Tread the Boards (A Rivervue Community Theatre Romance, #1)

by Nikki Logan

  Bleak eyes rose again.

  ‘No. The person who did that is some anonymous face in a mask on the other side of the planet. Draven is a gimmick. Cheap tricks, cheap shots.’

  It hurt to go from being Kenzie’s hero to being the instrument of her pain, but this wasn’t the time to let that particular barb strike home. He’d waited long enough—too long—and the time for waiting was over. But opening his mouth to let the words out was as hard as back when he was a kid, and it terrified him that he might go back to never being able to speak to Kenzie. Except this time, it would be her doing, not his.

  He sucked in a lungful of air and forced it back through his lips.

  ‘What if Draven wasn’t on the other side of the planet?’ he started, on a rush. ‘What if he was here?’

  Tiny forks appeared between her brows. ‘In Australia?’

  Closer than Australia. In her living room. But that little detail was going to need some working up to.

  ‘I mean right here in Brachen.’

  Kenzie’s first reaction to that ludicrous suggestion was to mentally scan every single person who’d ever walked through the clinic for evidence of secret global arts careers. Then, once she’d discarded them all, she narrowed it down to Rivervue. Isn’t that where world-famous playwrights would most likely hang out?

  Pffff …

  ‘You think that it could be Bruce?’ she asked, not very seriously.

  Dylan’s gaze hooded a little. ‘Building stuff by day and burning the midnight oil at the keyboard?’

  ‘You’re right. Bruce doesn’t have time to shave some days, I don’t see him having the time for an international arts career.’

  Joking helped ease the pain just a little. Or was it flirting? Impossible to know with Dylan. It all felt the same. A tiny chemical boost just when she needed it. Lord knows she could use the tiny buzz and distraction from the gut-turning feelings of the last thirty minutes.

  ‘Or maybe Emma’s dad,’ she chanced. ‘How much do we know about him, anyway?’

  Dylan joined in but he couldn’t match her levity. Back behind his eyes a dark shadow lurked. ‘You don’t think Draven would need to be a little more … full time?’

  True. Every moment Mark Conroy wasn’t being Brachen Shire’s CEO, he was working on the bicentennial.

  She pushed up onto her knees, bringing herself closer to where Dylan perched on the sofa arm. ‘I guess I shouldn’t rule out the sisterhood. Maybe Lexi actually is Draven, and pretending to write Larrikin is the ultimate smokescreen for actually having written it!’ She tossed her hands in the air. ‘Hell, maybe I’m Draven having some kind of multiple personality disorder moment.’

  ‘Kenzie …’

  ‘You know, if anyone is going to be Draven it should be you,’ she teased, wearily. ‘Drift into town all mysterious, sitting in that room with all the time in the world to spare, always watching … watching …’

  It hit her then how much a part of her theatre life he’d become, how his ghost would always haunt her under-stage room even after he’d cycled away from Brachen. From her.

  And how quickly it all happened.

  All she had to do was lean in a tiny bit more and they’d be kissing again. Even thinking about it was like a plaster on her battered soul, the hormones shoved their way in among the hurt and coated them with something far more palatable.

  Need.

  Dylan was just as capable of closing the gap as she was, yet he wasn’t moving. She eased back a little so she could read his face.

  Woah. That was a whole lot of serious.

  Was it the blotchy face or was it what she’d just said? She rewound the last thirty seconds in her mind. She’d been implying that he was Draven.

  ‘Jeez, times are tough if a battered ten-speed is the best that Draven can do for transport—’

  ‘Ask me my mother’s tribal totem.’

  After the evening she’d had she was in no mood for games. Besides, the same deep instinct that was frosting her insides over was telling her not to ask.

  ‘No.’

  But Dylan was determined. ‘Spirit was important to the Algonquin. Dad wanted me to have his surname, but he wanted to make sure Mom’s totem was in there too. So it’s my middle name.’

  ‘Hm-hmm.’ Acknowledging it in words was too much like making it happen. And every word was coated in more and more dread.

  ‘Mom was raven clan.’

