Read Dance to the Piper for Free Online

neon glowed brilliantly against a white wall.
    "Quite a place," he murmured.
    "I like it when I'm here." Overhead came three simultaneous thuds. "Ballet student on the fifth," Maddy said easily. "Tours jett. Would you like some wine?"
    "Yes." Reed glanced uneasily at the ceiling again. "I
    think I would."
    "Good. So would I." She walked back to the kitchen, which was separated from the living room by a teetering breakfront and imagination. "There's a corkscrew in one of these drawers," she told him. "Why don't you open the bottle while I finish this?"
    After a moment's hesitation, Reed found himself searching through Maddy's kitchen drawers. In the first one he found a tennis ball, several loose keys and some snapshots, but no corkscrew. He rifled through another, wondering what he was doing there. On the fifth floor, the ballet student continued his leaps.
    "How do you like your steak?"
    Reed rescued the corkscrew from a tangle of black wire. "Ahh… medium rare."
    "Okay." When she bent down to pull the broiling pan out of a cupboard, her cheek nearly brushed his knee. Reed drew the cork from the bottle, then set the wine aside to let it breathe.
    "Why did you ask me to dinner?"
    Still bent over and rummaging, Maddy turned her face upward. "No concrete reason. I rarely have one, but if you'd like, why don't we say because of the hairbrush?" She rose then, holding a dented broiling pan. "Besides, you're terrific to look at."
    She saw the humor come and go in his eyes and was delighted.
    "Thank you."
    "Oh, you're welcome." She brushed away the hair that fell into her eyes and thought vaguely that it was about time for a trim. "Why did you come?"
    "I don't have any idea."
    "That should definitely make things more interesting. You've never backed a play before, have you?"
    "No."
    "I've never cooked dinner for a backer. So we're even." Setting the salad aside, she began to prepare the steak.
    "Glasses?"
    "Glasses?" she repeated, then glanced at the wine. "Oh, they're up in one of the cupboards."
    Resigned, Reed began another search. He found cups with broken handles, a mismatched set of fabulous bone china and several plastic dishes. Eventually he found a hoard of eight wineglasses, no two alike. "You don't believe in uniformity?"
    "Hot really." Maddy set the steak under the broiler, then slammed the oven door. "It needs a boost to get going," she told him as she accepted the glass he offered. "To SRO."
    "To what?"
    "Standing room only." She clicked her glass to his and drank.
    Reed studied her over the rim of his glass. She still wore the oversize sweatshirt. Her feet were bare. The scent that hung around her was light, airy and guileless. "You aren't what I expected."
    "That's nice. What did you expect?"
    "Someone with a sharper edge, I suppose. A little jaded, a little hungry."
    "Dancers are always hungry," she said with a half smile, turning to grate cheese onto potatoes.
    "I decided you'd asked me here for one of two reasons. The first was to pump me for information about the finances of the play."
    Maddy chuckled, putting a sliver of cheese on her tongue. "Reed, I have to worry about eight dance routines—maybe ten, if Macke has his way—six songs, and lines I haven't even counted yet. I'll leave the money matters to you and the producers. What was the second reason?"
    "To come on to me."
    Her brows lifted, more in curiosity than shock. Reed watched her steadily, his eyes dark and calm, his smile cool and faintly amused. A cynic, Maddy realized, thinking it was a shame. Perhaps he had a reason to be. That was more of a shame. "Do women usually come on to you?"
    He'd expected her to be embarrassed, to be annoyed, at the very least to laugh. Instead, she looked at him with mild curiosity. "Let's just pass over that one, shall we?"
    "I suppose they do." She began to hunt for a kitchen fork to turn the steak with. "And I suppose you'd resent it after a while. I never had to deal with that sort of thing myself. Men always came