When the Lights Go Down
When the Lights Go Down
Amy Jo Cousins
Opposites attract, but then what?Maxie Tyler is Chicago’s toughest stage manager. Her latest gig is just the break she needs, and she’s not going to let anyone get in her way. Not even the producer with dreamy blue eyes and bespoke suits that fit him perfectly in all the right places.A successful venture capitalist, Nick Drake is used to calling the shots. He doesn’t care about art unless it turns a profit. This show might prove to be a good investment, but he’s not sure if Maxie Tyler will. Her need to control every detail of the show makes him nervous. So does the fact that they can’t seem to keep their hands off each other.Scandal and disaster threaten her career, his reputation and the success of the play. Two people accustomed to being in control will have to trust each other if the show will, indeed, go on. And they’ll have to trust their feelings if their passion is going to last after the last curtain goes down and the lights go up.
Opposites attract, but then what?
Maxie Tyler is Chicago’s toughest stage manager. Her latest gig is just the break she needs, and she’s not going to let anyone get in her way. Not even the producer with dreamy blue eyes and bespoke suits that fit him perfectly in all the right places.
A successful venture capitalist, Nick Drake is used to calling the shots. He doesn’t care about art unless it turns a profit. This show might prove to be a good investment, but he’s not sure if Maxie Tyler will. Her need to control every detail of the show makes him nervous. So does the fact that they can’t seem to keep their hands off each other.
Scandal and disaster threaten her career, his reputation and the success of the play. Two people accustomed to being in control will have to trust each other if the show will, indeed, go on. And they’ll have to trust their feelings if their passion is going to last after the last curtain goes down and the lights go up.
For Shelley, who took me under her wing and welcomed me to Romancelandia. For dining room table writing dates and late night wine, for karaoke and corn bread, and for the most inspiring debut novel I’ve ever read. You make me want to push my writing harder.
Thanks for the friendship, lady.
When the Lights Go Down
Amy Jo Cousins
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
About the Author
AMY JO COUSINS knows one thing for sure: the people who read and write romance novels are the smartest, funniest, kindest and most optimistic souls on the planet and finding a place in this community has been like coming home.
She lives in Chicago, where she writes contemporary romance, Tweets more than she ought and sometimes runs way too far. She loves her boy and the Cubs, who taught her that being awesome doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with winning.
You can visit her online where she hopes you’ll say hi! Sign up for her (very occasional) newsletter at www.amyjocousins.com (http://www.amyjocousins.com), follow her on Twitter at @_AJCousins (https://twitter.com/_AJCousins) or visit her on Facebook.
Also by Amy Jo Cousins
From Mills & Boon Desire
At Your Service (Book 1 of The Tylers)
Sleeping Arrangements (Book 2 of The Tylers)
From Mills & Boon E
Calling His Bluff (Book 3 of The Tylers)
Contents
Chapter One (#u1d7569a1-08f3-5b85-aeb0-02ebae71ff2c)
Chapter Two (#u26fab356-aeef-58e9-8ae6-b35dddae85f9)
Chapter Three (#uc17a6248-5c40-5405-a9f7-48d16a069534)
Chapter Four (#u1a52531b-82f0-5286-9cbf-72365d61508e)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One
“Uh-oh.”
Maxie’s stomach twisted and her vision dimmed. Nine hundred ticket-holding audience members, two flawless dress rehearsals, twelve weeks of preparation, two hundred and seven precisely planned light and sound cues had all led to this.
Opening night.
The oldest joke in the business was also the truest: What are the last words a stage manager wants to hear on opening night?
Uh-oh.
“Don’t do this to me, people. What’s wrong?” she hissed into her headset mike. As if the typical opening-night stress wasn’t bad enough, she’d managed to get an interview next week with the producers of a big Broadway show, who had decided that Chicago was the perfect city in which to begin a second run. To stage-manage such a big production would propel her into the top tier of show business in Chicago, a longtime goal of hers, and she’d invited the producers to attend the opening night of this show.
She had the sinking feeling that she might have made an error there.
“The dog is gone.” Ruben’s voice floated back to her through the earpiece she’d wedged in six hours ago. “I repeat, we have no Toto.”
She cursed under her breath. “Get the can opener,” she called to her assistant and sprinted down metal steps, heading for the tiny kitchen hidden in the building’s subbasement. When she reached the door, she grabbed the combination padlock and quickly opened it. The combination was easy enough to remember, even in times of extreme stress like now: one, two, three. Everyone from the producer down to the after-hours janitor knew it.
But then again, the lock wasn’t needed to keep out people. Just canines.
They’d yet to figure out how a schnauzer whose nose only reached knee-high even when it was standing on its hind legs managed to work the doorknob. But he’d broken into the kitchen a dozen times before they’d installed the lock, one time even leaving behind an incriminating trail of powdered sugar paw prints after stealing a box of donut holes.
“Damn genius dog.” Maxie shoved aside assorted bags of snacks until her fingers snagged on one last can of dog food. She had made it a policy never to run out of them.
“Ruben!” Her voice echoed in the bare hall.
“Got it!” Her assistant’s portly form shuffled down the last of the stairs, the puffing of his breath no doubt exaggerated for effect.
Melodramatization. A symptom exhibited by even the non-actors of a theatrical production.
Plucking the hand-operated can opener out of Ruben’s hand, she tossed a “Thanks!” over her shoulder and took the stairs two at a time to the top. Muttered curses followed her.
Maxie cranked open the can as she climbed, then hit the ground floor at a sprint. She took the corner at top speed, and slammed into what felt like a brick wall.
No way had someone on her crew abandoned a piece of the sliding set scenery in such a ridiculous location. They wouldn’t dare contradict her prop book, which assigned a precise backstage location for everything from hair ribbons to the enormous Emerald City set. Then her brain registered the texture, scent and sound—summer-weight wool fabric, a clean, sharp lemony spice, the sudden woof of breath being slammed out of a person. She looked up to memorize the face of the person she was going to kill as soon as she tracked down the damn dog.
“Blue.” She blurted out the word.
Lake-blue eyes froze her in place. They were narrowed at the moment, with fine lines at the corners that looked like they came from frowning, not laughing. Her stomach, already mid-butterfly stampede with nerves, did a slow dip and roll that made her dizzy. She blushed.
That indignity wrenched her back into the present. That and the realization that this stranger, this arrestingly good-looking man with those stop-you-in-your-tracks blue eyes and the thick shock of black hair, was an unauthorized intruder in her backstage empire.
“Get out.” She pushed past the man, her elbow out. If he complained, she’d claim the jab to his midsection was an accident.
She wrenched the lid off of the can, ignoring the sharp pain when the jagged metal sliced across her right index finger. Crossing to the breakfront that would decorate Auntie Em’s living room during a scene in Act One, she tossed the lid behind her, spattering some of the slimy contents of the can. God, how can even dogs eat this stuff?
When a deep voice registered a protest, she didn’t even turn to look. That meat and grease would be hard to get out of good wool, no doubt. Tough. He shouldn’t be trespassing on her set. She grabbed a cheap china plate off the breakfront and found a spoon in the top drawer, just where you’d expect to find silverware in real life. Verisimilitude, baby.
“I said get off my stage. Now.” She lowered her voice just enough to keep it from traveling past the heavy drop curtain while she warned off the intruder she could still feel hovering behind her. The light at the edges of the curtain was dim because the house lights had dropped. The audience would be settling down and listening for the first sounds of the play.
It was a thick curtain. She didn’t lower her voice much.
She let the plate clatter to the concrete floor and began whistling, long and low, as she slopped the contents of the can onto it.
Still out of sight behind her, Ruben took up the whistle, and from beyond him, she could hear other crew members whistling, too. Yeah, they knew the drill. Maxie paused for a breath and rattled the spoon around the empty can.
In moments, the magical, musical sound of Butch’s too-long, unclipped nails hitting the floor at top speed soared to her ears like “Ode to Joy” as the miscreant came out of hiding in search of the one thing that motivated him: food.
With the perfection of hindsight, it occurred to her that she could probably have dug an empty potato-chip bag out of the trash and rustled it loudly to much the same effect.
As Butch did his happy food dance in front of the plate she still guarded, she couldn’t help but grin. The damn dog was too clever by half, but in his own way he was more reliable than several members of her cast.
“You—” she scolded, tossing the can opener behind her and shaking her finger at the dog, who had the nerve to roll over, expose his belly and whine pitifully. Some sort of ruckus was developing behind her. “—better be ready to hit your mark in sixty. Stop being such a ham and eat up.”
Time to call off the panic. She thumbed on her mike. “Toto’s in the house.”
“So is a visiting producer,” Ruben shot back at her.
“I know. Front and center. I pulled a couple of press tickets for them, which means I owe drinks to the two critics standing in back.”
“No, not those guys—”
“Okay, well, the more producers in the house, the merrier. Now, let’s make it look like silk for ‘em.”
“But Maxie—”
“Not now, Ruben. Sound, one.” She called the first sound cue and classical music rolled out over the audience, settling them down.
Sixty seconds came and went. She waved Dorothy over, dumped Toto into her basket, called the first lighting cue, the curtain cue, and settled into her high chair with her hieroglyphically marked-up script. It was time to run the show with the ruthless precision that had gotten her the job in the first place.
Every battalion in her army was dialed up and ready to go and she was Command Central, poised to give the order to begin the battle.
She took one last look around and caught the eye of the sharply dressed man who was still there, standing well to the back now. He frowned at her and for a moment she wondered who he was. But she trusted her ASM to know which visitors were welcome backstage. Not her problem. Then Ruben, the Assistant Stage Manager in question, flashed her a thumbs up and she forgot Mr. Foxy without a moment’s hesitation. Her eyes left him and she prepared to enter the fray.
“Lights, one. Sound, two. Let’s knock ’em dead, kids.”
* * *
Nick’s shoulders locked up and the tendons in his neck tightened.
A civilized breakfast business meeting would have killed her?
He’d wanted his nine o’clock meeting to take place somewhere he could drink espresso and eat eggs benedict. Though she hadn’t thrown out the breakfast idea, she’d refused his suggestion of Chicago Cut—the swanky steakhouse did an amazing businessman’s breakfast, in Nick’s opinion—saying she’d take him somewhere after he met her at her office. Tracking down the office’s address on a street in Chicago’s warehouse district had been annoying enough, particularly since he could be sitting comfortably at Chicago Cut instead. Now he was stuck in the entrance to an alley. A ten-foot carving of a banana hung off the building in a manner most precarious above his car and two mental giants in front of him were arguing about a pile of two-by-fours in the back of a van that was blocking his way.
One of the guys could have stepped out of a Gap ad in his khakis and a plain white T-shirt. The other, who looked like he expected to audition for ZZ Top later that day, crossed his arms under his chest-length beard and glared at his buddy from beneath a black fedora. The lumber sticking out of the back of the van was several feet too long for the vehicle. The argument about how to solve this sphinx’s riddle had clearly been going on for some time.
An enormous metal door burst open just in front of his car, crashing into the brick wall, and a figure exploded out of the doorway, boots pounding down the potholed pavement of the alley.
He grabbed for the gearshift and prepared to hit reverse. The warehouse district wasn’t the worst neighborhood in Chicago, but he’d made it through his life so far without getting mugged and keeping the trend going was his preferred plan.
But those boots...
Somehow knee-high shiny white boots with fuzzy balls dangling from the laces didn’t strike much fear in his heart. Especially when they were paired with a thigh-skimming turquoise vinyl mini-dress, a chin-length swing of platinum hair and enormous sunglasses.
In fact, he’d rather pull up next to her and offer her a ride than back away. He lifted an appreciative brow and leaned forward, resting an arm on the steering wheel. He was far more interested in watching this intriguing woman than the two yahoos arguing in front of him. Which was when a high-pitched whine intruded on his senses.
His eyes locked on the saw.
At which point it became clear that his knowledge of shop and/or hand tools was severely lacking. Because even as he considered shouting a warning to the two brain-drains, he realized that he wouldn’t know what to say.
Look out! She’s got a...saw?
Buzz saw?
Circular saw?
A thing in her hand that’s smaller than your head but will undoubtedly be able to take it off at the neck?
By now, the guys had grasped the danger of the situation and shifted to either side of his car, backing up with their hands raised in the air.
Good job, boys. Two targets are better than one.
But as they inched down the length of his car, the saw-wielding Andy Warhol model stalked toward them, her tool-cum-weapon lining up precisely with his Mercedes’ trisected ornament at the front of the hood. The relationship he’d developed with his mechanic over the two years it had taken to restore this car to its youthful glory had been long and intimate and much like a marriage.
Returning the car to the garage with a large hole chopped in its hood would result in a messy divorce, particularly after he tried to explain about the blonde, the boots and the saw.
But the icy blonde had stopped, thank god, at the foot of his car. She shook the buzzing saw at the two men who were standing like captured criminals on either side of his car. Then she whirled around, stomped to the back of the van and ran the saw neatly through the stack of lumber. Wood blocks thunked to the pavement as the saw bit through each two-by-four. At the bottom of the pile, she slowed her progress, the muscles of her arms straining as she controlled the descent of the saw through the wood with delicate skill, until the last piece was neatly trimmed.
When she shut off the saw, the sudden silence was deafening. She slammed the rear doors of the van shut, crossed one pompom-ed boot in front of the other and took a bow.
Then she turned, popped the saw on her shoulder like it was an idle baseball bat, and walked back the way she’d come.
Applause erupted from the lunatics beside his car—hoots and hollers and a “Way to remember safety first, boss!” upon which the go-go girl turned and tapped her enormous, white-framed sunglasses. She grinned at them.
“Next time it’s your heads, boys.”
The voice that emerged from that compact little body was surprisingly low and throaty. It vibrated against his skin, a ticklish buzz that put him in mind of something far less appropriate than the business meeting for which he was prepared.
At least he now knew who the blonde serial killer was. His gaze followed her as she stomped back through the metal doors.
There was no mistaking that voice. It didn’t matter that today she was all 60s glam and last night she’d been a dark-haired grease monkey in mechanic’s overalls with a bandana tied around her head, shouting orders and curses and elbowing him out of the way as she ruled over the chaos of a backstage on opening night.
All he would ever need to recognize Maxie Tyler was one of two things: a glimpse of those midnight-dark eyes, glittering with intensity, or one word in that husky growl of a voice.
He sighed, wondering why he always got stuck coming to his mother’s rescue after the damage had been done. The money she’d sunk into backing a hot new playwright’s work had already been spent, of course, by the time he heard about it. She never called him before she made her next disastrous decision. Just sent out a press release—literally, she had the Tribune, Sun-Times, Chicago Reader and all the rest on speed dial—and then cried for help when her latest project escaped her control. At least this was one loose end he could handle himself, which was the only reason he was here, waiting for a breakfast meeting with a lunatic.
The budget of the play was already spiraling out of control, and the director had insisted that the next crucial step was to hire a brilliant stage manager. The only name on his list was Maxie Tyler.
Nick’s self-assigned duty, with his mother’s grudging approval, was to check her out. If she wasn’t up to the job, he’d make it clear that the golden goose wasn’t laying any more eggs until someone wrestled this train wreck back onto the tracks.
Before he’d arrived backstage last night, he hadn’t even been sure Maxie Tyler was a woman. His introduction to the theater world had been quick and intense, but the first thing he’d learned about the industry was that it teemed with unusual characters. Maxie could just as easily have been the nickname for a three-hundred-pound grizzled old man as this pixie who probably didn’t top a buck-five soaking wet. But at the very least, he’d expected someone a little, well, older.
And a little less dramatic.
And a lot less sex-on-wheels hot.
The van finally drove off down the alley. Nick maneuvered his baby into a nearly empty parking lot behind the building, bumping over cobblestones and chunks of lumber along the way. He made sure to park as far as possible from the giant pickup truck that screamed I’m compensating for my tiny penis.
He shook his head as he walked back to the door into which the go-go girl had disappeared. This entire venture, not just this meeting, was a frustrating waste of his time. If his mother had any sense of restraint at all...
Who was he kidding? He’d spent his entire life wishing his mother possessed some of the self-control and propriety of all the other Gold Coast society matrons. When friends had lamented their cold and demanding parents, Nick’s only thought had been if only. In these past months, ever since she’d met that playwright, the wheels had really come off. His mother had lost her mind. To the tune of several hundred thousand dollars.
He yanked the alley door open, heading down a barren hallway past dimly lit doorways sporting handwritten signs that read like a list of doomed-to-fail enterprises: Abel’s Anytime Carpet-Laying, Darning by Deborah, SnowGlobe: The Magazine.
At the end of the hall, under another roughly sculpted wooden banana that was a miniature of the one outside, he stopped and eyed the words painted on the frosted glass pane.
Carving Bananas, Inc.
He sighed—here was yet another reminder of the eccentricity of theater people—and started to push open the door, freezing in place as a voice he didn’t recognize leaked out through the crack. He nudged the door open a couple more inches and waited.
“—just saying. You couldn’t have played the role of straitlaced businesswoman today? Three-hole punch?”
“I am a straitlaced businesswoman, child. Cabinet, middle shelf, right-hand side.”
“Sure,” the female voice doing the scolding snorted, as metal squeaked on metal.
“See, right where I told you, doubting Thomasina.”
“I wasn’t questioning your bizarrely accurate knowledge of where every little damn thing in your life is placed, you weirdo. I was questioning your claim to straitlaced businessdom.”
Nick grinned in agreement with the scolder. Though if one of his employees spoke to him that way, he’d have them shipped off for drug testing.
Maybe they were both high.
“It’s what I am. That doesn’t have any relation to how I dress.”
“Clearly.”
“That’s it. I’m docking your pay for insolence. Brat.”
“You don’t pay me, remember? I’m an intern.”
“And why do you work here?”
“I think I’ve forgotten.”
“Well, make yourself useful and keep an eye out for Mr. Sharp-Dressed Man, will you? I’m trying to make a good impression here.”
Nick entered the claustrophobic office just in time to glimpse a flash of turquoise and platinum disappearing through an interior door to his right. A floating echo that sounded like “Gotta pee” slipped past the door as it swung shut.
The young woman behind the wood-laminate desk wore a shell-pink twinset, a short strand of pearls, and a velvet hair ribbon. She was still rolling her eyes when she turned back to see who’d entered.
Her recovery when she saw him, the “Mr. Sharp-Dressed Man” for whom she was waiting, was remarkable. She should be paid more...or at all.
“Mr. Drake, I presume?” At his nod, she waved her hand grandly to the one unoccupied flat surface in the room: a metal folding chair huddled between two enormous steel cabinets pasted over with advertisements for dozens of shows. He was sure she guarded the chair with the ferocity of a mother lion. Every other open space in the room was piled high with everything from crumbling bricks to ladies’ satin underwear. “Ms. Tyler will be with you momentarily.”
He twisted his mouth and raised an eyebrow. “As long as she unplugs the saw first, I can wait.”
The girl didn’t drop her smile for a moment. “Ah. So it’s too late for the good impression.” She shrugged philosophically. “Coffee?”
“Who makes it?”
“I do. Fresh ground Columbian.”
“I’m in.”
By the time the click of high-heeled boots approached, he’d discovered that the unpaid intern’s name was Clarissa, that she’d been working full-time for Maxie for six weeks, on top of a full course load in theater management at Columbia College, and that Maxie was the best stage manager she’d ever met. Apparently, the same woman who’d pegged him with the lid from a can of dog food was “surreally talented, kind of spooky and not a little bit of a tyrant.”
Not exactly what he’d been hoping to hear. He was on the lookout for someone solid, understandable and amenable to taking orders.
But when Maxie strode into the crowded office, he turned from the girl, who was now perched on the corner of the desk, to watch as an earpiece of her big white sunglasses slid into the turquoise V of her dress, drawing his eyes down from where they ought to be.
He looked back up to find big, dark-chocolate eyes waiting for him under equally dark brows that somehow worked with the icy white-blonde hair. Her cheekbones were high and sharp and her wide, full mouth was frosted pink.
He held his breath, every muscle in his body tensing at the first drift of her scent—leather and vanilla. Even the smell of her was fascinating.
She held out her small hand.
Enveloping it in his own, he was caught off guard by the strength in her fingers. An electric shock jumped through him at the gentle bite of her white fingernails into the back of his hand. He had a momentary vision of those same fingernails stair-stepping lightly down his spine and his dick stiffened at the thought.
Get a grip, Drake.
“Ms. Tyler.”
“Nicholas Drake.” The look she raked over him was scornful or borderline sexual, maybe both. She held his hand longer than necessary before letting go. “You were trespassing backstage last night.”
“I wanted to see you in action.” He’d certainly done that. She was a martinet, but everything she touched had fallen into place like clockwork.
“I don’t normally take meetings with people who won’t tell me who they’re representing, but I’m always ready to eat. Let’s go.”
She whipped a white trench coat off of an old-fashioned coat rack behind the door, shrugged it on, belted it and left the door open behind her as she plunged into the dim hallway.
Clarissa groaned from behind him.
“I heard that,” Maxie said from down the hall, laughing. “You said it was too late to make a good impression, girl, and I’m starving.”
* * *
Ten minutes later, Maxie was up to her eyebrows in Jamaican jerk chicken with dirty rice and beans and as happy as a kid with a new toy. She watched her “I’d prefer a breakfast meeting, if you don’t mind” nine-o’clock appointment stare with drawn brows at the photographs on the side of the boxy white truck parked at the curb. She’d bet twenty bucks he’d never bought food out of a van before.
Poor, deprived soul.
“Best plantains in the city,” she said and opened her foam container. The lid flip-flopped in the cool morning breeze.
He pushed back the straight, dark hair falling over his brow with an automatic gesture and didn’t seem to notice when it dropped right back into place.
“It’s nine o’clock in the morning.”
“Hey, opening night wrapped up at four and I came straight to work. Haven’t slept yet. Breakfast was hours ago.” He ordered coffee. She shook her head. His loss. She’d brought the man to the best Jamaican outside of Montego Bay. You could lead a horse to water...
“Yes, I’m sure you’ve been hard at work in your—” he flicked a hand at her “—what? Costume?”
“You don’t gotta wear construction boots to wheel a dolly of two-by-fours to the checkout line.” She grinned and winked at him. Like Clarissa said, the good impression window was closed. She might as well have fun. There was no need for him to know she’d worn the sixties sex-kitten outfit because it made her feel like a sexual powerhouse. She’d been restless in the hours before dawn this morning, still feeling his chest under her palms from their split second of physical contact the night before. A little boost had seemed in order. “Who do you think brought those two lunkheads who work for me the lumber? There’s a twenty-four-hour Home Depot just off North Avenue.”
“How did you get it to fit in the van?”
She was pretty sure the curiosity in his voice was unwilling. He looked like the type of man who’d just as soon file her neatly in a box and forget about her.
“I didn’t.” She shoveled a forkful of rice and beans in her mouth and let him wait for a minute while she chewed. She didn’t play around with Jahman’s food. “I picked it up in my truck. It has a longer flatbed, but those two are forbidden to drive it.”
