Page 4 of The Claiming of the Shrew (Fated Mountain Lodge #4)

But instead, she looked amused—and somewhat charmed, though he tried not to read too much into it. “Did you have a plan for this night walk, or are you just wandering?”

He did have a plan, which he absolutely could not put into effect accompanied by Leah. “Wandering,” he said.

“Do you want to wander through our work area? I can show you what backstage looks like at night.”

There was nowhere on earth he would rather be. “Lead on,” he said.

Leah headed off at an angle through the grounds, passing in and out of inky black shadows. She must be some kind of nocturnal shifter, Fawkes thought, following her; she hardly seemed to notice the dark. Or maybe she simply was just that fearless.

She might turn into a bear, for all he knew.

They went into the woods, where fairy lights had been strung up between the trees, providing some relief from the islands of pitch darkness between the lights of the tents and campsites.

Fawkes couldn’t help admiring Leah’s grace and silence in the dark, especially on crutches. The woman was a natural-born sneaker.

Which, he reminded himself, was potentially relevant to his entire purpose for being here.

“Have you been up here with the theater company the whole time?” he asked. “I don’t remember seeing you around before.”

“No, I just got here. I’m the effects coordinator, as well as Peter Pan’s understudy, and they didn’t really need me for the initial setup and rehearsals.”

“Peter Pan, is that the play?”

Leah turned to look at him, the fairy lights playing across her face as she moved. “You didn’t know that? Why are you here, anyway?”

“Working weekend,” he choked out.

“What do you do?” Leah asked promptly.

“Gig work. Very boring. I mostly stay inside with my computer.” He didn’t even have a computer with him, so hopefully she wouldn’t check. Change the subject, change the subject ... “What do you do? No wait, you told me. Special effects.”

“Not as a career,” Leah said. “Though I’d love to.

But it’s tough to make a living at it, especially in theater.

I do gig work. In fact, that’s the main reason I’m up here so much later than everyone else.

It’s true that I’m not vital to the production, but I also had to wrap up a stint at a call center. ”

“Of course you’re vital to it,” Fawkes said defensively. “You can’t have Peter Pan without special effects. Otherwise you’d just have Peter Pan—walking on the ground, I guess? Or sailing on a rope into a tree.”

Leah giggled. “That’s Tarzan. Oooh.” Her face became rapt. “Tarzan as a production in the woods would be amazing. Or The Lion King . I wonder if they’ve given any thought to doing this again next year.”

She was incredible when she was fascinated with something. Fawkes found himself riveted, watching the play of mobile, ever-changing expressions on her face.

Well, obviously you’re fascinated, you nitwit, she’s your mate.

Probably.

He wondered if it was possible to just casually remark on that. When I said you weren’t my mate, I actually meant you WERE my mate . Which she probably knew anyway—probably? possibly?—because there was every chance she had an inner animal telling her the same thing ...

Leah darted away again, whipping along on her crutches with absolute lack of concern for roots and other obstacles.

As Fawkes hurried to catch up, she started talking over her shoulder.

“Okay, so the reason why we went with Peter Pan for our production is because we thought it would be an absolutely amazing one to do in the woods. Have you ever been to an outdoor Shakespeare play? That’s our model for what we’re doing here, and in fact we did kick around the idea of doing A Midsummer Night’s Dream , but outdoor Pan effects and a pirate ship battle just seemed so fun.

It really gets your inner kid excited, you know? ”

“It does,” Fawkes said, captivated by the vivid kinetic energy of her body language when she was excited. Her enthusiasm flowed through her whole body. He’d never seen anything like it.

“So here’s the Darling house.” She gestured, and Fawkes was puzzled: it was just trees, with something that looked like fat white cords dangling from their tops, and some tarp-covered lumps.

“Uh, there’s not much to see yet, sorry.

So we’re hanging up these sheets, they’re rolled up now so they don’t get tattered or soggy with the weather, to make the space feel enclosed and indoors, in contrast to the wide-open spaces of Neverland which are using the natural woods.

That was my idea, and I’m super proud of it.

” She sparkled at him, and Fawkes stumbled on a tree root.

“But you can’t really get the full effect without unrolling the sheets, which I think we won’t do tonight. ”

She pointed up at ropes dangling from the trees.

