The spotlights converged. The dancers dispersed. All eyes were now fixed upon the brown-eyed leading lady: the young, the lovely, the up-and-coming Hannah Given.
With a well-rehearsed look of sexy self-assurance, she swayed her hips to the rhythm and sang.
“Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets.
And little man, little Lola wants you . . .”
She shot a sultry gaze at the actor sitting downstage right, a handsome young man in a cricket player’s uniform. He was theatrically bewitched by her. In reality, he was mostly bothered. Her neurotic questioning of all creative decisions made rehearsals twice as long as they needed to be. Still, he was casually determined to sleep with her sometime before the production closed. He wouldn’t.
“Make up your mind to have no regrets.
Recline yourself, resign yourself, you’re through.”
A sharp cough from the audience made her inner needle skip, throwing her Lola and dropping her into a sinkhole of Hannah concerns. She fished herself out on a gilded string of affirmations. Your stomach looks fine. Your voice sounds great. Gwen Verdon isn’t screaming from Heaven. And odds are only one in ninety-nine that the angry cough came from the CityBeat critic.
You know damn well who it was, a harsher voice insisted.
She narrowed her eyes at the dark sea of heads, then fell back into character. The rest of the song proceeded without a hitch. At final-curtain applause, Hannah convinced herself that the whole premiere went swimmingly aside from that half-second skip. She figured the misstep would haunt her for days. It wouldn’t.
—
She wriggled back into her halter top and jeans and then joined the congregation in the lobby, where half the audience lingered to heap praise on the performers they knew. Hannah had given out five comp tickets, including two to her roommates and one to the day job colleague she was kinda sorta a little involved with. None of them showed up. Lovely. That only left the great Amanda Ambridge, plus spouse.
Hannah had little trouble finding her sister in the crowd. Amanda was a stiletto pump away from being six feet tall, with an Irish red mane that made her stand out like a stop sign. She stood alone by the ticket booth, a stately figure even in her bargain blouse and skinny jeans. At twenty-seven, Amanda’s sharp features had settled into hard elegance, a brand of uptight beauty that was catnip to so many artists. Hannah felt like a tavern wench in the presence of a queen.
Amanda spotted her and shined a taut smile. “Hey, there you are!”
“Here I am,” Hannah said. “Thanks for coming.”
After a clumsy half-start, the two women hugged. Hannah stood five inches shorter and twenty pounds heavier than her sister, though she’d squeezed it all into a buxom frame that drove numerous men to idiocy. Amanda felt hopelessly unsexy in her company, the Olive Oyl to her Betty Boop. Her husband did a fine job fortifying her complex tonight. The only time Derek didn’t writhe in agony during the awful show was when Hannah graced the stage with her grand and bouncy blessings. Amanda had hacked a sharp cough at him, just to throw sand in his bulging eyes.
Hannah scanned the lobby for her brother-in-law, a man she’d met six times at best. “Where’s the doc?”
“He’s getting the car. He’s tired and we both have to be up early tomorrow.”
“Okay. Hope he didn’t suffer too much.”
“Not too much.” Her smile tightened. “He really enjoyed your performance.”
“Oh good. Glad to hear it. And you?”
“I thought you were terrific. Better than . . .”
Amanda stopped herself. Hannah’s brow rose in cynical query. “Better than what? Usual?”
“That’s not what I was going to say.”
“Then just say it.”
“I thought you were better than the show deserved.”
A frosty new leer bloomed across Hannah’s face. Amanda glanced around, then leaned in for a furtive half whisper.
“Look, you know I like Damn Yankees, but this whole idea of turning it into a Bollywood pastiche was just . . . It was painful, like watching someone try to shove a Saint Bernard through a cat door. But despite that—”
Hannah cut her off with a jagged laugh. Amanda crossed her arms in umbrage.
“You asked me my opinion. Would you rather I lie?”
“I’d rather you say it instead of coughing it!”
A dozen glances turned their way. Amanda blinked at her sister. “I . . . don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Now you’re lying.”
“Hannah—”
“You just couldn’t hold in your criticism. You had to let it out in the middle of my big number.”
“That’s not what happened.”
“Bullshit. You know what you did.”
“Hannah, I don’t want to fight with you.”
“Oh my God.” The actress covered her face with both hands. “You do this every time.”
“Well, I’m—”