She jerked her head at a bus-stop bench down the sidewalk. He followed and stood looming over her as she sat with her container on her lap and ate. Ignoring him as she dug into her second breakfast for the day, she ploughed through the meal and then sat back happily, having mopped up spicy jerk sauce with the last piece of fried plantain. A perfect bite.
She stretched her arms along the back of the aluminum bench and tilted her face back to catch the weak warmth of the sun on a Chicago spring day.
Cracking one eye open, she glanced up at the man who was watching her, one hand in his pocket, the other lifting the paper cup of coffee to his mouth with mechanical regularity. Just watching. The fine hairs on her arms stood up as she shivered under that gaze.
She crossed her legs and sat a bit straighter, unaccountably irritated.
“Look, Drake, you asked for this meeting, not me. Now would be a good time to start talking, before I fall into a food coma.”
“I represent some people who want to hire you.”
She waited. Nothing. She rolled her eyes and then glared at him. And?
“And I’m not at all convinced it’s a good idea.”
Ouch.
She might joke about not caring about good impressions, but it still stung when someone told you they didn’t think you were good enough. She knew better than to indulge in hurt feelings and was annoyed that she couldn’t find her normal self-control. “What a surprise,” she said. “Like your underlings a little bit more conventional, do you?” The drawled words scratched him back with a not very well-hidden swipe of her claws. Burning a professional contact wasn’t her normal style, but she would already have heard of this guy if he were a name in theater, so she felt free to play a little. Especially since next week’s interview was looking like more of a lock with every day that passed, according to the gossip in her network. She swung her legs up on the bench, just missing kicking him in the knife-sharp crease of his slacks.
To her surprise, he smiled at her. Pulled out his sunglasses and slid them on.
She didn’t like not being able to see where his eyes were directed. Not knowing what he was looking at made her feel as if his gaze was touching her everywhere.
Instead of responding to her taunt, he came back with a question.
“Why Carving Bananas?”
She laughed and stared up at his dark shades, wondering how he’d take her explanation.
Some men took it personally.
“Eisenhower was speaking of Montgomery when he said, ‘I could carve a better man out of a banana.’” She paused for a moment, remembering the old embarrassment. “Or, at least, I thought he did. Turns out the historian who wrote the book I read made that up. Live and learn. Once a two hundred pound carving of a banana has been delivered to your door, you suck it up.”
After a silent moment, he pulled the sunglasses off. The shock of meeting his eyes again, the blue of Lake Michigan in July framed by dark lashes, made her wobbly. He studied her, eyes narrowing. She couldn’t read minds, but she’d swear that he was finally ignoring her outfit and how she talked to him, and looking at her.
“And you’re Eisenhower, I take it?”
She bestowed her grin like a teacher giving a gold star to her favorite pupil.
“You got it.”
Focused on him, she forgot the grooved metal slats under her thighs and the ruffle of cool air against her bare skin. She felt him step a little deeper into her mind.
“More like General Patton, I bet.”
“I’ve got more subtlety and a broader grasp of the field of engagement than that. Besides, have you seen the state of education in this country? Most kids wouldn’t know who Patton was if he walked up and smacked them on the head with his riding crop.”
“I bet you’d like to wear the boots, though.” His mouth quirked into a grin.
A mental picture of herself in thigh-high riding boots and a jacket covered in military ribbons floated up from Maxie’s subconscious and she laughed out loud.
“That might be one look even I can’t pull off.” She stood up, dumped her empty food container into the trash can next to the bench, and scrubbed her hands with her napkin before balling it up and making a rim shot into the open mouth of the can.
She took two steps and stopped in front of him. Her mother had always advised her to face her fears head on.
Wise woman.
“You may think I’m not what you’re looking for, Mr. Drake. But if you get to know me better, you’ll find I’m exactly what you want. You’d be lucky to hire me or my company for your show, whatever it is.” Even in the boots, she had to tilt her head back at an uncomfortable angle to avoid staring at the front of his blindingly white shirt. She felt the snap and sizzle of sexual tension between them and fed off it.
“Oh, I’m changing my mind about what I want.” His voice was low as he loomed over her.
It took her a moment to figure out what he meant, and then she shook her platinum hair back with a swing of her head.
She bet his usual type wore Louboutin shoes and pencil skirts as a daily uniform, but she damn well knew what he wanted right now.
She smacked her palm flat on his chest and left it there. His heart thumped under her fingertips and she tapped her index finger against the muscles of his chest.
“Hiring me would be the best bad idea you ever had.” She didn’t know why she was pushing this. If she picked up the Broadway second run, her entire crew would be booked. She wouldn’t be able take any more jobs.
His hand wrapped around her wrist.
“If that’s a bad idea, then I’m pretty sure this is a terrible one.”
The blue of his eyes blotted out the spring sky as his head dipped toward hers, slow enough for her to pull her back if she’d wanted to do any such thing. Instead, she touched her tongue to her teeth and waited until his lips pressed against hers, his hand tightening on her wrist. Then her mouth fell open and she was lost.
Chapter Two
He tasted like coffee and cream from the cup he’d dropped at their feet. She had just enough brainpower left to register surprise at the sweetness, too. She’d have laid money on him taking it black.
And god, this was stupid. The one thing she never, ever did was get involved with anyone in her professional life. She’d learned her lesson, thank you, and that burn had taken a long time to heal.
But his mouth on hers was hot and she was slipping under his spell, her hand on his chest flexing as she dug her fingertips into the hard muscle under his corporate costume. He licked at her mouth and she let him in, a surge of heat shooting through her belly until she felt dizzy. Only the sharp pain of bobby pins poking her scalp when he tugged on her hair brought her to her senses before she climbed this guy like a tree in front of her favorite food-truck driver.
* * *
Maxie spent the next forty-eight hours thinking about what she’d agreed to after her kiss with Nick, and she still wasn’t sure it was a good idea. But she did know she could count on her sisters to tell her the truth.
Whether or not she actually wanted it.
She met her sister-in-law, Grace, and her two older sisters, both of them hugely pregnant, for an emergency summit slash massive laundry session the afternoon after her kiss with Nicholas Drake. Apparently everything that came into contact with babies needed to be washed in a special detergent, and between her two sisters they’d bought out most of Babies”R”Us. Her oldest sister Addy’s house was centrally located for all of the sisters and for their sister-in-law, Grace, who’d already knocked out her two kids and called a halt to further procreation, so they’d gathered there.
Hip-deep in burp cloths and onesies, Maxie was starting to regret giving them the details of her interactions with the well-tailored businessman. Addy, Sarah and Grace had leaped onto the details like lions attacking a wounded wildebeest, oversharing way too many details of their own about the dearth of sex in late pregnancy. She’d threatened to leave and deprive them of her Gap-trained folding skills, but Maxie knew there was no chance she was getting off the hook.
The speculation from her sisters, the preggos each sprawled on a separate couch, was getting progressively more explicit when Maxie finally gave up and raised her hands in surrender. “All right! All right! Pains in my ass.” She marched over and planted herself at the edge of the coffee table that stretched between the two couches. Bending her knees and leaning forward, hands on her thighs like an umpire at the plate, she glared at them.
“It was hot. It was wet. After he dropped his coffee cup, he tangled his hand in my hair and pulled my head back a little.” She nearly lost it when Sarah gave a wistful sigh and only managed to keep a straight face by biting her lip hard. “I was pressed up against him and bent backward over his arm and we didn’t come up for air for ages.” Addy’s aww distracted her for a moment, but she nailed the finale.
“Five more minutes and I would’ve jumped him on that bench. The thirty-three Washington bus could’ve stopped, unloaded passengers and driven off and I never would’ve noticed.”
Her sisters closed their eyes and smiled dreamily in unison. She was sure each was imagining her own husband, ridiculously attractive men that they were.
But the habit of sisterly ribbing was not to be denied for long. Addy cracked an eye open and lifted a brow. “Would have been funny if you’d lost that wig.”
She definitely regretted telling them what she’d worn to work that day.
Always the performer in the family, she held a beat before giving in.
“I almost cried like a baby when all of those bobby pins dug into my skull. Who knew the man was gonna want to pull my hair?”
They laughed at her until both had to get up and go pee and she returned to the laundry. The mountain of baby clothes had been transformed into neat piles of color-coded outfits, all greens and yellows and peaches. Both of them were waiting to find out the sex of their babies and they avoided anything pink or blue like the plague.
“So.” Grace folded the last of the baby blankets. “Close encounters with bus-stop sex aside, what happened? Does the guy want to hire you? And who is he? His name rings a bell.”
Maxie wrinkled her nose.
“He’s not part of the scene, that’s for sure. And he asked me to dinner. Tonight. Said we’d give the business meeting another chance, only this time he was damn well not going to eat his meal on a street corner.”
She still wasn’t sure that meeting this man, whose presence danced on her nerves, in a non-business setting was a good idea.
“Hmm.” She could read Grace as easily as she could her sisters. After all, this was the woman to whom she confessed her secrets when she wanted advice but wasn’t ready to talk to her sisters. It had been that way since she was a teenager.
“Yeah, I know. It didn’t really feel like a business kiss when he laid it on me.” She tossed the little hat she was playing with back into the basket and flopped onto the armchair behind her. She dropped the sarcasm. “I’d be a fool not to meet with him, at least. This is the first time someone’s come to me about a job, instead of me pitching to them. It’s taken six years to get to the point where we’re almost a real player in the industry. And Ruben is ready to call the show tonight. More than ready, really. He’s bored being the assistant stage manager.” She tucked her feet beneath her loose floral skirt. She’d felt very peasant-girl-come-to-do-the-laundry when she got dressed this morning.
“You know it takes time to build up a business reputation,” Grace reminded her.
“I know. And between the outfit and the make-out session, I may have started Carving Bananas on the road to a reputation for something other than business.” She frowned and pulled a final onesie from the laundry basket. “Not that I can take the job if I get the Broadway show. But still, options are nice.” She folded the onesie and dropped it on a pile. Straightened the pile until it stopped listing to one side.
“Hey, he kissed you.”
That was Grace. Always on your side. Maxie smiled.
“I provoked it.”
“So, show him you mean business. You’re good, Maxie, and if this guy has any kind of business sense, he’ll be able to see that in no time at all. There’s really only one question.”
Maxie arched a brow at her sister-in-law and cocked her head to one side, listening. She’d taken advantage of Grace’s acumen when she’d first had the idea to turn her habit of filling her family members’ basements with discarded props from the shows she stage-managed into a business. Anything Grace—who hobnobbed with the movers and shakers of Chicago with ease while running her restaurant conglomerate—had to say was worth hearing.
“He’s seen Go-Go Girl Maxie, and the anti-glamour, can-you-really-tell-she’s-a-woman, Opening Night Maxie. Who he’s going to meet tonight?”
It was a good question. Maxie sank back into the cushions and tapped a fingernail against her bottom lip, staring across the room, seeing nothing at all.
Who indeed would Nick Drake meet tonight at Nomi, in the spare white environment of one of the city’s best restaurants? There would be two-hundred-dollar bottles of wine, no doubt, and tiny and intricately constructed morsels of food speared on metal sculptures or some such.
Who should be sitting across the table from the classic businessman in a bowler hat, metaphorically speaking?
He’d found her a bit loose the other day, perhaps. Uncontrolled. And he seemed like a man who had a thing for giving orders, and having someone else take them.
That would be a problem. On several levels. Maxie considered herself the person most capable of dishing out the orders in any given situation. Nothing personal, but she knew the most efficient way to handle things and had become convinced that being in charge was where she belonged.
He liked control. Perhaps he wanted to see more of it from her...
Well, she would show him her idea of control.
* * *
Nick let a sip of Cabernet roll over his tongue, the heat and fruit and spice building in his mouth like a kiss. His entire week had been hectic, not the least because he’d been unable to shake thoughts of Maxie Tyler and her conflicting personas out of his brain.
Who was he kidding? The only things stuck in his head were memories of her mouth, spicy and hot and open to him, her body, so small but a powerhouse of lean muscle, pressed against him, and her eyes...
In more than one meeting since that morning, he’d caught himself blinking at a room full of silent observers, only to realize that he’d once again lost focus, sunk in the memory of those deep dark eyes locked on his.
The fact that no one else knew what he was picturing did nothing to quell the embarrassment.
His usual self-control was failing him.
He wasn’t sure what had possessed him to suggest dinner after the breakfast meeting had offered up such unpredictable fare. Aside from his momentary indulgence in a purely physical attraction, the entire interaction had been beyond the pale. Much like the rest of the time he’d spent on this latest obsession of his mother’s. Par for the course for her, although he’d spoken to more than one contact in the arts world who swore that this playwright actually had the chops to write an award-winner. Still, there would be no shortage of local gossips eager to tear this latest eccentricity to pieces. His own involvement only drew more attention to his mother’s whims, as Nick’s business activities were reported on as a matter of course in the business press.
Not that Maxie Tyler wasn’t intriguing. The World War II history buff didn’t fit with the flighty theater drama queen he’d anticipated from someone who would show up in costume to a meeting. Maybe stage managers were a different breed.
He glanced at his watch and sighed. Every theater person he’d met so far was absolutely reliable in never showing up on time. Ironic, that. Since they’d agreed to meet at eight and it was now five minutes to, he figured he had about half an hour of quiet anonymity to enjoy at the restaurant’s bar. He’d have some time to sip this robust wine and throw off a little of the week’s tension. The details were falling into place on his latest venture capital deal—and the kids who’d started this new company were brilliant—but he never relaxed until a deal was done.
Actually, even then he didn’t relax. After all, someone had to make sure the businesses in which he invested grew at the proper pace and in the correct directions. And that someone was always him.
He lifted his glass and scanned the room, from the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Chicago Avenue to the host stand at the entrance. And promptly choked on his Cabernet.
Damn.
Boots again.
He watched her brush past the hostess with a brief word and imagined he could hear the pounding bass beat of a movie soundtrack with each stalking step she took across the room to where he waited, glass still lifted to his mouth.
And he’d been worried about his self-control.
She looked like someone who asserted control—no, let’s be accurate here, domination is the word that comes to mind—over others as a way of life.
Who would have thought that a woman showing barely an inch of skin below the neck could look like a walking sexual fantasy in midnight black?
A form-fitting black leather jacket with a stiff military collar hugged her torso from the shoulders to the swell of her hips. The narrow black skirt would have looked prim if it weren’t so tight, right down to where its edge brushed the top of her boots. And if he’d ever believed that stiletto heels were the height of sexiness, he was rapidly changing his opinion in favor of these black boots that laced up the front in a style more reminiscent of a motorcycle gang than Milan.
Heads turned to follow her all the way across the crowded bar as she arrowed a straight line to the empty seat he’d saved beside him. He had a moment to regret the way she drew attention just by moving. Nick was always happier staying in the background. She swung one hip up onto the high chair and held out a hand.
“Ms. Tyler.” He squelched the urge to wolf whistle. That he could dredge her name up from his stunned brain was amazing.
“Nicholas Drake.”
Her low voice was quiet enough that he needed to lean in to hear her. He didn’t remember taking her hand in his, but when she smiled and glanced down to where he still held it, he dropped it and set his wine glass on the bar, happy enough to break contact with her for a moment. He couldn’t think when he was touching her.
At his lifted hand, the bartender stepped over. Maxie leaned forward to order a drink and he caught the scent of her, warm and sweet, rising from the tight knot of hair that was twisted at the nape of her neck. She accepted her own glass of red wine and lifted it to his, her face pale and bare except for the thick smoky smudges around her lashes and the deep crimson of lips that already looked wine-stained.
He tapped his glass against hers with a crystalline ring that he felt in his fingertips. This might be the most dysfunctional business meeting ever, but it was shaping up to be one of the more interesting evenings of his life.
Over the sharply stitched line of her shoulder, the hostess caught his gaze, lifting a graceful hand in the direction of the dining room.
“Our table is ready,” he said. “Shall we?”
She stood up in one flowing motion, swung a large black portfolio he hadn’t noticed over one shoulder, and began walking. He indulged himself with a muscle-loosening shake of the head and shoulders before giving a short bark of a laugh and following her.
The leisurely stare he focused on her ass during the stroll to the dining room wasn’t an indulgence.
He was damn sure it was the entire purpose of a walk like that.
At the table, she leaned the portfolio against her chair and allowed an attendant to slide her into her seat. Somewhere between the server’s spiel about the specials and them ordering their meals, Nick realized he was grinning. He’d stopped wondering if every other diner in the posh restaurant was staring at the woman seated across from him because he was too busy staring at her himself.
“Where’s that riding crop, General?”
She smiled an acknowledgement. “It’s never a good idea to over-accessorize. Besides, I’m hoping for my second chance to make a good first impression.”
“They say you never get one of those.”
“I’m not a big fan of relying on anyone’s judgment other than my own, and mine tells me you’re open to it.”
“Open to what?”
She leaned forward, resting her forearms on the table, and looked at him from beneath lifted brows. Her lips twisted into a close-mouthed smile.
“My second first impression being a good one.”
It was his turn to lean forward. He reached across the table to pick up one of her small, strong hands, currently sporting blood-red fingernails and one twisted-steel ring that looked like it might have been made from barbed wire. He ran his thumb over the dulled edges of the ring and watched her, his hand holding hers.
“Ms. Tyler, you have made about seven different impressions on me already. All I know is that it’s unlikely you’ll make the same one twice.”
To his surprise, she laughed, squeezed his hand and let it go. When she sat up, it was as if she’d flipped a switch, cutting off the invisible electric current between the two of them. The sexual tension was buried, gone in an instant like snapping out of a dream to the sudden blare of an alarm clock. When she shrugged out of her jacket, revealing a simple black sleeveless top that draped elegantly over her small, high breasts, he could see she wasn’t doing it to attract his notice. She reached for her water glass, leaving the wine untouched beside her plate.
“What’s your story, Drake?” Her gaze was direct. Steady. She didn’t lick her lips or run a fingertip down the side of the water-beaded glass in her hand or pull a pin from her hair and slowly shake out the raven waves until her hair hung loose and tangled in her eyes.
Well, damn.
“Tell me why you came to see me.”
From business to sex and back again. Well, he was comfortable with business, always had been, and it was probably the safer choice in this highly public arena, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t miss the divinely sexual Ms. Tyler.
He shook his head and gave up trying to figure this woman out.
Give the lady what she wants.
* * *
Maxie wanted to jump in the icy waters of Lake Michigan.
Sitting across the table from Nick as he described the fateful encounter of his mother, divorced and possessed of far too much time and money, with the young man she swore was the next Sam Shepard, Maxie made a distinct effort to pay attention. Still, she barely managed to catch the gist. That his mother had taken it into her head to back this young playwright and get his work produced was unusual enough. At the level of big theater, as Nick was describing it, that took serious cash or, more commonly, a consortium of investors and a business plan. Not some rich snowbird with a whim, taking the idea of a patron of the arts to new levels.
Nick’s involvement seemed even stranger.
Just the sound of his name in her head was enough to send her stomach into a slow tumble and roll she hoped wasn’t visible on her face. She’d been unable to drive their kiss from her thoughts; it had haunted her through restless, tossing nights until she gave up and went without sleep. But he didn’t need to know that. So tonight, she’d chosen clothes to project a blatantly in control woman.
Exactly the opposite of how she was feeling, which was slightly out of control every time she so much as breathed around the man.
And then when Nick reached across the table and began stroking her fingers, all her best intentions vanished like so much smoke. She couldn’t remember anymore whether he was supposed to respond to her provocation or not, or what she would do with him then. The only sensation she registered was the slide of his thumb over the back of her hand. The pressure of his fingers on her palm. And that was when she knew she’d lost control.
Again.
She shut down.
Turned it off, dropping his hand and every ounce of sensuality in her body, until she might as well have been wearing sackcloth and ashes. The one thing she knew she had mastery over was her work, and if that was the only stability she could find as the edges of the cliff crumbled beneath her feet, then she’d stand firm on that rock and leave the daredevil tricks behind.
It was an act, of course, and she’d been a decent-enough actor way back when, before figuring out she’d rather organize the strings instead of dance to them or even pull them. Good enough at least to get her through one meal with this man.
As long as he stopped touching her.
Then she caught a name in the general flow of words brushing against her consciousness and jerked her attention back to Nick.
“Heitman? What about Heitman?”
Lips pressed together, he looked more likely to throttle her than kiss her. It occurred to her that frustrated sexual tension might not be the best of moods under which to conduct a business negotiation.
Better frustrated than indulged. Maybe.
“How far back should I go?” His voice snapped like a pane of glass broken over his knee. Clearly her mask of polite attentiveness had slipped a bit.
She rattled off the list. Even though she was only giving him partial attention, she hadn’t missed much.
“Your mother’s hot for this young playwright.” He glared at her. She refrained from rolling her eyes. “In the artistic sense, obviously. I’ve actually heard of him. He’s supposed to be hot shit.” And wasn’t that intriguing. The first tingles of excitement were sparking in her belly. “So she’s backing his show in a big way, you’re white knighting it with your business expertise—” that glare again “—or are concerned for her welfare. Crap. Do you ever just say anything right out? So, you’re putting yourself in the royal seat, thumbs up or down on everything, nothing will get past your tricky eye, will it? And Heitman. You’ve got Heitman as the director?”
“I don’t have him. I don’t want him. But my mother and Smith do, and yes, they have him.”
“And Heitman wants me?”
“Apparently.”
She had to admit, she hadn’t expected that one.
She stopped chewing and looked down to discover that she was most of the way through a meal she hadn’t tasted. It seemed she’d chosen a smoked-prawn risotto with celery root, pickled fennel and—were those juniper berries? She slowed and enjoyed the complex medley of flavors in her mouth while she considered this new piece of information from all angles.
When she looked up, Nick was staring at her. He held his steak knife in a fist, more like a weapon than an eating utensil, with a white-knuckled grip.
She thought he might be developing a twitch in one eye.
“Heitman and I did one show together. After the third drop cloth caught fire, the male lead had a stroke, literally, and then the city shut down the theater for building-code violations. And those were just the highlights.” She shrugged. “Heitman’s a big believer in curses, jinxes. I was sure if he ever said my name out loud again, he’d throw salt over one shoulder and holy water over the other, just in case.”
“Well, he must have seen something he liked in you, because he doesn’t want me talking to any other stage managers.” Nick frowned.
“Yeah, I’m good at putting out fires.”
“Better at starting them than putting them out, I’d say.”
“Problem is, I’m gonna be booked.” Which was almost a shame, because she’d enjoy a chance to joust with this man from time to time across a dinner or conference table. Not to mention that this Smith was rumored to be an up-and-comer. But she wasn’t missing out on the big leagues for anyone.
Nick winced and shook his head. “No, you’re not.”
“I am. There’s a Broadway show leaving New York and word on the street is we’re a lock for the Chicago run. I’m meeting with the show runners in a few days. I really can’t take on anything else right now.”
“That isn’t happening.”
“What do you mean?” The muscles in her back locked up as she stopped herself from flinching. Nick’s face was calm. He wasn’t trying to break her heart, she was sure, just delivering what sounded like the world’s worst news.
“Heitman said to tell you it’s going to London next. They just haven’t announced it.”
Shit.
