A Midsummer Night's Fling (Much Ado about Love #1) (10 page)

Why does the universe hate me?
The day was still young, but the sun was already sharp and bright, the shaded covers over the outdoor stage insufficient against such enthusiastic, chipper new light. Nicola’s skin was warmed but not yet overheated.
Only a matter of time
. A needlepoint of pain started behind her eyes.

“Uh, what kiss, Rita?” Shakespeare’s actual play had no such stage direction and none of the blocking Nicola had spent the last week learning had indicated kissing Max as a possibility.

Rita flapped her hands, motioning Nicola to silence. “I rethought the scene where Oberon lifts the spell, mija.
Gilbert!
Ay dios…where is Gil? I need my Bottom!”

Nicola was so wound up, she didn’t even laugh at that ridiculous statement. She flipped her script to the right place and reviewed how Rita had originally blocked the scene. Nicola’s heart was pounding out a sick, punishing beat inside her, but she kept her face expressionless, calm.

Stupid to think she would be able to get through this production without kissing Max.
I wonder if it’s too late to switch parts
. Maybe Rita could have Gil play Titania instead. That would be a new and different direction for the play.

The stage manager and a few of the fairies pushed several unpainted wooden blocks together to make up Titania’s bed. Nicola stretched herself out.

“Max
im
!” Rita’s shrill cry echoed off the back rows of the theater, taking full advantage of the wonderful acoustics.

“I’m here. I’m here.” Max jogged onto the stage and circled behind Nicola. The bed platform rocked as Max leaned his considerable bulk against it.

“Puck! Where the hell is Puck?” Rita spat out, losing patience. “And Gil! Abe, you find my Puck. Violet, find Gilbert.
Ay dios mio
. Where is everybody?” Rita stormed over to confer with the stage manager.

Nicola propped herself up on her elbows. Max eased himself down to sit at her feet. For a long moment, she only stared at him, and he stared back, looking ridiculously worried.

“It’s not the end of the world.” Watching him, Nicola was provoked into a laugh. “Maybe she’ll let you kiss Lachlan next.”

A corner of Max’s mouth tipped up, and he stared thoughtfully at the sky. “We’ll be fine. It’s not like we’ve never done this.”

“No.” Her heart thudded in her chest, punching against her ribs. “No. After all, we spent most of 2005 making out.”

“2006 too.”

“2006 was a good year.”

His mouth quirked. “An immature vintage, but it had potential.”

She scoffed out a laugh, then gazed around, feeling antsy.

“What?”

“If there’s going to be kissing today, I’d just as soon get it over with.”

Crushing silence followed her pronouncement.

Nicola reran her words in her head and, realizing how she’d sounded, clapped a hand over her mouth. Max shot her a mock glower, but she couldn’t hold back one squeak of laughter. “Sorry, Max. You know what I mean.”

“I wonder if there are any onions lying around somewhere. Garlic?”

“Don’t you dare. That wasn’t funny in
R&J
and it’s not funny now. You’re a grown man. A professional actor. Act like it.”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

She ought to say something stern and grown up, something responsible, but his hair was glinting gold in the sun, a dimple flirting with her at the corner of his mouth. All she wanted was to sit in the sun beside him and laugh.

Max
. Her heart had forgotten what it felt like to know someone like this, to be able to read his expressions, to predict what he’d say, to be pleased simply by his nearness. This was the sweet comfort of affection—not only wanting the person you were with, or loving them, but liking them too. Over the years, she’d forced herself to forget how much she simply
liked
Max.

It wasn’t a comforting thing to recognize now.

Especially what with the imminent kissing.

Max studied her face, his eyes narrowed. He opened his mouth to say something.

“Sorry, sorry.” Gil Dodgson thumped onstage and threw himself onto the platform next to her, nearly kicking Max. Gil yawned, his hair and clothes appearing sleep rumpled. Her Bottom settled in front of her—the small spoon to her big spoon, cutting Nicola off from Max.

Lachlan sauntered onstage, smelling of cigarette smoke as he stood behind her against the platform.

