Sandra's Classics - The Bad Boys of Romance - Boxed Set (67 page)

‘And hardly any of it the truth,’ he said.

‘Is Princeton the truth?’

‘Yeah, Hard believe, right? Me, a music major at a place like that...’

‘Easy to believe, after seeing you play with the Ma
rauders last week.* She blushed again and he smiled.

‘That’s nice,’ he said softly.

‘What?’

‘That blush. I didn’t think women did that anymore.’

To her horror, she felt the color in her cheeks heightening.

‘An inherited trait,’ she said lightly. ‘All the women in my family blush. My mother, my aunts, my cousins...’

Cade laughed. ‘And where are these hordes of blushing females? How come they haven’t taken America by storm?’

Shannon
rose and padded across the room. ‘They’re back home in Kansas,’ she said, refilling her glass.

‘Waiting for you to win an Emmy or a Tony or an Oscar?’

Waiting for me to give all this up as a bad idea and come home,’ she laughed. ‘I think they’ve heard too many stories about starving in the name of art. Would you like more wine?’

Cade nodded and held his glass out to her. ‘It’s true, though. For every musician making a living, there must be fifty who aren’t.’

‘Is that why you didn’t stay with classical guitar?’

‘
The money?’ he asked and she nodded. ‘No, it wasn’t that. Well, it was, at the beginning... Are you sure you want to hear this?’

‘If you want to tell me.’

He sighed and sat back against the couch cushion.

‘I was a scholarship student, which meant I was broke most of the time. I started playing at clubs near school on weekends—my own stuff, mostly—and after a while I realized that I’d always love classical guitar but, I don’t know, there’s a reality to other music...’ He
drank some wine. ‘How’s that sound? Pompous? Pretentious? Trite?’

‘Honest,’ Shannon answered, smiling at him. ‘I just wish there were as much reality in the soaps. But then, who would watch them?’

‘Yeah,’ Cade said with a sigh, ‘I noticed. My character—Johnny Wolff—seems awfully one-dimensional. Nobody can be that evil.’

‘Alana Dunbar can,’ Shannon said. ‘My girl’s a cold, calculating shark. In fact, the first time she really thaws is... is when she meets Johnny.’

‘Ah yes, back to today’s horror show. I don’t know if I’ll ever get that scene right. I told Jerry...’

‘It wasn’t your fault, Cade. I never even gave you a chance to say your lines, but tomorrow, I...’

‘Does the entire population of Manhattan always stand around watching a rehearsal? I’m not sure I want a chance to get to my lines tomorrow if it means every adult this side of the Continental Divide will be leering at us. I kept expecting someone to sell popcorn.’

Shannon let her breath out and slumped down on the couch beside him.  ‘So much for paranoia,’ she muttered.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I told Claire—my agent—virtually the same thing and she said I was crazy. But I knew I wasn’t. I’ve never seen an audience like that at a rehearsal.’

‘Well, that’s because it wasn’t an audience. It was a bunch of gawking idiots, waiting to see me make an ass of myself.’

‘What?
No. That wasn’t it at all. Those people...’

He sprang to his feet and stalked across the room. ‘Come on, Shannon, we both know that those people think of me as an intruder.’

‘An intruder?’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘You know what I mean. All those actors and technicians, watching me, knowing I got a chance some of them would give their right arms for.’ He took a deep breath and swung around to face her. ‘I don’t blame them for wanting to see me mess up
.’. Shannon rose from the couch and walked towards him.

‘Cade,’ she said gently, ‘you don’t understand. Those people weren’t there to see you fail. They heard about... about what happened the day we met, you see, and about all the things people said about it, and...and...’ She took a deep breath. ‘They want to see us together,’ she said finally. ‘They want to see if what they’ve heard is true.’

He looked at her blankly. ‘What they’ve heard?’

Her eyes narrowed. If he’s playing games with me, she thought, if he’s putting me on... But Cade was looking at her as if she were speaking another language. My God, she thought, is he so ter
rified of failing that he thinks the whole world is watching him?

‘Sparks, remember?’ she said with false brightness. ‘They want to see if the room lights up when we play our love scenes.’

