Fake Dating at the Playhouse

• Chapter 1 Opening Night Jitters
• Chapter 2 The Stagehand and the Starlet
• Chapter 3 Desperate Measures
• Chapter 4 A Scripted Romance
• Chapter 5 Rehearsing the Part
• Chapter 6 Center Stage Sparks
• Chapter 7 The Ghost Light
• Chapter 8 A Body in the Wings
• Chapter 9 Lights Up on a Crime
• Chapter 10 The Suspect List
• Chapter 11 Playing the Role
• Chapter 12 Props and Motives
• Chapter 13 Behind the Curtain
• Chapter 14 Blurring the Lines
• Chapter 15 Toolboxes and Alibis
• Chapter 16 Cue the Accusations
• Chapter 17 A Dangerous Duet
• Chapter 18 Stealing the Spotlight
• Chapter 19 Secrets Under the Stage
• Chapter 20 Costumes and Cover-ups
• Chapter 21 Breaking Character
• Chapter 22 The Final Rehearsal
• Chapter 23 Trapdoors and Traitors
• Chapter 24 Climax in the Dark
• Chapter 25 Unmasking the Villain
• Chapter 26 The Real Final Act

The smell of pancake makeup, old velvet, and the distinct aroma of warm dust rising off hundred-watt stage lights was a fragrance Clara Brooks could identify with her eyes closed. It was the scent of panic and promise, a volatile combination that had fueled theater performers for centuries. Tonight, however, the panic was winning by a wide margin.

Clara sat in front of the vanity mirror in dressing room three, staring at her own reflection until her eyes blurred. Her fingers trembled slightly as she applied a final stroke of crimson lipstick to her upper lip. In the mirror, her dark eyes looked wide and startled, like those of a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming tour bus. She pinched her cheeks, hoping to bring a flush of natural color to her pale face, but it did little to disguise the sheer terror radiating from her posture.

This was supposed to be her breakthrough moment. After three years of touring minor dinner theaters, doing voiceover work for local car dealerships, and serving cold espresso to ungrateful patrons in midtown, she had finally landed the female lead at the Oakridge Playhouse. The play was Shadows in the Parlor, an intricate, moody period piece that the board had gambled the entire summer season on. If the show succeeded, the playhouse might actually scrape together enough revenue to fix its leaking roof and clear its mounting debts. If it failed, the building would likely be sold to a developer who had already announced plans to tear it down and put up a luxury parking garage.

No pressure, Clara thought, smoothing down the front of her high-collared Victorian costume gown. Absolutely no pressure at all.

Outside her dressing room door, the hallway echoed with the frantic thrum of pre-show activity. Quick footsteps clattered across the linoleum floor, accompanied by the muffled voices of crew members shouting about mislaid props, faulty wiring, and missing quick-change buttons. Someone down the hall was warming up their vocal range with an aggressive series of lip trills, sounding remarkably like an outboard motor struggling to turn over in cold water.

A sharp knock rattled the thin wood of her door frame, making Clara jump nearly an inch off her stool.

"Five minutes to places, Miss Brooks!" called out Chloe, the overworked nineteen-year-old assistant stage manager whose voice was currently oscillating between professional authority and total hysteria. "House is officially open, and Mr. Sterling is pacing the lobby like a caged tiger. Please tell me you’re dressed."

"Dressed and ready, Chloe!" Clara called back, endeavoring to sound infinitely more confident than she felt. "Just finishing hair!"

"Great! Perfect! Don't trip on the stairs!" Chloe’s footsteps raced away down the corridor toward the green room, leaving behind a draft of cool air that rustled the paper call sheets pinned to Clara’s wall.

Clara took a slow, deliberate breath, expanding her diaphragm just as her vocal coach had taught her, holding it for four seconds, and letting it out in a quiet hiss. It did very little to calm the swarm of angry wasps currently executing synchronized maneuvers in her stomach.

She stood up, gathering the heavy folds of her dark green taffeta skirt, and adjusted the pearl hairpins securing her intricate updo. The costume was gorgeous, tailored to fit her slim frame down to the millimeter, but the corset underneath felt like an iron cage designed to stop her lungs from expanding beyond fifty percent capacity.

