Thad’s parents had raced up from Kentucky. Coop was best man. Clint walked the bride down the makeshift aisle as Rachel sang, and neither the bride nor groom—both of whom were used to working under pressure—could make it through their vows without choking up.
It was a beautiful ceremony. The flowers, the guests, the music. As Thad and Olivia exchanged the kiss that sealed their union, Cooper Graham leaned over to the man sitting next to him and whispered, “One marriage. Two divas. This is going to work out just fine.”
Clint Garrett couldn’t have agreed more.
Epilogue
Thad stood in the wings of the Lyric Opera of Chicago, his arms crossed over his chest to keep his heart from spilling out as he watched Liv deliver the best “Habanera” of her life. Her Carmen was a headstrong rebel—sultry, sexy, foolhardy, and answerable only to herself—everything Liv wasn’t, except for the sultry, sexy part.
After three years, she still took his breath away.
He liked helping people be their best, whether it was motivating Liv to reach new heights in her career or cheering on the idiot through every game. Damn, but he loved that guy.
Onstage, Carmen had caught ol’ Don José’s eye. Liv did way too great a job of dying, and Thad made it a policy never to watch the last act. Plus, he’d been forbidden to stick around backstage that long because he made the tenor singing Don José nervous.
Their first year of marriage had been just as messy and hectic as they’d anticipated. He’d started training camp on the exact day Liv had to be in Munich. When the Stars played their first game, she was in Tokyo and after that Moscow. They talked all the time and competed with each other to come up with the most innovative way of keeping their sex life interesting, although it meant installing lots of extra software to guard against hackers.
After Moscow, Liv was back in Chicago sitting in Phoebe Calebow’s skybox watching Thad win two games back to back when Clint was out with an ankle sprain. One of the Calebow kids had sneaked photos of Liv screaming her head off every time Thad completed a pass. Embarrassing, but Mrs. Calebow was a big opera fan, and she didn’t seem to mind.
The second year of marriage grew more complicated as he finished his contract and moved ahead with his retirement plan. He’d become a certified financial planner so he could play a more active role in keeping stupid, young rookies from blowing all their money, satisfying work but a sideline to his real job. He was Piper’s full-time partner in her volunteer crusade to put an end to child sex trafficking. Follow the money. He’d gotten very good at exactly that, and whenever he helped put another of those bastards behind bars, he felt better than he’d ever felt winning a football game.
He was a little busier than he wanted to be, but as a bonus, his work was portable so he could travel with Olivia as much as either of them wanted, which was most of the time.
“I entertain people,” The Diva was fond of saying. “You save lives.”
Then, just when things were running smoothly, The Diva decided she wanted a baby.
* * *
The ovation rolled over her in an endless wave. She’d killed as Carmen tonight, and everyone in the audience knew it. She was ecstatic, triumphant, gratified, and drained—more than ready to go home to her child and the man she loved with all her heart.
This would be her last Carmen for a couple of years. With her family growing, she was cutting down on the number of time-consuming operas she performed and stepping up her concert appearances instead. She loved the concerts. She could spend much less time on the road, reach even more audiences, and also experiment with a broader repertoire. She planned to ramp up her time in the recording studio, beginning with recording a selection of lullabies, all of which she was auditioning in front of Theodosia Shore Owens, her squirmy, cuddly, dark-haired devil-angel. “She’s going to be a soprano for sure,” Thad had said after Sia had thrown a particularly dramatic temper tantrum because her father wouldn’t let her eat the kitchen sponge.
Olivia had never sung better than when she’d been pregnant with Sia. The baby had provided additional support to her abdomen and diaphragm, which—right up until the last month—made singing even the most taxing passages easier.
Unlike Dennis, Rachel’s ex-husband, Thad had no interest in micromanaging Liv’s career. Thad had more than enough to do staying on top of his own work. She didn’t keep her nose out of his career nearly as well as he did hers. She was as passionate as he about his work with Piper, and she liked staying up to date. She’d also developed a fondness for some of the rookies he was coaching. He said he was only helping them manage their money, but since when did money management involve watching hours of game film with them?
Sometimes when she performed, Olivia stole glances into the wings or out into the audience looking for him. The sight of that beautiful face, the knowledge of what they’d created together, gave her singing extra meaning.
They talked, they planned, they adjusted and readjusted their lives together. No soprano could hope for a more perfect husband. And he still loved when she sang naked for him.
* * *
As Thad headed home, he remembered the serious doubts he’d had about Liv’s competence as the mother of his future child. How could he not have doubts after he’d watched her sing Azucena in Il trovatore? Crazy Azucena, who throws her own fricking baby in the fire! Witnessing The Diva’s glee as she prepared for the role, then watching her onstage as she sang that wacko woman with way too much enthusiasm, made him consider a vasectomy. When he’d expressed his doubts about leaving her alone with an infant, she’d gone off into whoops of laughter, jumped in his lap, and started kissing him.
Nine months later, Sia was born.
The light of his life, Theodosia Shore Owens, should be asleep by now, and it was time for him to get home and relieve their nanny.
Now they had another baby on the way, which meant they’d be facing more of the chaos they’d gotten so good at untangling. He couldn’t wait.
He turned the volume up on his favorite classical radio station. Tonight they were playing a recording of Olivia singing bel canto, and his wife hit a Rossini passage that covered him with goose bumps. “I wouldn’t be able to sing the way I do without you,” she’d told him more than once.
He didn’t believe it, but what he did know was this: At the end of the day, when her makeup and costumes came off, Liv loved being Mrs. Thad Owens. Almost as much as he loved being Mr. Olivia Shore.
Author’s Note
I am especially indebted to the three women who helped me on my journey through the world of sopranos and opera. Dr. Ramona Wis was there with me as I started my journey. Marianna Moroz, public relations manager at the world-renowned Lyric Opera of Chicago, graciously answered my questions. And the brilliant author Megan Chance, who knows exactly what another writer needs, helped bring this story home. Thank you all and forgive any liberties I might have taken with this cherished art form and with those who keep it alive.
As always, I am more grateful than I can say for my team at HarperCollins, William Morrow, and Avon Books, led by my dear friend and longtime editor Carrie Feron.
I hope readers who aren’t familiar with Cooper Graham and Piper’s story will enjoy reading it in First Star I See Tonight. A list of all my Chicago Stars books is available on my website, susanelizabethphillips.com. Thank you for being the best readers any author could hope to have!
About the Author
SUSAN ELIZABETH PHILLIPS is an international bestseller whose books have been published in more than thirty languages. She’s the only four-time recipient of the Romance Writers of America’s prestigious Favorite Book of the Year Award, and a recipient of their Lifetime Achievement Award. Among her other accomplishments, Susan created the sports romance genre.
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Also by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
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Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
when stars collide. Copyright © 2021 by Susan Elizabeth Phillips, LLC. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
first edition
Cover design and illustration by Sandra Chiu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
Digital Edition JUNE 2021 ISBN: 978-0-06-297310-8
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-297308-5
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