When Stars Collide (Chicago Stars #9)(73)

Arthur Baker, the aging but still handsome tenor playing Radamès, came in, along with Gary, the director. A few hours later it was time to rehearse the second scene of act 1, where Amneris tricks her servant Aida into revealing her true feelings for Radamès with the lie that Radamès is dead. Sarah was meticulously prepared, as always, but the chemistry they’d once shared onstage was gone.

Olivia had never been happier for a day to be over. At five o’clock, as she opened her dressing room door, she saw Thad sprawled on her chaise waiting for her. “How did you get in?” she demanded.

“I’m a famous football player. I can go wherever I want.”

Witnessing her lover playing the part of the arrogant asshole lifted her spirits. “I should have known,” she said, closing the door behind her.

“Bad news.” He idly crossed his ankles. “Someone stole your car.”

She regarded him suspiciously. “Any idea who that might have been?”

“Probably Garrett. He’s a punk.”

“I see.” She remembered the spare set of car keys she’d unwisely left on the dresser in his guest bedroom. “And under whose order might he have performed this particular act of felony?”

“I’m fairly sure he thought it up all by himself.”

“And I’m fairly sure he didn’t.”

He tilted his head toward her private bathroom. “Want to get it on in there?”

Her answer was as surprising to him as it was to her. “Yes. Yes, I do.”

They locked themselves in the small bathroom, pulling at their clothes and groping each other, exactly what she needed to wipe out her day. They ended up partially naked in the cramped shower, water not running, Olivia against the wall with her pants pooled around one ankle, Thad’s jeans at his knees, both of them awkward and frantic—out of their minds. It wasn’t the third night. It was the fifth day, and this wasn’t supposed to happen because she couldn’t keep loving a man who wasn’t part of her world, but at that moment, she didn’t care.

Afterward, she did. “What’s wrong with me? This only makes everything tougher,” she said, as she reassembled herself.

“Only if you want it to be.” He closed the lid of the toilet and sat on top, watching as she finished pulling herself back together. “Not to criticize, Liv, but you’re way too uptight.”

“Taking care of my career is not being uptight,” she retorted, sounding uptight. She grabbed a hairbrush. “What did you do today? Other than arrange for my car to disappear?”

“I bought a couple of new stocks and nosed around in your portfolio again. You need to dump Calistoga Mutual Fund. It’s been underperforming for years.” His leg brushed the back of hers as he crossed an ankle over his knee. “I also spent some time with Coop and his wife, Piper. That’s Cooper Graham, the Stars’ last great quarterback.”

“Until the idiot came along.”

“The idiot’s not in that category yet.”

“But he could be.”

“I guess,” he said begrudgingly.

“It’s good you have something to do.” She picked up a makeup brush, stalling for time. “I sang for Sergio Tinari this morning,” she told him.

“Did you now?”

She turned on the bathroom faucet. “And I went to see my old voice teacher.”

He ignored the broader significance of that. “How’d you get there?”

“I walked.”

“Not smart.”

“It’s hard to get abducted in the Loop at midday. And I need my car back. I have to look at apartments.”

“I’ll do it for you.”

“You don’t have to—”

“You’re working. I’m not. It’s only fair.”

The offer was enticing. The last thing she wanted to do after a full day of rehearsals was go apartment hunting. On the other hand, the sooner she found her own place, the better it would be for her, especially after what had just happened.

*

That night, he went to her room, testing the new boundaries she’d set. “I think I’ll sleep in here,” he said. “But no touching, okay?”

She gave him a soft smile and held out her arms. “No touching.”

He laughed, got in next to her, and pulled her body to his. As he kissed her, he thought how much he loved being with this woman. Not love-love. But pure-enjoyment-love. What meant the most, however, was how well someone who wasn’t part of his world understood him. If The Diva had been a guy and athletically gifted, she’d have made a hell of a teammate.

He rubbed her earlobes with his thumbs. Kissed her. It wasn’t long before she was making those beautiful, throaty sounds. They traveled together, climbing, reaching, falling . . . The world splintered into a million pieces.

Afterward, God help him, she wanted to talk. He snuffled into his pillow and pretended to be asleep, which didn’t do anything to discourage her.

“This is only temporary, Thad. Temporary insanity on my part. It all ends on opening night. I’m serious.”

He muttered something deliberately unintelligible. Mercifully, she said no more.

He didn’t get it. Career or not, even prima donnas needed a private life, and he wasn’t high-maintenance like her. Sure, he attracted a lot of attention when he went out, but she wasn’t exactly invisible. And yes, now that the tour was over, he had a lot of catching up to do—putting in extra hours with his trainer, digging deeper into his sideline work. There were people he needed to see, meetings he had to take, rookies who wanted to talk to him about managing their money. And maybe he hid more of himself than she did, but all that didn’t add up to him being high-maintenance, right?