The World is a Stage

by Tamara Morgan

  “Molly’s a big girl with big-girl pants. Are you sure you want to start telling her who gets in them?”

  “She’s falling for this one fast and hard, Nora. And he’s already hit her once.” Rachel paused uncomfortably. “Well, allegedly. She swears it wasn’t him, but you know what she’s like about that kind of stuff.”

  “And what about the other guy you mentioned? The friend? The one you obviously have the hots for?”

  Rachel stumbled on a rock. “If you’re talking about the one I want to brain with one of the swords from the costume department, then yes. You should check up on him too. Especially him too.”

  She kept her words level and neutral, but she could see Nora studying her out of the corner of her eye. She schooled her features as best she could.

  Michael had sat across from her at the coffee shop, all full of himself because he managed to pull her hefty five feet nine inches up the movie theater aisle and out onto the street. Even fuller of himself because she’d let him. It was the moment, nothing more. Sam Spade always made her sentimental.

  “I think maybe you’re digging your own grave,” he’d announced between mouthfuls of pastry. “With your sister, I mean.”

  “I beg your pardon?” If his goal had been to antagonize her, that was the fast track to get there. No one told her how to handle her sister, least of all a man she’d known a few weeks and who had the understanding and finesse of a horse.

  He’d had the audacity to laugh. “Oh, calm down, woman. It’s not going to do you any good to get your fur all riled up for me. I’m not scared of you. In fact, I think it’s kind of cute.”

  “I think you’re kind of heinous. So we’re even.”

  “Just hear me out for a minute, will you? I’m not going to pretend to know what goes on inside that pretty head of yours, but your sister is lucky to have a guy like Peterson. Damn lucky. There’s no better man I know, and I would sign my name to that fact.”

  Rachel had snorted. “You must not know very many people.”

  He’d instantly sobered, leaning forward as if to try and intimidate her. “Lash all you want at me—to my face, behind my back, with your tongue or with your fists. It doesn’t bother me, and I’d rather take all your anger than have you spreading it around. But be very careful what you say about my friends. Even I have limits.”

  “I’m not scared of you either.” Rachel refused to look away or back down, even though her heart was thumping painfully, suddenly too big and explosive for her ribcage. “And my limits? You’re constantly treading them. Stomping them, actually, with your big, stupid feet.”

  “That’s better.” He relaxed, though there was still a soberness to his face that unsettled her. “Can I say something serious now?”

  He’d taken her rigid silence as assent.

  “Molly and Peterson—they are scared of you. They’re both good people, and they seem to have a nice thing going on. But for some reason, they think if you have even one minute to yourself, you’ll fuck up the best thing either one of them has had in years.” All Neanderthal jokes aside, his brow lowered, and those ridiculously blue eyes of his looked into hers, clouded and troubled. “That’s not true, is it, Rachel?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The conversation had begun to make her feel very uncomfortable.

  “Me. I’m talking about me.” He’d placed one of his man-paws over her hands then, all warm and comforting and sending pricks of sensation up her spine. “This might come as a surprise to you, but I don’t really like Shakespeare. In fact, I think he’s kind of a tool with all those big words and dramatic, girly men. I do like Peterson, though, and I like Molly. And though you may not believe me, you’re pretty great yourself.”

  Rachel refused to blink. If this was a declaration of some sort, he sucked at it. Even if her body temperature had risen a few dozen degrees and her head felt suddenly light and unattached to the rest of her.

  “So?”

  “So.” Michael shook his head. “Don’t you think it’s kind of…weird that I’m hanging around the stage all day?”

  “I think you’re a sad, pathetic man without anything else to do.”

  “That’s true,” he’d said with a grin. “But I’m also a man doing a favor for a friend. They want your blessing, Rachel, more than anything else in the world.”

  She’d sat back, then, the sticky vinyl of the seat too hot and too confining to make her the least bit comfortable. What was this? “What exactly are you saying?”

