by Alice Ward
CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
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BOOK DESCRIPTION
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 FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
EPILOGUE
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
A SNEAK PEEK
MORE BY ALICE WARD
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT AND DISCLAIMER
The Interview
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BOOK DESCRIPTION
I have secrets. She wants answers. Never the two shall meet.
When Sadie Danes strolls into my life with a notepad and an attitude, it’s just another interview. At first.
As an A-list movie star, everyone wants a piece of me, especially now that I’m back in New York doing what I love... the theater. Broadway.
But this theater critic is different. She sees past the actor, into the man hiding in the spotlight. She’s real. Beautiful. My Juliet.
A simple interview turns into more. And that’s a problem.
I have a past.
Secrets that can ruin not just me but my brother, ruin everything.
*** This is a full length novel with a happily ever after, no cliffhanger, no cheating, and plenty of steam.***
CHAPTER ONE
Sadie
I’d been in this position before.
Legs crossed. Pad of paper balancing on my knee. Pen poised in hand. Eyes forward.
Dim light curled around the corners of my vision, and the grenadine velvet of the seat clung to the loose skirt tucked beneath my thighs. The backrest behind me forced perfect spinal alignment, but my shoulders turned inward to shield my thinly bloused torso from the cool draft drifting down from the soaring ceiling above.
A dull hum lit on my ears as the bodies seated shoulder to shoulder around me turned to one another and discussed post-show dinner plans in the patented Broadway murmur. This was a world I knew well, one I visited weekly in both the revered theaters of New York City and the lesser-known playhouses of hopeful up-and-comers, but I felt like a virgin in a sea of hookers tonight.
Tate McGrath was headlining the Imperial’s newest production, Concrete, and I was terrified.
For years, I’d been following McGrath’s career, even before I landed the critic’s column at The Apple. He’d started by playing supporting roles on dingy stages across Staten Island and Brooklyn before being recognized as a true talent by producer Jack Jacobsen, who promptly plunked him into an off-Broadway show as the lead, and Tate’s road to theater stardom was paved with sequins from there.
While live performers hardly gained the notoriety of the actors and actresses on the silver screen, he became somewhat of a legend in the industry, lionized for his powerful method acting and raw realism, and I became an avid fan. Then, practically overnight, he became a national sensation when he was scooped up by Hollywood to star in a psychological drama film that shattered box office records and led to a sequel of similar success.
He’d done the interviews and talk shows and public Q&A panels typical of A-list celebrities, and he’d now returned to his home on the stage, but while it seemed everyone was eager to see Concrete merely for the sake of watching Tate McGrath live, I was almost fearful.
More than once, I’d reviewed plays featuring movie stars of note, and the delicate art form that made Broadway and its less luminous counterparts such an exquisite experience was simply absent. There were no camera angles and close-ups and gripping graphics to pull the audience into the soul of the plot, only people reaching out with the very deepest parts of themselves to a room of eyes and ears. If Tate had lost his gift of honest expression in the fabricated studios of the West Coast, I was going to be crushed.
I was the only one, apparently.
“Did you read that interview he did in the Times?” a woman wearing green from head to toe whisper-screamed to her companion. She sat a couple seats away from me, but I could hear every word. “He sounds like he’s turned into just another California hippie. Avocado on toast for breakfast? You’d think he’d never heard of New York, much less gotten his start here. Anyway, I wouldn’t have even come to see this show, but I’ll bet it’s his last run before his career falls apart, and I’d hate to miss that.”
The man directly in front of me — donned in a full tuxedo, complete with a modern top hat — was having a similar conversation with his wife. “I heard the boy refused to do the play unless they doubled the salary he got for those movies. Greedy, if you ask me. And ungrateful. It would serve him right if this thing’s a flop.”
Six girls barely of drinking age in knockoff designer dresses filed into the row behind me, jarring my seat as they tittered amongst themselves.
“I can’t wait to see him in person. He’s so hot.”
“He should keep doing movies though. Plays are so boring.”
“I bet he’s not as good live. No retakes, you know?”
“Who cares? He’s so hot!”
Putting pen tip to paper, I scribbled several fragments, including a mention of avocado toast, a query about salary, and a note about giddy fangirls. I wasn’t just a critic tonight. After the show, I was going backstage for an exclusive interview with Tate McGrath, which was another reason for the bowling ball in my belly.
It was an honor to have been given the piece by my editor, as I’d never strayed from standard reviews during my employment with The Apple, but it was especially exciting because the small-circulation paper had never had an exclusive with anyone of such status. The closest we’d come was reprinting from other sources.
I was going to be the first person in my paper’s history to have my name printed alongside a self-conducted interview with a high-profile star, and I was determined to make it the best damn interview of Tate McGrath to date. If that meant digging into the mundane details of breakfast choices and contractual negotiations to find the juice, so be it.