“What line are we starting from, Rita?” Max asked.

Nicola felt seasick, her gut writhing as Max and Lachlan kept knocking into the flimsy platform. Their jarring movements were minor, hardly anything, but her body was already unsettled, her insides flailing in anticipation.

It was worse having kissed him so recently, because she didn’t have to think back across years to remember how good he was, how he tasted, how his arms felt…

She rolled her weight over, trying to find a position on the rough wooden platform that didn’t hurt. She counted lines in her head, trying to figure out where Rita would put the kiss.
You’re a professional. Suck it up. It doesn’t mean anything. You can kiss Max.

Every day. Sometimes twice a day for the matinee performances. All summer.

The thought was far more horrifying and far more exciting than it should be.

Rita stopped the Oberon and Puck dialogue and began flipping script pages. “All right, Maxim, you keep all the business the same, but on your line, ‘wake you, my sweet queen,’ we have a kiss.”

Max cleared his throat, and his weight thudded against the flimsy platform. “A small kiss or…”

“You hold the kiss for three seconds, I think. Your wife has just been with her lover. You are trying to make an impression. Reclaim your wife. We try it, mijo. Yes?”

Oh good. I’m being claimed.
Nicola lay down on the platform.

“Cheat out, mija.”

Nicola adjusted herself, per Rita’s instructions, and made sure her body was turned out so the audience could see her face and so that—
sigh
—Max would have easy access for the kissing.

He delivered his line and bent toward her. “Sorry, Nic,” he whispered. His breath stirred against her face, but his lips barely brushed hers even as he held for the required three seconds. She fought every instinct, every bit of lingering muscle memory, which told her to open her mouth against his and deepen that kiss. Still, when he pulled back, she couldn’t help but feel…unsatisfied.

A breathless moment passed, her body tingling with heat.

“It’s your line, darling,” Lachlan said above her, his rich voice vibrating with laughter.

Nicola blinked her eyes open. “What?”

The stage manager cued her in a flat monotone, “‘My Oberon. What visions have I seen.’”

“Right.” The scene went on even after Max kissed her. The world went on—even after such a flat, lifeless kiss as that. “Sorry.” Nicola turned to Max, making her voice go breathless with wonder, “‘My Oberon! What visions have I seen! Methought I was enamour’d of an ass.’”

“‘Silence awhile—’”

“Hold, Maxim.” Rita lifted a hand, staring at her script. “We add another kiss there, I think. Yes. Make a note, everyone.”

Casting Nicola a dry glance, Max pulled his pencil out of his pants pocket, and made a quick note in his script. She was pretty sure she knew what his look meant.
She
wasn’t going to forget they were supposed to kiss. The fact Max felt at least as awkward as she did with this whole thing wasn’t much comfort. But it helped.

“All right, we run the scene again,” Rita declared. “And, Maxim-mijo, can you put some enthusiasm into the kiss this time? Some fire, eh?”

“Sure, Rita.”

I’m in hell
. Nicola flattened herself against the bed platform and waited, defenseless, for her ex-boyfriend to kiss her.

This next time, his lips had barely brushed hers before Rita charged onto the stage, swearing in Spanish and, then, “Nonono
no
. Ugh.” The director’s bracelets set up a clinking racket as she flung her arms in the air with exasperation. Rita was a little breathless after her rant. Violet the stage manager started for her, but Rita waved the woman off. “Why did I cast you two if I am going to get such lifeless kisses? I want deep. Long.
Claim
her, Maxim.”

Max blinked, looking stunned.

Lachlan chuckled.

Nicola wet her lips and reclined on the box. She squeezed her eyes closed. “Just do it, Max. It’s fine.”

The other actors reset.

The scene began again.

“‘Wake you, my sweet queen.’” Max’s voice rumbled above her, the resonance of it causing flutters in her belly. Minty breath stirred on her face, and she smelled him, felt his bulk and heat. She shifted on the platform, rising toward his nearness.

He kissed her.

