This Is How I'd Love You Read Online Free Page B

Hensley would be relegated to being a stagehand, producing the program, or acting as an usher. Her friend Marie, who was soft-spoken and hadn’t even wanted to audition for a speaking role, was cast as the disapproving grandmother. She was mortified. “Please come with me. I’ve got to get out of it. Maybe he’ll let us switch places. You’re a much better choice anyway.”
    Hensley acquiesced. And it was then that she was first able to properly assess Lowell Teagan.
    He entered the theater wearing a black hat and a beautiful black overcoat, cut slim and flattering for his tall frame. He walked past Hensley and she looked down at her feet, ashamed of the way she wanted to reach out and touch his coat just to feel it. She raised her eyes after he passed, studying his back.
    Suddenly he stopped and turned and looked directly at her as though he could read her mind. “Hensley?” he asked and walked back toward her. He lifted his hat off his head. “I hardly recognized you without that dreamy look in your eye.”
    Hensley felt herself capable of nothing but blushing hotly when he spoke to her. His face was pale and accentuated with straight black eyebrows and a thick crop of black hair. His amber eyes darted energetically about as he spoke, and then they settled, unnervingly, upon her as he spoke the last word of his sentence.
    “And Marie, is it? Our dear Granny. What can I do for you girls?”
    With a slight nudge from Hensley, Marie asked, politely, if he might assign the Old Granny to Hensley. As she spoke, Hensley watched Lowell’s eyes move quickly around the theater and then, when Marie was silent, he looked again at Hensley.
    “You want to be the Old Granny?”
    Hensley mumbled. “I’m amenable to anything.”
    “Yes, well, though that is a nice quality for a lapdog, it will not do for an actress. Marie remains our Granny. But you, Hensley, have a talent you did not share at the audition.”
    Hensley, with newly permanent crimson cheeks, did not reply.
    “You sew, I’m told. You will be our costume designer. I will need to consult with you before tomorrow’s rehearsal. Come here directly after class. Thank you, ladies,” he said and fixed his eyes toward the stage, upon which he leaped moments later, throwing his hat into the empty front row.
     • • • 
    S he decided she hated him. Anybody who could make her so perpetually flush irked her. Even as she sewed a new velvet band for her hair that night, she fumed at his condescending attitude. She intended to walk into the theater at the appointed time the next afternoon and stonewall him and his larger-than-life ego.
    And she had, in fact, stood in the aisle with her hands straight at her sides, her mother’s owl brooch pinned to her coat, and told him that if he wanted her talent, she would require total creative control. He must give her final say on all designs. She would not answer to any of the cast, nor to him.
    He was sitting with his feet propped up against the row of seats in front of him. He held her gaze and she promised herself, no matter how rude his reply, she would not blush.
    He let the noise from the hallway, the afterschool banter, fill the space between them. When he finally spoke, he said only, “Splendid.”
    Hensley had been prepared to argue, or to turn and walk away without allowing him to have the final word. Instead, she smiled.
    “Really?” she said.
    His eyes traveled from her face, across her torso, and ever so subtly to the skirt that hung tightly around her hips and fell into a puddle of pleats at the floor. “I’d be a fool to decline,” he said finally and, despite her best efforts, she blushed. “You are obviously the most fashionable girl here, or in half of Manhattan, for that matter. Did you make these clothes you’re wearing?” he asked, motioning to the full expanse of her body with his long-fingered hand.
    Hensley nodded. She felt slightly hollow, as though with that motion of his hand he had