‘If the room...’ His eyes widened. ‘Really? Is that what they’re waiting for?’ She nodded her head and a smile lit his face. ‘Damn it, that’s terrific!’

‘
There’s nothing terrific about it. I don’t want to burst your bubble, Cade, but those people are going to be very disappointed.’

‘That’s it,* he said, flashing her a quick, uncertain smile. ‘Give me a vote of confidence and then snatch it back. I thought you said they weren’t waiting to see me fall on my face.’

‘My, what an ego we have, Mr. Morgan. Didn’t you hear me? Those people are watching us, not just you. I’m the one who’s supposed to be the pro.’ She laughed shakily. ‘Hasn’t it occurred to you that no matter how well we play that scene, it’s not going to be good enough?’

‘I wish to hell I’d known all this before,’ he said softly. ‘I’d have told you there isn’t a thing to worry about.’

‘Of course there is. It’s as if everybody’s forgotten we’re acting. They’re bound to be disappointed.’

Cade took the empty glass from her hand. She watched as he set it on the table.

‘Let me show you something,’ he said, twining his fingers through hers.

‘Show me what?’ Her voice was wary, but she let him draw her toward him.  ’

‘Nobody’s going to be disappointed,’ he said. ‘Not Jerry, not that crowd of gawkers...’

Her heart thumped erratically. ‘No, don’t...’

‘Not anybody, Shannon. I guarantee it.’

His eyes were narrow slits of blue darkness and his fingers steel clamps around hers. She shook her head, her body tensing instinctively as the space between them lessened until finally they were only a breath apart.

‘Cade, please...’

His hand tangled in the cascade of her hair as he bent his head to hers and her whispered plea was lost against his mouth.

For an instant she struggled against him, and then her blood grew thick in her veins. She made a sound that was half moan, half sigh and she leaned into him, burrowing into the hardness of his chest, stretching herself against the hard length of him, as if her legs might collapse under her.

His lips teased at hers, urging her to open her mouth to him, urging her to taste and be tasted, and she made soft, inarticulate sounds as she did as he demanded.

He tasted just as he had the first time he’d kissed her, she thought, only now there was the added tang of the wine on his tongue, blending with the taste  she remembered as his and his alone. She freed her hand from his and spread it on his chest; the other moved to the nape of his neck. She wanted to feel the heat from his body burning through her palm, through her fingers...

A horn blasted in the street below, shattering the stillness that had settled around them. Cade growled at the interruption, but Shannon grasped it as she would a lifeline, pulling free of his. embrace and backing away from him. Only his eyes followed her, dark indigo stones set in his face. She could feel the heat of his probing stare spreading over her skin. .

‘Why did you do that?’ she whispered.

He had a thousand answers; he had no answers. In the end, all he could do was make a half-hearted attempt at lightening the tension that had suddenly filled the room.

‘Nobody’s going to be disappointed,’ he said huskily, reaching out and running his finger across her lips. ‘Now you can relax.’.

His voice was as warm as his breath. For a fragment of eternity, her eyes closed and she swayed towards him— and then his throaty whisper sorted itself into words she could understand.

Of course, she thought, the love scene! The scene won’t be good enough, she’d said, and he’d taken her in his arms to prove her wrong.

But he’d proved more than that, she thought in sudden panic. He’d proved that he could turn her world upside down each time he touched her. And he knew it—he knew it...

The realization was frightening.

As if on cue, the doorbell rang.

‘My groceries, at last,’ she said, snatching her shoulder-bag from the table. ‘I’ll just be a minute.’ She opened the door and smiled at Mario. ‘I’m so glad to see you,’ she whispered, taking the groceries from him. His teen-aged face puckered in surprise as she pushed a ten dollar bill at him. ‘For you,’ she said. ‘And here’s the money for the groceries.’ The boy was still staring at her as she closed the door and turned back to Cade. ‘Dinner,’ she said brightly.

His eyes  met hers.

‘Shannon. We need to talk.’

‘I need to put away this stuff. You need to go home.’

‘Shannon…’

Her phony smile faded.

