He got out a pad of paper and a pencil. He wrote down an address for her with a time and date.
“You should go.” He finished off the dregs of his glass and got up to leave. “Just tell them Ivan sent you.”
Chapter 8
Clutching the same piece of paper a few days later, Donna found herself walking back up to the gypsy encampment on the hill.
She had her eyes peeled for a glimpse of Antonio, but just as they had been on her first visit, all of the little cave windows and doors were shut up in the midday heat.
The paper said number 21 and the time read twelve o’clock. She was late, but she was hoping that wouldn’t matter.
She had decided to go to one class. Ivan had been right; the passion of the dance had moved her, and the more she’d thought about it, the more she’d wanted to try it herself.
She had only ever been to dance class in the States as a very little girl, and she had been so scared of the strict ballet teacher that she had had nightmares. After that, her mother had stopped taking her.
She wondered what kind of woman this teacher would be, and who the other students might be—tourists, women from the town, or other women from the gypsy community?
At the entrance to cave 21, Donna took a deep breath before stepping through the open door.
The room was similar to the other cave—painted white and almost bare. There were three other girls in flamenco dance shoes standing on the flat wooden boards which had been pulled across the stone floor.
The girls looked up in surprise to see someone new joining them. They looked darker than the Spanish women in the village, and Donna figured they were most likely gypsy girls.
She felt out of place again but they smiled and seemed friendly enough, focusing on stretching and their warm-ups, tapping their feet in preparation for the music that would soon be playing. The teacher had his back to them, his dark curly hair in a ponytail, his long neck bent as he looked down at his hands, fiddling with a stereo.
Donna gasped, her heart beating at 100 miles an hour, but not from the walk or the heat.
It was him! It was Antonio.
He turned around and stopped what he had been in the middle of saying as he saw her, a spark of recognition and the unexpected hint of a blush spreading across his face.
“Hello,” Donna said helplessly.
He turned bright red as his expression changed from one of delighted surprise to one of … anger? Donna couldn’t quite read what emotions she was seeing in his face.
Ignoring her, Antonio turned quickly to the other girls and began speaking in fast, incomprehensible Spanish.
He began giving directions, still speaking Spanish, and Donna tried to follow along, not understanding his reluctance to speak to her in English, even for a second. But she was determined to keep up, so she followed the girls’ steps as best she could.
Halfway through the class, Antonio finally approached her and spoke quietly and seriously in English, without any of the warmth of their previous encounter.
“The lessons are in Spanish. I’m not sure how much you will be able to do.”
“That’s perfectly fine. I can just copy your movements,” she replied with a sweet smile, though she bristled at his words.
Finally, he looked her in the eye, only for a split second, but she caught something like a flash of anger, a similar expression to those she’d glimpsed from his uncle.
Maybe he doesn’t really recognize me. Maybe he thinks I’m a tourist who has wandered in.
He showed the class some rudimentary footsteps and Donna focused on the technique, ignoring her hurt and confused feelings and the growing urge to run away.
Antonio continued on to the basic flamenco arm movements, taking each girl’s arm, curving it into shape with his own. Every now and then he’d grab their wrists, moving them a millimeter here, a millimeter there, until they were perfect.
It was Donna’s turn, and her heart was bursting at the thought of him touching her.
But he stopped, a meter or so away from her, and observed her arm position thoughtfully.
“Good. That will do for now. You have the basic shape,” he said sternly and in plain English, keeping a firm distance.
