by Kait Nolan
I never stopped loving you. Ever.
His words echoed through her mind, mending something long broken inside. How could she think, how could she act, with that hanging unresolved between them?
“I’m right here with you,” he murmured, and his breath tickled her ear, stirring something considerably lower.
The sooner I face them, the sooner this rehearsal is over, and the sooner we can talk about this. Though talking wasn’t exactly her body’s preferred first order of business at the moment. Tyler straightened her spine—and still she couldn’t move.
Brody stepped beside her and held out a hand. She eyed it, knowing that taking it would be the best thing for the show, would put the rest of the cast at ease and prove that she and Brody could work together. But she couldn’t help feeling he wasn’t thinking about any of that. His gaze was steady on her, ignoring everyone else, and Tyler understood he wasn’t asking about facing the cast or doing the show. Could she really bridge the gap of those eight years, give him another chance?
Don’t think about the past or the future. Just focus on the now.
She laid her hand in his. His fingers curled sure and solid around hers, and it felt…right.
They made their way down the aisle, up to the edge of the stage. Because she still wanted to mumble, Tyler lifted her chin and her voice until everyone could hear. “I apologize for the disruption. I’m ready to get back to rehearsal now.”
“Well, everyone is allowed one diva moment per show,” said Nate with a long, measured look. “Except you, Myles.”
Myles affected a crestfallen expression and everyone laughed. The tension level dropped perceptibly.
As they made their way back to their places onstage, Nate continued, “Just to be clear, it’s Betty who hurries off and Bob who chases after her. And Brody, remember this is White Christmas, not Basic Instinct.”
“I’d pay money to see that,” muttered a woman on the back row.
Tyler felt her face flame.
Brody’s lips twitched. “My mistake.”
Nate clapped his hands and turned back to the assembled cast. “Okay people, let’s pick up where we left off. After the kiss.”
They ran the scene. Mistakes were made, but none so major as to necessitate a second run. They had time yet for that, and Tyler knew Nate was cutting her a break. As soon as they wrapped for the night, Piper made a beeline for the front row seat where they’d left their bags.
“Are you all right?”
Sensing eyes on her, Tyler looked across the auditorium to where Tucker had cornered Brody. The punch of Brody’s gaze made her pulse leap, but she wasn’t entirely sure if it was fear or anticipation.
I never stopped loving you. Ever.
“I don’t know what I am.”
“Do you want me to come over? There’s emergency Ben and Jerry’s in my freezer. It wouldn’t take me ten minutes to swing by and pick it up.”
Tyler shifted her attention fully to Piper and mustered a smile “No, that’s not necessary. Brody and I have a conversation to finish. It may take a while. You go on home.”
“A conversation,” she repeated. “About that kiss?”
“And what happened eight years ago. We need to clear the air if we’re going to finish the show together, and neither of us wants to let the Madrigal down. I’ll be fine.”
Skepticism and worry warred on Piper’s expressive face. She leaned in for a quick, fierce hug. “Whatever way it goes, if you need to, call me after. Or come over. I don’t care what time it is.”
Tyler knew she wouldn’t do either, but she appreciated the offer.
Everybody filed out, including Nate.
Brody walked over, a keyring in hand. “I said we’d turn off lights and lock up. You good to talk?”
“Yeah. It’s after ten. Dad and I have an arrangement that if I don’t get Ollie by then, he stays overnight.”
The last door fell shut with an echo. In the silence, she heard the softer click of the lobby door shutting behind her castmates, leaving her alone with the man who’d ripped her heart out, all because of his idiotic, stubborn pride. They’d fallen in love in this theater, on this stage. It seemed fitting that the next phase of…whatever they would become should begin here.
Tyler wandered back on stage and sat at the edge, legs dangling into the orchestra pit while the old building popped and groaned like a grumpy old woman, settling around them for the night.
He smiled at her. “I imagined you here, over the years. Wondering what roles you played.”
