by Nora Roberts
did they go from here?
Lovers. It seemed inevitable that they would become lovers. The passion that simmered under the surface every moment they were together wouldn't be held back for long. They both knew it and, in their different ways, accepted it. What worried Reed was that once he'd taken her to bed, as he wanted to, he would lose the easy companionship he was coming to depend on.
Sex would change things. It was bound to. Intimacy on a physical level would jar the emotional intimacy they had just begun to develop. As much as he needed Maddy in his bed, he wondered if he could afford to risk losing the Maddy he knew out of bed. It was a tug-of-war he knew he could never really win.
Yet he didn't believe in losing. Given enough logical thought, enough planning, he should be able to find a way to have both. Did it matter if he was being calculating, even cold-blooded, when the end result would please both of them?
The answer wouldn't come. Instead, an image ran through his head of Maddy as she'd been a few afternoons before, laughing, tossing bread crumbs to pigeons in the Park.
When the buzzer sounded on his desk, he discovered he'd lost another ten minutes daydreaming. "Yes, Hannah."
"Your father's on line one, Mr. Valentine."
"Thank you." Reed pushed a button and made the connection. "Dad?"
"Reed, heard a rumor that Selby's taken on a fresh batch of indies. Know anything about it?"
Reed already had a preliminary report on the influx of independent record promoters taken on by Galloway. "Keeping your ear to the ground on the 'nineteenth' hole?"
"Something like that."
"There's talk of some pressure on some of the Top 40 stations to add a few records to their playlist. Nothing new. A few whispers of payola, but nothing that gels."
"Selby's a slippery sonofabitch. You hear anything concrete, I wouldn't mind being informed."
"You'll be the first."
"Never liked the idea of paying to have a record air," Edwin muttered. "Well, it's an old gambit, and I'm thinking more of new ones. I wanted to see a rehearsal of our play. Would you like to join me?"
Reed glanced at his desk calendar. "When?"
"In an hour. I know it's the form to let them know; they'd like to be on their toes when the bank roll's expected, but I like surprises."
Reed noted two appointments that morning and started to refuse. Giving in to impulse, he decided to reschedule. "I'll meet you at the theater at eleven."
"Stretch it into lunch? Your old man's buying."
He was lonely, Reed realized. Edwin Valentine had his club, his friends and enough money to cruise around the world, but he was lonely. "I'll bring an appetite," Reed told him, then hung up to juggle his schedule.
Edwin entered the theater stealthily, like a boy without a ticket. "We'll just slip into a seat on the aisle and see what we're paying for."
Reed walked behind his father, but his gaze was on the stage, where Maddy was wrapped in the arms of another man. He felt the lunge of jealousy, so surprisingly fierce that he stopped in the center of the aisle and stared.
She was looking up at another man, her arms linked behind his neck, her face glowing. "I really had a wonderful time, Jonathan. I could have danced forever."
"You're talking like it's over. We have hours yet." Reed watched as the man pressed a kiss to her forehead. "Come home with me."
"Come home with you?" Even with the distance, Reed could sense the alarm in the set of Maddy's body. "Oh, Jonathan, I'd like to, really." She drew away, just a little, but he caught her hands. "I just can't. I have to… I have to be at work early. Yes, that's it. And there's my mother." She turned away again, rolling her eyes so that the audience could see the lie while the man beside her couldn't. "She's not really well, you know, and I should be there in case she needs anything."
"You're such a good person, Mary."
"Oh, no." Guilt and distress were hinted at in her voice. "No, Jonathan, I'm not."
"Don't say that." He drew her into his arms again. "Because I think I'm falling in love with you."
She was caught up in another kiss. Even knowing it was only a play, Reed felt something twist in his stomach.
"I have to go," she said quickly. "I really have to." Pulling away, she darted across stage right.
"When will I see you again?"
She stopped and seemed at war within herself. "Tomorrow. Come to the library at six. I'll meet you."
"Mary—" He started toward her, but she held up both hands.
"Tomorrow," she said again, and ran offstage.
"All right." The director's voice boomed out. "We'll have fifteen seconds here for the drops and set change. Wanda, Rose, take your marks. Lights go on. Cue, Maddy."
