Naked Angel Read online

  Alec got down on one knee. Mallory looked at him in shock.

  “Oh, my God! What are you doing?”

  He pulled out a small black box and opened it to reveal a beautiful art deco, antique diamond ring.

  “Marry me, Mallory,” he said, his voice low and husky with emotion.

  Mallory wasn’t sure if the low roar she heard was the sound of blood rushing to her head, or if it was the sound of the crowd, or if this was simply what it felt like to be truly shocked for the first time in her life.

  “Oh, my God,” she repeated.

  “What do you say, Mal?” he asked with that wonderful teasing glint in his eyes.

  Was this really happening? After all the years, the mind-blowing sex, the jealousy, fights, uncertainty, missteps, soul-searching, and compromise, could it really culminate in this one perfect moment?

  “Yes,” she managed to breathe. “I’ll marry you.” He stood up and hugged her. Through a blur of tears, she watched him slip the ring on her finger.

  He held her tight, and all she could think was that she didn’t ever want this happiness to end. She had no idea how to leave the stage. She didn’t want to. She didn’t trust the magic of the moment to follow her into “real life.”

  But on the stage, anything was possible.

  Behind the red curtain backstage, Nadia Grant clapped her hands in delight. She was happy for Mallory and, to be perfectly honest, thrilled for the last-minute reprieve from having to perform immediately.

  Not for the first time that night, she wondered if this was madness. Maybe her ballet friends were right: She had no business being on a burlesque stage. One of them, Anna Prince, was at the show tonight to support her, but Anna still was trying to talk her out of performing at The Painted Lady: “You’re a ballet dancer. Even if you can never go en pointe again, you can find a place in ballet.”

  Easy for her to say: Anna had scored a spot in the hot new company Ballet Arts, run by one of the youngest choreographers in New York City, Max Jasper. All of her hard work was paying off, while Nadia watched hers go down the drain. How could Anna blame her for becoming intrigued when she’d learned that Mallory, the woman with whom she’d been sharing dance studio practice space for over a year, was a burlesque dancer. And of course the competitive part of her—the part that would not die no matter how bad her injury—whispered, I can do that. Hearing that inner voice made her feel hopeful and alive again for the first time since hearing the doctor’s prognosis.

  “You don’t understand,” Nadia told Anna. “If I can’t perform in ballet, I need to do something completely different. Being near it but not a part of it just kills me.”

  But burlesque—now that was something to keep her mind off the tragedy of her lost ballet career. It was daring, it was glamorous, and, best of all, she had a built-in tour guide: Mallory.

  It had been Mallory’s idea. When Nadia had told her she wasn’t going to use the practice space for a while, Mallory had been concerned enough to ask lots of questions. And when Nadia confessed that her ballet career was over, Mallory insisted that she find another outlet for performing.

  “You have to get back onstage,” she’d said. “It’s the only way you will get through this.”

  Mallory was right: Studying burlesque, trying on costumes, and witnessing Mallory and Alec build the club had saved her sanity during the past few months she’d spent in physical therapy instead of in ballet rehearsals.

  So she would never be reviewed by Alastair Macaulay in the New York Times. But she could make a name for herself in a different world—a glamorous, fascinating world that was probably more relevant to women today than ballet.

  Knowing that Anna was in the audience made her nervous. Nadia had thought having a friend in the audience would make her feel better, but now she regretted it. She felt all the more pressure—that her performance must justify her choice. She imagined that somehow, if Anna saw her dance a classic striptease, she would change her mind. Anna might agree that Nadia had found the right alternative to her thwarted dance dreams. And she knew that one transcendent burlesque performance could change anyone’s mind, just like watching Mallory had changed hers. Of course, she wasn’t Mallory. But she had the heart of a dancer, and she had to believe that would get her through her début performance. When it came to dance, confidence was key. She couldn’t waver now. “Nadia, three minutes,” Bette told her.

  Nadia took a deep breath. Showtime.