Leaving her dressing room, she stepped into the dimly lit, narrow corridor behind the main stage. The atmosphere back here was electric and claustrophobic. Heavy canvas flats lined the walls, painted to look like marble archways and stormy English moorlands. Coiled ropes hung from iron cleats near the fly gallery, and thick black snakes of sound cables snaked across the floor, taped down with yellow hazard stripes.

As she rounded the corner toward the stage left wing, she nearly collided with a broad shoulder clad in a faded flannel shirt.

"Watch your step," a deep, gruff voice rumbled from above her.

Clara winced, stepping back to avoid treading on his heavy work boots. "Sorry, Luke. I was watching my hem."

Luke Vance didn't look like an artist, and he made a point of reminding everyone within earshot that he wasn't one. He was the playhouse’s head handyman, technical supervisor, and de facto firefighter for every mechanical disaster the aging building could pull off. Broad-shouldered, square-jawed, and perpetually wearing a faint dusting of sawdust and grease across his forearms, Luke looked like he had been carved out of solid oak by someone who only possessed a hatchet. His dark hair was short and messy, and his amber eyes were currently narrowed in their customary state of dry disapproval.

"If you drop that hem onto the stage floor before the curtain goes up, the wardrobe department will have a collective stroke," Luke said, leaning against the wooden framework of a flats wall while holding a battery-operated drill in one hand and a roll of duct tape in the other. "And frankly, I don't think Susan's blood pressure can take it."

"I am exercising extreme caution," Clara said primly, though she couldn't help glancing at the drill. "What broke this time?"

"The French doors in act two," Luke muttered, jerking his chin toward the center of the stage. "The latch warped because of the humidity. If your co-star makes his grand entrance by kicking them open like he usually does, the whole frame is going to pull right out of the drywall and land in the front row."

"Can you fix it?"

Luke offered her a flat, unamused stare that made Clara feel roughly three inches tall. "I'm fixing it now. Which means it won't fall down unless he decides to throw himself against it like a battering ram."

"He's an expressive actor," Clara offered weakly, defending her leading man, Julian Delacroix—a man whose talent was inversely proportional to his self-regard.

"He's an idiot with a loud voice," Luke corrected plain-spokenly, tucking the tape onto his tool belt. "There's a difference. Try not to break anything else out there. The building is older than your grandfather and twice as fragile."

Before Clara could conjure a witty retort, Luke turned on his heel and moved off toward the dim shadows behind the sound board, moving with a quiet, deliberate grace that seemed out of place for a man built like an anvil.

Clara took a breath, letting the encounter shake off a tiny fraction of her nerves. Luke Vance was notoriously abrasive, but there was something oddly comforting about his absolute refusal to participate in the theatrical drama that consumed everyone else under this roof. To Luke, the theater wasn't a temple of fine art; it was a drafty old structure made of timber, wire, and pipe that required constant supervision to keep from collapsing in on itself.

She made her way to the stage left wings, where the rest of the cast was gathering like a group of aristocratic refugees waiting for an evacuation protocol.

Julian Delacroix was standing near the proscenium, obsessively checking his reflection in a small hand mirror brought to him by a terrified intern. Julian was handsome in a sharp, fragile sort of way, with slicked-back blonde hair and high cheekbones that caught the light perfectly. He was currently humming a dramatic monotone hum to loosen his jaw.

"Clara, darling," Julian murmured without looking away from his mirror. "Tell me the house lighting isn't as harsh as it was during dress rehearsal. If they put the amber gels on the footlights, I'm going to look positively jaundice-ridden in the second scene."

"The lighting is fine, Julian," Clara lied smoothly. "You look radiant."

"I feel exposed," Julian sighed, handing the mirror back to the intern with a dismissive wave. "This director is pushing us to the brink. Did you see the local critic in the third row? Evelyn Gable. She wrote a review last month that drove the director of the regional opera into early retirement."

