The Private Rehearsal (Caught Up In Love: The Swoony New Reboot of the Contemporary Romance Series Book 4) Read online

  The Private Rehearsal

  Lauren Blakely

  Contents

  Also by Lauren Blakely

  About

  The Private Rehearsal

  Prologue

  1. Davis

  2. Jill

  3. Davis

  4. Jill

  5. Davis

  6. Jill

  7. Jill

  8. Davis

  9. Jill

  10. Davis

  11. Jill

  12. Davis

  13. Jill

  14. Davis

  15. Jill

  16. Davis

  17. Davis

  18. Jill

  19. Davis

  20. Jill

  21. Jill

  22. Jill

  23. Davis

  24. Jill

  25. Davis

  26. Jill

  27. Jill

  28. Davis

  29. Jill

  30. Davis

  31. Jill

  32. Jill

  33. Jill

  34. Davis

  35. Davis

  36. Jill

  37. Davis

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Lauren Blakely

  Contact

  Copyright © 2020 by Lauren Blakely

  Cover Design by Helen Williams. THE PRIVATE REHEARSAL.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. This contemporary romance is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners. This book is licensed for your personal use only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  Also by Lauren Blakely

  Big Rock Series

  Big Rock

  Mister O

  Well Hung

  Full Package

  Joy Ride

  Hard Wood

  The Gift Series

  The Engagement Gift

  The Virgin Gift

  The Decadent Gift (coming soon)

  The Heartbreakers Series

  Once Upon a Real Good Time

  Once Upon a Sure Thing

  Once Upon a Wild Fling

  Boyfriend Material

  Asking For a Friend

  Sex and Other Shiny Objects

  One Night Stand-In

  Lucky In Love Series

  Best Laid Plans

  The Feel Good Factor

  Nobody Does It Better

  Unzipped

  Always Satisfied Series

  Satisfaction Guaranteed

  Instant Gratification

  Overnight Service

  Never Have I Ever

  Special Delivery

  The Sexy Suit Series

  Lucky Suit

  Birthday Suit

  From Paris With Love

  Wanderlust

  Part-Time Lover

  One Love Series

  The Sexy One

  The Only One

  The Hot One

  The Knocked Up Plan

  Come As You Are

  Sports Romance

  Most Valuable Playboy

  Most Likely to Score

  Standalones

  Stud Finder

  The V Card

  The Real Deal

  Unbreak My Heart

  The Break-Up Album

  21 Stolen Kisses

  Out of Bounds

  The Caught Up in Love Series:

  The Swoony New Reboot of the Contemporary Romance Series

  The Pretending Plot (previously called Pretending He’s Mine)

  The Dating Proposal

  The Second Chance Plan (previously called Caught Up In Us)

  The Private Rehearsal (previously called Playing With Her Heart)

  Stars In Their Eyes Duet

  My Charming Rival

  My Sexy Rival

  The No Regrets Series

  The Thrill of It

  The Start of Us

  Every Second With You

  The Seductive Nights Series

  First Night (Julia and Clay, prequel novella)

  Night After Night (Julia and Clay, book one)

  After This Night (Julia and Clay, book two)

  One More Night (Julia and Clay, book three)

  A Wildly Seductive Night (Julia and Clay novella, book 3.5)

  The Joy Delivered Duet

  Nights With Him (A standalone novel about Michelle and Jack)

  Forbidden Nights (A standalone novel about Nate and Casey)

  The Sinful Nights Series

  Sweet Sinful Nights

  Sinful Desire

  Sinful Longing

  Sinful Love

  The Fighting Fire Series

  Burn For Me (Smith and Jamie)

  Melt for Him (Megan and Becker)

  Consumed By You (Travis and Cara)

  The Jewel Series

  A two-book sexy contemporary romance series

  The Sapphire Affair

  The Sapphire Heist

  About

  From #1 New York Times bestselling author Lauren Blakely comes a scintillating forbidden romance between a director and his actress…

  The first rule of directing is simple: Never fall for your leading lady.

  The second? Don’t let it get to you when she stage kisses another man.

  Looks like I’ve already broken both. Now my jealous, possessive heart wants all of her – the ingenue who’s the star of my next show. I’m captivated by her raw talent, her addictive charm, and her desperate need for me.

