Scenes of Passion (12 page)

Maggie shook her head as she filled her mug with steaming water. “What time
did
you get up?”

“Four-thirty,” Matt told her. “Usually I don't wake up till six o'clock, but for some reason I've been having more trouble than usual sleeping.”

And guess what—or rather who—that reason is?

She didn't meet his eyes, because she knew.

“So far this morning,” he told her, “I've memorized the first ten pages of my dialogue for the show, and I've gone grocery shopping.”

“Grocery shopping this early?”

“The Stop and Shop is open twenty-four hours.” He shrugged. “Sometimes if I can't sleep, I'll go over at three a.m.” He smiled. “No crowds, you know.”

“If you write out a list, I'll get the groceries next time we need them,” Maggie volunteered.

But Matt shook his head. “No, that's okay. I like to do it.”

She took her mug of tea and headed for the door. “Aliens have
definitely
invaded your body.”

 

The Yankee Potato Chip factory was a huge brick building on the other side of town, surrounded by a parking area that was almost entirely filled with the employees' cars.

Maggie flipped through her file as Matt pulled up in front of a parking spot marked President near the main door.

“I don't know if I can do this,” he said.

“Of course you can.” She glanced up from the papers. “You own this company. You're perfectly within your rights to inspect—”

“No, I mean, I don't know if I can park here.”

Maggie looked at the parking spot, then at Matt.

“I mean, that word
president
,” he said. “It implies a certain dignity, a certain knowledge. Maybe I should have them paint over it with Ignorant Son.”

Maggie laughed. “I can think of better ways to use the money.”

“So can I.”

Inside the plant, the manager gave them a complete tour, explaining as they went what he saw as the strengths and weaknesses of the operation. Matt grasped each issue quickly, asking probing and intelligent questions. He stopped frequently as they walked, speaking to the employees, listening intently as they talked. By the time they were through, five hours later, Maggie was exhausted.

And Matt was silent in the car on the way home. It wasn't until an hour later that he turned from staring out the office window to say, “Have you come across blueprints and specs for the construction of the plant?”

“I just saw them.” Maggie dug through the piles of papers and files, and found the thick three-ringed binder. She hefted the blueprints onto the table. “What do we need these for?”

“Hmm,” Matt said. He punched the speaker phone and dialed. “Hey, Steve, it's Matthew Stone.”

Steve? As in Stevie? As in her brother? She hadn't thought Matt was serious about…

“Yo, Matthew Stone.” It was indeed Stevie. “'Sup, my man?”

“How are you at Internet research?”

“I think I once surfed around looking for historical information on the Ramones,” Stevie said. “Why?”

Maggie rolled her eyes. “He got 1520 on his SATs.”

“Hush there, Mags,” Stevie said. “If you say that too loudly, you'll ruin my rep. Chicks don't dig the brainiacs.”

“You want to bet?” Maggie countered.

“Steve, you want to earn twenty bucks an hour?” Matt asked.

“Tell me who to kill,” her brother said. “I'll ask no questions.”

“Consider yourself hired,” Matt said.

“When do I start?”

“Now. I need you to get me all the information you can find about…got a pencil?”

“No,” Stevie said, “but for twenty bucks an hour, I'll open a vein and write with my own blood.”

“Get a pencil,” Matt said. He looked up at Maggie and smiled. “I think I can improve this company.”

 

“Okay, boys and girls.” Dan Fowler raised his voice and the actors immediately fell silent. “Break's over. We've got mucho work to do tonight, so don't turn off your brains yet. Let's walk through the blocking for the opening number. Places on stage!”

The cast scrambled for their spots.

Maggie moved center stage. So far Dan's storm-trooper attitude was working. He was among the most efficient directors she'd ever worked with.

“Okay,” Dan called. “Lucy is center. Spot comes up on her. The stage is dark and misty. Creepy crawly things start moving behind her….”

As he spoke, the cast walked through their on-stage movements.

“Lucy says,
Stop
, and the creepy things scramble away. Lights come up. Out from the wings come my men in top hats and tails. They pick her up and carry her around….”

