The Billionaire's Ballet: A Contemporary Billionaire Friends to Lovers Romance (Friends with Benefits) by JJ Knight, Deanna Roy, Lucy Riot Read Free Book Online

have held you back. I should have sent you to school so much sooner.”
    I hurried across the gleaming floor and pressed my hands against hers. “Of course not. I did just fine.”
    “But you could be a principal by now,” she said.
    “Maybe,” I said. “Those roles aren’t just about the quality of the dance. It’s political.”
    She nodded. “I never knew. I never got that far.”
    I let go of her. “You’re not letting me off the workout hook that easy, are you?” I asked.
    Mom shook her head. “Back to position,” she smiled. “Three more.”
    I focused back in, intent on pleasing her. Each muscle, each position of my body, each preparatory hold before I unleashed became an acute point of attention.
    I went into a series of arabesques, part of the Shades dance that I knew she would recognize, then the door opened with a bang.
    “Dump them in here,” a voice said.
    I turned to face the source of the noise.
    It was Pearl, sixteen and heavily made up. She wore a pair of ripped jeans and three tank tops of varying colors, the top one loose and strategically cut up.
    A delivery man in a brown uniform unloaded a stack of boxes from a dolly.
    “Don’t block the door, thank you,” Mother said.
    The man shifted the boxes over.
    “Nobody uses this place anyway,” Pearl said.
    My anger rose up like a furnace blast. “What exactly are we doing right now?” I asked.
    “Who are you?” Pearl put her hand on her hip. Her long blond hair fell down one shoulder. It had black tips now.
    “Juliet,” I said. “And we’re working out in here.”
    Her eyebrows went up in shock, taking in my dance outfit and hair.
    The delivery man looked unsure now and slid the base of the dolly back under a box.
    Pearl kicked it off again. “They are just the help,” she said. “I’ve got a lot more stuff coming and no place to put it.”
    “You have an entire mansion,” I said, but Mom placed her hand on my shoulder.
    “It’s fine, Pearl,” she said. “When is your party?”
    “It’s not my party, it’s Quinn’s,” Pearl said. “For that tennis chick. I just got stuck dealing with the decorations.”
    My stomach dropped a little to hear that there was a party. Quinn hadn’t mentioned it on our ride. I remembered again his hand on my arm when he thought I was the tennis instructor.
    “I was just wondering how long the boxes would be here,” Mom said. She moved away from me to shift them against the wall. The delivery man took one glance at her frailty and moved forward to help.
    “The party’s Friday,” Pearl said.
    “It will be fine,” Mom said. “Will you be at your lesson later today?”
    “Hardly,” Pearl said. “I’ve got way better things to do.”
    She sneered at me, as if to say, “And you don’t.”
    I had nothing to prove to her. I turned away to refocus.
    Step step step, LEAP. Step step step, LEAP. By the time I was winded, Pearl and her delivery man were gone.
    Mom held out a towel and I took it. “Lovely girl,” I said.
    “It’s hard growing up without a mother,” she said. “Clarence Claremont really did his children a great disservice.”
    “They had a good nanny,” I said, remembering the warm, rotund, friendly faced Mrs. B. She had stayed on with the family until Pearl went to kindergarten.
    “Which is probably the only reason they aren’t psychopaths,” Mom said.
    This made me laugh. I had never heard her say anything like that.
    I draped my arm around her. “Come on,” I told her. “I’m dying for a cheese enchilada from Rose’s Tamale House. You can’t get decent Mexican food in Manhattan, at least not without paying fifty dollars for it.”
    “Fifty dollars! An enchilada plate is five!”
    “Yep,” I said. “And I’m buying.”
    We scooted between the boxes of decorations and headed out into the sweltering San Antonio summer afternoon. But I was on alert now. Mom had it tough enough. I wasn’t going to let some billionaire’s snotty daughter make her life