Nothing Like Love (7 page)

Her face was exquisite. The delicate architecture of her cheekbones, her jaw, her temples . . .

And her mouth. God, he could write a sonnet about her mouth. Full and soft, and so expressive the slightest quirk could speak volumes.

He’d been with his share of beautiful women. Women who were photographed on red carpets, women who were celebrated for their looks on the pages of fashion magazines and tabloids.

But of all the women he’d known, Simone’s beauty was the most complex. Comparing Simone to the supermodel he’d dated last year would be like comparing her set for
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
to painted cardboard.

The silk panels she’d created could be both transparent and opaque. They could reveal and conceal at the same time.

Simone was like that, too. Her beauty was in her layers—creativity, humor, intelligence, sexiness. Layers that revealed and concealed at the same time.

His hand rose of its own accord and he ran the backs of his fingers down the side of her neck. Her eyes widened, and he was so attuned to her he could tell when her pulse sped up.

“What about tonight?” he asked, his voice husky. “Where do you think tonight could lead?”

She didn’t say anything for a minute. They stared at each other, and the electricity between them seemed to crackle in the air.

But then, suddenly, the mood was broken. Simone looked over his left shoulder and gasped. “I don’t believe it. She actually came.”

He turned his head to see Jessica in the doorway. She’d changed out of her wedding gown and into a plain blue dress. Her eyes were red but her chin was up, and she looked groggy but game.

When he turned back to Simone, she’d already slid off her stool.

“I’m guessing that duty calls,” he said.

She nodded. “It’s my turn to put friendship over a one-night stand.”

He didn’t know if she felt as much regret as he did, but he respected her choice. “Your friend is definitely worth it. She’s got guts.”

“I’m sure your friend was worth it, too.” She tilted her head to the side as she looked up at him. “Look at us, all noble. Sacrificing hot sex for friendship.”

His body tightened. “I wish you’d stop talking about how hot the sex would have been. You’re not making this any easier.”

“True enough. And anyway, we both know sexual chemistry is a total crapshoot. There’s at least a fifty-fifty chance that the sex would have been lousy, and then all we’d have is the memory of a big buildup and an even bigger letdown. This way we’re setting ourselves up with a permanent might-have-been. The sex will stay imaginary . . . where it can be as hot as we want.”

She stepped in close and rose up on her toes, laying her hands against his chest as she looked into his eyes. Then, as his body hummed with anticipation, she slowly brought her mouth toward his.

At the last minute she changed course and pressed her lips to his cheek. Her scent, something subtle and spicy, enveloped him in a sensual haze.

She pulled back and smiled at him. “Be good, Zach.”

Then she hurried away to join the other guests gathering around the jilted bride.

“Damn,” he said softly, watching her.

His cheek still tingled where she’d kissed him.

The dream started off the way it always did: with a memory.

He was at Oxford, and a cloudless morning sky glowed above the ancient buildings and crisp green grass of the quadrangle. Zach was on his way to a history lecture with a fellow student when he saw her.

She was tall, graceful, and elegant, with long chestnut hair rippling down her back. She smiled at him as they passed each other. It was only a moment, but Zach turned to the student walking with him and said, “That’s the girl I’m going to marry.”

It didn’t work out like that. He and Isabelle became friends but never dated, and any chance they would ended when she married up-and-coming politician Nigel Pearson. A year later Zach left England for Hollywood.

But in his dream, his youthful declaration was always followed by a fairy-tale wedding scene: Isabelle in a dress fit for a princess, gazing up at him with her heart in her eyes.

He’d had this dream a hundred times. But this time, something was different. Isabelle was too short, for one thing—the top of her head barely reached his sternum.

Her veil was also wrong. It was opaque instead of transparent, hiding her face completely.

He lifted it out of the way and saw Simone.

She frowned at him. “This is the stupidest dream I’ve ever been in,” she said. “Have you seriously been carrying a torch for this woman for fifteen years?”

“It’s not stupid,” he tried to say, but Simone was turning invisible, and he wasn’t sure she could hear him. “It’s not stupid,” he said again, louder. “It’s romantic.”

“Romantic my ass,” Simone said faintly . . . and then she was gone.

