Читать книгу Romance Backstage - Kim Shaw - Страница 10

Catch Me If You Can

“Raven, Raven Walker…wait up,” a voice called as Raven stepped out onto the busy Manhattan street.

It was two o’clock and rehearsal had just ended. An exhausted cast filed out of the theater, headed to their various other obligations. Raven was planning to hop on the subway back uptown to her family’s Harlem apartment. She turned to find Dru exiting the theater behind her and rushing to catch up with her.

“What’s up?” she asked in as casual a voice as she could muster. She gathered the mass of damp, dark curly hair back with one hand and replaced the ponytail holder she’d removed with the other, never breaking the connection her eyes had made with Dru’s.

Secretly, she had wanted to make a quick getaway to avoid another run-in with the man. When rehearsals had gotten underway, she’d quickly found out exactly who Mr. Dru Davis was. The word embarrassed didn’t even begin to cover how she felt at not having recognized one of the most influential modern figures in the area of stage. He was the Dru Davis, of Davis Theater Initiatives. Barkley had introduced Dru to the cast, informing them that not only was he the son of the infamous producer Stuart Davis, who’d had a hand in many of the classic Broadway productions over the past thirty years, but that Dru would be serving as a producer for The Salon.

Dru bore only a passing resemblance to the elder Davis in her opinion, the younger man’s smooth chocolate skin and sensual eyes being disarmingly attractive. From what she remembered from newspaper and magazine photographs of Stuart Davis, Dru was several inches taller, at least six feet three inches, and whereas the father possessed a thin, wiry build, Dru’s muscular frame was discernable even through the plain white T-shirt and dark denim jeans he wore now. In short, the young man’s sex appeal was all his own.

“I was wondering if you had time to grab a bite with me,” Dru asked.

Raven’s head began shaking vehemently before her lips could even form the words. She realized immediately from the startled expression on his face that she must have appeared to be having an epileptic fit or something.

“No…no,” she stammered.

“No, you don’t have time, or no—”

“No, I…I can’t. Sorry,” Raven hurried, cutting Dru off.

She gave her best attempt at a smile, turned and scurried away from him. She could feel his eyes boring into her, which only made her quicken her pace. She wanted to put as many square inches of city sidewalk between herself and Dru Davis as possible, before he had a chance to corner her again. There was no way her resolve could hold up very long under the warmth of his intense gaze.

By the time she’d boarded a crowded subway car headed uptown, her cheeks were flushed. That feeling definitely did not come from the fast pace of her trek nor the heat of the oppressive underground iron horse, however. No, it was the pallor of embarrassment that had colored her as she replayed the scene with Dru over and over again in her mind. He must think her a complete idiot. A silly, juvenile idiot at that. Why had she run away like a cockroach scurrying under the glare of fluorescent lights? There were two reasons, and while both were equally compelling, the knowledge of that did not make her feel much better. For one, he was the Dru Davis. Essentially, he was the boss, one of the players behind the production that she’d just landed a role in. Her very first production in a brand-new career and there was no way she was going to get involved with one of the bosses and make a name for herself as that girl five minutes out of the gate.

The second reason caused Raven’s heart to skip a beat as a warm fluttering sensation rippled through her entire body. Dru Davis was unabashedly gorgeous. Everything about the man had touched her—his smile, his eyes, even the timbre of his voice. His scent and his body caused a shock to her heart that she thought would cause it to jump through her chest. She had never been so physically attracted to a man, neither stranger nor acquaintance, as she had been to Dru, and she was completely unnerved by it. Her only defense was to run, because she knew that with her limited experience in matters of the heart, she was no match for a man as charismatic and alluring as Dru Davis.