by Leslie Kelly
“You hadn’t seen me in over a decade.” He hadn’t even really expected her to show for his birthday bash— especially since he’d posted a notice on a social network board at the last minute and invited a ton of people to the Hard Rock.
“But I planned on looking you up when I turned thirty in November, so I would have found out then and I would have been... I would have missed you.”
“Wait a minute.” He moved to face her fully. To read the nuances of her expression to be sure he understood her. “You’re saying—”
“I knew we’d both be turning thirty this year and I remembered our deal that we’d...consider each other if we made it to the ripe old age of thirty and were still single.”
“Holy hell. You’d been thinking about...us.” This changed things. Made his task easier—and harder.
Easier because she clearly had some deeper feelings for him somewhere, so maybe she’d hear him out about giving their crazy marriage a try.
Tougher, though, because now they both ran the risk of being hurt when things didn’t work out. Not that he was a pessimist. But no woman signed on for the kind of life he had to offer—she’d be alone most of the time. And when she was, she’d have no clue whether he was twenty-five miles away or five thousand.
He’d signed on for tougher missions than convincing Arianna Demakis to stay married to him. But the toll of failure was going to hurt a lot worse than any fallout a battle could have delivered.
3
“I’M NOT SURE if I was thinking about us.” She traced the handle of the stoneware mug with her finger, musing over how much to give away about the torch she’d always carried for him. “But I’ve definitely thought about you. I knew the marriage pact was a joke when we made it, yet I always had it in the back of my head to check in on you one day and see if you’d followed your dreams. If you were happy.”
She lifted her gaze to find him watching her with an avidness that made her...hot. There was no other word for it. Tempted as she was to act on that heat, though, she didn’t want to miss an opportunity to talk through their unorthodox predicament. Did he think she was crazy to still wear the wedding ring from a drive-through ceremony? Maybe he’d only arranged this meeting with her to get the ring back and sign the papers that would end the charade.
Her thumb went to the expanse of silver filigree and rubbed the surface. She didn’t always wear it on her finger. Sometimes she put it on a chain around her neck so as not to cause too much speculation. She’d worn it one way or another since he’d given it to her, though. Partly, it reminded her of him.
It also reminded her that she’d made a fool of herself by letting herself believe in starry-eyed romance.
“Happy?” He arched an eyebrow like Mr. Spock debating an alien concept. “My work is fulfilling, but I wouldn’t say—”
Her cell phone trilled a sharp note.
“Sorry,” she murmured, hopping to her feet before that obnoxious ring tone went off again. “I have to crank the volume when I’m working because the pandemonium backstage can be so loud. I have another show running—” She pressed the button to answer. “Hello?”
“Thank God you’re home.” Krista’s voice rushed into her ear. “Your snake handler is a no-show, a handful of the dancers had too much to drink at a Christmas party and the theater manager is ripping Maisey up one side and down the other. I told her to delay the start time by ten minutes but—”
Arianna closed her eyes. “I’m on my way.”
“I’m really sorry to call you in. It’s just that I thought I’d be giving performers a little encouragement, not taking charge of a whole lot of problems.” Krista’s voice sounded high and nervous. In the background, lively holiday tunes played over the house speaker system.
“It’s okay. See you in ten.” Swallowing hard, she disconnected the call and tried to think of how to frame the right apology for ditching an air force captain fresh home from service to his country.
On Christmas.
But Dylan was already on his feet. “Where are we headed?”
* * *
SHE FILLED HIM in on the problems during the drive over to the Pompeii Theatre. She hadn’t been able to convince him to stay behind, even though she’d urged him to relax and enjoy the tree lights and some cookies she’d made in a fit of holiday domesticity.
“I just feel so bad about doing this on your first night home.” Arianna fretted as she handed her keys to the valet at the Pompeii and hurried toward the theater entrance. With his long strides, Dylan easily kept pace. “We enjoyed the tree for...what? Fifteen minutes?”
Her eyes went to the watch on her wrist. It was after 12:00 a.m. and past time for the “Midnight” Christmas Circus to be under way.
He shrugged. “Usually it’s my work that hauls me away from a good evening, and I can tell you, the reasons for having to fire up a military mobile command center on short notice usually aren’t half as entertaining as intoxicated dancers and missing snake handlers.”
“I assure you, if Ricardo the Reptile Raiser wants to work in this town again, he will show up for his performance time.” Arianna had left messages for the snake charmer at his home and on his cell. She slid a sideways glance at Dylan when he held open the door for her. “Although your point is well taken—I’m glad we’re tackling my work problems tonight instead of yours. Ideally, however, we’d be toasting each other with champagne, then...”
She trailed off, only because she wasn’t sure what would happen next. Her heart still hurt from the way he’d left her four months ago—and the way he’d never phoned to touch base in the weeks that followed. But that hurt didn’t take away the attraction that still zinged between them, even though she knew she’d be an even bigger romantic fool to give in to it.
“Go on,” he urged, leaning close to whisper in her ear as they took a wide staircase down to the dressing-room area backstage. “You stopped at the juicy part of that story.”