She came rushing onstage again to where Wanda was lounging in a chair and the woman named Rose was primping in a mirror.
"You're late," Wanda said lazily.
"What are you, a time clock?" Maddy's voice had an edge of toughness now; her movements were sharper.
"Jackie was looking for you."
Maddy stopped in the act of pulling on a wild red wig. "What'd you tell him?"
"That he wasn't looking in the right places. Don't stretch your G-string, Mary. I covered for you."
"Yeah, she covered for you," Rose agreed, snapping a wad of gum and fussing with her outrageous pink-and-orange costume.
"Thanks." Maddy whipped off her skirt. Nudging Rose aside, she began to paint her face.
"Don't thank me. We gotta stick together." She watched negligently as Rose practiced a routine. "Think you're nuts, though," Wanda added.
"I know what I'm doing." Maddy slipped behind a screen. The blouse she'd worn flapped across it. "I can handle it."
"You better make sure you can handle Jackie. Any idea what he'd do to you and your pretty boy if he found out what's going on?"
"He's not going to find out." She came out from the screen in a long, slinky gown covered with red spangles. "Look, I'm on."
"Crowd's pretty hot tonight."
"Good." She sent Wanda a grin. "That's the way I like them." She walked off stage right again.
"Lights stage left," the stage manager called. "Cue Terry."
A dancer Reed recognized from the only other rehearsal he'd seen paced out on stage left. His hair was slicked back, and he'd added a pencil-thin moustache. He wore a brilliant white tie against a black shirt. When Maddy came out behind him, he grabbed her arm.
"Where the hell you been?"
"Around." Maddy pushed back the mane of red hair, then settled a hand saucily on her hip. "What's your problem?"
Edwin leaned over and whispered to Reed. "Doesn't look like the little lady who came into your office with a dead plant."
"No," Reed murmured as the two on stage argued. "It doesn't."
"She's going to be big, Reed. Very, very big."
He felt twin surges of pride and alarm and could explain neither of them. "Yes, I think she is."
"Look, sugar." Maddy gave her partner a pat on the cheek. "You want me to go strip or stay here and read you my diary?"
"Strip," Jackie ordered her.
"Yeah." Maddy tossed her head back. "That's what I do best."
"Lights," the stage manager called out. "Music."
Maddy grabbed a red boa and walked—no, sauntered—to center stage, then stood there like a flame. When she began to sing, her voice came slowly and built, as arousing and teasing as the movements she began to make. The boa was tossed into the audience. It would be replaced dozens of times before the play closed.
"I never took you to a strip joint, did I, Reed?"
He had to smile, even as Maddy began to peel off elbow-length gloves. "No, you didn't."
"Hole in your education."
Onstage, Maddy let her body take over. It was just one routine among nearly a dozen others, but she knew it had the potential to be a showstopper if she played it right. She intended to.
When she whipped off the skirt of the dress, some of the
technicians began to whistle. She grinned and went into a series of thunderous bumps and grinds. When the two-minute dance had run its course, she sat on the stage, arched back, wearing little more than spangles and beads. To her surprise and pleasure, there was a smattering of applause from the center of the audience. Exhausted, she propped herself on her elbow and smiled out into the darkened theater.
Word traveled quickly, from assistant to assistant to stage manager to director. Money was in the house.
Don went down the aisle, swearing because the grapevine hadn't gotten to him sooner. "Mr. Valentine. And Mr. Valentine." He offered hearty handshakes. "We weren't expecting you."
"We thought we'd catch something a little impromptu." Reed spoke to him, but his gaze wandered back to the stage, where Maddy still sat, dabbing at her throat now with a towel. "Very impressive."
"We could be a little sharper yet, but we'll be ready for Philadelphia."
"No doubt about that." Edwin gave him a friendly slap on the shoulder. "We don't want to hold things up."
"I'd love you to stay longer, if you could. We're about to rehearse the first scene from the second act. Please, come down front."
"Up to you, Reed."
He was going to have to put in an extra two hours with paperwork to make up for this. But he wasn't going to miss it. "Let's go."