Clara felt her stomach do a somersault. Evelyn Gable was the chief culture writer for the State Gazette, and her column possessed enough venom to shut down productions within forty-eight hours of opening night. If Gable hated Shadows in the Parlor, the Oakridge Playhouse wouldn't just lose its season—it would be ruined before the weekend was out.

"Don't think about the critics," Clara said, trying to anchor her own rising panic. "Think about the work. We've rehearsed this for six weeks."

"Six weeks of torture," Julian corrected, straightening his velvet cravat. "If the set doesn't crush us, the plot holes will."

From the dark depths of the back corridor, Richard Sterling, the artistic director, burst into the wing space like a storm system looking for a place to break. His silver hair was standing on end, his necktie was pulled loose, and he was clutching a rolled-up script as if it were a life preserver.

"Everyone, listen to me," Richard hissed, gathering the cast into a tight circle behind the heavy velour main curtain. "This is it. The house is eighty percent full. The mayor is here. Mrs. Pemberton from the historical society is here, and yes, Evelyn Gable is sitting in seat D-12. If we pull this off tonight, the board will extend our operating grant through next spring. If we fumble our cues, if anyone drops a line, or if the stage hardware fails..." He paused, darting a furious glare toward the shadows where Luke was standing with his toolbox. "...we are finished. Done. The curtain goes up in two minutes. Give them art, people. Give them passion!"

Richard clapped his hands together with a sound like a pistol shot, spun around, and stalked away toward the sound booth, muttering under his breath about ticket sales and seating charts.

The cast scattered to their respective entrance points. Clara stepped up to the edge of the dark stage curtain, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. She peeked through the tiny slit in the heavy fabric.

The auditorium was filled with the low hum of conversation. Rows of plush red seats—many of them showing patches of worn fabric where the velvet had rubbed away over decades—were occupied by local patrons, theater donors, and curious locals holding their folded programs. The scent of buttered popcorn from the concession stand drifted up toward the stage, mixing bizarrely with the smell of stage sweat and Luke’s wood varnish.

Clara closed her eyes and ran through her opening line in her head. 'If the walls of this house could speak, Mr. Vance, they would tell a story of betrayal...'

She paused, catching herself. Mr. Vance? No, that wasn't the character's name. The character was Lord Harrington. Luke Vance was the handyman who was currently watching her from the darkness near the dimmer racks, arms crossed over his chest, his expression unreadable.

Clara shook her head rapidly to clear the error. The jitters were playing tricks on her brain. She couldn't afford to mix up character names on opening night. If she botched her very first line, the whole domino rally of the first act would come tumbling down around their ears.

"Places for act one!" Chloe’s voice squeaked through the backstage headset system. "House lights going down in five, four, three..."

The chatter in the auditorium began to fade into silence as the overhead chandeliers dimmed to a dull crimson glow, then vanished entirely into blackness.

A heavy hush fell over the building. In the dark wing, Clara took one last deep, shaky breath. The overture music—a moody, minor-key cello piece recorded by a local university quartet—began to filter through the main speakers, reverberating through the floorboards beneath her slippered feet.

Beside her, Julian adjusted his cuffs one last time, taking his position near the stage right archway. Farther back, Luke stood in the gloom, a quiet, motionless shadow against the towering wooden supports of the playhouse, watching the light board attentively in case something snapped.

The red velvet curtain began its slow, squeaking ascent into the fly loft above. The stage lights blazed to life in a blinding burst of warm gold, illuminating the painted parlor floor and casting long, dramatic shadows against the back wall.

The show was starting. There was no turning back now, no more rehearsals, and no room for mistakes. Clara stepped out into the blinding light, put her hand to her heart, and prepared to play the role of her life.

The first act of Shadows in the Parlor went off without a single set falling into the lap of Evelyn Gable, which Clara considered a minor miracle.

Julian Delacroix had hit his entrance mark with appropriate flourish, though he did manage to kick the French doors hard enough to make the wooden frame shudder. Thanks to Luke Vance’s reinforced latches, the set held firm. Clara’s opening monologue had slid out of her throat with only a slight quiver on the higher vowels, and by the time the stage manager called the intermission blackout, the polite applause from the house sounded reasonably warm. It wasn’t a thunderous standing ovation, but it was far from the silence of a dying production.

