Chapter Ten
AXEL HADN’T EXPECTED to like being married.
In fact, he’d braced for the worst since his parents’ marriage had been a strong advertisement for cutting line before things got worse than they needed to be.
Plus, after living on his own for so many years, he had developed an appreciation for order and quiet and minimalism.
Joy’s things were everywhere, especially when they got back from Paris. They had to convert the spare bedroom into a dressing room to accommodate it all.
Oddly, he liked seeing her clothes next to his in the closet. He liked hearing her talk to her family over the tablet before they went to bed. He liked coming home to someone and eating meals with her, and he liked being out with her.
They’d gone out every night in Paris, but she was visibly nervous the first night he took her to a cocktail party in Berlin. She was worried there would be a language barrier and judgment over their quick marriage.
She charmed everyone they met, of course. She was naturally curious and wry and so attractive in a beaded black cocktail dress, everyone was dazzled to be in her sphere.
The next day she had her first meeting with Heskel’s friend, the dance instructor. She was nervous about that, too.
“I’m rusty,” she said as she anxiously tried to choose between two leotards that looked identical to him.
She was packing a duffel so full, it looked as though she was leaving for a week.
“The school I was at was good, but it wasn’t the Royal Ballet in London.
I want him to be honest, but I don’t want him to be too honest, you know?
A wrong word from him could kill my dreams.”
His hackles went up. “Do you want me to cancel my meeting and go with you?”
“No. I don’t want you to see me humiliate myself.” Her tone asked him how he dared make such a stupid suggestion.
Heskel arrived then to take her to the studio.
Axel quietly relayed in German that his assistant should ensure zero wrong words were spoken to his wife and was told, “I’m confident he’ll be completely professional.”
Axel was distracted through his meeting, though, troubled by thoughts that this instructor would deride Joy in some way.
He wasn’t used to being concerned about someone, not beyond the level of basic decency.
His mother had been a source of constant distress when he’d been a child, but this was different.
Joy wasn’t engaging in risky behavior like drug use.
She was worried her feelings would be hurt.
So was he.
Unable to stand it, he cut his meeting short and had Heskel text him the address so he could catch up with them before she finished.
When he arrived, she was kneeling on the floor in the middle of an otherwise empty dance studio. Her eyes were closed. She wore a black sports bra and pair of matching yoga shorts, but nothing else.
Heskel motioned him to quiet while a recording of a haunting female vocalist began to play.
With slow grace, Joy took hold of her own head, drawing it down so her body followed.
She flowed into a snakelike move and kicked one leg up straight.
That turned into a cartwheel that put her on her feet.
After quickly tiptoeing across the room, she crumpled into a handful of bends and swooning movements that synced with the music.
The emotion in the song poured from her limbs and her face and the butterfly lightness of her leaps.
The yearning of the vocals chased her around the room, making him catch his breath and clench his fist in an agony of longing as she stood on one foot and reached toward him, the distance seeming to be a thousand miles.
Axel was spellbound until the final moment when she returned to the center of the room and did a slow spin that pulled her down, down, down until she was only a ball on the floor.
What else could he do but throw his hands together in claps that reverberated around the big, empty room?
“My employer,” Heskel said ruefully when the instructor, a man in his sixties with white hair and a lean, tall posture, shot them a frown.
“My husband,” Joy said as she popped up from the floor, scolding, “You distracted me.” She hurried toward the instructor and listened attentively as he critiqued her performance.
“Look after yourself when you get home,” the instructor reminded her as he brought her to where Axel and Heskel were waiting.
“I will. Thank you so much.” She was damp with sweat, but her smile was pure radiance.
I gave her this, Axel thought, and found himself despising her ex yet again for taking dance away from her.
“It went well?” he asked when they were walking to the car. “No humiliation?”
“Oh, he didn’t pull a single punch,” she said with a sheepish laugh. “But in terms of a master class, that single opportunity to have his one-on-one attention for an hour was beyond anything I could ever hope for. Thank you.” She hugged his arm.
