On Thin Ice Page 3

  After all, Petralahti did train world champions and Olympic medalists in that private complex of his on the outskirts of town, the one from which famous people were known to come and go. Hostesses therefore vied for the privilege of his attendance. Having Petralahti make an appearance at one’s soiree was considered quite a social coup, especially as he was wont, as often as not, to send his regrets to the numerous invitations he received. Ivan cared only for skating and considered the social structure in Kells Crossing narrow in scope and provincial in outlook.

  Sasha Miller, a millworker’s child, would never have expected to even meet the man. And in truth, she was much too young to care. His celebrity status meant nothing to her; all she knew about the man in fact was that he kept to himself, talked with a funny accent, and had a private ice rink on his property.

  The latter was the only thing she considered to be of interest.

  Sasha loved to skate. She lived for the winters when first Swenson’s pond and then the river would freeze over and she could pull out her old hand-me-down skates. She was most particularly looking forward to this year, because for the first time ever she didn’t have to stuff the toes of her skates with Mama’s old cast-off nylons in order to make them fit. From the moment she heard about the opportunity to skate in a real rink—something she had yet to experience—she didn’t get one decent night’s sleep.

  Like Christmas, it seemed as though the big day would never arrive. Ultimately it did, of course, and Sasha was among the very first to reach the Methodist Church on Seventh Street where the bus that would take them to Mr. Petralahti’s rink was parked. She scrambled aboard and then was forced to wait in an agony of impatience for the rest of the children to arrive. By the time the last straggler finally took his seat, she was on the verge of screaming.

  Too excited to indulge in small talk, she spoke to no one on the short ride across the river to the outskirts of town. She instead stared out the window, watching the scenery pass by as she silently willed the rickety transport to go faster.

  The rink was everything she’d dreamed it would be and more. The ice was even and smooth, like nothing she’d ever skated on before. And safe. What a picnic it was to not need to keep an eye peeled for thin ice, to not have to identify the trouble spots that required avoiding. Filled with joy, she zipped round and around, weaving in and out of the more cautious skaters.

  A boy in the center of the rink caught her eye. He was attempting moves she had attempted on Swenson’s Pond last winter, and with about the same amount of success. Watching him pick himself up for the third time, she skated to center ice to join him. Silently, side by side, they attempted to make their blades perform in a manner which the two of them hadn’t even the experience to name. When their skates refused to behave and instead tangled up and knocked them to their knees or on their butts, they grinned, picked themselves up, and tried again.

  It was the best day of Sasha’s life.

  And it was over much too soon. Before she knew it, she was home again, peeling potatoes for dinner and prattling on in rhapsodic terms of her day at the rink. She had been discoursing nonstop for a solid twenty minutes when the doorbell rang and interrupted her excited monologue.

  “I’ll get it,” her mama said with a fond smile for her daughter’s euphoria.

  Sasha hacked away at the potato in her hand and tapped her toes in an impatient tattoo against the worn linoleum floor. She hoped whoever it was wouldn’t keep her mother at the door too long, because she still had lots more to share with her. She hadn’t even told her about the boy yet.

  Sasha realized she hadn’t even learned his name. They’d skated together, bouncing attempts at fanciful footwork off each other, for the better part of three hours. But they’d hardly exchanged two words. It was kind of weird the way they hadn’t really needed to talk, almost as if they’d understood what it was the other one wanted to accomplish without having to utter so much as a word.

  “Sasha?” Her mama’s voice, sounding kind of funny, interrupted her reverie. Sasha looked up to see her in the doorway. “Come on out here, please. There’s someone here to see you.”

  Sasha followed her into the parlor but stopped in shock just over the threshold. Seated on the old, dilapidated easy chair was Ivan Petralahti.

  Himself.

  In her house.

  Her mouth opened and closed several times, but no words emerged. Gripping the doorjamb for support, she finally squeaked out his name. “Mr. Petralahti!”

  “Hullo, Sasha.” He rose to his feet. “I haff come to talk to you of skating,” he said.

