Once Upon A Setup (Meet Cute Romance 5)

“Anything,” Piper replied.

“Well, tell me what you want to dream about, and I’ll know what to give you.”

The pause stretched out as Myles waited for her to return the line. “Oh, what’s that?” she asked.

His Betty’s brain was not at all on the task at hand. She kept glancing out at the loading dock, where Tucker and Brody were horsing around, fencing with PVC pipe and egging each other on in assorted accents. Did she have a thing for Tucker? Maybe he was the reason she had that rule about not dating your costars. Certainly he’d been around the theater almost as long as she had. But Myles simply hadn’t gotten that vibe between them.

“I got a whole big theory about it. Different kind of food makes for different kind of dreams. Now, if you have a ham and cheese on rye, you’ll dream about a tall, cool blonde. Peanut butter and jelly, you get a nice comfortable, average Joe. And a turkey on wheat with barbeque potato chips sandwiched in will get you a shape-shifting marmoset from Pluto.”

Not even a flicker of response.

“It’s a little chilly in here, isn’t it?” she returned.

Yep, that confirmed it. Head totally not in the game.

As Myles started to speak, he caught a flash of Tucker leaping off the loading dock in some kind of spin kick.

“Tucker!” Piper screamed and raced to where he now lay, curled in a ball, arms wrapped protectively around his leg, swearing a blue streak.

Myles was right behind.

Piper crouched down, voice brisk and efficient. “Let me see.”

Red-faced and faintly breathless, Tucker didn’t want to unbend. “It hurts. Christ, it hurts.”

“

What happened?” Nate demanded, coming out from the stage doors.

“We were just fooling around,” Tucker groaned. “Doing spin kicks off the back of the truck.”

Tyler crouched on his other side, rubbing his back in a soothing gesture. “You are aware you aren’t twenty-one anymore?”

“Brody can still do it.”

Over Tucker’s head, Tyler fixed Brody with a glare that placed all the blame squarely on him.

He held his hands up in a How could I have known? gesture.

“It’s broken,” Piper announced. “I can feel the bump in the bone.”

“It can’t be broken,” Tucker argued. “I have to dance.” He tried to stand, using Brody and Piper to lever himself up. But the moment he put weight on it, the leg buckled and he howled.

“Get him in my back seat,” Piper ordered. “I’ll take him to the emergency room.”

“I don’t wanna to go the ER.”

“Then you shouldn’t have broken your leg on a Saturday,” she said practically.

Tucker looked miserably at Nate. “Sorry. I would never have tried it if I didn’t think I could pull it off.”

Nate scrubbed both hands over his red and gray beard, as if he could somehow rewind the last few minutes. “It’s all right. You just get yourself taken care of. This is why we have understudies.”

Tyler went pale at that.

“Somebody take him. I’ll go get my car.”

Myles stepped in. “Here, let me.” He swapped positions with Piper, taking Tucker’s weight.