Clara slipped off the bright stage and ducked around the heavy black velvet drapes into the backstage corridor, her heavy Victorian skirts rustling like dry leaves against the linoleum. The cool, damp air behind the set hit her face like a wet towel, washing away the sweltering heat of the footlights.

She leaned her back against a sturdy pine beam, closing her eyes and letting out a long, shuddering breath. Her ribs felt like they were being crushed by a iron clamp, courtesy of the tight corset Susan had laced up an hour ago.

"You dropped a line in scene three," a voice muttered from the shadows to her right.

Clara snapped her eyes open. Luke Vance was leaning against the sound rack, wiping his hands on a greasy blue rag. He was still wearing the same faded red flannel shirt, rolled up to his forearms to reveal skin decorated with a light dusting of oak sawdust and a long, faint scar near his left wrist. His amber eyes were fixed on her with that familiar, dry scrutiny that always made her feel like she was being evaluated by a building inspector.

"I didn't drop it," Clara said defensively, straightening her spine despite the tight boning of her costume. "I adapted it. The rhythm of Julian's pause was off."

"You skipped four words about the family inheritance," Luke said, tossing the rag into a nearby tool bucket. It landed with a soft thud. "Which meant the lighting crew had to hold the blue wash on the fireplace for an extra six seconds. Artie almost missed the sound effect for the grandfather clock because he was waiting for you to say the word 'midnight.'"

Clara glared at him. "Artie hit the sound effect just fine, thank you very much. And since when do you memorize the script, Luke? I thought you were only interested in the structural integrity of the floorboards."

"I don't memorize it," Luke replied calmly, taking a small screwdriver out of his back pocket and examining its tip. "I just listen. When you've been sitting under this stage for five years fixing the plumbing and patching the rigging, you hear the shows through the floorboards whether you want to or not. This script has three separate plot holes about a forged will that don't make sense, but if you skip the lines about the inheritance, it makes even less sense."

"It's a moody atmospheric thriller," Clara snapped, though her voice carried no real venom. She was too exhausted to manufacture true anger. "The audience is supposed to be swept up in the emotion, not taking notes on probate law."

"Evelyn Gable takes notes on everything," Luke pointed out. He gestured with the screwdriver toward the front of the house. "She’s got a yellow notepad in her lap. I saw her write something down right after Julian did that dramatic hand-sweep during his monologue about the estate."

Clara felt a fresh wave of panic ripple through her chest. "What was she writing? Was she smiling? Did she look disgusted?"

"She looked like she was calculating her tax returns," Luke said, leaning his heavy shoulder against the set wall. "She's a critic, Clara. That's her job. She gets paid to find the crack in the plaster."

"This playhouse is a crack in the plaster," Clara muttered, stepping closer to him so she didn't have to raise her voice over the noise of the stage crew shuffling props behind the main curtain. "If she slaughters us in the paper on Friday, Richard won't be able to pay the utility bill next month. You know that as well as I do."

Luke glanced up at the high, dark ceiling of the fly loft, where hundreds of feet of aged hemp rope hung from iron pulleys like thick cobwebs. "The building's seen worse than a bad review. It survived a fire in seventy-two and a flooded basement in nineties. Though if the board doesn't pay the electric bill, I won't have to worry about fixing the wiring in the dimmer racks."

"You really don't care, do you?" Clara looked at him with a mix of fascination and frustration. "About the art? About the theater?"

Luke paused, his sharp hazel eyes meeting hers in the dim blue twilight of the backstage area. For a second, the dry, sarcastic edge left his expression, replaced by a quiet, heavy stillness.

"I care about the building not falling down while there are three hundred people sitting inside it," he said softly. "I care about the floorboards not giving way when Julian decides to stomp his foot to prove a point. The 'art' part is your job. The 'staying alive and dry' part is mine."

Before Clara could respond, the hallway door swung open with a bang, and Julian Delacroix strode into the wing space, holding an ice pack against his collarbone. Behind him floated Richard Sterling, looking even more frantic than he had before the show started.

