The World is a Stage by Tamara Morgan Read Free Book Online Page A

full of compliments and charm, but she was wound up tighter than a nun’s habit—and a hell of a lot less fun to talk to. I think Peterson is trying to have me killed. Oh, I’m sorry. Not Peterson. Eric. He goes by Eric now.”
    Peterson flipped him the bird before leaning heavily on his barrel, the bottom of it digging a circle into the hard-packed dirt. “It’s only for a few weeks. All you have to do is show up and volunteer to be a bouncer with me. You saw those ushers Dominic hired—there’s no way they could stop some jerk trying for a little more than a peep show.”
    It was true. But Michael was not a man to stick his nose in other people’s business.
    “Come on,” Peterson persisted. “They could use the help. I could use the company. And Molly says you’re the perfect distraction.”
    “More like the perfect sacrifice,” Michael said. “Why should I be the moving target for that woman’s rage while you and your girlfriend go make out in all those dark corners backstage?”
    “I already explained it, Mikey.” Peterson looked pained. “Molly’s sister is crazy overprotective, and she’s hell-bent on getting me out of the way. Apparently, she’s the sort of woman who will hire a private investigator…and dig up enough dirt to bury me alive. Molly says Rachel’s done it before.” His voice lowered. “You know I can’t risk stirring that up. Not with Sammy and Pris at home.”
    It wasn’t fair, and Peterson was all too aware of it, the bastard. He wouldn’t even look Michael in the eye.
    They were none of them saints, but Peterson’s sins ran a little bit deeper and darker than the rest of theirs. Michael didn’t know all the details, but there had been something across state lines in Idaho a few months ago involving Peterson’s brother, Nick, and a bar fight that sent a man to the hospital for weeks. If he remembered correctly, no arrests had been made, but not for lack of trying.
    He’d have to ask Peterson about that later.
    “Molly and I just need you to distract her sister,” Peterson added. “Keep her occupied until I can find a way to win her over, explain away a few things so she won’t turn around and go batshit crazy all over my life. Please, Mikey?”
    “This girl means that much?”
    First Julian, now Peterson. His bros were falling, one by one.
    Peterson nodded, and Julian clapped him heavily on the back, sharing a look that seemed a lot like a giant pussy whip dipped in romantic comedies and trimmed with lace.  
    Turning to Michael, Julian added, “How bad can it be? All you really have to do is be nice to a woman who, according to Peterson here, is pretty fucking hot.”
    Michael perked up a little. She was pretty fucking hot. He wasn’t going to lie—he’d much rather sleep on a bed of nails with that Jillian woman than poke Rachel with a stick from a distance of a hundred feet, but he could still appreciate the finer points of a well-built woman. And it had been fun making her so angry the muscle along her temple looked like it was going to explode.
    He gave it one last try.
    “But volunteer for a naked Shakespeare play, Peterson? For a woman who wants to eat my soul and shit it out in bricks? I do have a reputation to uphold.”
    Not to mention a lively interest in keeping all his favorite parts intact.
    Julian laughed. “What reputation? This is the first time I’ve seen you near a field in weeks, and Kate says you never called back that friend of hers she set you up with. What else have you got going on right now?”
    “You can tell Kate it was not my fault,” Michael said mulishly. “That woman she set me up with only wanted me for my body. I refuse to be treated like a piece of meat.”
    He got the obligatory laughs, glad when the men’s conversation moved in the direction of an action flick they’d all been to see the day before. The sad truth of it was he wasn’t doing a whole hell of a lot of anything right now. A gentle workout that didn’t