by Nora Roberts
“I enjoy it more when you do,” Eve murmured, then rose to wander the room as she spoke. “What most don’t remember about that scene in that long-ago movie, even those involved at the time, was that it wasn’t played the way it was written. Victor changed the moves, and our lives.”
“Quiet on the set.”
Eve took her place, mentally gearing up. “Roll film.”
She ignored the dollies, the booms, the technicians. Tossed up her chin, eased her weight onto one foot, pouted out her lower lip. Became Susan.
“Scene twenty-four, take three.” The clapper slapped together.
“And … action.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know everything about you, sweetheart.” Victor loomed over her, fury and frustration in eyes that had been mild only seconds before. “You figured out when you were twelve that your looks would take you anywhere you wanted to go. And you went, taking the easy road and leaving a trail of men behind.”
The close-up would come later. She knew the medium shot wouldn’t capture the frost in her eyes, or the sneer on her lips. But she used them, the same way a good carpenter uses a hammer. To drive the point home. “If that were true, I sure as hell wouldn’t be here in this dump with a loser like you.”
“You walked into this.” He stuck his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “Eyes wide. Women like you always have their eyes wide. You’ll get yourself out too. That’s your style.”
Turning, she poured a drink from the bottle on the scarred chest of drawers. “It’s not my style to turn my friends over to the cops.”
“Friends.” On a laugh he pulled out a cigarette. “You call it friendship when someone’s out to slit your throat? Your choice, honey.” The cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth, his eyes squinted against the smoke that curled up between them. “You make the right choice—for you. And you’ll get paid for it. The D.A.’ll slip you a few for the information. A woman like you …“He pulled the cigarette out of his mouth, blew smoke in a cloud. “You’d be used to getting paid for a favor.”
She slapped him, forgetting to pull her punch at the last minute. His head jerked back, his eyes narrowed. Slowly, watching her, he dragged on the cigarette again. Eve drew her arm back a second time, wincing a little when his fingers clamped over her wrist. She was braced for the shove they’d rehearsed, prepared to slam hard into the chair behind him.
Instead, he tossed the cigarette to the floor. Her look of surprise, of knowledge, of panic, was captured on film forever as he dragged her into his arms. When his mouth crushed against hers, she struggled. Not so much against the arms that banded her against him, but against the explosions rocketing furiously inside her that had nothing to do with Susan and everything to do with Eve.
She might have staggered if he hadn’t held her upright. It was terrifying to feel her legs go weak, to hear her blood roar. When he freed her she was fighting for each breath. Her skin had a pallor that needed no trick of lighting or makeup. Her lips trembled open. Her eyes glittered with tears, then with rage. She remembered her line only because it so completely suited her own feelings.
“You bastard. Do you think that’s all it takes to have a woman fall at your feet?”
He grinned, but it didn’t diffuse the passion or the violence in the air. “Yeah.” Now he shoved her. “Sit down and shut up.”
“Cut—print it. Jesus, Vic.” The director was up, striding onto the set. “Where the hell did that come from?”
Bending, Victor picked up the smoldering cigarette, took a drag. “Just seemed like the thing to do.”
“Well, it worked. Christ almighty, it worked. Next time the two of you get a brainstorm, fill me in. Okay?” He turned back to the cameras. “Let’s shoot the close-ups.”
She got through another three hours of shooting. That was her job. Not by a flicker did she reveal how shaken she was. That was her pride.
In her dressing room she exchanged Susan’s clothes for her own. Shed Susan’s problems for her own. Her throat was raw so she accepted the tall glass of iced tea from her on-set assistant.
“Susan smokes too much,” she said with a half laugh. Go on home. “I’m just going to sit for a while and quiet down.”
“You were terrific today, Miss Benedict. You and Mr. Flannigan are wonderful together.”
“Yeah.” God help her. “Thanks, darling. Good night.”
“Good night, Miss Benedict. Oh, hello, Mr. Flannigan. I was just saying how well things went today.”
“That’s good to hear. Joanie, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yes, sir.”
“Good night, Joanie. See you tomorrow.”
He stepped inside, and Eve remained seated and braced, watching him in the dressing table mirror. She relaxed fractionally when he left the door open. It wasn’t, she realized, going to be a repeat of her initiation with Tony.
“I thought I should apologize.” But there wasn’t a hint of regret in his voice. Eve kept her eyes on his reflection, wondering when she’d get over this weakness for cocky actors. Casually she lifted a brush and began to pull it through her shoulder-length hair.
“For your brainstorm?”
“For kissing you when it had nothing to do with acting. It’s something I’ve wanted to do since the first day we met.” “Now you have.”
“And now it’s worse.” He dragged a hand through his hair, hair that was still dark with only the faintest hint of gray at the temples. “I’m a little past the age for playing games, Eve.”
After setting the brush aside, she reached for the glass again. “No man ever is.” “I’m in love with you.”
The ice clinked together when her hand shook. Very carefully she set the glass down. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I have to be because it’s true. The first minute we were together.”
