by Fae Mallory
Her words still ringing in the air, Robert turned to glare down at her, and Izzy held her ground, conscious of the actors and technicians giving them a wide berth as they made their way out of the theater.
It wasn’t until they were alone that Robert finally spoke, his nostrils flaring. “So I take it you’re the director now.”
“You needed a break. So did I. So did everyone else,” Izzy informed him. “Everything will look better after lunch.”
“Nothing is going to look better because the same crew of idiots will be returning!” he roared.
“That is enough,” Izzy snapped, losing patience with him. “You are going to calm down and eat something, and then we are going to finish this rehearsal like civilized adults.”
“I believe I sign your paychecks, not the other way around,” he bit out.
Drawing herself up to her full height, Izzy glared down her nose at him. “Sit down and stop acting like a child.”
Instead of obeying her, Robert turned on his heel and stalked to the end of their row, pausing when he reached the theater’s center aisle. “I’m going for a cigarette,” he announced.
“Wait,” she called after him, but Robert didn’t break stride, heading for the back of the theater.
Making a split-second decision, Izzy charged after him, her tennis shoes pounding as she ran. Robert had to hear her, but he didn’t turn around, giving her the advantage of surprise as she tackled him from behind, using her own momentum to bear him down to the carpeted floor.
Beneath her, he grunted in surprise as she grabbed his wrist and twisted, pinning his arm behind his back. When he struggled against her hold, Izzy swung her leg over his body, straddling his hips to hold him down more securely.
“Let me go,” he snarled, bucking his hips to try to throw her off.
Izzy rode the jerky movement, twisting his wrist into a more secure position and putting just enough pressure on his shoulder to remind him that fighting her could be very painful for him. “Settle down,” she advised.
With a grumble, he subsided, his body relaxing beneath hers. Warily, Izzy eased her grip on him, yelping as he suddenly flung her off of him.
“No, you don’t,” she snapped, recovering quickly. This time she grabbed both of his wrists and let her full weight rest on his upper body, grinding the side of his face against the carpet as she pinned him down. “Enough.”
Lying against his back, Izzy could feel the rise and fall of his chest as he sucked in a ragged breath. This time when the tension began to bleed out of him, she stayed on her guard, not relaxing her hold as she leaned down close to his ear.
“You quit smoking,” she reminded him.
The wheezing sound he made might have been a laugh. “Out of everything, you’re most concerned about me smoking?”
“I want you healthy. If anything’s going to kill you, it’s going to be me.” Smirking to herself, she twisted his wrists, feeling his body shudder.
Grunting, Robert struggled in her grip, subsiding with a jagged sigh when she held on tighter, maintaining dominance. “I said enough.”
It took effort to keep him restrained, and Izzy’s arms were starting to ache. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she held him down until his breathing evened out, his body going loose and liquid beneath her. Even then she couldn’t quite bring herself to let him up. Instead she sat up and scooted back until she was more comfortable settled, admiring his profile. In the theater’s dim light, Robert’s eyes were half-lidded, the lines of his face soft. Testing a theory, Izzy pushed his left wrist higher up his back, the action rewarded by a quiet groan from the man beneath her.
She’d been exactly right about him, she realized with a thrill. Even though he’d been shutting her out since that night at his apartment a week ago, Izzy still knew exactly what he needed. This time the realization didn’t frighten her.
Her mouth dried as a thousand lovely possibilities crossed her mind, but with regret she admitted that there was no time for any of them. All too soon the cast and crew would return from lunch, and it would hardly be appropriate for them to walk in on their director being dominated by his stage manager. Besides, they still had hours of rehearsal to get through today, and Izzy was hungry. She was willing to bet that he was, too.
Robert made a noise of dismay when she slowly released her hold on him. He stayed where he was, limp against the floor as Izzy carefully straightened his arms at his sides, rubbing them to get the blood flowing again.
“I’m going to get us lunch,” she told him, brushing her fingers over the back of his neck. “You need to eat.”
“Not hungry,” he protested, but all of the fight had gone out of him.
Izzy flicked her finger against the tip of his nose. “Don’t argue with me.”
A fine shudder ran through his body at the words, making her smirk. For just a moment longer, she let herself rest against his back before lifting herself off of him. “Come on. I’ll help you up,” she coaxed.
Groaning, he rolled onto his back, taking her hands and letting himself be heaved to his feet. Izzy’s biceps protested the effort, but having Robert standing in front of her with his eyes glassy and his mouth lax with contentment made the pain worth it.
She nudged him back toward their table, waiting until he was seated before heading for the theater door. She’d pick up drinks and sandwiches for them, something easy to eat so it wouldn’t matter if they didn’t have time to finish before rehearsal started again.
The bag of food wasn’t heavy, but Izzy’s arms still ached as she lifted it down from the diner’s counter. If she and Robert planned to make a habit out of this, she was going to have to start going to the gym.
An idea crossed her mind, and with a wicked smile, she made another stop on her way back to the theater. As a stage manager, she’d gotten very good at sourcing obscure items, so buying a pair of handcuffs was the work of moments. If they continued their game, they’d be able to have a great deal of fun with this prop, and if Robert decided to freeze her out again, she could restrain him and force him to talk this out with her. With her prize in her purse, Izzy made her way back to the theater, her steps quick and light.