‘Go home, Cade.’ Her voice trembled. ‘Please.’

He looked at her for a long minute.

His hand cupped her cheek. Her lashes fluttered down; she felt the sweet whisper of his mouth over hers.

Then he was gone.

The bed squeaked ominously as Shannon eased herself down on it. ‘It’s still making funny noises,’ she called into the shadowy darkness surrounding the lighted set.

Someone chuckled in reply.

Shannon could feel her cheeks reddening, but she kept her chin up and her eyes never wavered from the spot where she knew Jerry Crawford was standing.

‘I just don’t want to waste any more time,’ she added carefully. ‘Otherwise, I wouldn’t mention it...’

‘It’s OK, Shannon,’ Crawford said. ‘It won’t collapse again.’ There was another giggle and then a soft laugh. ‘Quiet,’ Jerry barked, ‘or I’ll clear the damned set. We’ve got work to do.’

Please, Shannon thought, please, let something go right. Maybe someday she’d be able to look back at today and laugh—from the start, things had gone like a skit from Saturday Night Live—but  right now she felt closer to tears than laughter.

At nine o’clock, the mike boom had collapsed for no apparent reason. They’d no sooner fixed it than Rima the Prima had gasped and dropped to her knees. For a few panicked seconds, everybody had thought she’d had a heart attack. But it turned out that Rima had lost a contact lens, and the cast and crew had spent twenty minutes crawling around on the floor, looking for the darned thing, which, of course, they never found.

What they did find was that the famous Rima the
Prima’s emerald eyes weren’t emerald at all. Without the artificial color added by the contacts, they were a pale, near-sighted brown.

And then it had been time to rehearse
The Scene, which was how Shannon thought of it, and as the time had grown near for the first run-through, she’d felt the cold touch of panic. Who would be on that bed with Cade Morgan? Shannon Padgett or the character she was playing?

Cade’s assurance that the scene would sizzle was suddenly not comforting at all.

Why hadn’t it occurred to her that knowing he could draw such a passionate response from her was dangerous? If she wasn’t going to be an actress playing Alana Dunbar, who would she be? Crawford had hated the way she’d played this scene with Tony. No passion, he’d said, but that had been safer than losing control of herself in Cade’s arms...

At least they hadn’t been in costume for the first re
hearsal.

If Jerry had told her to change into the flesh- colored bodysuit, she’d never have been able to walk to that awful bed, much less sit down on it. As it was, she’d moved towards it with all the grace of a badly con
trolled marionette. She’d managed to say her lines when Cade had materialized before her, but even she knew her delivery had been wooden.

And when he’d smiled and walked towards the bed, his eyes and voice ca
ressing her as if they were a man and a woman alone in a real bedroom in a real apartment, panic had exploded deep inside her.

‘You’re going to feel the planet spin when I touch you.’

That was Cade’s first line. Would it? An actress couldn’t afford to lose control.
She
couldn’t afford to lose control.

He’d come down beside her and then the damned bed had swayed, groaned, and with a shriek of rending metal, it had  collapsed in a heap, tumbling them to the floor in an undignified spill of pillows, sheets and blankets.

There had been a second of stunned silence, and then everybody, including Cade, had burst into peals of laughter.

Everybody but her.

  Well, Jerry hadn’t laughed, either, but it wasn’t because he’d been mortified the way she’d been. It was because he was angry at all the delays.

‘Fix the freaking bed,’ he’d snarled, stalking off the set. While the grips had hammered and sawed, the make-up man had scurried over and said he’d been asked to make her eyes look darker.

Wearily, Shannon had closed her eyes while he applied some new shadow and liner.

‘Smashing, darling,’ the make-up man had cooed, but by the time the bed was in one piece again and Jerry had waved her back to the set, her eyes were tearing and red.

‘It’s probably just a little allergic reaction,’ she’d said desperately, while she tissued the make-up off. ‘Really, it’s  nothing.’

‘Nothing,’ the make-up man had echoed frantically. ‘Nothing!’ He’d rushed to her side and when he did, he’d  tripped over a cable and bl
own out an entire set of lights.