“There’s a difference between love and lust, Victor.” She sprang up, snatching the canvas bag she habitually carried to the studio. “I’m not terribly interested in lust at the moment.”
“How about a cup of coffee?”
“What?”
“A cup of coffee, Eve. In a public place.” When she hesitated, he grinned—and the grin was nearly a sneer. “You’re not afraid of me, are you, sweetheart?”
She had to laugh. It was Richard challenging Susan. “If I was afraid of anything,” she said, in character, “it wouldn’t be a man. You’re buying.”
They sat for almost three hours, eventually ordering meat loaf to go with the coffee. Victor had chosen a harshly lit diner with laminated tables and hard plastic booths that turned the average derriere to stone in ten and a half minutes. The floor was a dingy gray that would never bleach white again, and the waitresses talked in shrieks.
Obviously, Eve thought, this wasn’t going to be a seduction.
He talked of Muriel, of his marriage, of its failure, of his obligations. He did not, as she had half expected, start with the line that his wife didn’t understand him, or that his marriage was an open one. Instead, he admitted that in her way, Muriel loved him. That more than love, there was a desperate need in her to pretend the marriage was intact.
“She’s not well.” He toyed with the blueberry pie he’d ordered to top off the meal. It tasted like something his mother might have baked—a million years ago in the stifling kitchen on the fifth floor apartment on East 132nd Street. His mother, he thought fleetingly, had been an incredibly bad cook. “Not physically or emotionally. I’m not sure she’ll ever be, and I can’t leave her until she is. She doesn’t have anyone else.”
As a woman who had not so long ago escaped a ruinous marriage, she tried to empathize with Victor’s wife. “It must be difficult for her, your work, the traveling, and the hours involved.”
“No, actually, she enjoys it. She loves the house, and the servants are well trained to care for her. If she needs care. Actually, she would be self-sufficient but she often forgets to take her medication, and t
hen …” He shrugged. “She paints. Very well, too, when the mood’s on her. That’s how I met her. I was your typical starving young actor, and I took a job modeling for an art school to earn enough to eat.”
She forked a bite of his pie and grinned. “Nude?”
“Yeah.” Her smile eased out one of his own. “I was a bit on the thin side then. After a session, Muriel showed me a sketch she’d done of me. One thing led to the other. She was what we’d have called a bohemian. Very forward-thinking and free-spirited.” His smile faded away. “She’s changed. The illness—the baby. Things changed her. She was diagnosed less than a year after we were married, and gave up completely on the dream of making art her career. Replaced it by making a career out of the religion we’d both rebelled against. I was sure I could shake her out of it. We were young, and I was positive nothing really terrible could happen to us. But it did. I began to get parts, we began to have money. Muriel began to become what she is today: a frightened, often angry, unhappy woman.”
“You still love her.”
“I love the rare, the very rare glimpses of that young bohemian who so enchanted me. If she were to come back, I don’t think the marriage would hold. But we’d part as friends.”
Eve suddenly felt tired, overwhelmed by the smell of grilling onions, the taste of coffee that was too hot and too strong, the hard, headachy colors that surrounded them. “I don’t know what you expect me to say, Victor.”
“Maybe nothing. Maybe I just need you to understand.” Reaching across the table, he took her hand. When she looked down she saw that she was completely enveloped by him completely covered, completely caught. “I was twenty-two when I met her. Now I’m forty-two. We might have made it all work if the fates hadn’t been against us. I’ll never know. But I knew when I looked at you. I knew you were the woman I was meant to spend my life with.”
She felt the truth of it, the terrifying truth of it pass from his heart to hers. As cleanly, as quickly as a flower is sliced from its stem, the bright corner where they sat was cut off from the rest of the world.
Her voice was unsteady as she drew her hand away. “You’ve just spent a great deal of time explaining to me why that’s not possible.”
“It’s not, but that doesn’t stop me from knowing it’s what should be. I’m too Irish not to believe in destiny, Eve. You’re mine. Even if you get up and walk away, that won’t change.”
“And if I stay?”
“Then I’ll give you whatever I can for as long as I can. It’s not only sex, Eve, though Christ knows I want you. It’s needing to be there when you first open your eyes in the morning. Sitting on some sunny porch together listening to the wind. Reading by the fire. Sharing a beer at a baseball game.” He took a careful breath. “It’s been nearly five years since Muriel and I have been together as husband and wife. I haven’t been unfaithful—not in those five years or all the years we’ve been married. I don’t expect you to believe me.”
“Maybe that’s why I do believe you.” She got shakily to her feet, but held out a hand to keep him from rising as well. “I need time, Victor, and so do you. Let’s finish the movie, then see how we feel.”
“And if we feel the same?”
“If we feel the same … we’ll see what destiny has in store for us.”
“And when the movie was over, we felt the same.” Eve still had the glass in her hand. There were tears running unnoticed down her cheeks. “Destiny has run us a long, hard course.”
“Would you change it?” Julia asked quietly.
“Parts of it, God, yes. But as a whole—it would hardly matter. I would still be here, exactly as I am today. And Victor would still be the only man.” She laughed, brushing a tear away with her index finger. “The only man who could bring me to this.”
