yanked the alley door open, heading down a barren hallway past dimly lit doorways sporting handwritten signs that read like a list of doomed-to-fail enterprises: Abel’s Anytime Carpet-Laying, Darning by Deborah, SnowGlobe: The Magazine.
At the end of the hall, under another roughly sculpted wooden banana that was a miniature of the one outside, he stopped and eyed the words painted on the frosted glass pane.
Carving Bananas, Inc.
He sighed—here was yet another reminder of the eccentricity of theater people—and started to push open the door, freezing in place as a voice he didn’t recognize leaked out through the crack. He nudged the door open a couple more inches and waited.
“—just saying. You couldn’t have played the role of straitlaced businesswoman today? Three-hole punch?”
“I am a straitlaced businesswoman, child. Cabinet, middle shelf, right-hand side.”
“Sure,” the female voice doing the scolding snorted, as metal squeaked on metal.
“See, right where I told you, doubting Thomasina.”
“I wasn’t questioning your bizarrely accurate knowledge of where every little damn thing in your life is placed, you weirdo. I was questioning your claim to straitlaced businessdom.”
Nick grinned in agreement with the scolder. Though if one of his employees spoke to him that way, he’d have them shipped off for drug testing.
Maybe they were both high.
“It’s what I am. That doesn’t have any relation to how I dress.”
“Clearly.”
“That’s it. I’m docking your pay for insolence. Brat.”
“You don’t pay me, remember? I’m an intern.”
“And why do you work here?”
“I think I’ve forgotten.”
“Well, make yourself useful and keep an eye out for Mr. Sharp-Dressed Man, will you? I’m trying to make a good impression here.”
Nick entered the claustrophobic office just in time to glimpse a flash of turquoise and platinum disappearing through an interior door to his right. A floating echo that sounded like “Gotta pee” slipped past the door as it swung shut.
The young woman behind the wood-laminate desk wore a shell-pink twinset, a short strand of pearls, and a velvet hair ribbon. She was still rolling her eyes when she turned back to see who’d entered.
Her recovery when she saw him, the “Mr. Sharp-Dressed Man” for whom she was waiting, was remarkable. She should be paid more...or at all.
“Mr. Drake, I presume?” At his nod, she waved her hand grandly to the one unoccupied flat surface in the room: a metal folding chair huddled between two enormous steel cabinets pasted over with advertisements for dozens of shows. He was sure she guarded the chair with the ferocity of a mother lion. Every other open space in the room was piled high with everything from crumbling bricks to ladies’ satin underwear. “Ms. Tyler will be with you momentarily.”
He twisted his mouth and raised an eyebrow. “As long as she unplugs the saw first, I can wait.”
The girl didn’t drop her smile for a moment. “Ah. So it’s too late for the good impression.” She shrugged philosophically. “Coffee?”
“Who makes it?”
“I do. Fresh ground Columbian.”
“I’m in.”
By the time the click of high-heeled boots approached, he’d discovered that the unpaid intern’s name was Clarissa, that she’d been working full-time for Maxie for six weeks, on top of a full course load in theater management at Columbia College, and that Maxie was the best stage manager she’d ever met. Apparently, the same woman who’d pegged him with the lid from a can of dog food was “surreally talented, kind of spooky and not a little bit of a tyrant.”
Not exactly what he’d been hoping to hear. He was on the lookout for someone solid, understandable and amenable to taking orders.
But when Maxie strode into the crowded office, he turned from the girl, who was now perched on the corner of the desk, to watch as an earpiece of her big white sunglasses slid into the turquoise V of her dress, drawing his eyes down from where they ought to be.
He looked back up to find big, dark-chocolate eyes waiting for him under equally dark brows that somehow worked with the icy white-blonde hair. Her cheekbones were high and sharp and her wide, full mouth was frosted pink.
He held his breath, every muscle in his body tensing at the first drift of her scent—leather and vanilla. Even the smell of her was fascinating.
She held out her small hand.
Enveloping it in his own, he was caught off guard by the strength in her fingers. An electric shock jumped through him at the gentle bite of her white fingernails into the back of his hand. He had a momentary vision of those same fingernails stair-stepping lightly down his spine and his dick stiffened at the thought.
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.”