Nothing was written in stone until you had the ten-commandments tablets in your hands. She knew that. Knew better than to count on anything in the constantly shifting sands of show business. But she let herself mourn for a moment, even though she made sure to keep every sign of her crushing disappointment off her face. She’d been so ready to take this next big leap forward. To join the big leagues.
For a moment, she wondered if she should doubt Drake. Who knew if he was ruthless enough to lie to get his mother what she wanted? But, no. It would only take one phone call to Heitman, or almost anyone in the industry, to check. She was sure it was true.
Get a grip, girl. Life’s disappointing. Let’s see what we can salvage here.
She’d kept her calendar clear for the Broadway show, not pursuing other gigs that would have taken over her schedule. Unless she wanted to take a big hit, going after this play with Heitman might be her best option this late in the game.
Of course, it would have been better had she not made out with the man who was effectively one of the show’s producers, but that couldn’t be helped now. She knew he wanted her. And there was no use pretending she hadn’t just spent the previous two nights imagining him naked and in her bed. But there was no room in her business plan for romance. Or even down and dirty one-night stands. Particularly not with the money.
Shaking her head, Maxie readjusted her battle plan and rolled into her standard pitch speech. The words flowed without hesitation. It was a presentation she’d made dozens of times by now, albeit never before to a man who’d kissed her senseless at a bus stop.
She slapped her portfolio on the table the moment her dinner plate was whisked away by the busboy and showed off her stuff.
Literally.
“We have a warehouse half a mile from the office. Historically, more than half of the prop needs of any given show can be fulfilled by our stock, and that number is trending upward as our inventory expands. We’ll save you time and that means money.” Nick flipped through the pages of digital photos of precisely organized rows of bins and crates and closets. Clothes, shoes, pots, pans, bicycles, birdcages, traffic lights, trees—anything and everything that a set designer might want to see on stage. The warehouse was her baby. Her business coup. Without it, she didn’t have a business. The financial crash had hit the theater world hard. Life had been rough for years as people cut back on luxuries, which definitely included nights out on the town watching plays. But when the real estate market in Chicago tanked, she picked up an old foreclosed warehouse for a song, borrowing money from her family after presenting her business plan in a three-hour PowerPoint presentation. She’d immediately started filling it with every prop she’d collected over twelve years of backstage work. Then she’d hired her network of talent, mining her friends, classmates and savvy competitors when she could.
Nick was listening.
She could tell he’d buried his frustration as the wheels clicked in his brain and he considered her proposal.
“We’re also prepared to fully staff the crew needs of the show, at whatever level necessary. This is a plus for you in that it will save an enormous amount of time. My crews work together without missing a beat—everyone on the same page, using the same system.”
“Isn’t it more traditional for the director to assemble the crew piecemeal? Hiring the best individual for each job?”
He didn’t look up from the portfolio. He’d moved on to the copies of her projected and actual budgets for shows she’d run in the past. She hoped he’d assume that the thinness of that section had more to do with the inherent dryness of pages of numbers than the fact that she’d yet to land many big shows.
“It is. It’s also traditional to waste time creating a smoothly functioning crew out of a crowd of people who are used to a dozen different ways to call a show. I don’t waste time, and my people work together like clockwork from day one.”
Closing the cover, he drummed his fingertips on it for a moment while looking at her. She ran through her mental list of expected objections and prepared to counter them with articulate explanations.
“How many shows do you run at a time?”
A new question.
“Myself, only one. My company? Right now we’re managing Oz and a couple of small local productions.” She wanted to tell him about her vision for the future, her sandcastles in the sky, but this wasn’t high school. And she wasn’t standing in front of an open locker, hoping the cute boy across the hall would ask her to prom. She needed to impress.
One of the hottest directors in Chicago wanted her. She was disappointed about missing out on the Broadway show, but this opportunity could be nearly as big for her.
She sat calmly under Nick’s pensive gaze. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that she knew what she was doing, and that she did it better than almost anyone. Let him stare as long as he liked. When he figured her out, if he figured her out, there was only one conclusion to reach: She’d be the one solid, knowable factor in the swirling mystery that was the world of a theater production.
He wouldn’t be able to resist her.
“You’re sure you can take on another show right now?”
She didn’t even blink.
“I was already planning to do that, plus it’ll be at least three months before we open. In ten years, Carving Bananas will be stage managing half the shows in Chicago.”
She had him. She could feel it.
Handing the portfolio back to her, he waved off the sommelier’s approach with more wine and signaled for the check. “That’s ambitious.”
“That’s a given,” she said, dropping the folio at her side. She knew the end of a meeting when she felt one. It was time to wrap it up. “We’re efficient. We’re cost effective. We minimize chaos. The more shows we run, the more obvious that will be. The only limits are on how many good people I can hire, and that pool is nowhere near tapped out yet.”
“Okay.”
He plucked the napkin out of his lap and dropped it on the tablecloth in front of him. Like clockwork, the server arrived with the check and Nick handed him a credit card. The man returned almost immediately and Nick gestured for him to wait while he signed the slip. Before she could figure out what to say next, Nick put his hands on the arms of the chair and started to slide it back.
Her butt was frozen to her seat, like she was sitting on a block of ice, the cold locking her brain into immobility. Her jaw creaked as she pushed the word out. “So, okay?”
He looked down at her. “You’ve got the job.”
“I do?”
The distinction was important.
The corner of his mouth quirked upward. “Meet with Heitman. Go over the script. If your numbers are in line, then you, your crew and your warehouse have the job.”
She stood up. Now was the time for some memorable comment to seal the deal. Some pithy remark about how he wouldn’t regret it. Maxie opened her mouth.
“I have to go to the bathroom.”
She spun on one heel and walked away, bracing herself momentarily on the arm of a passing busboy as the trembling in her knees threatened to spill her across the slick Brazilian-cherry wood floor.
The pristine surfaces of the ladies’ room at Nomi had never echoed so loudly with shouts of glee.
“Yes!”
An older woman in beige linen and pumps yanked her hands out of the sink and left the room without drying them, glancing back over her shoulder on her way out.
“Yes!”
A glimpse of herself in the wall-length mirror arrested her celebratory stomping dance around the room. She laughed out loud and wondered if the escaping woman had gone to summon help.
Her eyes glittered wildly and color rose high in her cheeks. She couldn’t get enough air for shouting, though her open-mouthed grin was unshakeable.
She looked high.
Or insane.
The laughter rose from her belly and shook her soul with joy, turning into another loud woo-hoo! at the end.
“We’re on our way, baby,” she said with satisfaction to her reflection and shook her head at the grin she still couldn’t get off her face. But she must have managed to tone it down a notch from lunatic to simply happy, because when a waitress cracked the door to the restroom and poked her head in gingerly, she smiled back at Maxie before glancing around the empty room and leaving. She checked her cell phone before leaving the bathroom and, sure enough, there was a missed call and a message from a New York number. But she didn’t even care about the missed opportunity with the New York show. Heitman wanted her and his shows almost always hit the big time after launching in Chicago.
This could be the start of everything.
Walking back to where Nick was waiting for her near the elevators to the ground floor, energy flooded her body. She felt as if sparks were shooting out of her fingertips and the ends of her hair. It wasn’t possible for a body to hold in this much electricity. She wanted to sprint up a mountain. Or dance, dripping sweat, to a thundering beat in a hot, crowded club.
Or be thrown on a bed and devoured.
The elevator doors opened in front of Nick. She heard another couple approaching down the hall.
She couldn’t hold this explosion inside for one more second. And mountain climbing and dancing were out.
Stepping into the elevator behind Nick, she pushed the door-close button in the face of the startled couple and dropped the portfolio to the floor with a heavy thud.
Nick looked at the folio. He looked at her, eyebrows drawn together. She might have seen the beginnings of a smile.
Yeah, no time for that.
She smacked her palm against his chest when he took a step toward her and held him away. Felt a full-body memory flash of the last time she’d had her hands on him.
“In sixty seconds there’s nothing but business between us.”
She curled her fingers under the placket of his shirt and yanked him close enough to wrap her free hand around his neck and pull his mouth down to hers. Her lips bruised against his teeth as their mouths crashed together.
The world spun and she stumbled backward until her head rapped against the elevator wall, held up by the iron bands of his arms around her, one of his hands on her ass, pulling her up and into him, the other gripping the back of her neck. His tongue plunged into her mouth and hers did battle with it. She moaned as fire shot through her and raced her hands over him, desperate to get even closer.
He found the hem of her shirt and scraped a hand up her naked back, while she arched her breasts into him and sucked greedily at his mouth. Gasping, she dragged his hand from her back to her naked breast beneath the shirt, crying out when he scraped a thumbnail roughly over her hard nipple.
The ding of the bell when they hit the lobby barely registered.
When she came to, they were leaning against each other like two shipwreck survivors stumbling back onto solid ground. Nick’s forehead braced against hers and she wasn’t certain whose breath rasped louder in the small square box that suddenly felt devoid of air.
The slide of the doors opening and then closing again pulled her part of the way to clarity. She knuckled the door-open button before they were recalled to the twenty-fifth floor.
The tiny ping of a hairpin hitting the floor as she straightened rang in her ears like a bell.
Her updo was definitely a lost cause.
She jammed the elevator door open with one booted foot and tugged her fingers roughly through what remained of her French twist. Pins dropped and bounced on the floor as she raked loose hair back, hoping she didn’t look like she’d just jumped off a cliff. The descent from the twenty-fifth floor had been quite a ride.
They both stepped out into the lobby and Nick handed her the forgotten portfolio. He didn’t let go when she tugged it, so their fingers met on the black leather handle of the case.
His eyes were deep and dark, all iris and shadows of blue. His breath was still uneven.
Hers was, too.
“Sixty seconds?” He sounded like he regretted it.
She felt the zing where his hand touched hers, but didn’t back down.
“All business.” Her answer was firm.
After another moment, he dropped the handle of the portfolio and led the way through the revolving glass doors at the front of the upscale hotel that housed Nomi. A shiny black town car pulled up as they stepped out into the cool night air. Nick lifted a hand to the driver and turned to her.
“Can I offer you a ride?”
She laughed and shook her head.
“I think I need the walk.” She slung the folio’s shoulder strap across her chest and nodded goodbye. Taking her first long strides, she gloried in the feeling of her muscles moving, needing the activity to calm her sizzling nerves.
“Maxie, it’s three miles to your place.”
She didn’t let herself wonder how he knew that.
“Thank god!” she called out without looking back, letting her legs eat up the long walk home.
She felt his eyes on her until she turned the corner and headed north.
Chapter Three
A week later, Maxie was up to her ass in script notes and preliminary prop lists. Heitman had been his usual model of efficiency, and she’d delivered a lengthy monologue thanking him for the second chance after their last, cursed show together. She was in love with the play itself—a brutal story about a young South Side Irish man losing his innocence after joining the force in the John Burge years of the Chicago Police Department, when it wasn’t uncommon for cops to torture confessions out of suspects. The Restless Tide was shocking. Controversial. And almost guaranteed to win a slew of Jeff Awards, if she was any judge of talent. Smith himself was a fascinating, unpredictable genius who was barely articulate in person, but he observed rehearsal with laser-like intensity each day and returned the next morning with new pages that shone even brighter, like diamonds.
She hadn’t seen Nick since their dinner meeting, but at least she’d finally figured out a way to get some sleep. Of course, her solution was one she couldn’t mention in polite company.
Thank god her sisters had never been polite. The preggos cracked up when she explained how she was managing to deal with her rising tide of sexual frustration, having had no chance to get her hands on the elusive Nick Drake.
“I’m just saying, I’m gonna have to hit Early to Bed for a replacement vibrator at this rate.” She grinned when they catcalled their approval.
She pressed a kiss onto the forehead of each giggling, snorting sister before leaving. Since their due dates were imminent, both had recently stopped working and they kept each other entertained during the day, alternating between each other’s homes. At least, as entertained as two women who had to pee constantly and take turns pulling each other off the couch could be. She’d set her phone’s ringtone for both of them and their husbands to Guns and Roses’s “Sweet Child o’ Mine.”
As she left Addy and Spencer’s castle of a Victorian gingerbread house, the wind blowing from the southwest whipped the loose curls of her hair in her face. Like any true, homegrown Chicago Cubs fan, she knew without thinking that the pennants lining the outfield wall of Wrigley were blowing out.
A good day for home runs.
She glanced at her watch—just after noon—and then again at the clear blue sky overhead.
There was almost always someone in the Tyler family who was willing to catch the 1:20 p.m. start of a weekday-afternoon Cubs game. She was ahead of schedule on the show and could blow off an afternoon if she put in a couple extra hours of paperwork later that night. She calculated her best odds on a Tuesday afternoon and dug out her cell phone.
By the time her call was answered, she was behind the wheel of her truck, heading to the ballpark.
“Wanna play hooky with me, Grace?”
* * *
A Polish, half a bag of peanuts and two frozen lemonades later, she sighed and rubbed her aching stomach. She passed the rest of the peanuts to the delicate blonde in the expensive suit beside her.
“This feels a little sacrilegious.”
Her sister-in-law cracked a peanut shell open with her teeth. The pile of broken shells at her feet had been growing steadily for the first four innings. They’d already sworn to their server that they’d clean up the mess. “I said I’d pick up the peanut shells! Jeez. And it was your idea to play hooky. Who’s up next?” She tossed another husk to the floor.
“Their cleanup batter. Ten gets you twenty it’s an intentional walk,” she said automatically, shading her eyes with one hand before remembering where she was. “And that’s not it. Look at this place.” She waved a hand at the private box around them. “We’re supposed to be squeezed into bleacher seats between a bunch of rowdy drunks, with some underage kid in front of us losing her lunch all over her shoes. My lemonade should be spiked with cheap vodka from a flask you’re hiding in your purse, and we should both be well on our way to a good sunburn by now. And Sarah and Addy should be here, too. What’s happened to us?” Although she knew her sisters would be with them if they weren’t both past their due dates at this point. They’d responded with total jealousy when Maxie and Grace texted them a selfie from the stadium.
“Welcome to the world of adulthood.” Grace sat back and propped her bare feet on the coffee table in front of them. She had already kicked her high-heeled, strappy sandals to the side of the sofa. “The company box. God, I’m glad I kept this perk in the budget. Non-alcoholic drinks because we both have to go back to work tonight. And shade.”
“That’s just what I mean.” Maxie shook her head in disgust and took another sip of her slushy. Let out a little yell as the Mariners’ base runner tried to steal second, only to be tagged out in a rundown between the second and first basemen. “Face it. We’ve lost our youth.”
Grace snorted as she sucked on the straw in her ice tea and then choked a little. “Come on, girl, it’s not all bad. Remember the vomit.”
“True. There is that.” Giving in, she propped up her feet on the table beside her sister-in-law’s and graciously accepted the rewards of aging. After all, there was something to be said for getting regular attention from the servers, who poked their heads in every fifteen minutes to see if they needed anything.
“So,” Grace said after cracking open another few peanuts shells, “we’ve been here for four innings, and you haven’t mentioned Nick Drake once, despite giving me every detail of your script review, your consults with Heitman, the résumé of every man and woman you’re putting on this crew and a fairly detailed rundown of the prop list for the show.” Grace pinned her with a bland look that was somehow also impossible to dodge. “What gives?”
She’d been holding in the words for a week.
“I haven’t seen the damn man!”
Grace tilted her head. “Since when?”
She bit her lip. “Since I, um, attacked him in a public elevator.”
“Ahh.”
Maxie shook her head and clenched her teeth. Kicking the table away, she jumped up and paced over to the plate-glass window. She leaned her forehead against the cool glass for a moment, but it wasn’t as soothing as she’d hoped it would be. After a moment, she laughed and turned to face the sofa again, leaning the back of her head against the glass.
“When I told him we had to be ‘all business’ after that second incident, I thought he’d try and schedule more of those meetings he’s so fond of.” She sighed and rapped her head lightly against the window, hoping it would help clear her mind. Didn’t work. “I didn’t think he’d up and vanish on me. Not that I care.”
“Right. You’re the picture of indifference.”
“Shut up.”
“Make me.”
“See, we’ve found our youth again.” Maxie grinned.
Grace’s next words stopped her cold.
“You know, he’s got a box here.” Crack, crunch, toss.
“Who? Nick?”
“Who else?”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I’ve watched a game from there. I knew his name rang a bell when you said it, I just didn’t make the connection right away. It’s been a year or two, but we’ve met several times. His company invited us when they were trying to woo your brother.” Maxie waved her on. Tell me more. “They wanted to franchise Tyler’s, take it nationwide. Hell, who knows? Worldwide. Nick’s company thinks big.”
“His company?” Her brother had nearly done business with a man she couldn’t stop picturing naked. Too strange. “I’m embarrassed to admit I wasn’t really paying attention to that part. God, I’m a jerk. Is he a really big deal?”
“He’s a venture capitalist. An angel investor. Deals in all kind of things. Companies or concepts with potential. Normally people pitch to angels rather than vice versa, but Nick’s a more proactive breed. He goes looking for prospects. Your brother decided he wanted to move more slowly and keep sole ownership.” Grace looked up at Maxie, her brow wrinkled. “I thought you were interested in this guy. Haven’t you found out anything about him at all? All you’d have to do is search his name on Google. There’s gotta be a million hits about him.”
“I want to jump him, not hire him. He just makes something in my brain go haywire.” Grace’s phone rang, preventing Maxie from continuing with that dangerous line of conversation. She flopped back onto the couch as her sister-in-law got up and started pacing with the phone.
What had she thought he did for a living? Ran around and saved his mother from making bad financial decisions? Backed shows all over the theater world? She supposed she’d mentally tagged him with some kind of generic “Finance Dude” title. Who the hell knew what a comptroller did, after all? He could have been a relatively regular guy just looking out for his mom.
Except no one would ever mistake Nick Drake for a “regular guy.” Or even a generic Finance Dude.
No, she’d known it was an unknown field to him, but their conversation over dinner had revealed that he’d mastered the most salient details quickly. His command of the information with which she’d supplied him in her sales pitch had been swift and complete.
But it still seemed weird for her to think of him with responsibilities that had nothing to do with her. She’d been so focused on her reaction to him that she hadn’t stepped back to acknowledge the fact that the man had a life. One that might keep him too busy to engineer ways to drop in on her and challenge her “all business” declaration, like she’d secretly hoped he would.
Okay. She’d let him live.
Grace was smiling as she bantered over the phone. Maxie caught the last piece of her conversation. “Yes, dear,” she said, “I’m planning an afternoon affair with another man. Can you text me his number? You’re a doll. Love you.” She kept the phone in her hand until the message alert went off and then tapped the screen. “Bingo.”
Waggling her eyebrows at Maxie, she held the phone to her ear.
“What are you doing?”
She grew suspicious, if only because her sister-in-law was backing away from her. She seemed intent on getting as much heavy furniture between the two of them as possible. The sudden roar of the crowd meant she was missing something exciting on the field, but she kept her eyes on Grace, whose face had lit up.
“Nick? Hi, it’s Grace Tyler.”
She’d wrap her hands around that woman’s neck and squeeze until she was dead. She jumped off the sofa and rushed toward the back of the room.
Grace clapped a hand over the end of her cell phone, trying not to laugh and failing. “You’ll leave your brother a widower.”
“He’ll get over you.” She circled the sofa, angling to trap the devil between the big screen TV and the bar.
“I can tell from the roar of the crowd that you’re at the ballpark, Nick.” Grace kept the sofa between them, jumping up on the coffee table rather than going around it. “You’ll never guess. Yup. About ten doors down, I think. Step out onto your balcony and wave. I hear there’s a new connection between our families, and I wanted to know if you’d—”
She ducked through the sliding glass door at the front of the room and yanked it shut behind her. Faster than she looked, that girl.
Maxie would have tugged the door open and dragged her in by her perfect blond pageboy, but she knew that Nicholas Drake would witness the assault.
She might not have been able to prevent Grace from leaving, but she could damn well keep her from coming back in. She shoved the coffee table up against the stationary half of the sliding glass door. The table was a couple inches short of filling the entire track, so the door would still slide open a bit, but that was okay.
Grace wasn’t that skinny. She was stuck out there.
After raising a hand and waving down the long row of balconies, Grace slid the phone in her pocket and tugged on the door.
Maxie watched her struggle, pleased with herself.
Grace pressed her lips to the minute crack in the door. “I see we’ve found our youth again. Should I call your mother?”
“You’re a traitor, and should be left in the bleachers with the drunks and the vomit.”
“Charming, sister mine. You have approximately ninety seconds before he gets here.”
She jumped like a cat on fire. Dragging the coffee table back to where it belonged, she grouched at her sister-in-law. “If you don’t have a mirror in your bag, I swear I will throw you right off that balcony.”
She caught the silver compact one-handed. Made do with lip liner and strawberry-flavored ChapStick and wondered why she didn’t ever remember to get her eyebrows done. Maybe that was the secret to Grace’s always-polished appearance.
When she was done, she winged the compact back across the room, catching Grace’s wince as it smacked into her open hand. Served her right. Maxie turned to the door with a sharp inhale as it opened.
It was like having double vision. She shook her head, waiting for her memory of elevator Nick—eyes hot, breathing hard with lust—to dissolve over the clear lines of the tall man in the suit who was lounging with one shoulder propped against their doorway.
“You’re saving me from the world’s most boring corporate outing,” he said with a smile. “I’m glad.”
“Bankers?” Grace asked as she walked over to take his hand, air kiss him on the cheek and pull him into the room.
Maxie clutched the couch cushion beneath her butt with both hands and reminded herself that Grace was not hitting on her man. Reminded herself also that he wasn’t her man, even if there was no reason for someone to cling to his arm like that.
“Worse. Accountants. Although I did invite these genius kids I’m trying to seal a deal with. The four of them are a trip.” Nick smiled down at Grace, who wrinkled her nose and offered to order him a drink. When he took her up on it, she disappeared into the hall. Strolling over to where Maxie sat fuming, Nick dropped into one of the straight-backed chairs across the coffee table from the couch and hooked his foot beneath the rung of another, dragging it closer so that he could prop both shiny loafer-shod feet on it. Draping an arm over the back of his chair, his back to the game, he might as well have twiddled a toothpick in his mouth for all the sense of urgency he seemed to possess. There was no sign of the Nick who’d been with her in that elevator.
“Hello, Ms. Tyler. Working hard?”
She forced her aching fingers to loosen their grip. Crossing her arms over her chest, she kept her voice as cool as an iced margarita when she answered. “I am a well-oiled machine, Mr. Drake. The crew’s good to go.” Her smile was sweet, her voice perky. “Your playwright’s the one who’s causing the production delays.”
“Hmm, yes.” He rubbed the knuckle of his index finger above his lip and nodded again. “That impression has been growing on me, as well.”
Whoa. Backpedal. The last thing she wanted to do was spook the backers.
