Prince of the Playhouse (4 page)

Ru cleared his throat. “Just stand relaxed.”
Take that advice yourself.
He stepped behind him. Gray towered over Ru’s five eleven. The man must be a full six three or four as reported. Stretching his tape, Ru measured the width of those shoulders.
Have to do it.
He rested a hand against Gray’s arm and let the warmth seep into his bones—and his boner. “Do you usually wear a forty-four long?”

“Uh, yes, I think so. They tailor it for my, uh, waist.”

“Um-hm.” Ru wrapped the tape around Anson’s waist, trying not to pass out. “Thirty-three.”

“Yeah.”

Though he didn’t really have to, he measured Gray’s chest and hips. “How do you see Hamlet?”

“Sorry? What do you mean?”

“What’s your understanding of the character?”

“Oh.” He shrugged. “I guess he’s confused. Pissed that everybody including ghosts wants something from him.”
Whoa. That last boiled with heat.
“Sorry.”

“No, I like your take on him.”

The edges of his lips turned up. “You do?”

“Yeah.” Ru knelt to measure the inseam. “Just hold still for a second.” He swallowed hard and snuggled one hand in the general vicinity of Gray’s balls. Some balls they were too, nicely framed by the crotch of a pair of old, worn jeans. Movies often unveiled Gray’s awesome ass, but the balls Ru had never seen. He pulled the tape to the floor. “Thirty-six sound right?”

“Yes. I guess.”

If he burrowed his nose in Gray’s crotch and sniffed, could he blame it on the need to gather impressions for his design? His giggle tried to escape again. He stood before he went through with it. “Let me show you what I’m thinking.”

He didn’t usually share his designs until they were further along, but man, he didn’t want Gray to leave. He leaned over the table he’d been sketching at. Gray rested his perfect forearm on the table and looked over Ru’s shoulder. Warmth from his body slammed into Ru like a day in Jamaica, and Mr. Downtown turned into a heat-seeking missile.

Ru sucked in a breath. “Uh, what if we dress Hamlet like a sort of ultrafashionable gangbanger? Baggy pants and a combination of wifebeaters and baggy T-shirts. But we’ll do them in fantasy colors and cover your arms and chest in tattoos.” Ru’s fingers flew across the pages as the ideas took shape, bold lines slashing the white paper. “We’ll even tie your head in a bandana.” He looked up and almost choked. Gray’s face was poised only inches from his, and he was smiling, the huge, flashing-teeth, dimples-as-deep-as-craters smile that had made this man a billionaire.
All I’d have to do is stand on tiptoe and I could kiss him.
Of course, I wouldn’t get to do costumes for
Hamlet
anymore, but it might be worth it.
He smiled slowly at the incongruity of the perfect face surrounded by the ratty gray wig.

Gray spoke softly. “You really get into this, don’t you?”

Ru swallowed. “Uh, yes, sorry.”

“No need to be sorry. I love the idea, and I love your passion.”

“You—you do?”

“Yes.” He just kept staring at Ru. “Do you know your eyes are almost the color of a cat’s?”

“And yours are like the sky before a storm.”

Stand still, time. Don’t let him move, ever.
So close that warm breath from Gray’s perfect lips fluttered over Ru’s cheek.

The door to the theater opened, and Tilda, the girl playing Ophelia, burst in. “They told me you want to see me next. Can we make it quick?”

Gray turned instantly away, grabbed his jacket, and headed straight out the back door. “Thanks. See ya.”

Just like that, the best moment of Ru’s life ended. Maybe he’d costume Ophelia in a fucking garbage bag.

GRAY STOOD
outside the back door to the theater and breathed.
Damn, why did I do this?
When Mrs. Atchison and the Playhouse board approached his manager, Benson had politely called them crazy, but Gray intervened. He’d been flattered they thought he could do it, and he wanted a challenge. Hell, every critic and reviewer in the country would be clamoring to see it. Now, just staring at the pages of the script made his palms sweat. Who the hell did he think he was? Laurence Olivier?
Shit!
He got paid to crash and burn, but not like this.

And now, add in Ru Maitland. Hair like midnight. Eyes like liquid chocolate. So powerful he melted the floor under Gray’s feet—and so dangerous that running back to explosions and gunfire looked like the easy way out.