Restraining Robert had cleared her head as much as it had seemed to relax him, and Izzy felt downright jaunty as she deposited the bag on their table and dropped into the seat next to him, reaching for a sandwich and her notebook at the same moment. “I think I know what’s wrong with the lights,” she informed him.
Robert, who’d been staring blindly at the empty stage, a faint smile on his face, snapped to attention. Turning to face her, he rasped, “Oh?”
Izzy took a massive bite of her sandwich and started to scribble a diagram of the stage lights. “I think two circuits got crossed on the main dimmer,” she explained, using her rough sketch to show him the two banks of lights that she suspected had been cross-wired.
Helping himself to a sandwich, Robert perused her diagram. “It’s a valid theory,” he allowed.
“I’ll have Keith check it as soon as he gets in,” she promised, trying to think of anything else she could do to make this afternoon’s rehearsal run more smoothly than the morning session. Robert’s good humor had been restored thanks to her—Izzy took a moment to pat herself mentally on the back for that—but that would be short-lived if things didn’t improve. She wanted the show to be a success, but more than that, she wanted him to be satisfied.
“I think I’ll watch the second half from the booth,” she decided. She preferred to be at Robert’s elbow to take notes and reassure him, but if she was in the booth with the sound and lighting operators, she’d be able to troubleshoot more efficiently.
Glaring down at his sandwich like it had personally offended him, Robert grunted acquiescence to her idea.
“Is something wrong with your lunch?” Izzy hazarded. “I told them to go easy on the pesto aioli.”
She wasn’t sure what to make of his look of disbelief, but it disappeared as quickly as it had
come, Robert shaking off his odd mood. “A bit too much pepper for my taste. Not your fault,” he assured her.
That was easy enough to fix. Half-rising, Izzy offered, “Want me to go get you something else?”
“No!” he snapped, and she sat back down, watching his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed hard.
The next time he spoke, his voice was carefully controlled. “No, it’s fine. Stay here with me. I have some notes for you.”
Izzy sank back into her seat and picked up her pen. “You got it, boss.”
Brown eyes searched her face, something pleading in his expression. Before Izzy could think to ask what was bothering him, he launched into a detailed plan for changing the incidental music, leaving her struggling to keep up. By the time he’d finished outlining the changes he wanted, the cast was beginning to straggle back in, forcing Izzy to pack up the remains of her lunch and head for the booth.
“You ride herd on the actors. I’ll keep them in line upstairs,” she promised, warming at the smile he gave her.
To her relief, the afternoon rehearsal was a dramatic improvement over the morning’s disaster. Keith checked the dimmer rack and confirmed her suspicion. Once it had been diagnosed, fixing the problem was the work of minutes, and with her breathing down the sound and light board operators’ necks, the show finally started to come together. Even so, Izzy wasn’t sorry when they reached the end of the contracted rehearsal time.
Reclaiming her seat in the audience, she watched Robert chat with the actors, skillfully soothing ruffled feathers. “I’m so glad you don’t mind that we wrote out your spotlight,” he was telling Jim, the second lead who had loudly and repeatedly protested that very thing. “The way the shadows play over your face now is incredibly striking. I couldn’t take my eyes off of you.”
“So, losing the spotlight has made me more visible?” the heavyset man asked suspiciously.
Robert draped his arm over his shoulders. “You know how much bright light washes people out, and it’s a crime to do that to someone with your bone structure. The shadows highlight the planes of your face and make your eyes pop. It’s very film noir.”
Izzy hid her smile behind her hand as Robert kept talking, extolling the virtues of Jim’s craggy face until the actor was mollified. “Tomorrow he’s going to keep begging us to turn the lights down,” she warned him when he joined her at their table after Jim left for the night.
Robert stretched and linked his fingers together behind his head, leaning back in his seat. “Take a note for our next show—no lights. We’ll perform in complete darkness.”
“We’d save a fortune on the electric bills and lighting plot,” Izzy agreed.
“And in costuming and set design,” he reminded her.
“Better yet, you wouldn’t have to listen to vain actors complain,” she finished.
Robert grinned at the ceiling. “You’ve discovered my ulterior motive.”
Izzy turned in her seat to look at him, admiring the elegant lines of his body as he lounged in his seat, relaxed and content. It was how she always wanted him to look, and knowing that she’d played some small part in his current good mood warmed her. Robert needed what she could give him, and as soon as the show was open and no longer consuming their every waking moment, they needed to talk about this.
“That actually might be interesting,” he said idly. “I don’t think we could pull off a complete blackout, but maybe very dim lighting throughout with one or two moments of brightness for impact.”
Smiling dreamily, Izzy closed her eyes and listened to him talk, already foreseeing a dozen major issues that would crop up if he attempted to mount a production like the one he was verbally sketching. He’d dismiss them as technicalities, leaving them for her to deal with, and she’d cement her own reputation with him as a miracle worker by doing so. With him to dream and her to execute, there was nothing they couldn’t accomplish.
