Dancing with Fireworks

I wandered a little off the beaten path when I heard there was a publisher looking for stories about dancing. No, I'm not a dancer, never been a dancer, never wished I was a dancer (ok, so maybe I wished it...), never knew any professional dancers...but it just so happens that I wrote a short story to enter in a contest last year - about a dancer. Of course, I never entered it because by the time I finished writing I decided I wanted to use it elsewhere - and so, it sat in my file of story ideas waiting to be written or finished. See, I thought I might make it into a full length story - some day. And then I saw the call for an anthology about dancers and it nudged my memory.

So here it is!

Dances with Fireworks is a collection of stories celebrating romance and the love of dance.

Here's a little blurb from Dance of a Lifetime - my short in this anthology:

She should have left right after the funeral. But she couldn’t bear to think of dancing without Chris. He should have been there practicing with her, facing her at every turn, laughing at her foibles, rubbing the aches out of her feet when they were done.

“You need to take some time off,” Cody answered as he pulled her close again and rubbed her back. “He was your brother! They can’t expect you to step out on a stage just a month later.”

“You’ve heard the mantra,” she said softly as she eased away from him. “The show must go on.”

“So let it go on without you! Don’t you have an understudy? Obviously if they’re ready to start rehearsals they must have one for Chris’ part.”

“Of course they do. But if I don’t dance in this show I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to go back.”

“They wouldn’t blackball you because of this!”

She shook her head and looked away then back. “Not them, me. I don’t know if I’ll be able to… to start over without him. If I don’t get right back out there, I don’t know if I’ll ever find the courage.”

Cody stared into her eyes for a moment then slid his hands down her arms and sat back on his heels. “I saw you together in The Nutcracker last Christmas.”

Her head shot up. “Why didn’t you let me know you were coming, that you were there? How …when …?”

He touched her cheek and pushed a strand of her long blond hair behind her ear. “I knew you were in it. I’ve known about every show you’ve been in since you left.”

“Why?”

He stopped stroking her hair and looked straight into her soul. “Because I loved you.”