Zach opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling, disoriented. It took him a moment to remember that he was in a hotel room in New York City and not at his flat in London.

He sat up in bed and scrubbed his face with his hands. He didn’t dream about Isabelle as often as he used to, but when he did, the dream was always the same . . . or at least, it had been until tonight.

What the hell was Simone Oliver doing in his dreams? He’d only known her a few weeks. And when this production was over, she’d go on with her life here in New York while he went back to his in London.

It was Monday morning, and he’d be seeing Simone that evening at rehearsal. He’d been toying with the idea of asking her out on a proper date ever since the wedding on Saturday, even though Simone had seemed to favor leaving things the way they were.

Now he was starting to think she was right.

The dream had been about ambiguity. Haziness. Uncertainty. His subconscious was telling him not to blur the lines of a working relationship—especially when there was no possibility of a romantic relationship.

And there wasn’t. Even if there weren’t an ocean between them, the two of them had vastly different worldviews. Simone was a realist and a pessimist. She didn’t believe in romance.

She might be up for a one-night stand, and God knew he’d had his share of those. But the chemistry he felt with Simone wasn’t one-night-stand chemistry.

His attraction to her was more than physical. He was intrigued by her, stimulated by her, charmed by her.

But he wasn’t prepared for her to invade his dreams. It was time to reestablish the boundaries between them.

Starting tonight.

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN

S
imone spent the better part of Monday wondering what it would be like to see Zach after their two near misses.

She’d had time over the weekend to think about all the reasons the two of them shouldn’t hook up. They were colleagues, for one thing, and while Simone had never given a damn about her personal reputation, she cared a lot about her professional one. Sleeping with her company’s guest director was not a bullet point she wanted on her resume.

And while her avoidance of serious relationships usually protected her from heartbreak, she had a feeling that even a few days with Zach Hammond could leave a mark. Did she really want to go there?

The smart money was on no.

This way she got to be a sexy cameo in Zach Hammond’s life—and he was one in hers. Their flirtation had been exciting and fun, a moment to relive when she was old and decrepit and trading anecdotes in a retirement home. A rare thrill, like floating on a cloud.

Now it was time to come back down to earth.

But when she passed a trio of reggae street musicians on her way to rehearsal, she did a little dance on the sidewalk. And whenever she thought of Zach’s blue eyes looking into hers, her heart skipped a beat.

“Oh, that I had an algebra book,” she murmured to herself when the theater came in sight, “so that I could scribble our names in the margins with a plus sign and a
4eva
.”

But no amount of snarky self-talk could deflate the bubble of happiness she’d been in since Saturday. Zach Hammond had flirted with her, damn it. Wasn’t she entitled to get a little teenage dreamy over that?

She’d been gearing up to see him once she got inside the theater, but it happened sooner than she expected. She was at the doors when a taxi pulled up at the curb and Zach got out. He was wearing sunglasses, jeans, and an Arctic Monkeys T-shirt, and he crossed the sidewalk with all his usual confidence—confidence that bordered on arrogance but never quite crossed the line.

He stopped short when he noticed her standing there. In spite of her determination to stay cool, her heart was beating like a drum.

“Hi, Zach.”

“Hello, Simone.”

He kept his sunglasses on, which put her at a disadvantage. She’d already taken hers off, which meant she was squinting into the setting sun while his eyes were hidden behind reflective lenses.

She needed to think of something to talk about before a brief silence stretched into an awkward one.

“So,” she said after a moment, deciding to ask about tech rehearsal schedules. “What do you think about—”

“Simone,” he said, interrupting her.

She blinked up at him. “Yes?”

“I want to apologize.”

“Apologize? For what?”

“For my behavior this past weekend. I blurred the lines of our professional relationship and I’m sorry. I’m hoping we can go back to the way things were.”

It was exactly what she’d been thinking, so there was no reason to feel disappointed . . . or rejected.

Except for the fact that what she was thinking and what she was feeling were two entirely different things.

Zach’s body language couldn’t have been more different from what it had been at the wedding reception. His hands were in his pockets, his shoulders were stiff, and he was already turned toward the theater, as though he was impatient to leave and only continuing this conversation out of politeness.

