Dual Image

by Nora Roberts

  the world she understood. “All right, the signs are posted.” She listened to the sound of the wind, the sound of voices. Someone reeked of drugstore cologne. An empty bag of potato chips skimmed and rustled along the concrete. “I’m not a very good businesswoman. I won’t apologize for my lifestyle or my personality, but I will do my best to keep our conversations very professional.”

  She took a deep breath and turned back to him. Some of the warmth had left her eyes, and he felt a momentary regret. “I’m a good actress, an excellent craftsman. I’ve known since the first moment I picked up the script that I could play Rae. And I’m astute enough to know how well my reading went.”

  “No, you’re not a fool.” Even with the regret, Booth felt more comfortable on this level. He understood her now—an actress in search of that prime part. “I wouldn’t have said you were what I was looking for—until this afternoon. No one’s come even close to the core of that character before you.”

  She felt the tickling dryness down in her throat, the sudden lurch of her heart rate. “And?” she managed.

  “And I want you to come back and read with Jack Rohrer. He’s cast as Phil. If the chemistry’s there, you’ve got the part.”

  Ariel took a deep breath. She leaned against the sturdy observation glass and tried to take it calmly. She’d told him she’d be professional. No good, she realized as the pleasure bubbled up inside her. It simply wasn’t any use. With a shout of laughter, she threw her arms around his neck and clung. The touching was vital, the sharing essential.

  Ariel Kirkwood—the skinny dreamer from West 185th Street—was going to star in a DeWitt script, a P. B. Marshell production opposite Jack Rohrer. Would life never stop amazing her? As she clung to Booth, Ariel dearly hoped it wouldn’t.

  His hands had come to her waist in reflex, but he left them there as her laughter warmed his ear. He found it odd that he was sharply reminded of two things—his young niece’s boundless pleasure when he’d given her an elaborate dollhouse one Christmas, and the first time, as a man, he’d ever held a woman. The softness was there—that unique strength and give only a woman’s body has. The childlike pleasure was there—with the innocence only the young possess.

  He could have held her. It moved in him to do so, just to hold something soft and sweet and without shadows. She fit so well against him. The curve of cheek against his, the alignment of bodies. She fit too well, so that he stood perfectly still and drew her no closer.

  Something drifted through her pleasure and excitement. He smelled of soap—solid—as his body felt. There was nothing casual about him, nothing easy. He was all intensity and intellect. The strength drew her; his reserve drew her. He was a man who would be there to pick you up, however reluctantly, if you stumbled. Who would demand that you keep pace with him, and who would expect you to give him exactly the amount of room he wanted when he wanted it. He was a man whom a woman who ran on her emotions and her senses would do well to avoid. She wished almost painfully that his arms would come around her, even while she knew they wouldn’t.

  Ariel drew away but kept their faces close so that she might have a hint of what it would be like to have that serious, unsmiling mouth lowered to hers. She was breathless, and her eyes made no secret of her attraction or her surprise in feeling it.

  “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “Physical displays come naturally to me. I have a feeling you don’t care for them.”

  Had there ever been a woman he’d wanted to kiss more than this one? Almost, almost, he could taste the mouth inches from his own. Nearly, very nearly, he could feel its texture against his own. When he spoke, his voice was indifferent, his eyes remote. “There’s a time and a place.”

  Ariel let out a long breath and decided she’d set herself up for a backhanded slap. “You’re a tough man, Booth DeWitt,” she murmured.

  “I’m a realist, Ariel.” He took out a cigarette, cupping his lighter against the wind with hands that amazed him because they weren’t steady.

  “What a hard thing to be.” Consciously, she relaxed—shoulder muscles, stomach muscles, hands. A moment’s awareness didn’t equal trouble. She’d felt it before; it was a blessing and a curse in a woman like herself. Ariel didn’t understand indifference to people or to things. Everything you saw, touched, heard, triggered some emotion. “But then, you’re stuck with it.” More at ease, she smiled at him. “I’m going to enjoy working with you, Booth, though I know it’s not going to be a picnic. I’m going to give your script my very best shot, and we’ll both benefit.”

  He nodded as the smoke whipped up and away. “I don’t accept anything less than the best.”

  “Fine, you won’t be disappointed.” It was in her nature to reach out and touch, to add something personal. But one slap was enough for one day.

  “Good.”

  With a laugh, she shook her head. “You’re attractive, Booth. I haven’t the least idea why because I don’t think you’re a very nice person.”

  He blew out another stream of smoke and watched her lazily. “I’m not,” he agreed.

  “In any case, we’ll give each other what’s needed professionally.”

  Then because she rarely resisted impulses of any kind, she kissed his cheek before thrusting the violets at him and walking away. Booth stood in the wind on top of New York with a handful of spring flowers and stared after her.

  Chapter Three

  Booth had been on and around sets most of his professional life. There were eighteenth-century drawing rooms, twentieth-century bedrooms, bars, restaurants and department stores. Spaceships and log cabins. With props and backdrops and ingenuity, anything could be created.

