The World is a Stage (2 page)

“Yes.”

“How many tattoos does he have?”

“That’s not a fair question!”

The black pencil Rachel was using to paint on a pair of highly arched brows stilled. “How many?”

“I don’t know. Six. Maybe seven. That I’ve seen so far.”

Rachel let out a whoosh of breath. She couldn’t tell if it was annoyance or relief—annoyance that her sister was once again being lured by a man whose ineligibility was literally stamped on his skin, or relief that she hadn’t yet had the time or the opportunity to count all his tattoos.

“How many piercings?”

“Just two,” Molly mumbled, refusing to meet Rachel’s eye in the mirror. She was beginning to falter. “A pair of gauges—small ones, I swear.”

“And what does this paragon of ours do for a living?”

“I’m not telling you.”

Rachel let her sister stand there, nervously tapping her foot, until both brows were finished. When she was satisfied they were perfect, she turned her head a little, marveling at the changes those simple brows wrought.
 

She looked fifteen years older, pale and wan with worry. A heavy circlet painted gold covered her head cloth, completely wiping away her hair, and an extra dab of gray face paint in the hollows of her cheeks gave her an eerie pallor. From the neck up, she was the perfect Gertrude, adopting the role of Hamlet’s mother with as much grace as could be expected of a woman still firmly in her twenties.

From the neck down, Rachel was much less Queen of Denmark and much more Las Vegas showgirl. A garter belt and a corset that pushed her boobs up to her neck weren’t exactly time-period accurate, but that was the deal. One didn’t work at Shakespeare After Dark, Little Willy’s Jack-Off-Broadway Review, without a bit of cleavage coming into the equation. Times were hard for a stage actress stuck in a midsize Eastern Washington city. Rachel made do.

She always did.

“I thought Debbie was supposed to do everyone’s makeup,” Molly said, full of petulance, very much in keeping with her attire.

“Debbie,” returned Rachel calmly, spinning on her stool and rising to her stiletto-clad feet in a single graceful movement, “is a white-trash hack who thinks it’s okay to apply greasepaint with her bare fingers. Ten dollars says your face breaks out like you’re fifteen again.”

Molly’s hand went involuntarily to her cheek. Rachel grabbed her wrist and held it for just a second too long before letting go, immediately contrite. She was doing it again—letting the worry take over everything else.

Molly deserved better.

“Let me guess,” she said quietly, looking into her sister’s turbulent gray eyes, so very much like her own. It was the only trait they shared outside of the signature sloped Hewitt nose, which everyone assumed was the product of a plastic surgeon’s skilled hand rather than really good genetics. “You met him at a bar. He didn’t even try to get you drunk or passed out in his bed. He’s misunderstood, really sweet once you get to know him. Not at all like the last one. I just don’t understand.”

Tears filled Molly’s eyes, and she didn’t even try to check them or keep them from running down Debbie’s botched attempt at stage makeup. Rachel’s chest tightened. That was the fundamental difference between the two of them.

Never let them see you cry. Never let them see they’ve won.

“You two ready?” Dominic, the director of the production, popped his head in through the creaking wooden door and nodded. “I see you’ve turned yourself into a Gorgon again tonight, Rachel. How delightful. That’s exactly what our guests pay to see.”

“Shove off, Dominic,” Rachel promptly replied.

Most of the cast and crew didn’t dare question Dominic’s superior opinion in all matters Shakespeare and stage. The man, aged gracefully into his late forties with the salt-and-pepper hair that had always been his signature, boasted of the quintessential academic. For years, he’d taught English classes at the local university. This production was his brainchild, a gutsy move to introduce classic literature to the masses by whatever means were necessary.

Easy for him to say.
He wasn’t the one whose nipples had to be taped down to keep them from popping out of his top.

“Five minutes to places. We won’t wait for you, Rachel—I mean it this time.”

“I hear you, already. I’m just going to give Molly a quick touch-up.”

He paused a beat too long, his gaze lingering on the band of thigh where garter met stocking. “Okay. Break a leg.”

As the door clicked shut behind him, Molly sucked in a sharp, excited breath. “Ooooh, he
likes
you. Are you going to start seeing him again?”

Rachel’s response was a sharp look and a strong hand that forced her sister to the seat she’d just been occupying.
 

It was no secret she and Dominic had once dated. And by dated, she meant she’d been a starry-eyed drama student and he’d been the bespectacled and patchouli-scented professor of all her college-age longings. There had been a lot of clandestine, locked-office sex. Not a whole lot of nice dinners for two.

A real gentleman.
Even if he redeemed himself with an entire month of nice dinners, dating a guy like Dominic wasn’t in the long-term plan. Dating
anyone
wasn’t in the long-term plan. These days, a girl either got a Neanderthal whose knuckles and balls dragged on the ground, or a clean-shaven city boy with retractable testes.

It was slim pickings out there.

Rachel peered into her sister’s face and quickly worked her over with some powder and an eye pencil. She thought they were done with the conversation, but Molly had more to say.

“You’re wrong, you know.” Molly kept her facial movements to a minimum, her voice soft. “Eric is different. You’ll see. He’s coming to the show and to the cast party at Dominic’s tonight. He really wants to meet you.”

“Good,” Rachel agreed. She turned away so her sister couldn’t see how hard it was for her to keep a smile plastered on her face. “I can’t wait to meet him too.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

They hurried out of the room and to the backstage area, a fairly large extension of the stage that held all their equipment, changes of costume, and one or two weather-beaten couches that were a welcome respite from their dangerously tall heels. The entire female cast hobbled around in said heels and bustiers, the men primarily in pants so tight the little muscular indentation of every one of their butt cheeks within a twenty-foot radius was clearly outlined.