This wasn’t the first time Zach had had second thoughts about flirting with her, but it would be the last.

“You bet,” she said. “It’s like it never happened.”

She turned before he could and pushed open the doors first.

“Simone—” she heard Zach say behind her, but she ignored him.

Amy and Quentin were in the lobby, and she hurried over to them before Zach could catch up to her.

“Ready for rehearsal?” she asked brightly.

Amy frowned at her. “Are you all right?”

“Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know. You seem tense. And you’re dressed up.”

“Not wearing jeans doesn’t make me dressed up,” she snapped, wishing Amy weren’t so observant.

“You’re also wearing makeup.”

“So?”

“You don’t wear makeup to rehearsals.”

“I’m going out after.”

“On a Monday night?”

“What are you, the clubbing police?”

“Okay, okay, forget I asked. Did you get Louise’s message about the Helena costume? She’s waiting for you in the dressing room.”

Simone managed to keep her path from crossing Zach’s for the rest of the night, mostly by staying in the dressing room and focusing on costume issues. If Zach had a question about the set, he relayed it through Amy or Norbert, which seemed to indicate he was no more eager for a meeting than she was.

She felt better by the next night’s rehearsal. It didn’t make sense to be angry, and even if she were, she wasn’t the passive-aggressive type. When she was mad, she said so. Loudly.

But she wasn’t about to yell at Zach for flirting with her and then apologizing for it. She wasn’t about to imply that he had the power to upset her that much. Zach was her company’s guest director, and that was all.

She made a point of going up to him with a question about one of the backdrops. He looked at her a little quizzically and then smiled, and by the time their conversation was over, Simone felt herself relaxing.

By the end of that week things between them were almost back to normal. Then, the night of dress rehearsal, they found themselves alone backstage. Zach was checking one of the prop tables and Simone was looking over the lighting cue sheet when she happened to glance up and catch his eye.

For a moment they just stared at each other. Simone felt as though some enormous weight were crushing her chest, making it impossible to breathe. Zach’s face flushed and his jaw tightened, and he took a step toward her.

She had no idea if he was intending to come up to her, or what he might say if he did. All she knew was that she didn’t want to find out. She turned blindly and went toward the women’s dressing room, one place she knew he wouldn’t follow her.

Simone was careful not to be alone with Zach after that. They only interacted when there were other people around, and Zach was a little more formal with her than before—almost scrupulously polite. But it felt as though an electric current ran between them, a live wire it wouldn’t be safe to touch.

The show was going well. Once the reviews came in they sold out their second weekend, something they’d never done before. They had an actual hit on their hands. Not a
Wicked
-level hit, of course, but an off-Broadway, Shakespeare-level hit.

Everything was good. Great, even. They sold out their closing weekend, and the company was starting to talk about their upcoming trip to Ireland.

If there was a way she could have been beamed across the Atlantic, Simone might have been excited, too. But her fear of flying loomed larger and larger, making it impossible to look forward to the trip.

And then it was their second-to-last performance and Kate and Ian were in the audience. With the costume and scene changes running like a well-oiled machine, Simone had gotten Zach’s permission to sit with them and watch the show from the house.

While they waited for the curtain to go up, Kate and Simone discussed the text they’d gotten from Jessica. It said only:
On honeymoon with friend. Will call when I get back.

“Do you think it’s, you know, a guy friend?” Kate asked.

“I don’t know, but I hope so. If anyone deserves to blow off a little steam, it’s Jessica. I wonder if—”

A hand descended on her shoulder. “Simone?”

She turned her head and saw Amy standing in the aisle. It was obvious from her expression that something was wrong.

The curtain was supposed to go up in twelve minutes. This was a very bad time for something to go wrong.

“Got to go,” she said to Kate and Ian before grabbing her purse and following the stage manager backstage.

Amy started talking as soon as they were out of earshot. “It’s Belinda,” she said. “Something with her appendix. She went to the hospital.”

Simone had to trot to keep up with Amy’s long strides. “Is she okay?”

“Her boyfriend just texted that she’s in surgery. The doctor said she’ll be fine . . . but we don’t have anyone to play Hermia.”

“What do you mean? What about Pam?”

