Scenes of Passion (19 page)

“W
here the
hell
is he?” Dan Fowler stormed. “I knew it. I
knew
I should never have trusted that bastard with the lead to my show!”

“My brother works with Matt,” Maggie told him. “I just spoke to him on the phone—he says he hasn't heard from him all day.”

Outside, a storm was raging, and thunder crackled deafeningly, directly overhead.

“Beautiful, just beautiful.” Dan groaned. “You guys had a fight, didn't you?”

“We split up,” Maggie said, and saying the words aloud made her sick.

“And now he's gone.” Dan started to pace as he swore. “The understudy is awful. We'll have to modify the dance numbers….”

“I think you should just take a deep breath,” Maggie said, “because Matt wouldn't just blow off the show. He's going to be here.”

Dan stopped pacing and stared at her. “You look like you've been run over by a truck. This guy does
that
to you, and still you defend him?”

“I just don't believe he would desert us one day before opening night,” Maggie insisted. “He'll be here.”

“Jeez, somehow I didn't expect
you
to be my champion.”

Maggie whirled around to see Matt standing behind them. He looked exhausted. And he was soaking wet.

Dan swore at him, loud and long. “You're late. We're paying our orchestra by the hour, damn you. Where the hell have you been?”

Matt finally stopped looking at Maggie. “We're getting tidal flooding from this storm. I've been organizing work crews at the factory—sandbagging. I should have called, but for the past hour I've been on the verge of getting into my car and coming over here. But there was always one more person who needed to talk to me. I apologize for being late.”

“Places!” Dan was already yelling. “Get Stone into costume and makeup! Now!”

 

After the dress rehearsal ended, Maggie reached over her shoulder to unzip the evening gown she wore for the show's closing number. She pulled the zipper down as far as she could, then reached around behind her, struggling to find the tiny pull.

A warm hand on her shoulder stopped her, and she felt the zipper slide all the way down.

Holding the dress to her front, she turned to face Matt.

Matt.

Tonight she'd run out of anger. All she could feel was the hurt. And boy, did it hurt bad. Because despite everything he'd done, she still loved him.

His eyes were angry, the way they'd been all night long, but his face and words were polite, cordial. “You did well tonight.”

Maggie laughed humorlessly. “I know exactly how well I
did. This is an endurance test for me, Matt. I can't wait until it's over.”

He nodded then, his eyes dark with misery now. “Yeah, me, too.” He cleared his throat. “I just wanted you to know that I'm going to go back to California after the fiscal quarter. I've already contacted a divorce lawyer and…I want you to have the house.”

She stared at him.

“There's no way I could stay in town with you living here, too,” he said quietly. “I know you love it here, and…”

“That's…that's insane,” she said. That house had to be worth millions.

“It's no more insane than any of the rest of this,” he told her as he walked away.

 

Maggie stood backstage in the dark, listening to the sounds of the people who had begun to fill the seats of the auditorium.

It was ten minutes to curtain on opening night.

Matt was in makeup, already in character, joking and laughing with everyone in sight.

She closed her eyes, wishing it could be that easy for her, too, wishing she could just snap her fingers and become someone else, if only for a little while.

But Lucy, her character, was too much like herself. It wasn't enough of an escape.

“Yo, Mags,” came a whispered voice.

She turned to see Stevie. He was wearing blue jeans that were crusty with dried mud, and a T-shirt that was no longer white.

“Well, gee,” she said. “You got dressed up for the occasion.”

He grinned. “I'm coming to the show tomorrow night. With Danny.” He laughed. “We actually have a real date. Matt's even letting me borrow the Maserati.”

“A date?” Maggie said. “You mean you finally—”

“Yeah, I finally took your advice,” Stevie said. “See, we were out with the gang, and I just couldn't stand it another second. I said, ‘Danny, I'm madly in love with you, and if you don't kiss me right this second, I'm gonna die.'”

“You did?” Maggie laughed. “Oh, my God.”

“So she laughed at me,” Stevie told her, “And I'm mortified, thinking, ‘Wow, how totally humiliating.' But then—” he paused dramatically “—she kissed me. Boom. Right there. In front of everyone.” He smiled. “She actually loves me, too.”

“That's so great,” Maggie said.

“So I came down here to say thank you and break a leg.”

“Thanks.”

“You and Matt patch it back together yet?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I don't think that's going to happen.”

Stevie rolled his eyes. “You are such a fool. He loves you, Maggie.”

“He married me to get his inheritance,” she told him. But even as she said the words, they sounded so wrong. And Stevie was looking at her as if she were the village idiot.

“You don't
really
believe that, do you?” he said.

“I don't know,” she admitted.

“Yes, you do,” Stevie said. “You know him, Mags. He's a good guy. A little flaky with the weirdo diet and the strange sleep patterns, but…you
know
him.”

She'd thought she did.

“He's been hanging out at the law library for very unhealthy periods of time,” her brother told her. “He's working on something that would probably take you five minutes to do. He could use your help, you know. I mean, unless you don't care if he makes himself sick….”

Maggie gave him a look. “That's laying it on a little thick.”

“Will you please just talk to him?” Stevie said. “If not for him, if not for you, then for
me?
”

She just shook her head.

