When Stars Collide (Chicago Stars #9) - Susan Elizabeth Phillips Page 0,85

and someone Olivia had been deliberately ignoring since she’d lost her voice. Batista had once been an accomplished soprano. Now she was one of the best opera coaches in the country. She was maddeningly condescending, but also highly effective.

Olivia set the bag of plums on an ornate mahogany side table near the door. “My voice . . . ,” she said. “It’s gone.”

“Ah, well.” Scorn dripped from Batista’s every word. “Now you will find a husband to take care of you, and you will make him gnocchi every night for supper.” She waved a dismissive hand. “Enough of this bullshit. Let me hear you.”

* * *

When Olivia reached the rehearsal stage later that afternoon, she found Lena Hodiak moving through Amneris’s blocking for the Judgment scene in act 4. Olivia watched as Lena mouthed the lyrics, “Ohime! Morir mi sento . . .” Alas! I shall die! Oh, who will save him?

Lena waved as she spotted Olivia and quickly moved into the audience to give Olivia the stage.

It felt like midnight instead of late afternoon. Olivia had sung badly for the maestro and only a little better for Batista. At least Batista had abandoned her crotchety prima donna routine and gotten serious when she heard the state of Olivia’s voice.

“Lift your palate, Olivia. Lift it.” At the end of the lesson, Batista had prescribed bee propolis throat spray and more abdominal exercises and ordered Olivia to come back the next day.

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,”