Heat smoked through her veins again, even as she stressed about the show.
“I’m not sure how the story ends, I guess.”
“We could take turns making up possible scenarios for what would happen after the champagne,” he suggested, nodding to a harried-looking stage manager who was speaking urgently into his headset as he passed them.
The sounds of holiday music swelled, but didn’t cover the hum of a restless crowd out front. Having a performance start late was never ideal, even though Vegas audiences were usually easygoing. A midnight Christmas-show crowd wasn’t quite as forgiving, however, and Arianna didn’t blame them.
Still...Dylan’s invitation was a pleasant distraction from the problems she couldn’t fix.
“Hmm... If tequila makes us think of marriage, maybe champagne would put us in the mood for...a romantic movie?”
A weak effort at best. She couldn’t picture Dylan sitting through some weepy chick flick, even after downing half a magnum.
His arched eyebrow said as much. “We’d better wait and continue this later.” He pointed toward a throng of performers talking in raised voices off to one side of a darkened set behind the main stage curtain.
Arianna hastened her pace as Krista broke away from the crowd to join her.
“Still no word from Ricardo. The show girls are in the dressing area guzzling coffee to sober up, but I’m not sure it will help.” Krista rattled off the news, efficient but nervous.
Arianna didn’t blame her. It sucked being the point person for everyone’s problems, yet that was exactly her most important job responsibility.
“They’re fired.” She raised her voice so all the gathered dancers could hear. She’d made up her mind about this on the drive over. As much as she hated to cut anyone on a holiday, she knew there were twenty other dancers who would give their right ear for the job and who would respect their fellow entertainers enough
not to pull stunts like this. “Send out the opening act, we’ll come up with a plan for choreography. Everyone else here is a professional and I know they’ll pull together to make this work.”
Her actions were simple. Her tone clipped. In theory, she could have given the directive to Maisey or Krista over the phone. However, experience taught her that sometimes the fastest way to cool down a tense situation was to send in a big gun. Her physical presence spoke louder than any advice she delivered. Maisey was already snapping orders to the tech guys in the sound booth on her headset while Krista straightened the headpiece on one of the first girls who would take the stage in a set modeled to look like a sleigh.
Even Dylan jumped in to help, offering advice to a stagehand trying to reassemble a part on the gear mechanism that rotated the sets to accommodate fifteen different scenes.
“What about the snake handler?” The theater manager trundled over, his forehead sweaty and his cheeks red. An unpleasant micromanager, Bernard didn’t usually allow third-party producers like her to bring in pre-packaged shows such as this one, but his boss had loved Arianna’s pitch. So now Bernard had no choice but to roll with it. Would he try to use tonight’s crisis to his advantage? Could she trust him to carry out her orders? Normally she would be able to read the situation without hesitation, but her nerves were a wreck and her life was a jumbled mess thanks to her hunky “husband” who stooped a few feet away picking up feathers off the floor.
She forced her shoulders back and her chin up, refusing to let Bernard see the cracks in her professional confidence. “I have a substitute act if necessary.”
“Ricardo has been featured in all the show literature—”
“Our contract makes provisions for substitutions when needed.” She kept her tone even as her eyes met Dylan’s reassuring gray gaze across the open backstage space. The connection she felt to him was a novel experience. She wasn’t the kind of woman to let a man fight her battles. Still, the protective vibe emanating from her lover-turned-husband was enough to make even a tough girl’s toes curl. “If you’ll excuse me, Bernard, I’ve got some choreography to approve for my dancers. We can’t afford any more delays.”
He huffed and stomped after her, but the show music was swelling. The crowd out front quieted briefly before applauding as the curtain rose to reveal the first number—a scantily clad Mrs. Claus high kicking her way through the reindeer barn to choose the right fleet-footed coursers for her sleigh ride. The song was sweet and frivolous and rattled through the lower quality speakers that peppered the halls backstage.
“And we’re off,” she assured herself as she raced down the stairs toward the main dressing area where the choreographer would be filling the holes in the dance routines.
Performers rushed past her, holding their sequined antlers firmly in place for the reindeer number, or soothing anxious dogs on leashes for the “Canine Parade.”
“Ms. Demakis,” Bernard blustered at her as he hurried to keep up. “I cannot tolerate this sort of unprofessionalism.”
“Nor can I.” She spun to meet his beady gaze, pausing just outside the makeup room. “I do not enjoy terminating employees on a holiday, but for the sake of the Pompeii and my responsibility to your patrons, I’ve done just that. If you’ll be so kind as to send one of the stagehands down with a walkie, I’ll ensure the rest of this performance exceeds your expectations.”
His mouth worked silently for a moment, as if he hoped to find some way to argue with her and failed. Thank you, God. She didn’t need any more distractions on a night when she should have been sitting under a Christmas tree with one sexy air force captain. She would smooth things over here and then get back to giving Dylan the welcome home he deserved.
“Maybe if you didn’t book three shows on top of each other, this wouldn’t have happened,” he said finally, crossing his arms over his barrel chest. “With a little more supervision, those girls wouldn’t have been downing red apple sangrias before they went on stage.”