“I’m not saying the play’s not good. It is. It’s brilliant, actually.” She didn’t have to lie there, thank god. The only explanation she might have for the playwright’s uncanny talent with words might be demonic possession, since he could barely string together a coherent sentence in person, but she wasn’t about to knock it. “But he shouldn’t have this much power at this late stage of the game. He’s too stressed out about achieving perfection and that means rewrites, which were fine at the beginning, but he needs to lock it down now. Your mama’s backing his choices all the way, though, and his delays are costing us. Heitman’s gotta be the final word, not this kid. No matter how talented.”
“How much is it costing us?” His eyes narrowed.
“Less with me than with any other stage manager out there.” She stood up. This was a time to hold the high ground, so to speak.
“That’s not exactly encouraging.”
Before she could even register what was going on, Nick was pacing and barking orders into his cell phone.
She really needed to register the fact that this guy was not from the theater world. She kept forgetting that run-of-the-mill disasters in the lead-up to a big show would seem like complete and utter chaos to a civilian, particularly one who was used to the less...colorful world of business.
She tugged at his sleeve as he snapped out commands at some poor soul who had to be his mother’s personal assistant.
The assistant had probably never dealt with anything more challenging than organizing fundraising tables for the annual Lincoln Park Zoo Ball. This latest leap into the arts by Nick’s mother was probably the biggest shitstorm from which they’d ever had to protect themselves.
“Listen, Nick.” She ducked as he whirled around, his elbow breezing through the space her temple had occupied a moment earlier. “Hey! Watch it, Drake. Listen—”
Shouting in the wind, she was. There was only one thing to do.
She snagged a liter bottle of club soda off the bar and shook it.
Hard.
Right as her hand cranked the cap off she spun around, seltzer spurting volcanically from the bottle. She had a split second to wish she wasn’t always quite so sure of herself.
Then she blasted him square in the face.
In the silence that followed she could hear a high-pitched voice squeaking from his phone, rising in volume when no one answered.
Nick’s pale blue Oxford was plastered to his chest. Club soda ran off his chin, beaded up and then soaked into the wool of his charcoal-gray suit coat, dripped off the spiky tips of his hair. She was splattered with it when he tossed his head back and whipped the wet ends of his hair out of his eyes, his phone still clutched in one hand.
Slowly, cautiously, she raised her open hands in front of her.
No sudden movements.
Just as slowly, but without a hint of caution, he walked toward her, wiping the phone off on his pants and slipping it into a pocket. She retreated one step at a time until she ran into the hard edge of the table, which caught her just beneath her butt. She leaned even farther back from the hips, certain there wasn’t enough room in this box to escape him. He didn’t stop his approach until he was pressed hard against her thighs, hands braced on the table on either side of her.
Her elbows ached from leaning on them. Maybe hosing him down with club soda hadn’t been the best way to get his attention.
He lifted one hand and wrapped it around her throat.
She sucked in a breath and shivered as the liquid soaking him seeped into her jeans, her shirt. Excruciatingly aware of the hard wedge of thigh that was pressed against her crotch, she shifted slightly and saw an answering fire flare in his eyes. His voice was a growl that thrummed against her nerves and sent heat racing through her system.
“Do you know what I’m going to do to you?”
She surrendered. Hooked her ankles behind his waist and used his shoulders to pull herself up.
“If it doesn’t involve getting me naked on this table, I don’t want to know.” She wrapped her arms around his neck. His warm breath brushed her mouth as his face dipped toward hers, eyes half-shut in that slow burn of a smile.
“I’m so glad we agree.” The words slipped out between barely-there kisses. She tolerated that for a moment and then captured his bottom lip in her teeth and nipped, hard. Stay still and kiss me.
The sudden blaring of 80s hard rock from across the room was more of a shock than a turn-on, she had to admit.
“What the—” Nick was prevented from pulling away by her legs, which were still wrapped around him.
“Ignore it. They’ll call back later.” She didn’t normally approve of begging, but if that was what it took...
She ran her hands up his arms, across his shoulders and then cupped his face in her hands, pulling him back to her.
He came willingly, lifting her butt up onto the table behind her for leverage.
“If there’s some theater emergency that requires your immediate attention, I swear we’ll be right back to the part where I strangle you.”
He flexed his hands on her hips, drawing her tighter against him. The thick length of him against her made her groan. She slid her fingers around his neck to thread through his hair as she arched her back, increasing the pressure.
“Those calls get ‘Cabaret.’ Or, hmm, yessss—” His hands slid up her sides until his thumbs brushed the undersides of her breasts. Her mind went blank, but her lips kept forming the words as her head dropped back and she gave in to the need pounding through her body. “Or ‘Send in the Clowns,’ not GNR.”
GNR.
Guns N’ Roses.
The words registered.
“Sweet Child o’ Mine.”
Her eyes flew open as she snapped forward. Pain exploded as her head cracked into Nick’s. She clutched a hand to her brow as he did the same, a grimace on his face.
For a moment, she forgot the world and simply stared at him. How had she lost her head so completely around this man, and where the hell had Grace disappeared to anyway? That had to be the longest walk for a drink ever. Thank god. Because if Grace had walked in while she was trying to climb Nick like a tree, Maxie would be hearing about it forever.
“Sweet Child o’ Mine.”
The words crashed back into her brain and she jumped off the table and shoved Nick to the side, whooping as she slid over the back of the couch and dove for her bag.
“The babies! Where is my damn phone? One of my sisters has gotta be going into labor. They know better than to call us at the ballpark for anything other than life or death emergencies.”
It was ringing again, Guns N’ Roses was calling to her, but she couldn’t find her phone in her bag before the ringing stopped. She’d call back whichever family member was trying to reach them on the way to the hospital.
“Where the heck is Grace?”
Nick lifted the phone to his ear again as she danced in place and pulled up her call log. Her brother-in-law J.D.’s name topped the list. “Sarah’s baby!”
Damn Nick, didn’t he have any sense of urgency? A baby was on the way and he was just standing there making calls.
At the door, she reached for the knob and jumped back just in time to avoid a broken nose as it crashed open and Grace barreled through, laughing, shouting.
“Sarah’s having a baby! At last, damn,” Maxie said.
“Sarah? Spencer just called me to say that Addy’s on her way to the hospital.”
They stopped for a moment to stare at each other. Both babies?
“Damn. That stuff about women’s hormones syncing up if they spend a lot of time together is some powerful shit.” Maxie shrugged. However it had happened, the babies were on their way and they needed to hustle.
“I’m not in an E-Z Out lot,” Maxie said. “You?”
“I cabbed it. You won’t be able to get your truck out ’til the game ends.”
“I’ll leave it. Shit. They’re gonna tow it, aren’t they? Oh, well.”
“Maxie.” It was Nick.
“Don’t worry,” she said without looking back, tossing the words over her shoulder as she rummaged through her bag for cash to pay off their tab. Grace was shouting down the hall for their server, who’d disappeared—of course—after practically never leaving their side during the game. “Talk to Heitman,” she continued. “Get your mom to back him up and put a choke chain on Smith and everything will be fine. We aren’t even close to disaster.”
Grace reappeared without the server and shrugged. Turning to Nick, who was now standing behind her, she thrust out the money she’d gathered from purse.
He waved it off. “Ladies,” he said.
“Just take it, will you?” She shoved the fistful of bills at him, not sure why he wouldn’t stop talking and take it.
“Aunties.”
That caught both of their attention.
“Go two blocks east on Addison. At the corner of Fremont, on the south side of the street, my driver is waiting for you.” He nodded to Maxie. “You’ve seen Tommy. He’ll take you to the hospital. And if you give me your parking ticket, I’ll get your truck out of the lot.”
Maxie heart thumped an extra beat. She rubbed at the sore spot in her chest with the edge of her fist, telling herself it was the emotion of the moment, nothing more. She tried to say thank-you but couldn’t get the words out.
Grace didn’t hesitate. She threw her arms around Nick and smacked a loud kiss on his cheek.
“Nick Drake, I love you more than Kerry Wood.” Grace’s infatuation with the Cubs’ relief pitcher from the nineties was family legend.
“I’m flattered,” he said with a smile, giving her a kiss on the cheek, too. “Now, get out of here. Call me with the good news.”
Calling out their goodbyes and thanks, Grace tugged Maxie out the door. She broke free for just long enough to run back inside and say goodbye to Nick the way she really wanted to. She flung her arms around his neck, rose up on tiptoes and pressed her mouth to his.
“Thank you,” she said, and then gave a sharp yank on his tie. “And if you kiss my sister again, I’ll cut your heart out,” she whispered in his ear.
“Duly noted. Now go.” He smacked her ass. The sweet sting only made her laugh.
Sprinting through the crowds at Wrigley, Maxie and Grace elbowed and bumped their way down the long ramps to the ground-floor exits and then jogged down the sidewalk on Addison, both of them on their phones, trying to find out which sister was in labor.
Of course, it turned out that both Addy and Sarah had been hiding labor pains all afternoon, not wanting to alarm anyone until they were sure that their babies were coming.
And coming right now.
“Thank god they’re both at Northwestern.” Maxie laughed as they tumbled into Nick’s car, calling out directions to the driver. “If I had to pick which one of them to visit, I’d be hearing about it from the other one until my dying day.”
“I hate to break it to you, dear. They’re not going to be in the same room. You’re still going to have to choose.”
“They can’t share a room? Princesses. Fine, we’ll do shifts. Trade rooms every hour. Deal?”
“Hey, I don’t want to be guilt tripped any more than you do. Deal.”
The hospital was enormous. There also seemed to be a preponderance of idiots on staff, none of whom were able to provide them the most basic information about Addy or Sarah. Grace did manage, however, to find her husband and kids. The group of them, even larger once their mom arrived, made such a stink that a large woman in flowered scrubs cornered them at the reception desk and explained that the Tyler sisters were not, in fact, the only patients in the hospital.
By the time they finally made it to the labor and delivery floor, it was clear that someone had telephoned ahead with a warning. Two R.N.s met them at the elevator doors and took command like drill sergeants. Maxie clamped down on her normal urge to give directions, not take them.
She had to admit that, in this particular scenario, she might not know best.
As the hours blurred, Maxie learned more than she ever wanted to know about the stages of labor and dilation and epidurals. The latter seemed to provide immediate relief to Addy, who looked up at her for the first time in hours and asked for the final score of the Cubs game. Sarah, who was three doors down the hall, had waved off the epidural and was still powering through her labor pains, pacing slowly back and forth across the linoleum floor.
Toward the end, when matters were unfolding with an astonishing rapidity and teams of people were sweeping in and out of rooms with drill-like precision, Maxie found herself mostly holding hands: Addy’s, Sarah’s, Addy’s husband Spencer’s, her mother’s. Sarah’s husband, J.D., didn’t do handholding but his calm-under-pressure attitude kept them all from getting too overwhelmed. Watching from the sidelines as her sisters found their way without much help from anyone, she felt at once useless and amazed. Addy cursed when she heard that Sarah had already delivered, giving a last enormous push that sent a squalling, sloppy baby into her doctor’s waiting hands.
Maxie burst out of the hospital doors at 3:00 a.m., hugging herself and wondering how it wasn’t broad daylight. There should be a parade and confetti. Maybe even fireworks.
The street outside the Galter Pavilion of Northwestern was empty. The rest of her family had left an hour ago, but she hadn’t been able to tear herself away from the quiet rooms where her sisters were resting with their new families. She wondered how she was going to find a taxi. Or, for that matter, get her truck back.
While she was debating the likelihood that Nick would answer her call in the middle of the night so she could pick up her truck, a familiar black Lincoln Town Car slid to a halt in front of her. Seconds later, the friendly face of Tommy the driver popped up to smile at her across the roof of the car.
“Mr. Drake thought you might need a ride.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, and then gave up and climbed into the backseat of the car, muttering all the way.
“It’s enough to make you suspicious, how that man thinks of everything.”
“He doesn’t miss much, no, ma’am.”
“And you’ve just been, what, waiting here?”
“Nah. He asked your brother to let us know when the babies came.”
Which still meant that he’d been parked outside for an hour while she was lingering upstairs. She felt guilty about that for a moment and then reminded herself that there wasn’t any way she could have known.
The cellophane-wrapped bouquet of roses on the seat should have charmed her, especially since it was pinned with a card that read, “Congratulations, Auntie.”
For some reason, she was just annoyed. Being outmaneuvered, even when it was to her benefit, made her cranky.
Enough so that when Tommy reeled off her address and asked if that was where she wanted him to drop her off, she had a better idea. Conveniently enough, her destination was not at all far from the Gold Coast hospital complex.
* * *
The insistent electrical trill of his cell phone tugged Nick from the depths of sleep even as he buried his head under a pillow and tried to ignore it.
Unsuccessful, he slid a hand across the bedside table, groping in the dark. Once he found it, he dragged it back under the pillow, tapping blindly until something connected.
“What?”
“James Robinson and Elizabeth Ann.”
“Wrong number.”
“Personally I was rooting for Esmerelda and Diego. I love how sexy that name sounds. Diego—you know what I mean? But I suppose the parents know best.”
He shoved the pillow off his head and sat up in the dark.
“Maxie?”
“You said to call with the good news.” Her laughter rumbled through the phone. She sounded so close, whispering in his ear in the silence of his room. He glanced at the digital glow of the clock next to his bed.
“It’s three o’clock in the morning. Where are you?”
“Downstairs, having a chat with your doorman.”
After calling the desk to okay his late-night visitor, Nick managed to drag on a pair of dark jeans and a gray T-shirt. In his kitchen, he set a coffee mug, a water glass and a wine goblet on the counter.
That’s when the solid knock landed on his door.
He pulled open the heavy wooden door and then stepped back, looking at her framed in the light from the bright hallway. Her clothes were wrinkled and her eyes were tired, but she was bouncing on the balls of her feet, probably still riding an adrenaline high that would have her crashing any minute. He turned to the side, motioning her in.
She didn’t move.
Chin lifted, she stared at him, an almost visible shimmer of energy rising off her skin.
“I don’t sleep with people I work with. Or for.”
An interesting opening line.
“You know, you don’t really work for me.” He shoved his hands deep into his pockets and leaned one shoulder against the doorway. He’d thought about this quite a bit in the week during which he’d kept himself away from the project. “I’m more of an outside consultant.”
Her slow grin slid over him like tiny, licking flames.
“See, that’s just what I was thinking.” She stepped inside and closed the door.
Chapter Four
The sparkling Chicago skyline sprawled in front of the wall of windows in the living room. The distant reaches of Lake Michigan merged seamlessly with the dark sky, a horizon that couldn’t be seen, only imagined.
“The view on the forty-sixth floor just oozes wealth, doesn’t it?” She drifted over to the windows. “My view is of the Cigarettes Cheaper across the street.”
He didn’t have any response to that. He wasn’t about to deny enjoying his home.
Having decided to come inside, Maxie seemed unable to settle in one spot, pacing around the room like a cat. She stopped to run a hand over the back of the leather couch, rest a fingertip on the roughly carved surface of the stone obelisk on the large low table in front of the couch, click her fingernails against the floor-to-ceiling glass.
He thought about what it would be like for her to take such a delicate, thorough inspection of him instead of his condo, and wished she’d stay still for a moment.
“Tommy brought you here?” The silence needed to be broken.
“Yes, but I knew where you lived.” She turned and started flipping idly through the pages of a coffee-table book—graceful photographs of architectural details, enlarged to lose all resemblance to reality—and looked up at him through dark lashes, her eyes giving away nothing. “You’re not the only one who can run a background check.”
“Excuse me?”
“I figured that out because you knew where I live. I work pretty hard to keep that info off the web, you know.” She dropped the cover of the book and walked back to the window. The room was dimly lit and her silhouette showed as negative space against the city lights. “Do you have any idea how likely actors are to turn up on your doorstep at 3:00 a.m. with a broken heart, looking for beer?”
“It’s past 3:00 a.m. now. If you tell me you’re here because you’re broken-hearted and looking for a six-pack, I’ll be hugely disappointed.”
She laughed and swung around to face him. The lights behind her left her face in darkness.
“No six-packs in your fancy condo?”
She was needling him. Why? The fancy condo insult from any other woman might have led him to believe that she was uncomfortable with his penthouse. It was a pretty goddamn visible display of wealth. But he couldn’t imagine Maxie Tyler, chameleon extraordinaire, being out of her element anywhere.
He wasn’t about to start apologizing for the family fortune he’d rescued through long hours of hard work. He took a deep breath and Maxie froze, as if bracing herself for the sarcastic comment she’d tried to provoke. He decided on a different tack.
He kept his voice mild as he moved into the open kitchen that unfolded off the living room. “I have beer, if that’s what you’d like. Or celebratory champagne. Coffee?” His waving hand took in the lineup of glasses on the marble countertop.
She stayed silent for a long minute.
He could wait.
Finally, she shook her head and walked toward him. The sway of her hips as she strolled was a powerful prod to the imagination. He wondered if it was unconscious or for his benefit.
“Just water, thanks.”
He’d expected her to stop on the far side of the counter, the wide stretch of stone between them, but she circled it and stepped onto the terra-cotta tiles of the kitchen floor, stopping several feet away from him.
When he handed her the tall, cool glass, she stretched out an arm to take it. Her fingers avoided his on the glass.
Seeing that ratcheted the tension up anyway.
She lifted the glass to her mouth, eyes locked on his, and only broke the connection when she tilted her head back, her throat working as she drained the glass dry and set it back on the counter with a clink.
“What are you doing here, Maxie?”
He could read her face as she ran through a dozen different responses and discarded them all.
In favor of the honest truth.
She shrugged.
“I don’t know.”
He gave her an out.
“Do you want me to call you a cab? I already told Tommy to go home for the night.”
“I don’t want you to do anything at all for me, Nick.” She tried to jerk away as he caught her slim wrists in his hands and gently pulled her toward him.
“Maxie.”
Staring at his shirt, she refused to meet his eyes. He rested his chin gently on the top of her head, her curls tickling his face. After a moment her arms crept around his waist and he was glad she couldn’t see his smile.
“Make up your mind, Maxie. You can’t be pissed at me and want to go to bed with me at the same time.”
Her voice was muffled but clear.
“Wanna bet?”
A hard pinch on his stomach was her answer to his silent laughter. Then her hands slid under his T-shirt and stroked up and down his back, warm fingers on skin that suddenly felt hot. When her face tilted up to him, her mouth was right there. She sighed into his kiss, opening to him, and he wasn’t laughing any longer.
He brushed fingertips down her cheek, smoothing over downy softness before stroking down the strong column of her neck. Her mouth was cool and wet from the water and her tongue teased his, dancing with it for a moment before pulling away as she tilted her head to the other side and changed the angle of the kiss.
She was warm in his arms, and the slow drift of heat from her spread over him like a drug. Breaking the kiss, he dragged his hands up to frame her face, pushing back her dark curls. Lowering his mouth to hers again, he brushed his lips back and forth until she deepened the kiss.
Her palms slid up his chest and over his shoulders and he buried his face at the base of her neck, inhaling her dark, sweet scent.
He looked up and caught her snaking a hand up to cover her mouth, wide open in a giant, creaking yawn.
Ah, the death of the ego.
“Whoops.” He couldn’t believe she’d made him blush. “Sorry.”
Abandoning all hopes of wild sex in the moonlight, he wrapped one arm around her shoulders, tucked the other under her butt, and bumped her up into his arms. “Come on.” He headed down the dark hall to his bedroom.
She pounded a fist on his chest.
“Put me down. I can walk.”
“I know you can. I’ve enjoyed watching you do so on more than one occasion.”
Thump. Again.
“Put me down.”
“Shut up.”
He didn’t stop until his knees bumped the edge of the king-size mattress, where he deposited her on top of the rucked-up duvet. Glaring up at him, she raked the hair out of her eyes with one hand, using the other to push herself up. But her toes slid under the covers and he knew she was fighting a losing battle.
“I’m not sleepy.”
He gave her shoulder a gentle push, rolling her onto her back among the fluffy white pillows piled in front of the headboard. Sitting on the edge of the mattress, he held up a placating hand.
“If you can stay awake for five whole minutes, then I promise...”
Smoothing back her hair, he leaned down and pressed a kiss to her forehead, then brushed the tip of her nose with his lips, and the corner of her mouth.
The curve of her ear.
“I’ll ravage the pants off you,” he whispered. His words made her shiver.
She was determined. He’d give her that. She fought every millimeter, but as he stroked her hair, her lids fell inexorably shut. She curled up on her side, one hand tucked beneath the pillow. Even so, she muttered at him, “Not sleeping.”
“Of course not.”
“Pants off.”
“Absolutely.”
He stood up and stretched mightily. Considered the empty smoothness of the sheets in the guest bedroom at the end of the hall.
Oh, what the hell.
At least this way he’d have the memory of sleeping with her in his bed.
Stripping off his jeans and chucking them toward the door of the walk-in closet in the corner, he moved to the far side of the big bed and slid under the comforter. Leaving his T-shirt and boxers on would be his nod to propriety. She was curled up all the way across the mattress, her back to him.
That wouldn’t do at all.
But as soon as he wrapped an arm around her waist and tucked her against him, Nick realized his mistake. Her butt was snug against his crotch and she’d curled her hand around his, pressing his arm between her breasts.
He dropped his head on a pillow with a low groan and resigned himself to the wait for sleep to come.
Long before it did, his breath had slowed to match hers, almost imperceptible in the darkness next to him.
* * *
When she awoke, sunlight warm on her face and a tangle of sheets around her body, Maxie was alone in a strange bed.
She slid her hands across the luxuriously soft sheet beneath her, wrinkled now with the impression of two sleeping bodies. Not a strange bed, no. The enormous bed with its slate-colored down duvet, the sleek lines of the dark, low dresser and bedside table, the bare walls—all of it fit her picture of Nick Drake, captain of a financial empire.
That it did not remotely resemble the explosion of clothes, photographs and random souvenirs from past shows that distinguished her own bedroom shouldn’t bother her.
Should it?
Her midsection growled audibly. Introspection would have to wait. The last meal she’d consumed had been a Polish and some peanuts at the game the previous afternoon, not counting the various candy bars she and Grace had snagged from vending machines in the corridors of the hospital.
She ran her tongue over her teeth.
A toothbrush wouldn’t hurt, either.
When she emerged from the bathroom, she placed her feet carefully so as to make no noise in the silent apartment. She felt like a cat burglar and that was annoying, since she wasn’t sneaking anywhere.
She heard the clicking before she saw him and wasn’t surprised to find Nick hunched over the keyboard of a laptop computer on the coffee table, forearms resting on his knees as he leaned forward and typed with impressive speed.
His cheeks curved into a smile as she walked over to the large leather couch, so she knew he heard her, but he continued typing without looking up. He was dressed in yet another crisply tailored suit, ready for the day to begin. She ran her palms over her wrinkled jeans and felt half-dressed, and poorly at that, in comparison. He’d clearly been awake for some time already and she couldn’t say why this bothered her.
