Waltz This Way Read online

  “It’s better,” Max declared, fl ashing Mel another brilliant smile and folding her hands on top of the fi les on her desk.

  Well, what could be better than herding seniors with attitude on a part- time basis? “Okay …”

  Frankie rolled her eyes while laughter slid from her lips. “Quit looking like we just invited you to join our coven. Sit down and at least listen. If you don’t like what you hear, then you can go home to Joe and be honest when you tell him you at least heard our shtick, okay?”

  “But the catch is, you absolutely have to listen,” Jasmine added, uncrossing her graceful legs and straightening the multicolored scarf she had draped elegantly over her shoulder.

  “What exactly am I listening to?”

  “The speech I give all ex-trophy wives before I hook them up with potential employers,” Max said.

  Mel’s spine stiffened. “I hate that label. Ex-trophy wife,” Mel muttered. It implied she’d married Stan for all the wrong reasons—like money reasons. Absolutely untrue.

  Had she been blown away by his interest in her? Defi nitely. Had she fallen madly in love with her Svengali- like mentor? Unequivo-cally. Had she devoted her every waking moment to him? Yes. Had he asked her to? She couldn’t remember. It had just happened. Still, the term made her squirm in her chair.

  “Well, that’s unfortunate,” Jasmine interjected with a drawl, pushing her long blond hair from her face. “But that’s what you are.

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  A beautiful woman who married her much older, very rich husband at a tender age and got ditched when her goodies got stale. Own it.”

  “I didn’t marry Stan for his money.” She said that a lot lately— in defensive mode. She’d said it to the seniors, the pet store manager, and the drive- thru cashier at Wendy’s when she was getting a chocolate Frosty with the change she’d found in her father’s couch cushions.

  Jasmine waved a hand with perfectly polished nails in the air.

  “Whatever. Most of us truly fell in love. Doesn’t change what society calls you. Though, now I’m an ex-trophy wife slash cougar. Again, own it.” Jasmine’s smile held no malice— she was simply a straight shooter. For someone who hadn’t been able to scream her rage at Stan while she hunted him down with her sledgehammer and night-vision goggles, Mel admired that trait.

  Max waved a fi nger of admonishment at Jasmine, her hair catching the light from the window when she shook her head. “Easy on the newb until we break her in. Anyway, it’s like I said. I have a speech I give before I hook you up with a potential employer, and tag, you’re it.”

  Mel was remiss in hearing the part about potential employers and instead focused on the speech. “The speech?”

  “Yes. The one where I give you a packet with all sorts of information in it that you’ll make faces about behind my back before you consider pitching it in the garbage. The packet includes, among other things, a divorce journal— typical and cliché, but believe it or not, a way to really vent instead of letting things build up. It’s also the speech about not letting this disgusting piece of shit you were married to own the rest of your life by suppressing your reasons to live.”

  Mel’s eyes widened at Max. Now, ex-husband bashing she could probably get on board with. Maybe these were the women to trust with the Hefty bags and bleach after she killed Stan in the most heinous manner she could concoct.

  Max winked a lovely green, perfectly coal- lined eye in response.

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  “Yes. I called him a disgusting piece of shit. It’s unprofessional and only allowed once in the ‘speech’ conversation. After that, we go all adult on you and tell you not to hold grudges because they’re unhealthy.”

  “I love the ‘piece of shit’ part of the speech,” Jasmine murmured her delight, her eyes twinkling.

  “Nah, my favorite part’s the part where you fi nd a way to beat down the piece of shit by being self- suffi cient and confi dent all by your lonesome. Sometimes, Max swears in that portion. I love to hear her say the word ‘fuck’—it cracks me up,” Frankie snickered, running soothing hands over Nikos Junior’s back.

  Mel’s head had been sinking into her chest with disinterest until she caught sight of Frankie’s face in full view. “You’ re—”

  “Mitch in the Kitchen’s ex-wife. That’s me.” She grinned like she wasn’t at all displeased by Mel’s recognition.

  “I loved his show …” Mel mumbled, then caught herself.

  Frankie’s freak- out on Mitch’s show was infamous. There were YouTube spoofs on it, Saturday Night Live had had a fi eld day with it, and the late- night talk show hosts had used her for fodder for months afterward. Instantly, she regretted her words. “Damn, that’s probably not appropriate. I’m sorry. How rude of me.”

  “Don’t be sorry, Mel. Just be glad to know you can fi nd your way out of tabloid hell with me as your guide.” Frankie rose, slender in her skinny jeans and layered tank tops, to pass the baby to Jasmine, who cooed her appreciation and ran her nose along the baby’s cheek, inhaling his scent.

  Frankie sat back down and faced Mel, her warm eyes and smile reassuring. “Here’s the score. Your husband had the upper hand when you were married. You did whatever he wanted, gave him every last fi ber of your being, accepted whatever explanation he offered, and then he took a dump on you by taking the one thing you really love, your dance studio. In one way or another, we’ve all been through 9780425245507_WaltzThisWay_TX_p1-344.indd 43

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  it and come out the other end realizing it was never about the cars and the jewelry or the limitless credit cards we had. It was about not being able to breathe on our own when we lost it all. It’s sad and maddening all at once.”