  “To me?” Her eyes got big. “You want to talk to me?”

  “Yes. I watched you skate today and I see somesing . . . somesing special. No training. Rough, you understand. But you luff it, yes?”

  “Oh, yes! More than anything.”

  “Then you will come be my student. Be at the rink Monday promptly after school. I will expect you no later than 4 P.M.” He moved toward the door.

  “Mr. Petralahti,” Sasha’s mother said anxiously, fearing he may have somehow overlooked the poverty of their home, “we simply can’t afford—”

  “Iss a scholarship.” Petralahti turned back to assure her. “I am giffing out two and one will go to Sasha on a probationary basis. If she does as well as I expect, it will be hers permanently. The second iss earmarked for a young man named Lon Morrison.” He turned to Sasha with a slight smile. “I sink you know him, eh? Four o’clock,” he reiterated autocratically. “Do not be late.” And as abruptly as he had arrived at their door, he was gone.

  Sasha blinked in wonder at her mother. “Mr. Petralahti is going to be my teacher?” She laughed suddenly, that deep, affecting laugh she’d had since she was a toddler, and grabbed her mother by the hands, whirling her around. In the midst of their third spin, she suddenly pulled back to regard her mother with puzzled eyes. “But why did he say I knew that person, Mama? I don’t know anybody named Lon Morrison.”

  But, she did. More or less. For the first thing she learned on Monday when she walked into Ivan Petralahti’s big, barn-like structure and saw him whizzing around the rink was that Lon Morrison was the boy from center ice.

  She shook her head, coming back to the present with a start. Holy cow. Where had all that come from?

  As if you don’t know.

  Sasha skated slowly over to the rinkside seats where she’d left her sweats and skate bag. She’d better hit the road. This little trip down memory lane was all well and good . . . but life did move on.

  Then her head raised with stiff-necked pride. No, tell the truth, she demanded fiercely of herself. It wasn’t well and good at all; actually, it was kind of disturbing. It brought back memories she’d just as soon forget, and while recollections of Ivan were all very pleasant, thoughts of Lonnie were just plain, painful.

  She was tired of the pain. But her ties to Lon Morrison seemed to keep her perpetually bound to it.

  Sasha pulled off her skates, wiped the blades dry, put the rubber guards back on, and packed them away. Pulling on her sweatpants and street shoes, she went in search of the office to call a cab and let the guard know she was leaving. Ten minutes later she was on her way back to the hotel.

  A group of Follie’s performers was just coming out of the coffee shop when she walked into the lobby. Connie was among them and, spotting Sasha, she peeled off from the group and crossed over to her. “Hi! Where’ve you been?”

  “Checking out the ice at Arco Arena.”

  “Sasha, Sasha, Sasha.” Connie shook her head in mock despair. “I have got to teach you to have a little fun.” She nodded toward the coffee shop. “You hungry?”

  “Starved,” Sasha admitted. “I skipped breakfast.”

  Connie grabbed her arm and steered her into the restaurant. “Come on, then,” she commanded. “I’ll keep you company while you eat.”

  Connie all but danced in her seat with suppressed excitement while Sasha put in her order. “Hot news,” she sa
id the minute the waitress walked away. “The new manager arrived while you were out.” She gripped the edge of the tabletop, straining closer. “And wait until you get a load of this guy, Saush.” She pursed her lips, rolled her eyes to heaven, and flapped her fingers. “Um, um, um.”

  Properly incredulous, Sasha met her friend’s eyes over the rim of her water glass, then slowly lowered the glass to the table. “You’re kidding,” she marveled, her gray eyes wide. “A babe? We’ve got us a manager who’s good-looking, who’s hot? Isn’t there some sort of law against that?” Oh bless Connie’s heart, this was exactly the sort of nonsense she’d needed. It beat the hell out of brooding about Lon. Nakamura was the best in the world at coming up with topics that were silly, frivolous, and fun.