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Amy Jo Cousins
Opposites attract, but then what?Maxie Tyler is Chicago’s toughest stage manager. Her latest gig is just the break she needs, and she’s not going to let anyone get in her way. Not even the producer with dreamy blue eyes and bespoke suits that fit him perfectly in all the right places.A successful venture capitalist, Nick Drake is used to calling the shots. He doesn’t care about art unless it turns a profit. This show might prove to be a good investment, but he’s not sure if Maxie Tyler will. Her need to control every detail of the show makes him nervous. So does the fact that they can’t seem to keep their hands off each other.Scandal and disaster threaten her career, his reputation and the success of the play. Two people accustomed to being in control will have to trust each other if the show will, indeed, go on. And they’ll have to trust their feelings if their passion is going to last after the last curtain goes down and the lights go up.
Opposites attract, but then what?
Maxie Tyler is Chicago’s toughest stage manager. Her latest gig is just the break she needs, and she’s not going to let anyone get in her way. Not even the producer with dreamy blue eyes and bespoke suits that fit him perfectly in all the right places.
A successful venture capitalist, Nick Drake is used to calling the shots. He doesn’t care about art unless it turns a profit. This show might prove to be a good investment, but he’s not sure if Maxie Tyler will. Her need to control every detail of the show makes him nervous. So does the fact that they can’t seem to keep their hands off each other.
Scandal and disaster threaten her career, his reputation and the success of the play. Two people accustomed to being in control will have to trust each other if the show will, indeed, go on. And they’ll have to trust their feelings if their passion is going to last after the last curtain goes down and the lights go up.
For Shelley, who took me under her wing and welcomed me to Romancelandia. For dining room table writing dates and late night wine, for karaoke and corn bread, and for the most inspiring debut novel I’ve ever read. You make me want to push my writing harder.
Thanks for the friendship, lady.
When the Lights Go Down
Amy Jo Cousins
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
About the Author
AMY JO COUSINS knows one thing for sure: the people who read and write romance novels are the smartest, funniest, kindest and most optimistic souls on the planet and finding a place in this community has been like coming home.
She lives in Chicago, where she writes contemporary romance, Tweets more than she ought and sometimes runs way too far. She loves her boy and the Cubs, who taught her that being awesome doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with winning.
You can visit her online where she hopes you’ll say hi! Sign up for her (very occasional) newsletter at www.amyjocousins.com (http://www.amyjocousins.com), follow her on Twitter at @_AJCousins (https://twitter.com/_AJCousins) or visit her on Facebook.
Also by Amy Jo Cousins
From Mills & Boon Desire
At Your Service (Book 1 of The Tylers)
Sleeping Arrangements (Book 2 of The Tylers)
From Mills & Boon E
Calling His Bluff (Book 3 of The Tylers)
Contents
Chapter One (#u1d7569a1-08f3-5b85-aeb0-02ebae71ff2c)
Chapter Two (#u26fab356-aeef-58e9-8ae6-b35dddae85f9)
Chapter Three (#uc17a6248-5c40-5405-a9f7-48d16a069534)
Chapter Four (#u1a52531b-82f0-5286-9cbf-72365d61508e)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One
“Uh-oh.”
Maxie’s stomach twisted and her vision dimmed. Nine hundred ticket-holding audience members, two flawless dress rehearsals, twelve weeks of preparation, two hundred and seven precisely planned light and sound cues had all led to this.
Opening night.
The oldest joke in the business was also the truest: What are the last words a stage manager wants to hear on opening night?
Uh-oh.
“Don’t do this to me, people. What’s wrong?” she hissed into her headset mike. As if the typical opening-night stress wasn’t bad enough, she’d managed to get an interview next week with the producers of a big Broadway show, who had decided that Chicago was the perfect city in which to begin a second run. To stage-manage such a big production would propel her into the top tier of show business in Chicago, a longtime goal of hers, and she’d invited the producers to attend the opening night of this show.
She had the sinking feeling that she might have made an error there.
“The dog is gone.” Ruben’s voice floated back to her through the earpiece she’d wedged in six hours ago. “I repeat, we have no Toto.”
She cursed under her breath. “Get the can opener,” she called to her assistant and sprinted down metal steps, heading for the tiny kitchen hidden in the building’s subbasement. When she reached the door, she grabbed the combination padlock and quickly opened it. The combination was easy enough to remember, even in times of extreme stress like now: one, two, three. Everyone from the producer down to the after-hours janitor knew it.
But then again, the lock wasn’t needed to keep out people. Just canines.
They’d yet to figure out how a schnauzer whose nose only reached knee-high even when it was standing on its hind legs managed to work the doorknob. But he’d broken into the kitchen a dozen times before they’d installed the lock, one time even leaving behind an incriminating trail of powdered sugar paw prints after stealing a box of donut holes.
“Damn genius dog.” Maxie shoved aside assorted bags of snacks until her fingers snagged on one last can of dog food. She had made it a policy never to run out of them.
“Ruben!” Her voice echoed in the bare hall.
“Got it!” Her assistant’s portly form shuffled down the last of the stairs, the puffing of his breath no doubt exaggerated for effect.
Melodramatization. A symptom exhibited by even the non-actors of a theatrical production.
Plucking the hand-operated can opener out of Ruben’s hand, she tossed a “Thanks!” over her shoulder and took the stairs two at a time to the top. Muttered curses followed her.
Maxie cranked open the can as she climbed, then hit the ground floor at a sprint. She took the corner at top speed, and slammed into what felt like a brick wall.
No way had someone on her crew abandoned a piece of the sliding set scenery in such a ridiculous location. They wouldn’t dare contradict her prop book, which assigned a precise backstage location for everything from hair ribbons to the enormous Emerald City set. Then her brain registered the texture, scent and sound—summer-weight wool fabric, a clean, sharp lemony spice, the sudden woof of breath being slammed out of a person. She looked up to memorize the face of the person she was going to kill as soon as she tracked down the damn dog.
“Blue.” She blurted out the word.
Lake-blue eyes froze her in place. They were narrowed at the moment, with fine lines at the corners that looked like they came from frowning, not laughing. Her stomach, already mid-butterfly stampede with nerves, did a slow dip and roll that made her dizzy. She blushed.
That indignity wrenched her back into the present. That and the realization that this stranger, this arrestingly good-looking man with those stop-you-in-your-tracks blue eyes and the thick shock of black hair, was an unauthorized intruder in her backstage empire.
“Get out.” She pushed past the man, her elbow out. If he complained, she’d claim the jab to his midsection was an accident.
She wrenched the lid off of the can, ignoring the sharp pain when the jagged metal sliced across her right index finger. Crossing to the breakfront that would decorate Auntie Em’s living room during a scene in Act One, she tossed the lid behind her, spattering some of the slimy contents of the can. God, how can even dogs eat this stuff?
When a deep voice registered a protest, she didn’t even turn to look. That meat and grease would be hard to get out of good wool, no doubt. Tough. He shouldn’t be trespassing on her set. She grabbed a cheap china plate off the breakfront and found a spoon in the top drawer, just where you’d expect to find silverware in real life. Verisimilitude, baby.
“I said get off my stage. Now.” She lowered her voice just enough to keep it from traveling past the heavy drop curtain while she warned off the intruder she could still feel hovering behind her. The light at the edges of the curtain was dim because the house lights had dropped. The audience would be settling down and listening for the first sounds of the play.
It was a thick curtain. She didn’t lower her voice much.
She let the plate clatter to the concrete floor and began whistling, long and low, as she slopped the contents of the can onto it.
Still out of sight behind her, Ruben took up the whistle, and from beyond him, she could hear other crew members whistling, too. Yeah, they knew the drill. Maxie paused for a breath and rattled the spoon around the empty can.
In moments, the magical, musical sound of Butch’s too-long, unclipped nails hitting the floor at top speed soared to her ears like “Ode to Joy” as the miscreant came out of hiding in search of the one thing that motivated him: food.
With the perfection of hindsight, it occurred to her that she could probably have dug an empty potato-chip bag out of the trash and rustled it loudly to much the same effect.
As Butch did his happy food dance in front of the plate she still guarded, she couldn’t help but grin. The damn dog was too clever by half, but in his own way he was more reliable than several members of her cast.
“You—” she scolded, tossing the can opener behind her and shaking her finger at the dog, who had the nerve to roll over, expose his belly and whine pitifully. Some sort of ruckus was developing behind her. “—better be ready to hit your mark in sixty. Stop being such a ham and eat up.”
Time to call off the panic. She thumbed on her mike. “Toto’s in the house.”
“So is a visiting producer,” Ruben shot back at her.
“I know. Front and center. I pulled a couple of press tickets for them, which means I owe drinks to the two critics standing in back.”
“No, not those guys—”
“Okay, well, the more producers in the house, the merrier. Now, let’s make it look like silk for ‘em.”
“But Maxie—”
“Not now, Ruben. Sound, one.” She called the first sound cue and classical music rolled out over the audience, settling them down.
Sixty seconds came and went. She waved Dorothy over, dumped Toto into her basket, called the first lighting cue, the curtain cue, and settled into her high chair with her hieroglyphically marked-up script. It was time to run the show with the ruthless precision that had gotten her the job in the first place.
Every battalion in her army was dialed up and ready to go and she was Command Central, poised to give the order to begin the battle.
She took one last look around and caught the eye of the sharply dressed man who was still there, standing well to the back now. He frowned at her and for a moment she wondered who he was. But she trusted her ASM to know which visitors were welcome backstage. Not her problem. Then Ruben, the Assistant Stage Manager in question, flashed her a thumbs up and she forgot Mr. Foxy without a moment’s hesitation. Her eyes left him and she prepared to enter the fray.
“Lights, one. Sound, two. Let’s knock ’em dead, kids.”
* * *
Nick’s shoulders locked up and the tendons in his neck tightened.
A civilized breakfast business meeting would have killed her?
He’d wanted his nine o’clock meeting to take place somewhere he could drink espresso and eat eggs benedict. Though she hadn’t thrown out the breakfast idea, she’d refused his suggestion of Chicago Cut—the swanky steakhouse did an amazing businessman’s breakfast, in Nick’s opinion—saying she’d take him somewhere after he met her at her office. Tracking down the office’s address on a street in Chicago’s warehouse district had been annoying enough, particularly since he could be sitting comfortably at Chicago Cut instead. Now he was stuck in the entrance to an alley. A ten-foot carving of a banana hung off the building in a manner most precarious above his car and two mental giants in front of him were arguing about a pile of two-by-fours in the back of a van that was blocking his way.
One of the guys could have stepped out of a Gap ad in his khakis and a plain white T-shirt. The other, who looked like he expected to audition for ZZ Top later that day, crossed his arms under his chest-length beard and glared at his buddy from beneath a black fedora. The lumber sticking out of the back of the van was several feet too long for the vehicle. The argument about how to solve this sphinx’s riddle had clearly been going on for some time.
An enormous metal door burst open just in front of his car, crashing into the brick wall, and a figure exploded out of the doorway, boots pounding down the potholed pavement of the alley.
He grabbed for the gearshift and prepared to hit reverse. The warehouse district wasn’t the worst neighborhood in Chicago, but he’d made it through his life so far without getting mugged and keeping the trend going was his preferred plan.
But those boots...
Somehow knee-high shiny white boots with fuzzy balls dangling from the laces didn’t strike much fear in his heart. Especially when they were paired with a thigh-skimming turquoise vinyl mini-dress, a chin-length swing of platinum hair and enormous sunglasses.
In fact, he’d rather pull up next to her and offer her a ride than back away. He lifted an appreciative brow and leaned forward, resting an arm on the steering wheel. He was far more interested in watching this intriguing woman than the two yahoos arguing in front of him. Which was when a high-pitched whine intruded on his senses.
His eyes locked on the saw.
At which point it became clear that his knowledge of shop and/or hand tools was severely lacking. Because even as he considered shouting a warning to the two brain-drains, he realized that he wouldn’t know what to say.
Look out! She’s got a...saw?
Buzz saw?
Circular saw?
A thing in her hand that’s smaller than your head but will undoubtedly be able to take it off at the neck?
By now, the guys had grasped the danger of the situation and shifted to either side of his car, backing up with their hands raised in the air.
Good job, boys. Two targets are better than one.
But as they inched down the length of his car, the saw-wielding Andy Warhol model stalked toward them, her tool-cum-weapon lining up precisely with his Mercedes’ trisected ornament at the front of the hood. The relationship he’d developed with his mechanic over the two years it had taken to restore this car to its youthful glory had been long and intimate and much like a marriage.
Returning the car to the garage with a large hole chopped in its hood would result in a messy divorce, particularly after he tried to explain about the blonde, the boots and the saw.
But the icy blonde had stopped, thank god, at the foot of his car. She shook the buzzing saw at the two men who were standing like captured criminals on either side of his car. Then she whirled around, stomped to the back of the van and ran the saw neatly through the stack of lumber. Wood blocks thunked to the pavement as the saw bit through each two-by-four. At the bottom of the pile, she slowed her progress, the muscles of her arms straining as she controlled the descent of the saw through the wood with delicate skill, until the last piece was neatly trimmed.
When she shut off the saw, the sudden silence was deafening. She slammed the rear doors of the van shut, crossed one pompom-ed boot in front of the other and took a bow.
Then she turned, popped the saw on her shoulder like it was an idle baseball bat, and walked back the way she’d come.
Applause erupted from the lunatics beside his car—hoots and hollers and a “Way to remember safety first, boss!” upon which the go-go girl turned and tapped her enormous, white-framed sunglasses. She grinned at them.
“Next time it’s your heads, boys.”
The voice that emerged from that compact little body was surprisingly low and throaty. It vibrated against his skin, a ticklish buzz that put him in mind of something far less appropriate than the business meeting for which he was prepared.
At least he now knew who the blonde serial killer was. His gaze followed her as she stomped back through the metal doors.
There was no mistaking that voice. It didn’t matter that today she was all 60s glam and last night she’d been a dark-haired grease monkey in mechanic’s overalls with a bandana tied around her head, shouting orders and curses and elbowing him out of the way as she ruled over the chaos of a backstage on opening night.
All he would ever need to recognize Maxie Tyler was one of two things: a glimpse of those midnight-dark eyes, glittering with intensity, or one word in that husky growl of a voice.
He sighed, wondering why he always got stuck coming to his mother’s rescue after the damage had been done. The money she’d sunk into backing a hot new playwright’s work had already been spent, of course, by the time he heard about it. She never called him before she made her next disastrous decision. Just sent out a press release—literally, she had the Tribune, Sun-Times, Chicago Reader and all the rest on speed dial—and then cried for help when her latest project escaped her control. At least this was one loose end he could handle himself, which was the only reason he was here, waiting for a breakfast meeting with a lunatic.
The budget of the play was already spiraling out of control, and the director had insisted that the next crucial step was to hire a brilliant stage manager. The only name on his list was Maxie Tyler.
Nick’s self-assigned duty, with his mother’s grudging approval, was to check her out. If she wasn’t up to the job, he’d make it clear that the golden goose wasn’t laying any more eggs until someone wrestled this train wreck back onto the tracks.
Before he’d arrived backstage last night, he hadn’t even been sure Maxie Tyler was a woman. His introduction to the theater world had been quick and intense, but the first thing he’d learned about the industry was that it teemed with unusual characters. Maxie could just as easily have been the nickname for a three-hundred-pound grizzled old man as this pixie who probably didn’t top a buck-five soaking wet. But at the very least, he’d expected someone a little, well, older.
And a little less dramatic.
And a lot less sex-on-wheels hot.
The van finally drove off down the alley. Nick maneuvered his baby into a nearly empty parking lot behind the building, bumping over cobblestones and chunks of lumber along the way. He made sure to park as far as possible from the giant pickup truck that screamed I’m compensating for my tiny penis.
He shook his head as he walked back to the door into which the go-go girl had disappeared. This entire venture, not just this meeting, was a frustrating waste of his time. If his mother had any sense of restraint at all...
Who was he kidding? He’d spent his entire life wishing his mother possessed some of the self-control and propriety of all the other Gold Coast society matrons. When friends had lamented their cold and demanding parents, Nick’s only thought had been if only. In these past months, ever since she’d met that playwright, the wheels had really come off. His mother had lost her mind. To the tune of several hundred thousand dollars.
He yanked the alley door open, heading down a barren hallway past dimly lit doorways sporting handwritten signs that read like a list of doomed-to-fail enterprises: Abel’s Anytime Carpet-Laying, Darning by Deborah, SnowGlobe: The Magazine.
At the end of the hall, under another roughly sculpted wooden banana that was a miniature of the one outside, he stopped and eyed the words painted on the frosted glass pane.
Carving Bananas, Inc.
He sighed—here was yet another reminder of the eccentricity of theater people—and started to push open the door, freezing in place as a voice he didn’t recognize leaked out through the crack. He nudged the door open a couple more inches and waited.
“—just saying. You couldn’t have played the role of straitlaced businesswoman today? Three-hole punch?”
“I am a straitlaced businesswoman, child. Cabinet, middle shelf, right-hand side.”
“Sure,” the female voice doing the scolding snorted, as metal squeaked on metal.
“See, right where I told you, doubting Thomasina.”
“I wasn’t questioning your bizarrely accurate knowledge of where every little damn thing in your life is placed, you weirdo. I was questioning your claim to straitlaced businessdom.”
Nick grinned in agreement with the scolder. Though if one of his employees spoke to him that way, he’d have them shipped off for drug testing.
Maybe they were both high.
“It’s what I am. That doesn’t have any relation to how I dress.”
“Clearly.”
“That’s it. I’m docking your pay for insolence. Brat.”
“You don’t pay me, remember? I’m an intern.”
“And why do you work here?”
“I think I’ve forgotten.”
“Well, make yourself useful and keep an eye out for Mr. Sharp-Dressed Man, will you? I’m trying to make a good impression here.”
Nick entered the claustrophobic office just in time to glimpse a flash of turquoise and platinum disappearing through an interior door to his right. A floating echo that sounded like “Gotta pee” slipped past the door as it swung shut.
The young woman behind the wood-laminate desk wore a shell-pink twinset, a short strand of pearls, and a velvet hair ribbon. She was still rolling her eyes when she turned back to see who’d entered.
Her recovery when she saw him, the “Mr. Sharp-Dressed Man” for whom she was waiting, was remarkable. She should be paid more...or at all.
“Mr. Drake, I presume?” At his nod, she waved her hand grandly to the one unoccupied flat surface in the room: a metal folding chair huddled between two enormous steel cabinets pasted over with advertisements for dozens of shows. He was sure she guarded the chair with the ferocity of a mother lion. Every other open space in the room was piled high with everything from crumbling bricks to ladies’ satin underwear. “Ms. Tyler will be with you momentarily.”
He twisted his mouth and raised an eyebrow. “As long as she unplugs the saw first, I can wait.”
The girl didn’t drop her smile for a moment. “Ah. So it’s too late for the good impression.” She shrugged philosophically. “Coffee?”
“Who makes it?”
“I do. Fresh ground Columbian.”
“I’m in.”
By the time the click of high-heeled boots approached, he’d discovered that the unpaid intern’s name was Clarissa, that she’d been working full-time for Maxie for six weeks, on top of a full course load in theater management at Columbia College, and that Maxie was the best stage manager she’d ever met. Apparently, the same woman who’d pegged him with the lid from a can of dog food was “surreally talented, kind of spooky and not a little bit of a tyrant.”
Not exactly what he’d been hoping to hear. He was on the lookout for someone solid, understandable and amenable to taking orders.
But when Maxie strode into the crowded office, he turned from the girl, who was now perched on the corner of the desk, to watch as an earpiece of her big white sunglasses slid into the turquoise V of her dress, drawing his eyes down from where they ought to be.
He looked back up to find big, dark-chocolate eyes waiting for him under equally dark brows that somehow worked with the icy white-blonde hair. Her cheekbones were high and sharp and her wide, full mouth was frosted pink.
He held his breath, every muscle in his body tensing at the first drift of her scent—leather and vanilla. Even the smell of her was fascinating.
She held out her small hand.
Enveloping it in his own, he was caught off guard by the strength in her fingers. An electric shock jumped through him at the gentle bite of her white fingernails into the back of his hand. He had a momentary vision of those same fingernails stair-stepping lightly down his spine and his dick stiffened at the thought.
Get a grip, Drake.
“Ms. Tyler.”
“Nicholas Drake.” The look she raked over him was scornful or borderline sexual, maybe both. She held his hand longer than necessary before letting go. “You were trespassing backstage last night.”
“I wanted to see you in action.” He’d certainly done that. She was a martinet, but everything she touched had fallen into place like clockwork.
“I don’t normally take meetings with people who won’t tell me who they’re representing, but I’m always ready to eat. Let’s go.”
She whipped a white trench coat off of an old-fashioned coat rack behind the door, shrugged it on, belted it and left the door open behind her as she plunged into the dim hallway.
Clarissa groaned from behind him.
“I heard that,” Maxie said from down the hall, laughing. “You said it was too late to make a good impression, girl, and I’m starving.”
* * *
Ten minutes later, Maxie was up to her eyebrows in Jamaican jerk chicken with dirty rice and beans and as happy as a kid with a new toy. She watched her “I’d prefer a breakfast meeting, if you don’t mind” nine-o’clock appointment stare with drawn brows at the photographs on the side of the boxy white truck parked at the curb. She’d bet twenty bucks he’d never bought food out of a van before.
Poor, deprived soul.
“Best plantains in the city,” she said and opened her foam container. The lid flip-flopped in the cool morning breeze.
He pushed back the straight, dark hair falling over his brow with an automatic gesture and didn’t seem to notice when it dropped right back into place.
“It’s nine o’clock in the morning.”
“Hey, opening night wrapped up at four and I came straight to work. Haven’t slept yet. Breakfast was hours ago.” He ordered coffee. She shook her head. His loss. She’d brought the man to the best Jamaican outside of Montego Bay. You could lead a horse to water...
“Yes, I’m sure you’ve been hard at work in your—” he flicked a hand at her “—what? Costume?”
“You don’t gotta wear construction boots to wheel a dolly of two-by-fours to the checkout line.” She grinned and winked at him. Like Clarissa said, the good impression window was closed. She might as well have fun. There was no need for him to know she’d worn the sixties sex-kitten outfit because it made her feel like a sexual powerhouse. She’d been restless in the hours before dawn this morning, still feeling his chest under her palms from their split second of physical contact the night before. A little boost had seemed in order. “Who do you think brought those two lunkheads who work for me the lumber? There’s a twenty-four-hour Home Depot just off North Avenue.”
“How did you get it to fit in the van?”
She was pretty sure the curiosity in his voice was unwilling. He looked like the type of man who’d just as soon file her neatly in a box and forget about her.
“I didn’t.” She shoveled a forkful of rice and beans in her mouth and let him wait for a minute while she chewed. She didn’t play around with Jahman’s food. “I picked it up in my truck. It has a longer flatbed, but those two are forbidden to drive it.”
She jerked her head at a bus-stop bench down the sidewalk. He followed and stood looming over her as she sat with her container on her lap and ate. Ignoring him as she dug into her second breakfast for the day, she ploughed through the meal and then sat back happily, having mopped up spicy jerk sauce with the last piece of fried plantain. A perfect bite.
She stretched her arms along the back of the aluminum bench and tilted her face back to catch the weak warmth of the sun on a Chicago spring day.
