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

It was meant as a joke, but there was some truth to my words. I didn’t want to be responsible for Georgia’s beautiful gown. I’d be afraid to eat without a bib—or drink red wine. Or stand next to anyone else drinking red wine. I could think of a whole lot of things that could go horribly wrong. At least I’d ruled out the possibility of barbecue sauce being on the menu. I hoped.

Georgia scrunched her nose in an adorable chipmunk-with-a-donut sort of way. “I’m not letting you borrow anything,” she said. “Not like I wouldn’t—you can borrow anything you want—but this is yours. Stella got it for you.”

She beamed with her whole face to deliver that little piece of news. She must have expected it to be a welcome intelligence, but I couldn’t process it that way. It was too much. I looked to Stella, whose proud expression confirmed it.

“You did this for me?”

“And shoes,” added Georgia while Stella retrieved a shoe box from beneath the bed. “And a clutch to match.”

“We got your size from Ari,” said Stella. “Six and a half?”

I was gobsmacked. How did they get all this in a matter of hours? Was it a rental?

I could only stutter. “How… when?”

“Never mind that,” replied Stella. “Put it on before we miss cocktail hour. The seared ahi is always the first to go.”

26

Stay

Will

I gave Lady one last scratch of the snout and thanked Ephraim for staying late. He’d been up at the crack of dawn, not to mention a week of instructing vendors where and how to set up. He single handedly was responsible for any troubleshooting that arose with the facility. He liked to call my house the facility. It made it seem official. So here he was, fourteen hours in, taking care of Lady. I suggested he take her to his home, so he could relax and most likely spoil her with his famous carne asada, but he insisted on staying close, just in case a problem arose in the facility. I told him the screening room would be the best place to stay low, but I wanted him to put his feet up, maybe stream a movie. He’d be set up quite nicely with the leather recliners and fully stocked snack bar. I made a mental note to have some of the roast sent down to him later.

The formal living room in our house, which we used primarily for absolutely nothing except to showcase Georgia’s new piano, was filled with the most interesting hodgepodge of weirdos. Most of them were moneymakers in the entertainment industry, but there were some politicians and Silicon Valley types who made a fortune in the dot-com era. Every single one of them were sickeningly wealthy and were primarily interested in being seen throwing their money at a good cause. Stella was an incredibly savvy woman and knew how to use this to her advantage. She didn’t care (for the most part) where the funds came from, she just wanted arts education for the underprivileged. So, she made sure to stroke the egos of those with the deepest pockets.

I mingled with those folks for longer than I would have liked before Stella and Georgia finally came down to rescue me. The whole business made me feel like Captain Von Trapp forced to make small talk with Vienna’s high society. The only things missing were Nazi sympathizers (although one can never be certain) and singing children requesting champagne. My Maria was somewhere getting ready, and I hoped she wouldn’t change her mind and run off to the Abbey.

“Where’s Beth?” I tried not to sound too anxious by keeping my voice low, but it ended up more like a sad Barry White impression. Georgia shot me a what the what face and scrunched her nose.

“Twitterpated,” was all she said.

As I rounded the bend towards the grand staircase, a vision in gold almost blinded me, and my heart stopped. Beth descended with tentative steps from the top of the stairs as radiant as the sun.

Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon.

Her hair was gathered atop her head and held there by some sort of magic. A few loose strands cascaded down her elegant neck, the column of which could boast of smooth buttermilk skin and graceful lines to the bare shoulder.

Each of her steps down the staircase was the blessing of the heavens come to take me from the misery of the intolerable guests drinking expensive wine and exchanging pleasantries with people they could hardly stand. All the world fell away, and her sublime face was fixed solely on me.

I never knew until that moment how your future could flash before your eyes. But that’s exactly what happened. I’d once seen an episode of Doctor Who where John Smith and his love interest could look into their possible future through the aid of a fob watch. In an instant, they saw a vision of a happy marriage, having children, and John on his deathbed. Seeing Beth with her hand on the same banister I slid down as a child was something like that, sans the death bed part. All of it was in her eyes. Did she see it too? Her smile was only a hint. I wanted to ask somehow.

But even if I were the real William Shakespeare and not some idiot who portrayed him in a musical, any words I could have said couldn’t have done justice to that moment suspended in time. Beth at the end of my stairs—maybe seeing the future. But if I didn’t open my mouth to speak, I might have carried her off and groveled at her feet for all eternity. So, like a novice screenwriter regurgitating every cliché in dialogue, I said, “You look beautiful.”

No, I wasn’t about to win an Oscar for that brilliant one-liner, but Beth only blushed and bit at her bottom lip.

“I feel kind of silly,” she said.

“Why?”

“This dress costs more than my car.”

I