by Meg Tilly
“Show me,” she said, crossing her arms to let him know she was taking no guff.
He opened his mouth, lifted his tongue. She nodded. “Vicki, I need you to book me transportation to”—he glanced down at the pad of paper he had scribbled notes on—“Solace Island. I need to leave as soon as possible.”
Vicki’s mouth tightened. “Do you really think it’s wise to travel? You clearly aren’t feeling well.”
“I don’t have a choice. Kevin Hawkins claims Sarah Rainsford was there. He’s put out a bulletin that will show up across all police jurisdictions with the license plate of the car she’s supposedly driving. If she is still alive, we need to get to her before he does.”
Vicki’s hand rose to her throat as if the collar of the rose silk blouse she wore had suddenly gotten too tight. “Good Lord.” Her eyes wide, mouth agape. She swallowed hard. Once. Twice. Then her lips firmed. Her spine straightened. “I’m coming with you,” she said, just as he had hoped she would. She turned without waiting for his answer and hurried through the door to her computer to book their trip.
14
“Arrgh!” Mick knew the layout of his study, hadn’t bothered switching on the light. Had made the journey to his desk many times in the dark. But apparently that meddling woman had subtly rearranged the furniture in front of his desk, and he had rammed the little toe on his right foot into the wooden box with brass fittings that was supposed to be under the window. “Goddammit!” It would have been satisfying to hop around on one foot clutching the injured toe, but he couldn’t even do that, because God knew what else had been shifted around. No. He had to shuffle his feet slowly, the script tucked under one arm, the other outstretched until his fingertips landed first on the back of one of the leather armchairs in front of his desk and then onto the desk itself. Once there, he was able to find the desk lamp and switch it on. He blinked, his eyes adjusting to the light. The room looked the same, but different. The two armchairs had been angled slightly, and the wooden box was now acting as a side table. There was a small crystal and silver bowl with almonds in it. She had dragged a rug from somewhere, woven with warm earth tones, a few small tweaks that made a room into something more. He dumped the screenplay on the desk, hobbled to the bowl and snagged a few almonds, rattled them around in the palm of his hand, trying to decide if he was pissed off or delighted. He popped the almonds into his mouth. They tasted good—smoky and salty. That’s when he noticed a bottle of his favorite whiskey on the bookshelf, sitting on a silver tray with two crystal tumblers like a minor miracle. He smiled, rounded the armchair forgetting to limp, poured a finger of whiskey into a crystal tumbler, and then returned to his desk and settled in to work.
Mick had idly browsed through the Columbia screenplay while eating dinner. He had picked the script as company, a dinner companion so he didn’t have to face another meal alone. He wasn’t looking for a new project, but Ron Berg, the Columbia studio head, had bulldozed his secretary, Lois, into booking a conference call for ten a.m. Mick decided to skim a few pages so he could be semi-articulate when he turned Ron Berg down. There was no way Mick was going to dive into another project. He planned to take a couple of months off after the press for Retribution wrapped up. Go somewhere tropical. Laze in the sun. Swim. Fish. Down a couple of frozen cocktails with pointless paper umbrellas that he liked to grump about but privately adored.
The Crushed Dandelions screenplay started out better than he had expected given the synopsis that had come with it. Mick finished thumbing through the script while watching the Las Vegas Golden Knights skate their asses off. The Knights had lost in the shootout, which sucked. Just like the screenplay, which had quite a few good components but three-quarters of the way through took a hard right into ludicrous. He had deposited the script on the discard pile, relieved it was an easy no and his tropical holiday was still on deck. He tossed back the remains of his whiskey, switched off the TV, ambled down the hall to the bathroom, brushed his teeth, and went to bed.
But was he sleeping? No. The damned script had niggled at him like a splinter trapped under the skin. So he had dragged his sorry ass out of bed and was sitting in his damned study trying to fix the problems in a script he was pretty certain he didn’t want to take on. He had decided to jot down the ideas that were swirling in fragment form so his brain would shut up and let him sleep. In the morning, when he got to the office, Lois could type them up.