Another day, another dollar.

Even though it was obvious Molly wanted to keep talking, Rachel expertly maneuvered them to their spots without once mentioning the tattooed and ineligible man of her sister’s dreams.

Because Rachel would go ahead and meet this guy, all right.

And then she’d get rid of him before he got anywhere near her sister’s soft, malleable and completely patchwork heart.

Chapter Two

A Freckled Whelp

Michael didn’t normally favor hats for casual wear. If you asked him, they had a tendency to move a man firmly up the charts of tool-dom. The jauntier the angle, the more likely the guy was to post pictures of his dick on the Internet.

But if there was one thing he learned in high school, it was that a hat provided the perfect cover for long, boring lectures given by long-faced, boring men. He wasn’t taking any chances on this Shakespeare fellow. A wool fedora went firmly over his head, and just to give Peterson something to bitch about, he cocked the hat so it almost covered one of his eyes.

He checked his image in the side-view mirror of Peterson’s van.
Perfect.

“You look like an idiot,” Peterson said.

Michael waggled his eyebrows and tipped the brim. “I
feel
like an idiot. Why are we doing this again?”

When Peterson opened his mouth to talk, Michael interrupted. “Oh, yeah. Because you plan on owing me—big-time and for the rest of your pathetic life. I still don’t see why you couldn’t bring someone else in my place, though.”

Peterson focused his eyes on the road and didn’t offer a response. Michael took a deep breath and prepared for the inevitable.

“What do you want, Peterson? And what’s it going to cost me?”

“The thing is, I really like this girl.”

“Got it.” Michael held up one hand and placed the other reverently over his chest. “I hereby solemnly swear not to hit up your lady friend with my numerable charms.”

Even though Peterson concentrated on driving, Michael flexed his arms for good effect, doing his best not to notice how much less impressive the results were these days. A few months off from his regular training schedule for the Scottish Highland Games, where both he and Peterson were regular competitors, and he was withering away like an old woman. It was March, so there weren’t any competitions for a while, but they always did a team Top Warrior Race this time of year, to keep the brotherhood and muscles going strong.

One more month.
 

He just needed to give his knee, five months post-surgery and still not fully functional, some time to recuperate before he could get back on his regular track. And then it was back to life. Back to flexing his muscles. Back to being the Michael O’Leary everyone knew and loved.

“It’s not just that,” Peterson warned. The blur of trees and shopping malls blended into a kind of static as Michael waited to hear the rest. “I need your help.”

“You don’t have to say anything more,” Michael offered, trying to find his footing in the strangely heavy air between them. “She’s got this friend, and your girl won’t go anywhere without her. You need me, and you need my game. Just say it, bro. You. Need. My. Game.”

It worked. Peterson grinned.

“I might have lied some,” he admitted. “It’s not a friend—it’s her sister. Apparently, she can be high-strung, and I want to make a good impression. It’d be awesome if you could unwind her a little.”

“Unwind? Is that what we’re calling it now?”

“I’m practically doing you a favor, Mikey.” It was hard to ignore the question in Peterson’s voice. No—not a question. This was out-and-out pleading. “Molly says she’s drop-dead gorgeous.”

Michael pulled the hat down lower over his head and braced himself for the worst.

That’s what they always said.

“You’ve got to be shitting me.”

A woman seated behind them in the darkened theater shushed loudly. Michael lowered his voice a few notches and tried again. “Seriously? The woman in red? That’s the sister?”

Michael considered himself a lover of women—all women, really. Skinny, curvy, tall, short, smart, dumb… There was ample place in his heart and arms for each one. It was a credo that had turned him into a semipermanent wingman for his friends, and that was fine. He was more than happy to take on the role. After all, someone had to placate the flesh that others left behind.

But that up there on the stage hardly qualified as flesh at all. It was as though someone had sucked all the life and vibrancy out of a human being and replaced it with a zombie.

A creepy Shakespearean zombie in negligee.

“What’s wrong with her?” Peterson protested. “I think she looks nice. Check out those legs.”

“Dude. That woman is fifty, if not more. You’ve got to have the wrong one.”

Peterson leaned forward in his chair, a fluffy velvet thing too narrow to accommodate the breadth of him. “I’m pretty sure that’s her. Molly said her sister was the queen, and she’s the only one wearing that crown thing. Besides, you’ve got to admit, Mikey—if you squint a little, she’s pretty hot.”

Michael squinted, and it did, in fact, help.

Like most of the other actors and actresses on the stage, the supposed sister wore an almost nonexistent dress, stockings that reached to the middle of her thighs, and a corset that made the most out of an already buxom form. There was a definite appeal to that kind of getup, and Michael was trying his best to enjoy it.

Every woman had value. He firmly believed that.

“Maybe it’s just the stage makeup?” Michael finally offered.

“I bet that’s it!” Peterson shouted, happy to latch on to an excuse.

“You’re being rude,” the woman behind them hissed. “I can’t hear what they’re saying.”

Michael shot an apologetic look over his shoulder before pulling his attention back to the stage. He had to admit, it was a pretty good production, and the theater was nice enough. It was small and dark and decorated mostly in the deep red draperies whorehouses in Wild West movies always had. Besides, whoever had thought to put all that antiquated dialogue into the mouths of a young, vibrant and scantily clad cast was a genius.

Boobs made everything better. True fact.

But it was damnably hard to follow what the actors were saying—especially every time that Gertrude character came on stage and stabbed her freakishly high eyebrows right into her hairline. With a little color in her, she wouldn’t be ugly, exactly. Sour was a better word for it, like a schoolteacher bent on punishing him—and not in the good way. Michael didn’t think he’d ever seen a more unhappy person in his entire life.