Off Limit: Claimed by My Ex-Fiancé's Stepdad novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: Places
Minutes before her wedding on the stage of her own show, Cleo hears her fiancé and her stepsister through a live mic, walks away from the altar in front of two hundred people, and in the alley Ward shows her the email that was meant to get her fired before she ever said I do.
At ten to one on my wedding day, I sat at my own stage manager's desk in a white dress with forty buttons down the back.
The crew thought it was the funniest thing they'd ever seen.
"Bride's calling her own wedding," the head flyman said from the rail. "Your dad would've died laughing."
"He'd have made me wear the headset," I said.
So I wore the headset.
The Stanton was full.
Two hundred people sat in the red seats out front. The whole company, the crew's families, Jude's agent, my stepmother in the third row.
Past the edge of the curtain, our ferry deck glowed under warm light.
In eleven days it would pitch through a storm eight shows a week.
Today it had white roses tied to the rail and an arch where the wheelhouse door should be.
Jude had wanted the wedding on the set. "Think of the pictures," he'd said.
I'd said yes because it was the one place on earth I knew how to run.
The program monitor on my desk hissed.
Up in the sound booth, Joanie had fired up Lenore's show mic to check it.
My stepsister was singing the processional, our show's big ballad, so she was wearing her pack.
I reached over to turn the monitor down.
A breath came through it. Then a laugh I knew.
"We have nine minutes," Lenore whispered.
"I only need four," Jude said.
Something thumped against wood. Then again, and again, steady.
Lenore moaned, low, right into the mic taped at her hairline.
"Say you'll still do this after," she said.
"Every night," Jude said. "She'll be calling cues. She won't notice a thing."
In my headset, Joanie's voice came very quiet. "Cleo. I'm killing it."
"Don't," I said. "Record it."
I took off the headset and coiled the cord the way my father taught me, so nobody trips.
Then I walked down the hall to dressing room one.
Jude's name was on a gold star on the door.
I opened it.
Lenore was on the makeup counter in her lilac bridesmaid dress, the skirt shoved up to her waist.
Jude stood between her knees with his tuxedo pants open.
My veil hung on the mirror behind them.
Lenore saw me in the mirror first. Her mouth fell open.
Jude turned his head. He didn't even step back right away.
"Cleo," he said. "Babe. This isn't what it looks like."
"Places, Jude," I said. "You're on in five."
I closed the door.
My hands were steady.
I didn't go back to the desk.
I walked through the gap in the curtain and out onto the deck.
The string quartet stopped mid-bar. Two hundred faces turned.
Somebody said, "Oh, she's early," and people laughed.
My stepmother half rose from her seat. "Cleo, sweetheart, you're supposed to wait for the song."
Jude came through the wheelhouse door behind the arch, buttoning his jacket.
Lenore came after him with her bouquet. Her lipstick was gone.
He took his place under the roses and smiled out at the house.
I walked up to him. The officiant opened his book.
I took Jude's hand and turned it palm up.
I pulled off my ring and set it in the middle of his palm.
"Cleo," he said through his teeth. "Not here."
"Here's fine," I said.
I turned to the house. I didn't need a mic. I've been calling across this stage since I was eight.
"Lenore's been wearing a live show mic for the last half hour," I said. "Joanie and I heard every word from dressing room one."
Up in the booth at the back of the house, a small red light blinked once.
The theater went so quiet I could hear the old radiators tick.
Lenore's hand went to the pack at the small of her back.
"You can keep her," I told Jude. "She's already miked."
Bettina's face had gone the color of her pearls.
I walked off the deck the way I'd come in.
Past my desk. Past the flyman, who pulled off his cap as I went by.
Down the iron stairs and out the stage door, into the alley on 46th Street.
It was March, and cold, and my arms were bare.
The stage door banged open behind me.
I thought it was Jude. I put my hand up to stop him.
It was Ward Stanton.
Jude's stepfather. The man who owned this theater, and this show, and the rule in every contract I'd ever signed with him.
The producer never touches anyone in his company.
In five years he had never held my hand a second longer than a handshake needed.
He took off his jacket and put it around my shoulders.
Then his hands stayed there. Both of them, heavy and warm, his thumbs resting on my collarbones.
"You're shaking," he said.
"I'm cold."
"You're furious."
"I'm both."
I looked up at him. He was very close. He smelled like cedar and the old dust of the fly floor.
"Are you here to tell me to go back in?"
"No."
"Good. Because I'll be at my desk for tech at nine tomorrow. And so will they."
Something moved in his face. It looked almost like pride.
His thumbs pressed once, and then he made himself let go.
"Cleo," he said. "There's something you need to see first."
He took his phone out and turned the screen toward me.
It was an email to his office, from Bettina, manager of both his stars.
"My clients will not work with Cleo Seward. Replace her before tech on Monday, or both of them walk."
I read the time stamp twice.
9:04 a.m.
Four hours before I was supposed to say I do.
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