After half an hour he had accumulated an ever-growing stack of marked-up Post-its, and that’s when he realized there was a fundamental flaw in his plan. He should have numbered the damn things or stuck them on the corresponding pages of the script. What you really need to do is learn how to type. Then you wouldn’t be dependent on other people. He reached for the phone to call his assistant and then remembered it was Rachel. Crap. I can’t call her. Mick exhaled, plucked a couple of Post-its from his desk. He flipped through the screenplay to find the scenes he’d made the notes about. He would transcribe them in the margins. If he ran out of space, he could use the backs of the pages. He was able to figure out what scene the top Post-it was about and stick it on the appropriate page. The next two Post-its were a lost cause. His handwriting was messy on the best of days. In the dead of night it was damn near indecipherable. Didn’t make fucking sense. “Dammit.” He balled the offending Post-it notes in his fist and attempted to chuck them against the wall, but they had no weight, no heft, and the scraps of yellow paper floated ineffectually through the air for all of a foot and then descended as delicately as rose petals to rest on the top of his desk. “If the damn agency had sent me a male assistant as I requested, I would have already dictated the notes and gone back to bed,” he muttered, glaring at the mess on his desk. The very fact he was sitting up in the middle of the night, attempting to work without success, avoiding calling Rachel because he didn’t want to disturb her rest irritated him. Mick exhaled. He plucked another fistful of Post-its off his desk and attempted to read the scribbled notes. “A final—what the hell is this word? A final . . . blankity-blank . . . before the elevator. Make sure to . . . something . . . red haze through window.” He slapped the Post-its down. “That’s it. I’m calling her.”
* * *
* * *
A shrill noise jerked Sarah to a seated position, the taste of panic in her mouth. “What the—” Ring . . . ring . . . Wrestling her way out from under the covers, she freed an arm and grabbed for her burner phone from the bedside table. “Yes?” she croaked, swiping the screen, her brain groggy from being wrenched out of a deep sleep. “Hello?”
Ring . . . ring . . . “Damn!” She staggered out of bed and sprinted through the darkened apartment. Following the sound of the ringtone to the kitchen. Ring . . . ring . . . She could make out the shadowy shape of the old-fashioned landline phone attached to the wall by the fridge. She lunged for the receiver; her heart was pounding and high-octane adrenaline was coursing through her veins. “Hello?” She covered the mouthpiece and puffed out a breath, trying to dispel the frenetic panic in her voice. “Hello?” Her parents were already gone, four years now. But in the dark of the night, yanked from sleep, time had morphed, played a trick on her, and it felt like she was going to get the bad news all over again.
“Need you to get over here, pronto.” The sound of her employer’s voice acted as a foghorn and tugged Sarah back into the present.
“Yes. Of course,” she said, modulating her tone. “Give me five to change out of my pajamas.”
“Don’t bother. You’re coming over to type, not participate in a fashion show. And I don’t want to hear any bellyaching. I warned you this would happen a lot.”
So, the man is back in asshole mode. Fine. “Very well,” she said, exhaling softly, trying to dispel the leftover effects of the fight-or-flight panic that had surged through her body. “I’ll be right there.”
“Thanks,” he said curtly, and the phone went dead. Sarah flipped on the light so she wouldn’t break her neck
on the journey back to her bedroom. She shoved her feet in a pair of sneakers, grabbed her robe, which used to belong to her mother, and tugged it on as she sprinted across the apartment and out the front door. On the landing, she remembered her eyeglasses on the bedside table. Confound it. She whirled around and ran back into her apartment.
15
She was wearing a vintage pale-pink robe. It was a well-worn quilted satin with delicate clear pink flower petals with rhinestone pistils. When Rachel had rushed through the front door in her worn cotton pajamas and that robe, it momentarily knocked Mick on his ass. The robe was such a contradiction to the contained, constrained, almost inhuman efficient exterior that she had presented in all their prior encounters. It was as if he had stepped into the pages of an enchanted storybook, and on some cellular level, that pale-pink robe that she had wrapped around her slender body was the key.
“We’re in here,” he said, with a jerk of his head toward his study. Aware that his voice was gruffer than it should be. He followed the gentle sway of her body into the room, leaving a healthy distance between them, so she wouldn’t be spooked. There was an innate grace to the way she moved. Perhaps she had studied ballet as a girl. Easy to imagine, long, lean legs encased in pastel-colored tights. Who was she before the world had left those ever-present shadows in her eyes? Once in his study, she turned and looked at him from where he was hovering in the doorway. The room that had seemed like a trap five minutes ago suddenly felt inviting. Intimate. He stayed where he was, propped against the doorframe. “I need you to take notes.”