If there hadn’t been a smidge of truth in what he said, she would have been able to brush it aside. As it stood, the criticism stung. She was ambitious—sometimes to a fault.
“I can’t change what has already happened,” she reminded him, her words stiff and formal, at odds with the lively Christmas jazz still humming through unseen speakers. “Moving forward, do you have a preference for how I should handle things this evening?”
He harrumphed. Shuffled his feet. “Maybe you shouldn’t fire the girls on Christmas, is all.”
With that, he stomped away, leaving her to her professional responsibilities and her regrets. She was working on Christmas even though she’d been so determined to make Dylan’s homecoming special. Worse, she was ready to ax a few dancers only just beginning to find their way in a tough profession.
Midnight Christmas Circus didn’t call for a Scrooge character, but if it did, apparently she’d landed the starring role. Was it any wonder she’d latched on to a guy who wouldn’t stay in town long enough to see below her well-maintained surface to the mess of the real woman beneath?
* * *
ARIANNA PUT ON one hell of a show.
Dylan watched the final set of dancers go out for the grand finale, mesmerized by the contrast between the seamless flow of performers onto the stage and the chaos behind the scenes that lasted from the late start to the madhouse rush to the finish. He stood in the shadows next to the weird snake handler who’d showed up about fifteen minutes before he was scheduled to go on stage.
Ricardo kept his main snake—Sheba—draped over his shoulders so that the spotted Indian python glared at Dylan with beady eyes. Though nonvenomous, any snake would sure as hell bite when provoked, as Ricardo had shown his audience when he offered his scarred hands for illustration. While Dylan appreciated that the guy hadn’t sewn the creature’s mouth shut the way some conscienceless street performers had been known to do, Dylan didn’t plan on letting Sheba get close enough to test her teeth out on him.
“You are here with our Ari?” Ricardo asked him even though his eyes remained on the dancers waiting nearby for the final curtain call.
“Yes.” Dylan hadn’t lost sight of her since she’d returned to the main floor after working with the choreographer downstairs.
She’d seemed distracted since then—her expression closed, her posture tense—making him wonder if things had turned ugly with the intoxicated dancers. He understood that had been a tough call for her.
“She does not let anyone close to her,” the man offered, patting his snake on the head. “She never socializes with the cast.”
Dylan wondered how well the guy could know Arianna when the Christmas circus show was a once-a-year deal. Still, he couldn’t deny a flare of jealousy that someone knew Ari better than him.
“A manager has to draw boundaries.” The military wouldn’t function if the colonels spent their time in team-building exercises with new airmen. Hierarchy was earned and it worked.
Ricardo nodded absently and shifted the python closer to the dancers, sending three of them skittering away, squealing and giggling.
“Just don’t forget, the ones who have the most boundaries often put them there because they possess the most fragile hearts.” For a moment, he locked eyes with Dylan, as if to telegraph the import of the message.
Making a weird moment even weirder.
Then again, maybe the snake handler wasn’t as much of a whack job as Dylan had taken him for.
Dancers started moving past them in a swirl of green sequins and white feathers. Headdresses bobbed past him while the floorboards vibrated with the tap of a hundred red satin high heels. Ricardo followed them out while the applause thundered through the theater. Backstage, assistants and stagehands high-fived each other. Arianna’s second-in-command, Maisey, hugged Krista, a big-time recording artist who headlined a lot of Ari’s shows.
But the producer herself?
She remained in the shadows, speaking into a walkie-talkie while her eyes roamed over some notes on a clipboard. It wasn’t the snake charmer’s words in his head that suddenly made him close the distance between them. It was seeing her put herself in the background, the indispensable cog in the wheel of a show that would have never gotten off the ground without her.
“You did it.” He slid an arm around her waist and kissed her temple, knowing the clock was ticking on his chances to touch her...unless he could convince her to give their relationship another try. “Congratulations.”
“Thank you.” She stared out at the stage, though something about her expression suggested she was a million miles away. “But I’m not sure ruining your homecoming was worth it.”
The applause continued while the master of ceremonies called out one set of performers after another to take their bows.
“Nothing was ruined.” He eased back to look at her, but his hand didn’t leave the indent of her waist, his fingers greedy for more of her. “I can guaran-damn-tee you that my life could use a whole lot more festivity, and this night brought me that.”
She turned to him, her dark eyes narrowed. “I noticed you talking to Ricardo just now. I can’t imagine that conversation proved festive or uplifting.” She shuddered. “No doubt it involved waving Sheba under your nose?”
“Well...maybe. But I enjoyed everything else. Mostly, I liked seeing you in your element. I’ve tried to picture what you do as a producer. Now I know.” He drew her back a step to give the exiting performers more room as they hurried toward the dressing rooms. Assistants were already collecting headdresses for storage.
Arianna laughed and handed her clipboard and headset to a stagehand as she and Dylan walked toward the exit.
“This is only a small facet. The tougher work is finding funding for the productions and making all the necessary pieces of the puzzle come together each time. Tonight’s work was...”
She bit her lip in a gesture so uncharacteristic of the strong woman he knew that he stopped in his tracks.