Body Heat

Nikki released Crystal’s hair and raced over to Grace. “You’re gonna have to go on tonight.” She may as well have told the understudy that she had terminal cancer from the look of sheer horror that blanketed Grace’s face.

“I can’t. I can’t.” Grace stepped back until her small frame was pressed against the back wall.

“What do you mean?” Nikki grabbed the young, pencil-thin actress by the shoulders, but then reminded herself at the last second that it was illegal to snap the woman in half. “We don’t have a choice. You have to go on.”

“B-But I didn’t learn the lines,” she confessed in a high-pitched whine.

“What?” Nikki’s heart sank deeper in the pit of her stomach. “What do you mean you didn’t learn the lines? You’re Crystal’s understudy.”

“I know…But Crystal is such a good actress I didn’t think anything could go wrong. Not to mention my college courses are really kicking my ass this quarter and my boyfriend and I have been fighting and—”

“Grace! Focus!”

The young understudy snapped her jaw shut. But then Grace’s eyes started blinking so much, Nikki was afraid that she was in the middle of an epileptic fit.

“The bottom line is that you didn’t bother to learn your lines,” Nikki said, feeling as if the floor was spinning beneath her feet. “I don’t believe this. In a few minutes I’m about to be the biggest joke on Broadway.”

“You mean off-off-Broadway,” Grace corrected.

Nikki’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t push it. You’re already on my bad side.”

Grace teared up. “I’m really, really sorry.” And with that weak-ass apology, she scampered off.

“Curtain in two minutes,” Barbara, Nikki’s stage manager-slash-assistant-slash-baby sister, announced as if everything was all sunshine and roses.

Barbara caught sight of Nikki’s horror-stricken face and rushed right over. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t have a lead actress,” Nikki choked out. She checked over her shoulder to see Crystal still hunched over the garbage can and dry heaving into it. “You don’t happen to have a gun on you, do you?”

Barbara steered her sister’s attention away from the sick actress. “C’mon now. She’s not worth it.”

“It’s not for her. It’s for me. I’d rather do myself in than have the critics do it.”

“C’mon. It’s not like Ben Brantley is out there.”

“Please. Who needs The New York Times when you have this little bitty thing called the Internet?”

The desperation of the situation seemed to finally hit Barbara because she clammed up for a few seconds. “But what about—?”

“She didn’t learn her lines,” Nikki answered in a flat tone. “An understudy that doesn’t study…” She smacked her palm against her forehead—which seemed to flip the switch on a lightbulb. Nikki looked at her sister with renewed hope.

Barbara’s eyes bulged as she inched away. “Don’t look at me. I’m not an actress.”

“But you know the lines.”

“Just because I read the script doesn’t mean I memorized the lines,” Barbara stressed, trying to pull her arm out her sister’s grasp. “You’re not going to get me to go out there and make a fool of myself.”

Nikki’s hopes plummeted as fast as they had risen.

“What about you?” Barbara suggested. “Nobody knows this script like you do.”

“I’m not an actress,” Nikki protested with the same horror her sister displayed just moments before.

“Yeah, but you seem to be a little short on those tonight,” Barbara reminded her.

In sync, their watches beeped. A hush came over the whole theater.

“It’s showtime,” Barbara said, whispering the obvious.

Nikki felt ill, but she knew what she had to do. “Go out there and stall,” she instructed Barbara. “I need two minutes. I’m going to have to go on.”

“Are you sure?”

“You have a better idea?” she asked, in a voice that was ironically tinged with both sarcasm and hope.

Barbara gave Nikki a sympathetic smile, the kind you give when someone tells you that they only have twenty-four hours to live. “Okay. Break a leg, kid.”

Nikki took off toward Crystal’s dressing room—a janitor’s closet—and quickly changed her clothes. As bad luck would have it, Crystal was a size smaller than Nikki and she was forced to cram her size eight hips into a size six dress.

It wasn’t pretty.

She quickly tunneled her fingers through her hair to give it a very tousled and unkempt look, grabbed her antique hot comb prop, and then had to waddle like a penguin on crack back toward the stage. Standing stage left, Nikki took a deep breath and then waved frantically at her sister to let her know to wrap up her rambling speech.

Barbara brightened with relief. “And now…on with the show!”

There was a respectable applause as Barbara curtsied her way off the stage.

Nikki started praying and she kept on praying well after the house lights dimmed and the curtains parted.

The last thing in the world Hylan Dawson wanted to do was to go to a play—especially one entitled HotComb & Hair Grease. This artsy-fartsy stuff was never his thing. Nevertheless, one of his New York playmates, Shonda, was calling herself an actress these days and she kept insisting on dragging him from one bad production to another. It was a high price to pay to get into her Victoria’s Secrets, but a man had to do what a man had to do.

Shonda squeezed his hand as the house lights dimmed. “I’m so excited. My friend Crystal is the lead actress,” she boasted in a low whisper. “I just know that you’re going to love her.”

Oh joy. Hylan smiled to camouflage his despair. If this Crystal chick’s acting was as bad as Shonda’s then he was truly in for a very long night. He turned his attention to the stage, drew a deep breath and prepared himself for anything.

Well, almost anything.

A woman waddled out on stage in a dress so tight he swore the entire front row could hear the seams screaming. Hylan didn’t mind so much since the actress had an incredible body. She was stacked like a priceless work of art with full breasts, slim waist and rounded hips. If this play involved nudity it was definitely going to get two thumbs up and a couple of toes from him.

“That’s not Crystal,” Shonda hissed, frowning.

Good. That meant that Hylan could avoid a sticky situation between girlfriends when he slipped this black angel his number after the show. Sure the slick move would make him what women called a dog, but to him and his fellow Kappa Psi Kappa brothers it was what they considered exercising his options. Which for the record, he did on the regular. And why not? He was single, handsome and rich. Why shouldn’t he shop around and play with all the toys his lifestyle afforded him?

Hylan smiled, wondering what her back view had to offer—something lush and squeezable he hoped. He took his time committing every curve of her incredible body to memory. When his gaze finally reached the actress’s face, he sucked in a sudden breath at the sight of what could have only come straight out of his dreams. Her glowing oval face, plump full lips, crescent-shaped cheekbones and large doe-shaped eyes were a lethal combination to his heart…and his libido. Immediately, he started imagining how sexy she’d look draped in diamonds and writhing on a bed of black satin sheets.

Suddenly, his pants felt tight. He shifted in his chair and hoped that Shonda wouldn’t notice.

“Isn’t she going to say something?” Shonda whispered.