Cracking one eye open, she glanced up at the man who was watching her, one hand in his pocket, the other lifting the paper cup of coffee to his mouth with mechanical regularity. Just watching. The fine hairs on her arms stood up as she shivered under that gaze.
She crossed her legs and sat a bit straighter, unaccountably irritated.
“Look, Drake, you asked for this meeting, not me. Now would be a good time to start talking, before I fall into a food coma.”
“I represent some people who want to hire you.”
She waited. Nothing. She rolled her eyes and then glared at him. And?
“And I’m not at all convinced it’s a good idea.”
Ouch.
She might joke about not caring about good impressions, but it still stung when someone told you they didn’t think you were good enough. She knew better than to indulge in hurt feelings and was annoyed that she couldn’t find her normal self-control. “What a surprise,” she said. “Like your underlings a little bit more conventional, do you?” The drawled words scratched him back with a not very well-hidden swipe of her claws. Burning a professional contact wasn’t her normal style, but she would already have heard of this guy if he were a name in theater, so she felt free to play a little. Especially since next week’s interview was looking like more of a lock with every day that passed, according to the gossip in her network. She swung her legs up on the bench, just missing kicking him in the knife-sharp crease of his slacks.
To her surprise, he smiled at her. Pulled out his sunglasses and slid them on.
She didn’t like not being able to see where his eyes were directed. Not knowing what he was looking at made her feel as if his gaze was touching her everywhere.
Instead of responding to her taunt, he came back with a question.
“Why Carving Bananas?”
She laughed and stared up at his dark shades, wondering how he’d take her explanation.
Some men took it personally.
“Eisenhower was speaking of Montgomery when he said, ‘I could carve a better man out of a banana.’” She paused for a moment, remembering the old embarrassment. “Or, at least, I thought he did. Turns out the historian who wrote the book I read made that up. Live and learn. Once a two hundred pound carving of a banana has been delivered to your door, you suck it up.”
After a silent moment, he pulled the sunglasses off. The shock of meeting his eyes again, the blue of Lake Michigan in July framed by dark lashes, made her wobbly. He studied her, eyes narrowing. She couldn’t read minds, but she’d swear that he was finally ignoring her outfit and how she talked to him, and looking at her.
“And you’re Eisenhower, I take it?”
She bestowed her grin like a teacher giving a gold star to her favorite pupil.
“You got it.”
Focused on him, she forgot the grooved metal slats under her thighs and the ruffle of cool air against her bare skin. She felt him step a little deeper into her mind.
“More like General Patton, I bet.”
“I’ve got more subtlety and a broader grasp of the field of engagement than that. Besides, have you seen the state of education in this country? Most kids wouldn’t know who Patton was if he walked up and smacked them on the head with his riding crop.”
“I bet you’d like to wear the boots, though.” His mouth quirked into a grin.
A mental picture of herself in thigh-high riding boots and a jacket covered in military ribbons floated up from Maxie’s subconscious and she laughed out loud.
“That might be one look even I can’t pull off.” She stood up, dumped her empty food container into the trash can next to the bench, and scrubbed her hands with her napkin before balling it up and making a rim shot into the open mouth of the can.
She took two steps and stopped in front of him. Her mother had always advised her to face her fears head on.
Wise woman.
“You may think I’m not what you’re looking for, Mr. Drake. But if you get to know me better, you’ll find I’m exactly what you want. You’d be lucky to hire me or my company for your show, whatever it is.” Even in the boots, she had to tilt her head back at an uncomfortable angle to avoid staring at the front of his blindingly white shirt. She felt the snap and sizzle of sexual tension between them and fed off it.
“Oh, I’m changing my mind about what I want.” His voice was low as he loomed over her.
It took her a moment to figure out what he meant, and then she shook her platinum hair back with a swing of her head.
She bet his usual type wore Louboutin shoes and pencil skirts as a daily uniform, but she damn well knew what he wanted right now.
She smacked her palm flat on his chest and left it there. His heart thumped under her fingertips and she tapped her index finger against the muscles of his chest.
“Hiring me would be the best bad idea you ever had.” She didn’t know why she was pushing this. If she picked up the Broadway second run, her entire crew would be booked. She wouldn’t be able take any more jobs.
His hand wrapped around her wrist.
“If that’s a bad idea, then I’m pretty sure this is a terrible one.”
The blue of his eyes blotted out the spring sky as his head dipped toward hers, slow enough for her to pull her back if she’d wanted to do any such thing. Instead, she touched her tongue to her teeth and waited until his lips pressed against hers, his hand tightening on her wrist. Then her mouth fell open and she was lost.
Chapter Two
He tasted like coffee and cream from the cup he’d dropped at their feet. She had just enough brainpower left to register surprise at the sweetness, too. She’d have laid money on him taking it black.
And god, this was stupid. The one thing she never, ever did was get involved with anyone in her professional life. She’d learned her lesson, thank you, and that burn had taken a long time to heal.
But his mouth on hers was hot and she was slipping under his spell, her hand on his chest flexing as she dug her fingertips into the hard muscle under his corporate costume. He licked at her mouth and she let him in, a surge of heat shooting through her belly until she felt dizzy. Only the sharp pain of bobby pins poking her scalp when he tugged on her hair brought her to her senses before she climbed this guy like a tree in front of her favorite food-truck driver.
* * *
Maxie spent the next forty-eight hours thinking about what she’d agreed to after her kiss with Nick, and she still wasn’t sure it was a good idea. But she did know she could count on her sisters to tell her the truth.
Whether or not she actually wanted it.
She met her sister-in-law, Grace, and her two older sisters, both of them hugely pregnant, for an emergency summit slash massive laundry session the afternoon after her kiss with Nicholas Drake. Apparently everything that came into contact with babies needed to be washed in a special detergent, and between her two sisters they’d bought out most of Babies”R”Us. Her oldest sister Addy’s house was centrally located for all of the sisters and for their sister-in-law, Grace, who’d already knocked out her two kids and called a halt to further procreation, so they’d gathered there.
Hip-deep in burp cloths and onesies, Maxie was starting to regret giving them the details of her interactions with the well-tailored businessman. Addy, Sarah and Grace had leaped onto the details like lions attacking a wounded wildebeest, oversharing way too many details of their own about the dearth of sex in late pregnancy. She’d threatened to leave and deprive them of her Gap-trained folding skills, but Maxie knew there was no chance she was getting off the hook.
The speculation from her sisters, the preggos each sprawled on a separate couch, was getting progressively more explicit when Maxie finally gave up and raised her hands in surrender. “All right! All right! Pains in my ass.” She marched over and planted herself at the edge of the coffee table that stretched between the two couches. Bending her knees and leaning forward, hands on her thighs like an umpire at the plate, she glared at them.
“It was hot. It was wet. After he dropped his coffee cup, he tangled his hand in my hair and pulled my head back a little.” She nearly lost it when Sarah gave a wistful sigh and only managed to keep a straight face by biting her lip hard. “I was pressed up against him and bent backward over his arm and we didn’t come up for air for ages.” Addy’s aww distracted her for a moment, but she nailed the finale.
“Five more minutes and I would’ve jumped him on that bench. The thirty-three Washington bus could’ve stopped, unloaded passengers and driven off and I never would’ve noticed.”
Her sisters closed their eyes and smiled dreamily in unison. She was sure each was imagining her own husband, ridiculously attractive men that they were.
But the habit of sisterly ribbing was not to be denied for long. Addy cracked an eye open and lifted a brow. “Would have been funny if you’d lost that wig.”
She definitely regretted telling them what she’d worn to work that day.
Always the performer in the family, she held a beat before giving in.
“I almost cried like a baby when all of those bobby pins dug into my skull. Who knew the man was gonna want to pull my hair?”
They laughed at her until both had to get up and go pee and she returned to the laundry. The mountain of baby clothes had been transformed into neat piles of color-coded outfits, all greens and yellows and peaches. Both of them were waiting to find out the sex of their babies and they avoided anything pink or blue like the plague.
“So.” Grace folded the last of the baby blankets. “Close encounters with bus-stop sex aside, what happened? Does the guy want to hire you? And who is he? His name rings a bell.”
Maxie wrinkled her nose.
“He’s not part of the scene, that’s for sure. And he asked me to dinner. Tonight. Said we’d give the business meeting another chance, only this time he was damn well not going to eat his meal on a street corner.”
She still wasn’t sure that meeting this man, whose presence danced on her nerves, in a non-business setting was a good idea.
“Hmm.” She could read Grace as easily as she could her sisters. After all, this was the woman to whom she confessed her secrets when she wanted advice but wasn’t ready to talk to her sisters. It had been that way since she was a teenager.
“Yeah, I know. It didn’t really feel like a business kiss when he laid it on me.” She tossed the little hat she was playing with back into the basket and flopped onto the armchair behind her. She dropped the sarcasm. “I’d be a fool not to meet with him, at least. This is the first time someone’s come to me about a job, instead of me pitching to them. It’s taken six years to get to the point where we’re almost a real player in the industry. And Ruben is ready to call the show tonight. More than ready, really. He’s bored being the assistant stage manager.” She tucked her feet beneath her loose floral skirt. She’d felt very peasant-girl-come-to-do-the-laundry when she got dressed this morning.
“You know it takes time to build up a business reputation,” Grace reminded her.
“I know. And between the outfit and the make-out session, I may have started Carving Bananas on the road to a reputation for something other than business.” She frowned and pulled a final onesie from the laundry basket. “Not that I can take the job if I get the Broadway show. But still, options are nice.” She folded the onesie and dropped it on a pile. Straightened the pile until it stopped listing to one side.
“Hey, he kissed you.”
That was Grace. Always on your side. Maxie smiled.
“I provoked it.”
“So, show him you mean business. You’re good, Maxie, and if this guy has any kind of business sense, he’ll be able to see that in no time at all. There’s really only one question.”
Maxie arched a brow at her sister-in-law and cocked her head to one side, listening. She’d taken advantage of Grace’s acumen when she’d first had the idea to turn her habit of filling her family members’ basements with discarded props from the shows she stage-managed into a business. Anything Grace—who hobnobbed with the movers and shakers of Chicago with ease while running her restaurant conglomerate—had to say was worth hearing.
“He’s seen Go-Go Girl Maxie, and the anti-glamour, can-you-really-tell-she’s-a-woman, Opening Night Maxie. Who he’s going to meet tonight?”
It was a good question. Maxie sank back into the cushions and tapped a fingernail against her bottom lip, staring across the room, seeing nothing at all.
Who indeed would Nick Drake meet tonight at Nomi, in the spare white environment of one of the city’s best restaurants? There would be two-hundred-dollar bottles of wine, no doubt, and tiny and intricately constructed morsels of food speared on metal sculptures or some such.
Who should be sitting across the table from the classic businessman in a bowler hat, metaphorically speaking?
He’d found her a bit loose the other day, perhaps. Uncontrolled. And he seemed like a man who had a thing for giving orders, and having someone else take them.
That would be a problem. On several levels. Maxie considered herself the person most capable of dishing out the orders in any given situation. Nothing personal, but she knew the most efficient way to handle things and had become convinced that being in charge was where she belonged.
He liked control. Perhaps he wanted to see more of it from her...
Well, she would show him her idea of control.
* * *
Nick let a sip of Cabernet roll over his tongue, the heat and fruit and spice building in his mouth like a kiss. His entire week had been hectic, not the least because he’d been unable to shake thoughts of Maxie Tyler and her conflicting personas out of his brain.
Who was he kidding? The only things stuck in his head were memories of her mouth, spicy and hot and open to him, her body, so small but a powerhouse of lean muscle, pressed against him, and her eyes...
In more than one meeting since that morning, he’d caught himself blinking at a room full of silent observers, only to realize that he’d once again lost focus, sunk in the memory of those deep dark eyes locked on his.
The fact that no one else knew what he was picturing did nothing to quell the embarrassment.
His usual self-control was failing him.
He wasn’t sure what had possessed him to suggest dinner after the breakfast meeting had offered up such unpredictable fare. Aside from his momentary indulgence in a purely physical attraction, the entire interaction had been beyond the pale. Much like the rest of the time he’d spent on this latest obsession of his mother’s. Par for the course for her, although he’d spoken to more than one contact in the arts world who swore that this playwright actually had the chops to write an award-winner. Still, there would be no shortage of local gossips eager to tear this latest eccentricity to pieces. His own involvement only drew more attention to his mother’s whims, as Nick’s business activities were reported on as a matter of course in the business press.
Not that Maxie Tyler wasn’t intriguing. The World War II history buff didn’t fit with the flighty theater drama queen he’d anticipated from someone who would show up in costume to a meeting. Maybe stage managers were a different breed.
He glanced at his watch and sighed. Every theater person he’d met so far was absolutely reliable in never showing up on time. Ironic, that. Since they’d agreed to meet at eight and it was now five minutes to, he figured he had about half an hour of quiet anonymity to enjoy at the restaurant’s bar. He’d have some time to sip this robust wine and throw off a little of the week’s tension. The details were falling into place on his latest venture capital deal—and the kids who’d started this new company were brilliant—but he never relaxed until a deal was done.
Actually, even then he didn’t relax. After all, someone had to make sure the businesses in which he invested grew at the proper pace and in the correct directions. And that someone was always him.
He lifted his glass and scanned the room, from the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Chicago Avenue to the host stand at the entrance. And promptly choked on his Cabernet.
Damn.
Boots again.
He watched her brush past the hostess with a brief word and imagined he could hear the pounding bass beat of a movie soundtrack with each stalking step she took across the room to where he waited, glass still lifted to his mouth.
And he’d been worried about his self-control.
She looked like someone who asserted control—no, let’s be accurate here, domination is the word that comes to mind—over others as a way of life.
Who would have thought that a woman showing barely an inch of skin below the neck could look like a walking sexual fantasy in midnight black?
A form-fitting black leather jacket with a stiff military collar hugged her torso from the shoulders to the swell of her hips. The narrow black skirt would have looked prim if it weren’t so tight, right down to where its edge brushed the top of her boots. And if he’d ever believed that stiletto heels were the height of sexiness, he was rapidly changing his opinion in favor of these black boots that laced up the front in a style more reminiscent of a motorcycle gang than Milan.
Heads turned to follow her all the way across the crowded bar as she arrowed a straight line to the empty seat he’d saved beside him. He had a moment to regret the way she drew attention just by moving. Nick was always happier staying in the background. She swung one hip up onto the high chair and held out a hand.
“Ms. Tyler.” He squelched the urge to wolf whistle. That he could dredge her name up from his stunned brain was amazing.
“Nicholas Drake.”
Her low voice was quiet enough that he needed to lean in to hear her. He didn’t remember taking her hand in his, but when she smiled and glanced down to where he still held it, he dropped it and set his wine glass on the bar, happy enough to break contact with her for a moment. He couldn’t think when he was touching her.
At his lifted hand, the bartender stepped over. Maxie leaned forward to order a drink and he caught the scent of her, warm and sweet, rising from the tight knot of hair that was twisted at the nape of her neck. She accepted her own glass of red wine and lifted it to his, her face pale and bare except for the thick smoky smudges around her lashes and the deep crimson of lips that already looked wine-stained.
He tapped his glass against hers with a crystalline ring that he felt in his fingertips. This might be the most dysfunctional business meeting ever, but it was shaping up to be one of the more interesting evenings of his life.
Over the sharply stitched line of her shoulder, the hostess caught his gaze, lifting a graceful hand in the direction of the dining room.
“Our table is ready,” he said. “Shall we?”
She stood up in one flowing motion, swung a large black portfolio he hadn’t noticed over one shoulder, and began walking. He indulged himself with a muscle-loosening shake of the head and shoulders before giving a short bark of a laugh and following her.
The leisurely stare he focused on her ass during the stroll to the dining room wasn’t an indulgence.
He was damn sure it was the entire purpose of a walk like that.
At the table, she leaned the portfolio against her chair and allowed an attendant to slide her into her seat. Somewhere between the server’s spiel about the specials and them ordering their meals, Nick realized he was grinning. He’d stopped wondering if every other diner in the posh restaurant was staring at the woman seated across from him because he was too busy staring at her himself.
“Where’s that riding crop, General?”
She smiled an acknowledgement. “It’s never a good idea to over-accessorize. Besides, I’m hoping for my second chance to make a good first impression.”
“They say you never get one of those.”
“I’m not a big fan of relying on anyone’s judgment other than my own, and mine tells me you’re open to it.”
“Open to what?”
She leaned forward, resting her forearms on the table, and looked at him from beneath lifted brows. Her lips twisted into a close-mouthed smile.
“My second first impression being a good one.”
It was his turn to lean forward. He reached across the table to pick up one of her small, strong hands, currently sporting blood-red fingernails and one twisted-steel ring that looked like it might have been made from barbed wire. He ran his thumb over the dulled edges of the ring and watched her, his hand holding hers.
“Ms. Tyler, you have made about seven different impressions on me already. All I know is that it’s unlikely you’ll make the same one twice.”
To his surprise, she laughed, squeezed his hand and let it go. When she sat up, it was as if she’d flipped a switch, cutting off the invisible electric current between the two of them. The sexual tension was buried, gone in an instant like snapping out of a dream to the sudden blare of an alarm clock. When she shrugged out of her jacket, revealing a simple black sleeveless top that draped elegantly over her small, high breasts, he could see she wasn’t doing it to attract his notice. She reached for her water glass, leaving the wine untouched beside her plate.
“What’s your story, Drake?” Her gaze was direct. Steady. She didn’t lick her lips or run a fingertip down the side of the water-beaded glass in her hand or pull a pin from her hair and slowly shake out the raven waves until her hair hung loose and tangled in her eyes.
Well, damn.
“Tell me why you came to see me.”
From business to sex and back again. Well, he was comfortable with business, always had been, and it was probably the safer choice in this highly public arena, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t miss the divinely sexual Ms. Tyler.
He shook his head and gave up trying to figure this woman out.
Give the lady what she wants.
* * *
Maxie wanted to jump in the icy waters of Lake Michigan.
Sitting across the table from Nick as he described the fateful encounter of his mother, divorced and possessed of far too much time and money, with the young man she swore was the next Sam Shepard, Maxie made a distinct effort to pay attention. Still, she barely managed to catch the gist. That his mother had taken it into her head to back this young playwright and get his work produced was unusual enough. At the level of big theater, as Nick was describing it, that took serious cash or, more commonly, a consortium of investors and a business plan. Not some rich snowbird with a whim, taking the idea of a patron of the arts to new levels.
Nick’s involvement seemed even stranger.
Just the sound of his name in her head was enough to send her stomach into a slow tumble and roll she hoped wasn’t visible on her face. She’d been unable to drive their kiss from her thoughts; it had haunted her through restless, tossing nights until she gave up and went without sleep. But he didn’t need to know that. So tonight, she’d chosen clothes to project a blatantly in control woman.
Exactly the opposite of how she was feeling, which was slightly out of control every time she so much as breathed around the man.
And then when Nick reached across the table and began stroking her fingers, all her best intentions vanished like so much smoke. She couldn’t remember anymore whether he was supposed to respond to her provocation or not, or what she would do with him then. The only sensation she registered was the slide of his thumb over the back of her hand. The pressure of his fingers on her palm. And that was when she knew she’d lost control.
Again.
She shut down.
Turned it off, dropping his hand and every ounce of sensuality in her body, until she might as well have been wearing sackcloth and ashes. The one thing she knew she had mastery over was her work, and if that was the only stability she could find as the edges of the cliff crumbled beneath her feet, then she’d stand firm on that rock and leave the daredevil tricks behind.
It was an act, of course, and she’d been a decent-enough actor way back when, before figuring out she’d rather organize the strings instead of dance to them or even pull them. Good enough at least to get her through one meal with this man.
As long as he stopped touching her.
Then she caught a name in the general flow of words brushing against her consciousness and jerked her attention back to Nick.
“Heitman? What about Heitman?”
Lips pressed together, he looked more likely to throttle her than kiss her. It occurred to her that frustrated sexual tension might not be the best of moods under which to conduct a business negotiation.
Better frustrated than indulged. Maybe.
“How far back should I go?” His voice snapped like a pane of glass broken over his knee. Clearly her mask of polite attentiveness had slipped a bit.
She rattled off the list. Even though she was only giving him partial attention, she hadn’t missed much.
“Your mother’s hot for this young playwright.” He glared at her. She refrained from rolling her eyes. “In the artistic sense, obviously. I’ve actually heard of him. He’s supposed to be hot shit.” And wasn’t that intriguing. The first tingles of excitement were sparking in her belly. “So she’s backing his show in a big way, you’re white knighting it with your business expertise—” that glare again “—or are concerned for her welfare. Crap. Do you ever just say anything right out? So, you’re putting yourself in the royal seat, thumbs up or down on everything, nothing will get past your tricky eye, will it? And Heitman. You’ve got Heitman as the director?”
“I don’t have him. I don’t want him. But my mother and Smith do, and yes, they have him.”
“And Heitman wants me?”
“Apparently.”
She had to admit, she hadn’t expected that one.
She stopped chewing and looked down to discover that she was most of the way through a meal she hadn’t tasted. It seemed she’d chosen a smoked-prawn risotto with celery root, pickled fennel and—were those juniper berries? She slowed and enjoyed the complex medley of flavors in her mouth while she considered this new piece of information from all angles.
When she looked up, Nick was staring at her. He held his steak knife in a fist, more like a weapon than an eating utensil, with a white-knuckled grip.
She thought he might be developing a twitch in one eye.
“Heitman and I did one show together. After the third drop cloth caught fire, the male lead had a stroke, literally, and then the city shut down the theater for building-code violations. And those were just the highlights.” She shrugged. “Heitman’s a big believer in curses, jinxes. I was sure if he ever said my name out loud again, he’d throw salt over one shoulder and holy water over the other, just in case.”
“Well, he must have seen something he liked in you, because he doesn’t want me talking to any other stage managers.” Nick frowned.
“Yeah, I’m good at putting out fires.”
“Better at starting them than putting them out, I’d say.”
“Problem is, I’m gonna be booked.” Which was almost a shame, because she’d enjoy a chance to joust with this man from time to time across a dinner or conference table. Not to mention that this Smith was rumored to be an up-and-comer. But she wasn’t missing out on the big leagues for anyone.
Nick winced and shook his head. “No, you’re not.”
“I am. There’s a Broadway show leaving New York and word on the street is we’re a lock for the Chicago run. I’m meeting with the show runners in a few days. I really can’t take on anything else right now.”
“That isn’t happening.”
“What do you mean?” The muscles in her back locked up as she stopped herself from flinching. Nick’s face was calm. He wasn’t trying to break her heart, she was sure, just delivering what sounded like the world’s worst news.
“Heitman said to tell you it’s going to London next. They just haven’t announced it.”
Shit.
Nothing was written in stone until you had the ten-commandments tablets in your hands. She knew that. Knew better than to count on anything in the constantly shifting sands of show business. But she let herself mourn for a moment, even though she made sure to keep every sign of her crushing disappointment off her face. She’d been so ready to take this next big leap forward. To join the big leagues.
For a moment, she wondered if she should doubt Drake. Who knew if he was ruthless enough to lie to get his mother what she wanted? But, no. It would only take one phone call to Heitman, or almost anyone in the industry, to check. She was sure it was true.
