Maybe she was a little too involved in Dylan's life, but Lindsey knew it was because Dylan was frequently ill and she needed to monitor his health very carefully. Lindsey could only imagine how stressful that was for Joanie and her husband, Tim.

"I'm sorry, Mom," Dylan said. "But don't you want to stay and watch awhile?"

"No. I told you how I felt about your participation in this play," Joanie said. "The late hours, the stress, it just can't be good for you. I don't know why you had to go against my wishes. If you get sick, you have no one to blame but yourself."

"Mom, it's my senior year of high school, and I'm graduating at the top of my class. I just wanted to do something fun for a change," he said.

"But that woman, Violet La Rue, have you heard what they say about her?" Joanie asked. She didn't even bother to keep her voice down. "She had all sorts of tawdry affairs, and even has a child out of wedlock."

Dylan rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I know. Charlene La Rue is her daughter, and she happens to be a very successful television newscaster in her own right."

Lindsey could feel her teeth clenching hard as Joanie criticized her friends.

"That's not the point," Joanie said. "She wasn't married when she had a child. There's no excuse for that sort of irresponsibility. And don't even get me started on that Robbie Vine. You are not allowed to go anywhere near him. He's completely amoral, with a wife and a girlfriend at the same time, and he probably does drugs."

"He's not that bad," Dylan said. "He's actually very nice."

Joanie's eyes looked like they were going to pop out of her head. "You've spoken to him?" she asked.

"Just to say hello," Dylan said. "You did raise me to be polite."

"Fine, but nothing more than hello," she said. "I mean it. I won't have you mixing with these sordid people."

Lindsey had never suspected that Joanie Peet could be such a judgmental shrew. She was boggled that the woman who had raised Dylan, one of the nicest kids she'd ever had work at the library, could be so awful.

Dylan looked miserable, but he nodded his head. Lindsey watched the two of them leave. She wondered if she should have leapt to her friends' defense. But then, she sort of suspected Joanie was right about Robbie. The comments about Violet, however, really chapped her.

"Lindsey, how goes the mask?"

"Huh, what?" she asked. Lindsey turned and found Beth standing beside her. Beth was looking at her with concern.

"I think your hands are going to harden into claws," Beth said.

Lindsey looked down at the mixture on her hands. Then she glanced at the chicken wire she had been trying to wrap with the soggy newspaper strips.

"I think we can safely conclude that papier-mche is not my forte."

Beth lifted up the chicken wire, which Lindsey had molded into the shape of a donkey head.

"I don't know," she said. "I think you've almost got it."

Lindsey watched while Beth deftly dampened a few dry strips in the bowl of paste and smoothed them over the frame. She carefully folded a few more strips around the ears and managed to fill in the sad gaps that Lindsey had missed.

"There," she said. "When this dries and you paint it, it will be fabulous."

"I'd hug you, but we'd probably get stuck together forever," Lindsey said.

Beth grinned. "Come on, let's go wash up."

The bathrooms for the cast and crew were at the back of the theater near the dressing rooms. They could hear Violet's voice directing the cast on stage mingling with the set builders, who were pounding nails on the loading dock out back.

Lindsey wondered if Sully was here tonight. She hadn't seen him earlier-not that she was looking for him she reminded herself, refusing to acknowledge any disappointment.

Trying not to touch anything, they walked through the theater with their hands up in the air like surgeons. Beth pushed through the swinging door that led to the ladies' room with her hip, holding it open for Lindsey. The bathroom was empty, and they each took a sink.

Lindsey had just gotten the last of the goop off of her hands and was reaching for a paper towel when a crash sounded from the stage followed by several shouts. She and Beth exchanged surprised glances and hurried toward the sound of the commotion.

When they managed to push through the curtains at the side of the stage, Lindsey's heart caught in her throat when she saw Robbie sprawled on the ground with a large tree, saved from a previous play to be used in this show, lying across him.

His left leg was trapped and he was grimacing in pain. Lindsey and Beth hurried forward and knelt beside him while Sully and Ian tried to lift the round tree trunk off of him. As soon as they lifted it, she and Beth tugged Robbie out from underneath it.

Robbie grunted as they pulled. Violet hurried across the stage to join them as Beth and Lindsey gently helped him stand on the wooden stage.

"Robbie, are you all right? What happened?" Violet asked.

"Bloody hell! I was leaning against the tree just like we blocked it, and the next thing I knew it was falling on top of me."

Sully was kneeling by the base of the tree, checking the bottom of it. When he glanced at Robbie, he frowned.

"The base of this has been damaged," he said. "Any pressure on it and it was going to fall."

"Well, how did that happen?" Violet asked. "We used it last night and it was fine."

"It could have been damaged when it was moved earlier," Ian said. He was frowning like Sully, and Lindsey got the feeling he wasn't happy with the idea that the pieces of the set could be damaged so easily.

"Robbie!" a voice shrieked from the side of the stage. A buxom brunette came running across the stage and flung herself against Robbie who had just lowered himself into a seated position.

"Easy, Lola," he said. "You hit harder than the tree."

"Sorry," she said and sat back on her heels. "It's just-when I saw-are you all right?"

Robbie carefully moved his leg. He cringed as he bent his knee and put his foot flat on the floor.

"I think I'll live," he said.