  “I’m asking you, as a personal favor, to give them a chance. Lay off, lay low, and let them figure their own shit out. That’s all.”

  Lay off? Lay low? Michael-the-Mule was telling her what to do? The room grew dangerously quiet, and Rachel could barely see beyond a few feet in front of her. “Are you saying it’s been your job this whole time to make sure I do that?”

  “No.” He sat back, satisfied. “It’s been my job to keep you from making a mistake until you’re ready to see straight. I think you’re ready. They don’t—but you’re a lot more reasonable than I think people give you credit for.”

  She felt the impact of his words before they fully registered in her brain. It was odd that her body would acknowledge the blow first, recoiling as though struck. She waited for a moment, expecting the wash of red-hot anger to follow.

  It didn’t come.

  According to Michael’s confession, she was being watched. She was being babysat. She was being handled. There was nothing worse than that. Her mother had to be handled, her massive ego stroked even as she was prevented from making a spectacle that would reflect poorly on her brand.

  But instead of making Rachel so furious she couldn’t see straight, the knowledge fell over her like a numbing blanket. Molly thought she was no better than their mother—when all this time, Rachel had been doing everything, changing her whole life, to try to take care of Molly.

  And the only person leaping to her defense was Michael.

  “Say something, Rachel,” Michael had said, peering over the table at her. “You’re kind of freaking me out.”

  “I can’t believe this,” she’d muttered, pulling away so that all contact between them was separated. It was too much.

  “You want to talk about it?”

  “Do I look like I want to talk about it?”

  “Good point. I’m sorry to spring it all on you like this—and believe me, I feel awful about lying to you that whole time. You deserve better. Just…don’t go crazy or anything now, okay?”

  Surprisingly, she hadn’t.

  But her stomach still hadn’t fully unfurled itself from its tight knot, and being here with Nora wasn’t helping as much as she’d hoped. This was supposed to be Rachel’s attempt to make things right. If, as Michael insisted, his friend was a good person, then Nora would find it—and Rachel was willing to back off and let Molly do her thing.

  But if he and Peterson were hiding something, she reserved the right to step in. It was only fair. She couldn’t stop worrying just because Michael told her to. That wasn’t how the real world worked.

  “Care to share?” Nora asked, snapping her fingers and bringing Rachel’s attention back to the present.

  “No, I don’t. Will you just do this for me? Please? It will be the last time.” Rachel continued avoiding her friend’s eyes. She just needed to know the facts. That was all.

  “I don’t like it,” Nora warned.

  “You don’t have to like it. Just say yes.”

  Nora waited a full two blocks before she finally stopped, forcing Rachel to come to a halt next to her. “I’ll do it, but I want to know that you’re aware of what you’re getting into here. No one has a completely clear past. Not even you. And I need a few weeks. Spring is the worst for affairs. It’s like the second the sun comes out, women and men can’t help themselves.”

  “I can wait,” Rachel said. Something like relief warred with something like guilt inside her heart. She refused to acknowledge either.
This was about protecting her sister. This was about refusing to bend under the pressure of someone else’s command. “I want nothing held back. I want to know who these guys really are.”

  “What if it turns out they’re actually quite nice?”

  Rachel blinked. The image of Michael sitting across from her at the coffee shop, his hand on hers, flashed across her mind. What had he said? Give them a chance…as a personal favor?

  “What is it, Rachel?” Nora asked, interrupting her thoughts. “Change of heart?”

  No. Never that.

  She shook her head. Rachel Hewitt was not her mother or her sister, and she didn’t form her decisions or her life around a man. Not even one who kept snagging on her insides like Michael O’Leary.

  Especially not that one.

  Chapter Twelve

  Man’s Ingratitude

  “You’re a fucking moron, O’Leary.”

  Michael crossed his arms over his chest and firmed his stance.

  “Get your ass off the field right this minute, or I will forcibly remove you.”

