pencil—everything from blocking to how he wanted certain lines delivered. “I will worry about everything having to do with this play and its performers until the final curtain call is finished.”
“You don’t have anything to worry about.”
Blake’s deep voice came from only a foot or so behind Niall. He’d approached so close while Niall was busy at the table that when Niall turned around, they were almost in each other’s arms. It was a bloody shame that Niall had his script clenched in his hands, almost like a shield between the two of them. That was the last thing he wanted to convey to Blake, especially when he could smell the scent of the man’s shaving soap. Blake had missed a spot on his jaw, close to his ear, proving that his beard probably grew in with lightning speed if he didn’t shave every day. Niall caught himself wondering what a day’s worth of stubble would feel like against his chest or his inner thigh.
Hard on the heels of those thoughts, the door at the back of the auditorium opened, and a group of underclassmen who had been cast in the chorus burst into the room. Blake stepped back from Niall so fast that Niall thought he would stumble over the chairs. Blake cleared his throat and waved to his new castmates as a few more entered the room.
“Stanley,” one of them, Morton, called out as soon as he entered the room. “Fancy seeing you here. Brilliant goal yesterday, by the way. That goalie didn’t stand a chance.”
In an instant, whatever spell had been cast between Niall and Blake vanished. Niall remembered the football game he’d heard about the day before and assumed that was what Morton was talking about. Of course Blake would be enough of a bloke to score a winning football goal. The way he walked over to the particularly rough and tumble men Niall had cast to play the swordsmen in his show, thumping them on the back and being congratulated in kind was as obvious a sign as anything that Blake wasn’t like him.
He sighed, shook his head, cursed himself for a fool caught up in wishful thinking, and set about organizing his notes for the rehearsal. More and more of his cast arrived, and Niall did everything he could to stop himself from gazing longingly at Blake as he laughed and chattered away with the blokey blokes.
“I still can’t believe you cast him in the lead,” Ian grumbled to Niall almost as soon as he entered the auditorium and deposited his things in one of the empty seats.
The comment served to alert Niall to the fact that he was staring at Blake even though he’d told himself not to, and that Ian was bitter about the casting.
“Blake has the best voice,” he explained with what he hoped looked like a casual shrug as he took his script down to the stage and mounted the steps. Ian followed behind him. “Some of Siegfried’s songs are technically complicated. But you did extraordinarily well at the audition yourself. That’s why I cast you as Reinhold.”
“So you’re saying that if Blake hadn’t swooped in at the last minute to steal the role, it would have gone to me?” Ian asked, crossing his arms.
Niall paused when he reached the center of the stage and looked over his shoulder at Ian. The man’s nose was thoroughly out of joint. “It’s best not to think about what could have been.”
He faced forward, ostensibly looking at his script, but peeked at Blake and his rambunctious friends as he did. The group was thoroughly enjoying whatever noisy conversation they were having now, but in the midst of the revelry, Blake glanced Niall’s way. It could have completely been Niall’s imagination, but Blake’s eyes seemed to take on that particular soft warmth they had in the pub the other day.
Niall’s heart thudded against his ribs, particularly when Blake’s gaze shifted to Ian standing by Niall’s side and his mouth went tight. Niall blinked, forcing himself to concentrate. Ian was saying something. But the possibility that Blake was jealous of another man talking to him was too good to be true. Literally. It couldn’t possibly be true. More likely, he was jealous of Blake getting along so famously with the sort of men who would never be caught dead socializing with him and had only auditioned for the play because they thought girls would fawn all over them for treading the boards.
“…wouldn’t have time to