A Midsummer Night's Fling (Much Ado about Love #1) (13 page)

* * *

S
tupid Max
. This was the one coherent thought Nicola’s warmly boozy brain could hold on to as she stood outside in the cold with Lachlan.

Of course, Nicola couldn’t quite remember what she was mad at Max for this time. Still, she was sure her reasons were sound, her anger righteous.

Yeah
. She rocked on her heels and swayed sideways into Lachlan’s solid warmth. His arm banded across her shoulders, steadying her. When she glanced over to smile her thanks, his face was close, raw-boned and beautiful with those blue,
blue
eyes. His other arm settled around her, urging her to face him as he embraced her. As he leaned in.

Not Max
. But shouldn’t that be a plus to her? Something in the “advantages” column? Apparently not. Instead of butterflies, Nicola’s stomach seemed filled with lead.

Lachlan stilled, his lips inches from hers, and his eyebrows quirked in a questioning way, as if to say,
Shall I continue?

Nicola stared at his mouth, feeling almost as if she were outside her body, pushing herself toward him. Or at least pushing herself away from Max. As she tilted toward Lachlan, a grin flashed across his face, then was gone. His mouth fastened to hers, soft, warm.

Not Max
.

She turned from the kiss. “Wait.”

His hands slid to hold her shoulders, rubbing her arms through the fabric of her coat. “Not good? I promise you, Nicola, Tierney exaggerates my sluttish reputation.”

“No, she doesn’t.”

Nicola startled as Max’s voice rumbled behind them. She whirled toward the sound, but then she bobbled in her slippery flats, falling. Max caught her elbow to keep her upright. When he stared at her from his so great height, anger crackled like blue lightning in his eyes.

Lachlan shoved his hands deep into his pockets, slouching into his coat. “I do not sleep around.”

Max scoffed. “Lach, you live in my house. I know
exactly
how many women you bring home.”

“Fuck off.”

They bristled at each other, two lions about to come to blows, and Nicola rolled her eyes. “Ah, naked male insecurity: my favorite thing ever. But do you two mind if I sit this round out? I’ve got a bit of a headache.”

Max’s eyes crimped at the corners, as if he were about to laugh but was holding it back to maintain his dignity.

Eventually, after too long, she remembered to step away from Max’s supporting arms.

Lachlan dug a pack of cigarettes out from his coat. He tapped one free, then pulled the smoke the rest of the way out with his teeth. He offered the pack to Nicola, and she shook her head, sighing to herself.
Lachlan is handsome, charming, and British. There has to be
something
wrong with him to keep things fair for the female population of the world.

Lachlan lit up, and the familiar acrid smell burned into her nostrils. She hated cigarettes, ever since her favorite grandfather had smoked himself to death when she was twelve. And how many times had she had to watch Max do the same? How many times when they were younger had she stood outside in the cold, waiting for him to finish his stupid cigarette?

Lachlan’s mouth turned up at one corner as he offered the cigarettes to Max.

Just like old times.
Nicola fisted her hands inside her coat pockets.
Dammit
.

Max waved the pack away and even retreated a step farther from Lachlan as if to avoid the cigarette smoke.

She blinked, pinching her lips to keep from gaping.

Max glanced over and must have caught her incredulous expression. “I
quit
, Nic.”

“Right.” She couldn’t quite stop her derisive snort. “How many times have I heard that? Did you ever break your three-week record?”

A muscle ticked in Max’s jaw, and his eyes were cold. “I haven’t had a cigarette in three years.”

“Oh.” Nicola swallowed.

“Dear Maxim,” Lachlan said, his voice sharply inflected, overcompensating for his drunkenness. “Did you come out here for a purpose?”

“Actually, yes. Cassie and I had a conversation through the ladies’ room door. She’ll get Tierney home. My job is to handle you two.”

Nicola groaned. “Oh joy.”

Max shot her a dry look. “Well, don’t say it like that. You might hurt my feelings.”