The next scene was played strictly for laughs. Reed didn't know enough to dissect the comedic timing, the pacing, the stage business that made the simplest things funny. He could see, however, that Maddy knew how to play it to the hilt. She was going to have the audience eating out of her hand.
There was something vivid about her, something convincing and sympathetic even in her role as the brazen, somewhat edgy stripper. Reed watched her play two roles, adding the innocence necessary to convince the eager and honest Jonathan that his Mary was a dedicated librarian with a sick mother. He'd have believed her himself. And it was that quality that began to worry him.
"She's quite a performer," Edwin commented when the director and stage manager went into a huddle.
"Yes, she is."
"I suppose it's none of my business, but what's going on between you?"
Reed turned, his face expressionless. "What makes you think anything is?"
Edwin tapped the side of his nose. "I'd never have gotten this far in the business if I couldn't sniff things out."
"We're… friends," Reed said after a moment.
With a sigh, Edwin shifted his large bulk in the seat. "You know, Reed, one of the things I've always wanted for you is a woman like Maddy O'Hurley. A bright, beautiful woman who could make you happy."
"I am happy."
"You're still bitter."
"Not with you," Reed said immediately. "Never with you."
"Your mother—"
"Leave it." Though the words were quiet, the ice was there. "This has nothing to do with her."
It had everything to do with her, Edwin thought as Maddy took the stage again. But he knew his son well, and kept his silence.
Edwin couldn't turn back the clock and stop the betrayal. Even if it were possible, he wouldn't. If he could, and did, Reed wouldn't be sitting beside him now. How could he teach his son that it was a matter not of forgiveness but of acceptance? How could he teach him to trust when he'd been born of a lie?
Edwin studied Maddy as her bright, expressive face lighted the stage. Could she be the one to do the teaching?
Maybe she was the woman Reed had always needed, the answer he'd always searched for without acknowledging that he was looking. Maybe, through Maddy, Edwin could lay all his own past hurts to rest.
Even though it was simply a walk-through, Maddy kept the energy at a high level. She didn't believe in pacing herself through a performance, or through life, but in going full out and seeing where it landed her.
While she ran through her lines, practiced her moves, part of her concentration focused on Reed. He was watching her so intently. It was if he were trying to see through her role to who and what she really was. Didn't he understand that it was her job to submerge herself until there was no Maddy, only Mary?
She thought she sensed disapproval, even annoyance—a completely different mood from the one he'd sat down with. She wanted badly to jump down from the stage and somehow reassure him, though of what she wasn't sure. But he didn't want that from her. At least not yet. For now he wanted everything casual, very, very light. No strings, no promises, no future.
She stumbled over a line, swore at herself. They backtracked and began again.
She couldn't tell him how she felt. For a woman with an honest nature, even silence was deception. But she couldn't tell him. He didn't want to hear her say she loved him, had begun to love him from the moment she'd stood on the sidewalk with him at dusk. He would be angry, because he didn't want to be trapped by emotion. He wouldn't understand that she simply lived on emotion.
Perhaps he'd think she simply gave her love easily. It was true enough that she did, but not this kind of love. Love of family was natural and always there. Love of friends evolved slowly or quickly, but with no qualms. She could love a child in the park for nothing more than his innocence, or an old man on the street for nothing more than his endurance.
But loving Reed involved everything. This love was complex, and she'd always thought loving was simple. It hurt, and she'd always believed love brought joy. The passion was there, always simmering underneath. It made her restless with anticipation, when she'd always been so easygoing.
She'd invited him into her life. That was something she couldn't forget. More, she'd argued him into her life when he'd been ready to back away. So she loved him. But she couldn't tell him.
"Lunch, ladies and gentlemen. Be back at two, prepared to run through the two final scenes."
"So it's the angel," Wanda murmured in Maddy's ear. "The one in the front row who looks like a cover for Gentleman's Quarterly."
"What about him?" Maddy bent from the waist and let her muscles relax.
"That's him, isn't it?"
"What him?"
"The him." Wanda gave her a quick slap on the rump. "The him that's had you standing around dreamy eyed."
"I don't stand around dreamy eyed." At least she hoped she didn't.
