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Considering Kate: the classic story from the queen of romance that you won’t be able to put down
Nora Roberts
THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING AUTHOR‘The most successful novelist on Planet Earth’ Washington PostKate Stanislaski Kimball has turned her back on glamourand fame, and has come home to make a fresh start. The onlything more perfect than the beautiful—dilapidated—buildingshe’s bought for her new dance school is Brody O’Connell,the frustrating and surprisingly fascinating contractor she’shired for the renovation.Brody is determined to resist Kate’seffortless allure—she’s Natasha Stanislaski’s pampered,perfect daughter, after all. But how long can a man holdout against his own heart?Nora Roberts is a publishing phenomenon; this New York Times bestselling author of over 200 novels has more than 450 million of her books in print worldwide.Praise for Nora Roberts‘A storyteller of immeasurable diversity and talent’ Publisher’s Weekly‘You can’t bottle wish fulfilment, but Nora Roberts certainly knows how to put it on the page.’ New York Times‘Everything Nora Roberts writes turns to gold.’ Romantic Times.‘Roberts’ bestselling novels are… thoughtfully plotted, well-written stories featuring fascinating characters.’ USA Today
Considering Kate
The Stanislaskis
Book Six
Nora Roberts
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
The Stanislaskis: an unforgettable family saga by #1 New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts
Kate Stanislaski Kimball had turned her back on glamour and fame, and she’d come home to begin a new life. The only thing more perfect than the beautiful—dilapidated—building she’d bought for her new dance school was Brody O’Connell, the frustrating and surprisingly fascinating contractor she’d hired for the renovation.
But Brody was determined to resist Kate’s effortless allure. She was Natasha Stanislaski’s pampered, perfect daughter, after all. Still, every fiber of his being longed to make her his….
To my guys.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue
Chapter One
It was going to be perfect. She was going to see to it. Every step, every stage, every detail would be done precisely as she wanted, as she envisioned, until her dream became her reality.
Settling for less than what was exactly right was a waste of time, after all.
And Kate Kimball was not a woman to waste anything.
At twenty-five, she had seen and experienced more than a great many people did in a lifetime. When other young girls had been giggling over boys or worrying about fashion, she’d been traveling to Paris or Bonne, wearing glamorous costumes and doing extraordinary things.
She had danced for queens, and dined with princes.
She had sipped champagne at the White House, and wept with triumph and fatigue at the Bolshoi.
She would always be grateful to her parents, to the big, sprawling family who’d given her the opportunities to do so. Everything she had she owed to them.
Now it was time to start earning it herself.
Dance had been her dream for as long as she could remember. Her obsession, her brother Brandon would have said. And not, Kate acknowledged, inaccurately. There was nothing wrong with an obsession—as long as it was the right obsession and you worked for it.
God knew she’d worked for the dance.
Twenty years of practice, of study, of joy and pain. Of sweat and toe shoes. Of sacrifices, she thought. Hers, and her parents. She understood how difficult it had been for them to let her, the baby of the family, go to New York to study when she’d been only seventeen. But they’d never offered her anything but support and encouragement.
Of course, they’d known that though she was leaving the pretty little town in West Virginia for the big city, she’d be surrounded—watched over—by family. Just as she knew they had loved and trusted—believed in her enough—to let her go in any case.
She’d practiced and worked, and had danced, as much for them as for herself. And when she’d joined the Company and had appeared on stage the first time, they’d been there. When she’d earned a spot as principal dancer, they’d been there.
She’d danced professionally for six years, had known the spotlight, and the thrill of feeling the music inside her body. She’d traveled all over the world, had become Giselle, Aurora, Juliet, dozens of characters both tragic and triumphant. She had prized every moment of it.
No one was more surprised than Kate herself when she’d decided to step out of that spotlight and walk off that stage. There was only one way to explain it.
She’d wanted to come home.
She wanted a life, a real one. As much as she loved the dance, she’d begun to realize it had nearly absorbed and devoured every other aspect of her. Classes, rehearsals, performances, travel, media. The dancer’s career was far more than slipping on toe shoes and gliding into the spotlight—or it certainly had been for Kate.
So she wanted a life, and she wanted home. And, she’d discovered, she wanted to give something back for all the joy she’d reaped. She could accomplish all of that with her school.
They would come, she told herself. They would come because her name was Kimball, and that meant something solid in the area. They would come because her name was Kate Kimball, and that meant something in the world of dance.
Before long, she promised herself, they would come because the school itself meant something.
Time for a new dream, she reminded herself as she turned around the huge, echoing room. The Kimball School of Dance was her new obsession. She intended it to be just as fulfilling, just as intricate, and just as perfect as her old one.
And it would, no doubt, entail as much work, effort, skill and determination to bring to life.
With her hands fisted on her hips, she studied the grime-gray walls that had once been white. They’d be white again. A clean surface for displaying framed posters of the greats. Nuryev, Fontayne, Baryshnikov, Davidov, Bannion.
And the two long side walls would be mirrored behind their barres. This professional vanity was as necessary as breathing. A dancer must see each tiny movement, each arch, each flex, even as the body felt it, to perfect the positioning.
It was really more window than mirror, Kate thought. Where the dancer looked through the glass to see the dance.
The old ceiling would be repaired or replaced—whatever was necessary. The furnace…she rubbed her chilly arms. Definitely replaced. The floors sanded and sealed until they were a smooth and perfect surface. Then there was the lighting, the plumbing, probably some electrical business to see to.
Well, her grandfather had been a carpenter before he’d retired—or semiretired, she thought with affection. She wasn’t totally ignorant of what went on in a rehab situation. And she’d study more, ask questions, until she understood the process and could direct the contractor she hired appropriately.