Lachlan examined the blazing tip of his cigarette, the light reflecting red in his eyes. “I’m not sure we’re quite ready to leave yet. Why don’t you go back to the lovely Judith and enjoy the rest of your evening together? Nicola and I will manage.” Lachlan exhaled a stream of smoke, right into Max’s face.

Nicola groaned inwardly even as she retreated a step.

Max shifted on his feet, the line of his jaw standing out strong even through the scruff of stubble. Nicola froze, worried he was about to throw a punch.
Max hasn’t changed a bit
.

But then Max sort of rolled his shoulders back and immediately appeared much less menacing. His face assumed a bland, genial expression. “I left Judith all alone at the bar, Lachlan. Maybe you ought to say hello to her. If you can get her away from Jack Arden.”

Lachlan’s delicate nostrils flared, and he darted a quick, blazing glance at Nicola that she didn’t understand, then he laughed and tossed his cigarette to the ground. “I think I shall. You’ll be all right?” Lachlan asked.

She glanced over at Max.
No
. But she nodded. “Sure.”

Lachlan hustled into the pub, even tripped over some loose gravel in his haste.

“Watch your step!” Max called.

Lachlan, without a backward glance, gave Max a two-fingered salute, what would be a peace sign to anyone who wasn’t British.

Alone in the dark with Max, the silence lengthened, and Nicola, only to have something to say, blurted out, “Lach just flipped you off.”

Max frowned. “He used two fingers.”

“That’s how they do it in Merry Old England. Haven’t you seen
Hot Fuzz
?”

“Oh.”

More silence.

Nicola glowered at the bar. “Huh.”

“What?” Max asked.

“I…I didn’t think Lachlan had a thing for Judith
.” I thought Lachlan had a thing for
me. “Is it her breasts? She has great breasts.”
I do not have great breasts
. Nicola sighed.

Max grinned, and the expression was oddly so much less irritating than it had been for the past few days. In fact, she was feeling distinctly
warm
. Like a radiator ticking towards hot.

She swallowed. Lachlan had been throwing himself at her all night—in the most gentlemanly way possible—yet one word from Max had her all horny and bothered?
Life is not fair
.

Max jerked his chin toward the pub. “What were you doing with Lachlan?”

“Is that your business?”

“He’s my roommate. I’m concerned for his reputation. You’re probably a bad influence.”

Nicola wrapped her coat closer as the wind kicked up, damp with the smell of coming rain. “Why do I even talk to you?”

“Because I’m charming. Funny. A great conversationalist, full of verve and keen insight. And because I am possessed of a certain sympathetic ear in times of need.”

“No, I think it’s because you’re so pretty.” She pinched his chin and jiggled his head a bit. “Whenever you start being a jackass, I tune out and admire the scenery.”

“You’re very shallow.”

“Hm. Must be the company I keep.” His stubble was more beard than stubble now, soft beneath her fingers. She let her hand linger, tracing over the bones of his face, the strength of his jaw, the perfect slope of his cheekbone.

She heard him swallow, and when her gaze crossed with his, all the laughter had left his eyes. “How much did you drink tonight, Nicci?”

“Three—no. Four beers.”
And a half
.

“Ah, fuck. You’re in the tactile phase.” Then he sort of…grunted and eased his face away from her fingers.

With a jolt, Nicola remembered
Max
had been the one to nickname her touchy-feely side when drunk. Because more often than not, Max had been the thing she’d gotten touchy-feely with. Who needed a table when there was a big, sexy man-hunk around to touch?

History. Ugh
. She was falling into the past all the time with him, swimming in it, drowning in it. Heart thumping, she wet her lips. “Max?”

He turned, his hands deep in the pockets of his overcoat, fisted into hard lumps. “What?”

She laid one hand against the lapel of his coat, her fingers tracing over the soft wool. Too curious to walk away, too embarrassed to meet his gaze, she studied the flat, black buttons on his overcoat. “Max, what were you doing with Judith O’Fallon?”

As the wind kicked up again, Max didn’t reply, but he reached forward and turned up the collar of her jacket. His knuckles brushed against her chin, and she forced herself to look up as skin touched skin, the one spot of heat in the chilly evening.