"That's him," Wanda said with a self-satisfied smile before she strolled offstage.
Grumbling to herself, Maddy walked down the steps beside the stage. She put on a fresh smile. "Reed, I'm glad you came." She didn't touch him or offer the quick, friendly kiss she usually greeted him with. "Mr. Valentine. It's so nice to see you again."
"I enjoyed every minute of it." He sandwiched her hand between his big ones. "It's a pleasure to watch you work. Did I hear the man mention lunch?"
She put a hand on her stomach. "That you did."
"Then you'll join us, won't you?"
"Well, I…" When Reed said nothing, she searched for an excuse.
"Now, you wouldn't disappoint me." Edwin ignored his son's silence and barreled ahead. "This is your neck of the woods. You must know a good spot."
"There's a deli just across the street," she began.
"Perfect. I could eat a good pastrami." And it would only take a quick call to cancel his reservation at the Four Seasons. "What do you say, Reed?"
"I'd say Maddy needs a minute to change." He finally smiled at her.
She glanced down at her costume of hot-pink shorts and tank top. "Five minutes to get into my street clothes," she promised, and dashed away.
She was better than her word. Within five minutes she had thrown a yellow sweat suit over her costume and was walking into the deli in front of Reed and his father.
The smells were wonderful. There were times she stopped in for them alone. Spiced meat, hot mustard, strong coffee. An overhead fan stirred it all up. Most of the dancers had headed there from the theater like hungry ants to a picnic. Because the proprietor was shrewd, there was a jukebox in the rear corner. It was already blasting away.
&
nbsp; The big Greek behind the counter spotted Maddy and gave her a wide white grin. "Ahhh, an O'Hurley special?"
"Absolutely." Leaning on the glass front of the counter, she watched him dish up a big, leafy salad. He used a generous hand with chunks of cheese, then topped it off with a dollop of yogurt.
"You eat that?" Edwin asked behind her.
She laughed and accepted the bowl. "I absorb it."
"Body needs meat." Edwin ordered a pastrami on a huge kaiser roll.
"I'll get us a table," Maddy offered, grabbing a cup of tea to go with the salad. Wisely she commandeered one on the opposite end of the room from the music.
"Lunch with the big boys, huh, Maddy?" Terry, with his hair still slicked back a la Jackie, stooped over her. "Going to put in a good word for me?"
"What word would you like?" She turned in her chair to grin up at him.
"How about'star'?"
"I'll see if I can work it in."
He started to say something else but glanced over at his own table. "Damn it, Leroy, that's my pickle."
Maddy was still laughing when Reed and his father joined her.
"Quite a place," Edwin commented, already looking forward to his sandwich and the heap of potato salad beside it.
"They're on their best behavior because you're here."
Someone started to sing over the blare of the jukebox. Maddy simply pitched her voice higher. "Will you come to the Philadelphia opening, Mr. Valentine?"
"Thinking about it. Don't travel as much as I used to. There was a time when the head of a record company had to be out of town as much as he was in his office."
"Must have been exciting." She dipped into her salad and pretended she didn't envy Reed his pile of rare roast beef.
"Hotel rooms, meetings." He shrugged. "And I missed my boy." The look he gave Reed was both rueful and affectionate. "Missed too many ball games."
"You made plenty of them." Reed sliced off a corner of his sandwich and handed it to Maddy. It was a small, completely natural gesture that caught Edwin's eye. And his hope.
"Reed was top pitcher on his high school team."
Reed was shaking his head with a smile of his own when Maddy turned to him. "You played ball? You never told me." As soon as the words were out, she reminded herself he had no reason to tell her. There were dozens of other details about his life that he hadn't told her. "I never really understood baseball until I moved to New York," she went on quickly. "Then I caught a few Yankee games to see what the fuss was about. What was your ERA?"
He lifted a brow. "2.38."
It pleased her that he remembered. She rolled her eyes at his father. "Big-league material."
"So I always told him. But he wanted to work in the business."
"That's the big leagues, too, isn't it?" She nibbled on the portion of sandwich Reed had given her. "Most of us only look at the finished product, you know, the album we put on the turntable, the cassette we stick in the car stereo.