Get a grip, girl. Life’s disappointing. Let’s see what we can salvage here.
She’d kept her calendar clear for the Broadway show, not pursuing other gigs that would have taken over her schedule. Unless she wanted to take a big hit, going after this play with Heitman might be her best option this late in the game.
Of course, it would have been better had she not made out with the man who was effectively one of the show’s producers, but that couldn’t be helped now. She knew he wanted her. And there was no use pretending she hadn’t just spent the previous two nights imagining him naked and in her bed. But there was no room in her business plan for romance. Or even down and dirty one-night stands. Particularly not with the money.
Shaking her head, Maxie readjusted her battle plan and rolled into her standard pitch speech. The words flowed without hesitation. It was a presentation she’d made dozens of times by now, albeit never before to a man who’d kissed her senseless at a bus stop.
She slapped her portfolio on the table the moment her dinner plate was whisked away by the busboy and showed off her stuff.
Literally.
“We have a warehouse half a mile from the office. Historically, more than half of the prop needs of any given show can be fulfilled by our stock, and that number is trending upward as our inventory expands. We’ll save you time and that means money.” Nick flipped through the pages of digital photos of precisely organized rows of bins and crates and closets. Clothes, shoes, pots, pans, bicycles, birdcages, traffic lights, trees—anything and everything that a set designer might want to see on stage. The warehouse was her baby. Her business coup. Without it, she didn’t have a business. The financial crash had hit the theater world hard. Life had been rough for years as people cut back on luxuries, which definitely included nights out on the town watching plays. But when the real estate market in Chicago tanked, she picked up an old foreclosed warehouse for a song, borrowing money from her family after presenting her business plan in a three-hour PowerPoint presentation. She’d immediately started filling it with every prop she’d collected over twelve years of backstage work. Then she’d hired her network of talent, mining her friends, classmates and savvy competitors when she could.
Nick was listening.
She could tell he’d buried his frustration as the wheels clicked in his brain and he considered her proposal.
“We’re also prepared to fully staff the crew needs of the show, at whatever level necessary. This is a plus for you in that it will save an enormous amount of time. My crews work together without missing a beat—everyone on the same page, using the same system.”
“Isn’t it more traditional for the director to assemble the crew piecemeal? Hiring the best individual for each job?”
He didn’t look up from the portfolio. He’d moved on to the copies of her projected and actual budgets for shows she’d run in the past. She hoped he’d assume that the thinness of that section had more to do with the inherent dryness of pages of numbers than the fact that she’d yet to land many big shows.
“It is. It’s also traditional to waste time creating a smoothly functioning crew out of a crowd of people who are used to a dozen different ways to call a show. I don’t waste time, and my people work together like clockwork from day one.”
Closing the cover, he drummed his fingertips on it for a moment while looking at her. She ran through her mental list of expected objections and prepared to counter them with articulate explanations.
“How many shows do you run at a time?”
A new question.
“Myself, only one. My company? Right now we’re managing Oz and a couple of small local productions.” She wanted to tell him about her vision for the future, her sandcastles in the sky, but this wasn’t high school. And she wasn’t standing in front of an open locker, hoping the cute boy across the hall would ask her to prom. She needed to impress.
One of the hottest directors in Chicago wanted her. She was disappointed about missing out on the Broadway show, but this opportunity could be nearly as big for her.
She sat calmly under Nick’s pensive gaze. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that she knew what she was doing, and that she did it better than almost anyone. Let him stare as long as he liked. When he figured her out, if he figured her out, there was only one conclusion to reach: She’d be the one solid, knowable factor in the swirling mystery that was the world of a theater production.
He wouldn’t be able to resist her.
“You’re sure you can take on another show right now?”
She didn’t even blink.
“I was already planning to do that, plus it’ll be at least three months before we open. In ten years, Carving Bananas will be stage managing half the shows in Chicago.”
She had him. She could feel it.
Handing the portfolio back to her, he waved off the sommelier’s approach with more wine and signaled for the check. “That’s ambitious.”
“That’s a given,” she said, dropping the folio at her side. She knew the end of a meeting when she felt one. It was time to wrap it up. “We’re efficient. We’re cost effective. We minimize chaos. The more shows we run, the more obvious that will be. The only limits are on how many good people I can hire, and that pool is nowhere near tapped out yet.”
“Okay.”
He plucked the napkin out of his lap and dropped it on the tablecloth in front of him. Like clockwork, the server arrived with the check and Nick handed him a credit card. The man returned almost immediately and Nick gestured for him to wait while he signed the slip. Before she could figure out what to say next, Nick put his hands on the arms of the chair and started to slide it back.
Her butt was frozen to her seat, like she was sitting on a block of ice, the cold locking her brain into immobility. Her jaw creaked as she pushed the word out. “So, okay?”
He looked down at her. “You’ve got the job.”
“I do?”
The distinction was important.
The corner of his mouth quirked upward. “Meet with Heitman. Go over the script. If your numbers are in line, then you, your crew and your warehouse have the job.”
She stood up. Now was the time for some memorable comment to seal the deal. Some pithy remark about how he wouldn’t regret it. Maxie opened her mouth.
“I have to go to the bathroom.”
She spun on one heel and walked away, bracing herself momentarily on the arm of a passing busboy as the trembling in her knees threatened to spill her across the slick Brazilian-cherry wood floor.
The pristine surfaces of the ladies’ room at Nomi had never echoed so loudly with shouts of glee.
“Yes!”
An older woman in beige linen and pumps yanked her hands out of the sink and left the room without drying them, glancing back over her shoulder on her way out.
“Yes!”
A glimpse of herself in the wall-length mirror arrested her celebratory stomping dance around the room. She laughed out loud and wondered if the escaping woman had gone to summon help.
Her eyes glittered wildly and color rose high in her cheeks. She couldn’t get enough air for shouting, though her open-mouthed grin was unshakeable.
She looked high.
Or insane.
The laughter rose from her belly and shook her soul with joy, turning into another loud woo-hoo! at the end.
“We’re on our way, baby,” she said with satisfaction to her reflection and shook her head at the grin she still couldn’t get off her face. But she must have managed to tone it down a notch from lunatic to simply happy, because when a waitress cracked the door to the restroom and poked her head in gingerly, she smiled back at Maxie before glancing around the empty room and leaving. She checked her cell phone before leaving the bathroom and, sure enough, there was a missed call and a message from a New York number. But she didn’t even care about the missed opportunity with the New York show. Heitman wanted her and his shows almost always hit the big time after launching in Chicago.
This could be the start of everything.
Walking back to where Nick was waiting for her near the elevators to the ground floor, energy flooded her body. She felt as if sparks were shooting out of her fingertips and the ends of her hair. It wasn’t possible for a body to hold in this much electricity. She wanted to sprint up a mountain. Or dance, dripping sweat, to a thundering beat in a hot, crowded club.
Or be thrown on a bed and devoured.
The elevator doors opened in front of Nick. She heard another couple approaching down the hall.
She couldn’t hold this explosion inside for one more second. And mountain climbing and dancing were out.
Stepping into the elevator behind Nick, she pushed the door-close button in the face of the startled couple and dropped the portfolio to the floor with a heavy thud.
Nick looked at the folio. He looked at her, eyebrows drawn together. She might have seen the beginnings of a smile.
Yeah, no time for that.
She smacked her palm against his chest when he took a step toward her and held him away. Felt a full-body memory flash of the last time she’d had her hands on him.
“In sixty seconds there’s nothing but business between us.”
She curled her fingers under the placket of his shirt and yanked him close enough to wrap her free hand around his neck and pull his mouth down to hers. Her lips bruised against his teeth as their mouths crashed together.
The world spun and she stumbled backward until her head rapped against the elevator wall, held up by the iron bands of his arms around her, one of his hands on her ass, pulling her up and into him, the other gripping the back of her neck. His tongue plunged into her mouth and hers did battle with it. She moaned as fire shot through her and raced her hands over him, desperate to get even closer.
He found the hem of her shirt and scraped a hand up her naked back, while she arched her breasts into him and sucked greedily at his mouth. Gasping, she dragged his hand from her back to her naked breast beneath the shirt, crying out when he scraped a thumbnail roughly over her hard nipple.
The ding of the bell when they hit the lobby barely registered.
When she came to, they were leaning against each other like two shipwreck survivors stumbling back onto solid ground. Nick’s forehead braced against hers and she wasn’t certain whose breath rasped louder in the small square box that suddenly felt devoid of air.
The slide of the doors opening and then closing again pulled her part of the way to clarity. She knuckled the door-open button before they were recalled to the twenty-fifth floor.
The tiny ping of a hairpin hitting the floor as she straightened rang in her ears like a bell.
Her updo was definitely a lost cause.
She jammed the elevator door open with one booted foot and tugged her fingers roughly through what remained of her French twist. Pins dropped and bounced on the floor as she raked loose hair back, hoping she didn’t look like she’d just jumped off a cliff. The descent from the twenty-fifth floor had been quite a ride.
They both stepped out into the lobby and Nick handed her the forgotten portfolio. He didn’t let go when she tugged it, so their fingers met on the black leather handle of the case.
His eyes were deep and dark, all iris and shadows of blue. His breath was still uneven.
Hers was, too.
“Sixty seconds?” He sounded like he regretted it.
She felt the zing where his hand touched hers, but didn’t back down.
“All business.” Her answer was firm.
After another moment, he dropped the handle of the portfolio and led the way through the revolving glass doors at the front of the upscale hotel that housed Nomi. A shiny black town car pulled up as they stepped out into the cool night air. Nick lifted a hand to the driver and turned to her.
“Can I offer you a ride?”
She laughed and shook her head.
“I think I need the walk.” She slung the folio’s shoulder strap across her chest and nodded goodbye. Taking her first long strides, she gloried in the feeling of her muscles moving, needing the activity to calm her sizzling nerves.
“Maxie, it’s three miles to your place.”
She didn’t let herself wonder how he knew that.
“Thank god!” she called out without looking back, letting her legs eat up the long walk home.
She felt his eyes on her until she turned the corner and headed north.
Chapter Three
A week later, Maxie was up to her ass in script notes and preliminary prop lists. Heitman had been his usual model of efficiency, and she’d delivered a lengthy monologue thanking him for the second chance after their last, cursed show together. She was in love with the play itself—a brutal story about a young South Side Irish man losing his innocence after joining the force in the John Burge years of the Chicago Police Department, when it wasn’t uncommon for cops to torture confessions out of suspects. The Restless Tide was shocking. Controversial. And almost guaranteed to win a slew of Jeff Awards, if she was any judge of talent. Smith himself was a fascinating, unpredictable genius who was barely articulate in person, but he observed rehearsal with laser-like intensity each day and returned the next morning with new pages that shone even brighter, like diamonds.
She hadn’t seen Nick since their dinner meeting, but at least she’d finally figured out a way to get some sleep. Of course, her solution was one she couldn’t mention in polite company.
Thank god her sisters had never been polite. The preggos cracked up when she explained how she was managing to deal with her rising tide of sexual frustration, having had no chance to get her hands on the elusive Nick Drake.
“I’m just saying, I’m gonna have to hit Early to Bed for a replacement vibrator at this rate.” She grinned when they catcalled their approval.
She pressed a kiss onto the forehead of each giggling, snorting sister before leaving. Since their due dates were imminent, both had recently stopped working and they kept each other entertained during the day, alternating between each other’s homes. At least, as entertained as two women who had to pee constantly and take turns pulling each other off the couch could be. She’d set her phone’s ringtone for both of them and their husbands to Guns and Roses’s “Sweet Child o’ Mine.”
As she left Addy and Spencer’s castle of a Victorian gingerbread house, the wind blowing from the southwest whipped the loose curls of her hair in her face. Like any true, homegrown Chicago Cubs fan, she knew without thinking that the pennants lining the outfield wall of Wrigley were blowing out.
A good day for home runs.
She glanced at her watch—just after noon—and then again at the clear blue sky overhead.
There was almost always someone in the Tyler family who was willing to catch the 1:20 p.m. start of a weekday-afternoon Cubs game. She was ahead of schedule on the show and could blow off an afternoon if she put in a couple extra hours of paperwork later that night. She calculated her best odds on a Tuesday afternoon and dug out her cell phone.
By the time her call was answered, she was behind the wheel of her truck, heading to the ballpark.
“Wanna play hooky with me, Grace?”
* * *
A Polish, half a bag of peanuts and two frozen lemonades later, she sighed and rubbed her aching stomach. She passed the rest of the peanuts to the delicate blonde in the expensive suit beside her.
“This feels a little sacrilegious.”
Her sister-in-law cracked a peanut shell open with her teeth. The pile of broken shells at her feet had been growing steadily for the first four innings. They’d already sworn to their server that they’d clean up the mess. “I said I’d pick up the peanut shells! Jeez. And it was your idea to play hooky. Who’s up next?” She tossed another husk to the floor.
“Their cleanup batter. Ten gets you twenty it’s an intentional walk,” she said automatically, shading her eyes with one hand before remembering where she was. “And that’s not it. Look at this place.” She waved a hand at the private box around them. “We’re supposed to be squeezed into bleacher seats between a bunch of rowdy drunks, with some underage kid in front of us losing her lunch all over her shoes. My lemonade should be spiked with cheap vodka from a flask you’re hiding in your purse, and we should both be well on our way to a good sunburn by now. And Sarah and Addy should be here, too. What’s happened to us?” Although she knew her sisters would be with them if they weren’t both past their due dates at this point. They’d responded with total jealousy when Maxie and Grace texted them a selfie from the stadium.
“Welcome to the world of adulthood.” Grace sat back and propped her bare feet on the coffee table in front of them. She had already kicked her high-heeled, strappy sandals to the side of the sofa. “The company box. God, I’m glad I kept this perk in the budget. Non-alcoholic drinks because we both have to go back to work tonight. And shade.”
“That’s just what I mean.” Maxie shook her head in disgust and took another sip of her slushy. Let out a little yell as the Mariners’ base runner tried to steal second, only to be tagged out in a rundown between the second and first basemen. “Face it. We’ve lost our youth.”
Grace snorted as she sucked on the straw in her ice tea and then choked a little. “Come on, girl, it’s not all bad. Remember the vomit.”
“True. There is that.” Giving in, she propped up her feet on the table beside her sister-in-law’s and graciously accepted the rewards of aging. After all, there was something to be said for getting regular attention from the servers, who poked their heads in every fifteen minutes to see if they needed anything.
“So,” Grace said after cracking open another few peanuts shells, “we’ve been here for four innings, and you haven’t mentioned Nick Drake once, despite giving me every detail of your script review, your consults with Heitman, the résumé of every man and woman you’re putting on this crew and a fairly detailed rundown of the prop list for the show.” Grace pinned her with a bland look that was somehow also impossible to dodge. “What gives?”
She’d been holding in the words for a week.
“I haven’t seen the damn man!”
Grace tilted her head. “Since when?”
She bit her lip. “Since I, um, attacked him in a public elevator.”
“Ahh.”
Maxie shook her head and clenched her teeth. Kicking the table away, she jumped up and paced over to the plate-glass window. She leaned her forehead against the cool glass for a moment, but it wasn’t as soothing as she’d hoped it would be. After a moment, she laughed and turned to face the sofa again, leaning the back of her head against the glass.
“When I told him we had to be ‘all business’ after that second incident, I thought he’d try and schedule more of those meetings he’s so fond of.” She sighed and rapped her head lightly against the window, hoping it would help clear her mind. Didn’t work. “I didn’t think he’d up and vanish on me. Not that I care.”
“Right. You’re the picture of indifference.”
“Shut up.”
“Make me.”
“See, we’ve found our youth again.” Maxie grinned.
Grace’s next words stopped her cold.
“You know, he’s got a box here.” Crack, crunch, toss.
“Who? Nick?”
“Who else?”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I’ve watched a game from there. I knew his name rang a bell when you said it, I just didn’t make the connection right away. It’s been a year or two, but we’ve met several times. His company invited us when they were trying to woo your brother.” Maxie waved her on. Tell me more. “They wanted to franchise Tyler’s, take it nationwide. Hell, who knows? Worldwide. Nick’s company thinks big.”
“His company?” Her brother had nearly done business with a man she couldn’t stop picturing naked. Too strange. “I’m embarrassed to admit I wasn’t really paying attention to that part. God, I’m a jerk. Is he a really big deal?”
“He’s a venture capitalist. An angel investor. Deals in all kind of things. Companies or concepts with potential. Normally people pitch to angels rather than vice versa, but Nick’s a more proactive breed. He goes looking for prospects. Your brother decided he wanted to move more slowly and keep sole ownership.” Grace looked up at Maxie, her brow wrinkled. “I thought you were interested in this guy. Haven’t you found out anything about him at all? All you’d have to do is search his name on Google. There’s gotta be a million hits about him.”
“I want to jump him, not hire him. He just makes something in my brain go haywire.” Grace’s phone rang, preventing Maxie from continuing with that dangerous line of conversation. She flopped back onto the couch as her sister-in-law got up and started pacing with the phone.
What had she thought he did for a living? Ran around and saved his mother from making bad financial decisions? Backed shows all over the theater world? She supposed she’d mentally tagged him with some kind of generic “Finance Dude” title. Who the hell knew what a comptroller did, after all? He could have been a relatively regular guy just looking out for his mom.
Except no one would ever mistake Nick Drake for a “regular guy.” Or even a generic Finance Dude.
No, she’d known it was an unknown field to him, but their conversation over dinner had revealed that he’d mastered the most salient details quickly. His command of the information with which she’d supplied him in her sales pitch had been swift and complete.
But it still seemed weird for her to think of him with responsibilities that had nothing to do with her. She’d been so focused on her reaction to him that she hadn’t stepped back to acknowledge the fact that the man had a life. One that might keep him too busy to engineer ways to drop in on her and challenge her “all business” declaration, like she’d secretly hoped he would.
Okay. She’d let him live.
Grace was smiling as she bantered over the phone. Maxie caught the last piece of her conversation. “Yes, dear,” she said, “I’m planning an afternoon affair with another man. Can you text me his number? You’re a doll. Love you.” She kept the phone in her hand until the message alert went off and then tapped the screen. “Bingo.”
Waggling her eyebrows at Maxie, she held the phone to her ear.
“What are you doing?”
She grew suspicious, if only because her sister-in-law was backing away from her. She seemed intent on getting as much heavy furniture between the two of them as possible. The sudden roar of the crowd meant she was missing something exciting on the field, but she kept her eyes on Grace, whose face had lit up.
“Nick? Hi, it’s Grace Tyler.”
She’d wrap her hands around that woman’s neck and squeeze until she was dead. She jumped off the sofa and rushed toward the back of the room.
Grace clapped a hand over the end of her cell phone, trying not to laugh and failing. “You’ll leave your brother a widower.”
“He’ll get over you.” She circled the sofa, angling to trap the devil between the big screen TV and the bar.
“I can tell from the roar of the crowd that you’re at the ballpark, Nick.” Grace kept the sofa between them, jumping up on the coffee table rather than going around it. “You’ll never guess. Yup. About ten doors down, I think. Step out onto your balcony and wave. I hear there’s a new connection between our families, and I wanted to know if you’d—”
She ducked through the sliding glass door at the front of the room and yanked it shut behind her. Faster than she looked, that girl.
Maxie would have tugged the door open and dragged her in by her perfect blond pageboy, but she knew that Nicholas Drake would witness the assault.
She might not have been able to prevent Grace from leaving, but she could damn well keep her from coming back in. She shoved the coffee table up against the stationary half of the sliding glass door. The table was a couple inches short of filling the entire track, so the door would still slide open a bit, but that was okay.
Grace wasn’t that skinny. She was stuck out there.
After raising a hand and waving down the long row of balconies, Grace slid the phone in her pocket and tugged on the door.
Maxie watched her struggle, pleased with herself.
Grace pressed her lips to the minute crack in the door. “I see we’ve found our youth again. Should I call your mother?”
“You’re a traitor, and should be left in the bleachers with the drunks and the vomit.”
“Charming, sister mine. You have approximately ninety seconds before he gets here.”
She jumped like a cat on fire. Dragging the coffee table back to where it belonged, she grouched at her sister-in-law. “If you don’t have a mirror in your bag, I swear I will throw you right off that balcony.”
She caught the silver compact one-handed. Made do with lip liner and strawberry-flavored ChapStick and wondered why she didn’t ever remember to get her eyebrows done. Maybe that was the secret to Grace’s always-polished appearance.
When she was done, she winged the compact back across the room, catching Grace’s wince as it smacked into her open hand. Served her right. Maxie turned to the door with a sharp inhale as it opened.
It was like having double vision. She shook her head, waiting for her memory of elevator Nick—eyes hot, breathing hard with lust—to dissolve over the clear lines of the tall man in the suit who was lounging with one shoulder propped against their doorway.
“You’re saving me from the world’s most boring corporate outing,” he said with a smile. “I’m glad.”
“Bankers?” Grace asked as she walked over to take his hand, air kiss him on the cheek and pull him into the room.
Maxie clutched the couch cushion beneath her butt with both hands and reminded herself that Grace was not hitting on her man. Reminded herself also that he wasn’t her man, even if there was no reason for someone to cling to his arm like that.
“Worse. Accountants. Although I did invite these genius kids I’m trying to seal a deal with. The four of them are a trip.” Nick smiled down at Grace, who wrinkled her nose and offered to order him a drink. When he took her up on it, she disappeared into the hall. Strolling over to where Maxie sat fuming, Nick dropped into one of the straight-backed chairs across the coffee table from the couch and hooked his foot beneath the rung of another, dragging it closer so that he could prop both shiny loafer-shod feet on it. Draping an arm over the back of his chair, his back to the game, he might as well have twiddled a toothpick in his mouth for all the sense of urgency he seemed to possess. There was no sign of the Nick who’d been with her in that elevator.
“Hello, Ms. Tyler. Working hard?”
She forced her aching fingers to loosen their grip. Crossing her arms over her chest, she kept her voice as cool as an iced margarita when she answered. “I am a well-oiled machine, Mr. Drake. The crew’s good to go.” Her smile was sweet, her voice perky. “Your playwright’s the one who’s causing the production delays.”
“Hmm, yes.” He rubbed the knuckle of his index finger above his lip and nodded again. “That impression has been growing on me, as well.”
Whoa. Backpedal. The last thing she wanted to do was spook the backers.
“I’m not saying the play’s not good. It is. It’s brilliant, actually.” She didn’t have to lie there, thank god. The only explanation she might have for the playwright’s uncanny talent with words might be demonic possession, since he could barely string together a coherent sentence in person, but she wasn’t about to knock it. “But he shouldn’t have this much power at this late stage of the game. He’s too stressed out about achieving perfection and that means rewrites, which were fine at the beginning, but he needs to lock it down now. Your mama’s backing his choices all the way, though, and his delays are costing us. Heitman’s gotta be the final word, not this kid. No matter how talented.”
“How much is it costing us?” His eyes narrowed.
“Less with me than with any other stage manager out there.” She stood up. This was a time to hold the high ground, so to speak.