He tilted his head to the side, his face wry. “What were you doing with Lachlan, Nicci?”

“
Flirting.
What were you doing with Judith, Maximilian?”

“That was a business meeting.”

“In a pub. At night. Just the two of you.”

“Yeah.” Max frowned, but the expression became more worried, thoughtful rather than angry. “Yeah…”

“It seems we’re both out in the cold since Lachlan practically ran in there for a shot at Judith. Aren’t you worried he’s stealing your date?”

“He doesn’t have a thing for Judith. He has a thing for King Henry.”

“Excuse me?”

“Judith’s directing
Henry V
in the fall. Lachlan and I are the two most obvious candidates from within the company. He wants to get a chance to bend her ear without me around.” Max folded his arms and leaned against a car. His face was shadowed by the streetlamp above, but his voice was smug.

“Great.” She turned toward the pub, the buzz of pleasure she’d been building all night freezing away, going brittle with her suddenly bad mood.
I should have made out with Lachlan
. Just closed her eyes and thought of England or something—whatever was required to get the Max disease out of her system. “So Lachlan ditched me for a part. Well, at least I’m used to it.”

“
Hey
.”

“What?” She whipped toward Max to find him towering above her, his brow knotted in a frown.

“I never
ditched
you. Not for a part. Not for anything.”

She flung her hands up and got right up in his face—or as close as she could get without a stepladder. “Oh
please
, Max. Have you forgotten who you’re talking to? You ditched me for
everything
. For parts and parties and friends and business and booze. You left me, you ripped my fucking heart out so you could go make that stupid tearjerker. You didn’t even care when I was gone. I saw the pictures, Max. All those wild parties right after we broke up. Was there a single party-girl starlet you
didn’t
make out with?” Tears stung her eyes, and the freezing wind fanned across her wet cheeks. “Were you so relieved to get rid of me?”

“That’s not what happened.”

“Oh?” Nicola whipped her phone out, pulled up a browser, and typed
max fiesengerke drunk
in image search. The first row of pictures alone showed a much younger Max in a sweaty clench with three different girls in various night clubs. And there were at least a dozen pages of image results. Nicola’s gut swooped in a sickening rush, and she shivered. She hadn’t looked at these pictures in years. She shoved her phone toward him. “Now tell me I’m wrong.”

He flinched, and a muscle in his jaw ticked. “I was in a shitty place back then, I don’t deny it. But
you
left
me
the second time. We were already over when all these pictures were taken. Was I supposed to become a monk?”

“Oh fuck you.” She swiped at her eyes, feeling some thin wall of defense inside her shred to pieces, as if a layer of her skin had been peeled away, and now she was standing there, with
him
, throbbing with these old memories, raw and aching. “You were happy it was over. You
never
loved me.”

He rocked back on his heels as if she’d slapped him. “What the fuck? Nicola, I
worshipped
you.”

“I
hated
you, Max. For
years
. I used to get so pissed when I thought about you. For a long time I couldn’t even say your name because the sound of it made me so angry.” Her breath was coming fast and painful from her chest, her voice shaking with emotion. “And
now
, now
you
want to be friends. Like it never happened. Like we never mattered.”

“Wait a minute. You’re trying to say I didn’t love you enough then because I don’t hate you now?”

“
Yes
.” It was true. It had to be true. She’d loved him so much, needed him so much—how could he have had all that feeling inside him too? How could he have felt the way she did and not hate her?

Because she
did
hate Max. Violently. Desperately. Hated him for being everything to her then, and hated him so much for being nothing to her now.

Exhausted, empty, she smeared her cheeks against her sleeve, scrubbing her skin dry. “I’m going back inside.”

“To find Lachlan.”

“Yes.” She walked toward the pub and heard him fall in step behind her, his boots heavy against the gravel. “You should go find Judith.”

His steps stopped, and Nicola’s heart ached, imagining the expression on his face, the anger, the hurt.

