Phoenix Falling (15 page)

Flopping on the bed, she lifted the phone and asked the switchboard to connect her to Rainey's room. She half expected not to be put through, but Rainey picked up immediately. "Hi, Rainey. I'm here." Val covered a yawn. "Do I start work immediately, or do I get a good night's sleep first?"

"You made it! Come up to my room for a hot fudge sundae." Rainey chuckled. "I'll fill you in and even give you an official red
Centurion
show jacket, which won't go with your hair any better than mine, so I guess you start work tonight."

Val's doubts about the wisdom of this job evaporated. She might be in for a wild ride, but she wouldn't be bored.

* * *

Kenzie smiled to himself as he entered his suite. Val Covington was a small but not-to-be-underestimated wildcat. He wondered how much Rainey had told her friend about their marriage. Probably not a lot—Rainey was almost as reticent about personal matters as Kenzie—but enough that Val seemed to be ready to scratch his eyes out.

Saying he envied Rainey her friends had been the honest truth. Women were so much better at sharing their feelings and supporting each other than men. That was something he'd never been able to do, and not only because he was male and British. Despite all Trevor had done for him, they'd never had a confiding relationship. Even with Charles Winfield, there had been subjects untouched. A good thing he had acting as an outlet for past angst.

Though he almost never drank alone, he found some wine in the suite minibar and poured a glass, then went onto his balcony without turning on the light. The moon had risen, silvering the landscape. He tried to guess where Cibola was among those folded mountains and valleys.

The exhilaration he'd felt at buying the ranch was fading now that he was back in the hotel, overshadowed by the fact that Rainey was within a couple of hundred yards of him, and untouchable.

He sank into a chair and sipped at his wine. Offering for Cibola had been the most powerful impulse he'd had since his proposal to Rainey. He hoped to God that Cibola worked out better.

* * *

Instead of returning to Los Angeles after the
Pimpernel
filming ended, he'd had the private jet take them to a small airport in Northern California. There he loaded Rainey and the luggage inside a nondescript rental car that awaited them.

As they pulled onto the coast highway, she loosened her seat belt enough to lie down and pillow her head on his thigh. "It's been dark for a long, long time."

"The drawback to flying west with the night. Soon the sun should start rising behind us." Since the car was an automatic, he had a hand free to rest on her shoulder.

"Is it permitted to ask where we're going?" she asked drowsily.

"An inn on the coast where I stayed a couple of years ago. Very peaceful and private."

"You can certify it as an ideal love nest?"

Feeling tension in her shoulder, he explained, "I stayed there alone to get away from the world for a few days. I remember thinking it would be a wonderfully romantic place if I knew someone I liked well enough to take there."

Relaxed again, she curled a hand over his knee. A good thing they'd had such a passionate flight, or her touch might start to interfere with his driving.

"I'm almost afraid to go to bed properly and wake up later," she said quietly. "Fear of the Gilda phenomenon."

"You mean when Rita Hayworth said that men went to bed with the glamorous, fictional Gilda, but woke up with the real Rita instead?"

"Exactly."

"Since we both have to deal with that, I expect the effects to cancel out." He stroked along her side, unable to get enough of touching her. "I'm not worried. We've had months of working together to get beyond the images."

"Actually, to me you seem much like your public image. Intelligent. Enigmatic." She hesitated. "A little tragic."

The trouble with actors is that they observed too closely. "Enigmatic—the quality of keeping silent and making people wonder if one is stupid rather than opening one's mouth and removing all doubt."

She laughed. "What's your real history, Kenzie? You've told so many wild tales that I figure the truth is something really boring, like your father was a solicitor, you went to a good but unexceptional school, and have absolutely nothing colorful to talk about."

A chill entered the warm sanctuary of the car. "Don't ask me about my past again, Rainey. I don't want to have to lie to you."

She was silent for the space of several heartbeats. "Very well."

He'd liked her acceptance. Most women were like curious cats, determined to tease information out of him, but Rainey never raised the subject again.

The inn had a guest cottage isolated from the main building, and they stayed there for a glorious, absurdly romantic holiday. Long walks on the beach in sun, fog, and rain, sometimes all in the same walk. Drives through the mountains. Lazy evenings in front of a fireplace or in a hot tub. Watching videos of bad movies and becoming helpless with laughter as they made wicked comments about the acting and production values.

And of course making love, sleeping in each other's arms, then waking to make love again. He'd never been so happy in his life. Rainey glowed, more relaxed than he'd ever seen her.

Seven days flowed past swift as a heartbeat. Five more days until they must leave. Four. Three. His gut knotted at the knowledge that soon he must be in Argentina while Rainey flew east to New York. It would be weeks, perhaps even months before they could get together again, and who knew what might intervene?

Two days before departing, he reluctantly called his manager. "Kenzie! Dammit, where are you?" Seth roared. "Every reporter in America is trying to find you."

"Which is why I haven't told anyone where I am. Why are the reporters slavering? I haven't broken any laws that I know of."

"Because Raine Marlowe also dropped off the face of the earth, and was last seen with you playing Tarzan to her Jane."

"Ah. I should have guessed. Is there any critical business I should know about?"

"Just the usual minor crises—nothing to worry about. You haven't told me where you are, or if Raine is with you."

"I'm in the Pacific time zone, and the other matter is really no one's business."

"So you're together. Hope you're having fun. But you will be in Argentina next week, won't you?"

"When have I ever broken a contract?"

