A Midsummer Night's Fling (Much Ado about Love #1) (4 page)

Nope, the sexiest man alive just left my apartment
. Nicola popped to her feet, fighting to appear nonchalant even as her insides writhed. “We all went to high school together. I thought I’d mentioned I knew Peter once upon a time.”

“You most certainly did
not
.” Cassie yanked her arm so Nicola was forced to fall back onto the bed. “So, Peter Fiesengerke’s brother is an actor too?”

“That’s right.” Nicola glanced at her digital clock and feigned shock. “Oh no! Don’t you have to get to work?”

Cassie turned her wrist over to look at her watch face. She narrowed her eyes, then leaned back like a woman who would not be easily moved. “I have a few minutes. And you are being evasive. Nicola, why didn’t you ever mention tall, blond, and hunky before?”

“I don’t talk about him.”

“Yeah, but why?”

Because talking about him reminded Nicola how much she used to adore him. Because talking about him, thinking about him, the two of them—
us
—hurt. “Bad breakup,” she murmured.

“A bad breakup means you mainline chocolate ice cream and stop washing your hair for three weeks. You don’t pretend your ex never existed.”

Nicola gave a brittle chuckle, feeling herself teeter near the ragged edge. “We had an extinction level breakup, then. How’s that?”

“Nic—”

“Don’t push this, Cass. Please.”

Cassie folded her arms, her eyes unhappy. “All I was going to say was if the situation is that bad, are you sure you want to work with the guy?”

Yes. God, yes
. The answer surged through Nicola, blazing with certainty. Dating Max had been frustrating, exhilarating, wonderful, heartrending. Acting with Max was pure pleasure. “He’s not a bad guy. Just the wrong guy for me.”

“Can I ask what happened with you two?”

You can ask, but
…

But Cassie was still worried, her mouth twisted, eyes pinched. Nicola sighed. If she didn’t give Cassie some scraps, her Mother Hen of a friend would worry herself sick.

Nicola snagged one of her pillows and hugged its softness against herself as her stomach churned. “So, me and Max. We dated in high school.” Ugh their stupid prom picture was buried somewhere in all her mess too.
Dammit
. Dredging through the muck of her old life had suddenly become a lot more painful. And it had already been painful enough
before
Max’s visit.

Nicola squished her pillow and continued, “Back then, Max and I were always on and off. We’d break up a lot, but only for a day or two.”

“Couldn’t stay apart.”

“Trite, but yes. I always felt safe with him, brave, kind. Like the best version of myself. And no one made me laugh like him. I guess we just…understood each other, had each other’s backs.” Her throat felt thick, remembering. Max holding her as she made herself sick sobbing after her father cheated on her mother, then left with the other woman. Her holding Max, watching him fight so hard not to cry when his own estranged father died. They’d grown up together in a lot of ways, been through so much—

“What happened?”

Stick to the facts, Nic
. Remembering all the emotional stuff would only hurt more. “Max drank a lot, and then he got into fights when he drank. He was a bit of a flirt, and I hated that. I didn’t like his friends, so he started partying with them more than spending time with me. That got worse when he started working more. He chose work and networking over me a lot.”

“Acting?”

“Yeah. Max was already a professional actor in high school when we started dating. He had a few walk-on movie roles. Some guest spots on TV. Then the summer after I graduated high school, he got a supporting role in
The Last Quarter
.”

“Sounds familiar.”

“The tearjerker about the high school football team. With the dog.”

“Oh, yeah. He’s the one who dies in the car crash before the big game.” Cassie blinked, her expression going reminiscent. “Wow. He sure grew up nice.”

“Yes, dear. Anyway, he fell in with a bad crowd on that movie. The drinking and the fighting got much worse. He was drunk more often than not.”

A sea of unpleasant memories seemed to lap against Nicola’s heart now. Max dropping out of college to make more silly B-movies. Him trying to seduce her by drunkenly quoting
Romeo & Juliet
. Him barfing on her mom’s porch. Paparazzi following them, scaring her, taking those horrible pictures of him drunk that always ended up in the magazines, on the Internet. “My big deal-breaker was one night he crashed his car coming home drunk from a party. I thought he was going to get himself killed. I didn’t want to be there to see it.”

Cassie whistled. “That’d do it.”

“Yeah.”
The first time
. Nicola fought not to look like she was withholding information. But she could barely talk about this first breakup. Wading into the mess of the
second
time Max broke her heart might kill her. She hugged her pillow. “We were together for years. Well into our twenties.” She swallowed. “Ah, first love. It’s always traumatic out of all proportion to the rest of your love life, right?”

At this, Cassie gave her the fish eye, suspicious.