“Right,” he said, voice tight. He started walking, and his long strides carried him past her so that she watched his stiff, braced shoulders as he entered the pub.

When she walked into the Bore’s Head, Max sat at a table laughing with Judith, looking happy.

Nicola wandered away to find Lachlan.

“
M
axim
,
no
. You cross down left. If you come in that way, you run right into the Indian boy exiting.” Rita had her hands on her hips, head cocked in annoyance, and was staring at Max like he’d sprouted a second head. A really ugly second head.

He glanced around and realized he’d mixed up the blocking from Act Five with Act Three. “Right. Sorry.” Max jogged across to his proper entrance point. Lachlan slid a smirk his way, then wiped his face blank as the scene started.

Max didn’t have much to do onstage. The main players in this scene were the four lovers, bickering and fighting with each other.

“‘Lord, what fools these mortals be!’” Lachlan cackled beside him, and the other man’s voice grated along Max’s nerve endings.

Max and Lachlan settled into position upstage, back from the main action of the scene. The lovers’ dialogue filtered over Max’s senses as he waited for his next cue line. The girl playing Helena cried out, “‘What though I be not so in grace as you, but miserable most, to love unloved?’”

Max had been off all day and wrong entrances weren’t the worst of it. Wrong lines. Forgotten stage business. The past week of rehearsal had been shit for him.
Awful
. Ever since that night at the Bore’s Head. Lachlan hadn’t come home that night, and he had been chummy with Nicola in the week since then. They’d sit together during breaks, eat lunch together, practically beaming a sign that said,
Private Party
. Max hadn’t even spoken to Nicola this whole week, except in character as Oberon.

Hermia in the scene was near weeping. “‘I am as fair now as I was erewhile. Since night you loved me. Yet since night you left me: Why, then
you left me—O, the gods forbid!—In earnest, shall I say?’”

Her straying lover, Lysander, fired back, “‘Ay, by my life and never did desire to see thee more. Therefore be out of hope, of question, of doubt. Be certain, nothing truer. ’Tis no jest that I do hate thee…’”

Judith kept trying to set up another meeting with Max. He kept stalling her with flimsier and flimsier excuses. An actor’s real job is to search for more work, he knew that, and he did want to play King Henry, but his head wasn’t in the game this week.

Onstage, the actors playing the lovers masterfully masked their slaps and punches, the two guys realistically jostling with each other, the two women perpetually on the edge of an all-out catfight.

Relationships suck
. Or not having a relationship sucked. Dancing around like someone’s dog, missing them, wanting them, then having them fall for someone else. It
sucked
.

“‘I say I love thee more than he can do,’” Lysander’s rival, Demetrius, yelled.

Recognizing a cue, Max stirred himself to motion and mechanically went through the stage action Rita had blocked. Lachlan capered around him, totally in character as Puck. Lachlan’s smirk flashed with mischief, and Max heard a familiar feminine laugh at Puck’s antics.

Max winced.

“‘You thief of love!’” Hermia cried.

Max had some heavy dialogue with Lachlan at the end of this scene. He found himself wishing the clock would run out and they could break for lunch before getting to Oberon.

Not good, Maxim. Not good
.

It was the last week of rehearsal. One week out from Tech and Dress. Two weeks out from actual performances, in front of people, and Max had never felt worse about an acting performance. That was including the movie he’d made seven years ago, where he’d been so drunk all during filming he still, years later, couldn’t remember
doing
his scenes.

The male lovers made their exit, then the two women exited one by one. Waiting for Hermia to crawl offstage, Max opened his mouth to deliver Oberon’s line, but Violet, the stage manager, called a halt. “Five minutes, everybody!”

Max sagged with relief. Lachlan turned toward him, but Max pretended not to see. He hopped offstage, dodging away from Lachlan, Nicola, everybody, and dropped into the back row of the audience. He needed to get his head together, get himself on track, or he might as well not even be at rehearsal. A cardboard cutout of Tinkerbelle could play a better fairy king than him at just that moment.