He slipped his arm around her, pleased to see her showing so much exuberance. “Will he take you on as a student? What happens next?”
“Flatterer. I’m not that good! No.” She tucked herself more fully under his arm as they walked.
“His focus is ballet, anyway. He said my foundation skills are solid, that I have nice musicality, but that I need to work on my physical strength. He could tell I’ve been developing certain muscles and not others, which affects my alignment and some of my transitions.
He liked that I learn fast and know how to correct myself, but I need more height in my leaps.
He’s going to put me in touch with a student choreographer who is putting something together for a festival in May.
It’s a shoestring budget, but they’re holding auditions soon.
He said if I can get in with them, the training and networking will help me find my track. ”
She was still in high spirits the next evening when they met Gerard and his wife at a restaurant.
Axel could hardly take his eyes off how dazzlingly pretty Joy was as she relayed her excitement about the dance opportunity and traded misadventures with Gerard’s wife around the other couple’s children and Joy’s toddler nephew.
“I miss him so much,” she confessed wistfully.
I can give you that, too, Axel thought abstractedly, then frowned because children had never been on his radar. With his upbringing? No. He had always thought to spare a child whatever baggage he would bring to parenting.
Joy glanced at him and must have seen his consternation. Her smile faltered.
“I’ll visit the powder room while we’re waiting on dessert,” she said with a strained smile.
Gerard’s wife accompanied her, and Gerard took advantage of having Axel alone to catch him up on his legal position with Otto.
“As we expected, Otto is questioning the veracity of your marriage,” Gerard said. “He’s claiming to protect Joy’s interest. What if he gifts you the company and your marriage dissolves?”
“It won’t.” The words came out more forcefully than Axel intended, grunted out by the inner Neanderthal who was having the best sex of his life with the woman he’d dragged into his cave.
“He’s leaning into the ‘married for a year’ stipulation,” Gerard added.
“He doesn’t have a year,” Axel derided. “He’s scrambling for investment funding to replace what Mira has yanked.
Now that she’s working with Rocco DeStefano and tying up Rocco’s resources, the timing has never been better for me to start my own firm.
I can poach from both of them. Tell Otto that his refusal to honor the marriage contract nullifies my noncompete clause. I will act accordingly.”
Not that he had been waiting on anyone’s permission to start his own firm. He’d already put Heskel on finding office space and staffing it.
When they returned home, he was still turning over the longing in Joy’s voice when she had spoken of her nephew.
“Do you want children?” he asked her.
“I—” Her voice turned strangled. She halted in removing her earrings, eyes wide as a deer confronting headlights.
“Because of what I said about missing my nephew? I saw you frown when I said that. I wasn’t trying to hint that I want a baby.
I’ve actually been meaning to ask you to help me find a doctor so I can use something more reliable than condoms.” She turned away to finish removing her jewelry and started on the pins from her hair.
“Meaning you don’t want children,” he clarified.
“Maybe. Someday. Not now.”
“Not with me.” That shouldn’t be such a kick in the crotch, but it was.
“Not when I’m about to get back into dance. Why? Do you want children?” She turned to face him but contorted her arms, trying to lower the zip on her dress.
He moved across to do it for her, turning her so he could reach. “I wasn’t planning to become a father, no. But it crossed my mind tonight that starting a family would go a long way to proving our marriage is more than a piece of paper.”
“This is about Otto?” She spun around to face him, affronted.
“What are you thinking? That if I continue the man’s bloodline, he’ll bestow his riches upon me?
There is a limit to how far I’ll let you use me, Axel.
It does not extend to being a vessel that literally carries your ‘justice.’ I sure as hell won’t let you or anyone use my child for anything. Ever.” She started to brush past him.
He stopped her.
She knocked his hand off her arm and glared up at him.
“That wasn’t what I was suggesting,” he ground out. “I thought a family might be something you want. I thought we should talk about it.”
“Why would I want to have a baby with you when our marriage has an expiration date?”
“It doesn’t,” he said in another knee-jerk response. “We can choose whether we end it and when.”