ABOUT THE AUTHOR

      Cindi Myers’s one attempt at acting ended with her being sent to help paint scenery. Now she prefers to enjoy watching others perform. An avid skier, reader, knitter and cook, she lives in the mountains of Colorado with her husband and spoiled dogs.

      To all the volunteers who give their talent

       to community theater groups

      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter One

      “Places, everyone. We need to run through this scene one more time.”

      Ignoring the groans of her fellow cast members, Tanya Bledso stood downstage and waited for everyone to resume their positions. Dust motes danced in the beam from the single spotlight, and up close the floorboards were badly scuffed and worn—a far cry from the Hollywood soundstages she’d called home for ten years. If some of her former colleagues could see her now they’d either cringe or laugh, but she tried not to think of that. She’d come home to Crested Butte, Colorado, to make a fresh start, and if that meant shepherding a bunch of locals through an amateur production, so be it. At least she was still doing what she loved, if not on the scale she’d once aspired to.

      “Is this how they do things in Hollywood?” her best friend, Angela Krizova, asked as she draped her ample figure across a chaise longue and picked up a fan to waft in front of her face. “Work you till you drop?”

      “There’s no such thing as a short day on the set,” Tanya said. “Actors work hard.”

      “Yeah, but those guys are getting paid.” The male lead in the production, town councilman Oscar Renfield, struck a pose at center stage. “We’re all volunteer amateurs.”

      “You can’t get much more amateur than your performance, Oscar,” the man in charge of lighting, Bill Freeman, called from the shadows.

      Oscar waited for the laughter to die. “Yeah, well, we’re all second-string compared to Tanya,” he said with a genial smile at their director.

      Tanya joined Oscar at center stage. Everyone had been so kind since her return, pretending she’d been a big star, though she had only a few commercials and four years on a soap opera to show for her so-called career. It was only through luck—aided, she suspected, by a few called-in favors to her parents—that she’d landed this position as director of the Crested Butte Center for the Arts and the Mountain Theatre, which made it all the more important that she do a good job here. “Come on, everyone,” she said. “One more time and that’s it. I promise.”

      With only minor grumbling, the rest of the company shuffled into place. Tanya checked her script for Angela’s line. “How do I know I can trust you, Steve?” Angela said. “It didn’t work out for us the last time.”

      The rear door of the theater slammed against the back wall and a man stood behind a large scrim. “Where do you want this?” he asked, his voice booming in the empty darkness. Not waiting for an answer, he maneuvered the scrim, which depicted the exterior of an oldtimey saloon, up the aisle. He stopped at the foot of the stage and leaned into the opening for the saloon’s swinging doors. “I’ve got three more of these in the truck, and I need to know where to put them.”

      At the first sound of his voice, Tanya thought her ears were playing tricks on her, but when the stage lights hit the man’s face, she knew her instincts had been right. He was older now, with the solid arms and shoulders of a man instead of the boy of her memory, but Jack Crenshaw’s thick, dark hair still fell across his forehead in a careless wave, and his intense blue eyes could pierce right through a person. As a teen, he’d had the kind of looks that made every female between the ages of six and sixty give him a second glance; now Tanya found herself standing more erect and putting a hand up to smooth her hair.

      The movement drew his attention and for an eternity of a moment their eyes locked, and she felt her heart plummet somewhere near her stomach. She’d successfully avoided Jack until now for this very reason. Seeing him again reminded her too much of what she’d been like at eighteen—so young and full of such big dreams and easy emotions.

      A slow, seductive smile formed on his lips and her knees turned to jelly. “Well, if it isn’t the Hollywood princess,” he said.

      She flinched at the coolness in his voice, but willed herself not to show it. Yes, they’d parted on awkward terms all those years ago, but surely he’d forgiven her by now. After all, they’d both been practically children then. Something else must be eating him. Maybe he didn’t like theater in general, or maybe this was his idea of a joke. “Hello, Jack,” she said.

      His gaze wandered over her, frankly checking her out. The hardness in his expression made her flinch. So many things about Crested Butte had changed in her absence; she hadn’t wanted to believe Jack would be one of them.

      “I take it you’re in charge around here,” he said, with as much emotion as if he’d been talking to a stranger on a loading dock. “Where do you want these scrims?”

      She blinked. Yes, Jack had definitely changed, and like so many things in her hometown, not for the better. “The scrims are stored backstage,” she said, nodding toward the wings.

      “Maybe