Maggie looked nervously at the eight men who would be hoisting her onto their shoulders in this part of the opening number. They didn't lift her now, since it was only a walkthrough, but they were going to spend a great deal of time rehearsing this particular move, to make it look effortless.

“On comes the full chorus, including all four secondary leads. We talk, talk, talk, sing, sing, sing. The stage is packed but the crowd parts as Cody enters upstage center.”

This was as far as they'd got before the break.

“Okay, Cody,” Dan ordered Matt. “You come directly downstage to Lucy. You sing your bit of the song and then you talk. Lucy, don't back away, I want you directly center stage for the kiss that's coming.”

Maggie nodded, glancing up at Matt, who was making notes on his script.

“This kiss has to be very 1940s Hollywood,” Dan continued. “Very big screen passionate. The music underneath swells, so you've got to time it just right. I think you've got eight bars of music to fill. Rhonda, dear, play it for them, would you?”

The accompanist played as Maggie and Matt listened. God, eight bars was an awfully long time.

“Try it with the music,” Dan ordered. “Whenever you're ready.”

Matt tossed down his script and positioned himself next to Maggie. “Your last line is what?
So go away,”
he remembered. “You should turn your back to me, as if you're going to walk away, stage left. I'm going to grab you by the arm and swing you back around toward me, okay?”

Maggie nodded, suddenly frightfully nervous.

“Give us about four measures before the kiss,” Matt called to Rhonda, who began to play.

Maggie listened for the musical cue, then turned away
from Matt. He pulled her hard toward him, and she slammed into his chest. As Matt's lips met hers, she couldn't keep from giggling.

“Wrong!” Dan's nasal voice interrupted. “Stanton, you're as stiff as a board. Get into character! Think about your motivation! This is one of Lucy's fantasies, and she's as hot as hell for Cody, even though she won't admit it. Come on, people, what happened to that chemistry I saw at your audition? I want steam! I want pheromones! Try it again.”

Once again the music started. Matt pulled her toward him, more gently this time, but she knew she was still too tense.

“I'm sorry,” she said, pulling away before he kissed her.

“Can we take a few minutes?” Matt called to Dan.

“Not right now,” Dan's bored voice intoned. “Work on it at home. We've got to move on.”

 

“I couldn't get into character tonight,” Maggie said in the car on the way home from rehearsal. “What's wrong with me?”

Matt glanced at her. Her expression in the dim reflection from the dashboard light was woeful. She was stuck inside of her own head, that's what was wrong.

He spun the steering wheel hard to the right, pulling into a side street. Maneuvering the car to the side of the road, he cut the engines and the lights, and they were plunged into total darkness.

“Matt—”

He grabbed her and kissed her.

“There,” he said as he let her go. God, he didn't want to let her go. But that was probably why she was freaking out about kissing him in the first place. “
That's
how long those eight bars of music are. That wasn't so terrible was it?”

“No,” she said faintly.

“Good,” he said as matter-of-factly as he could manage. He started the car and did a one-eighty to get them back to the main road, glad that the car was too dark for her to see his face, because his eyes surely would have betrayed him.

M
aggie read another selection from the endless pile of business reports as she ate a bowl of oatmeal. Matt sat across from her with a giant bowl of fruit.

She glanced up at him, and he smiled.

“Don't you ever eat anything but fruit for breakfast?” she asked.

Matt laughed. “Wow, we wouldn't do too well on the
Newlywed Game,
would we? No. The only thing I eat before noon is fruit.”

“Why?”

“Because it makes me feel healthier.”

Maggie gazed across the table at him, wishing he'd tell her why he'd been in the hospital three years ago. But whenever she brought the topic of conversation even vaguely in that direction, he changed the subject. Like right now.

“Speaking of newlyweds, your mother left a message on the answering machine. She wants us to come for Sunday
dinner sometime next month. Talk about advance notice—I guess she figures this way we can't make up an excuse.”

Maggie sighed.

“Also, we've got a rehearsal tonight,” he added.

She nodded. Great.

“We're doing a run-through of the first four scenes,” he reminded her.

She nodded again, focusing her attention on her oatmeal.

He didn't get the message. “You know that means we've got to go in there and do that kiss from the opening scene.”

The kiss. Oh, God.

“We should practice it,” Matt said. “Don't you think?”