‘God give me strength!’ Jerry had screamed. ‘What next?’

The heating system was what had come next. The studio was old. So were the radiators that heated it, and they’d suddenly set up a clatter that was loud enough to raise ghosts on Halloween.

Then they went silent.

That was the good news.

The bad was that the  whole system had died. Within minutes, the huge studio was like a walk-in refrigerator, so that now everybody was standing around in coats and hats.

But there were still small miracles in the world, Shannon thought, shifting cautiously on the bed. Jerry had wanted a dress rehearsal, which meant that if the heat hadn’t failed, she’d have been sitting here, staring into the darkness, wearing nothing but a flesh-colored bodysuit, feeling naked as the day she’d been born,  waiting for Cade, waiting for him to make his entrance and move on to the bed beside her, waiting for him to take her into his arms…

‘Shannon?’

A shiver of apprehension ran through her. Jerry’s voice was a silken sigh, an ominous portent considering the mood he was in.,

‘Yes?' she asked in a cautious whisper.

‘Is there a problem?’

‘No, of course not,’ she said quickly. ‘I’m just waiting.’

‘For what? The crosstown bus?’

She cringed at the acid tone of his voice.

‘Passion, Miss Padgett, passion! I want to see longing on your face, not resignation. Is that so much to ask? And where’s Make-up, damn it? Haven’t you got something you can use to kill the shine on her nose? Her nose looks like my mother’s freshly waxed floor!’

Shannon cleared her throat. ‘I... I asked him to go easy on the powder, Jerry. I was afraid I might have another allergic reaction. You see, sometimes these things are cumulative. Once I couldn’t wear make-up for a week, and...’

Crawford threw his arms up in disgust. ‘OK,’ he roared, ‘OK, that’s it. Everybody, go home. Go on, get out of here! What is this, a conspiracy? It’s bad enough I’m freezing my tail off, working in this barn they call a studio while it collapses around me, without having you tell me that we may have to tape tomorrow’s show with you looking like an ad for a bottle of spot remover.’

‘I’m sure I’ll be fine by tomorrow, Jerry. I’ll take an antihistamine  as soon as—‘

‘Spare me the details, OK? Just get yourself in shape for an early start. I want you here at six a.m., Miss Padgett. We’ll work straight through until late afternoon and then we’ll tape the damned thing. Is there an outside chance you can manage to turn into an actress by then?’

She swallowed hard. ‘Yes, sir. I know I can..’

‘I hope so. Otherwise, I’ll have to assume I made a mistake in casting you. Maybe those sparks were a one-shot. Maybe I’m better off hoping for competency. Maybe I should hire my cleaning lady for this part!’

‘I’ll be fine tomorrow,’ she said quickly. ‘You’ll see.’

I’d better see, because I damned well don’t have any more time to waste. You got that?’

Shannon nodded and watched silence as the di
rector tossed his script aside and stalked off the set.

Oh, God, she thought, lacing her trembling hands together in her lap, oh, God, he’s going to replace me. He’s going to fire me. He’s...

‘He’s not really blaming you, you know. He’s just frustrated.’

Her head sprang up at the sound of that familiar, husky whisper. ‘Cade?’.

He stepped out of the shadows and sat down on the bed beside her. ‘Stop looking as if Jerry handed you your notice. It was just a bad day for everybody.  I think we’ll all feel better when we get this damned scene out of the way.’

‘I
f we ever do,’ she said glumly.

‘We will.  You’ll see. Tomorrow will be perfect.’

‘Sure,’ she said tonelessly. Suddenly, her eyes widened. ‘I wonder if there’s time to catch Eli at the workshop.’

‘Didn’t he say he was going to be in Boston this week? What did you want to do? Read lines with him?’

  She shook her head. ‘I know my lines.’

‘Well, then, what’s the problem? If you know them...’

A touch of pink rose to her cheeks and she turned away from Cade’s puzzled face.

‘
There’s no problem,’ she said quickly, snatching up her jacket and starting across the studio. ‘I’ll be fine, Cade. Don’t worry. I’ll spend the night going over the scene and...’

