Read Dance to the Piper for Free Online Page B

at the script without the songs and the dance numbers. The music punctuates, emphasizes, exhilarates, but even without it, it's a good story. I like the way Mary develops without having to change intrinsically. She's had to be tough to survive, but she's made the best of it. She wants more, and she goes after it because she deserves more. The only glitch is that she really falls for this guy. He's everything she's ever wanted in a material way, but she really just plain loses her head over him. After she does, the money doesn't matter, the position doesn't matter, but she ends up with it all anyway. I like that."
    "Happy ever after?"
    "Don't you believe in happy endings?"
    A shutter clicked down over his expression, quickly, completely. Curiously. "In a play."
    "I should tell you about my sister."
    "The one the men came on to?"
    "No, my other sister. Would you like an éclair? I bought you one, and if you have it you could offer me a bite. It would be rude for me to refuse."
    Damn it, she was getting more appealing by the minute. Not his type, not his speed, not his style. But he smiled at her. "I'd love an éclair."
    Maddy went into the kitchen, rummaged noisily, then came back with a fat chocolate-iced pastry. "My sister Abby," she began, "married Chuck Rockwell, the race driver. Do you know about him?"
    "Yes." Reed had never been an avid fan of auto racing, but the name rang a bell. "He was killed a few years back."
    "Their marriage hadn't been working. Abby really had been having a dreadful time. She was raising her two children alone on this farm in Virginia. Financially she was strapped, emotionally she was drained. A few months ago she authorized a biography of Rockwell. The writer came to the farm, ready, I think, to gun Abby down," Maddy continued, placing the éclair on the table. "Are you going to offer me a bite?"
    Reed obligingly cut a piece of the pastry with his fork and offered it to her. Maddy let the crust and cream and icing lie on her tongue for a long, decadent moment. "So what happened to your sister?"
    "She married the writer six weeks ago." When she smiled again, her face simply lighted up, just as emphatically as the pink neon. "Happy-ever-after doesn't just happen in plays."
    "What makes you think your sister's second marriage will work?"
    "Because this is the right one." She leaned forward again, her eyes on his. "My sisters and I are triplets, we know each other inside out. When Abby married Chuck, I was sorry. In my heart, you see, I knew it wasn't right, that it could never be right, because I know Abby just as well as I know myself. I could only hope it would work somehow. When she married Dylan, it was such a different feeling—like letting out a long breath and relaxing."
    "Dylan Crosby?"
    "Yes, do you know him?"
    "He did a book on Richard Bailey. Richard's been signed with Valentine Records for twenty years. I got to know Dylan fairly well when he was doing his research."
    "Small world."
    "Yes." It was full dusk now, and the sky was deepening to purple, but she didn't bother with lights. The ballet student had long since stopped his practicing. Somewhere down the hall, a baby could be heard wailing fitfully. "Why do you live here?"
    "Here?" She gave him a blank look. "Why not?"
    "You've got Attila the Hun on the street corner, screaming neighbors…"
    "And?" she added, prompting him.
    "You could move uptown."
    "What for? I know this neighborhood. I've been here for seven years. It's close to Broadway, handy to rehearsal halls and classes. Probably half the tenants in this building are gypsies."
    "I wouldn't be surprised."
    "No, chorus-line gypsies." She laughed and began to toy with the leaf of the philodendron. It was a nervous gesture she wouldn't have begun to recognize herself. "Dancers who move from show to show, hoping for that one big break. I got it. That doesn't mean I'm not still a gypsy." She glanced back at him, wondering why it should matter so much that he understand her. "You