Just like that, the best moment of Ru’s life ended. Maybe he’d costume Ophelia in a fucking garbage bag.
Gray stood outside the back door to the theater and breathed. Damn, why did I do this? When Mrs. Atchison and the Playhouse board approached his manager, Benson had politely called them crazy, but Gray intervened. He’d been flattered they thought he could do it, and he wanted a challenge. Hell, every critic and reviewer in the country would be clamoring to see it. Now, just staring at the pages of the script made his palms sweat. Who the hell did he think he was? Laurence Olivier? Shit! He got paid to crash and burn, but not like this.
And now, add in Ru Maitland. Hair like midnight. Eyes like liquid chocolate. So powerful he melted the floor under Gray’s feet—and so dangerous that running back to explosions and gunfire looked like the easy way out.
Chapter Four
A week later, Ru sat in a theater seat a few rows behind the director and sketched as the actors, with a stand-in for Hamlet, walked through blocking. He’d draw a few lines, then flip the page and go back to his impromptu portrait of Gray Anson, now that he’d seen that face up close. Ru drew in the tiny lines that popped out around his eyes when he smiled. He must smile a lot, because at only twenty-five, he didn’t have any age lines. Jesus, how could the man be so much prettier than he was on the screen? No fair, dammit.
“Let’s take a short break, everyone,” the director called from his perch in midaudience.
Ru flipped the page back to the costume drawings and looked busy, which shouldn’t have been hard to do, since he could start working on them now and not take a break until he turned thirty.
Merle, the actor playing Horatio, slid in beside him. “Hey, I still need to come back and get measured.”
Ru grinned. The guy was maximally cute. “Sure, sweetheart. Want to do it now?”
“Probably not enough time. How about as soon as the blocking rehearsal is through? Will you still be here?” His wide blue eyes looked anxious.
“Sure. I can be. I have a lot of designing to do, and I can do it here as well as anywhere.”
“These costumes must be a huge job.”
“They are, but I’m actually working on a collection for Fashion Week, so I’ve got a couple projects breathing down my neck.”
“I imagine breathing down your neck would be a lot of fun.” He flashed a wide smile. “I’d love to hear about your collection. Some of us are going out for drinks after the rehearsal. Want to come?”
Did he? Blue eyes, not gray. Button nose instead of high-bridged and slim. “Uh, that’s nice of you. I probably better get back home and work. I have help, but I still end up doing a lot of sewing myself.”
“Hey, you gotta take a break sometime. Why not with me—us?” He leaned in. “I’ll tell you all about Horatio.”
Ru smiled. He really was cute. “It must be hard rehearsing without Hamlet.”
“It is. But hell, he’s going to bring in the crowds, so why should I care?”
“I guess if he’s bad, it could be tough on you.”
Merle laughed. “I earn my bread in a teenybopper heartthrob supernatural TV series. Simply having a copy of Hamlet on the stage will class up the joint for me.”
Ru grinned. He liked this guy.
A buzzing sound pierced the soft voices in the theater. Ru looked up. “What’s that?”
Bam. The back doors to the theater opened and through them, holding the arm of a superclassy blonde woman and followed by three men in suits, came the billion-dollar baby himself, Gray Anson. A crease the size of the San Andreas fault carved his forehead. “Why can’t they keep those fucking things away from me?”
“Sorry, Gray.” The guy replying stood well over six feet and outweighed Gray by at least seventy pounds. “We don’t know where they originate, so we can’t stop them.”
“I know. Sorry. But they’re so damned intrusive. It’s like being robbed or something. Jesus.”
Merle leaned over and whispered, “Probably drones. They fly around the guy like mosquitoes. It’s got to be insane.”
Gray’s chest expanded with an inhale. Then he flashed the pearlies and called out, “Sorry to be late, everyone. I hope I haven’t screwed up the morning for you. These damned paparazzi won’t leave me alone, and I can’t get past them.”
Artie waved from the front of the house. “Oh, poor baby.” He laughed, and Gray joined in. Still, it didn’t sound like fun.
His clothes reeked of money—jeans so perfectly tailored they probably had a Dolce & Gabbana label rather than Levi’s, a white silk shirt, and a hammered-leather jacket as thin as tissue that would have bought most of these actors a car. Hell, it would have dressed Ru for a year. If the clothes were rich, they paled next to the woman. Ru had seen her in magazines with Gray lately—Penelope Tisane, a trust-fund baby who regularly appeared on the Best Dressed lists. They said she had a few years on him, but not so you’d notice.
Merle whispered, “He does make an entrance.”
Could this be the same man Ru met in the costume department a week before? Did he have a shy twin?
Artie walked up the side aisle with his hands extended. “Gray, sorry about the bullshit. Glad you could make it.”
“Sorry I’m late. Please, put me to work.” He pointed to the youngest guy in his entourage. “George is going to take down all the blocking for me so I can review it at home. I had them build a model of the stage in my backyard.”
Artie raised an eyebrow. “How Elizabethan of you.”
Gray laughed—a sound almost as famous as his face. “Artie, this is Penelope, my manager, Benson, and my bodyguard, Chris. And George you met.”
Chris had to be a Christophe or a Christian. Huge and Germanic.
Artie shook hands. “Come meet the cast and crew.” He turned and spied Ru and Merle. “Starting here. This is Merle Justice.”
Gray’s eyes landed on Ru, then flicked to Merle, whom he gave that patented smile. “Horatio. Honored to meet you.”
“And this is our brilliant fashion designer costumer, Rupert Maitland.”
Ru smiled but waited to see what Gray would say. Anson stuck out his hand, took Ru’s, squeezed, glanced at Merle with a tiny flicker of a frown, then showed the teeth. “I’m so happy to meet you. I know the costumes will be a big reason people come to the show. I can’t wait to see them.”
“Happy to meet you too. I’m a big fan.”
“How nice.” He glanced back at his manager. “See, Benson, I do have intellectual fans amidst the truckers and rednecks.”
Ru shrugged. “That’s okay. I’m not as smart as I look.”
Gray smiled, and then he laughed full-on.
Artie led him down the aisle. He looked back once, still laughing, although his eyes again stopped on Merle. Maybe I dreamed it.
Merle leaned toward Ru. “I’d say you made an impression.”
“Yes, but maybe not the one I wanted to make.” What the hell had possessed him to say that? Oh well, the slim ass of Penelope Tisane pressing against Gray’s hip certainly advertised that, whatever Gray Anson might have said about Ru’s eyes looking like a cat’s, his real interest was in pussy.