Harlequin E Contemporary Romance Box Set Volume 3: Falling from the SkyMaid to LoveWhen the Lights Go DownStart Me Up

by Sarina Bowen

  Hers was, too.

  “Sixty seconds?” He sounded like he regretted it.

  She felt the zing where his hand touched hers, but didn’t back down.

  “All business.” Her answer was firm.

  After another moment, he dropped the handle of the portfolio and led the way through the revolving glass doors at the front of the upscale hotel that housed Nomi. A shiny black town car pulled up as they stepped out into the cool night air. Nick lifted a hand to the driver and turned to her.

  “Can I offer you a ride?”

  She laughed and shook her head.

  “I think I need the walk.” She slung the folio’s shoulder strap across her chest and nodded goodbye. Taking her first long strides, she gloried in the feeling of her muscles moving, needing the activity to calm her sizzling nerves.

  “Maxie, it’s three miles to your place.”

  She didn’t let herself wonder how he knew that.

  “Thank god!” she called out without looking back, letting her legs eat up the long walk home.

  She felt his eyes on her until she turned the corner and headed north.

  Chapter Three

  A week later, Maxie was up to her ass in script notes and preliminary prop lists. Heitman had been his usual model of efficiency, and she’d delivered a lengthy monologue thanking him for the second chance after their last, cursed show together. She was in love with the play itself—a brutal story about a young South Side Irish man losing his innocence after joining the force in the John Burge years of the Chicago Police Department, when it wasn’t uncommon for cops to torture confessions out of suspects. The Restless Tide was shocking. Controversial. And almost guaranteed to win a slew of Jeff Awards, if she was any judge of talent. Smith himself was a fascinating, unpredictable genius who was barely articulate in person, but he observed rehearsal with laser-like intensity each day and returned the next morning with new pages that shone even brighter, like diamonds.

  She hadn’t seen Nick since their dinner meeting, but at least she’d finally figured out a way to get some sleep. Of course, her solution was one she couldn’t mention in polite company.

  Thank god her sisters had never been polite. The preggos cracked up when she explained how she was managing to deal with her rising tide of sexual frustration, having had no chance to get her hands on the elusive Nick Drake.

  “I’m just saying, I’m gonna have to hit Early to Bed for a replacement vibrator at this rate.” She grinned when they catcalled their approval.

  She pressed a kiss onto the forehead of each giggling, snorting sister before leaving. Since their due dates were imminent, both had recently stopped working and they kept each other entertained during the day, alternating between each other’s homes. At least, as entertained as two women who had to pee constantly and take turns pulling each other off the couch could be. She’d set her phone’s ringtone for both of them and their husbands to Guns and Roses’s “Sweet Child o’ Mine.”

  As she left Addy and Spencer’s castle of a Victorian gingerbread house, the wind blowing from the southwest whipped the loose curls of her hair in her face. Like any true, homegrown Chicago Cubs fan, she knew without thinking that the pennants lining the outfield wall of Wrigley were blowing out.

  A good day for home runs.

  She glanced at her watch—just after noon—and then again at the clear blue sky overhead.

  There was almost always someone in the Tyler family who was willing to catch the 1:20 p.m. start of a weekday-afternoon Cubs game. She was ahead of schedule on the show and could blow off an afternoon if she put in a couple extra hours of paperwork later that night. She calculated her best odds on a Tuesday afternoon and dug out her cell phone.

  By the time her call was answered, she was behind the wheel of her truck, heading to the ballpark.

  “Wanna play hooky with me, Grace?”

  * * *

  A Polish, half a bag of peanuts and two frozen lemonades later, she sighed and rubbed her aching stomach. She passed the rest of the peanuts to the delicate blonde in the expensive suit beside her.

  “This feels a little sacrilegious.”

  Her sister-in-law cracked a peanut shell open with her teeth. The pile of broken shells at her feet had been growing steadily for the first four innings. They’d already sworn to their server that they’d clean up the mess. “I said I’d pick up the peanut shells! Jeez. And it was your idea to play hooky. Who’s up next?” She tossed another husk to the floor.