However, Nicola was saved from further interrogation when her phone buzzed on the kitchen counter, drumming against the box of pans she hadn’t unpacked yet. She snagged the phone. “Hello?”

“
Mi esperanza
! My beautiful girl! Maxim says you will do the part for me.”

Nicola beamed, unable to maintain her doomy mood under Rita’s bright enthusiasm. “Yes, Rita. I’m so happy to be working with you.”
And Max
. She flinched at the thought.
Shut up, brain
.

“Oh,
mija
, I cannot wait. You will be the most beautiful, the most brilliant Titania. There is only one small, insignificant detail Maxim maybe forgot to mention to you.”

Nicola listened to Rita for several long minutes in increasing indignation.

Cassie, perhaps observing her expression, entered the kitchen nook, a worried frown on her face.
What?
she mouthed.

Nicola waved her hand,
In a minute
. She grabbed the magnetic pad from her fridge with its attached pen, then scribbled directions as Rita rattled them off.

Cassie glanced at her watch. Her eyes widened. She pointed to the door in an
I-gotta-go
sort of way. Nicola waved bye while inside her stomach writhed.

“So you can come in tonight?” Rita said in her ear.

“Yeah, Rita. No problem.” Nicola said bye to Rita, hung up, then slammed her phone down on the counter. “
Son of a bitch
.”

Cassie came skidding back into the apartment, looking startled. “
What? What?
”

“I have to audition.
Tonight
.”

N
icola’s drive
to the theater for her audition was pretty much insane: more than an hour long, involving four different freeways, then a long,
long
drive up a twisting road that skirted elaborate gardens and forest land.

Every turn and scenic outcrop on that narrow, winding trip left her worried she had missed the theater somehow. Every
other
turning had her thinking she should flip a U-turn and retreat.
I can’t go. I can’t
.

How could she work with Max? Seeing him had her twisted in a Gordian knot so tight even Alexander the Great couldn’t cut through it. If she had to spend every day for the rest of the summer like this, rigid along every nerve ending, she was pretty sure she’d spontaneously combust. Long before she ever got to tread the boards as Titania.

Then maybe you shouldn’t have driven all the way out here.

The driveway for a long narrow road appeared with a sign and an arrow:
RSF Main Stage This Way —>

The drive was shorter than the winding road had been, yet the short path felt eons longer. She flexed her fingers around the steering wheel, sending up a rhythmic
squish, squish-squish, squish
from the rubber.

She pulled into a sandy lot with wooden logs to mark the parking spaces, then dropped her head to the wheel of her car. Her heart was pounding, her throat dry and thick with approaching panic.
I can’t go. I can’t
.

She heaved out a long, sighing breath, irritated with herself more than anyone else.

If you aren’t going in, then why did you put on your favorite audition outfit? Why did you bring a stack of pics and résumés? And
why
did you waste all this time and gas money driving to Pasadena if you aren’t going to do the stupid audition?

She sat up straight in the car, breathing in, out. In. Out.

In
. Max didn’t matter.
Out
. The opportunity mattered.
In
. So what if they were going to work together?
In. Out. In
. So what if she saw him all day—
in, in, in
—every day for the rest of the summer—

“Oh,
shit
.” She dropped her head down and fought not to hyperventilate, trying to soothe her rampaging heart.

You’re being ridiculous
.

“Yes, brain, I know. Thank you for the input.”

Get out of the car. Do the audition. Knock their socks off. Worry about Max later.

“Right.”

And stop panicking. All right?

“All right.”

When Nicola glanced away from her steering wheel, she spotted a tall, pink-haired girl leaning against the side of the administration offices for the theater company. As their gazes crossed, the pink-haired girl pushed away from the side of the cottage-like building and sauntered toward Nicola’s car.

Anxiety clotting in her throat, Nicola managed to pin a game smile on her face as she popped out her driver’s side door. “Hello.”

“Hiya.” Offering her hand to shake, the girl grinned.

Woman, rather, Nicola realized as she stepped closer to exchange greetings. From the painted-on purple jeans and artfully ripped Black Sabbath shirt the stranger wore, Nicola had been thinking teenager, but now she figured the woman to be somewhere in her early twenties.

The pink-haired stranger was also startlingly pretty. Gorgeous, really. Pillowy red lips, dark eyes with an epicanthic fold, and a straight, leonine nose. From her eyes and bone structure, she appeared to be part Asian, but her hair provided no clue as it was dyed that blinding, bubblegum pink.

Nicola nodded politely. “I’m Nicola Charles.”

“Tierney Haruko.” Tierney jerked her chin toward the parking lot. “Max sent me to make sure you found the theater all right. Having a pre-audition breakdown, were we?”