“That’s not exactly encouraging.”
Before she could even register what was going on, Nick was pacing and barking orders into his cell phone.
She really needed to register the fact that this guy was not from the theater world. She kept forgetting that run-of-the-mill disasters in the lead-up to a big show would seem like complete and utter chaos to a civilian, particularly one who was used to the less...colorful world of business.
She tugged at his sleeve as he snapped out commands at some poor soul who had to be his mother’s personal assistant.
The assistant had probably never dealt with anything more challenging than organizing fundraising tables for the annual Lincoln Park Zoo Ball. This latest leap into the arts by Nick’s mother was probably the biggest shitstorm from which they’d ever had to protect themselves.
“Listen, Nick.” She ducked as he whirled around, his elbow breezing through the space her temple had occupied a moment earlier. “Hey! Watch it, Drake. Listen—”
Shouting in the wind, she was. There was only one thing to do.
She snagged a liter bottle of club soda off the bar and shook it.
Hard.
Right as her hand cranked the cap off she spun around, seltzer spurting volcanically from the bottle. She had a split second to wish she wasn’t always quite so sure of herself.
Then she blasted him square in the face.
In the silence that followed she could hear a high-pitched voice squeaking from his phone, rising in volume when no one answered.
Nick’s pale blue Oxford was plastered to his chest. Club soda ran off his chin, beaded up and then soaked into the wool of his charcoal-gray suit coat, dripped off the spiky tips of his hair. She was splattered with it when he tossed his head back and whipped the wet ends of his hair out of his eyes, his phone still clutched in one hand.
Slowly, cautiously, she raised her open hands in front of her.
No sudden movements.
Just as slowly, but without a hint of caution, he walked toward her, wiping the phone off on his pants and slipping it into a pocket. She retreated one step at a time until she ran into the hard edge of the table, which caught her just beneath her butt. She leaned even farther back from the hips, certain there wasn’t enough room in this box to escape him. He didn’t stop his approach until he was pressed hard against her thighs, hands braced on the table on either side of her.
Her elbows ached from leaning on them. Maybe hosing him down with club soda hadn’t been the best way to get his attention.
He lifted one hand and wrapped it around her throat.
She sucked in a breath and shivered as the liquid soaking him seeped into her jeans, her shirt. Excruciatingly aware of the hard wedge of thigh that was pressed against her crotch, she shifted slightly and saw an answering fire flare in his eyes. His voice was a growl that thrummed against her nerves and sent heat racing through her system.
“Do you know what I’m going to do to you?”
She surrendered. Hooked her ankles behind his waist and used his shoulders to pull herself up.
“If it doesn’t involve getting me naked on this table, I don’t want to know.” She wrapped her arms around his neck. His warm breath brushed her mouth as his face dipped toward hers, eyes half-shut in that slow burn of a smile.
“I’m so glad we agree.” The words slipped out between barely-there kisses. She tolerated that for a moment and then captured his bottom lip in her teeth and nipped, hard. Stay still and kiss me.
The sudden blaring of 80s hard rock from across the room was more of a shock than a turn-on, she had to admit.
“What the—” Nick was prevented from pulling away by her legs, which were still wrapped around him.
“Ignore it. They’ll call back later.” She didn’t normally approve of begging, but if that was what it took...
She ran her hands up his arms, across his shoulders and then cupped his face in her hands, pulling him back to her.
He came willingly, lifting her butt up onto the table behind her for leverage.
“If there’s some theater emergency that requires your immediate attention, I swear we’ll be right back to the part where I strangle you.”
He flexed his hands on her hips, drawing her tighter against him. The thick length of him against her made her groan. She slid her fingers around his neck to thread through his hair as she arched her back, increasing the pressure.
“Those calls get ‘Cabaret.’ Or, hmm, yessss—” His hands slid up her sides until his thumbs brushed the undersides of her breasts. Her mind went blank, but her lips kept forming the words as her head dropped back and she gave in to the need pounding through her body. “Or ‘Send in the Clowns,’ not GNR.”
GNR.
Guns N’ Roses.
The words registered.
“Sweet Child o’ Mine.”
Her eyes flew open as she snapped forward. Pain exploded as her head cracked into Nick’s. She clutched a hand to her brow as he did the same, a grimace on his face.
For a moment, she forgot the world and simply stared at him. How had she lost her head so completely around this man, and where the hell had Grace disappeared to anyway? That had to be the longest walk for a drink ever. Thank god. Because if Grace had walked in while she was trying to climb Nick like a tree, Maxie would be hearing about it forever.
“Sweet Child o’ Mine.”
The words crashed back into her brain and she jumped off the table and shoved Nick to the side, whooping as she slid over the back of the couch and dove for her bag.
“The babies! Where is my damn phone? One of my sisters has gotta be going into labor. They know better than to call us at the ballpark for anything other than life or death emergencies.”
It was ringing again, Guns N’ Roses was calling to her, but she couldn’t find her phone in her bag before the ringing stopped. She’d call back whichever family member was trying to reach them on the way to the hospital.
“Where the heck is Grace?”
Nick lifted the phone to his ear again as she danced in place and pulled up her call log. Her brother-in-law J.D.’s name topped the list. “Sarah’s baby!”
Damn Nick, didn’t he have any sense of urgency? A baby was on the way and he was just standing there making calls.
At the door, she reached for the knob and jumped back just in time to avoid a broken nose as it crashed open and Grace barreled through, laughing, shouting.
“Sarah’s having a baby! At last, damn,” Maxie said.
“Sarah? Spencer just called me to say that Addy’s on her way to the hospital.”
They stopped for a moment to stare at each other. Both babies?
“Damn. That stuff about women’s hormones syncing up if they spend a lot of time together is some powerful shit.” Maxie shrugged. However it had happened, the babies were on their way and they needed to hustle.
“I’m not in an E-Z Out lot,” Maxie said. “You?”
“I cabbed it. You won’t be able to get your truck out ’til the game ends.”
“I’ll leave it. Shit. They’re gonna tow it, aren’t they? Oh, well.”
“Maxie.” It was Nick.
“Don’t worry,” she said without looking back, tossing the words over her shoulder as she rummaged through her bag for cash to pay off their tab. Grace was shouting down the hall for their server, who’d disappeared—of course—after practically never leaving their side during the game. “Talk to Heitman,” she continued. “Get your mom to back him up and put a choke chain on Smith and everything will be fine. We aren’t even close to disaster.”
Grace reappeared without the server and shrugged. Turning to Nick, who was now standing behind her, she thrust out the money she’d gathered from purse.
He waved it off. “Ladies,” he said.
“Just take it, will you?” She shoved the fistful of bills at him, not sure why he wouldn’t stop talking and take it.
“Aunties.”
That caught both of their attention.
“Go two blocks east on Addison. At the corner of Fremont, on the south side of the street, my driver is waiting for you.” He nodded to Maxie. “You’ve seen Tommy. He’ll take you to the hospital. And if you give me your parking ticket, I’ll get your truck out of the lot.”
Maxie heart thumped an extra beat. She rubbed at the sore spot in her chest with the edge of her fist, telling herself it was the emotion of the moment, nothing more. She tried to say thank-you but couldn’t get the words out.
Grace didn’t hesitate. She threw her arms around Nick and smacked a loud kiss on his cheek.
“Nick Drake, I love you more than Kerry Wood.” Grace’s infatuation with the Cubs’ relief pitcher from the nineties was family legend.
“I’m flattered,” he said with a smile, giving her a kiss on the cheek, too. “Now, get out of here. Call me with the good news.”
Calling out their goodbyes and thanks, Grace tugged Maxie out the door. She broke free for just long enough to run back inside and say goodbye to Nick the way she really wanted to. She flung her arms around his neck, rose up on tiptoes and pressed her mouth to his.
“Thank you,” she said, and then gave a sharp yank on his tie. “And if you kiss my sister again, I’ll cut your heart out,” she whispered in his ear.
“Duly noted. Now go.” He smacked her ass. The sweet sting only made her laugh.
Sprinting through the crowds at Wrigley, Maxie and Grace elbowed and bumped their way down the long ramps to the ground-floor exits and then jogged down the sidewalk on Addison, both of them on their phones, trying to find out which sister was in labor.
Of course, it turned out that both Addy and Sarah had been hiding labor pains all afternoon, not wanting to alarm anyone until they were sure that their babies were coming.
And coming right now.
“Thank god they’re both at Northwestern.” Maxie laughed as they tumbled into Nick’s car, calling out directions to the driver. “If I had to pick which one of them to visit, I’d be hearing about it from the other one until my dying day.”
“I hate to break it to you, dear. They’re not going to be in the same room. You’re still going to have to choose.”
“They can’t share a room? Princesses. Fine, we’ll do shifts. Trade rooms every hour. Deal?”
“Hey, I don’t want to be guilt tripped any more than you do. Deal.”
The hospital was enormous. There also seemed to be a preponderance of idiots on staff, none of whom were able to provide them the most basic information about Addy or Sarah. Grace did manage, however, to find her husband and kids. The group of them, even larger once their mom arrived, made such a stink that a large woman in flowered scrubs cornered them at the reception desk and explained that the Tyler sisters were not, in fact, the only patients in the hospital.
By the time they finally made it to the labor and delivery floor, it was clear that someone had telephoned ahead with a warning. Two R.N.s met them at the elevator doors and took command like drill sergeants. Maxie clamped down on her normal urge to give directions, not take them.
She had to admit that, in this particular scenario, she might not know best.
As the hours blurred, Maxie learned more than she ever wanted to know about the stages of labor and dilation and epidurals. The latter seemed to provide immediate relief to Addy, who looked up at her for the first time in hours and asked for the final score of the Cubs game. Sarah, who was three doors down the hall, had waved off the epidural and was still powering through her labor pains, pacing slowly back and forth across the linoleum floor.
Toward the end, when matters were unfolding with an astonishing rapidity and teams of people were sweeping in and out of rooms with drill-like precision, Maxie found herself mostly holding hands: Addy’s, Sarah’s, Addy’s husband Spencer’s, her mother’s. Sarah’s husband, J.D., didn’t do handholding but his calm-under-pressure attitude kept them all from getting too overwhelmed. Watching from the sidelines as her sisters found their way without much help from anyone, she felt at once useless and amazed. Addy cursed when she heard that Sarah had already delivered, giving a last enormous push that sent a squalling, sloppy baby into her doctor’s waiting hands.
Maxie burst out of the hospital doors at 3:00 a.m., hugging herself and wondering how it wasn’t broad daylight. There should be a parade and confetti. Maybe even fireworks.
The street outside the Galter Pavilion of Northwestern was empty. The rest of her family had left an hour ago, but she hadn’t been able to tear herself away from the quiet rooms where her sisters were resting with their new families. She wondered how she was going to find a taxi. Or, for that matter, get her truck back.
While she was debating the likelihood that Nick would answer her call in the middle of the night so she could pick up her truck, a familiar black Lincoln Town Car slid to a halt in front of her. Seconds later, the friendly face of Tommy the driver popped up to smile at her across the roof of the car.
“Mr. Drake thought you might need a ride.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, and then gave up and climbed into the backseat of the car, muttering all the way.
“It’s enough to make you suspicious, how that man thinks of everything.”
“He doesn’t miss much, no, ma’am.”
“And you’ve just been, what, waiting here?”
“Nah. He asked your brother to let us know when the babies came.”
Which still meant that he’d been parked outside for an hour while she was lingering upstairs. She felt guilty about that for a moment and then reminded herself that there wasn’t any way she could have known.
The cellophane-wrapped bouquet of roses on the seat should have charmed her, especially since it was pinned with a card that read, “Congratulations, Auntie.”
For some reason, she was just annoyed. Being outmaneuvered, even when it was to her benefit, made her cranky.
Enough so that when Tommy reeled off her address and asked if that was where she wanted him to drop her off, she had a better idea. Conveniently enough, her destination was not at all far from the Gold Coast hospital complex.
* * *
The insistent electrical trill of his cell phone tugged Nick from the depths of sleep even as he buried his head under a pillow and tried to ignore it.
Unsuccessful, he slid a hand across the bedside table, groping in the dark. Once he found it, he dragged it back under the pillow, tapping blindly until something connected.
“What?”
“James Robinson and Elizabeth Ann.”
“Wrong number.”
“Personally I was rooting for Esmerelda and Diego. I love how sexy that name sounds. Diego—you know what I mean? But I suppose the parents know best.”
He shoved the pillow off his head and sat up in the dark.
“Maxie?”
“You said to call with the good news.” Her laughter rumbled through the phone. She sounded so close, whispering in his ear in the silence of his room. He glanced at the digital glow of the clock next to his bed.
“It’s three o’clock in the morning. Where are you?”
“Downstairs, having a chat with your doorman.”
After calling the desk to okay his late-night visitor, Nick managed to drag on a pair of dark jeans and a gray T-shirt. In his kitchen, he set a coffee mug, a water glass and a wine goblet on the counter.
That’s when the solid knock landed on his door.
He pulled open the heavy wooden door and then stepped back, looking at her framed in the light from the bright hallway. Her clothes were wrinkled and her eyes were tired, but she was bouncing on the balls of her feet, probably still riding an adrenaline high that would have her crashing any minute. He turned to the side, motioning her in.
She didn’t move.
Chin lifted, she stared at him, an almost visible shimmer of energy rising off her skin.
“I don’t sleep with people I work with. Or for.”
An interesting opening line.
“You know, you don’t really work for me.” He shoved his hands deep into his pockets and leaned one shoulder against the doorway. He’d thought about this quite a bit in the week during which he’d kept himself away from the project. “I’m more of an outside consultant.”
Her slow grin slid over him like tiny, licking flames.
“See, that’s just what I was thinking.” She stepped inside and closed the door.
Chapter Four
The sparkling Chicago skyline sprawled in front of the wall of windows in the living room. The distant reaches of Lake Michigan merged seamlessly with the dark sky, a horizon that couldn’t be seen, only imagined.
“The view on the forty-sixth floor just oozes wealth, doesn’t it?” She drifted over to the windows. “My view is of the Cigarettes Cheaper across the street.”
He didn’t have any response to that. He wasn’t about to deny enjoying his home.
Having decided to come inside, Maxie seemed unable to settle in one spot, pacing around the room like a cat. She stopped to run a hand over the back of the leather couch, rest a fingertip on the roughly carved surface of the stone obelisk on the large low table in front of the couch, click her fingernails against the floor-to-ceiling glass.
He thought about what it would be like for her to take such a delicate, thorough inspection of him instead of his condo, and wished she’d stay still for a moment.
“Tommy brought you here?” The silence needed to be broken.
“Yes, but I knew where you lived.” She turned and started flipping idly through the pages of a coffee-table book—graceful photographs of architectural details, enlarged to lose all resemblance to reality—and looked up at him through dark lashes, her eyes giving away nothing. “You’re not the only one who can run a background check.”
“Excuse me?”
“I figured that out because you knew where I live. I work pretty hard to keep that info off the web, you know.” She dropped the cover of the book and walked back to the window. The room was dimly lit and her silhouette showed as negative space against the city lights. “Do you have any idea how likely actors are to turn up on your doorstep at 3:00 a.m. with a broken heart, looking for beer?”
“It’s past 3:00 a.m. now. If you tell me you’re here because you’re broken-hearted and looking for a six-pack, I’ll be hugely disappointed.”
She laughed and swung around to face him. The lights behind her left her face in darkness.
“No six-packs in your fancy condo?”
She was needling him. Why? The fancy condo insult from any other woman might have led him to believe that she was uncomfortable with his penthouse. It was a pretty goddamn visible display of wealth. But he couldn’t imagine Maxie Tyler, chameleon extraordinaire, being out of her element anywhere.
He wasn’t about to start apologizing for the family fortune he’d rescued through long hours of hard work. He took a deep breath and Maxie froze, as if bracing herself for the sarcastic comment she’d tried to provoke. He decided on a different tack.
He kept his voice mild as he moved into the open kitchen that unfolded off the living room. “I have beer, if that’s what you’d like. Or celebratory champagne. Coffee?” His waving hand took in the lineup of glasses on the marble countertop.
She stayed silent for a long minute.
He could wait.
Finally, she shook her head and walked toward him. The sway of her hips as she strolled was a powerful prod to the imagination. He wondered if it was unconscious or for his benefit.
“Just water, thanks.”
He’d expected her to stop on the far side of the counter, the wide stretch of stone between them, but she circled it and stepped onto the terra-cotta tiles of the kitchen floor, stopping several feet away from him.
When he handed her the tall, cool glass, she stretched out an arm to take it. Her fingers avoided his on the glass.
Seeing that ratcheted the tension up anyway.
She lifted the glass to her mouth, eyes locked on his, and only broke the connection when she tilted her head back, her throat working as she drained the glass dry and set it back on the counter with a clink.
“What are you doing here, Maxie?”
He could read her face as she ran through a dozen different responses and discarded them all.
In favor of the honest truth.
She shrugged.
“I don’t know.”
He gave her an out.
“Do you want me to call you a cab? I already told Tommy to go home for the night.”
“I don’t want you to do anything at all for me, Nick.” She tried to jerk away as he caught her slim wrists in his hands and gently pulled her toward him.
“Maxie.”
Staring at his shirt, she refused to meet his eyes. He rested his chin gently on the top of her head, her curls tickling his face. After a moment her arms crept around his waist and he was glad she couldn’t see his smile.
“Make up your mind, Maxie. You can’t be pissed at me and want to go to bed with me at the same time.”
Her voice was muffled but clear.
“Wanna bet?”
A hard pinch on his stomach was her answer to his silent laughter. Then her hands slid under his T-shirt and stroked up and down his back, warm fingers on skin that suddenly felt hot. When her face tilted up to him, her mouth was right there. She sighed into his kiss, opening to him, and he wasn’t laughing any longer.
He brushed fingertips down her cheek, smoothing over downy softness before stroking down the strong column of her neck. Her mouth was cool and wet from the water and her tongue teased his, dancing with it for a moment before pulling away as she tilted her head to the other side and changed the angle of the kiss.
She was warm in his arms, and the slow drift of heat from her spread over him like a drug. Breaking the kiss, he dragged his hands up to frame her face, pushing back her dark curls. Lowering his mouth to hers again, he brushed his lips back and forth until she deepened the kiss.
Her palms slid up his chest and over his shoulders and he buried his face at the base of her neck, inhaling her dark, sweet scent.
He looked up and caught her snaking a hand up to cover her mouth, wide open in a giant, creaking yawn.
Ah, the death of the ego.
“Whoops.” He couldn’t believe she’d made him blush. “Sorry.”
Abandoning all hopes of wild sex in the moonlight, he wrapped one arm around her shoulders, tucked the other under her butt, and bumped her up into his arms. “Come on.” He headed down the dark hall to his bedroom.
She pounded a fist on his chest.
“Put me down. I can walk.”
“I know you can. I’ve enjoyed watching you do so on more than one occasion.”
Thump. Again.
“Put me down.”
“Shut up.”
He didn’t stop until his knees bumped the edge of the king-size mattress, where he deposited her on top of the rucked-up duvet. Glaring up at him, she raked the hair out of her eyes with one hand, using the other to push herself up. But her toes slid under the covers and he knew she was fighting a losing battle.
“I’m not sleepy.”
He gave her shoulder a gentle push, rolling her onto her back among the fluffy white pillows piled in front of the headboard. Sitting on the edge of the mattress, he held up a placating hand.
“If you can stay awake for five whole minutes, then I promise...”
Smoothing back her hair, he leaned down and pressed a kiss to her forehead, then brushed the tip of her nose with his lips, and the corner of her mouth.
The curve of her ear.
“I’ll ravage the pants off you,” he whispered. His words made her shiver.
She was determined. He’d give her that. She fought every millimeter, but as he stroked her hair, her lids fell inexorably shut. She curled up on her side, one hand tucked beneath the pillow. Even so, she muttered at him, “Not sleeping.”
“Of course not.”
“Pants off.”
“Absolutely.”
He stood up and stretched mightily. Considered the empty smoothness of the sheets in the guest bedroom at the end of the hall.
Oh, what the hell.
At least this way he’d have the memory of sleeping with her in his bed.
Stripping off his jeans and chucking them toward the door of the walk-in closet in the corner, he moved to the far side of the big bed and slid under the comforter. Leaving his T-shirt and boxers on would be his nod to propriety. She was curled up all the way across the mattress, her back to him.
That wouldn’t do at all.
But as soon as he wrapped an arm around her waist and tucked her against him, Nick realized his mistake. Her butt was snug against his crotch and she’d curled her hand around his, pressing his arm between her breasts.
He dropped his head on a pillow with a low groan and resigned himself to the wait for sleep to come.
Long before it did, his breath had slowed to match hers, almost imperceptible in the darkness next to him.
* * *
When she awoke, sunlight warm on her face and a tangle of sheets around her body, Maxie was alone in a strange bed.
She slid her hands across the luxuriously soft sheet beneath her, wrinkled now with the impression of two sleeping bodies. Not a strange bed, no. The enormous bed with its slate-colored down duvet, the sleek lines of the dark, low dresser and bedside table, the bare walls—all of it fit her picture of Nick Drake, captain of a financial empire.
That it did not remotely resemble the explosion of clothes, photographs and random souvenirs from past shows that distinguished her own bedroom shouldn’t bother her.
Should it?
Her midsection growled audibly. Introspection would have to wait. The last meal she’d consumed had been a Polish and some peanuts at the game the previous afternoon, not counting the various candy bars she and Grace had snagged from vending machines in the corridors of the hospital.
She ran her tongue over her teeth.
A toothbrush wouldn’t hurt, either.
When she emerged from the bathroom, she placed her feet carefully so as to make no noise in the silent apartment. She felt like a cat burglar and that was annoying, since she wasn’t sneaking anywhere.
She heard the clicking before she saw him and wasn’t surprised to find Nick hunched over the keyboard of a laptop computer on the coffee table, forearms resting on his knees as he leaned forward and typed with impressive speed.
His cheeks curved into a smile as she walked over to the large leather couch, so she knew he heard her, but he continued typing without looking up. He was dressed in yet another crisply tailored suit, ready for the day to begin. She ran her palms over her wrinkled jeans and felt half-dressed, and poorly at that, in comparison. He’d clearly been awake for some time already and she couldn’t say why this bothered her.
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Amy Cousins
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Opposites attract, but then what?Maxie Tyler is Chicago’s toughest stage manager. Her latest gig is just the break she needs, and she’s not going to let anyone get in her way. Not even the producer with dreamy blue eyes and bespoke suits that fit him perfectly in all the right places.A successful venture capitalist, Nick Drake is used to calling the shots. He doesn’t care about art unless it turns a profit. This show might prove to be a good investment, but he’s not sure if Maxie Tyler will. Her need to control every detail of the show makes him nervous. So does the fact that they can’t seem to keep their hands off each other.Scandal and disaster threaten her career, his reputation and the success of the play. Two people accustomed to being in control will have to trust each other if the show will, indeed, go on. And they’ll have to trust their feelings if their passion is going to last after the last curtain goes down and the lights go up.