The lights mounted on the walls ebbed to a muted glow, and a moment later, the sounds of brass and stringed instruments suffering various degrees of sharpness or flatness rose throughout the theater as the orchestra tuned their instruments.
Hot anticipation burbled in my gut.
I hadn’t been so wired for a performance since my first review outing almost five years before, when I was a young Connecticut girl fresh out of college with nothing but a trial piece between me and my journalistic dreams. As a critic, of course, it was my obligation to write an unbiased analysis of the performance I was a
bout to see, but I was rooting for excellence nonetheless for reasons that were very much born of bias.
When the play began, the entirety of the Imperial auditorium was swathed in a sheen of gloomy blue as a young child in tatters emerged to walk the curb of the set’s faux street. I recognized him at once as one of the Dresden twins cast to portray Xander, Tate’s character in his youth. His dark head was arced down, shoulders hunched, in a show of weighty misery, and he trudged the length of the curb and back before settling to sit with his elbows on his knees. He ground a toe into the rain soaked pavement and kicked aside a stray piece of litter. Then a soft, mournful lament rippled from his cherub lips, accompanied only by a simulated rainfall.
The scene was very Dickens-esque, and I was captivated right away. Without tearing my eyes from the stage, I scrawled a comment on my pad and listened with bated breath as the child’s voice swelled and hung on one trembling, sorrowful note. His angst rattled in the deepest parts of my bones, drawing a lone tear from the corner of my eye just before the poignant fade to black.
And there he was.
In a blaze of gold like the Second Coming, a man swaggered to the center of the same street, which now glistened as if bathed in sunshine. He was nearly as tall as the doors boasting quirky shop names on either side of him, and he was shirtless. Taut chest muscles and lean arms of bronze claimed my attention to distract me from the sinfully low-hung jeans cradling narrow hips. Not a single hair on his perfect head was out of place, but the scruff on his stern chin and the guarded brace of his posture revealed a torn and incomplete soul hiding behind midnight blue eyes. I stared unblinking at the Adonis, my chest failing to rise and fall normally.
“It wasn’t the first time I thought about murder.”
Forlorn, bitter, and steely, the words curdled in my ears and kickstarted my breathing again. With the unforgiving immediacy of a whip, I knew my fears had been for naught. Tate McGrath was back.
***
I had risen from the trenches, scarred and rejuvenated all at once. The emotional rollercoaster that was Concrete had prodded guffaws loose, yanked tears free, and drawn both hope and hatred from the darkest chasms of my being. I battled the desire to sleep off the hangover of overstimulation and the need to hop in a cab and go directly to the nearest skydiving facility to exorcise my body of coursing adrenaline.
How I was going to present myself professionally when I was reeling from the conflict, heartache, and retribution I’d just witnessed, I didn’t know. But I needed to figure it out quickly because I was standing in Tate’s empty dressing room with the promise he would be with me shortly.
Having been so enraptured in the play, I’d failed to take as many notes as I would’ve liked, so I sat down at the stark white vanity and used the moment of solitude to scribble as much on my nearly naked pad as I could.
Writing reviews was a harder task than it sounded like because I was forced to toe the line between providing ample detail and spoiling the plot’s highlights. Or lowlights, in some cases. This one, in particular, was going to be more of a challenge than usual.
Concrete was perhaps my new favorite work, certainly my favorite production featuring Tate McGrath, and I found myself filling out an entire summary on one lemony sheet after another rather than bulleting neat, concise points to touch upon.
“Am I disturbing you?”
I whirled around so quickly that the chair rocked back onto two legs, and I nearly toppled over. I’d been so focused on my recollection of the performance that I hadn’t even heard the door open or the footsteps approaching, and my heart was thrumming furiously against my breast.
A dark brow lifted in a smooth arc over a piercing eye that, with its partner, stripped away my physical existence to peer into the ether of my thoughts — which were little more than snapping static in my startled state.
“No.” My voice was far away, muffled by walls that didn’t exist. “Sorry.”
“Are you sure? I can give you a few minutes.”
He was pulsing, emanating a palpable intensity that stroked my hair and slapped my cheeks. In the hundreds of photographs I’d seen and the scads of plays I’d enjoyed, I’d memorized this man’s striking features, but I never could have imagined how imposing his presence actually was.
His shoulders, broader up close, claimed the space around him with stunning conviction, and his stare seemed to see straight through me. Straight to the truth of me. His gaze was so penetrating I couldn’t move. As I faced him, I suddenly felt a wave of unprovoked defiance crash over me, as if he’d verbally threatened to make this meeting as difficult as possible and ensure my everlasting failure as that one theater critic from The Apple who botched the interview with the famous Tate McGrath.