  3

  Max Jasper stretched his long legs under the table. Their seats were close to the stage. A little too close, if Max had had anything to say about it. This whole burlesque thing was making him uncomfortable. He was a man who loved women—and loved women’s taking off their clothes. But he preferred it in the privacy of his bedroom, not in a crowded room surrounded by hoots, hollers, and clapping.

  When Anna had told him that Nadia Grant, the promising girl who’d danced the corps de ballet with American Ballet Theatre, had become a burlesque performer, he could not believe it. Anna had urged him to come to the show.

  “She needs the support of her community,” Anna said.

  “I don’t think you should encourage her,” Max told Anna.

  “That’s what friends do,” Anna said. It was that kind of simplistic thinking that made him uninterested in sleeping with her a second time. He’d warned her about that—that he was a “one and done” kind of guy. But she hadn’t believed him—they never did. And he was sure this outing to support her friend was just a ploy to get him interested in resuming their physical relationship. But if she had known him at all, she would have known that this whole scene was a huge turnoff.

  So why had he gone?

  “Curiosity,” he told Anna. And now he regretted it.

  “This is Nadia’s music,” Anna said with excitement as the curtain parted. The room filled with the song “The Entertainer” made famous by the 1973 Robert Redford and Paul Newman film, The Sting.

  Max barely recognized Nadia, and if it hadn’t been for her remarkably long legs and obvious ballet hands, he wouldn’t have believed it was the same girl he had seen dance on some of the most prestigious stages in the city.

  Nadia’s slender form was sheathed in a silver, beaded sleeveless dress, with bands of silver fringe just under her breasts and at the bottom that shimmered when she moved. She wore long black gloves to her elbows. Her hair was covered with a short brunette wig, and she wore a silver sequined headband on her forehead. Her cheeks were heavily rouged, her lips outrageously red and more sensual than Max remembered.

  The kicky, up-tempo song lent a playful edge to Nadia’s dance, and the way she teased off her gloves suggested confidence. Her movements were a classic flapper performance, and if this were as far as the dance were to go, he could live with the idea of a once-promising ballerina carving a path for herself in this arena. But he knew that was not how these things went—and if he’d had any doubt, the first act of the night had made it very clear.

  The crowd cheered when Nadia bent over suggestively as she unstrapped her shoe. That was another thing that so unsettled Max: The relationship between audience and performer in this club was so different from the respectful applause in ballet.

  Now that Nadia’s gloves and shoes were off, and the song was more than halfway over, it was only logical that the performance should do a rapid gearshift into nudity. She clearly had control of the crowd—the onlookers were enraptured with her every move, and Max could feel the buzz of anticipation for her to remove her dress. But just when Nadia should have been cashing in her best chips of the night, she froze: She awkwardly reverted back to earlier motions from the performance that now made no sense since she had already removed her gloves and shoes. The audience laughed, thinking her dance was taking a comedic turn—which apparently these things were known to do—but it soon became clear that Nadia was not trying to be funny.

  “Oh, my God. She can’t go through with it,” Anna said.

  “Glad to see
common sense prevail,” said Max.

  “No, it’s not good! She must be so humiliated,” Anna said. Nadia wandered around the stage in a fruitless attempt to improvise an end to her performance that did not involve removing her clothes. Mercifully, the curtain closed almost before the song finished. The confused audience clapped, but with markedly less enthusiasm than before.

  “This isn’t a bad thing, you know,” said Max. “Maybe she’s got this out of her system, and now she can think of another outlet for herself.”

  “Do you think there’s something she could do at Ballet Arts?”

  “I don’t know,” Max said. He hated to admit it, but what he was really thinking was that he would like to do her. If she had taken off her clothes, he would have lost interest. But since she hadn’t, he had the nagging urge to get her to finish the job. In private.

  “I’m going to go talk to her,” Anna said. “Meet me out front?”

  “We should get going,” Max said, looking at his watch.

  “I need to make sure she’s okay. And then I need you to come back to my place, and make sure I’m okay,” she said, putting his hand on her leg.