  Soon we’re staying late in the empty theater, our private rehearsals spiraling into forbidden territory.

  Exactly where I can’t go. Because then I’d break the most dangerous rule of all.

  Don’t give her your heart.

  Because how can I be sure that what she feels is real and not a part of the play?

  Author’s Note: The Private Rehearsal was previously titled Playing With Her Heart. It has been significantly revised and updated. I hope you enjoy this new edition of one of my first novels!

  The Private Rehearsal

  By Lauren Blakely

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  Prologue

  Jill

  There’s a magic moment in the theater, when the lights go down and you know that when they come up, you’ll be a different person. I leave my past backstage and enter the scene as my character, and I’m self-assured and brave. I share a lingering look with
the handsome man across the crowded room, then I turn away to mingle with the other guests. I don’t go far before a hand brushes my shoulder. I shudder. Close my eyes. Feel him near me. Everything else fades away, and we’re the only ones there. He kisses me. I kiss him back, feeling the kiss in every cell—deep, and fevered, and possessive. My head spins because my character is falling head-over-heels. I am that woman on the stage, and I can have what she has, know what she knows. Love without reason. Love without fear.

  For two hours, in that world under the spotlights, I’m living someone else’s life.

  Then the play ends, the curtain falls, and I am back to being me. I come down from my high still wanting, missing something that was only pretend. I’ll need another play, another character to become before I feel this way again.

  The curtain rises to applause, and I take my bow, saying goodbye to the character, to the kiss, to love that only happens in stories and make-believe.

  At least, I’ve always thought so.

  1

  Davis

  She has my attention the moment she steps onto the stage at the St. James Theater, but when I hear her sing, I know she’s my Ava.

  After the opening bars from the accompanist, she doesn’t launch into the solo—she floats into it with a tremulous, vulnerable quality that gives me chills. Her voice strengthens as emotions swell to match the lyrics, playing out the story in the music: a young woman on her own, searching for the way to reach her dream and finally finding it through pain and patience and heartache.

  When she builds to the final chorus, I don’t think—I only feel. Her voice has arms that stretch to encompass the empty house and fingertips that tendril far up to the balcony. It mesmerizes with color and texture, with layers of hope and hurt. So does this actress as she embodies the song and story, pouring out the character’s emotions.

  I rest my elbows on my thighs, my hands clasped together, seeing only her from my seat in the second row. I want to hold on to this moment, this feeling of being the director who discovers the next big star, because it comes around so rarely.

  She has it all, everything I want, and something more. It’s in the way she carries herself on stage, unaware of her own sex appeal. At first glance, she’s all innocent blonde, but catch her eye and there’s a torch singer sensuality in her gaze. That’s what I need. That’s what I want.

  She’s going to bring down the house. She’s going to make the audience cry and cheer. She’s going to make them want her.

  And she’s absolutely fucking beautiful, which sure as hell doesn’t hurt.

  When she finishes, I want to stand up, clap, and announce to everyone else here that she’s been cast in this love story. But I restrain myself. “Thank you. Now, the scene and song with Mr. Carlson.”

  Patrick Carlson, already cast as the lead in Crash the Moon, jumps from the red upholstered chair next to me. He’s here at the final auditions, along with the producer and Frederick Stillman himself, the most revered composer in the last quarter-century. Stillman’s collected armfuls of awards for Best Musical. Actors fall all over themselves to star in his shows, and directors fawn at his feet.

  I would have prostrated myself for the chance too, if I’d had to.

  I’ve won three Tonys, received an Oscar for my only film, and—maybe more to the point—my Broadway shows have all made a return on their investors’ dollars. But it felt like the pinnacle of success when, six months ago, Stillman called my cell one fine afternoon and said he was offering the directing job to me, only me, and no one but me.

  I said yes on the spot.

  Now I want to say yes to her.

  2

  Jill

  The floorboards creak at center stage in the St. James Theater. I didn’t notice while I sang, but now I focus on that surreal detail so that I stay in the moment.

  This moment is all I want.

  Everything I’ve done in my twenty-three years has led me to this gem of a Broadway house.

  Every vocal lesson and every acting class.