Collapsing in an audience chair, Max dropped his face into his hands and rubbed his skin hard
. “I hated you, Max…”
Why had that been so hard to hear? He’d hated Nicola too. For a long time. With all his heart.

What had shifted inside him? When had that changed?

When she opened her front door two weeks ago
…

He’d read an Elie Wiesel quote once:
“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference
.
”

He’d never been
indifferent
to Nicola. So, if love and hate weren’t opposites but two sides of the same coin, then had he ever really stopped—

“Mijo.” Rita’s voice was right above him.

He startled into a sitting up position, then flashed his teeth in a smile. “Hi, Rita.”

She settled into the chair in front of him and leaned against the back, watching him with dark, tired eyes. “What is going on? You don’t usually fall apart in the last week of rehearsal. Some of the others, but not you.”

“Nothing. Nothing’s wrong.”

“Maxim, I am not an idiot. Everyone is watching you and Nicola. You circle each other like two cats with their fur all bristled.” To demonstrate, Rita lifted one hand and flexed her fingers into claws. “You are sleepwalking through most of your scenes. Except the ones with Nicola. The Oberon and Titania scenes, the fighting, are very real.” She grimaced. “But, for me, I could do with less real there and more consistency throughout. Eh, mijo?”

He froze in his seat, gut tense, mouth dry, the sun blistering as it poured into the theater.

A bead of sweat trickled down Rita’s temple, and she brushed it away, her hand a little unsteady. Rita really needed to take better care of herself. He’d pull the stage manager, Violet, aside and have her make sure Rita drank enough water on these hot days.

Rita gripped his forearm, jiggling it a little. “You and Nicola. Always so good together onstage. But maybe I shouldn’t have cast her.”

Max clasped Rita’s wrist, her profusion of silver bracelets cool against his palm. “No, Rita. The work’s been going great. It’s fine. We’re all fine.”

“Oh yes?”

“Sure.”

“If you say so,” Rita murmured. “Oh, also, go to the costume shop? Tierney thought you and some of the others should try your costumes. I want to see if you can move in them.”

“As snug as Tierney is making my pants, that’s a good idea.”

“Good. It’s settled.” Rita stood, but immediately she swayed, falling against the aisle chair.

Max jumped to his feet and caught her by the shoulders, steadying her. “Rita?”

She waved him off, bracelets jangling, then rubbed her eyes. “Fine. Fine. A small headache only, mijo.” She lurched away from him, her usual grace muted as she shuffled toward the stage.

Max watched her go, his brain buzzing. Tight pants. Nicola. Drama. Theater. He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed
. I’m getting a headache too
.

* * *

“
L
achlan
, you know everyone thinks we’re sleeping together.” Nicola sat in the front row of the audience with the Brit. She was scrunched in her seat, her knees draped over the back of the chair in front of her. Lachlan was more spread out, sprawled in the seat beside her, his crossed ankles sticking out into the aisle.

She waited for him to make some sort of response, but he remained still beside her, his eyes closed, his face serene. “Lachlan?”

“And?” was all he said.

“What?”

“Everyone thinks we’re sleeping together and…you think I should care?”

“You have no feelings about this?”

“I have
absolutely
no feelings about this.” He did a sort of trill with his voice on “absolutely.” Showing off.

“You understand we aren’t
going
to sleep together, right? I’m not getting in the middle of your pissing match with Max.”

Lachlan grimaced. “Now there’s an image.”

“
Ew
.”

He produced a cigarette and a skull lighter that looked a lot like Tierney’s. “Pity about the sex. I’m a good shag. Ask your friend Cassie.” He lit up, took a long drag, then blew the smoke out in a long stream—away from her, at least.

“Should you be doing that in here?”

“We
are
outside.” At her exasperated look, he shrugged and sucked in another deep lungful so that his cheeks hollowed out. “It’s a gray area,” he said, speaking smoke like a blue-eyed dragon.

“
Lachlan
, put
out
the freaking cigarette!” the stage manager hollered from the orchestra pit.

