Amy Cousins - When the Lights Go Down

Opposites attract, but then what?

Maxie Tyler is Chicago’s toughest stage manager. Her latest gig is just the break she needs, and she’s not going to let anyone get in her way. Not even the producer with dreamy blue eyes and bespoke suits that fit him perfectly in all the right places.

A successful venture capitalist, Nick Drake is used to calling the shots. He doesn’t care about art unless it turns a profit. This show might prove to be a good investment, but he’s not sure if Maxie Tyler will. Her need to control every detail of the show makes him nervous. So does the fact that they can’t seem to keep their hands off each other.

Scandal and disaster threaten her career, his reputation and the success of the play. Two people accustomed to being in control will have to trust each other if the show will, indeed, go on. And they’ll have to trust their feelings if their passion is going to last after the last curtain goes down and the lights go up.

For Shelley, who took me under her wing and welcomed me to Romancelandia. For dining room table writing dates and late night wine, for karaoke and corn bread, and for the most inspiring debut novel I’ve ever read. You make me want to push my writing harder.

Thanks for the friendship, lady.

When the Lights Go Down

Amy Jo Cousins

www.millsandboon.co.uk

About the Author

AMY JO COUSINSknows one thing for sure: the people who read and write romance novels are the smartest, funniest, kindest and most optimistic souls on the planet and finding a place in this community has been like coming home.

She lives in Chicago, where she writes contemporary romance, Tweets more than she ought and sometimes runs way too far. She loves her boy and the Cubs, who taught her that being awesome doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with winning.

You can visit her online where she hopes you’ll say hi! Sign up for her (very occasional) newsletter at www.amyjocousins.com, follow her on Twitter at @_AJCousinsor visit her on Facebook.

Also by Amy Jo Cousins

From Mills & Boon Desire

At Your Service (Book 1 of The Tylers)

Sleeping Arrangements (Book 2 of The Tylers)

From Mills & Boon E

Calling His Bluff (Book 3 of The Tylers)

Contents

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 One

“Uh-oh.”

Maxie’s stomach twisted and her vision dimmed. Nine hundred ticket-holding audience members, two flawless dress rehearsals, twelve weeks of preparation, two hundred and seven precisely planned light and sound cues had all led to this.

Opening night.

The oldest joke in the business was also the truest: What are the last words a stage manager wants to hear on opening night?

Uh-oh.

“Don’t do this to me, people. What’s wrong?” she hissed into her headset mike. As if the typical opening-night stress wasn’t bad enough, she’d managed to get an interview next week with the producers of a big Broadway show, who had decided that Chicago was the perfect city in which to begin a second run. To stage-manage such a big production would propel her into the top tier of show business in Chicago, a longtime goal of hers, and she’d invited the producers to attend the opening night of this show.

She had the sinking feeling that she might have made an error there.

“The dog is gone.” Ruben’s voice floated back to her through the earpiece she’d wedged in six hours ago. “I repeat, we have no Toto.”

She cursed under her breath. “Get the can opener,” she called to her assistant and sprinted down metal steps, heading for the tiny kitchen hidden in the building’s subbasement. When she reached the door, she grabbed the combination padlock and quickly opened it. The combination was easy enough to remember, even in times of extreme stress like now: one, two, three. Everyone from the producer down to the after-hours janitor knew it.

But then again, the lock wasn’t needed to keep out people. Just canines.

They’d yet to figure out how a schnauzer whose nose only reached knee-high even when it was standing on its hind legs managed to work the doorknob. But he’d broken into the kitchen a dozen times before they’d installed the lock, one time even leaving behind an incriminating trail of powdered sugar paw prints after stealing a box of donut holes.

“Damn genius dog.” Maxie shoved aside assorted bags of snacks until her fingers snagged on one last can of dog food. She had made it a policy never to run out of them.

“Ruben!” Her voice echoed in the bare hall.

“Got it!” Her assistant’s portly form shuffled down the last of the stairs, the puffing of his breath no doubt exaggerated for effect.

Melodramatization. A symptom exhibited by even the non-actors of a theatrical production.

Plucking the hand-operated can opener out of Ruben’s hand, she tossed a “Thanks!” over her shoulder and took the stairs two at a time to the top. Muttered curses followed her.

Maxie cranked open the can as she climbed, then hit the ground floor at a sprint. She took the corner at top speed, and slammed into what felt like a brick wall.

No way had someone on her crew abandoned a piece of the sliding set scenery in such a ridiculous location. They wouldn’t dare contradict her prop book, which assigned a precise backstage location for everything from hair ribbons to the enormous Emerald City set. Then her brain registered the texture, scent and sound—summer-weight wool fabric, a clean, sharp lemony spice, the sudden woof of breath being slammed out of a person. She looked up to memorize the face of the person she was going to kill as soon as she tracked down the damn dog.

“Blue.” She blurted out the word.

Lake-blue eyes froze her in place. They were narrowed at the moment, with fine lines at the corners that looked like they came from frowning, not laughing. Her stomach, already mid-butterfly stampede with nerves, did a slow dip and roll that made her dizzy. She blushed.

That indignity wrenched her back into the present. That and the realization that this stranger, this arrestingly good-looking man with those stop-you-in-your-tracks blue eyes and the thick shock of black hair, was an unauthorized intruder in her backstage empire.

“Get out.” She pushed past the man, her elbow out. If he complained, she’d claim the jab to his midsection was an accident.

She wrenched the lid off of the can, ignoring the sharp pain when the jagged metal sliced across her right index finger. Crossing to the breakfront that would decorate Auntie Em’s living room during a scene in Act One, she tossed the lid behind her, spattering some of the slimy contents of the can. God, how can even dogs eat this stuff?

When a deep voice registered a protest, she didn’t even turn to look. That meat and grease would be hard to get out of good wool, no doubt. Tough. He shouldn’t be trespassing on her set. She grabbed a cheap china plate off the breakfront and found a spoon in the top drawer, just where you’d expect to find silverware in real life. Verisimilitude, baby.

“I said get off my stage. Now.” She lowered her voice just enough to keep it from traveling past the heavy drop curtain while she warned off the intruder she could still feel hovering behind her. The light at the edges of the curtain was dim because the house lights had dropped. The audience would be settling down and listening for the first sounds of the play.