Amy Cousins - When the Lights Go Down

Get a grip, Drake.

“Ms. Tyler.”

“Nicholas Drake.” The look she raked over him was scornful or borderline sexual, maybe both. She held his hand longer than necessary before letting go. “You were trespassing backstage last night.”

“I wanted to see you in action.” He’d certainly done that. She was a martinet, but everything she touched had fallen into place like clockwork.

“I don’t normally take meetings with people who won’t tell me who they’re representing, but I’m always ready to eat. Let’s go.”

She whipped a white trench coat off of an old-fashioned coat rack behind the door, shrugged it on, belted it and left the door open behind her as she plunged into the dim hallway.

Clarissa groaned from behind him.

“I heard that,” Maxie said from down the hall, laughing. “You said it was too late to make a good impression, girl, and I’m starving.”

* * *

Ten minutes later, Maxie was up to her eyebrows in Jamaican jerk chicken with dirty rice and beans and as happy as a kid with a new toy. She watched her “I’d prefer a breakfast meeting, if you don’t mind” nine-o’clock appointment stare with drawn brows at the photographs on the side of the boxy white truck parked at the curb. She’d bet twenty bucks he’d never bought food out of a van before.

Poor, deprived soul.

“Best plantains in the city,” she said and opened her foam container. The lid flip-flopped in the cool morning breeze.

He pushed back the straight, dark hair falling over his brow with an automatic gesture and didn’t seem to notice when it dropped right back into place.

“It’s nine o’clock in the morning.”

“Hey, opening night wrapped up at four and I came straight to work. Haven’t slept yet. Breakfast was hours ago.” He ordered coffee. She shook her head. His loss. She’d brought the man to the best Jamaican outside of Montego Bay. You could lead a horse to water...

“Yes, I’m sure you’ve been hard at work in your—” he flicked a hand at her “—what? Costume?”

“You don’t gotta wear construction boots to wheel a dolly of two-by-fours to the checkout line.” She grinned and winked at him. Like Clarissa said, the good impression window was closed. She might as well have fun. There was no need for him to know she’d worn the sixties sex-kitten outfit because it made her feel like a sexual powerhouse. She’d been restless in the hours before dawn this morning, still feeling his chest under her palms from their split second of physical contact the night before. A little boost had seemed in order. “Who do you think brought those two lunkheads who work for me the lumber? There’s a twenty-four-hour Home Depot just off North Avenue.”

“How did you get it to fit in the van?”

She was pretty sure the curiosity in his voice was unwilling. He looked like the type of man who’d just as soon file her neatly in a box and forget about her.

“I didn’t.” She shoveled a forkful of rice and beans in her mouth and let him wait for a minute while she chewed. She didn’t play around with Jahman’s food. “I picked it up in my truck. It has a longer flatbed, but those two are forbidden to drive it.”

She jerked her head at a bus-stop bench down the sidewalk. He followed and stood looming over her as she sat with her container on her lap and ate. Ignoring him as she dug into her second breakfast for the day, she ploughed through the meal and then sat back happily, having mopped up spicy jerk sauce with the last piece of fried plantain. A perfect bite.

She stretched her arms along the back of the aluminum bench and tilted her face back to catch the weak warmth of the sun on a Chicago spring day.

Cracking one eye open, she glanced up at the man who was watching her, one hand in his pocket, the other lifting the paper cup of coffee to his mouth with mechanical regularity. Just watching. The fine hairs on her arms stood up as she shivered under that gaze.

She crossed her legs and sat a bit straighter, unaccountably irritated.

“Look, Drake, you asked for this meeting, not me. Now would be a good time to start talking, before I fall into a food coma.”

“I represent some people who want to hire you.”

She waited. Nothing. She rolled her eyes and then glared at him. And?

“And I’m not at all convinced it’s a good idea.”

Ouch.

She might joke about not caring about good impressions, but it still stung when someone told you they didn’t think you were good enough. She knew better than to indulge in hurt feelings and was annoyed that she couldn’t find her normal self-control. “What a surprise,” she said. “Like your underlings a little bit more conventional, do you?” The drawled words scratched him back with a not very well-hidden swipe of her claws. Burning a professional contact wasn’t her normal style, but she would already have heard of this guy if he were a name in theater, so she felt free to play a little. Especially since next week’s interview was looking like more of a lock with every day that passed, according to the gossip in her network. She swung her legs up on the bench, just missing kicking him in the knife-sharp crease of his slacks.

To her surprise, he smiled at her. Pulled out his sunglasses and slid them on.

She didn’t like not being able to see where his eyes were directed. Not knowing what he was looking at made her feel as if his gaze was touching her everywhere.

Instead of responding to her taunt, he came back with a question.

“Why Carving Bananas?”

She laughed and stared up at his dark shades, wondering how he’d take her explanation.

Some men took it personally.

“Eisenhower was speaking of Montgomery when he said, ‘I could carve a better man out of a banana.’” She paused for a moment, remembering the old embarrassment. “Or, at least, I thought he did. Turns out the historian who wrote the book I read made that up. Live and learn. Once a two hundred pound carving of a banana has been delivered to your door, you suck it up.”

After a silent moment, he pulled the sunglasses off. The shock of meeting his eyes again, the blue of Lake Michigan in July framed by dark lashes, made her wobbly. He studied her, eyes narrowing. She couldn’t read minds, but she’d swear that he was finally ignoring her outfit and how she talked to him, and looking at her.

“And you’re Eisenhower, I take it?”

She bestowed her grin like a teacher giving a gold star to her favorite pupil.

“You got it.”

Focused on him, she forgot the grooved metal slats under her thighs and the ruffle of cool air against her bare skin. She felt him step a little deeper into her mind.

“More like General Patton, I bet.”

“I’ve got more subtlety and a broader grasp of the field of engagement than that. Besides, have you seen the state of education in this country? Most kids wouldn’t know who Patton was if he walked up and smacked them on the head with his riding crop.”

“I bet you’d like to wear the boots, though.” His mouth quirked into a grin.

A mental picture of herself in thigh-high riding boots and a jacket covered in military ribbons floated up from Maxie’s subconscious and she laughed out loud.

“That might be one look even I can’t pull off.” She stood up, dumped her empty food container into the trash can next to the bench, and scrubbed her hands with her napkin before balling it up and making a rim shot into the open mouth of the can.

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.