  With a snort, Michael planted himself even more firmly into the ground. “I’d like to see you try.”

  They were brave words, considering how little he was able to back them up. A tussle with his Scottish Highlands brethren—Julian, McClellan and Nick—used to be just another form of practice and camaraderie. Today, the first man to come at him in a linebacker tackle would find him more than willing to take his place on the sidelines. There was no way his knee could take it.

  “That’s it,” Julian said, shaking his head sadly. McClellan cracked his knuckles for good effect. Of all of them, no one said wall-of-muscle quite like he did. “Pull down his pants.”

  Michael fended them off the best he could, but at three to one, he barely had a chance to tighten his drawstring to stave off their attack.

  It wasn’t really his drawers they were after, and Michael knew it. Laughing at their antics, he pulled up the leg of his pants, rolling it slowly to expose his knee.

  There wasn’t much to it—at least not right now. He’d wrapped the damn thing up in three elastic bandages, layered in between with cold packs and topped off with about ten painkillers. If he were to unwrap it, there would be an entirely different story to tell.

  “See? Fully functional.”

  “Bend it.”

  He did. Most of the way, anyway.

  “Now get up and hop on it.”

  Michael scowled. “The Top Warrior Race is in a few weeks, and then the Highland Games season kicks off in full force. I’m not about to bow out of either because of a tiny recurring injury in one of my legs. I have two for a reason.”

  “You are bowing out, at least for today. You can time us instead.”

  There was little else to do but give in to the guys and accept the gift of a whistle and stopwatch. He couldn’t practice, he didn’t want to stay at home, and Rachel hadn’t returned his phone call. At least he could make the next hour of their lives pretty miserable.

  Michael went to the bleachers and very purposefully stood next to them rather than taking a seat.

  “Line up at the end zone. I want four full-length sprints, and then you’re climbing the goal posts. Let’s see how high you can get.”

  With a holler, all three men set off, Julian taking the lead. He was a good runner, better than McClellan, who had to carry his massive weight, and Nick, who looked as though he’d spent the night passed out underneath his car. At just twenty years old, Nick showed all the signs of wasting his youth on bars and brawls.

  Poor Peterson. It was hard for him to crack down on his brother when his own youth had looked like something out of a bad cop drama.

  The Top Warrior Race training was a bit of a change from their normal routine—and a welcome one most of the time. The race was known around the country as a manly man’s obstacle course, five miles of team-focused events that few people finished, let alone mastered. The lengthy run was combined with a tire course, a mud pit covered in barbed wire, a series of scalable walls, a barrel roll and a few other challenges that bonded men and put hair on their chests. It toured all the major cities and had been growing in popularity in recent years.

  The guys signed up as a way to show a kind of Highland Games solidarity—and they did it wearing their kilts. Their team, which had been coined Team Win one drunken night, hadn’t won a single damn time. They always killed it at the barrel roll and axe throw. Distance running and the wall climb were a different story.

  As if to demonstrate, the guys reached the goal post and tried shimmying up the length of it. If Michael had been in a better mood, it would have been hilarious. He was just about to suggest using McClellan as a step stool when there was a tap on his shoulder.

  The blow came as a complete surprise, taking first his jaw and then his neck, which snapped back with so much force he almost lost his footing. Almost. There wasn’t a man alive who could knock him all the way off his feet.

  He barely had time to see who had struck him when Julian came up from behind, holding him across the chest like a man skilled in breaking up fist fights. Which he was. They all were. But Michael’s vision was clearing, if not the dull throb of his right jaw, and he wasn’t going to hit back. No matter how many daggers Peterson might have lodged in his eyes, their tips pointed straight out.

  “You fucking snitch bastard,” Peterson raged. It was a good thing McClellan was keeping him back, because he looked ready to charge again. “What the hell did you do?”

  “Step off, Jules. I’m not going to return the punch,” Michael muttered, fingering the swelling along his jaw. “I might have had this one coming.”