  But her friend had been mulling over Sasha’s description, actually giving it serious consideration. “Good-looking?” she murmured doubtfully. She shook her head. “No. That’s not exactly the way I’d describe him.”

  Sasha made a rude noise. “Well, if he’s not good-looking what was this, Connie?” She pursed her lips, rolled her eyes, shook her fingers as if they’d been burnt. “I thought you were trying to tell me the Follies had gone out and hired us a honey.”

  “They did.” Connie grinned. “The guy’s not particularly good-looking, is all. But wait until you see him, Sasha. He’s”—she searched for wording that would illustrate the man’s impact but finally gave it up—“masculine,” she said. “Very, very masculine.”

  “Okay.” Sasha nodded sagely. “Masculine is good.”

  “You don’t know the half of it, toots. Mere words do not do this fella justice.” Connie was silent while the waitress placed Sasha’s order in front of her. As soon as she left she said, “On the minus side, he’s already managed to seriously offend Saint Karen.”

  “Jeez.” Sasha’s sandwich was suspended halfway between plate and mouth, her expression a study in admiration. “He’s only been on the premises—what?—three hours, tops?”

  “Try about an hour and a half”

  “Oh, even better. How did he manage to offend somebody so fast?”

  “Not just somebody, Sasha . . . Karen. And it was profanity. The use of extreme profanity.”

  They grinned at each other. “That’s bound to keep her hands out of his pants for a good week or so,” Sasha commented dryly.

  Karen Corselli was a fellow performer and a walking conundrum. Blond and deceptively fragile in appearance, she always dressed in trademark silver for her performances on the ice, looked like an angel, and favored numbers with a Christian theme such as the Lord’s Prayer and Ave Maria. Known for her absolute refusal to tolerate rough language, she was always quick with an offer to lead a prayer.

  And yet . . .

  If one could believe the rumors, she was also very fond of the men. Very fond. There were those who insisted she was a downright slut.

  Such an interesting contradiction was a source of endless entertainment and speculation for Sasha and Connie. They only saw the one side of her. With them, as with the other women in the troupe, she was basically nice enough, if a little distant and very stuffy. Frankly, she came across as a prude. A preachy prude, and try as they might, they couldn’t quite picture her any other way.

  According to the male population of Follies on Ice, however, at least the heterosexual division, a prude she was not. And when she invoked God’s name with them, they insisted, it wasn’t for the purpose of preaching.

  “I always feel guilty when I say stuff like that about her,” Sasha admitted now. “I’ve never seen her act with anything other than extreme virtue. I mean, it’s entertaining as all get-out trying to imagine her doing what the men say she’s doing, but I don’t know, Connie; it’s hard to credit. I’ve been acquainted with her for years. Not friends, maybe—she’s so self-contained I doubt that anyone really knows her all that well—but we followed the same amateur circuit. The point is, she acts so pure all the time.”

  “I know what you mean. And most of the Bozos who claimed to know her in the good ole Biblical sense are full of shit more often than not, anyway,” Connie agreed. “But . . . all of them, Sasha? Every damn heterosexual male in this company? Performers, lighting techs, roadies, stage crew? That’s a lot of men all claiming the same thing.”

  Sasha looked at her friend across the table. “You know what makes me believe it might be true?”

  “Henry,” Connie stated with a grin.

  “Yeah, Henry.” Sasha’s return smile was a little sheepish. “When I heard he’d been with her, I flat-out asked him but he refused to kiss and tell—like the very nice gent he is. But, God, Connie, he blushed so hard I was afraid he was going to spontaneously combust.” She laughed suddenly, an unprompted robust sound that came from deep in her diaphragm. As always, it caused people to turn and look at her, smiling reflexively at the sound. “Man, if it’s true and she seduced Henry, she must be something.”

  Connie was still grinning. “Kind of boggles the mind, doesn’t it?”

  “I’ll say.” Sasha looked at her friend across the table. “So what was the deal with the new manager? What exactly did he say to her to put her back up?”