“None. This is the first show I’ve been in since you left.”
That seemed to surprise him. “Why?” he asked.
“My heart had gone out of it. I couldn’t fathom performing across from anyone else. It seemed best to hang up my dancing shoes and put them away with other childish things.”
“We were hardly children,” said Brody, settling beside her. He was close, but not touching her.
“No, but our romance was the stuff of fairy tales and dreams. And then you left and I woke up to the reality of a life without you.”
“Tyler—”
“No, let me finish. When I saw your name on that cast list, I was furious. Absolutely livid that you had the gall to come back, to audition, now, when I’d spent years making my way on my own. Because it didn’t matter if it was eight years or eight days. The hurt was still fresh. Knowing the why behind your actions mitigates that some, but it just makes me sad and angry for a whole different set of reasons.”
“You have every reason to feel that way. I screwed up.” That he owned it helped, just a little.
“You did,” she agreed. “After you left, a lot of people thought you blamed yourself for your parents’ death. You were messed up and hurting. And they thought your leaving was some kind of admission of guilt. After a couple years, I stopped defending you because I couldn’t make sense of what you’d done either, and I was tired of all the looks of pity.”
“God, no wonder people gave me the cold shoulder.”
“I’m not here to beat you up over it. I find that, faced with the truth of what really happened, it’d be like beating a dead horse. We’ve both been punished enough.”
“What exactly are you saying?”
God, there was no way she could look at him. Instead, she looked at their hands, each curled around the worn wooden edge of the stage, separated by a couple of inches that were filled with years.
“I think you proved beyond a reasonable doubt that we still have chemistry. We always did, so that’s not much of a surprise. But I need to know—or maybe I need clarification of what you meant by what you said earlier.” Her chest felt tight, and Tyler found she couldn’t quite take a full breath as she waited for his reply.
“All right. Fair enough. You’ve said your piece, now I’m gonna say mine. I know we’ve got chemistry. I knew it the moment I saw you again, and I’ll admit that I shamelessly exploited that on stage tonight. I know all your buttons, and I pushed them with the intent to get a reaction, to make you remember how good we are together. Seeing as we both finally got the truth out of it, I can’t say I mind the end result. But I know I stirred you up, and I’ll understand if whatever you’re feeling is…residual from what we were before. It doesn’t feel residual for me, though. Not from the moment I saw you again.”
A painful sort of hope lit inside her. But she’d been through far too much to leap at a whim. “The fact is, Brody, you don’t know me anymore. I’m not the girl you left behind, and you’re not the boy who walked away.”
“Bullshit. You haven’t changed that much.”
Impatience simmered because she recognized that she was going to have to be the voice of reason here. “You don’t know that. You don’t,” she repeated when he started to speak. “Do I feel something for you? I’d be lying if I said I didn’t. But I don’t know if it’s real or just remnants of what came before that never got resolved. I can’t answer that question.”
“Isn
’t it worth finding out?”
Tyler studied his face, memorizing the lines and curves, noting how he’d changed, how he was the same. Tipping forward she brushed her lips over his, just because she could, because she ached for the taste of him. She knew that the sensible thing was to let him go, take this truth and whatever peace it brokered between them, and shut the door on the past.
I never stopped loving you. Ever.
Tyler fisted her hand in his shirt and let the whip of need lash through her. So long. So damned long. God, didn’t they deserve something? For a moment, she wavered, beyond tempted to be reckless, to take the heat they brought each other and ride it to whatever glorious end they could.
But she’d been left in the ashes before.
Heart still thundering, she flattened her palm and eased back, resting her temple against his.
“That felt pretty damned current to me.” The rasp of Brody’s voice stroked over her like a caress.
Uncertain whether her voice would work, Tyler made a noncommittal hum.
“We have something between us, Tyler. We always did.”