Nicola cleared her throat. “It’s an important audition.”

Tierney shook her head. “
Actors
.” She gave a small
come along
wave of her hand. “We’re meeting everybody at the main stage.”

Everybody?
Nicola swallowed.
The
main
stage?
How big was her audition going to be? She clutched the folder containing her headshots and résumés in a stiff, angry grip.

From the admin building, Tierney led her across a wide sidewalk toward the theater’s front entrance, the one Nicola had always used when she’d come to see plays here. It had been years since she’d attended any RSF shows, not since a field trip in high school. The main stage theater hadn’t even been built last time Nicola was here.

The enormous exterior of the theater towered over her, like a castle waiting to be stormed. She glanced at the white-and-gold Elizabethan façade, scanning for angry archers or someone with boiling oil.

Instead of leading her through the audience seating area, Tierney turned up a different side way, which paralleled the back of the theater. As Tierney led her along, the wall abruptly disappeared, giving way to only hillside.

“The others are coming soon.” Tierney glanced at her over her shoulder as she walked. “I thought you might want a minute on the stage first. Takes people a bit to get used to the space.” With that, Tierney led Nicola around the wall and onto the floor of the main stage.

Nicola paused at the corner, her mouth falling open as she stared around her. The RSF’s website had stated “the new Armina Elton outdoor theater has its own strange quirks,” and they hadn’t exaggerated. The building had basically been built snugged up to a small hill. Shuffling to the lip of the platform, Nicola wheeled to admire the whole setup with the hillside. Instead of having a wall behind the main stage there lay a hill with trees behind to form a “forest.” But it
was
a forest, with a charming collection of trees and bushes to form the back “wall” of the theater.

Yet, despite this homespun charm and quirkiness, when she faced the house, she recognized the audience chairs were modern and comfortable, upholstered in a muted gray. The lighting and other tech equipment likewise seemed as up-to-date as anything, despite the fact half the building was forestland.

The odd mash-up of elegant Elizabethan architecture, a real-live forest, and a modern theater left Nicola completely charmed. Like climbing through the cabinet to Narnia and finding a new world, this theater seemed to be an anachronism grown out of the ground. This space—part in, part out of this world—was a perfect place to stage
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
.

Oh, I want this part
. She thought she’d wanted the part before, thinking about Rita directing and the exposure for her career and, you know, actually having an income. But now, seeing this stage, standing here cloaked by its magic and beauty, Nicola
needed
to get this part.

She could remember only one other time she’d wanted something this badly and fallen so completely in love at first sight before.

Yeah, and
that
ended well
.

Shut up, brain
.

Tierney sidled up to her. “It’s a good space, huh?”

“Oh yes.” With an effort, Nicola pulled her gaze away from the theater building. “I forgot to ask before, what do you do with the company?”

“Costumes mostly.” Tierney sank down to sprawl across the steps in the middle of the stage. “But I’ve got my hand in everything around here. Sets. Stage managing. Comes from being one of the Infamous Eltons, I guess. Whenever they need bitchwork, it’s always, ‘Oh, let’s ask Tierney.’”

Armina Elton had founded the RSF in the 70s, and her daughter, Isabelle, was the current artistic director, but Tierney’s last name had started with an “H”…and been Japanese.

As if reading Nicola’s thoughts, Tierney gave her a wry grin. “I’m The Great Armina’s granddaughter. Isabelle is my mother.”

What a sweet spot at nepotism
. A guaranteed in with the best theater company on the West Coast. Never mind being part of a bona fide acting dynasty, granddaughter to a legendary movie star— “But you don’t act?” Nicola asked.

“I used to be a dancer. Not here. Over in New York. Fucked my knee up. End of that.” Tierney had fished a lighter out from somewhere, certainly not from her overtight jeans, and was flicking it on and off, on and off, watching the flame dance.

A door squealed open at the back of the theater, and the pink-haired girl hopped to her feet. “Time to start the show.” She thumped across the stage, the pound of her heavy boots seeming to belie her former life as a dancer. But then she smoothly jumped into the pit in front of the first row of seats, leaving Nicola alone onstage as a train of people entered the theater.

Nicola hesitated, rocking on the balls of her feet. Should she stay onstage? Go into the house to meet them and make nice? Max appeared, pulling up the rear and giving her a cheerful wave. She waved too, grimly smiling.
Should I kill Max for getting me into this?

The least awkward thing would seem to be to enter the house and meet everybody. This wasn’t a formal audition, after all. This was more of a clusterfuck, and Nicola, as well as everybody else, was winging it.

A tiny crowd congregated in the pit between the stage and the first row of the audience. Nicola did not copy Tierney’s performance and hop offstage. Instead, Nicola descended to the ground by way of a side stair, all the time trying to appear regal. Queenly.
Fairy
Queenly.