Imagining what would be, she closed her eyes, dipped into a deep plié. Her body, long and wand-slim, simply flowed into the movement until her crotch rested on her heels, rose up again, lowered again.
She’d bundled her hair up, impatient to get out and take another look at what would soon be hers. With her movements, pins loosened and a few locks of glossy black curls spilled out. Freed, they would fall to her waist—a wildly romantic look that suited her image on stage.
Smiling, a bit dreamy, her face took on a quiet glow. She had her mother’s dusky skin and high, slashing cheekbones, her father’s smoky eyes and stubborn chin.
It made an arresting combination, again a romantic one. The gypsy, the mermaid, the faerie queen. There had been men who’d looked at her, taken in the delicacy of her form, and had assumed a romanticism and fragility—and never anticipated the steel.
It was, always, a mistake.
“One of these days you’re going to get stuck like that, then you’ll have to hop around like a frog.”
Kate sprang up, eyes popping open. “Brandon!” With a full-throated war whoop, she leaped across the room and into his arms.
“What are you doing here? When did you get in? I thought you were playing winter ball in Puerto Rico. How long are you staying?”
He was barely two years her senior—an accident of birth he’d used to torment her when they’d been children, unlike her half sister, Frederica, who was older than both of them and had never lorded it over them. Despite it, he was the love of her life.
“Which question do you want me to answer first?” Laughing, he held her away from him, taking a quick study of her out of tawny and amused eyes. “Still scrawny.”
“And you’re still full of it. Hi.” She kissed him smackingly on the lips. “Mom and Dad didn’t say you were coming home.”
“They didn’t know. I heard you were settling in and figured I’d better check things out, keep an eye on you.” He glanced around the big, filthy room, rolled his eyes. “I guess I’m too late.”
“It’s going to be wonderful.”
“Gonna be. Maybe. Right now it’s a dump.” Still, he slung his arm around her shoulders. “So, the ballet queen’s going to be a teacher.”
“I’m going to be a wonderful teacher. Why aren’t you in Puerto Rico?”
“Hey, a guy can’t play ball twelve months a year.”
“Brandon.” Her eyebrow arched up.
“Bad slide into second. Pulled a few tendons.”
“Oh, how bad? Have you seen a doctor? Will you—”
“Jeez, Katie. It’s no big deal. I’m on the Disabled List for a couple of months. I’ll be back in action for spring training. And it gives me lots of time to hang around here and make your life a living hell.”
“Well, that’s some compensation. Come on, I’ll show you around.” And get a look at the way he moved. “My apartment’s upstairs.”
“From the looks of that ceiling, your apartment may be downstairs any minute.”
“It’s perfectly sound,” she said with a wave of the hand. “Just ugly at the moment. But I have plans.”
“You’ve always had plans.”
But he walked with her, favoring his right leg, through the room and into a nasty little hallway with cracked plaster and exposed brick. Up a creaking set of stairs and into a sprawling space that appeared to be occupied by mice, spiders and assorted vermin he didn’t want to think about.
“Kate, this place—”
“Has potential,” she said firmly. “And history. It’s pre-Civil War.”
“It’s pre-Stone Age.” He was a man who preferred things already ordered, and in an understandable pattern. Like a ballpark. “Have you any clue what it’s going to cost you to make this place livable?”
“I have a clue. And I’ll firm that up when I talk to the contractor. It’s mine, Brand. Do you remember when we were kids and you and Freddie and I would walk by this old place?”
“Sure, used to be a bar, then it was a craft shop or something, then—”
“It used to be a lot of things,” Kate interrupted. “Started out as a tavern in the 1800s. Nobody’s really made a go of it. But I used to look at it when we were kids and think how much I’d like to live here, and look out these tall windows, and rattle around in all the rooms.”
The faintest flush bloomed on her cheeks, and her eyes went deep and dark. A sure sign, Brandon thought, that she had dug in.
“Thinking like that when you’re eight’s a lot different than buying a heap of a building when you’re a grown-up.”
“Yes, it is. It is different. Last spring, when I came home to visit, it was up for sale. Again. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.”
She circled the room. She could see it, as it would be. Wood gleaming, walls sturdy and clean. “I went back to New York, went back to work, but I couldn’t stop thinking about this old place.”
“You get the screwiest things in your head.”
She shrugged that off. “It’s mine. I was sure of it the minute I came inside. Haven’t you ever felt that?”
He had, the first time he’d walked into a ballpark. He supposed, when it came down to it, most sensible people would have told him that playing ball for a living was a kid’s dream. His family never had, he remembered. Any more than they’d discouraged Kate from her dreams of ballet.
“Yeah, I guess I have. It just seems so fast. I’m used to you doing things in deliberate steps.”
“That hasn’t changed,” she told him with a grin. “When I decided to retire from performing, I knew I wanted to teach dance. I knew I wanted to make this place a school. My school. Most of all, I wanted to be home.”
“Okay.” He put his arm around her again, pressed a kiss to her temple. “Then we’ll make it happen. But right now, let’s get out of here. This place is freezing.”
“New heating system’s first on my list.”
Brandon took one last glance around. “It’s going to be a really long list.”
They walked together through the brisk December wind, as they had since childhood. Along cracked and uneven sidewalks, under trees that spread branches stripped of leaves under a heavy gray sky.
She could smell snow in the air, the teasing hint of it.
Storefronts were already decorated for the holidays, with red-cheeked Santas and strings of lights, flying reindeer and overweight snowpeople.
But the best of them, always the best of them, was The Fun House. The toy store’s front window was crowded with delights. Miniature sleighs, enormous stuffed bears in stocking caps, dolls both elegant and homely, shiny red trucks, castles made of wooden blocks.