She couldn’t deny that and didn’t try. “Brody, I can’t just…fall back into this.” Yes, I absolutely could, she thought, with very little provocation. She wanted this, wanted him, on whatever terms she could get. But she had to be sensible. She had to think about tomorrow.
“I get it,” he said. “I respect that. But just…” He cupped her cheek and Tyler cursed herself, even as she leaned into the touch. “Think about it.”
“Okay,” she agreed.
Brody’s gaze slid down to her mouth, his eyes going dark. Tyler felt her pulse jump again, started to sway toward him. He slid off the stage, down to the floor and turned to reach for her. Because she was still short of breath, Tyler let him help her down, let him hold her until she steadied.
“Okay,” she said again.
“Let me walk you to your truck.”
5 Weeks 'Til Show
Across the stage, General Waverly stood, menus in hand, while Bob, Phil, and the Haynes sisters dined and discussed how to help him. Just as Bob rose to go place the call to bring the show to Pine Tree, a long, low groan echoed through the theater.
“What the hell was that?” asked Piper, stepping fully out of character.
“Obviously it’s the ghost of old Mr. Stanton himself opining about how that scene was running,” said Nate, “which was terrible. Brody, if you could take your eyes off Tyler for five seconds and actually play your part, we’d all appreciate it.”
Tyler looked over at him, startled, a pretty pink flush creeping across her cheeks. Brody could only grin at her. No sense in pretending remorse he didn’t feel. But he saluted the director. “Yes, boss.”
“Again, from the top.”
Brody took his position, started the scene over. He did his best to stay in character, to look where he was supposed to look, say what he was supposed to say. But his mind was full of Tyler.
In the week since they’d broken their stalemate, he’d made excuses to see her. He took over the daily supply run for the hotel job just for the chance to make her smile at the start of the day. And it had been a simple matter to start taking his lunch breaks when she did, either eating take out at the store or over at Dinner Belles, where they shared a slice of Mama Pearl’s pie. That they could share a meal and a joke without that angry tension hovering between them was a minor miracle. Though there’d been no more of those blistering kisses, she was spending time with him, willingly, without trying to push him away. It was progress, and that should’ve been enough for him.
But it wasn’t.
Time was galloping by, and each workday brought a reminder of the end of the job and the start of the next, which would take him away from Wishful, away from Tyler. He didn’t bring it up, knowing that would hardly help his case. At least half of her caution was wrapped up in the brevity of their time together. But urgency nipped at his heels, urging him to push, to demand.
He’d promised he wouldn’t. She wanted to take things slow and easy so she could figure things out, and Brody respected that. But what was there to figure out? They practically combusted when they got within three feet of each other. For all that she said he didn’t know her anymore, he hadn’t seen anything that made him love her any less.
Patience is a virtue, Jensen, he reminded himself. Albeit not one he’d ever been blessed with, particularly when it came to one Tyler Edison.
A sense of relief and anticipation flooded through him at the opening bars to “Mandy.” Keeping his promise not to push had meant keeping his hands to himself. But all bets were off when they danced. His eyes followed her as she made her way down the risers, dancing and flirting past all the guys on the cast. She was glorious. Lithe and charismatic in a way that had every set of eyes centered on her. At the bottom of the stairs, she linked arms with him and Myles for the easy tap portion of the number, which Myles pulled off with more aplomb than he’d managed on the previous run. And at last the cue came and Brody took Tyler’s hand, spinning her into his arms for the complicated part of the routine.
Her eyes sparked and her smile spread. Brody lost himself—in the music, in her, in the unique intimacy they shared while dancing. She arched back over his knee, pointing one long leg high into the air in a manner that had him thinking all about other uses for her miraculous flexibility. She moved with him, responsive to every touch, every step, fully in sync. Heat and awareness flared between them. The pace of the music picked up and they danced their way through the pack, and up the risers for the finale of the song, where she ended, perched on his shoulder.
“Finally, something went right!” called Nate.