A WEEK
later, Ru sat in a theater seat a few rows behind the director and sketched as the actors, with a stand-in for Hamlet, walked through blocking. He’d draw a few lines, then flip the page and go back to his impromptu portrait of Gray Anson, now that he’d seen that face up close. Ru drew in the tiny lines that popped out around his eyes when he smiled. He must smile a lot, because at only twenty-five, he didn’t have any age lines. Jesus, how could the man be so much prettier than he was on the screen?
No fair, dammit.

“Let’s take a short break, everyone,” the director called from his perch in midaudience.

Ru flipped the page back to the costume drawings and looked busy, which shouldn’t have been hard to do, since he could start working on them now and not take a break until he turned thirty.

Merle, the actor playing Horatio, slid in beside him. “Hey, I still need to come back and get measured.”

Ru grinned. The guy was maximally cute. “Sure, sweetheart. Want to do it now?”

“Probably not enough time. How about as soon as the blocking rehearsal is through? Will you still be here?” His wide blue eyes looked anxious.

“Sure. I can be. I have a lot of designing to do, and I can do it here as well as anywhere.”

“These costumes must be a huge job.”

“They are, but I’m actually working on a collection for Fashion Week, so I’ve got a couple projects breathing down my neck.”

“I imagine breathing down your neck would be a lot of fun.” He flashed a wide smile. “I’d love to hear about your collection. Some of us are going out for drinks after the rehearsal. Want to come?”

Did he? Blue eyes, not gray. Button nose instead of high-bridged and slim. “Uh, that’s nice of you. I probably better get back home and work. I have help, but I still end up doing a lot of sewing myself.”

“Hey, you gotta take a break sometime. Why not with me—us?” He leaned in. “I’ll tell you all about Horatio.”

Ru smiled. He really was cute. “It must be hard rehearsing without Hamlet.”

“It is. But hell, he’s going to bring in the crowds, so why should I care?”

“I guess if he’s bad, it could be tough on you.”

Merle laughed. “I earn my bread in a teenybopper heartthrob supernatural TV series. Simply having a copy of
Hamlet
on the stage will class up the joint for me.”

Ru grinned. He liked this guy.

A buzzing sound pierced the soft voices in the theater. Ru looked up. “What’s that?”

Bam.
The back doors to the theater opened and through them, holding the arm of a superclassy blonde woman and followed by three men in suits, came the billion-dollar baby himself, Gray Anson. A crease the size of the San Andreas fault carved his forehead. “Why can’t they keep those fucking things away from me?”

“Sorry, Gray.” The guy replying stood well over six feet and outweighed Gray by at least seventy pounds. “We don’t know where they originate, so we can’t stop them.”

“I know. Sorry. But they’re so damned intrusive. It’s like being robbed or something. Jesus.”

Merle leaned over and whispered, “Probably drones. They fly around the guy like mosquitoes. It’s got to be insane.”

Gray’s chest expanded with an inhale. Then he flashed the pearlies and called out, “Sorry to be late, everyone. I hope I haven’t screwed up the morning for you. These damned paparazzi won’t leave me alone, and I can’t get past them.”

Artie waved from the front of the house. “Oh, poor baby.” He laughed, and Gray joined in. Still, it didn’t sound like fun.

His clothes reeked of money—jeans so perfectly tailored they probably had a Dolce & Gabbana label rather than Levi’s, a white silk shirt, and a hammered-leather jacket as thin as tissue that would have bought most of these actors a car. Hell, it would have dressed Ru for a year. If the clothes were rich, they paled next to the woman. Ru had seen her in magazines with Gray lately—Penelope Tisane, a trust-fund baby who regularly appeared on the Best Dressed lists. They said she had a few years on him, but not so you’d notice.

Merle whispered, “He does make an entrance.”

Could this be the same man Ru met in the costume department a week before? Did he have a shy twin?

Artie walked up the side aisle with his hands extended. “Gray, sorry about the bullshit. Glad you could make it.”

“Sorry I’m late. Please, put me to work.” He pointed to the youngest guy in his entourage. “George is going to take down all the blocking for me so I can review it at home. I had them build a model of the stage in my backyard.”

Artie raised an eyebrow. “How Elizabethan of you.”

Gray laughed—a sound almost as famous as his face. “Artie, this is Penelope, my manager, Benson, and my bodyguard, Chris. And George you met.”

Chris had to be a Christophe or a Christian. Huge and Germanic.

Artie shook hands. “Come meet the cast and crew.” He turned and spied Ru and Merle. “Starting here. This is Merle Justice.”

