Amy Jo Cousins - When the Lights Go Down

She took two steps and stopped in front of him. Her mother had always advised her to face her fears head on.

Wise woman.

“You may think I’m not what you’re looking for, Mr. Drake. But if you get to know me better, you’ll find I’m exactly what you want. You’d be lucky to hire me or my company for your show, whatever it is.” Even in the boots, she had to tilt her head back at an uncomfortable angle to avoid staring at the front of his blindingly white shirt. She felt the snap and sizzle of sexual tension between them and fed off it.

“Oh, I’m changing my mind about what I want.” His voice was low as he loomed over her.

It took her a moment to figure out what he meant, and then she shook her platinum hair back with a swing of her head.

She bet his usual type wore Louboutin shoes and pencil skirts as a daily uniform, but she damn well knew what he wanted right now.

She smacked her palm flat on his chest and left it there. His heart thumped under her fingertips and she tapped her index finger against the muscles of his chest.

“Hiring me would be the best bad idea you ever had.” She didn’t know why she was pushing this. If she picked up the Broadway second run, her entire crew would be booked. She wouldn’t be able take any more jobs.

His hand wrapped around her wrist.

“If that’s a bad idea, then I’m pretty sure this is a terrible one.”

The blue of his eyes blotted out the spring sky as his head dipped toward hers, slow enough for her to pull her back if she’d wanted to do any such thing. Instead, she touched her tongue to her teeth and waited until his lips pressed against hers, his hand tightening on her wrist. Then her mouth fell open and she was lost.

Chapter Two

He tasted like coffee and cream from the cup he’d dropped at their feet. She had just enough brainpower left to register surprise at the sweetness, too. She’d have laid money on him taking it black.

And god, this was stupid. The one thing she never, ever did was get involved with anyone in her professional life. She’d learned her lesson, thank you, and that burn had taken a long time to heal.

But his mouth on hers was hot and she was slipping under his spell, her hand on his chest flexing as she dug her fingertips into the hard muscle under his corporate costume. He licked at her mouth and she let him in, a surge of heat shooting through her belly until she felt dizzy. Only the sharp pain of bobby pins poking her scalp when he tugged on her hair brought her to her senses before she climbed this guy like a tree in front of her favorite food-truck driver.

* * *

Maxie spent the next forty-eight hours thinking about what she’d agreed to after her kiss with Nick, and she still wasn’t sure it was a good idea. But she did know she could count on her sisters to tell her the truth.

Whether or not she actually wanted it.

She met her sister-in-law, Grace, and her two older sisters, both of them hugely pregnant, for an emergency summit slash massive laundry session the afternoon after her kiss with Nicholas Drake. Apparently everything that came into contact with babies needed to be washed in a special detergent, and between her two sisters they’d bought out most of Babies”R”Us. Her oldest sister Addy’s house was centrally located for all of the sisters and for their sister-in-law, Grace, who’d already knocked out her two kids and called a halt to further procreation, so they’d gathered there.

Hip-deep in burp cloths and onesies, Maxie was starting to regret giving them the details of her interactions with the well-tailored businessman. Addy, Sarah and Grace had leaped onto the details like lions attacking a wounded wildebeest, oversharing way too many details of their own about the dearth of sex in late pregnancy. She’d threatened to leave and deprive them of her Gap-trained folding skills, but Maxie knew there was no chance she was getting off the hook.

The speculation from her sisters, the preggos each sprawled on a separate couch, was getting progressively more explicit when Maxie finally gave up and raised her hands in surrender. “All right! All right! Pains in my ass.” She marched over and planted herself at the edge of the coffee table that stretched between the two couches. Bending her knees and leaning forward, hands on her thighs like an umpire at the plate, she glared at them.

“It was hot. It was wet. After he dropped his coffee cup, he tangled his hand in my hair and pulled my head back a little.” She nearly lost it when Sarah gave a wistful sigh and only managed to keep a straight face by biting her lip hard. “I was pressed up against him and bent backward over his arm and we didn’t come up for air for ages.” Addy’s aww distracted her for a moment, but she nailed the finale.

“Five more minutes and I would’ve jumped him on that bench. The thirty-three Washington bus could’ve stopped, unloaded passengers and driven off and I never would’ve noticed.”

Her sisters closed their eyes and smiled dreamily in unison. She was sure each was imagining her own husband, ridiculously attractive men that they were.

But the habit of sisterly ribbing was not to be denied for long. Addy cracked an eye open and lifted a brow. “Would have been funny if you’d lost that wig.”

She definitely regretted telling them what she’d worn to work that day.

Always the performer in the family, she held a beat before giving in.

“I almost cried like a baby when all of those bobby pins dug into my skull. Who knew the man was gonna want to pull my hair?”

They laughed at her until both had to get up and go pee and she returned to the laundry. The mountain of baby clothes had been transformed into neat piles of color-coded outfits, all greens and yellows and peaches. Both of them were waiting to find out the sex of their babies and they avoided anything pink or blue like the plague.

“So.” Grace folded the last of the baby blankets. “Close encounters with bus-stop sex aside, what happened? Does the guy want to hire you? And who is he? His name rings a bell.”

Maxie wrinkled her nose.

“He’s not part of the scene, that’s for sure. And he asked me to dinner. Tonight. Said we’d give the business meeting another chance, only this time he was damn well not going to eat his meal on a street corner.”

She still wasn’t sure that meeting this man, whose presence danced on her nerves, in a non-business setting was a good idea.

“Hmm.” She could read Grace as easily as she could her sisters. After all, this was the woman to whom she confessed her secrets when she wanted advice but wasn’t ready to talk to her sisters. It had been that way since she was a teenager.

“Yeah, I know. It didn’t really feel like a business kiss when he laid it on me.” She tossed the little hat she was playing with back into the basket and flopped onto the armchair behind her. She dropped the sarcasm. “I’d be a fool not to meet with him, at least. This is the first time someone’s come to me about a job, instead of me pitching to them. It’s taken six years to get to the point where we’re almost a real player in the industry. And Ruben is ready to call the show tonight. More than ready, really. He’s bored being the assistant stage manager.” She tucked her feet beneath her loose floral skirt. She’d felt very peasant-girl-come-to-do-the-laundry when she got dressed this morning.

“You know it takes time to build up a business reputation,” Grace reminded her.

“I know. And between the outfit and the make-out session, I may have started Carving Bananas on the road to a reputation for something other than business.” She frowned and pulled a final onesie from the laundry basket. “Not that I can take the job if I get the Broadway show. But still, options are nice.” She folded the onesie and dropped it on a pile. Straightened the pile until it stopped listing to one side.