  “I have an early rehearsal tomorrow. I’m going to head home,” Max said.

  “No! Don’t be lame. At least come with me to say hi to Nadia.”

  Seated at the table closest to the stage, costume designer Gemma Kole wondered what else could go wrong tonight. First, the proposal: Alec’s dramatic move had completely upstaged the costumes. If there were any photos of the show that were going to make it into tomorrow’s papers, it was the ones taken with Alec down on his knee in front of Mallory. And out of all the gorgeous costumes she had worked on for the past few months, The Painted Lady was going to be publicized with Mallory Dale in a silk robe that looked no more special than anything on the rack at Victoria’s Secret.

  Gemma hoped this wasn’t a sign. She’d spent all her savings on the move from England to New York City. This was the fashion capitol of the world, after all. She didn’t care what anyone said about Paris. It was New York. Of course, every aspiring designer knew this, so she was making a run on a very crowded field.

  She nervously poked her tongue against the gap between her two front teeth. Growing up in Gloucester, she’d hated her teeth. Now, thanks to the Dutch model Lara Stone, her gap was super trendy, and guys told her it was hot.

  “At least the audience can’t complain they didn’t get their money’s worth tonight,” Justin Baxter had said when Alec had proposed to Mallory onstage. As one of the owners of the club, he was also seated at the A-list table. Next to him, his unattractive wife, Martha, had slapped her knee and guffawed at the comment, which Gemma didn’t find particularly funny.

  She wondered if Martha had noticed that her husband had been stealing glances at Gemma since the moment they’d sat down. If so, it didn’t seem to bother her. But then, she’d heard about the Baxters’ famous “open” relationship. She doubted it was true. What woman really could live with a husband who was actively cheating on her? But now that she’d seen Martha, it was starting to make a little more sense. Justin was so handsome, and she was so … not. Martha Pike probably let her husband do whatever he wanted just to keep him from leaving. It didn’t sound like a very satisfying relationship model to her, but then, no relationship sounded worthwhile to her. Not unless it could further her career. She supposed, in a way, Justin was doing that for her. He signed Mallory’s paycheck, and Mallory had hired Agnes to design all of the costumes for The Painted Lady. And luckily for Gemma, Agnes was grooming her to take over the business. Which she would happily do—until she found a way to launch her fashion line, GemmaK.

  But after tonight’s setbacks, she wondered if that would ever happen.

  Gemma was still reeling from the letdown of Nadia’s performance. The pretty, slight brunette had been coltishly graceful as she’d emerged to the opening notes of “The Entertainer.” Gemma had felt a thrill of satisfaction to see her dress with the hand-sewn silver fringe draped on Nadia’s body. And she’d been eager to hear the audience’s reaction to the pièce de résistance underneath—the silver-spangled pasties and matching thong.

  But midway through the song, Gemma had sensed there was a problem. It was time for Nadia to unzip the easy-off dress and shimmy it to the floor. The silver material would slide off of her like mercury, and, if performed right, this was Gemma’s favorite striptease of the entire show. But the song kept going, and Nadia seemed no closer to shedding her clothes. Instead, she pointlessly repeated the earliest steps of the dance. What the hell was she doing?

  And that’s when Gemma had realized her pride-and-joy silver pasties would never see the light of day—or, rather, light of stage. Nadia was clearly not going to get naked.

  Disaster.

  Gemma was grateful for the distraction when Justin leaned over to ask her, “You’re coming to the after-party at my apartment, right?”

  “I think so,” Gemma said, in the understatement of the year. She’d spent a month working on her own costume for the party, which was continuing the evening’s theme of 1920s decadence. Even only having lived in New York for a year, she’d heard about the notorious Baxter parties. Some of what she knew she’d read in Page Six or some gossip blogs—items about celebrities getting wasted on absinthe; other things she’d heard whispers of—sex shows, orgies. But the real draw for her was the access to money people—big money people, if everything she’d heard about the Baxter crowd was true.