  Mel looked down at her feet covered in her old black ballet slip-pers with shame in her eyes, her heart tightening in her chest. “That’s it,” she choked, refusing to cry in front of strangers. “I don’t know how to breathe anymore. I can’t get comfortable in my own skin.

  Everything feels unfamiliar.” Everything, everything.

  “That’s because Stan owned your skin, darling. But he doesn’t anymore. He chose to fi nd new skin,” Jasmine pointed out, cradling Frankie’s little boy against her perfect breasts. “Look, we all know what it is to suffer through a high- profi le divorce, Frankie being the expert here. We all also know what it’s like to be tossed to the curb and lose everything. Your friends, your house, your clothes, your world. We know what it’s like to have to start over with nothing while trying to understand some of the most basic of life’s lessons like balancing a checkbook and interest rates on a credit card. It’s like wandering around in a foreign country where the countrymen don’t speak Gucci.”

  Mel felt her lip tremble. She hated that words of fear were tumbling from her lips, but there they were— tumbling in an outpouring of pathetic. “I went straight from my parents to marriage with Stan. I don’t know the fi rst thing about surviving on my own. Everything was handled either by Stan or his accountants, business managers, maids, and drivers. I feel like an idiot.” Nay. You defi ne “idiot.” She fought a groan.

  Max snorted from behind her desk. “I get it. Are you ready for this? When I was in the middle of my divorce and living with my mother, I’d fi nally made enough money to contribute to the groceries. She took me to Walmart. I actually hadn’t been in a place where you could buy things at discount in almost as many years as I was married. How�
��s that for pathetically sheltered? I was pitiful. Look, I 9780425245507_WaltzThisWay_TX_p1-344.indd 44

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  know you think all the gurulike stuff I spout is silly. You’re not some trendsetter there. I have all sorts of analogies and euphemisms for being an ex-pampered princess that are laughable. I had oodles of time to think while I job- hunted and took the place of one senior or another at the Village, teaching classes at the rec center. But if you at least give them a look, I think Jasmine and Frankie can tell you from personal experience, they work.”

  Frankie nodded, twisting a strand of her hair around her fi nger in thoughtful contemplation. “I hated Maxine’s hokey advice— at fi rst.

  But she taught me to suck it up. She made me shower. She helped me get a job. She encouraged me to come to the meetings here at Trophy where I met Jasmine, where I learned how to stand on my own two feet. I had no job skills other than being Mitch’s bitch. No one in the industry would hire me because Mitch blackballed me. If it wasn’t for Maxine, I’d still be at my Aunt Gail’s, buried under the covers.”

  “And you’d really smell,” Max said on a chuckle.

  Frankie nodded. “Yeah. There’s that.”

  “Is your aunt Gail Lumley?” Mel asked. She remembered Gail backing up her dad when he talked about the kind of help Maxine offered, but she’d blown her off because she wasn’t receptive to anything but a bag of salt- and- pepper kettle chips at the time.

  “That’s her.”

  Mel felt a smile lift her lips. “I like her. She’s pretty feisty.”

  “Indeed, she is,” Frankie confi rmed. “She’s also who called Max to intervene. Just like your dad called us. He wants to help, Mel. So do we. So there’s really only one question, Mel— are you ready to suck it up and take back your life by learning all the things you would have if you’d lived on your own and found out exactly who Melina Cherkasov was before you devoted your life to that jerk?”

  Without warning, tears, hot and stinging welled in her eyes again.

  She made a frustrated swipe at them. “Maybe.”

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  “Well, it’s time you fi gure it out, Mel,” Max said, only this time it was without the cajoling warmth in her tone, which was replaced with a sharper edge.

  “But it’s only been six months …” Which was a perfectly good excuse. Drowning your pain in junk food because you were divorced surely had a longer grace period.

  Jasmine sighed, shifting on the couch. “It’s not like we’re asking you to hurry up and sleep with someone. We’re asking you to get off your ass and get back in the game. We don’t just mean earning a living either. Do you know what you like to do aside from dance? Maybe you like to spelunk, and you wouldn’t know it because you never took the time to fi gure it out. Those six months you’ve been mourning that dick are six months you can’t get back. I don’t know about you, but Stan the Dancing Man wasn’t worth six minutes of your life let alone half a year.”

  Yeah. A small crack in Mel’s reluctance rippled inside her. “So what do I have to do? Is there a ritual ex-princess hazing?”

  Max shot Mel a sympathetic look. “Your hazing began when you went to your studio and found out it was locked because Stan didn’t want you to have it anymore, honey. When he took you from the kids who so obviously loved you. You’ve been hazed enough, in my opinion, and of all of us, you at least began to try and get it together more quickly than we did. You might be fi lling the gaping hole of your depression with junk food, but you multitasked and did it while you looked for a job. At least it wasn’t booze and cheap sex. Those are messy interventions.”