“The sheet walls have scenery painted on them, even the windows, except the window that Pan comes through, which is obviously open. And then when they fly off to Neverland, the ropes are rigged so we can drop the walls all at once, and suddenly you’re outdoors and the set is all around you. Neat, huh?”

“It really is,” Fawkes said, looking up at the treetops framed by fairy lights.

“I’ve never been much of a guy for live theater, but I’m looking forward to watching it.

” And he was—not least because he looked forward to seeing Leah’s energy and enthusiasm in her onstage presence. “What part are you playing?”

Unexpectedly, her energy deflated and she seemed to close down on herself.

“Oh—well, I’m not going to be in the actual play, at least unless Gloria, that is, Peter Pan, literally breaks a leg or something.

I’m strictly a behind-the-scenes gal. But!

” she went on, as if visibly bolstering herself.

“I’m going to be running around like a—uh—like a critter on a mission during the play anyway, so it’s probably just as well that I won’t also be onstage at the same time. Come here and see our pirate ship!”

With that, she was off across the edge of the Darling set, while Fawkes followed and tried to tamp down on his instinctive reaction to immediately tear off to the theater company director and get her a part.

It was her play, she was presumably happy enough with the outcome, and it was definitely clear that she was invested in the production, onstage part or not.

The pirate ship was eerie in the half-dark, a half-glimpsed framework of scaffolding and ropes, framed against the evocative twinkle of the fairy lights. It did actually feel like Neverland, Fawkes thought.

His animal was delighted with the darkness and all the crevices; it wanted to shift and run off to explore immediately. Fawkes kept a firm mental grip on it.

“The Lost Boys’ hideout is over here—there’s not much to that part of the set, it’s basically just cardboard props and trees,” Leah was saying.

“The pirate ship is what we’ve really poured a lot of work into because there’s going to be quite a lot going on around it special-effects-wise.

People will be flying, so there’s a scaffolding for that, which is part of the ship’s rigging, and we’ll have explosions, well, smoke and firecrackers, and a crocodile. ”

“How are you doing the crocodile?”

“Oh, that’s just Stacey,” Leah said offhandedly.

“She’s also playing various Lost Boys, but she spends most of her time in her crocodile form.

She’ll be lurking around in the woods and occasionally snapping at people.

She’s got the best role in the play, honestly.

She’s already bitten two people during rehearsals. ”

That’s right, Fawkes thought, they’re shifters . As an urban shifter who generally tried to hide his shifting, it was a strange feeling to be around people who shifted openly.

“Are all of your theater troupe shifters?” he asked.

“Not every single person, but the handful of humans in the Menagerie all know about us, of course. And the audience will be shifters as well for the first few performances. We’re even using it in some of the scenes, like having some of the Lost Boys shift and run around in their shifted forms.”

“But you’ll have a human audience later?”

“Yeah, right now the lodge is officially ‘closed’ ...” Leah made air quotes with her fingers.

“But actually, Hester keeps it open for shifter guests during the off season. Until Memorial Day, we’ll perform for a shifter crowd, and then afterwards we’re going to open to a general audience.

We’ll have to modify the performance, of course.

Stacey will be using an articulated crocodile puppet, much less authentic than the real thing, I’m sure you’ll agree. ”

“I’m sure,” Fawkes said. He tried to keep his smile from bursting out, and failed, but Leah grinned back.

They had continued wandering through the woods as they talked, and had entered a better lit area that Fawkes realized was the campground where the cast and crew were staying.

He could see lanterns back in the woods, the lights of a couple of RVs, and the flickering glow of a bonfire. Woodsmoke tickled his nose.

“Leah!” Someone at the bonfire had just risen to their feet. From here, all Fawkes could see was a vague shape against the fire. “Is that you? Come join us!”

Leah waved back, then gave Fawkes’s arm a tug before sliding her hand back to her crutch. “Come meet the cast. This is a full service backstage tour.”

“Uh,” Fawkes said. This was not the way to keep a low profile.

But it was also an unmatched opportunity, not to mention a chance to hang out with Leah a bit more, so he came willingly.

There were about a dozen people around the bonfire, sitting on a mix of camp chairs and improvised seats such as overturned buckets. One person had brought a beanbag chair.