  “You won’t want to miss it. Trust me,” Justin said.

  Gemma thought—but did not say—that once you set foot in the doorway of 40 Bond Street, trusting Justin Baxter was the last thing any sensible woman should do. And Gemma was nothing if not a sensible woman.

  Nadia shoved her costume into her bag. All around her, the other girls chattered and laughed and basically went on as if the world hadn’t just ended. Which, of course, it had.

  How could she have failed like that? After years of dancing under pressure and through injury, turning out stellar performances that were far more challenging physically and, in some ways emotionally, than burlesque, how could she freeze up the way she had tonight? It was ironic: All her friends were telling her that she shouldn’t do burlesque, that it was beneath her, and here she was, unable to keep up with the other performers in this dressing room.

  The worst part about it was that she had let Mallory down. Of course, Mallory had assured her she shouldn’t worry about it—that it wasn’t a big deal and that these things happened.

  “You just have to get back on the bike,” Mallory had told her.

  Nadia didn’t know about that. All she knew was that she couldn’t stay and watch the rest of the show. It was painful to endure the pitying glances of the other girls. And what was the point of hanging out until eleven? She certainly wasn’t going to the after-party at Justin Baxter’s apartment.

  She made her way out of the crowded dressing room as unobtrusively as possible. She knew she just had to slip out of the club without anyone’s recognizing her—which, without her wig and in her street clothes, shouldn’t be a problem. And then she was in the clear.

  She hadn’t counted on Anna’s intercepting her at the front door.

  “Nadia! Wait—are you leaving?”

  For about three seconds, Nadia seriously considered just walking out the door as if she hadn’t heard Anna. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it, so she reluctantly turned around. It was okay, she told herself. Anna was a friend—she didn’t have to be perfect in front of Anna.

  Except Anna wasn’t alone: She was with a tall, great-looking, dark-haired guy. And unfortunately, this wasn’t just any tall, dark hottie—Nadia knew immediately it was Max Jasper.

  Was Anna out of her mind bringing him there? She wanted to yell that at her, but refrained. She had embarrassed herself enough for one night.

  “Thanks for coming,” Nadia said, forcing herself to go on autopilot.

  “Of course!
I wouldn’t miss it. You looked beautiful out there. You really did.”

  Nadia knew her friend was trying to be kind, but it just made her want to cry.

  “I have to go,” she said.

  “I saw you dance in Giselle,” Max Jasper said. “You are good.” Reluctantly, Nadia looked up at him. Irrationally, she felt a surge of anger at this stranger for intruding on one of her worst moments and making her feel even worse just by his presence.

  “I was good,” Nadia said venomously. “I don’t dance anymore.”

  “There are other things you can do within a company,” he said.

  The nerve!

  “I don’t recall asking you for career advice,” Nadia said. Anna looked back and forth between them as if watching a tennis match.

  “Maybe you should have,” he said. Nadia looked at her friend, shook her head, and walked out the door of The Painted Lady. She just hoped she would have the courage to walk back in.

  4

  Another night, another party.

  Justin Baxter observed the crowd of models, actors, film producers, magazine publishers, and artists cavorting in the infamous art deco apartment he shared with his wife. The living room was so full he couldn’t see the way to the bar. Normally, such a turnout would give him a thrill so intense it was almost sexual. But after a few years of the most decadent soirées this side of Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball, his excitement was waning. He didn’t even feel inspired about the pinnacle of each party—picking out the woman he wanted, then seducing her into going upstairs with him so he could fuck her while Martha watched.

  “Do you need a scotch, baby?” asked his wife. Martha was, as always, the least attractive person at the party. Usually, this didn’t bother him; she provided companionship and love and financial security, and he still had the freedom to fuck any hot young thing that caught his eye. The only caveat was that Martha always had to be in the room. Sometimes a woman was willing to let her join in. No, he never wished his wife were more appealing to look at. So far, he’d found the perfect balance having her as his partner and other women as his excitement.