"Ah!" The woman called Lola clapped a hand over her mouth and turned to scan the crowd. With a shaking hand, she pointed into the crowd that had gathered and said, "You did this!"

Lindsey glanced over to see Kitty, the same woman who had warned her away from Robbie, standing at the edge of the crowd with her arms crossed over her chest and a sour look on her face.

"Please," she said. "If I wanted to hurt Robbie, I'd get him in his wallet. After all, I'm still his wife while you're just his ex-girlfriend."

Lola narrowed her eyes and growled, "Only because you won't sign the divorce papers."

"Are you that desperate to have my sloppy seconds, Lola?" Kitty asked. "How pathetic."

Lola snarled and launched herself at the other woman. Before she reached her, Sully jumped forward and snatched her up around the waist while Ian blocked Kitty from engaging.

"Enough! Take them outside to cool off," Violet ordered.

"I don't need to-" Kitty began, but Violet gave her a menacing look that made her close her mouth in midsentence.

"Go," Violet said.

Everyone watched as Sully took Lola out toward the back door and Ian led Kitty out the front.

"Come on, let's see if you can stand." Violet gestured for Lindsey and Beth to help Robbie up.

Lindsey took his right while Beth took his left.

"Upsy daisy," Beth said.

Robbie put an arm around each of their shoulders, and together they got him up on his feet. He gingerly put weight on his left leg. Lindsey saw his mouth tighten, but his arm on her shoulder was light.

He took a few steps forward and Lindsey and Beth walked with him. He gave them both a quick squeeze and released them.

"Thank you, my lovely angels of mercy," he said. "I think it's just going to be bruised."

Violet was watching him and said, "I want you to have it checked by a doctor."

"Will do," he said.

"You might want to keep it elevated, and ice it to keep the swelling down," Beth said. "I think we have some ice in the machine in the concession stand."

"Excellent," Violet said. "Could you get him an ice pack, Beth?"

"And, Robbie, for the rest of tonight's rehearsal, you are chair-bound. Milton, could you grab a chair from backstage?"

Lindsey watched Robbie wince as he took a step in the direction of the side of the stage. She hurried over and took his arm and draped it over her shoulders.

"You really shouldn't push it, you know."

He looked at her and his face cleared and his dimples deepened when he grinned at her.

"How do you know I wasn't just using my prodigious acting skills to see if you cared?" he asked.

"You wouldn't!" she said.

"Wouldn't I?" he asked.

He looked at her and for a second Lindsey was sure he could see all the way into her soul. She blinked and looked away. Then she shook her head and laughed.

"You are the only man I've ever met who would use an injury as an opportunity to flirt."

He winked at her and Lindsey felt her face heat up. She was not going to succumb to his charm, she told herself, even as she realized that she genuinely liked Robbie as a person.

"Probably, you should sort out your wife-girlfriend situation before you try to add any more women to your life," she said.

He sighed. "I'm not very good with the closure portion of relationships."

"Clearly."

He looked at her and grinned. "But I'm unrivaled at beginnings."

Milton arrived at the side of the stage with two chairs, one for sitting and one for leg propping. As Lindsey helped Robbie into a chair, Beth arrived with the ice pack.

As Lindsey stepped away, she saw Sully had returned without Lola and was watching her with a frown. She felt a flash of guilt and then shrugged it off. Helping an injured man was nothing to feel guilty about.

As she went to leave the stage and go back to her worktable, Robbie grabbed her hand and raised the back of it to his lips.

"Thanks, love," he said.

Lindsey felt her face heat up again, but only because she knew that Sully was watching them. She glanced back to where Sully had been standing, but he was gone.

When she turned toward Robbie, she saw a twinkle in his eye and said, "You like trouble, don't you?"

8.

"Me?" he asked. He blinked his green eyes innocently at her.

"Yes, you," she said. She was not buying what he was selling.

Violet had rolled up his pant leg and was about to put the ice pack on his leg. When Lindsey glanced down at the knot forming on Robbie's shin, she didn't have the heart to be too mad at him. He could have been seriously injured.

Lindsey left Robbie to Violet's ministrations and went back to her donkey to see how the drying process was going. When she got back to the table, she found the mask crushed as if someone had hit it repeatedly with a fist.

Beth and Mary joined her at the table as she picked up what was left of the mask and turned it over in her hands.

"What happened?" Beth gasped.

"At a guess, I'd say someone beat the hell out of it," Lindsey said. "Probably, I should be grateful that it isn't my face."

"But who-?" Mary began and then she broke off. "Oh."

"Oh?" Beth asked.

Mary looked at Lindsey and asked, "Wife or girlfriend?"

"Could be either, but I think Ian took Kitty out this way, so my guess would be that Ian left her and Kitty came back in and exorcised some misguided rage on Nick Bottom's donkey head," Lindsey said.

She glanced at the stage, where Violet was directing Robbie, who was still sitting, Ms. Cole and Milton through their parts in Act IV. She didn't have a good feeling about what had happened with Robbie. And she really didn't have a good feeling about what someone had done to her mask. Was it a warning? Were both incidents warnings? Or was she just being paranoid?

A movement in the shadows of the entrance of the theater caught her attention. Whoever was back there was carefully making their way to the door. If this was Kitty and she thought she was going to slip out after destroying Lindsey's work, she had another think coming.