  Every script I learned and every memory I plumbed for authentic emotion to pour into a scene.

  But more than anything, it’s the five marathons I’ve finished. That discipline keeps me from freaking out as Patrick Carlson joins me under the spotlights. With the stage lit and the house down, I can barely make out the powers-that-be in their seats. There’s the silhouette of the hotshot director Davis Milo in the second row, along with the producer, and, beside him, Frederick Stillman himself, who composed this anthemic musical. I’d volunteer for the Hunger Games to get a role in something he’s created, but fortunately all I have to do is nail this scene with the male lead.

  Who is Patrick Carlson, the man I’ve loved from afar the last six years.

  So, I draw on the same stores of willpower that keep me focused for twenty-six miles—blinders on so I can ignore how Patrick is the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen. It’s his magnetic stage presence as much as his looks. In college, when I skipped class to catch a matinee of Rent to watch him play Roger, or Wicked to see him as Fiyero, he’d mesmerized me all the way up in the cheap seats, and now, close up . . .

  I am a professional, for God’s sake. And when I take a deep, diaphragm-stretching breath and let it out, I’m not even that.

  I’m not Jill, working actress, auditioning for her first Broadway role, and he is not Patrick, slaying audiences with talent and charisma six nights a week. This is not a brightly lit stage in an antique gold auditorium, surrounded by high-flying balconies and almost 1,600 empty seats.

  This is the best art school in the country. I am Ava, a twenty-two-year-old painter without a family, and my teacher, Paolo, is a mercurial and world-renowned artist.

  He steps behind me, wordlessly studying the work Ava has just finished. My shoulders are tense; Paolo’s critique could crush her. He breathes a thoughtful hmm as he moves his attention from the art to the artist. He places his hands on my arms then runs his palms sensuously from my wrists to my shoulders.

  “You must let go, Ava. You try too hard to make your paintings perfect. You need to make them you.”

  I nod, breathless, speechless, because this man Ava has admired, looked up to, is touching her. He brushes my hair away from my neck, and I tilt my head, letting him trace a fingertip along the vein in my neck. Then, before my eyes drift closed, I remember that I’m a good girl, that I don’t do this, and I jerk away.

  “I am only here to learn,” I say primly.

  He narrows his eyes. “I am teaching you.”

  Ava knows he’s not, wants to say he’s out of line, even though his touch feels so good to this young woman who has known too little good in her life. Ava’s not ready for this, and the accompaniment comes in as Ava wheels on Paolo, fire in her eyes, and lashes out with the first sung line in a heated duet.

  “You don’t have permission to lay your hands on me.”

  He plays the gentleman, surrendering, but with a mocking half-bow. “Forgive me. I only touch you as your teacher,” he sings, in a soft but powerful tenor that could melt igloos.

  “That’s not teaching.”

  “Then find your own way to paint.”

  He stalks off and Ava breaks away and sings roughly of how this man makes her crazy with his demands—her brushstrokes are too controlled, her head is too much in the way, she needs to throw her body into the act of painting. And I hate it, and him, because he feels like the one thing that stands between true creativity and me.

  I sing an angry lament, a furious plea to the universe to show me a way to leave. But there is no place else, no one else. All I have is my art, and he’s the only one who can make it better.

  Make me better.

  And he is leaving.

  Ava detests solitude, even though it’s the thing she knows best. I rush across the empty classroom after him. He’s nearly off-stage, and I grab his shirt. He stops and gives me a look—satisfaction and curiosity.

  “I see you’ve changed your
mind . . .”

  I drop my squared shoulders in resignation to Ava’s reality. I was born to be an artist and will only succeed with him. “I need you, Professor.”

  “Don’t call me professor.”

  “What should I call you?”

  He casually runs a strand of my hair through his fingers. “Don’t call me. Kiss me.”

  He lets the strand fall and I grab him, bestowing a hard, wet kiss on his lips.

  Patrick’s lips. Paolo’s lips.

  He tastes divine. Paolo. Patrick. My teacher. The actor I idolize. They all collide—reality, make-believe, years of crushing, a moment of pretending. I don’t know if the way I feel right now comes from me or from Ava, but before I open my eyes, before I hear “end scene,” I know we have crazy chemistry, the kind that can’t be faked.