  “You’re damn right you did!” Peterson got an arm out from under McClellan’s iron grip and flailed it in the vicinity of Michael’s face. “I can’t believe you told Rachel about our plan. Especially after I told you specifically not to.”

  “It’s not as bad as you think it is,” Michael tried. He doubted his words would get very far, but he spoke in the soothing undertones he saved for Jennings when he got too riled up over some kids running across his lawn. “I know she probably seems like some kind of crazed serial killer right now, but in a few days—”

  “Do you have any idea what she did?”

  Michael had a few guesses. Some of them involved the decapitated heads of beloved household pets in Peterson’s bed. Others included buckets of blood and prom dresses. He took a stab. “She took a baseball bat to your minivan?”

  “Very funny, Mikey.” Peterson shook off McClellan’s grip. Julian let go at the same time, and Nick lay down on the grass, his shirt pulled up over his head against the early morning glare.

  “You guys let me know when you’re done.” He groaned. “I’m picking practice time next week.”

  Peterson turned his wrath on his brother, kicking him in the side with a thud. He didn’t get much of a reaction. “You should know better than to stay out when we’ve got training to do. And you”—he turned to Michael—“you can stop being a smartass. You know what Rachel did? She played the sister card, built up some big sob story about no one trusting her and treating her like a monster.”

  Michael shrugged. If you asked him, that’s kind of what they’d done. “So what? Start trusting her and stop treating her like a monster.”

  Rachel was obviously handling the news well if a guilt trip was her only reaction. Any doubts he had about breaking Peterson’s confidence and telling her the truth disappeared.

  Michael knew better than anyone that people lived up to the expectations laid on them by others. His parents hadn’t expected much out of the slightly slow, sports-mad son they never really wanted, but Jennings had. From his first day in the ramshackle old house that stood where the Airstreams were now, Jennings had made demands and forced Michael to meet them. Decent grades, four hours of grueling farm chores every day, treating others with kindness—it never even crossed the old man’s mind that Michael couldn’t do it all.

&nbs
p; So he did it. All of it.

  And he was pretty sure the only reason Rachel acted like an entitled pain-in-the-ass at work was because of the way people treated her. Dominic rarely looked her in the eye, though he seemed to spend plenty of time staring at her ass. The rest of the staff never asked her to join them for pizza or beer after rehearsal. As far as Michael could see, no one gave her a chance to be anything other than a social pariah. What did they think was going to happen?

  Peterson’s expectations were clear, that was for sure. His eyes narrowed to dangerous slits, and he pointed an accusing finger at Michael. “She got Molly tickets to some Big Band concert tonight.”

  “Harsh, Peterson. Really harsh,” Julian said with a laugh.

  “Oh, go fuck off. Tonight was supposed to be kind of a big deal for me and Molly.”

  “Gee, Eric. Are you going to pop your cherry tonight?” Nick asked from his spot on the ground, peeking over the edge of his shirt. He braced himself for another blow.

  “Forget it. I’m not talking to you morons.” Peterson lowered his voice and focused on Michael. “She’s edging in, Mikey. Now that she knows our game, she’s going to monopolize every second of her sister’s time.”

  “Dude—couldn’t Molly just say ‘thanks, but no thanks’?”

  The look Peterson leveled on him didn’t say much about his belief in Michael’s overall intelligence level. “They’re sisters,” was all he’d say.

  “What can I say, Peterson?” Michael splayed his hands helplessly. “It sounds to me like a win-win scenario. The dirty secret is out, Rachel didn’t blow up in your face, and now you get the night off from the old ball-and-chain to come out with me and the boys. If you ask me, it looks like I did you a pretty big favor.”

  The boys, overhearing Michael’s request, promptly set up a series of cheers.

  “Not a chance, Mikey. You’re babysitting tonight. Five o’clock. Bring your tutu.”

  Ominous words. And he actually did have a tutu—Sammy made it for him at preschool out of butcher paper and sparkles.