Backstage Romance: An Austen-Inspired Romantic Comedy Box Set by Gigi Blume (ebook reader with highlighter txt) 📕

it. But I knew that door had been there many years before Ari became the wardrobe director. How did I know this? Because I’d been locked in before.

The Stella Gardiner Theatre was my playground when I was a kid. My father, the most excellent actor I’d ever known, enjoyed taking a break from filming his blockbusters to perform in a summer-stock show at the Gardiner. He would often bring me to his rehearsals, and since there were no other boys my age to play with, I would wander backstage, in the catwalks, and through catacombs for hours. I knew every single crevice of this theatre better than my own home. One day in particular, for a reason I no longer remember, I hid in the costume shop and closed the door which locked me in. I was rescued within twenty minutes, but to me, it seemed an eternity. To this day, I never close a door without checking the knob first.

Therefore, when Caroline dislodged the doorstop in the surprisingly impressive soccer play with a spider, my instinct was to dive for the door, but my body felt like it was swimming in glue. I couldn’t get there fast enough. Furthermore, if Caroline spent more time learning to read rather than watching makeup tutorials on YouTube, she would have seen the bright-red warning sign on the door. That sign must have been put there by Ari. That woman might have been nutty as a fruitcake, but she did make a point to warn the actors about that door when they came in for fittings. I imagine Caroline was too busy taking selfies to pay attention.

To compound my frustration, she had no business following me down there. She had no idea what I was doing. I could have taken advantage of her if it suited me. She certainly was willing enough. As hot as she was, all I wanted to do was shake her off, but she was gum on my shoe—irremediably stuck to me.

To some extent, I was used to the attention from women, but that lifestyle got old very quickly. Oh, I was a firm believer in fun, but I liked to think I was more selective than girls like Caroline took me for. Plus, she’d been grating on my nerves all day. If it wasn't a jibe against other cast members spewing from her mouth, it was the conditions of our contract, or a complaint about the facilities, or bragging about her film work. But her crowning sauciness was her barefaced, unequivocal contempt for Beth.

Honestly, I couldn't care less about that pixie. As far as I was concerned, Beth was just a pretty little girl in over her head in professional theatre. She was rarely prepared for rehearsals, always seemed to be frazzled, and would oftentimes arrive at the theatre a hot mess. Emphasis on hot. And I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. What was it about her? She was… scrappy. The way she looked in those clingy yoga pants she wore, or how her fandom t-shirts stretched tightly over her chest and exposed just a tiny bit of skin at her waist when she moved the right way. I didn’t have to particularly like the girl to appreciate her at a distance.

Woah! Hold it right there. I certainly did not like the girl. But I didn’t hate her the way Caroline was determined to.

Beth had been a half hour late for rehearsal that morning, blaming her tardiness to car trouble. Her arms and face were smudged in grease, and her hair was all over the place. She looked flushed and radiant. It was hot. But Caroline wouldn’t shut up about it.

“Did you see her pants?” she sneered when Beth left to clean up in the bathroom. “Looks like she wiped her hands all over them.”

Oh, I had most certainly noticed that.

She went on. “What was she doing? Trying to fix her own car? Is she a hillbilly? And so sweaty!”

When I didn’t indulge her rants, she pressed me for my opinion.

“And did you notice the dark circles under her eyes?” she mocked. “Not that you can see much of them under layers of dirt and sweat.”

“I wasn’t looking at her eyes,” I said more to myself than to her, and then to shake off the effect the vision had on me, I stood and spent the remainder of rehearsal by the piano.

At lunch, Caroline climbed into the passenger seat of my car and insisted I take her to Whole Foods. Since I hadn’t yet decided what I wanted to eat, I acquiesced. All the rest of the day, I would catch her eyeballing me. Once rehearsal was dismissed and Bing was missing in action, she followed me when I went in search of him. Subsequently, by the turn of events that ensued, she trapped us in the costume shop. And who just happened to be there? The very woman I was trying to forget: Elizabeth Bennet. I was cursed.

At present, however, it wasn’t the arousing yet vexing presence of Beth in the room, or that Caroline had shut us all in together indefinitely that upset me. Those things were enough on their own. What irked me the most, and after all my admonishments to him, was that Bing got us into this situation because of some girl. It was written all over his dopey face. I didn’t blame him for wagging all over Jane; she was gorgeous—blonde hair, blue eyes, and legs for days. But Bing wasn’t the kind of guy to differentiate hook-ups from serious girls. He wasn’t a player, and he was falling fast and hard. I warned him not to get distracted by a woman. He needed to think of his career first, and he wasn’t following any of my advice. It infuriated me.

Also, my brain was a muddled mess with Beth so nearby. I needed to think of a way to get us out before we all murdered each other.

Four sets of eyes