She hoped that was as true for their personal lives as their professional ones.
Chapter 5
The next four days were a flurry of activity as they merged the technical and performance aspects of the show. With only days left before opening night, every minor issue that they’d been putting off for later suddenly needed to be handled, and Izzy was running herself ragged in an attempt to keep the ship afloat. There were a thousand last minute adjustments that needed to be made, and in her six precious hours of time off the clock, she was too tired to even daydream about what might happen after the show opened. At this point, she’d be content if the show opened at all.
Her phone woke her from a sound sleep with a raucous chorus of “You Give Love a Bad Name” which she’d assigned as Robert’s ringtone in a fit of whimsy. Since he was unlikely to call her phone when he was within earshot, she assumed she was safe.
Groping for the phone, she saw that it was three in the morning, and her heart lurched in her chest. He was under strict orders not to call after midnight except in case of an emergency and the only time he’d ignored that stricture was the time he came down with appendicitis. “What’s wrong?” she demanded, already climbing out of bed and reaching for something to put on.
“Izzy.” His voice wavered on her name, sounding slurred.
“Are you drunk or are you sick?” she asked, switching the phone from hand to hand as she yanked off her nightshirt and dragged the turtleneck she hadn’t had the energy to throw into the hamper over her head.
A hoarse chuckle met her ears. “Neither. I’m at the theater.”
“I’m on my way,” she vowed. “Don’t do anything stupid before I get there.”
Hopping wildly, she managed to get her jeans on and cram her feet into tennis shoes, barely remembering to grab her purse before she was off and running. Her apartment was a fifteen minute subway ride from the theater, giving her enough time to yank her hair into a ponytail and do some serious worrying.
When she reached the theater, Robert was easy to find. He was standing in the middle of the stage still dressed in the slim-fitting gray suit and cobalt blue tie he’d been wearing all day, his hair mussed like he’d been raking his hands through it. Although the stage and house lights were off, one spotlight illuminated the set, throwing odd shadows onto the sweeping staircase that dominated the entire left side of the stage. All too easily, Izzy could imagine eyes peeping at her through the banister, and she was careful to look only at Robert as she approached the stage.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, her voice echoing in the empty theater.
Robert shoved his hands into his pockets, his shoulders slumped, and she took a moment to wonder where his cane was. The loss of that accouterment said more about his state of mind than his rumpled suit.
Half-turning, he made a sweeping gesture to encompass the set. “It’s wrong.”
“We open in two days. It’s as good as it’s going to get,” Izzy reminded him as she found the stairs leading to the stage, hanging back as she watched him pace back and forth within the spotlight’s narrow beam.
“I think you’re too close to it. Sets look better from further away,” she reminded him as he glared at the scenery.
“It’s not the set,” he protested. “It’s everything—the costumes, the actors, the entire show. This is not how it looks in my head.”
Not for the first time, Izzy wished she could see what Robert saw. After four years of working with him, she thought she had a handle on how he worked and what his expectations were, but she’d never understood how he managed to turn his personal vision of a show into a mounted production. From the sound of it, this show was falling far short of his ideal, and she had no idea how to fix it when she wasn’t even sure what was wrong.
“What do you want to do?” she prompted when he fell silent.
“I don’t know!” he roared, rounding on her with wild eyes. His hands dove into his shaggy hair, yanking hard enough to make Izzy’s eyes water with sympathy.
Nervously, she jiggled her purse, hearing the faint clink o
f metal coming from within. She might not be able to fix the show, but there was one thing she could do. “Come here,” she beckoned, moving closer to the staircase.
Robert’s eyes searched her face for a long moment, but he obeyed, coming to stand in front of her, directly beside the bannister. “What?” he demanded.
Darting behind him, Izzy locked the handcuffs around his first wrist and threaded the chain through the plywood slats before securing his other one, trapping him in place. With a growl he tugged at the restraint until she slapped his hands. “Don’t struggle. You’ll break the set.”
“Good riddance to it,” he muttered, but he stopped fighting.
Izzy reached up to put her hands on his shoulders and squeeze. “You need to relax. All you’re doing is working yourself up, and we’re not getting anywhere.”
“And how do you propose I do that?” he asked. Although his tone was snide, his eyes pleaded with her for an answer.
If he couldn’t stop worrying about the show, she would have to give him something else to focus on. “Like this,” she murmured, untying his tie.
Taking the strip of blue silk in hand, she looped it around her palm and then draped the doubled fabric around his neck as he gazed at her with wide eyes, his pupils more dilated than even the darkened theater could account for. Emboldened by this wordless sign of approval, Izzy slipped the tie’s loose ends through the loop and pulled, drawing it snug around his throat.
Above the silk, Robert’s Adam’s apple bobbed convulsively, and Izzy ached with the need to press her lips to that delicate spot, but this was about what he needed, not what she wanted. Robert needed to relax, and if he couldn’t do it himself, she was willing to use force. “Inhale,” she murmured, stepping close enough to feel his chest rise as he obeyed her. She took a breath at the same moment, holding it as she drew the tie tight, cutting off his breathing.