  Kenzie blinked. Dylan stared.

  Dylan Raven North. D. Raven North.

  The fist that had held her heart in a chokehold since she’d read act three closed tighter. Almost too tight to squeeze out a denial.

  ‘No …’

  ‘Kenzie, I’m sorry—’

  ‘You’re not Draven,’ she croaked. ‘You can’t even speak to people!’

  She hadn’t meant to utter such a low blow but it was fear—not sense—coming out of her mouth right now.

  ‘I don’t need to. I’m a playwright. Anonymous. No publicity. No speaking circuit. It’s why I do it the way I do. It’s why I travel solo too. To focus on the work. It’s not a gimmick; it’s life support.’

  Travelling. Spying. Was this sport to him?

  ‘Is that how you get your kicks? Rock up at some hick theatre and watch the carnage your plays inflict?’

  How could she have got him so horribly wrong? She knelt back onto her bottom, no energy to stay upright.

  ‘I thought you needed somewhere safe and warm to sleep. I protected you! Was I just helping you hurt my town?’

  And, oh God, my theatre? The truth forced its way in like a blade between the ribs of her doubt.

  Dylan wrote Larrikin. Dylan had exposed her family’s darkest secret. And then right behind that realisation came her deepest fear.

  ‘Were you using me?’ she whispered. ‘Is that why you got close to me?’

  ‘Kenzie, no—’

  It took nothing to swing her legs around and push up onto her feet. ‘Did you know who I was?’

  His handsome face dropped. ‘Not until Nanna’s.’

  ‘Yet you sat there and looked us both in the eye—’ And kissed me in her bathroom! ‘—knowing what you were doing to us? Why? Why us?’

  ‘Draven writes truths, Kenzie.’

  ‘Don’t refer to yourself in the third person! You are Draven. You did this. There is a world full of truths to tell. Why tell this one?’

  ‘I got an exclusive on de Vue’s memoirs …’

  He couldn’t have made that sound more like business if he tried. But, for her, it was one hundred per cent personal and not just because she’d fallen in love with him.

  She puffed out a breath with the shock of the thought.

  There was a truth he’d probably laugh about all the way back to Canada. Cute little Mackenzie Russell with her adorable heart on her funny little small-town sleeve. There was a reason he felt so much a part of her world so incredibly quickly. There was a reason she’d spent hours beneath the stage deep in conversation with him. There was a reason she’d finally let someone close enough to know her, to kiss her …

  She loved Dylan North.

  And Dylan was Draven.

  A new energy burbled up from inside her. A furious mix of betrayal and anger and grief that came from deep below the gut; her gut, which should have known this thing between them would all turn out to be lies. It fuelled her to her feet.

  ‘Get out.’

  ‘Kenzie, don’t. We need to talk about this.’

  ‘Get out!’

  Lexi’s pages went flying as she threw the lot at him. Let him have his stinking words back. She wished she’d never so much as read them. Just as she wished she’d never poked her head through those bushes behind the back dock. Or played with that friendly dog on the grass back there.

  Her eyes turned to the corner of the room. Phantom. She was going to lose him as well.

  But the mortification in the dog’s wide brown eyes managed to hold her back from the brink. And she couldn’t
bring herself to throw him out the way she so desperately wanted to throw Dylan out. She crossed straight to him, knelt down and put as much normal in her face as she could manage. She didn’t speak—he couldn’t hear her anyway—but she put all the love and reassurance she could muster into her eyes and let them do her communicating for her.

  All the love she couldn’t give to Dylan.

  Phantom’s thick tail thudded on the rug. It was steady and regular, like a heartbeat.

  She was going to lose Dylan and Phantom in the same moment. It was almost unbearable.

  She flipped her fingers into a sequence of symbols that Phantom would know.

  Good boy.

  Safe.

  And the hardest signal of all …

  Go.

  The thumping stopped. Phantom looked at her like he knew exactly what that word really meant.

  Goodbye.

  Because, no doubt, Dylan would get himself as far from her—and from Brachen—as he could. He was hardly going to stick around waiting to be outed by some small-town props maven.

