"Sydney, darling," Sloane purred, "Come here, I'd like you to meet an old friend of mine."
She dropped Sergei's hand and glided, more than walked, across the rosin floor to where Sloane was standing with a young blonde man. She could feel the sweat pooling on her upper lip, cooling in the light breeze made by her movements.
"Julian," Sloane smiled, looking at him, "This is Sydney- we're fortunate enough to have her with us from the Joffrey in Chicago."
"The pleasure is surely all mine," the younger man said, grasping her outstretched fingers lightly and kissing the back of her hand. She could see the others in her peripheral vision, watching them in the mirrors, curiously.
"Hi, it's a pleasure," she said, though she didn't mean it. Something about his eyes gave her the creeps. They were bright blue, cold, and he didn't take his eyes from hers once, not even as he touched his lips to the back of her hand, on the tendons. She shivered despite her sweat.
Sloane ignored the weirdness between them, as he was wont to do, and beamed like a proud father. "Julian's mother is a friend of my wife's, Sydney," he explained. "We thought he might show you around London while you're staying."
"At your convenience, of course," Julian said, looking her up and down.
"If I have time, yes," she looked away, feeling uncomfortable for perhaps the first time in her workout clothes. They left nothing to the imagination.
"We didn't mean to interrupt," Sloane interjected, "The pas de deux is looking tres magnifique, darlings!" he called out so Sergei could hear him. "We'll get out of your hair."
She turned on her heel and fairly skipped back to Sergei, eager to be away from Director Sloane and his odd young friend. She hoped, as Sergei grasped her hand firmly and she lifted her leg into an arabesque, that she was not being set up. She didn't have time for that sort of nonsense.
