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

us. My lips instinctively part and she sucks in a faint, ragged breath—almost indiscernible—but it’s all I can hear. It echoes in my brain. She’s trying to keep her cool but she’s not fooling me. It’s adorable. I go in for the kill. My nose brushes against her hair and I can sense the ripple in the universe as her eyelids flutter. Butterfly wings disturbing the time-space continuum. She rocks my world—the way her vanilla scented shampoo floats through me like a drug, the way she trembles when I’m not even touching her. I don’t touch her. It’s torture, but I don’t. I’m good at keeping my hands to myself when it comes to her. Bing never so much as mentioned it, but hitting on his little sister was an unspoken violation of the bro-code. At least, it was in high school. Now? I’m not so sure.

She’s changed.

I want to kiss the sass right off her smart little mouth. Fat Thor. Two hours in the gym daily says otherwise. I lean in with a soft rumble, my breath hot against the shell of her ear as I whisper, “Are you willing to take that bet... Rosie?”

She shoots up, her high heels wobbling under her ankles. That hot lava core of hers is ready to melt into a pool on the floor.

Maybe I should dial it down a few thousand decibels or I’ll likely get burnt.

“You’re not stealing this account from me,” she snaps.

Whoa, now. 

“I’m not trying to steal anything from you.”

Except perhaps a kiss.

“Yes you are. You’re a terrible person.”

“Wow, Rosie. Tell me how you really feel.”

“And don’t call me Rosie. I’m not thirteen.”

I raise my hands up in the universal sign of surrender. “Okay, okay. Rosemary.”

Rose...ma-ry. There’s that music again.

She’s so worked up right now she lights up the room. She could power a small city with her static energy.

“What makes you think I’m a terrible person?”

“You kill.”

“I kill? Like... a Jekyll and Hyde type of thing or I kill... like a comedian slays the audience with his genius improv skills?”

“You are a murderer of the American Dream. Do you have any idea how many people will suffer when you shut down this factory? How many families will lose their breadwinner?”

I raise one brow, the pun not lost on me. It’s a pita pun. A perfectly pithy, peppy, pita pun.

She goes on. “Eugene hired me first. I have amazing plans. You will not win.”

She seems to think this is some sort of contest. Makes sense. She was the most decorated Girl Scout I’d ever seen. Sold my mom seventeen boxes of Thin Mints one year.

“I don’t think you understand what my company actually does,” I say, still fixating on her bright pink cheeks.

“I know exactly what your company does, thank you very much. You destroy. You sweep in and kill businesses when they’re in peril.”

“Well, if you want to put it that way, I guess you could call it mercy killing.”

She tuts. “Such a mercenary thing to say.”

“And who uses the word peril?”

Probably not the best thing to say considering her ire towards me right now. I dunno. Maybe I like it. Maybe I’m a masochist.

She points a dainty finger my way and opens her mouth to speak but another sound drowns her out. It’s an alarm or something. A blaring, screaming horn in short, successive squawks.

“What the—“

Then it stops and a definitive clunk echoes through the whole place. Like one big deadbolt latching down. Her face says it all. Those wide eyes wondering... if we thought we were locked in before, then what the blazes just happened? Her face is the last thing I see before the lights switch off.

3

ROSEMARY

It’s pitch black for a split second before the industrial nightlights flicker on. Of course they’re red and ominous. This is the part of every horror movie where one of the characters foolishly wanders off from her party and gets bumped off. Then later on someone finds her severed head and lets out a blood curdling scream because that’s a brilliant way to hide from a psycho killer. People in horror movies are idiots.

I look over at Ingram. His face is a chiseled study on deep shadow and red glow. He’s achingly gorgeous even in the scary lighting. I hate him for it.

“Are you all right?” he asks. You know, in case the pita bread monsters come out to get me.

“Yeah. Why shouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know.” He waves his hand in my general vicinity. “Your face.”

“My face?” He means my funny face. That was one of his many nicknames for me. My hackles are out and I don’t try to hide them.

“You looked startled, that’s all.”

“Startled? Me? No, no. This happens to me every day.” I play it tough because if he sees my weakness, I’m a gazelle and he’s a big, bad cat.

Not gonna freak out. Not. Gonna. Freak. Out.

He bites his bottom lip and looks around. I don’t know what he expects to see. Even with the red lights it’s still pretty dark in here. He takes a few steps away.

“I’m going to try and find an emergency lantern or a flashlight.”

“Don’t you dare leave me,” I blurt out—a little more panicky than I intend to. That stops him. He comes over, playfully sauntering into my personal space.

“My, my, my. Are you afraid of the dark?”

“No.” I don’t like the shaky tone in my voice. It’s small and timid. Ingram does that to me. It’s his pheromones or something. I pull myself together, straightening my spine. “Our vision will adjust, is all.”

He moves closer, those penetrating eyes of his taking survey of my features. He’s quiet for a beat then brushes a finger along my forehead, righting a stray strand of hair. I don’t stop him. I didn’t even realize how much the hair was bothering me until he swept it into place. How wild I must look right now. How blotchy my skin must appear under this red lighting while he looks like