  When you came to the bottom line, one set was the same as another—technicians, lights, cameras, booms, miles of cable. It was an industry of illusion and image. What looked glamorous outside the business was ultimately only a job, and often a tedious and exacting one. Long hours, lengthy delays, lights that made a studio into a furnace, bitter coffee.

  From the outset of his career, he’d never been content to be isolated with his typewriter and ideas. He’d insisted from his very first screenplay on being involved with the production end. He understood the practicality and the creativity of the right camera angle, the proper lighting. It appealed to the realistic part of him. Still, he had the ability to see the set and the people while blocking out the crowding equipment. To watch as an outsider, to see as a viewer. This appealed to the dreamer he’d always kept under strict control.

  Booth wasn’t sure what had motivated him to visit the set of Our Lives, Our Loves. He knew that the script he was currently working on had hit a snag, and that he wanted to see Ariel again. Perhaps it was the scent of violets that continued to drift to him as he tried to work. Twice he’d started to throw them away . . . but he hadn’t. Part of him, long repressed, needed such things, however much he disliked acknowledging it.

  So he had come to see Ariel, telling himself he simply wanted to watch her work before he committed himself to choosing her for the part of Rae. It was logical, practical. It was something he’d tried very hard to resist.

  Ariel sat at the kitchen table with her bare feet propped in a chair while Jack Shapiro, who played Griff Martin, Amanda’s college sweetheart, mulled over a hand of solitaire. On another part of the soundstage, her television parents were discussing their offspring. After they’d finished, she and Jack would tape their scene.

  “Black six on the red seven,” she mumbled, earning herself a glare from Jack.

  “Solitaire,” he reminded her. “As in alone.”

  “It’s an antisocial game.”

  “You think headphones are antisocial.”

  “They are.” Smiling sweetly, she moved the six herself.

  “Why don’t you go call the Committee for the Salvation of Three-legged Land Mammals? They probably want you at their next luncheon.”

  The timing wasn’t quite right, she decided, to ask him to contribute to the Homes for Kittens f
und she was currently involved with. “Don’t get snotty,” she said mildly. “You’re supposed to adore me.”

  “Should’ve had my head examined after you threw me over for Cameron.”

  “It’s your own fault for not explaining what you were doing alone in that hotel room with Vikki.”

  Jack sniffed and turned over another card. “You should’ve trusted me. A man has his pride.”

  “Now I’m stuck in a disastrous marriage and I might be pregnant.”

  Glancing up, he grinned. “Great for the ratings. Did you see them posted this week? We’re up a whole point.”

  She leaned her elbows on the table. “Wait until things start heating up between Amanda and Griff again.” She put a black ten on the jack of diamonds. “Sizzle, spark, smolder.”

  He smacked her hand. “You’re a great smolderer.” Unable to resist, he leered. “I haven’t kissed you in six months.”

  “Then when you get your chance, big guy, make it good. Amanda’s no pushover.” Rising, she strolled away for a last-minute check with makeup.

  The hospital set had already been prepared for the brief but intense meeting between the former lovers, Amanda and Griff. Some subtle dark smudges were added under her eyes to give the appearance of a sleepless night. The rest of her makeup gave her a slight pallor.

  By the time the cameras rolled, Amanda was in her office, going through her patient files. She seemed very calm, very much in control. Her expression was totally serene. Abruptly, she slammed the drawer back in the cabinet and whirled around to pace. When the tape was edited, it would flash back to her discovery of her husband and sister. Amanda grabbed a china cup from her desk and hurled it against the wall. With the back of her hand to her mouth, she stared at the broken pieces. The knock at her office door had her balling her fists and making a visible struggle for control. Deliberately, she walked around her desk and sat down.

  “Come in.”

  The camera focused on Jack as Dr. Griff Martin, rough-and-ready looks, rough-and-ready temper—Amanda’s first and only lover before her marriage. Ariel knew what the director would edit in a reaction shot later, but now, with the tape running on Jack’s entrance, she screwed up her face and stuck out her tongue. Jack gave her one of his character’s patented lengthy looks designed to make the female heart flutter.

  “Amanda, have you got a minute?”

  When the lens was focused on her again, her face was properly composed with just a hint of strain beneath the serenity. “Of course, Griff.” For a subtle sign of nerves, she gripped her hands together on the desktop.

  “I’ve got a case of wife beating,” he began in the clipped, almost surly tone of his character. Both Amanda and several million female viewers had found his diamond-in-the-rough style irresistible. “I need your help.”

  They went through the scene, laying the groundwork for a story line that would throw them together again and again over the next few weeks, building the sexual tension. When the camera was briefly at Jack’s back he crossed his eyes at Ariel and bared his teeth. As she went back to her patient file, she made certain she walked over his foot. Neither of them lost the rhythm of the scene.

  “You look tired.” As Griff, Jack started to touch her shoulder, then stopped himself. Frustration radiated from his eyes. “Is everything all right?”

  Amanda turned and gave him a soulful look. Her mouth trembled open, then closed again. Slowly, she turned back to the file and shut the drawer quietly. “Everything’s fine. I have a heavy workload right now. And I have a patient due in a few minutes.”

  “I’ll get out of here then.” He started for the door and paused. With his hand on the knob, he stared at her. “Mandy . . .”