"It was an outrage!" Julian bellowed, his voice echoing in the high ceiling. "The temperature on stage is at least eighty-five degrees! I am sweating through a velvet vest, Richard! A velvet vest! My makeup is practically running down my neck into my cravat!"

"Julian, please, keep your voice down," Richard pleaded, hands hovering nervously in the air as if trying to physically contain the actor's noise. "The audience is right on the other side of that curtain. And the AC unit in the basement is doing the best it can."

"The AC unit sounds like a jet engine warming up on a runway!" Julian declared, tossing the ice pack to a startled production intern. "Every time the compressor kicks on during my quiet scenes, it sounds like a dying whale in the orchestra pit!"

Julian turned his sharp glare toward Luke. "Vance! Can't you make that ancient piece of junk run quietly for another forty-five minutes?"

Luke didn't even blink. He slowly tucked his screwdriver into the leather loop on his hip and folded his arms over his chest. "I can turn it off entirely if you'd prefer, Delacroix. But then the temperature on stage will hit ninety-five by the time you reach the third act, and your velvet vest will be soaked through to your skin."

Julian drew himself up to his full height, glaring down his nose at the handyman. "I am the lead actor in this company. I expect basic professional conditions."

"And I'm the guy who keeps the stage roof from leaking on your high-collared shirt," Luke said smoothly, his tone flat and unbothered. "So I suggest you drink some water and get back out there."

Julian’s face flushed red, contrasting sharply with his pale stage makeup. "Richard, are you going to allow this... this laborer to talk to your star in such a manner?"

Richard rubbed his temples vigorously, looking as though he wished the floor would open up and swallow him whole. "Julian, please. Luke is doing what he can with an ancient mechanical system. Everyone just take a breath. We have ten minutes before the curtain goes back up for act two."

Julian let out a sharp, theatrical huff, spun on his polished heel, and marched toward his dressing room, his coat tails snapping around his knees.

Richard let out a long, shuddering sigh and looked at Luke. "Can you at least kick the compressor once or twice so it stops rattling during the final scene?"

"I already kicked it twice before house opened," Luke said. "Third time might break the fan blade completely. I'll go take a look, but don't expect miracles."

Richard nodded vaguely, his eyes already scanning the floorboards for the next potential catastrophe, before hurrying off after Julian to smooth over the actor's bruised ego.

Clara watched Richard disappear down the dim hallway, then turned back to Luke, who was already picking up his heavy steel toolbox from beside the light board.

"You really don't let anyone push you around, do you?" she asked, leaning against the wooden support pillar.

Luke picked up the heavy box without an ounce of strain, his shoulder muscles flexing under the thick flannel of his shirt. "Life's too short to spend it walking on eggshells around men who wear lip stain and whine about heat," he said plainly. "Besides, if I let Julian dictate how this building is run, the whole roof would be covered in gold leaf and the basement would be full of mold."

A tiny smile slipped past Clara's guard before she could stop it. "He is a bit dramatic."

"He's an actor," Luke replied, as if that explained every flaw in human nature. "It comes with the territory."

"Hey!" Clara feigned offense, putting a hand to her chest. "I'm an actor."

Luke paused, looking her up and down—taking in the intricate Victorian gown, the pearl hairpins, and the lingering traces of panic in her dark eyes. His expression softened just a fraction, a brief flash of warmth breaking through his rugged exterior.

"You're different," he said simply. "You actually work at it. Now get ready for act two. And try not to skip the lines about the grandfather clock this time. Artie’s fingers are getting crampy on the sound board."

Before she could reply, Luke turned and headed down the creaking wooden stairs that led into the dark, labyrinthine basement beneath the stage, his boots making a steady, rhythmic thud against the steps until the noise faded entirely into the shadows.

Clara stood alone in the wing for a moment, listening to the muffled chatter of the audience on the other side of the velvet curtain. The panic that had gripped her all evening hadn't completely vanished, but somehow, the blunt, unvarnished presence of the playhouse handyman had grounded her.

She took a deep breath, adjusted the lace cuffs of her sleeve, and walked toward the stage left wing to take her position. Whatever happened in act two, the building was still standing, the latches were holding, and the show had to go on.