Maggie took a deep breath. “Yeah. We should. How about after lunch?”

“How about now?”

She looked at him, looked at the clock. Stevie was due to arrive in about fifteen minutes. “Okay.” Somehow that made her feel safe.

Safer.

She stood up and headed toward the stairs.

Matt followed. “Where are you going?”

“To brush my teeth.”

He caught her arm, pulled her in to him, and kissed her. His mouth tasted sweet, like watermelon and bananas with a hint of peaches thrown in.

“Yum,” he said. “Brown sugar is definitely better than mint at this time of day.”

Maggie's insides were doing flip-flops. He hadn't touched her since that kiss in his car after last week's disastrous rehearsal. She'd thought she was getting over him—or at least
used
to him. But if all it took was one little nothing kiss to make her knees feel weak, she was in big trouble.

“Here's what I'm going to do,” Matt told her. He maneuvered her around as he spoke, going through it in slow motion, putting her into the right position for the best angle for
the kiss. She tried to pay attention, but couldn't. “Lucy is really nuts about this guy, despite everything she says. We should show that right from the start.”

As Maggie looked up into Matt's golden-greenish eyes, she realized that she understood Lucy's motivation perfectly. Because, damn it, she wanted Matt, no matter how hard she tried to deny it. Maybe that was her problem. This role was hitting too close to home. But maybe if she kissed him not as Lucy, but as
Maggie
—Maggie kissing Matt. He'd never know the difference, and she'd bring a certain authenticity to the role.

“Ready?” Matt asked.

“Yeah.” She smiled. She was ready.

She stepped away from him as per the stage directions, and he pulled her toward him. This time, her movement was fluid, and she seemed to flow into his arms. Her lips went up to meet his, and she kissed him with all the fire in her soul. Unable to remember any of the blocking he'd just explained, she put her arms around his neck and pressed herself against him.

She heard him groan, and felt his hands move down her back to the curve of her derriere, as he kissed her harder, more deeply. His thigh pushed against her, and she opened herself to him, wrapping one of her legs around his. The sensation of her bare skin against his made her ignite, and she pulled him even closer.

And still she kissed him. The eight bars of background music could have played over and over and over again.

He slipped his hand up underneath her T-shirt and she shivered at the touch of his fingers against her skin. But then his hand cupped her breast and her heart nearly stopped beating.

“Yo, dudes—Oops, looks like I've come at a bad time.”

Maggie and Matt jumped apart to see Stevie backing out of the room.

“We were just rehearsing,” Maggie said breathlessly, her cheeks heating.

Matt sat down at the kitchen table and put his face in his hands. When he glanced up at Stevie, his expression was black, with only a hint of amusement in his eyes to offset it.

“Oh, gee, I just remembered, uh,” Stevie said, “I've got to run some errands—”

“Oh, knock it off.” Maggie was annoyed. “It wasn't what it looked like.” She turned to Matt, blushing again as she remembered the feel of his hand on her breast, but determined to be professional. “I think we sort of overshot the mark, but at least I wasn't stiff.”

Matt fought the urge to laugh at her word choice.
She
may not have been stiff….

“Do you want to try it again?” she asked.

“No,” Matt said. He couldn't. He couldn't even stand up right now. “Maybe later.”

Steve followed Maggie into the office, turning back to give Matt one last apologetic look. Matt made a face at him, shaking his head and rolling his eyes in frustration.

Stevie glanced in the direction Maggie had disappeared, then came back into the kitchen. “Maybe this is none of my business,” he said quietly to Matt, “but she's in love with you.”

“I wish.”

“I'm telling you, it's true.” Steve was serious. “I know her. She's…Just don't hurt her, okay?”

Matt was silent as he met the kid's gaze, uncertain how to respond. He couldn't decide himself which was worse torture—thinking she didn't love him or thinking maybe she did.

 

As usual, Maggie and Matt rolled into rehearsal several minutes early.

The assistant director, the stocky woman with the cat eyeglasses and the clipboard—her name was Dolores, but Dan
Fowler called her
Hey!—
approached Matt immediately, holding out a plastic-wrapped cup with a screw-on lid.

Maggie's stomach took a downward plunge.