  “Their cleanup batter. Ten gets you twenty it’s an intentional walk,” she said automatically, shading her eyes with one hand before remembering where she was. “And that’s not it. Look at this place.” She waved a hand at the private box around them. “We’re supposed to be squeezed into bleacher seats between a bunch of rowdy drunks, with some underage kid in front of us losing her lunch all over her shoes. My lemonade should be spiked with cheap vodka from a flask you’re hiding in your purse, and we should both be well on our way to a good sunburn by now. And Sarah and Addy should be here, too. What’s happened to us?” Although she knew her sisters would be with them if they weren’t both past their due dates at this point. They’d responded with total jealousy when Maxie and Grace texted them a selfie from the stadium.

  “Welcome to the world of adulthood.” Grace sat back and propped her bare feet on the coffee table in front of them. She had already kicked her high-heeled, strappy sandals to the side of the sofa. “The company box. God, I’m glad I kept this perk in the budget. Non-alcoholic drinks because we both have to go back to work tonight. And shade.”

  “That’s just what I mean.” Maxie shook her head in disgust and took another sip of her slushy. Let out a little yell as the Mariners’ base runner tried to steal second, only to be tagged out in a rundown between the second and first basemen. “Face it. We’ve lost our youth.”

  Grace snorted as she sucked on the straw in her ice tea and then choked a little. “Come on, girl, it’s not all bad. Remember the vomit.”

  “True. There is that.” Giving in, she propped up her feet on the table beside her sister-in-law’s and graciously accepted the rewards of aging. After all, there was something to be said for getting regular attention from the servers, who poked their heads in every fifteen minutes to see if they needed anything.

  “So,” Grace said after cracking open another few peanuts shells, “we’ve been here for four innings, and you haven’t mentioned Nick Drake once, despite giving me every detail of your script review, your consults with Heitman, the résumé of every man and woman you’re putting on this crew and a fairly detailed rundown of the prop list for the show.” Grace pinned her with a bland look that was somehow also impossible to dodge. “What gives?”

  She’d been holding in the words for a week.

  “I haven’t seen the damn man!”

  Grace tilted her head. “Since when?”

  She bit her lip. “Since I, um, attacked him in a public elevator.”

  “Ahh.”

  Maxie shook her head and clenched her teeth. Kicking the table away, she jumped up and paced over to the plate-glass window. She leaned her forehead against the cool glass for a moment, but it wasn’t as soothing as she’d hoped it would be. After a moment, she laughed and turned to face the sofa again, leaning the back of her head against the glass.

  “When I told him we had to be ‘all business’ after that second incident, I thought he’d try and schedule more of those meetings he’s so fond of.” She sighed and rapped her head lightly against the window, hoping it would help clear her mind. Didn’t work. “I didn’t think he’d up and vanish on me. Not that I care.”

  “Right. You’re the picture of indifference.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Make me.”

  “See, we’ve found our youth again.” Maxie grinned.

  Grace’s next words stopped her cold.

  “You know, he’s got a box here.” Crack, crunch, toss.

  “Who? Nick?”<
br />
  “Who else?”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I’ve watched a game from there. I knew his name rang a bell when you said it, I just didn’t make the connection right away. It’s been a year or two, but we’ve met several times. His company invited us when they were trying to woo your brother.” Maxie waved her on. Tell me more. “They wanted to franchise Tyler’s, take it nationwide. Hell, who knows? Worldwide. Nick’s company thinks big.”

  “His company?” Her brother had nearly done business with a man she couldn’t stop picturing naked. Too strange. “I’m embarrassed to admit I wasn’t really paying attention to that part. God, I’m a jerk. Is he a really big deal?”

  “He’s a venture capitalist. An angel investor. Deals in all kind of things. Companies or concepts with potential. Normally people pitch to angels rather than vice versa, but Nick’s a more proactive breed. He goes looking for prospects. Your brother decided he wanted to move more slowly and keep sole ownership.” Grace looked up at Maxie, her brow wrinkled. “I thought you were interested in this guy. Haven’t you found out anything about him at all? All you’d have to do is search his name on Google. There’s gotta be a million hits about him.”