Nicola bumped him with her elbow. “Gray area, huh?”

With a serpentine smirk, he dropped his cigarette and stubbed it out with his toe. “You think I’m pursuing you because of Max?”

“I don’t really care. I suspect you’d be flirting with me even if I wasn’t Max’s ex-girlfriend. But I also suspect your singular focus on me has a lot more to do with your rivalry with Max than any particular charms of mine.”

“Don’t sell yourself short. You’re quite a pretty little armful.” He leered toward her, eyebrows madly wiggling. “You’re not rejecting me because I shagged your sexy Asian friend last week?”

“
Please
, Cassie probably chewed you up and spat you out. When we did
Les Mis
, she had every Revolutionary in the place sniffing at her skirts. She doesn’t get territorial about her…um.”

“Leftovers.” He grinned. “That was more or less my assessment. Still, she and I had fun the other week.” After their jaunt at the Bore’s Head, Nicola and Lachlan had ended up at Cassie’s apartment with her. Their poor, put-upon designated driver had had work in the morning and no time to run everybody home. Perhaps as compensation for the ride, Cassie had taken Lachlan to her bed—and left Nicola to the tender mercies of the couch.

Nicola flicked Lachlan’s nose, laughing. “What I’m saying is, you can turn off the charm. I’m not going to date anyone in the cast. Not you. Not Max. I’m never dating a costar again. But I do like you, and I’d like to be friends. If you want.”

“Friends?”

“Yes.” She sucked in a deep breath, ignoring the smoke-tinted air as she braced herself. “Because, Lachlan, I desperately need help with the Shakespeare stuff, or Judith is going to eat me alive.”

“You can’t ask dear Maxim to help you?”

“Does he know this stuff better than you?”

“Certainly not.”

She beamed at him, batting her eyelashes. “Then why would I ask Max?”

He studied her from under furrowed brows, then leaned back and actually cackled. “Dear heart, I do believe this is the start of a most beautiful friendship.”

“Good.” But as she stared into his keen, gleaming eyes, her stomach prickled with unease.
A beautiful friendship, sure. But are we Hermia and Helena…or Othello and Iago?

“Get your script,” he said.

Nicola pulled
Midsummer
out and flipped to her first scene. “Judith’s always telling me to ‘think faster,’ but she won’t explain what that means.”

“
Hmm
.”

“Just tell me, Lach.”

“You’re too naturalistic,” he said at last. “You take too many pauses.
Use the words
. Shakespeare’s got it in there, the rhythm is in the text already. That’s the trouble with you Yanks. You think you have to
feel
everything,
think
everything before you say one bloody line.”

Lachlan had been as vehement as Judith, but slightly less scathing. Still, Nicola’s cheeks burned. “Pick up my cues. Anything else?”

“Mija.”

At the sound of her director’s voice, Nicola whirled around in her seat. “Hey, Rita.”

Rita seemed exhausted, about as derelict as they would all look come tech week. A bad sign. What was wrong with the show that Rita already appeared so done in?

The answer came at once:
Me and Max
. Nicola bit her lip with guilt.

That whole week, Nicola had been playing all of Titania’s scenes with Oberon a little too angry, but she had been powerless to stop herself. Ever since he’d gone home with that skank, Judith, Nicola had barely been able to look at Max. Having to do scenes with him, pretend to be his wife, kiss him…was just too much.

“I need you to go to the costume shop for a fitting,
mi belleza
.”

“Me too?” Lachlan asked.

“No, mijo.” Rita smiled, and her tired eyes were abruptly sharper. “Only Nicola.”

Nicola bid Lachlan adieu, her heart hammering with excitement. What she’d seen of Tierney’s costumes so far had been brilliant. But the costume mistress had been annoyingly closemouthed about her plans for Titania.

Today at last, Nicola would get a glimpse of her fairy queen ensemble. She was practically skipping on the path to the admin building, happy in her anticipation, when she caught sight of the blond, broad-shouldered figure ahead of her on the path. She slowed her steps, but he must have heard her, because he turned.