Method Acting: An opposites attract, found family romance (Center Stage Book 2) Adele Buck (e novels to read .TXT) 📖

Balducci’s handshake was strong and sure as he welcomed Freddie into his tiny office in the Hatbox Theater in TriBeCa.

“Thanks for meeting with me on such short notice. Cath can’t say enough good things about you. Says she wanted to keep you as her assistant stage manager forever, but I know she’s too fair to hamper your career like that.” Michael’s warm smile made lines fan out from his deep-set brown eyes. “And I value her opinion. I even tried to lure her away from Paul once to do a show with me. But that was shortly before they got engaged, so I suppose that was a vain hope.”

Freddie nodded. She had worked for Cath that summer. The summer of Susan. The summer of James.

“Cath was a great mentor to me,” Freddie said. “She taught me a lot.”

“I don’t doubt it. And you have that same calm, competent demeanor that she has. It’s part of what makes me hope you’ll consider taking this job.”

Freddie leaned back in her chair, relaxing her tight, upright posture a little bit. She wasn’t used to being offered things on a platter like this. Her gaze roamed over Michael’s desk. Two framed pictures had pride of place. One showed Michael and another man, Freddie supposed this was his husband, both suntanned and standing with their arms around each other and their backs to the ocean. The other was of a snaggletoothed, shaggy little mutt who looked as if it existed in a permanent state of bafflement.

“What happened to your original stage manager?” Freddie asked, her eyes flicking back to Michael’s face. The production was halfway through rehearsals. “Losing a stage manager at this point in rehearsals…”

“Must be either a misfortune or carelessness?” Michael asked, paraphrasing Oscar Wilde, and Freddie suppressed a smirk. Cath and her husband Paul were forever quoting plays at each other. She wondered if she would eventually pick up the habit as well. “Neither, I’m afraid. Carolyn Tanner’s mother became gravely ill. Carolyn is an only child and was, unfortunately for us, the only person available to step in and take care of her.”

“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.” Freddie reflected on her large, chaotic family. At least she would never be on her own like that if something happened to her parents. She had once been the one everyone counted on, the go-to girl in the midst of her four brothers. But they all still lived in the former fishing town where her parents did, where her Portuguese ancestors had plied the sea. Whereas she had made the decision to leave. While she would always help out where she could, she felt sure she could count on her brothers to figure things out.

“So…what do you say?” Michael’s voice broke in on her irrelevant thoughts and his heavy brow made his intent expression even more compelling. “Can you bail us out?”

Freddie thought about her bank account. And then about Susan. She considered the resumé credit this project would represent.

And then she considered Susan.

She took a deep breath, holding it for a moment before answering. “Can you give me a day or two to think about it?”

Michael leaned back in his chair, considering. “I can give you twenty-four hours. Honestly, I shouldn’t even do that. I’m hoping you’ll say yes, but I’ll continue to get the word out. I need someone and I really need them yesterday, Freddie.”

“That’s fair,” Freddie said, rising. “I just have a few things to iron out. Thanks for being flexible.”

Shaking hands again with Michael, she headed for the theater door. Her phone chimed in her bag just as she reached the sidewalk. Pulling it out, she stared dumbly at the text message on the screen. A text from James.

Hey. Back in NYC. Drink?

Speak of the devil.

#

James fidgeted, checking Twitter on his phone, glancing at the door, swiveling on his bar stool.

You know Freddie better than this. She’s always punctual.

And James had shown up twenty minutes early. He was always too eager with Freddie, it seemed. He had asked her to move to Los Angeles with him, but she had panicked at the thought. She had been too young, too intent on building her own career. She couldn’t imagine what she might do on the West Coast except be James Martin’s girlfriend, and she had wanted more than that.

Your own fault you have to wait. James decided to answer a few tweets while he waited. The new show had raised his profile and activity in his mentions had picked up. He scrolled through the feed. Compliment: reply with thanks. Troll: block. Request for birthday wish…

“When you’re done with your adoring fans, can an old friend get a hello?”

James dropped the phone on the bar, his head whipping around to trace the sound of Freddie’s voice. The sight of her was a physical blow, a soft whump to his solar plexus.

“Hey stranger.” The husky voice that James had gotten used to hearing on the phone was even sexier paired with her face. Freddie hated cameras, which pretty much left out video chatting on FaceTime and Skype, so their infrequent, sometimes lengthy conversations after they had gotten past the hurt of the breakup and stitched their friendship back together had been voice-only. James had appreciated the intimacy of just that voice in the dark, but looking at her now, he remembered how much he had been missing.

Her eyes still dominated her face: huge, dark brown, and tip-tilted, she was a Disney princess come to life. That pointed chin still advertised her stubborn nature. Her hair was longer now, grown out from the short curls that had clustered around her face. Now it waved nearly to her shoulders, and James’s fingers itched to tug at the dark brown silk.

“Hey.” His own voice flaked with rust and he cleared his throat. “How’re you doing, Fred?” he asked as she clambered to the stool next to him, making a face as she boosted herself onto the barstool, her short, shapely legs dangling and her