"As long as this time isn't the first," Seth said, mollified. "In your spare time, you might draft a press release about your relationship with Ms. Marlowe. As soon as you show your face in public, you'll have to say something."

"You do it. Tell the world we are merely great and good friends." As Seth snorted, Kenzie ended the call.

Rainey asked, "A media feeding frenzy?"

"If Seth is to be believed."

She reached for the phone. "I think I'll start with Emmy rather than my agent."

The call to her assistant confirmed what Seth had said. Fevered speculations about their relationship were front-page news. The world was starting to close in on them, as threatening as wolves circling just beyond the firelight.

The night before leaving the inn to drive down the coast, they made love with special intensity. Useless with words when it mattered most, he tried to show with passion and tenderness what she meant to him. Tried to brand her with a rapture so intense that no other man would ever satisfy her so well.

In return, without saying a single word, she slid past his defenses, melding so deeply into his spirit that he feared he would wither away when she left.

He lay on his side while she rested on her back, the elegant curves of her body gilded by firelight. "You look like a perfectly composed camera shot of the most beautiful, erotic woman in the world."

Though she smiled, it didn't dispel the sadness in her eyes. "I don't want to go back to the real world."

"I don't either. But all idylls end."

"So true." Her gaze moved to the fire and she began to sing "Heart Over Heels," the signature song of Clementine, one of rock music's great, tragic superstars. He'd been only a boy when he first heard it, but the plangent emotion had struck him to the heart. Singing sweet and true, Rainey's voice hit with the same force as when he'd first heard the song.

"Thought this battered heart of mine would never mend Yet here I am, heart over heels again.

Heart over heels, moth to the flame.

Maybe this time, Lord, maybe this time..."

In the faint light he saw tears glimmering on Rainey's cheeks. He kissed them away. "I didn't know you could sing. You sound very like Clementine."

Gaze still on the fire, she said, "I should. She was my mother."

"Your mother?" he exclaimed. "Good God, I had no idea! Wasn't her last name Bartlett?"

"She was married briefly at twenty and she kept her husband's name. It's not exactly a secret that she's my mother, but I haven't made a point of telling people, either. Since I'm an actress, not a singer, I thought being her daughter wouldn't do me any good professionally, just turn me into a curiosity. There probably aren't more than a dozen or so people in California who know about our connection."

"Wise to be quiet about it. Not only would there be eyes watching to see if you'd crash and burn, but you'd have been pestered by people wanting money."

"Because they'd assume I inherited Clementine's estate, like you just did?"

"You weren't her heir?"

"She never updated her will after I was born, so almost everything went to good causes. Save the whales. Battered women. Animal rescue. My grandparents disliked what she did so much that they refused to contest the will on my behalf."

Rainey smiled. "I'm glad, actually. Clementine did set up a small trust fund when I was born, and the income from that helped me support myself when I first moved to Los Angeles. I think if I'd inherited her whole estate, it would have been a straitjacket."

He envied her casual dismissal of a fortune. For him, money was his shield and fortress, protecting him from the world. "You inherited her voice, which is quite a legacy. You could be a singer if you wanted."

"Not really. Clementine's voice was much bigger, and she was a real musician who sang from her soul. I'm not on that level."

He compared her delicate features with what he remembered of Clementine, who had been a robust, earthily sensual woman. "It's not obvious, but now that you've told me, I can see some resemblance to your mother. You must look more like your father, though."

Hearing the unspoken question, she said flatly, "Haven't the foggiest idea who he was. Maybe Clementine didn't, either. She had a very... liberated lifestyle."

"And it cost her her life. Such a great, great waste."

"Indeed." She gave a humorless smile. "I was the one who found her body after her drug overdose."

"Dear God, Rainey." He pulled her close, aching to dispel the terrible pain expressed in her taut body. No child should have to endure what she did. Yet she had survived, and successfully engaged with life on her own terms.

Now he understood the mysterious resonance between them. Coming from different countries, different social levels, unimaginably different upbringings, nonetheless they had much in common. No wonder she affected him as no other woman had. Maybe... perhaps with Rainey...

Swiftly, before he could remember all the reasons this was insane, he said, "Marry me, Rainey. We can drive to Nevada tomorrow and be married by dinnertime."

She pulled away and stared at him. "Marriage? Why, because you pity me?"

"No. Because becoming husband and wife says we want to be together whenever we can. Isn't that true?"

"I... I thought we were just having a fling. Fun, no complications, and go on our merry ways."

"Is that what you think the last week has been about?"

She bit her lip. "No, but I'm not the marrying kind and neither are you. Our careers are too demanding to have time for family life. What kind of marriage starts with the spouses halfway around the world from each other?"

"One where they both intend to get together again as soon as possible." He kissed her breast, feeling the nipple tighten against his tongue. "Maybe it won't work, but isn't risking failure better than not trying at all?"

A week of sensual abandon had taught him exactly what she liked best. How to touch, how to kiss, how to build desire until she cried out uncontrollably.

Until she whispered, voice breaking, "If it's what you truly want—yes, Kenzie, I'll marry you."

* * *

It took ten minutes to get a marriage license—thirty-five dollars, cash only—at the Washoe County Courthouse in Reno, Nevada. The process would have been quicker if the clerk hadn't recognized them. "Oh, my God, it's Raine and Kenzie!" she gasped as her gaze went from the application to their faces.

Kenzie repressed a sigh. Celebrity meant having everyone call you by your first name. "Indeed. Is there a wedding chapel you would recommend where we might be able to married without waiting?"