“Is love worth it?”
“It’s worth everything.” She shook off the mood. “I’m becoming maudlin. Christ, I could use a drink, but I indulged earlier and the camera picks up every bloody swallow.” She sat again. Leaning back, she shut her eyes and fell silent so long, Julia wondered if she slept. “You’ve made a happy home here, Julia.”
“It’s your home.”
“Mmm. My house. It’s you who’s put flowers in the watering can, dropped your shoes on the floor, lit the candles on the mantel, put pictures of a smiling boy on the table by the window.” Her eyes opened lazily. “I think it must take a clever woman to make a happy home.”
“Not a happy woman?”
“But you’re not. Oh, content certainly. Satisfied with your work, fulfilled in motherhood, pleased with your abilities and willing to sharpen them. But happy? Not quite.”
Julia leaned over to press the stop button on the recorder. Something told her this wouldn’t be a conversation she’d enjoy replaying later. “Why wouldn’t I be happy?”
“Because you’re carrying around a wound, never quite healed, from the man who conceived Brandon with you.”
The mild, interested tone of her voice sharpened like ice. “We’ve already discussed Brandon’s father. I hope I won’t regret that.”
“I’m not discussing Brandon’s father, but you. You were used and set aside, at a very early age. That’s kept you from looking for another kind of fulfillment.”
“It may be difficult for you to understand, but not all women measure fulfillment by the number of men in their lives.”
Eve merely arched a brow. “Well, it seems I pierced the skin. You’re quite right. But the woman who measures it that way is as foolish as the one who refuses to admit that a certain man might enhance her life.” She stretched long and limberly. “Julia darling, the recorder is off. It’s only we two. Can you tell me, woman to woman, that you’re not attracted, intrigued, titillated with Paul?”
After inclining her head, Julia folded her hands on her lap. “If I were attracted to Paul, would it be any of your business?”
“Hell no. Who wants to know only her own business? You of all people understand the desperate need in all of us to know everyone else’s.”
Julia laughed. It was hard to stay annoyed with such good-natured honesty. “I’m not a star, so fortunately my secrets are my own.” Because she was enjoying herself, she propped her feet on the coffee table. “The truth is, they’re not terribly interesting. Why don’t you tell me why you’re trying to hook up Paul and me?”
“Because when I see you together, something strikes me as right. And knowing him much better than I know you at this point, I’m able to judge his reaction. You fascinate him.”
“Then he’s easily fascinated.”
“Quite the contrary. As far as I know—and I say so with all proper modesty—I’ve been the only woman to do so until you.”
“Modesty, hell.” Lazily, Julia rubbed the bottom of her foot over an itch on her instep. “You don’t have a self-effacing bone in your body.”
“Bingo.”
Surrendering to a sudden craving for the brownies, Julia rose and went into the kitchen to fetch the plate heaped with the dark chocolate squares. She set them on the coffee table. Both women studied them warily, then dived.
“You know,” Julia said with her mouth full, “he said the other day that I remind him of you.”
“Did he?” Eve licked chocolate off her fingers, savoring. “Writer’s imagination? Or instinct?” At Julia’s puzzled look, she shook her head. “Christ, I have to get out of here before I eat another one.”
“If you will, I will.”
With no little regret, Eve resisted. “You don’t have to be shoved into costume in the morning. But let me leave you with one small thought. You asked if I would change anything in my relationship with Victor. The first and most important change I would make is so very simple.” She leaned forward, eyes intense. “I wouldn’t wait until the movie was finished. I wouldn’t waste a day, not an hour, not a moment. Take what you want, Julia, and damn caution. Live, enjoy. Feed ravenously. Or the biggest regret you’ll have at the end of your life is wasted time.”
Lyle Johnson took a pull from a bottle of Bud and mechanically pressed the channel changer on the remote. It was a lousy night for television. He was stretched out on his unmade bed wearing only a pair of baby-blue net bikinis. That way, if he decided to get up and fetch another beer from the fridge, he’d be able to admire his body when he passed the mirror. He was damn proud of his build, and had a particular fondness for his penis—which he’d been told by a number of lucky females was a sight to behold.
All in all, Lyle was satisfied with his life. He got to drive the big bitching limo for a movie star. Maybe Eve Benedict wasn’t Michelle Pfeiffer or Kim Basinger, but for an old broad, she was put together fine. In fact, Lyle would have been willing to share his amazing, world-renowned penis with her. But the lady was strictly business.
Still, he had it pretty good. His apartment over the garage was bigger and better than the dump in Bakersfield where he’d spend his childhood and dissatisfied adolescence. He had a microwave, cable TV, and someone to change the sheets and dig the place out once a week.
The snotty little maid, CeeCee, had turned down a trip to paradise on those nice fresh sheets. Didn’t know what she was missing. Her loss was someone else’s gain as far as Lyle was concerned. He’d been able to talk plenty of other, more friendly, ladies into his bed.
Still, it pissed him off that she’d threatened to go to Miss B. if he’d copped another feel.
