The Austen Playbook (London Celebrities #4)(23)

Giving up on the non-conversation, Freddy turned to move away before she was provoked into saying something that would bring the directorial wrath down on her head, but Sadie moved at the same moment. Their feet tangled, they both tried to step back, and they collided with a pillar.

Instead of grabbing on to Freddy when she felt herself falling, Sadie gave her a shove. Freddy landed on the wooden boards on her hip, which would have cut the damage short at a bruise, but apparently it was the day for painful encounters with tools. A builder had left a screwdriver beneath a stool, and the end gouged a slice out of her thigh. She squeaked and grabbed at her leg with both hands, instinctively squeezing above and below the cut to combat the sharp bite of pain. Sadie had managed to steady herself against the carved pillar and was still on her feet. Of course.

“Oh, nasty.” Greg came to kneel by her, inspecting Freddy’s bleeding thigh. “Might need a stitch or two.”

“Good to see you’re putting that fictional medical degree to use, doc.” Dylan elbowed the resident soap doctor out of the way and took his turn examining the patient. He reached out, and Freddy slapped his hand away.

“I can definitely do without the grope, thank you,” she said, finding her voice after the initial shock.

“I was going to check your pulse,” he said, affronted.

“Is that your standard line?” Freddy shot him a look. “My pulse is fine.”

Dylan grinned, and suddenly rubbed her head in a gesture that was almost brotherly. “Takes more than a minor impaling to dampen your spirit, Carlton. You’re a good ’un, really.”

She hissed quietly at the increased burn from the cut. Her skin was blanching white under her clenching fingers.

Maf performed a rapid assessment, decided that Freddy needed medical attention but wasn’t likely to pass out, and dispatched someone to fetch the production medic.

“He’s gone into the village for lunch.” It was Charlie who came up the steps to the stage, his handsome, freckled face concerned. He bent over her. “You all right, Freddy?”

She found a smile for him. “Don’t look so serious. Coming from you, it makes me feel like amputation is imminent. When’s the medic coming back?”

“We’ve sent someone after him, but in the meantime I went for the next best option.”

“Which is?” Her cautious query was answered when the door into the arena opened and Griff strode in, looking even stonier than he had earlier with his mother.

“Someone’s had an accident?” His grim voice carried over the quiet hubbub on stage, and he must have got a reply, because he pushed through the milling cast—most of whom were complaining about when they were going to get their own lunch—and came up the steps to crouch at her side.

He was a model of efficiency, and she wouldn’t have expected anything less. He moved one of her hands aside to see the wound, glanced around for the culprit—technically the screwdriver, although pain made Freddy cranky and she nearly pointed a blood-stained finger in Sadie’s direction as well—and then tilted Freddy’s face up. Despite the tension brewing behind his measured movements, his touch was consistently gentle.

And yes, for a moment she did think he was going to kiss her. Totally justified reaction. On the rare occasions a man moved her chin about with his fingers, he followed up with another body part. Usually but not always his tongue.

In the next instant, when she caught on to the fact he was just checking her pupils to make sure she hadn’t bumped her head, or whatever the rationale behind peering into people’s eyes when they’d taken a tumble, it occurred to her that if they hadn’t been surrounded by two dozen of her colleagues, she probably would have kissed him back.

“You need stitches,” he said, and nobody questioned it, although the diagnosis wasn’t even backed up by a fictional medical degree this time. He picked Freddy up, keeping a supportive hand under her injured thigh, and stood.

Her face was suddenly very close to his, and she was looking at the teeny, tiny flecks of caramel brown in his dark eyes. He was frequently rude, definitely a Slytherin, and clearly viewed her as a sort of irritating insect who kept buzzing around his space, but there was something very reassuring about his solid warmth when she hurt. Slipping one arm about his neck for stability, she curled in, just a little, and let her forehead rest tentatively against his shoulder. She felt muscles flex and the stirring of his breath when he briefly looked down at her, but he didn’t jostle her away, as she was half expecting.

“Where are you going to put her?” Charlie asked, as if she were a parcel, and Freddy opened one eye to see that he was watching them with a strange expression. Intrigued? Baffled?

“I’m taking you to the clinic in the village.” Griff addressed her directly, rather than responding to his brother. “At least it’s a sterile environment, and you won’t end up with heatstroke. It’s like a bloody sauna in here.” He looked impatiently at the hovering stage manager. “Why aren’t you using the ventilation system?”

There was a moment of dead silence and uniformly blank looks.

Freddy felt the movement of Griff’s deep exhale. “There’s a temperature control panel backstage to regulate the air on the stage. As the point of the renovations was to provide a safe workplace, it was one of the first things your construction crew fixed. If you don’t want half your cast dehydrated after one day of rehearsals, I suggest you turn it on, and use the roof.”