Theater of Engagement: Love at the Mountainside Theater

By Kat Samuels

A fake engagement to the one person they've been dreaming about forever, all to avoid a debt? Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

 

Caleb Adarsh Joshi is focused on one thing: building his acting career. Already the star of a well-respected British detective series, he's finally getting noticed by Hollywood. The last thing he needs is for his grandmother to demand that he go look into the money she loaned out to help start a theater decades ago, especially when it means coming face-to-face with the woman of his dreams.

 

Valeria Pasamonte has only one concern: her students at her summer stock/teaching theater in the mountains of North Carolina. All dreams of an acting career have been perfectly rechanneled to avoid thinking about the rejections she knows she'd get for being plus-sized and Hispanic in a size-00, white acting world. But when Caleb arrives, she knows he must be coming for the money her family has never repaid, all of which is sunk in the theater, with nothing to give away.

 

When Caleb suggests a fake engagement to distract his grandmother, it seems like a perfect answer to their troubles, especially as they can't seem to stop finding themselves in very intimate situations. But the longer they're together, the more they have to admit that they'd like to make this permanent. Still, can Valeria stand the heartache of a front-row seat to a brilliant career which she can never have herself?

 

They've got one week to decide whether this can work--or go back to the solitary lives they aren't so sure they can bear anymore.

 

This funny, steamy, multicultural, new adult, fake engagement rom-com will have you rooting for both passionate love and the perfect career. It's Book 1 in the Love at the Mountainside Theater series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Katherine Gilbert
• Release date: Nov 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201498818

Book preview

Also by Kat Samuels

Seasons (a steamy, second chance, seasoned romance)

Ghosts of the Past (a steamy, new adult romantic suspense novel with a touch of the paranormal)

Garden of Delights (a steamy, multicultural, college rom-com)

Beyond the Next Breath (a steamy, interracial, reverse age-gap romantic suspense tale)

Dedications

As always, to my sister Armida, with thanks for her constant encouragement and support. In her own words, she liked this novel despite the fact that it’s a romance. High praise, indeed.

Author’s Note

As this is the story of Valeria and Adarsh’s romance, it is told in both of their perspectives. Please be prepared for chapters to switch back and forth between viewpoints, so you receive a fuller vision of their love story.

Chapter 1

Rules of the Mountainside Theater—Rule #1: There are no guests here. Everyone who stays pull their own weight.

For Caleb Joshi, living meant three things: 1) Get to the next gig on time. 2) Give every new role everything you’ve got, even if it’s something not even the director cares about. 3) Don’t get distracted. Ever. By anything.

To his mind, this current detour was breaking all three of these rules.

Sighing, he squeezed his long form out of his gnat-like, orange rental car and headed toward the front doors of the rather rustic and oversized relic of a wooden theater, complaining to his oldest friend on his cell all the way.

Seriously, Andrew, I only stopped by Gran’s to let her know I’d be out of the country for a few weeks. I didn’t do it to get sent on a fool’s errand.

As usual, Andrew just laughed. Apparently, he was waiting for the next scene to begin, but—unlike Caleb—that didn’t mean focusing on character and staying in the moment. It meant looking for anyone and anything to distract him and keep him from being bored.

And HE’s the one who always gets the nominations. Life really isn’t fair.

"C’mon, Cal. You knew your grannie was going to stick you with this place for years now. Ever since you were a kid, you knew the turnover date was coming. Is it really any surprise that she finally stuck your bum on a plane and forced you to go look at it?"

Feeling seriously aggrieved, Cal sighed.

The building was odd—kind of a log cabin on steroids with a dream of going on the stage. It was a couple of stories tall and stretched on for quite some way. He supposed the wing out to the side with all the windows was where the offices and dorms were. While it had clearly been lovingly kept up, it was also obviously not new. But, as little as he wanted to admit anything except how peeved he was at being here, it did have an air of warmth and invitation.

But this didn’t make it any easier to get into.

He’d already tried the double front doors of what was clearly the theater—which were quite tall and, he had to admit, had been very impressively carved, with images of comedy and tragedy masks, scripts, and clapping hands—but they were either locked or stuck, so he was forced to mooch around, seeking either another entrance or someone to ask. All the while, he continued his complaints.

What in God’s name am I supposed to do with some dried-up old summer stock theater? And in the middle of nowhere, yet?

Trailing along the front of the building, also built out of the local lumber . . .

And which is sort of pretty in a woodworm kind of way, he admitted only to himself.

. . . it took him a while to get to the side over the rock-strewn dirt parking lot in front. For being so homemade, it was quite huge.

Honestly, who’s even heard of North Carolina outside of childhood geography lessons?

Becoming more annoyed the further he had to walk, he groaned.

And it’s not even in a city! I had to fly into some backwater town called Asheville and then drive forever onto some parkway and then through a bunch of hick towns and . . .

At this point, he came around the side and stopped.

The Mountainside Theater was built, appropriately, on the side of a mountain in the Blue Ridge range. He’d known this, but, as he came up closer and looked down, there were just beautiful, green mountains as far as he could see. One after another, they stretched on, covered with millions of trees.

He tried very hard not to admit he was captivated.

The air, too, was pure and clear and abundant and didn’t smell anything like the muck he’d gotten used to in London. Below, he saw a hawk or two circle slowly by, and a monarch butterfly fluttered up and rested on his shoulder.

