Chapter 2

He

was startled by the sound of a car horn beside the cab. The cabbie leaned out

of his window and yelled at the nearby taxi trying to push into the queue ahead

of them. Eduardo didn’t understand the words, but there was no mistaking the

ferocity. He felt an ice-cold shiver of panic run down his back. His setback

was looking increasingly like a crisis. As soon as the man knew he didn’t have

enough money to pay the fare, Eduardo would face not merely humiliation but

serious trouble. Trouble of the yelling and gesticulating kind—the kind Eduardo

hated. Or maybe even trouble of the physical hurting kind. Like a hot-headed

Stanley Kowalski, the cabbie wouldn’t listen to reason, but would turn and grasp

Eduardo by the throat, shaking him like a rag doll, perhaps in the hope of a

shower of coins falling out of his jeans pockets.

“You’d

better let me out here,” he called through the transparent screen. He could

walk the rest of the way, though it may be more of a run at this rate. He

thought he’d left plenty of time to get to the audition, but it was already a

tight thing. A cab ride was always a hideous expense, but he’d been sure it’d

give him a better chance of getting across town in time. What lunacy had

possessed him? He should know the London traffic better than that—he’d lived in

that miniscule flat in Clapham for long enough.

He

thrust his handful of money at the driver with all the confidence he could

muster, and scrambled out of the cab. The uneven cobbles tripped him, and he

bumped into a couple of tourists as he tried to right himself. Now he needed to

scarper, and fast, before the cash was counted and the shortfall discovered. In

his mind, he saw himself turn and run like the wind, like the Chariots of Fire

opening sequence, though not in slow motion, of course, and without the benefit

of proper sports clothing because he was in his audition gear, that is,

trousers a little too tight since Christmas, and his favourite jacket that was

always going to be too hot for this time of year—

A

hand landed on his arm before he’d taken the first leap forward from the

imaginary sound of the starting pistol.

“It’s

not enough,” the cabbie said. He’d followed Eduardo out of the cab.

Eduardo

looked into deep, dark brown eyes set under heavy brows. The man’s skin was

dark, his jaw line and upper lip covered by similarly dark hair. Eduardo

couldn’t get away from the darktheme, and he wasn’t thinking of his

preferred type of boyfriend. The grip on his arm was tight and the cabbie

obviously wasn’t letting him go.

“I’m

late for an appointment,” Eduardo said. That wasn’t a tremble in his voice, was

it? “You must let me go. At once.”

“No,”

the cabbie said. His voice was strangely calm, but the deep tone made him sound

so much more assertive than Eduardo. Eduardo felt a warm, roiling feeling in

his gut. He was trapped! It was like one of the new breed of police thrillers,

the hero chased to the end of a dank, pitch black alley, then turning to face

his erstwhile attacker with nothing to defend himself except…

Eduardo

tightened his grip on his messenger bag. As if that were going to protect him,

as if his copy of The Complete Stanislavsky Toolkit could be used as a club, as

if a selection of emery boards or his smartphone stylus could possibly morph

into his own personal lightsaber. No, he was trapped, alone, defenceless, and

hidden in the depths of gangland—

Except,

actually, he was pressed back against the side of a London black cab in broad

daylight in one of the most populated tourist areas. Even so, the trapped

feeling persisted. The cabbie’s chest was broad and his biceps bulged out from

under a tee shirt that had presumably shrunk in the wash. His throat was

sinewy, and hair from his chest curled up and over his low neckline. With a

further frisson of shock, Eduardo realised he was forced back against a flat

surface by a positive bear of a man. Delicious. His libido was liable to

wake up and lick its lips, although Eddy would have kicked himself at this

inappropriate reaction if he thought his legs could work normally. Instead, his

whole body was shaking and he felt more than a tad nauseous.

“Please,”

he said. “I must go.” How long did he have until the audition closed its doors?

Would they still see him if he were beaten and bruised, maybe even bleeding? He

wasn’t sure that was acceptable for a revival of one of Noel Coward's mannered

social commentaries.