“No,” I repeated, my tone noticeably more stable. At least I hoped so. “I just needed to write down a few extra thoughts about the show.”
I snatched my pad from the vanity and got to my feet, my skirt swishing around my knees. Tate didn’t move, but his gaze wandered up and down the length of my form, and I silently congratulated myself for having chosen the smart yet fitted blouse as my top for the evening.
When he failed to speak, I motioned to the Edwardian style couch with my pen. “Shall we?”
“If you wish.”
Still, he didn’t move, and I waffled so dramatically between being the first to sit and waiting for him to oblige me that I wobbled in my heels. My face grew warm as I realized the likeliest reason for his stillness.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I should’ve introduced myself.” I clacked toward him with my unburdened hand extended. “Sadie Danes, The Apple.”
“Tate McGrath.”
I almost chuckled at the unnecessity of his introduction, but he slid his palm against mine, and I froze. Hot sparks crackled and popped through my hand and up my arm. The air between us was suddenly gone, and my lungs were squeezed to prunes by invisible fingers. His eyes plunged into mine like harpoons, but they burrowed past the recesses of my racing mind to venture south into the nether land, which responded with a throbbing I didn’t know possible of the female body. All the moisture had gone from my mouth to slicken my panties instead, and my tongue was somehow three sizes too thick and impossible to maneuver.
“Okay… I mean… we should… the interview…” The last time I’d stumbled over my words like this, I’d been in the fifth grade standing in front of the class about to give a presentation on Jupiter and its known moons.
His thumb twitched, but he continued to grip my hand as he jerked his chin toward the couch. “After you.”
My fingers became ice-cold the moment I dislodged them from his, like he’d been the only source of heat in the room, and I clumsily tottered to the sofa. Sinking with some relief onto one end, I propped my elbow up on the armrest and situated the pad of paper on my lap. Tate joined me, and it didn’t escape my notice that he chose to seat himself on the middle cushion rather than the one on the opposite end from me. A boulder rolled through my stomach.
“Well, first, I want to thank you for agreeing to—”
“Did you want to record this?” His brow was raised again, and he’d rested his elbows on his knees with his hands clasped tightly before him in a pose of relative unapproachability.
I blinked, processing the interruption, then hastily dug into the clutch I’d paired with my outfit. “Right, yeah, sorry.” I was starting to notice a pattern of apologizing to this man, and I wasn’t fond of it. “I mean, thanks. For the reminder, I mean.” God, I sounded like such a putz.
He didn’t reply, choosing instead to watch me extract the device from the purse. The small silver recorder hummed as I pressed the button, and I placed it on the waxed mahogany coffee table in front of us.
“Okay…” I exhaled a long breath, determined to pull my act together. “Like I was saying, I wanted to thank you for agreeing to do this interview. I know you’ve spoken with a lot of reporters and television hosts since making it on the big screen, but you did very f
ew interviews prior to that, back when you were exclusively a Broadway man. So, thank you for taking the time to talk to me.”
I was speaking like rapid-fire now, syllable after syllable careening from my mouth and crashing into each other. Tate’s eyes were on my lips as if he was trying to figure out what I was saying. I felt my cheeks coloring again, but I couldn’t pull the reins hard enough to halt the sprinting horses hauling my tongue until it was too late and everything I’d said had jumbled together.
A dense silence stretched between us. The deep blue eyes were still on my mouth without a single flicker of comprehension, and not even a lash moved. My lungs were starting to ache with lack of oxygen. Finally, he offered me a sharp nod. “You’re welcome.”
This interview was going to be a mess.
CHAPTER TWO
Tate
Though I didn’t show it, I had a strong desire to laugh at how flustered Sadie Danes was by me. Since becoming a recognizable face after the success of The Paradox, and consequently, The Paradox Reborn, I’d grown accustomed to females swooning and screeching and slobbering in my presence, but members of the media had always demonstrated great composure — albeit, with some pushiness — when conversing with me.
Except Sadie.
Her hands were constantly moving, and she formed her sentences with the uncertainty of someone who’d just learned to speak English, which I was sure wasn’t the case because I didn’t detect even a hint of an accent, and Sadie Danes was about as English-speaking a name as they came. Every time she looked at me, the edges of her mocha irises grew cloudy, and she lost whatever momentum she’d gained in recapturing the skill of speech.
“So, you… ah… you recently decided to return to Broadway instead of pursuing more Hollywood roles. Why is that?”
I admired the way the tip of her pink tongue met the ridge of her upper teeth when she said “that,” protruding just a bit through the slight gap between the front two before slithering back like a shy snake.
“The theater was my first love.” My reply was simple, unpretentious, and accompanied by a shrug of airy nonchalance. She nodded and darted a quick look from her notepad to me, her pen poised over the paper to document further explanation, but I offered her none.