“Places!” Dolores said.

Her brother backed away, pointing to her leg and making a breaking motion with his hands, then miming a telephone, mouthing the words, “Talk to Matt.”

And tell him what?

Taking a deep breath, Maggie moved out into the center of the stage, to the mark where she would be standing when the curtain opened. She closed her eyes and bent her head, forcing her body to relax.

Tonight, her character, Lucy, was going to have a happy ending.

Maggie would give anything to have one of her own.

 

The cast went wild behind the curtains after the final bow. The show was a huge success—the audience had laughed at all the jokes, and the applause for the musical numbers had been deafening.

Laughing, Matt picked up Maggie and swung her around and around. She was smiling up at him, her arms around his neck and, without thinking, he kissed her.

Oh, God, he was kissing her. Her mouth opened willingly beneath his, and he drank her in, wishing he could slow this moment down, but too afraid even to move, for fear of breaking the spell. He could feel his heart pounding.

She pulled back, and he released her immediately. Their gazes locked, and Maggie cleared her throat.

“Cody and Lucy always did get a little carried away,” she said.

Cody and Lucy. Not Matt and Maggie. “Sorry,” he said.

“You were great tonight,” she told him.

“You were, too.”

The rest of the cast was making so much noise around them. Someone ran past with an open bottle of champagne.

“I don't want your house,” Maggie said quietly.

“Too bad,” he countered.

“Seriously, Matt,” she said. “Stevie said you were working on something, but you don't have to do that. We can go into court some time in the next few weeks, and show them our marriage license. You've already won.”

He laughed his disgust. “You call this
winning?
” His temper flared and he walked away from her, but then walked back. Breathe. He had to breathe, but he couldn't get the air into his lungs. “I'm not just giving you the house,” he told her. “I'm giving you half of my share of the business, too.”

She looked shocked. “Matt—”

“Hey, like you said,” he told her harshly, “I won. And I wouldn't've been able to do it without your help. The house is your payoff for that. The half of the business is yours because—believe it or not—I really did think of you as my wife. But if you're more comfortable with it, you can think of it as payment for the sex.”

Her eyes flared. Ooh, that got her mad. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He should have just kept walking away.

In response, Maggie actually uttered words he'd never heard her say before. At least not in this decade.

But it wasn't until he was in his car and driving—too fast—out of the parking lot, that he realized he wouldn't have been able to get a rise out of her if she truly didn't care.

Maybe he was going about this all wrong. Maybe instead of trying to show her how calm and collected he was—how much he'd changed over the years—maybe he should show her…

For the first time in days, Matt actually had hope.

He headed, fast, for Sparky's—where the entire cast was meeting to toast the opening of the show. He wanted to get there first.

 

Maggie pushed open the door to Sparky's feeling much less than enthusiastic.

But it was a tradition with the theater group to drink a
toast to the show, and this year, because they'd had no volunteers willing to host a party, the party was here at the bar.

Maggie was only going to stay for the toast, and then run for home as fast as she could.

As she went inside, she saw Matt was already there—sitting at the bar. Charlene, the flirtatious soprano, was next to him. She leaned in close to tell him something. And, God, he actually had his arm around her.

Maggie looked away, but not before she'd met Matt's eyes in the mirror.

He actually had the audacity to smile at her.

She found herself staring at the old-fashioned jukebox sightlessly, blinded by tears of jealousy. No, tears of anger. She wasn't jealous, she was mad.

She couldn't believe what he'd said to her after the show. Payment for sex…And now he was here, like this, with
Charlene
…

She glanced up to see Matt standing right behind her.

Quickly, she blinked back her tears and fished in her pocket for a quarter. She pushed the coin into the slot and pretended to be absorbed in choosing her song. But he reached over her shoulder and pushed the numbers for an old Beatles song. “P.S. I Love You.”

“Dance with me,” he said.

Maggie gazed up at him, suddenly beyond exhausted. She'd danced with him all night long, and that hadn't solved a thing. “Why don't you dance with Charlene?”

“Look, she sat down next to me. What am I supposed to do?”

“She made you put your arm around her?” Maggie couldn't stand it anymore. “I think it's kind of obvious that it's over between us,” she said forcefully. “Why don't you just relax and have a beer and a cigarette and
Charlene
while you're at it.”

“Is that really what you want?” Matt said. God, she was playing right into this entire scene. It was perfect. And he
was right about her still caring. Oh, man, she cared so much. He wanted to kiss her. Instead he shrugged. “Fine. You got it.”

He remembered the way he'd used to act, back in high school, before he'd learned to control his anger. It wasn't hard to get back into character—the bad boy was a part he'd played for years. He'd already started, over at the bar with Charlene.

He spun now, nearly colliding with a waitress. He took one of the oversized mugs of beer from her tray, ignoring her protest, and crossed to a table where some of the cast members were sitting. He put down the beer, took a cigarette out of a pack on the table and, holding Maggie's gaze, he very slowly and deliberately lit it.

He picked up the beer and crossed back toward her, taking a long pull on the beer and then an equally long drag off the cigarette.

Christ! He had to work hard not to cough. God, he hated the taste of both, but he didn't let her see that.