No tentative kiss this time, his mouth pressed hard against hers. She slid her fingers along the cord of his neck into the softness of his hair. She opened her lips for him and her arousal blossomed and shattered like a rose until the tingling heat was everywhere, until her veins seemed to flow with it.
Yes
.

Max groaned low in his throat and deepened the kiss. His tongue swept into her mouth, and he nipped playfully at her lower lip, ravaging her mouth, tasting her.

Yes. Yes
. It was a song in her heart, a joyful, skipping cry.
Yes
.

When he moved away, it was like a part of herself tearing loose, and she actually whimpered. She blinked her eyes open, staring into his handsome face. His eyes sparked in the sunlight, half-lidded with lust.

“‘My Oberon,’” she breathed out, not focused on anything but his face so close to hers, his mouth plump and a little roughened from that kiss. “‘What visions have I seen.’”

The rest of the cast tittered behind them, breaking the scene, and Rita called a halt.

“Bloody hell,” Lachlan murmured.

Rita’s voice was a trifle dry—but no longer irritated. “Maybe not quite so long a kiss next time, eh, Maxim? Moving on.
Puck!
”

Nicola’s heart was thumping inside her rib cage. She could feel the pulse in her throat, in her ears. “Crap.”

“Yeah.” A low voice rumbled above, so quiet she was probably the only one who heard Max.

As the scene continued, she shot Max a worried glance, which he returned. The question
How are we going to get through this?
seemed to hang in the air between them.

* * *

A
s soon as
Rita moved on from blocking that kissing scene in
excruciating
detail, Max and Nicola very literally ran away from each other. She retreated to the back of the theater to “review her lines,” and he fled into the greenroom to get his shit together. And to let his raging hard-on subside a bit in privacy.

He flung himself into the empty lounge and, with infinite care, pushed the greenroom door closed. If he didn’t close the door carefully, he was going to slam it, which would draw too much attention. “Fuck…” He raked his fingers into his hair and pulled on the roots. “
Fuck
.”

“Something the matter?”

Max whirled to find Lachlan was already in the greenroom. Smirking, the other man lay reclining on the couch with his script spread in his lap.

Max smoothed the stiffness out of his face. “Nah. Just stuff with my brother.”

“The glorious Peter. I should have known.”

Max crossed to the pile of his things in the greenroom’s cubbyholes. “Do you need a ride home tonight?” he asked, hoping to distract Lachlan.

“No ride needed. If I can’t find more congenial company, then Tierney will give me a lift. She and I were heading to the pub after rehearsal. Care to tag along?”

Max grimaced his answer.

“Such a teetotaler, our Max.
Tch
.”

“I’m gonna go straight home tonight, shower, and sleep.” Still trying to appear too busy—too
distracted
—to talk, Max fished for his phone in his duffle. Come to think of it, Max
was
waiting to hear from his agent about a film part. While he was creating phony stage business for himself, he might as well actually check for calls. Max tugged his phone free of the mess in his bag. No calls from his agent, but he had three text messages. All from his brother.

9:04 A.M.:
Mornin. What’s up?

12:47 P.M.:
Tierney said you kissed Nic onstage. You OK?

2:11 P.M.:
if you sleep with nic I WILL punch you in the face, then i’ll tell mom.

“Damn you, Peter.” Annoyed, Max shoved his phone deep into his bag.
Damn, damn,
damn Peter
. Max crossed to the water cooler for a drink, his skin seeming to throb as it released the heat and inched toward a normal temperature. The perfunctory California spring had ended, and today the sunlight was out full force, gilding everything with cheerful, yellow light. Max was glad he’d worn a T-shirt. He’d been in flannel shirts all last week.

Icy water trickled out of the cooler, and the tiny, thin paper cup felt like a thimble in his hand. Insufficient. He pounded one cupful back, then refilled his thimble.

“So.” Lachlan’s soft, cultured voice was right behind him. The other man slung an arm over his shoulders, making Max slosh water onto the carpet. “You and the new Titania. What’s the story there?”