  Amanda kept her back to him. The camera came in close as she shut her eyes and fought for control. “I’ll see your patient tomorrow, Griff.” There was the faintest of tremors in her voice.

  He waited five humming seconds. “Yeah, fine.”

  When she heard the door close, Amanda pressed her hands to her face.

  “Cut.”

  “I’m going to get you for that,” Jack said as he pushed the prop door open again. “I think you broke one of my toes.”

  Ariel fluttered her lashes at him. “You’re such a baby.”

  “All right, children,” the director said mildly. “Let’s get the reaction shots.”

  Agreeably, Ariel moved behind Amanda’s desk again. It was then she saw Booth. Surprise and pleasure showed on her face, though his expression wasn’t welcoming. He was frowning at her, his arms crossed over a casual black sweater. He didn’t return her smile, nor did she expect him to. Booth DeWitt wasn’t a man who smiled often or easily. It only made her more determined to nudge him into it.

  She’d thought about him—surprisingly often. At the moment, she had enough on her mind, both personally and professionally, yet she’d found herself wondering about Booth DeWitt and what went on inside that aloof exterior. She’d seen flashes of something warm, something approachable. For Ariel, it was enough to make her dig for more.

  And there’d been that pull—the pull she remembered with perfect clarity. She wanted to feel it again, to enjoy it, to understand it.

  She finished the taping and had an hour before she and Stella would play out their confrontation scene on the Lane living room set. “Jerry, I found a kitten for your daughter,” she told one of the technicians as she rose. “It’s a little calico; I can bring it in on Friday.”

  “Been to the pound again,” Jack said with a sigh. Ignoring him, Ariel stepped over some cable and walked to Booth.

  “Hi, want some coffee?”

  “All right.”

  “I keep a Mr. Coffee in my dressing room. The stuff at the commissary’s poison.” She led the way, not bothering to ask why he was there. Her door was open, as she usually left it. Walking in, she went directly to the coffeemaker. “You have to make do with powdered milk.”

  “Black’s fine.”

  Her dressing room was chaos. Clothes, magazines and pamphlets were tossed over all available space. Her dressing table was littered with jars and bottles and framed photographs of the cast. It smelled of fresh flowers, makeup and dust.

  On the wall was a calendar that read February though it was midway through April. An electric clock was unplugged and stuck on 7:05. Booth counted three and one-half pairs of shoes on the floor.

  In the midst of it, Ariel stood in a raw-silk suit the color of apricots with her hair pale and glowing in a sophisticated knot. She smelled like a woman should at sunset—soft, with a hint of anticipation. As the coffee began to drip, she turned back to him.

  “I’m glad to see you again.”

  The simplicity of the statement made Booth almost believe it. Cautiously, he kept half the room between them as he watched her. “The taping was interesting. You’re very good, Ariel. You milked that five-minute scene for everything there was.”

  Again she had the impression more of criticism than flattery. “It’s important in a soap. You’re working in little capsules. Some people only tune in a couple times a week. Then there are those who turn it on as a whim. You hope to grab them.”

  “Your character.” He eyed the suit, approving the subdued style. “I’d say she’s a very controlled professional woman who’s currently going through some personal crisis. There were a lot of sexual sparks bouncing around between her and the young doctor.”

  “Very good.” With a smile, Ariel picked up two cups, mismatched. “That’s neatly tied up. Want some M&M’s? I keep a stash in my drawer.”

  “No. Do you always play around on set when you’re not on camera?”

  She stirred powdered milk into her coffee, added a generous spoon of sugar, then handed Booth his. “Jack and I have a running contest on who can make who blow their lines. Actually, it makes us sharper and lowers the tension level.” Carelessly, she took magazines from a chair and left them stacked on the floor. “Sit down.”

  “How many pages of dialogu
e do you have to learn a week?”

  “Varies,” she said and sipped. “We run about eighty-five pages of script a day now that we’ve gone to an hour. Some days I might have twenty or thirty where my character’s involved. But for the most part, I tape about three days a week—we don’t do a lot of takes.” Opening the drawer on her dressing table, she took a handful of candies and began to eat them one at a time. “I’m told it’s the closest thing to live TV you can get.”

  Watching her, he drank. “You really enjoy it.”

  “Yes, I’ve been very comfortable with Amanda. Which is why I want to do other things as well. Ruts are monotonous places, but so easy to stay in.”

  He glanced around the room. “I can’t imagine you in one.”

  Ariel laughed and sat on the edge of her dressing table. “A great compliment. You’re frugal with them.” Something in his aloof, cool expression made her smile. “Would you like to have dinner?” she asked on impulse.

  For an instant surprise flickered over his face—the first time she’d seen it. “It’s a bit early for dinner,” he said mildly.

  “I like the way you do that,” she said with a nod. “Conversations with you are never boring. If you’re free tonight, I could pick you up at seven.”

  She was asking him for a date, he thought, very simply, very smoothly, in a manner more friendly than flirtatious. As he had often since the first time he’d met her, Booth wondered what made her tick. “All right, seven.” Reaching in his pocket, he pulled out