad? I mean, it hadfeltbad, but I was sure I’d done enough to make itlookgood.
‘Come down here, please, both of you,’ barked Daniella.
Okay, clearly not.
‘Was that any better?’ asked Luca hopefully.
Gabriele rounded on him immediately. ‘No, Luca, it is still not working. The two of you have zero chemistry.None! It was like two wooden planks had been forced to dance together.’
‘Gabriele, be kind,’ said Daniella, hiding a smirk.
I felt my skin begin to flush – I’d never seen Gabriele like this, not with other dancers, not with me. Planks of wood? I knew it hadn’t beenthatbad.
‘It was our first run-through,’ said Luca, clearly panicking. ‘We can work on it.’
‘I expect you to be able to make a dance look sexy,’ said Gabriele, raising his voice. ‘But the way you performed it, you are going to have a bored audience leaving in droves during the interval!’
I dug my thumbnail into the palm of my hand to stop myself from reacting. I was supposed to be a professional dancer now, one who could take criticism and negative feedback. It was just that it was Gabriele doing the criticizing. And also because I knew he was right.
‘So what do you suggest?’ I asked, trying to keep my voice steady. This wasn’t the real Gabriele; he was grieving, stressed. ‘How can we fix this?’
‘This is what we need to work out,’ said Daniella. ‘Steps we can work on, but a lack of spark is more difficult to work with.’
‘Lira, what about your old dance partner? The one you won the World Championships with?’ asked Gabriele.
‘Tomas?’ I asked, wondering why he was bringinghimup.
Tomas and I had had that brief exchange when he saw I’d made the cast ofSlow Burn, but I could count the numberof times we’d spoken to each other recently on one hand. Sedi and Nolo used to tease me that he’d been in love with me, but it wasn’t that – at least, I didn’t think it was. And I’d felt terrible, because when my parents asked me to run the studio, they hadn’t given a second thought to the impact that their decision would have on Tomas’s future.
‘He is still dancing. I saw he was in something in Brazil,’ said Gabriele, warming to his subject. ‘But I think the show was about to finish. Would he be free? The two of you work well together, yes?’
‘We used to.’
‘But you could slip back into it, right? Can you call him? Ask him if he can step in and do the Italian leg of the tour with you?’
‘Um…’
‘Please, Lira. It is the best solution.’
I looked at Daniella, who nodded in agreement. And then I looked at poor Luca, who was looking tired and humiliated and as though he wished the ground would open up and swallow him whole.
‘If that’s what you want,’ I said, standing up, fishing my phone out of my bag. ‘Let me speak to him.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREELira
Venice was even more beautiful than I’d imagined from the photos I’d seen, especially in the early morning sunlight, which gave it a misty, ethereal feel. We were sitting at a table outside a little café, with the most perfect view of the Doge’s Palace, and the iconic Grand Canal churning majestically in front of it. Or, at least, it would have been perfect if it was Gabriele sitting opposite me rather than Tomas. Gabriele had been on my mind almost every minute of every day, except for those brief moments on stage, when I’d managed to lose myself in the music and focus on my performance.
I smiled at Tomas. None of this was his fault, and I was grateful to him for stepping in. Luckily for us, he was in between shows and had a month off, and two weeks of travelling through Italy performing in a hit show to guaranteedsell-out audiences had fallen into his lap like a gift. Carlos and the producers had taken some convincing, but then again, Gabriele was very persuasive, and I think they felt so bad for him that they finally agreed to fly Tomas over and have him try out with me. As Italy was Gabriele’s home country, his appearance in the show had been the main draw, and they’d been worried that the audience wouldn’t be happy with a replacement. But luckily the advance reviews from London, Spain and Portugal had been so positive that the Italian theatres hadn’t cancelled, and any returned tickets had been swiftly snapped up. Tomas had joined us for the final few days of the Lisbon run, with him and I working on our routines during the day. Despite him having only five days to learn all of the duets – Luca had agreed to step into Gabriele’s role in the group numbers – everything seemed to be working out pretty well, although we were both apprehensive for our first performance together.
‘Can we run through the Argentine tango a couple of times before tonight?’ asked Tomas, stirring sugar into his double espresso. ‘I’m still struggling with that second set ofboleosinto thecolgada.’
‘Yeah, that’s tricky. We struggled with that at first, too,’ I admitted.
Thankfully, Tomas and I had fallen right back into the way we’d always danced. It wasn’t what I had with Gabriele, but it was good enough, and ten times better than it had been with Luca.
‘I remember seeing you and Gabriele dancing theArgentine tango in Paris,’ said Tomas with a half-smile. ‘I was sitting at the hotel bar and desperately wanted to ask you to dance, but that wasn’t the done thing, was it, to dance with your own partner? But you looked so pretty sitting there, and I saw you swaying your shoulders to the music. You were wearing a red dress, if I remember rightly. I was on my feet about to come over when I saw Gabriele swoop in.’
‘You saw that?’ I asked, feeling my cheeks redden. It had been a moment I’d played over and over in my mind, one that had felt much too intimate for anyone else to have witnessed. But now here was Tomas, telling me he’d been watching us the whole time.