  Connie repeated the string of obscenities and watched Sasha’s mouth drop open in shock. “Yeah. To give Karen her due, the guy’s got a mouth on him. It kind of took me by surprise when he introduced himself as the new manager, ’cause you know the powers that be and their reverence for the ‘Follies’ Family Image.’ ” Her fingers crooked quotation marks around the phrase. “Your act is about as R rated as we get. In Mick’s defense, though, he didn’t actually say it to her. I was running a little late coming down here for lunch—”

  “Ooh, there’s a surprise.”

  “Kiss my pretty gold butt.” Connie had practice ignoring that knowing sort of quirk Sasha could give to her right eyebrow. “Anyway, I ran into Karen upstairs just as she was heading back to her room from God knows where. I told her that everyone was meeting in the coffee shop and she decided to come down with me. Mick, which you’ve probably figured out by now is the new manager’s name, was standing outside his room. He was trying to juggle all this stuff he had in his hands and open his door, and we were just passing by when half of what he was holding fell to the floor. He let rip, and as you’ve already heard it was with quite a bit of creativity.” Connie shrugged. “You know Karen. She stopped to let him know in no uncertain terms she found that sort of language intolerable.”

  “And did he take one look at her big brown eyes and fall all over himself apologizing?” They’d seen that reaction more than once.

  “He was about two seconds away from telling her to f——off,” Connie replied with a laugh. “He didn’t actually say the words, but you could see them forming. He’s gotta be one of the few men I’ve ever seen she hasn’t managed to leave feeling about an inch tall by the time she’s finished raking them over the coals.”

  Connie watched in silence as Sasha consumed her sandwich. Then she rolled her shoulders and continued, “It was kind of weird, though, Saush. One minute he’s all arrogant male and you just know that nothing is going to make him back down. Then all of a sudden he takes a closer look at her and then at me . . . and it’s like watching night turn into day. He didn’t exactly fall all over himself even then, but he smiled, which believe-you-me is nothing to sneeze at.” She grinned. “It about knocked my socks off. He says, ‘Karen Corselli’ as if he’s known her all his life and gives me a nod. Well, okay, I’m a line skater, so he’s not gonna know me by name. But that’s when he introduced himself as the new manager. Then he apologized . . . and a pretty speech it was, too.” Connie shook her head. “Man. This guy. I’m telling you, Sasha, he’s got something and it is potent.”

  Sasha studied the expression on her friend’s face. She and Connie often cracked jokes that to an outsider would most likely make them sound as sex starved as convent-bred schoolgirls and twice as horny. But in truth each knew the other was mostly blowing smoke and w
ould cheerfully admit to it if pressed. Connie viewed men and relationships with a broad sense of humor laced with just a hint of cynicism. Sasha’s outlook equaled her friend’s in humor, but was laced with something else. Something a little . . . darker.

  Which was why the expression currently gracing Connie’s face piqued Sasha’s curiosity. For it held her usual humor as well as the edge of cynicism that Sasha was accustomed to seeing. But there was something else there also. Attraction, perhaps, but if so, it was one that appeared to repel almost as much as it enticed.

  “Whew.” Sasha propped her chin on her hand, finished chewing the last of her sandwich, and with unabashed interest observed her friend across the table. “I wish you could see your face,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look quite this way.” She studied her a few moments longer. “No fooling, Connie,” she finally said thoughtfully. “If he can pull this sort of response out of you, I most definitely look forward to meeting this guy.”

  THREE

  Sasha missed out on having that particular opportunity granted by no more than fifteen seconds. Her introduction to the new manager, had he been just a heartbeat or two slower, would have taken place in her very own hotel room, where Mick was in the midst of installing a tap on her phone.

  Utilizing an extensive if particularly vicious vocabulary to steadily berate himself under his breath, he hastily screwed the receiver back together and slipped from her room, fading from sight around a bend in the corridor just seconds—seconds, damnit!—before Miller and Nakamura stepped off the elevator. Leaning back against the wall, he shoveled his fingers through his hair and blew out a deep breath.