When Stars Collide (Chicago Stars #9)(74)

In the end, she fell asleep long before he did.

*

Wednesday. Thursday. The rehearsals ticked away. Olivia worked with Batista every day and started feeling a little more like herself. But it was never good enough. Next Monday’s sitzprobe hung over her head like a guillotine blade. She could mark through Tuesday and Wednesday’s technical rehearsal, but not sitzprobe and not Thursday’s final dress rehearsal, where there would be a selected audience. Friday was a rest day, and then opening night on Saturday.

She sensed members of the company talking about her behind her back. Their highly trained ears noticed the muting of the dark, tonal luster in her low range. They detected the occasional wobble, the awkward phrase. But everyone believed she was recovering from a cold, and only Sergio had begun to look concerned.

Lena, in the meantime, had become Olivia’s shadow, watching everything Olivia did during rehearsals, asking the occasional question, but also never being intrusive. Despite her youth, Lena was the consummate professional, yet Olivia had begun to hate the sight of her. She’d never felt this way about any of her other covers, but then she’d never felt so threatened by one. She was ashamed. Lena wasn’t a vulture standing on the sidelines waiting to fly off with Olivia’s bones. She was hardworking and respectful, doing exactly what she’d been hired to do, and once this was over, Olivia would make up for her unjust thoughts by buying her a great piece of jewelry or treating her to a spa weekend or . . . What if she fixed her up with Clint Garrett?

The last idea seemed genius until she saw Lena kissing a long-haired young man she later identified as her husband. Jewelry, then.

*

Thad picked her up at the Muni after his first day of apartment hunting. As it turned out, he’d found fault with every place he’d seen. One was too noisy, another too dark, the third had no place for her piano, the fourth had a Jacuzzi, but no decent shower. And the fifth . . .

“Smelled like dead rabbit,” he said. “Don’t ask me how I know this.”

“I won’t.”

On Friday morning, she had three hours of free time while the company rehearsed Aida’s famous Triumphal March—a complex piece of staging that involved over a hundred performers, twenty-six dancers, and two horses, but fortunately, no elephants, not for this production. She used the time to schedule a meeting with her real estate agent and wasn’t surprised when Thad decided to tag along.

Refusing to meet Thad’s disapproving gaze, her Realtor showed her three of the apartments Thad had rejected. One, as he’d reported, lacked enough natural light. The second was almost perfect, but would be crowded with her piano. As for the third . . . It had a doorman, video camera surveillance, and plenty of room. The location was great, she could move in right away, and it smelled nothing like rabbit.

“I’ll take it,” she told her Realtor.

“You’ll regret it come Easter,” Thad said.





17




Of course someone had broken into her dressing room at the Muni while she was gone! Why not, when everything else was so messed up?

She whipped off her coat and tossed it on the chaise. Dressing room thefts happened. A dozen keys floated around. It could have been anyone. Maybe this was simply coincidence.

But she no longer believed in coincidence, and she began what had become an all-too-familiar routine of trying to see if anything was missing.

Unlike all the other times, something was. The thief had made off with her snack pack of almonds.

She sank onto the chaise. What did this person want? The only item of value she had with her was her Cavatina3, and that had been on her wrist. When was this going to end? If she told Thad, he’d plant himself at the Muni to watch over her, and that would make it look as if she’d turned her famous lover into her lackey. He’d do it, too, because that’s who he was.

Unthinkable. She wouldn’t let him humiliate himself.

*

Her Realtor pulled off a miracle, and Olivia used Sunday, her day off, to settle into her new video-surveilled, concierge-secured, furnished apartment. Her piano sat by the front windows, but she’d only begun opening up the boxes of mementos the movers had packed and delivered under Thad’s supervision.

He emerged from her kitchen with a banana. “I don’t know why you had to do this so fast.”

She held up a notepad she’d scribbled with the words, I’m on vocal rest.

“Only when it suits you.”

She smiled at the softness in his voice. He understood how much was at stake for her tomorrow. He understood everything.

“Grab your coat,” he said, after he’d polished off the banana. “This mess isn’t going anywhere, and there are some people I want you to meet.”

*

The Cooper Graham and Piper Dove Graham household was a noisy one. Their three-year-old twins, Isabelle and Will, fought over possession of two identical cardboard boxes while their father stood idly by. “Survival of the fittest,” Coop declared, as he showed Thad and Olivia into the family’s spacious, toy-cluttered great room at the rear of their Lincoln Park home. “Piper and I try not to get too involved unless bloodshed is imminent.”

Cooper Graham was the Stars’ former quarterback and Thad’s best friend. The instant the twins spotted Thad, their tug-of-war over the boxes turned into a race to see who could get to him first. Thad diplomatically scooped them both up at the same time, one under each arm. “Look what I’ve got. A pair of elephants.”