Gray’s eyes landed on Ru, then flicked to Merle, whom he gave that patented smile. “Horatio. Honored to meet you.”

“And this is our brilliant fashion designer costumer, Rupert Maitland.”

Ru smiled but waited to see what Gray would say. Anson stuck out his hand, took Ru’s, squeezed, glanced at Merle with a tiny flicker of a frown, then showed the teeth. “I’m so happy to meet you. I know the costumes will be a big reason people come to the show. I can’t wait to see them.”

“Happy to meet you too. I’m a big fan.”

“How nice.” He glanced back at his manager. “See, Benson, I do have intellectual fans amidst the truckers and rednecks.”

Ru shrugged. “That’s okay. I’m not as smart as I look.”

Gray smiled, and then he laughed full-on.

Artie led him down the aisle. He looked back once, still laughing, although his eyes again stopped on Merle.
Maybe I dreamed it.

Merle leaned toward Ru. “I’d say you made an impression.”

“Yes, but maybe not the one I wanted to make.” What the hell had possessed him to say that? Oh well, the slim ass of Penelope Tisane pressing against Gray’s hip certainly advertised that, whatever Gray Anson might have said about Ru’s eyes looking like a cat’s, his real interest was in pussy.

Merle smiled. “So did you decide about joining us for drinks?”

Ru sighed very softly. “Sure, why the hell not?”

RU STEPPED
into the bar and glanced around the crowded tables. He’d gone home to get a touch clubbier and currently sported tight black slacks, the pink-polka-dot-and-black shirt he’d tailored himself, and, of course, his bow tie. Black jet earrings in each ear and a dab of eyeliner completed the portrait of fashionable gay boy on the town—a picture he’d carefully crafted over the last eight years.

A hand waved from the back of the club, and Ru started toward it. Three of the cast members—Merle, Beverly, and Phillip—plus Artie gathered at a table with pitchers of beer and bowls of snacks. Tilda must still be working on her Stanislavsky method. Merle waved him forward and pushed back a chair next to him. “Hey, Ru. Don’t you look adorable?”

Ru grinned. Apparently being a teenybopper heartthrob TV star didn’t keep Merle from advertising his homosexual status. “Thank you. You look edible yourself, darling.” Too true. He’d donned jeans so tight they should have prevented sitting, much less drinking, and a blue sweater that skimmed a boyishly lean but beautifully muscled body and screamed, “Look at these eyes.”

Merle gave him a melting look.

Artie nodded, probably trying to throw a little water on the gay mating ritual. “Glad you could join us, Ru. We were just talking about getting some food. Where’s a good place?”

“I like Rick’s. It’s about two blocks from here. It’s really popular, though, so I don’t know if we can get in.”

“Want to give it a try? All they’ve got here are burgers and fries. I’ve had enough of those this week.”

“Sure.” He stood before the seat even got warm and led them out the door, up the Pacific Coast Highway to the popular restaurant. It was still early, so the line only stretched to the sidewalk, not all the way in front of the patio as it would later. Ru slipped between the bodies, up to the hostess in her black slacks and white shirt. “Hey, dear.”

“Ru, sweetheart. How are you?”

“I have a few VIPs with me. A big Hollywood director and three actors. Any chance we can get in—?”

“Holy shit.” She looked past Ru. Her lips opened and stayed open. Ru slowly turned his head to look over his shoulder. Whatever was back there would surely turn him to a pillar of fucking salt.
Yep.
Ru stared first at a collar button, then up into the storm-tinted eyes of Gray Anson.

The hostess collected herself. “Yes, of course. I’m sure we can find a spot for Mr. Anson and his party. Why didn’t you say so, silly?”

“No, I mean—”

Gray smiled and time stood still. “Thank you so much. I actually think there are nine of us. Is there any way to put tables together? I know it’s a terrible inconvenience.”

She giggled. “Yes, yes, of course.”

People behind Gray didn’t even complain. They just stared and scooted a little closer to his glittering aura. Three people who’d just been seated on the patio got booted from their table with hearty apologies and attempts to accommodate them indoors, while tables scooted loudly and chairs got moved.

Ru looked up at Gray. “Don’t you feel bad?”

For a second the shiny face dulled a little. “Yeah.” Then the Gray mask fell back into place. “But I feel more hungry.”

“Do you really want all of us with you?”