When the Lights Go Down. Amy Cousins Jo
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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