“Who’s your friend, Leah?” asked one of the women.

“This is Fawkes. He’s a guest at the hotel. Fawkes, this is Gloria, our star.”

Was there a hint of resentment in Leah’s tone? Fawkes pondered that as he shook hands with a pretty blonde in an oversized university hoodie.

“And this is our Captain Hook, Halstadt.”

Fawkes had no idea if Halstadt was a first or last name, but considering his own name, he had no business throwing stones from his glass house.

He shook hands. Halstadt was a tall, angular man with an eye patch and a slight shadow of tragedy to his crooked smile.

Fawkes guessed immediately that half the women in the company were probably crushing on Halstadt, and had an equally strong sense just by the way Halstadt smiled at him that none of the women were his type, period.

In fact Halstadt seemed to be one of the only men in the group.

Among the other people Fawkes was introduced to, the only other men were a boyfriend of one of the actresses, and a slouching stagehand whose name was Ralph.

Fawkes received a flurry of names, parts in the play, and relationships, and eventually stopped trying to retain it all.

He accepted a cup of hot cider, and found that he was having fun.

“So what are you up here for?” Halstadt asked.

“Work,” Fawkes said. Well, it was true.

They didn’t ask for details, and the conversation wandered on. As the actors and stagehands started heading off to bed, Fawkes made his goodbyes, and he and Leah walked off into the night.

“You’ll be there on opening night, right?” Gloria called after him.

“Oh, for sure!” Fawkes called back, although he had no idea whether or not that was true.

“They like you,” Leah said as the bonfire disappeared behind the trees.

“Was that what that was? Getting a group read on my winning personality?”

“No, I just forgot everyone was still up, that’s all.” But she said it a little too quickly.

They reached the edge of the campground, near the parking area.

The lodge was visible across the lawn and the nearly full parking lot, the lobby lights and a few lit-up windows gleaming through the dark.

It really was a beautiful place, and Fawkes regretted that he had to be here on business he couldn’t tell anyone about.

Especially with such lovely company in the dark.

Abruptly he realized that the lovely company had been left a few steps behind, and turned back to find out what had distracted her.

Leah had stopped beside a campsite containing what appeared to be a large dark lump with one end sticking up in the air.

It looked like nothing so much as a gargantuan dead bat the size of a dining room table.

“What’s this?”

“My camp,” Leah said with a sigh. For the first time, he thought he saw her bravado deflate somewhat. “I was going to finish setting up my tent later. It’s a little more complicated than I thought it would be.”

The dead bat’s true nature became clear: a partially erected tent. It was the old type with about a million metal rods that were supposed to fit into each other. Fawkes remembered struggling with a similar one on camping trips as a kid. It had been an absolute nightmare to put together.

“Want some help? I’ve done a little camping in my time, and these are usually easier with two people.”

Setting up a tent together was not exactly going down in history as the most romantic sort-of-first-date activity (not that he had any idea if she considered this a first date).

But they struggled with fitting the metal rods into place, got some pinched fingers, and ended up laughing a lot.

By the time they had her tent put up and staked into place, Fawkes felt a shared sense of camaraderie that warmed him to his core.

“Oh, that’s nice,” Leah said, admiring the result of the past twenty minutes’ struggle. “It’s bigger than I thought it would be. Do you want to, um, stay a bit? Not in the tent!” she said hastily. “I mean, we could make cocoa or something.”

“I wish I could,” Fawkes said. And he did. But the clock was running on the night. “It’s getting late, though. I ought to be going.”

“Oh,” she said, twisting her hand in her crutch. “Well, I’ll ... see you around, right? Maybe in the morning?”

“There’s one restaurant in a twenty mile radius, so I think probably we will,” he said, grinning.

Leah did a cute little crutch-assisted hop. “Okay! Good night.”

“Good night,” Fawkes said.

It was only as he walked away that he started kicking himself. He could have sat around drinking cocoa with Leah. Maybe gotten her to invite him into her tent, even.

He indulged in a wistful sigh.

And then he firmly put Leah out of his mind, or at least tried to. Now he could get down to the night’s work. Though knowing Leah was watching, he would definitely need to stay on his toes.