Rita pounced as soon as Nicola was off the last stair, pulling her into a long hug. “Oh, mija, it has been too long.”

When Rita let her go, Nicola took quick stock of her former mentor. In her early sixties now, Rita’s brown eyes were still bright, helped along by the heavy eye makeup and false lashes she wore, but her spiky, short hair was pure white now. She wore a black turtleneck and slacks, with a pair of white glasses on a chain around her neck and her trademark cluster of silver bracelets on her wrist. She’d put on weight and didn’t look well. Nicola blinked in surprise. Rita had grimly held on to her slim dancer physique for years. Maybe the stress of directing was getting to her?

Nicola grinned at Rita, but the expression slid from her face as Max stepped close.

“You made it.” He wavered forward like he might hug Nicola.

Nicola leaned toward him, her hands shoved deep in her jeans pockets, and murmured, “I’m going to kill you for this. No audition
my ass
.”

He shot her an apologetic grin, but when she glared at him, he hurriedly pulled a woman forward. “Nicola, this is Isabelle, our artistic director. Isabelle, meet Nicola.” Then, much in the attitude of a man running for cover, he shuffled backward and dropped into one of the audience chairs.

Nicola shot him one last glower for good measure, then stepped forward to shake Isabelle Elton’s hand. She was surprised to find her idol was as short as she was. Nicola had revered Isabelle Elton for years, so at least this was one good thing about the day. “It is a huge pleasure to meet you, Ms. Elton.”

Isabelle slid her hand away. “Yes, I’m sure it is.”

Nicola blinked.
Did she just
—

Wheeling around, Isabelle faced the rest of the group. “We can’t start yet. This is Judith’s show. I need my co-artistic director.”

“She’s not here,” Tierney muttered.

Isabelle shot her daughter a sour look. “I’ll check the lobby.” She left to seek out the missing Judith.

“‘Co-artistic director.’” Tierney huffed. “Mom wants more time free to go on auditions. Reclaim her glory days.”

Rita clucked her tongue. “
Chiquita
, your mother works hard. She needs help to run this place.”

Tierney glowered. “If Ma needs help, why didn’t she ask you, Rita? Or me? Hell, you’re training Max to be a director. Even he could pick up some of the slack if we’re getting desperate.”

For someone who wasn’t an actor, Tierney was pretty damn dramatic. Then Nicola processed her remark and quirked her head. Max? A
director?

He snorted and avoided Nicola’s gaze. “Thank you, Tierney, for the vote of confidence.”

They all seemed tense, and no one from the company would meet her eyes. Nerves prickling, Nicola beamed a questioning glance at Rita, but Rita had a sudden need to pick some lint off her pants. Nicola snapped her gaze over to Max and raised an eyebrow. “What’s going on?” She felt a bit like the gentleman caller forced to bear witness to a family spat over Sunday dinner.

Max did a small lip-shrug. “Judith is our new co-artistic director. We all found out today.”

And no one was very happy about it, judging from reactions.

“I’m here! I’m here! So sorry.” An older British woman, fiftyish with white-blond hair, glided down the theater aisle, Isabelle trailing after her. “Apologies.” She stopped before Nicola. “Hullo. You must be the girl we’re auditioning. Nicola, was it?”

Girl?
Seriously?
Nicola twitched her shoulders but managed a friendly nod. “Yes. Hello.”

The woman, Judith, flashed her teeth in a smile, then turned to the others, presenting her back to Nicola. “All right, I’d like to see a few scenes with Bottom first. Then we’ll try her with Oberon.” Judith swept up the aisle and plopped herself into a seat in the last row of the audience.

Isabelle blinked after her co-artistic director, seeming startled, but she covered it well as she turned toward Nicola. “I can’t stay for the audition, unfortunately, I have one of my own to go to.”

“Is it deodorant or car insurance today, Ma?” Tierney said, her eyes glinting.

Isabelle fluffed her mass of curly hair, ignoring her daughter’s remark. “
Anyway
. Nicola, you’re in capable hands with Judith.”

As Isabelle made a grand exit out the doors of the theater and Rita rolled her eyes, Nicola stifled a laugh.

Rita bustled forward, pulling behind her a medium-height, chubby black guy with a sweet face. “Nicola, this is Gil Dodgson. He will be your Bottom the Weaver.”

Nicola reached out to shake his hand, but Rita interrupted, “Pleasantries later, my darlings.” She shoved them both toward the stage with a frantic hand on their shoulders. “For now, you impress the hell out of that bitch, Judith.” Her accent was thickening, a sure sign she was stressed.