Trying his absolute hardest not to be charmed out of his peevish mood, he grunted, Okay, it’s sort of pretty, I’ll grant you.

Clearly understanding, Andrew chuckled again. Unfortunately, the man knew him much too well. They’d met as background artists on the set of a magical school movie when they’d been all of eight or nine, had continued on through acting school together, and every triumph or failure along the way had been shared.

Still staring, Caleb barely took in his friend’s advice.

Look, Cal. You’ve known since you were born this was coming. Your grandmother’s deal with Val’s grandmother was always going to come due sometime in your twenties.

Grunting, Caleb refused to agree and continued to be unwillingly enraptured by the endless mountains.

And, if I remember correctly, when you met her before, you were quite fond of her.

Sighing, he couldn’t disagree, but still . . .

She was all of four years old when I met her, if you’ll remember. That doesn’t exactly tell me a lot.

Although, he failed to admit, the image of that little girl doing forward rolls across his grandmother’s living room—her dark curls going everywhere—had later turned into his semi-stalking of her Facebook and Instagram. Apparently, her parents had put her youthful energy to work, which had eventually ended with her winning a gymnastics scholarship to some local university.

He also didn’t admit that he had watched every one of their meets the school had posted.

A part of his mind defended himself. Not admitting to feelings is every British man’s God-given right.

He might be British Indian, but his deceased, very British grandfather on his mother’s side was enough to give him a claim, not to mention the several generations the Joshis had lived in England, too.

Still, he could nearly see Andrew rolling his eyes.

C’mon, Cal. You’ve been half in love with her since you were eight. You’re hardly there to play the cruel landlord and turn her out now.

While Caleb sighed, he knew this was true. But it did leave open the rather uncomfortable issue of the money.

Over sixty years ago now, his grandmother had loaned it to hers, with a proviso that, if it wasn’t repaid by the time her grandson was a grown man, the theater would revert to his ownership.

It was a very weird deal, nothing he’d asked or had time for, but he’d known about it forever. And, though the building was clearly being kept up, nothing here was fresh or new—all of it speaking to the fact that there probably wasn’t extra cash to hand over.

You know what I’ve suggested all along, Andrew went on, and Caleb seriously considered hanging up before he heard it again. Just marry her. Problem solved.

While Caleb knew this was probably true, it all seemed rather cold-blooded. Perhaps he’d long had the image of a beautiful, curvaceous, and athletic Puerto Rican-American girl dancing in his head, but he doubted if Valeria even knew who he was as anything other than a looming threat over the theater she’d clearly poured heart and soul into. And he definitely wasn’t going to be playing the evil Victorian seducer, demanding her body to pay for her debts.

As he didn’t want to argue this again, Caleb stuttered, Sor . . . Wha . . . ‘at? Br . . . ing up. Can . . . ‘ear . . . ‘u.

It was actually a fairly good performance, but Andrew wasn’t fooled.

"You know. You’re a really good actor except when you’re lying to yourself. Then you suuuuuck."

Rolling his eyes, Caleb tried again. Wha . . .? Ca . . .

Now Andrew was full-out laughing, his voice rising. "I said your acting sucks, Cal!"

Knowing it would amuse the hell out of his friend, Cal pushed the end button.

Just as he did, the butterfly fluttered off his shoulder, seemed to look at him for a moment, then flitted away.

Fine. You abandon me, too. See if I care.

Grumping to himself and having no idea at all how to deal with the weird position he was in, he set off to try to find a door he could get in and finally discovered one around the back, past a couple of outdoor showers.

Please tell me this place has indoor plumbing.

Suddenly, he had terrible visions of Appalachian outhouses.

As he made his way in, there was no one immediately around, but his senses were assaulted by all the smells and sounds of the theater which were just part of his nature. The new varnish and paint from the sets. A distant hammering. Someone’s vocal warmups. Another person reading the same line five different ways, clearly debating.

He hated to admit it, so far from where he was supposed to be, but it felt like home.

It also made it very clear why Valeria wasn’t going to be at all happy to see him.

Feeling like the grim reaper come to collect the soul of the theater, he made his way through the backstage, angling around an old set or prop or two. When he finally found the person doing vocal warmups—an attractive Asian woman—and asked for directions to the owner, she didn’t stop her warmups but did point toward the stage.

Seeing that there wasn’t a performance or rehearsal just at the moment, he made his way cautiously onstage but still didn’t see the woman he sought.

Looking around the empty stage and out into the seats, where only one or two actors or stagehands were visible—and most of them not at all interested in him—he was about to go out stage left to see if he could find her, when he heard a female voice above him.

Ah, crap. The vulture is here.

Not the least bit certain that he deserved such a moniker—although sure the term had been aimed at him—he glanced up.

There, hanging upside down from the rigging like a highly-curvaceous bat, was the woman he’d found in his dreams way too often.

Upside down, she glared at him, and he told himself it really wasn’t possible to fall in love with this girl he didn’t know at all.

Still, even at the odd angle, she was beautiful. Her long, wavy, reddish-brown hair was in pigtails, and her light green eyes glowered. She was holding onto the rigging only with her knees, clearly having just changed a bulb. Not breaking eye contact, she dumped the old lightbulb into a round cannister on a pulley. The position meant that her shirt rode up a little, giving him a view of a fair-sized, light brown stomach.

Sighing, he didn’t think she’d appreciate the fact that he wanted to kiss it.

Since she said nothing else, her arms now folded over her lovely, ample breasts, he bent over completely to