  “I want to jump him, not hire him. He just makes something in my brain go haywire.” Grace’s phone rang, preventing Maxie from continuing with that dangerous line of conversation. She flopped back onto the couch as her sister-in-law got up and started pacing with the phone.

  What had she thought he did for a living? Ran around and saved his mother from making bad financial decisions? Backed shows all over the theater world? She supposed she’d mentally tagged him with some kind of generic “Finance Dude” title. Who the hell knew what a comptroller did, after all? He could have been a relatively regular guy just looking out for his mom.

  Except no one would ever mistake Nick Drake for a “regular guy.” Or even a generic Finance Dude.

  No, she’d known it was an unknown field to him, but their conversation over dinner had revealed that he’d mastered the most salient details quickly. His command of the information with which she’d supplied him in her sales pitch had been swift and complete.

  But it still seemed weird for her to think of him with responsibilities that had nothing to do with her. She’d been so focused on her reaction to him that she hadn’t stepped back to acknowledge the fact that the man had a life. One that might keep him too busy to engineer ways to drop in on her and challenge her “all business” declaration, like she’d secretly hoped he would.

  Okay. She’d let him live.

  Grace was smiling as she bantered over the phone. Maxie caught the last piece of her conversation. “Yes, dear,” she said, “I’m planning an afternoon affair with another man. Can you text me his number? You’re a doll. Love you.” She kept the phone in her hand until the message alert went off and then tapped the screen. “Bingo.”

  Waggling her eyebrows at Maxie, she held the phone to her ear.

  “What are you doing?”

  She grew suspicious, if only because her sister-in-law was backing away from her. She seemed intent on getting as much heavy furniture between the two of them as possible. The sudden roar of the crowd meant she was missing something exciting on the field, but she kept her eyes on Grace, whose face had lit up.

  “Nick? Hi, it’s Grace Tyler.”

  She’d wrap her hands around that woman’s neck and squeeze until she was dead. She jumped off the sofa and rushed toward the back of the room.

  Grace clapped a hand over the end of her cell phone, trying not to laugh and failing. “You’ll leave your brother a widower.”

  “He’ll get over you.” She circled the sofa, angling to trap the devil between the big screen TV and the bar.

  “I can tell from the roar of the crowd that you’re at the ballpark, Nick.” Grace kept the sofa between them, jumping up on the coffee table rather than going around it. “You’ll never guess. Yup. About ten doors down, I think. Step out onto your balcony and wave. I hear there’s a new connection between our families, and I wanted to know if you’d—”

  She ducked through the sliding glass door at the front of the room and yanked it shut behind her. Faster than she looked, that girl.

  Maxie would have tugged the door open and dragged her in by her perfect blond pageboy, but she knew that Nicholas Drake would witness the assault.

  She might not have been able to prevent Grace from leaving, but she could damn well keep her from coming back in. She shoved the coffee table up against the stationary half of the sliding glass door. The table was a couple inches short of filling the entire track, so the door would still slide open a bit, but that was okay.

  Grace wasn’t that skinny. She was stuck out there.

  After raising a hand and waving down the long row of balconies, Grace slid the phone in her pocket and tugged on the door.

  Maxie watched her struggle, pleased with herself.

  Grace pressed her lips to the minute crack in the door. “I see we’ve found our youth again. Should I call your mother?”

  “You’re a traitor, and should be left in the bleachers with the drunks and the vomit.”

  “Charming, sister mine. You have approximately ninety seconds before he gets here.”

  She jumped like a cat on fire. Dragging the coffee table back to where it belonged, she grouched at her sister-in-law. “If you don’t have a mirror in your bag, I swear I will throw you right off that balcony.”

