Prologue
When the lights go down in the theater, I am ready to pretend. I leave the past behind to become the character on the stage. I share a lingering look with the handsome man across the crowded room. I turn back to the others. Then a hand brushes against my shoulder. I shudder. Close my eyes. Feel him near me. Everyone else fades away. He’s suddenly the only one there. He kisses me. I kiss him back, and I can feel the kiss in every single cell in my body. Deep, and fevered, and possessive. My head is spinning, my heart is jumping. I am that woman on the stage and I’m having what she’s having. Love without reason. Love without fear.
For two hours under the spotlights, I’m living someone else’s life.
Then the play ends, the curtains rise, and I am back to being me. I come down from my temporary high, still wanting, still wishing, knowing only that I’ll need another role, another part to feel this way again.
I take my bow, and say goodbye to the character, to the kiss, to the possibility of that kind of love.
Because love like that only happens when it’s make believe.
At least, I’ve always thought so.
Then I met Davis Milo and everything in my life changed.
Irrevocably.
Chapter 1
Davis
The moment she emerges from the wings and steps on stage at the St. James Theater to sing her solo, I know—without a shadow of a doubt—that she’s my Ava.
Her voice gives me chills. She starts small, as the song calls for, in a trembling kind of tone, and then through each verse her voice strengthens, matching the lyrics, the tone of the song, the story the music is telling: a young woman who was all alone, but who had to find her own way to her dream, and found it through pain and patience and heartache.
When she reaches the chorus, her voice is all I feel, and it’s got arms and fingertips that stretch from the center of the stage all the way around the theater to the balcony. A voice that surrounds you, and mesmerizes you with color and heat. The voice has layers and hurt all in one and so does this actress, her face, the way she wrings the emotion from the words.
I rest my elbows on my thighs, my hands clasped together, seeing only her from my seat in the second row. I want to hold onto this moment, this feeling of being the director who discovers the next big star, because it comes around so rarely.
She has it all, everything I want, but she also has something more. She has sex appeal and she doesn’t even know it. Something in the way she carries herself, in how she looks at you, a torch singer sort of sensuality in her gaze. She’s all innocent blond on the outside, but deep down she can pull off the provocative with that fantastic body and the way she moves on stage. That’s what I need. That’s what I want.
She’s going to bring down the house. She’s going to make the audience cry and cheer. She’s going to make them want her.
And it sure as hell doesn’t hurt that she’s absolutely f**king beautiful.
When she finishes, I want to stand up, shake her hand, and tell her she’s been cast in this love story. But I restrain myself. “Thank you so much. Now, the scene and song with Mr. Carlson.”
Patrick Carlson, the actor who landed the lead role in Crash the Moon, jumps from the red upholstered chair next to me. He’s here at the final auditions, along with the producer and Frederick Stillman himself, the most revered composer in the last quarter century, who’s collected armfuls of awards for Best Musical. Actors fall all over themselves to star in his shows, directors fawn at his feet.
I would have fawned to land this gig, but I didn’t have to.
I’ve won three Tonys, one Oscar, and my Broadway shows have all returned on their investors’ dollars. I directed a film too—that’s how I nabbed that golden statuette. So Stillman called my cell one fine afternoon six months ago, and told me he was offering the directing job to me, only me, and to no one but me.
I said yes on the spot.
Now I want to say yes to her.
Jill
My twenty-three years on earth have led me to this moment. Every singing lesson I ever took.
Every acting class I ever went to.
Every play I read, song I heard, emotion I called forth from deep inside for a part.
Here. Now. Today, as I wait center stage on the creaky floorboards in this gem of a Broadway house, for him.
But really, more than anything, it’s the fact that I finished five marathons that matters most right now. Because of that, I have the training, the perseverance, and the composure to not freak the f**k out as Patrick Carlson joins me under the spotlights that shine on us. I can barely see the powers-that-be because the seats are shrouded in darkness, and the lights are on the stage. But I can make out the silhouette of the hotshot director Davis Milo in the second row, along with the producer, and the God I bow down to—Frederick Stillman himself, who wrote this anthemic musical. I’d enter the Hunger Games for a chance to perform in something he’s created, but fortunately all I have to do is nail a scene with Patrick, the man I’ve been in love with from afar for the last six years.
So, as if I’m running with the kind of focus I need for 26 miles—blinders on, nothing but blinders—I ignore the fact that Patrick is the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen, that his honey blond hair looks thick and soft and that his light brown eyes draw me in with their warmth, just as they did all the times I skipped class in college to see matinees of Rent to watch him play Roger, or Wicked to see him as Fyero. All the moments I was mesmerized by him, and fell deeper under his spell.
But I let go of that now. Because I am no longer Jill, aspiring New York actress auditioning for her first Broadway role, and he is not Patrick, the man who exudes talent and charisma every second he’s on stage.
He’s Paolo, a mercurial and captivating artist, and my teacher. And right now I am Ava, a twenty-two-year-old painter without a family. I face the audience—nearly 1,600 empty seats and only a few occupied ones, the spotlights from above beaming brightly, the antique gold auditorium with high-flying balconies surrounding us.
He steps behind me. He says not a word. Instead, he breathes out, “hmmm,” as he places his hands on my arms, as if he’s considering Ava, then runs his palms sensuously from my wrists to my shoulders.
“You must let go, Ava. You try too hard to make your paintings perfect. You need to make them you.”
I nod, breathless, speechless, because this man Ava has admired, looked up to, is touching her. He brushes my hair away from my neck, and I lean my head to the side, letting him trace the vein in my neck with his finger. Then, as if I’ve just remembered that I’m a good girl, that I don’t do this, I jerk away.