  Not that she would expose him, no matter how good it would make her feel in the moment. Neither would she bail on Larrikin in a fit of tears. Or put Lexi in the position of having to pull the play. Lexi needed this play to be a success, to save the theatre. Rivervue had been her love long before Dylan had come cycling into town all grotty and silent. It would be her love as long as she could call it home.

  Rivervue would get her through this.

  She turned, rising, and glared at the man still standing awkwardly in the middle of her living room. The pain of forcing her loss down deeper gave her the energy to kick her chin up a notch or two.

  The tiny defiance helped. The moral high ground helped. Phantom’s long, steady, loving gaze had helped.

  ‘Kenzie, please don’t give up on this.’

  This? Did he mean his sordid play or did he mean this thing that they had between them?

  ‘I’ll do the play,’ her voice decided for her. It even sounded vaguely strong. ‘I’ve made a commitment to Lexi and I’m not about to let her down. I’ll go to Nanna and explain as gently as I can what it is that you’ve told the world about her father. I’ll give her the kindness of hearing it from someone she loves.’

  The lump in Dylan’s throat lurched.

  ‘We’ll make Larrikin a success because we need it to be. Not because you want another smash hit on your over-crowded shelf of industry gongs. And don’t worry, I’ll keep your dirty secret, Dylan Raven North.’

  ‘I trust you, Kenzie.’

  ‘That’s more than I can say for you, Draven. But I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for all those people who welcomed you into their theatre, their town.’ She thought about Nanna. ‘Their home. They don’t need the slap in the face that the truth will be.’

  A punch in the heart, in her case.

  ‘That’s where we’re different, you and me. I can know a truth and not feel a burning desire to spill it. Or to exploit it for fame or money. I would rather be someone who can keep a confidence, no matter how personally satisfying it would be to repay you in kind.’

  She would hold his truth deep inside, parcel it away with the beautiful beginnings of her love for Dylan, shove it into some antique chest sealed with a carefully restored padlock and entomb it forever.

  ‘But make no mistake, Draven. When I find the courage to front up to rehearsals tomorrow afternoon, I do not want to see your face there.’

  It hurt too much. But, oh God, the very idea of never seeing his smile again bleached the life from her. Not that he was smiling now. She’d never seen anyone look so grave.

  It wasn’t a patch on how she was feeling.

  ‘Get your stuff out of my props room and get back on your bike. Go haunt someone else’s fire exit.’

  And their dreams … something told her Dylan’s lips would be plaguing hers in the wee small hours for a long time to come. Even now she burned to press her own against them one final time, because she’d never have another chance. If she’d known that afternoon’s kiss was going to be her last she would have done it longer. Or better. Or horizontally.

  But dignity held her fast. She stared past him at her front door.

  ‘Kenzie, I’m sorry. I’ve handled all of this so badly—’

  ‘Just go, Dylan. Go ruin some other town.’

  And some other heart.

  He flicked his fingers and Phantom immediately crossed to stand beside him. He used this time to stare, searchingly, into her soul. It killed her that she cared how bad she must look—ragged with grief, blotched with tears, bleached with despair—but she did. This was how Dylan was going to remember her; if he remembered her at all once he’d moved on. She’d much rather their last moments had been her in her comfort zone—onstage or surrounded by her prop hoardings. Even at work. Confident and centred. With her I am woman stance on.

  But she could no more control that than the fact that she wasn’t ever going to hear his voice again. He didn’t use it to call Phantom to his side and he didn’t use it to say goodbye. He simply turned and gave her what she’d asked for.

  His absence.

  The door closed softly behind man and dog and they took all the room’s air with them. Without oxygen, Kenzie’s muscles weakened—shoulders, legs, neck—leaving her with nothing to hold her up.

  She sagged down onto all fours, like a praying pilgrim, and then to the floor among the scattered pages of her family’s reputation.

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘Well, well, well.’ A dramatic voice came at Kenzie almost as soon as she set foot in Rivervue’s auditorium the next morning. ‘De Vue not quite what everyone thought, eh?’