  She caught the silver compact one-handed. Made do with lip liner and strawberry-flavored ChapStick and wondered why she didn’t ever remember to get her eyebrows done. Maybe that was the secret to Grace’s always-polished appearance.

  When she was done, she winged the compact back across the room, catching Grace’s wince as it smacked into her open hand. Served her right. Maxie turned to the door with a sharp inhale as it opened.

  It was like having double vision. She shook her head, waiting for her memory of elevator Nick—eyes hot, breathing hard with lust—to dissolve over the clear lines of the tall man in the suit who was lounging with one shoulder propped against their doorway.

  “You’re saving me from the world’s most boring corporate outing,” he said with a smile. “I’m glad.”

  “Bankers?” Grace asked as she walked over to take his hand, air kiss him on the cheek and pull him into the room.

  Maxie clutched the couch cushion beneath her butt with both hands and reminded herself that Grace was not hitting on her man. Reminded herself also that he wasn’t her man, even if there was no reason for someone to cling to his arm like that.

  “Worse. Accountants. Although I did invite these genius kids I’m trying to seal a deal with. The four of them are a trip.” Nick smiled down at Grace, who wrinkled her nose and offered to order him a drink. When he took her up on it, she disappeared into the hall. Strolling over to where Maxie sat fuming, Nick dropped into one of the straight-backed chairs across the coffee table from the couch and hooked his foot beneath the rung of another, dragging it closer so that he could prop both shiny loafer-shod feet on it. Draping an arm over the back of his chair, his back to the game, he might as well have twiddled a toothpick in his mouth for all the sense of urgency he seemed to possess. There was no sign of the Nick who’d been with her in that elevator.

  “Hello, Ms. Tyler. Working hard?”

  She forced her aching fingers to loosen their grip. Crossing her arms over her chest, she kept her voice as cool as an iced margarita when she answered. “I am a well-oiled machine, Mr. Drake. The crew’s good to go.” Her smile was sweet, her voice perky. “Your playwright’s the one who’s causing the production delays.”

  “Hmm, yes.” He rubbed the knuckle of his index finger above his lip and nodded again. “That impression has been growing on me, as well.”

  Whoa. Backpedal. The last thing she wanted to do was spook the backers.

  “I’m not saying the play’s not good. It is. It’s brilliant, actua
lly.” She didn’t have to lie there, thank god. The only explanation she might have for the playwright’s uncanny talent with words might be demonic possession, since he could barely string together a coherent sentence in person, but she wasn’t about to knock it. “But he shouldn’t have this much power at this late stage of the game. He’s too stressed out about achieving perfection and that means rewrites, which were fine at the beginning, but he needs to lock it down now. Your mama’s backing his choices all the way, though, and his delays are costing us. Heitman’s gotta be the final word, not this kid. No matter how talented.”

  “How much is it costing us?” His eyes narrowed.

  “Less with me than with any other stage manager out there.” She stood up. This was a time to hold the high ground, so to speak.

  “That’s not exactly encouraging.”

  Before she could even register what was going on, Nick was pacing and barking orders into his cell phone.

  She really needed to register the fact that this guy was not from the theater world. She kept forgetting that run-of-the-mill disasters in the lead-up to a big show would seem like complete and utter chaos to a civilian, particularly one who was used to the less…colorful world of business.

  She tugged at his sleeve as he snapped out commands at some poor soul who had to be his mother’s personal assistant.

  The assistant had probably never dealt with anything more challenging than organizing fundraising tables for the annual Lincoln Park Zoo Ball. This latest leap into the arts by Nick’s mother was probably the biggest shitstorm from which they’d ever had to protect themselves.

  “Listen, Nick.” She ducked as he whirled around, his elbow breezing through the space her temple had occupied a moment earlier. “Hey! Watch it, Drake. Listen—”

  Shouting in the wind, she was. There was only one thing to do.

  She snagged a liter bottle of club soda off the bar and shook it.

  Hard.

  Right as her hand cranked the cap off she spun around, seltzer spurting volcanically from the bottle. She had a split second to wish she wasn’t always quite so sure of herself.