Pam understudied Hermia, Cobweb, and Hippolyta.

“Yeah, bad news there. Apparently Pam flew to LA this morning without telling anyone. Her agent got her an audition for a TV series.”

Amy took her to the greenroom. Every member of the cast and crew seemed to be there, all of them talking at once. Zach was there, too, standing like an island of calm in the midst of the chaos. When he caught sight of Amy and Simone, he went to join them, closing the door behind him.

They went down the hall to an empty dressing room. Zach grabbed a couple of chairs for Amy and Simone before leaning back against the Formica makeup counter, his arms folded across his chest.

He didn’t look panicked like Amy did. He looked intense and alive, his blue eyes sparking with energy when he spoke to her.

“Has Amy filled you in?”

Simone nodded. “She told me about Belinda and Pam. Could one of the other understudies—”

He shook his head. “No one else knows the part.” He paused. “The fact is, there’s only one person in this theater who knows Hermia’s lines.”

It took a moment to sink in. Then:

“Oh, no. No way.”

Amy grabbed her hand. “You can do it. You know the staging, the exits and entrances—you even fit the damn costume.”

Simone stared at her. “Are you out of your mind? I can’t go onstage and pretend to be an actor. I’d ruin the play.”

Amy shook her head. “I know you’ve never acted before, but you’ve been in theater your whole life. And you did great as Titania that day, and—”

“You can’t be serious. Fooling around as Titania for half a scene is one thing. But this—”

“We wouldn’t be asking if we weren’t desperate. We’ve got calls out to a few people, but even if we can find someone who knows the part and is willing to do it, what are the odds they can get here in time? We can delay curtain for twenty minutes, maybe, but not longer than that.” She leaned forward. “I don’t have to tell you what canceling tonight’s performance will do to our standing and credibility.”

“That’s not fair! You can’t—”

Zach put a hand on her shoulder and spoke to Amy. “Would you mind giving Simone and me a moment alone?”

“Of course not,” Amy said immediately. “I’ll check and see if anyone’s called us back.”

She pulled her phone from her pocket as she left the room, and then it was just the two of them.

In the silence, Simone felt her anxiety rising. And sitting down with Zach looming over her wasn’t helping.

She got to her feet and started to pace. “Zach, I would do this if I could. You know how much this production means to me.”

He stayed still for a moment as she moved restlessly around the room. “You
can
do this, Simone.” Then he stepped forward, into her path, and the symptoms of panic were suddenly intertwined with the symptoms of something else.

He put his hands on her shoulders and looked into her eyes, and rational thought went out the window.

Was there a woman alive who could say no to this man? A woman who could feel the persuasive power of those cobalt-blue eyes and refuse anything he might ask of her?

She pulled away from him and took a step back. “Don’t you dare try to charm me into this. You can’t just flash those baby blues and that sexy smile and expect me to—”

He grinned at her. “You think my smile is sexy?”

She refused to answer that. “Why did you send Amy out of the room?”

“It wasn’t so I could charm you. It was so I could persuade you.”

“Why would you want to persuade me to do something this insane? If I went up on that stage, I’d just be reciting lines from memory. I wouldn’t be
acting
. It would be a disaster! If you’d just look at this realistically—”

He shook his head. “That’s why I sent Amy out of the room. To persuade you, for once, not to be realistic—or pessimistic. We’re in theater, Simone. That means we’re in the magic-making business.”

“If I get on that stage, I won’t make magic. I’ll make a fool of myself.”

He shrugged. “It’s a possibility.”

“Hah! You admit it.”

“Doing live theater is always a risk. That’s what makes it magic, and that’s what stretches us. This is your chance to stretch. To get out of your comfort zone.”

He was so confident, so assured . . . and it was starting to piss her off. “That’s pretty rich, coming from the man with the perfect life. When have you ever had to stretch yourself?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Do you want to know why I left Hollywood? Because doing movies was getting too comfortable. In film, you can do a retake if you mess up a line. You can edit, you can do voice-overs, you can fix any damn thing you want to after the fact. But there’s no immediacy in that. No risk. In theater, a performance lives and dies in a single moment. There are no second chances. It doesn’t get scarier than that—or more electric.”