‘You know what you need, lady? You need to relax. And I know the way to get you unwound.’

She tossed him a sharp glance and he chuckled softly.

‘For shame,’ he murmured, taking her hand in his. ‘Whatever are you thinking?’

She tugged her hand free. ‘Look,’ she said wearily. ‘I’m exhausted. I don’t have the time or the energy for any verbal skirmishes. I’m going home to work on my role.’

‘That’s a mistake. You need to let go for a while.’

‘I know what I need, Cade. I should after all these years.’

Right. You’re the pro and I’m the novice. OK, maybe that’s true, but I’ve been performing more than half my life. I know something about stage fright.’

‘For God’s sake, I haven’t got stage fright! I just need to put in some more time with this script.’

‘Wrong, Padgett. You need time away from it. Trust me.’ He pushed open the door to the street
. ‘Wouldn’t you like to go somewhere, breathe fresh air, and forget about scripts for a while?’

‘Sure,’ she admitted with a sigh. ‘But I can’t. I have work to do. Goodbye, Cade. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘All right, all right, you win. I’ll ride you home and leave you to your work. Come on, don’t look at me like that. You know darned well I can deliver you to your doorstep in half the time it would take to get there any other way.’

Well, he had her there, she thought, eyeing the big motorcycle parked at the curb. The bike was fast and she knew Cade could maneuver it easily through the crowded streets, taking quick advantage of every hole in the traffic.

‘All right,’ she said finally. ‘I guess you’re right.’

‘I know I am,’ he said, handing her a helmet. ‘Just trust me, okay?. 1 know what I’m doing.’

***

‘Trust me, you said. I know what I’m doing, you said,’ Shannon slid from the Harley as it came to a stop. ‘Where in hell are we?’ she demanded. ‘Damn it,  you...you kidnapped me! And why didn’t you stop when I told you  to?’

Grinning lazily, Cade eased himself off the bike and pushed his visor up. ‘One question at a time, Padgett. . We’re at Jones Beach. Don’t tell me you’ve never been here before. It’s only thirty-something miles from the city.’

‘Spare me the geography lesson, please. Why didn’t you stop when I asked?’

‘I didn’t hear you,’ he said with wide-eyed innocence. ‘The engine noise must have drowned you out. Besides, you said you wanted to work, didn’t you? Well, this is the perfect place.’

‘Sure it is. Just you and me and the seagulls. Look, you’ve had your little joke. Take me back to the city, OK?’

‘Where’s your spirit of adventure, woman? Just smell that ocean breeze. And wait until you feel the sand between your toes.’

‘I want to feel my living-room carpet between my toes, Cade. And I want to smell the coffee brewing in my percolator.’

‘What a terrific idea,’ he said, taking her hand in his. ‘Coffee and cake... ’

‘Cade...’

‘And the world’s greatest chowder. Well, maybe not the greatest, but...’

‘Will you listen?’

‘You’ve got a choice, Padgett. Chowder and coffee and a walk on the beach and in an hour I’ll take you back to New York and deliver you, safe and sound, at your apartment.’

She looked at him warily. ‘Or?’

‘No chowder, no coffee, no walk and you can make it back to the city on your own. It’s only five miles or so to the main road. You can probably hitch a ride once you get there.’

‘Kidnapping and now blackmail,’ she said in tones as chilled as the salt-laden breeze blowing in from the ocean.

‘Just a little persuasion.’ Cade tucked her hand inside his, completely ignoring her attempts to pull free. ‘Why don’t you just relax and enjoy the afternoon?’

‘Enjoy being dragged off to some... some posh res
taurant that caters to the idle rich?’ she sputtered as he hurried her on to the promenade. ‘What’s so funny, Mr. Morgan? Who else could afford to come all the way out to a beach for lunch in November...’ Her angry words faded as Cade hustled her inside a large, rather barren room.

‘What is this?’ she demanded. ‘It looks like a cafeteria.’

‘Great deduction, Padgett. It
is
a cafeteria. And it’s not polite to stare. You don’t want to make all these idle rich folks uncomfortable. Do you want French fries with your chowder?’