Traitor's Daughter
Invasion
Salvation
Cerddoniol!
from Chapter One
“Did you see that?” Mike stamped the aggregate from the treads of his work boots. “What the hell?” His hard hat slammed into the barrier, his neck and shoulders rammed between the guardrail. Still on his feet, no bones broken, he ran straight at the roadster. Before he ripped the driver's door off its hinges, the passenger door walloped against the curb.
The roadster screamed away up Princes Street, its roar drowning the bagpipes and show hawkers only long enough for Mike to hear a sob.
One purple shoe tottered on the edge of the construction zone. The other clung to the twisted foot of a bare-legged girl.
Adrenaline pumped hard through his system, flashes of his collision with a fast car on an Arizona highway drove his temperature sky high. “Who was that jerk?”
The girl didn't hear him, too busy pulling the contents of her bag together, too busy pretending there was nothing strange about being shoved out of a car careening down an Edinburgh street where no cars were supposed to enter, too busy ignoring the stares of scores of tourists and the hulk of a construction worker standing over her.
“Are you all right?”
She didn't answer, just gave him one of those model's vacant stares, vaguely suggestive but too stupid to hold any lasting intrigue. Mike rolled his eyes and held out his hand to help her to her feet, wondering how anyone could walk on shoes with heels like needles.
She ignored his offer, pretended she didn't see his big fingers waggling under her chin.
A couple of his work crew came up behind him, asking questions, forming opinions, telling her story. Mike reached down to grasp her elbow. She yanked away to stand on her own. If he hadn't caught her, she'd have been in the pit.
She had the shortest hair of any girl he'd ever seen. “Whoa, now, lady. You've had a nasty shock.”
“I'm fine,” she huffed, pulling away and brushing her skirt. Short skirt. Nice legs. She bent to retrieve the shoe.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Mike said, holding her arm to keep her from toppling after her shoe. “One of you, go after that, will ya?”
Jimmy jumped down and held the shoe up. Mike plucked it from his foreman's hand. “Isn't going to be much good to you, lady. Heel's busted.”
She pressed two fingers to her lips.
“Who was that jerk?”
“Boyfriend. Whatever,” she said, holding out her hand, leaning hard on his arm. “Thanks.” She ignored all the speculation hissing around them. “Thank you.”
“Looks nasty.”
“What? It's nothing.”
“That cut. You'll need stitches.”
She looked down at her arm, pinched together by his thick fingers but still bleeding. In a breath, she was limp, collapsing like a piece of string. All he could do was clasp her under her arms and stop her from ending up a ragged pile at his feet....
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Not the standing room only lurches of the outbound bus on California Street, nor the fact she was late from the office, nor Dr. Gordon's dismissal of her symptoms, kept Emily from dancing along the sidewalk and making a grand jeté up the steps of Kelleher Memorial Hall to her Thursday night dance class. A breezy May, blustering June, and foggy July stood between her and her dream of performing on a San Francisco stage.
So what if the stage was a grimy dance hall and the company was a troupe of teachers and pencil-pushers? This was as close as a Public Relations Officer was likely to get. “Have you been on a fad diet of some kind? Taken up a strenuous exercise program? Any significant changes in any of your habits? Stress at work, with your relationships?” None of the above.
Susan stood ready to dance when Emily burst through the door, attaché case and shoulder bag at the ends of her arms, flung like dust rags onto the pile of discarded street clothes. The conversation began with the usual news and inevitable, “When do we get to meet your Friday night guy?”
“Ted's a lawyer.” Emily's infrequent date in summation. She tugged the skirt and nylons down her legs and dragged the dance tights and leotard up, gathered her hair into a bun at the back of her head and slid her feet into the pink leather practice shoes, joining Susan at the far end of the barre , that, on Friday and Saturday nights, propped up the students and office workers who came to the Kelleher to rock to the local rock bands.
“Arabesque, class.” Clapping her hands in rhythm with her demands, Madame Sharon navigated through waving arms, poking bent knees and cocked elbows with her black stick. “Remember your knees. First, third, second, fifth, fourth. Less chatter.”
“Why does she do that?” Susan asked through gritted teeth. “Positions are in numerical order for a good reason.”
“To keep us on our toes?”
“Ha. More like on our knees. I don't know how long I can keep this up, Emily. I won't have any time with Jacob when final exams start in a few weeks. We've been married two years and it seems I hardly know him.”
“I thought you enjoyed this class,” Emily said when the warm-up session finished and they were in position across the dance floor that gripped the Friday and Saturday night stench of spilled beer and cigarette butts left to burn into the parquet blocks.
“I enjoy knowing that I can plié with the best.” Susan reached the steps and spun for the return. “I don't enjoy getting home only in time to throw something in the oven and sit down with a stack of papers as high was the coffee table.”
The severity of Madame Sharon's pointed face silenced the two friends for the remainder of the ballet session. At 6:20, more than half the class departed to be replaced by a larger group for the modern dance session. During the break, Emily and Susan sat on the ballroom steps.
“Can't Jacob cook on Thursdays?”
“It isn't that, Em. He has and does. It's something else.” Susan glanced away, took a breath. “We've decided to have a baby.”
“Will you come to class until you're pregnant or is this good-bye?”
“My doctor has already told me that I'm an ‘older mother' for a first baby, practically geriatric. I'm only thirty-three.”
I'm thirty-four... Return to Top
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is Cymraeg (Welsh) for wonderous