Tyler’s hands curled around Brody’s forearms as he slid her down the length of his body. The pulse at her throat beat like a hummingbird’s wings, and her chest rose and fell against his as she worked to catch her breath. Brody didn’t release her when her feet hit the step, and she made no effort to move away, instead staring up at him with dark, hungry eyes.
“Well this is going to be the hottest Christmas to date,” Myles whispered.
“Pretty sure that’s the most provocative version of that song ever done,” someone else added.
Abruptly conscious of their audience, Brody ran his hands from Tyler’s shoulders to her waist, squeezing once before setting her away from him. The long groan came again. The theater offering up sympathy for his frustrated libido, no doubt.
“The next scene requires some set changes,” called Nate. “Let’s take care of that and pick up there tomorrow night.”
The set change burned off a little of the energy humming in Brody’s blood, giving him something else to focus on besides the remembered feel of Tyler’s body flush against his. At least until he caught her looking at him from across the stage as Nate made his end-of-rehearsal announcements. As soon as rehearsal wrapped, he gathered his gear and met Tyler at the head of the aisle to walk out.
“Good rehearsal tonight,” he said.
“For one of us anyway,” she grinned. “Nate’s gonna kill you if you don’t focus.”
“You could help me with that, you know. We could go get a drink or a late supper. Discuss the possibility of running lines.”
Tyler slanted him a glance, one corner of that luscious mouth lifting in delighted amusement. “Right. I remember exactly what you used to call running lines.”
Brody swung an arm around her shoulders and bent to whisper in her ear, “I’ve still got the old sofa of my parents where we used to do that. We could—”
The groan came again, bigger, louder this time, rising to a shriek above them. As the ceiling above began to cave, Brody shouted, “Move!” He swung around and dove backward, landing hard on Tyler as a huge portion of the mezzanine balcony collapsed behind them. Debris rained over them both. Brody curled his body over Tyler’s, taking the brunt of the impact.
In the wake of the crash, the silence was deafening. Brody lifted his head, squint
ing through the dust to see people running toward them down the aisles. He rolled to the side, hauling himself into a kneeling position beside Tyler. Her face was white. “Are you all right?” he demanded. He didn’t wait for her response, already running his hands over her limbs, checking for breaks and abrasions.
“I’m fine.” She coughed. “You just knocked the wind out of me.”
“Somebody go out the side door, check to make sure everybody made it into the lobby,” ordered Tucker from somewhere behind them.
A quick search and head count assured them that no one had been caught in the collapse.
“Thank God,” said Tyler. When she reached for him, Brody pulled her close. “You kept me from becoming a pancake.”
“I guess all those noises weren’t old Mr. Stanton after all,” said Piper.
Nate laced his hands behind his head and stared at the central section of the balcony, now blocking the auditorium doors. “This is a disaster.”
“The important thing is that no one was hurt,” said Barbara Monahan.
“We can’t have a show in a theater that’s falling apart. There’s barely money to put on the show. We don’t have the kind of time or money to get this fixed, and Stanton’s kids aren’t going to shell out for this,” said Nate.
The air of defeat settled over them like lead.
“It’s over,” Nate declared.
Brody looked down at Tyler, all thoughts of lust and flirtation forgotten. Distress was etched across her features.
“The fat lady hasn’t sung yet,” he said. “The show will go on.” But despite his conviction, as he stared at the rubble, he knew they were gonna need a miracle.
~*~
“I feel like there should be pizza for a summit meeting,” said Tucker.
“It’s too early for pizza,” said Piper.
“It’s never too early for pizza.”
“Either way, it’s hard to have a summit meeting when not everybody is here yet,” Piper pointed out.
“Brody hasn’t quite shaken loose of work yet, and Norah should be getting out of her meeting with the mayor shortly,” said Tyler. She paced restlessly in front of the register. The store was blessedly empty at the moment but for her friends, who crowded around the table in the consult area. She’d have been hard pressed to offer up the requisite customer service.