  Not today.

  She’d barely managed to be at rehearsals at all, without having to deal with Richard Yeates’s opinions on everything. But he was not a man to read into subtext; to him, silence just meant he needed to speak louder.

  ‘I assume you’ve read it?’

  ‘Of course, Richard.’

  ‘So you know, then.’

  Which fact? That Dylan was Draven, that her great-grandfather loved his half-sister, or that there was a whopping great kiss coming up between her and Yeates after all? The kiss that started—and ended—everything a century before.

  ‘I read it, Richard,’ she repeated, holding back of all the less tolerant things she desperately wanted to say. Zero sleep and a broken heart did not sit comfortably on her.

  ‘It’s all very … Caligula.’ When that didn’t get a rise, he went on, ‘Though it shouldn’t surprise me. A sibling romance is one hundred per cent up Draven’s alley.’

  The street cred Yeates must be imagining for himself … performing in the country’s first original Draven. Those six letters were such old news for Kenzie; she’d forgotten that breath-stealing moment when she first saw them printed on the script. It felt so long ago.

  Is that how they’d hit everyone when Lexi finally gave them the full script?

  ‘Do you think Mary was into it?’

  Into it? Like it was some kinky thing, rather than a disaster of outback isolation that ruined so many lives. You revolting human being.

  She rounded a baleful look at Yeates. ‘I think they managed it all the best they could once it was acknowledged.’

  ‘Yeah, but still …’ He whistled to express what his words didn’t seem capable of.

  Kenzie muttered, ‘I think we should just focus on the script. Handle it how Dy—’ She barely caught herself. ‘—how the author wanted it portrayed.’

  Truth? Untruth? It didn’t matter. What took place on this stage would become the truth as far as most of Brachen was concerned.

  ‘Anywaaay,’ he said, catching up with her as she pushed through the doors into the empty auditorium. ‘I wondered if you wanted to rehearse it.’

  ‘The play?’ Well, yeah. That’s why she was here.

  ‘No, the kiss.’ Her feet rooted to the ground. ‘Make sure there’s some decent chemi
stry between us onstage but also that you can hit the right tone. It’s a pivotal moment. He was her brother so there’s going to be a level of disgust there that you’ll need to practice to get spot-on.’

  A stage kiss was still a kiss, and as much as she didn’t want Dylan’s lips to be the last ones against hers, she wanted Yeates’s narrow flappers rubbing Dylan from pole position even less.

  She wanted to say that she wasn’t going to have any trouble being disgusted about kissing him. The very idea was at least as gag-worthy as the theatrical mansplain he was treating her to now. He got that she’d read the play, right? Did he just doubt she was bright enough to recognise that the whole play converged in that one, shocking moment?

  But she’d been raised to be kinder to people than they generally were to her, so she held her tongue.

  ‘I’ll just wing it,’ she murmured. ‘Keep the surprise as real as it would have been for Mary. For authenticity’s sake.’

  He could hardly argue that. But a dark kind of anger shadowed his face. ‘Righto. Whatever works for you. Lexi asked me to make concessions for the rookie, that’s all.’

  No, she didn’t.

  There was no reality in which Lexi Spencer would set her up for that from someone like Yeates. That comment was straight out of the narcissist’s training manual—always counter rejection with rejection.

  She would kiss Yeates exactly as many times as their performances demanded. And not a single time more.

  She plastered on her sweetest smile. The downside of Yeates’s particular disorder was a complete inability to recognise sarcasm. Most unsatisfying, but on this occasion it served her well enough. Whatever it took to get him to move on from anything remotely to do with kissing.

  ‘Ready to warm up?’

  ‘Oh, I’m always ready, Kenzie. You should know that about me by now.’

  Ugh. ‘Anyway …’

  She set off again and tried to get a few feet on him to re-achieve some semblance of personal space.

  ‘You’ve kept all of this very much on the down-low,’ he called after her. ‘I suppose it’s not in the de Vue estate’s best interests for all your family’s dirty laundry to be aired.’