“Time for you-know-what,” Dolores said, tossing the cup to him. “The rules are I've got to walk you into the little boys' room.”

Matt was serene. He just laughed. But when he glanced at Maggie, she knew this bothered him more than he was letting on.

She watched him walk away, wondering how it would feel to be haunted by a bad reputation. It didn't seem fair that people didn't notice how much he'd changed.

“Stanton!” Maggie turned to see Dan Fowler waving to her from up on the stage. “Come here for a sec.”

“What's up?”

He was sitting on one of the chairs that served as makeshift scenery, and he motioned for her to sit, too. When she did, he crossed his arms and looked at her.

And she panicked. He was having second thoughts about casting her. He didn't think she was going to be able to do those kisses, and he was figuring out the best way to break the news….

“How long have you been seeing Stone?” he finally asked.

She blinked. Stone. Matt. “I'm not…I mean, we're not dating or anything, if that's what you mean.”

“You always show up with him. And leave with him.”

What was this leading up to? Maggie didn't have a clue. “We're housemates,” she told him.

“You live together.”

“Yeah, but as friends,” she clarified. “We went to high school together.”

“And you're not involved with him?”

“No.” Why was he asking this?

Dan smiled, his beard parting to expose white, even teeth.
His eyes were warm, the dark brown flecked with gold. When he wasn't frowning, he was actually quite handsome.

“I was wondering if you'd have dinner with me tomorrow night,” he said.

 

They ran through the opening number, even daring to hoist Maggie onto the shoulders of the men's chorus. It was awkward and she giggled, but they were on their way.

Then the dread kiss approached. Matt gave her hand a reassuring squeeze as they began the sequence.

He pulled her to him, and instead of kissing her immediately, he gazed down into her eyes for several beats. When his lips finally met hers, Maggie melted. She forced herself to keep the embrace open, only putting her arms around his neck at the very end of the musical phrase.

When he pulled back, he didn't immediately move away. He looked into her eyes again, and smiled.

“Perfect!” Dan shouted. “That's
exactly
what I wanted.”

Maggie finished up the song on a cloud of relief and desire.

 

Al, the choreographer, was nearly as much of a slave driver as Dan Fowler. Sweat dripped off Maggie's face as they stopped for a break.

“One of these days,” she swore as she threw herself onto the stage next to Matt, “I'm going to be in a show that rehearses in a theater that has air-conditioning.”

The dance they were doing was a blend of athletic street dancing and graceful jazz, with several steps reminiscent of the old dirty dancing craze thrown in. Most of the steps had no body contact—instead they had to maintain eye contact. Maggie found that almost more dizzying than when Matt actually touched her.

Almost.

She rolled onto her stomach and put her chin in her hand. “Matt? How well do you know Dan Fowler?”

He turned his head to look at her. “I don't know. Well
enough. I know he's a good director—he gets the job done, and his end result is better than average. Why?”

She shrugged.

“Why?” Matt asked again, his eyes narrowing. “What aren't you telling me?”

God, he knew her too well. “Nothing,” she said.

“
Tell
me.”

She laughed. “No.”

“Tell me.” He rolled onto his side, head propped up on one hand. She could tell from looking at him that he wasn't going to let this slide.

And okay. Maybe she could actually get a rise out of him. She glanced around to make sure no one else was in earshot and Matt leaned in closer as she said, “Dan asked me out.”

He laughed. “You're kidding.”

Was that jealousy in his eyes, or just amusement? “No,” she said. “He asked me to have dinner with him.”

“Dinner with Dan,” Matt mused. “Do you think he takes the time to eat anything but fast food?”

No, it definitely wasn't jealousy. Was it possible he really didn't care if she had dinner with Dan…? “I'll let you know,” she said, even though she'd turned down the director.

Matt froze. “You're
going?”

Okay.
That
was a slightly better reaction.

“Actually—” she said, but he cut her off.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I didn't mean to…He's great. He's perfect for you, Mags. He's honest and solid and…”

“Oh,” Maggie said.

“Break's over,” Dan announced.

Matt gave her a smile as he pulled himself to his feet.

She'd been hoping for jealousy—not for Matt to give her and Dan his blessing.