  She and booze had never worked well together. Too much to drink made her either cry or sing. Both of which no one wanted to endure. “Is there some type of award or maybe a merit badge for my chaste nature and sober state?”

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  have to drag you out of bed like I did Frankie. So here’s the score.

  Take this.” She held out a manila envelope in Mel’s direction. “Look at it. Mock. Look at it again when you’re past rolling on the fl oor in fi ts of laughter. In the meantime, I have good news for you.”

  Mel took the envelope with a shaky hand. Max was right. She didn’t want it, and if some of the crazy catchphrases her father had picked up from Maxine were included in the divorce packet, she would indeed mock. “Thank you. So the good news?”

  Max beamed. “You have an interview for a full- time job!”

  Frankie and Jasmine clapped their hands.

  But Mel was instantly skeptical. “People in Riverbend are hiring women who can spin without getting dizzy?” There really was a job for everyone.

  “I saw your old competition videos on YouTube. You were truly beautiful to watch, Mel, and your partner, Neil Whatever, from Celebrity Ballroom—hellooooo,” Frankie commented with a sigh of exaggerated lust. “You were both so sexy at such a young age. Very sultry. Maybe sometime you can teach me how to roll my hips like that. I’m sure Nikos would appreciate it.”

  “Were.” “Was.” All words that contributed to her now. Neil was part of her was. They’d kept in touch over the years and made a point of seeing each other whenever possible, but his job and her life with Stan didn’t always allow them the kind of time she wished they had together. Still, he would always be one of her best friends.

  Max sighed just as breathy before saying, “Actually, yes. You have an interview at Westmeyer.”

  Mel was taken aback. “The private school for boys who’re Mensa candidates?”

  Max grinned. “That’s the one. God, I can’t tell you what it’s like to be around all those little geniuses. I feel like a total idiot. In fact, I am an idiot compared to them, but I can’t wait until you meet Dean Keller.”

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  Mel gave her a confused look. “Is this a private lesson? Does the dean want to learn how to samba?” She didn’t want to dance. Strike that. She didn’t want to move. She’d only agreed to Waltzing Wednesdays at the Village because she needed the money. As it stood, as the condition of her body stood, she was better off working at a Container Store.

  “He might after he sees your hips in action,” Jasmine snorted.

  Maxine laughed. “No. Westmeyer has a tradition. All the boys must learn to ballroom dance to hone their sorely lacking social skills.

  Most of the boys who attend Westmeyer are introverts with their noses always buried in a book. They don’t work well with others and are typically more awkward than your usual tween with girls. As you know, twelve and up is an age of discovery.”

  “Oh, I love it!” Jasmine snarfed. “Hormonal smart kids who can waltz.”

  “The tradition goes back as far as the early forties and is attrib-uted to the woman who opened the school— Leona Westmeyer. Her love of ballroom dancing and the traditional, in particular, was what led her to insist the boys learn how to dance. According to Dean Keller, the boys’ reluctance to socialize with anything other than a petri dish worried her enough that she mandated they all learn to dance and have fun. Lightening up being the key goal here. Back in those days, ballroom dancing
was common. Everyone knew how to dance. Its resurgence on TV seems to please Dean Keller.”

  “Leona Smith Westmeyer?” Mel asked.

  Max looked down at her papers then nodded. “Yep. You know her?”

  Mel clutched her hands in front of her, trying to remember what she knew of Leona’s history. “I know of her. She’s legendary in American smooth ballroom dancing. I had no idea she had a school for boys, let alone one for geniuses.”

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  “Her son was one, and he was who inspired her to open the school.”

  “So what good does it do for me to teach boys to dance with one another?” She didn’t want to dance. God, she really didn’t.

  “They have a big dance in December just before Christmas break, and then again in the spring with an all- girls private school— Thurston’s the name, I believe. Anyway, Westmeyer’s dance instructor retired at the beginning of this school year. Westmeyer begins earlier than public schools to allow for the heavy load of classes those boys endure.

  They’ve had a lot of trouble replacing the last teacher. It would seem there aren’t many ballroom teachers in Riverbend— you’re it.”

  Lucky, lucky boys. “But what about the Village classes?”

  “I’d appreciate you staying for a while at the Village— just on Wednesdays. You’re going to be hard to replace there, but I have someone in mind to take over your other duties.”

  “But I haven’t danced in …”

  “In six months. I know,” Max confi rmed. “Your father told me.

  But it’s your best skill and the one that’s most marketable. This is a helluva lucky break to fi nd something so well suited to you, especially considering it’s not a common profession. So if you want a job that’s full time and has bennies, dust off your leotards and suck it up.” Max smiled before glancing at her wristwatch. “And now we have to get going— you have an interview to get to.”