She ignored me.
“What about the costumes?” Ty asked, skating to my side and skidding to a stop (rather artfully, I noticed).
“Just a pinstriped suit for you and a white dress for her.”
“Sequins?” Ty asked.
“Not many,” Imelda said quickly.
He gave me a pained look.
Ugh. It was like she was ignoring everything we wanted to do. “You do realize we almost went home last night? This,” I shook the printed out routine at her, “is going to ensure that we go home. It’s boring!”
“I’m trying to keep in mind his capabilities and give the audience something appealing,” Imelda said easily, and then she went back to her chair.
I wadded up the paper in disgust. She wouldn’t come onto the ice with us. She had zero enthusiasm for her job. She made decisions without consulting us, and they were bad ones. “You know what? You’re fired.”
Her head popped up at that. “You can’t fire me.”
“Sure I can.” I pointed at the door. “You’re fired. Get out.”
“The network appointed me,” she said with a frown. “You don’t get to decide.”
The cameraman zoomed in on my face. I didn’t care that they were filming. She was doing nothing but dragging us down. “The Maltese Falcon is boring. You didn’t ask us if we wanted to dance to that, you just picked it. You’re ignoring our requests for the routine. You’re putting sequins on the costumes even though we’ve asked you not to—repeatedly. At this point, if we follow your routine, we’re going home. At least if we do our own routine, we’ll stand a chance. So if the network doesn’t kick us out, we might have a shot in hell of staying. Like I said. You’re fired.”
Imelda huffed. “There’re two of you on this team. I’m staying.”
Ty skated to my side. “I agree with my partner. I think you need to go.”
I gave Imelda a blissful smile. “Problem solved.”
She stared at both of us, and then pointed her phone in my direction. “I’m calling the network.”
“Call,” I bluffed, skating away. “Either you walk out, or we do. Let’s see which one they put on the show next week.” And I skated away, just because I could. It wasn’t like she’d follow me onto the ice, anyhow.
By the time I turned around again, she was gone, and Ty was there on the ice, arms crossed, giving me an impressed look.
I skated a circle around him, thinking. “You mad?”
He laughed. “Hell no. I was just thinking you have balls of steel sometimes.”
I gave him a flirty look. “Don’t f**k with me when I’m on the ice. That’s my home territory.”
“No kidding,” he drawled, his look appraising. “I like it. So…what now?”
I thought for a moment, skating in circles around him. “This is different than regular figure skating competitions. We’re pretty much f**ked with the judging panel no matter what we do.” Okay, so maybe that wasn’t that different than some skating competitions. “We need the audience on our side. Which means we have to impress them. Dazzle them.”
“Oh god. Dazzle. With sequins?”
I gave him a look. “Give me more credit than that?”
He chuckled. “Fine, fine. So tell me what you’re thinking.”
I continued to skate circles, thinking, my hands clasped behind my back. “We need to shock them somehow. This week’s theme is cinematic. Movie stuff. We just need to find the perfect movie that fits in with who we are….” An idea dawned on me, and I snapped my fingers. Oh my god, it was perfect.
It was perfect if Ty went for it.
I skated toward him and put my hands on his shoulders, looking up at him. “Do you trust me?”
“As much as I can trust anyone in this chickenshit outfit,” he said with a grin. “And as long as you don’t dress me as one of the Village People, I’m fine.”
“Nope,” I said enthusiastically, heading to the edge of the ice and stepping off. I went to my workout bag and pulled out my phone, then searched the internet for a clip. When I found it, I went back to Ty and handed my phone to him, looking for approval.
He snorted at what I picked, even as the music began to stream out from my phone, tinny and muffled. “Jaws? Cute.”
“That’s right,” I told him. “It is cute. People will think we’re poking fun at ourselves. They won’t expect it, and it’ll catch their attention. It’ll make you look like you have a sense of humor about the biting thing, and people will talk about it. That’s exactly what we want. It defuses an ugly situation and shows we can laugh at ourselves while having fun.”
He considered, staring at my phone for so long that I thought he was getting angry. Maybe I’d pushed too far and he’d tell me to f**k off. Maybe Ty didn’t have a sense of humor about the whole biting thing. When I’d asked him before, he’d shrugged me off.
But as I watched, a slow smile spread across his face. He looked over at me, and chuckled again. “Balls of steel, all right.”
Relief cut through me sharply, and I laughed. He wasn’t mad at me. Thank goodness. “I figure we can shock them into loving us, or go home anyhow.”
Ty regarded me. “So how do we skate to that music?”
I thought for a minute, and then grinned, my mind full of ideas. “We follow the pattern of the song. We can do slow movements at the start, and build up to the crescendo. When the crescendo hits, we can do a lift. You can put me on your shoulders, and I can raise a leg into the air. Oooh!” I clapped my hands. “I know. We can design a costume for me so that when I raise my leg into the air, it looks like a shark fin rising from the water.”
He chuckled, shaking his head. “I’ll admit, that’s kind of cool. So what do I wear?”
“You can dress as the main guy from Jaws. In the black shirt and jeans. Glasses, the works. What was his name?” I snapped my fingers, trying to think.
“Brody.”
“That’s it. Something simple and masculine.” I gave him an impish smile. “No sequins.”
“I could kiss you for that right now.”
I blushed. Hard. “No kissing necessary.”
He chuckled. “Spoilsport. So…partner lifts. How do we work those in?”