“Very well. I’ll need a pad of paper and a pen.” Her face looked different without the skillful application of subtle makeup. She looked younger, more vulnerable behind those dark-framed glasses. There was a slight imprint along the left side of her face. She must have been sleeping on her side when he woke her.
“Right.” He pushed away from the safety of the doorway and ambled across the room as if her presence was having no effect on him whatsoever. He crossed to his desk, rummaged through a drawer, found a pad of paper and a pen and slid them across his mahogany desk. He was aware of a hint of the scent of lemon and wax rising from the desk’s freshly polished surface. That was the bass note of comfort and home, but the melody was all her. The faintest scent of her warm skin clad in freshly washed light-blue cotton pajamas with a white piping trim. The worn pale-pink robe with buttons, which was both fanciful and yet elegant. There was something about her that dangled the impossible promise of hope and redemption. “Dammit,” he muttered.
“Pardon?” She looked at him inquiringly.
“I apologize.” His voice sounded stiff, slightly pissed off. Better that than drooling on her. “I hadn’t thought it through. Should have given you time to get dressed. With my previous assistants, always men, it didn’t . . .” He shrugged, feeling uncomfortable. “Anyway, next time, even if I sound grouchy, take the time you need to get dressed.” He wasn’t used to apologizing. Mick busied himself gathering the scattered Post-it notes. He was going to toss them across the desk, but Rachel extended her hand. She had elegant fingers. Perhaps she’d played piano or some other musical instrument. Maybe a cello cradled against her body, held in place with her thighs. A light grasp of her fingers holding the bow as she drew it across the strings, filling the listener with sweet melancholy music.
“Oh.” She started to withdraw her hand. “I’m sorry. I thought those were for me.”
“They are. I was . . .” He dropped the Post-its in her palm, careful not to make contact with her skin. Didn’t matter. His fingertips had entered the space surrounding her, and electric tingles leaped from her hand to his fingertips. “Lost in thought.” He put his hand behind his back. It didn’t help. The sensation continued up his arm, to his torso, where the tingles expanded, radiated outward, filling his chest cavity with an unfamiliar, unsettled feeling. He didn’t like it. Who was she to march into his home and turn it upside down, causing him to long for things he could never have? “Have a seat.” He gestured to the chair in front of his desk.
She sat, uncapped the pen, her eyes on the yellow legal pad. Her unbound hair fell forward, partially obscuring her face. “Ready.”
Mick wanted to lean across the desk and nudge the silky strands behind her dainty seashell ear so they wouldn’t obscure his view of her face. He sat in his leather desk chair, picked up the script and flipped through it. “At the top of the page. Heading. Crushed Dandelions Notes. Page seventy-one, scene one forty-two, this is where the script starts jumping the shark. The screenwriter”—Mick flipped to the title page—“Ed Swartz, made certain promises to the moviegoers at the start of the script. The setup was great. Unique. The characters were for the most part engaging.” He could hear the scratch of her pen on the pad. “I kept reading because I was intrigued by said promises and was curious about how the characters were going to solve them. Then something happened. From page seventy-one onward, it reads as if the screenwriter scored some potent BC bud and wrote the rest of the script stoned.”
* * *
* * *
When Mick first started dictating, he had seemed uneasy, distracted, but within a minute, he had shifted into another gear. Work mode, Sarah thought, her pen flying across the page. He had become engaged, laser-focused. She could sense his talent roaring to the forefront, and there was something very addictive, almost seductive in seeing him like this. “The scene in the cave, on . . .” She could hear the sound of him flipping through the script. “Page seventy-three. What the hell is that about? Felt like filler. On page seventy-six there is the addition of a fucking mountain lion? That’s what happened to Lance? Give me a break. The man is described as six foot six and built like a tank, and a mountain lion is going to take him down? First off, bees kill more people than mountain lions. Secondly, the man survived three tours of duty, is skilled in hand-to-hand combat, and he’s done in by a mountain lion?” Mick sounded so outraged on Lance’s behalf. “On page . . . sixty-nine, there is a long, drawn-out scene—Derek’s messed-up relationship with his father. It felt like an afterthought. If you leave the scene in, it needs to be woven into the fabric of the script. It’s a dramatic scene, but there is no mention of it afterward or any hint of foreshadowing. What do you get for it? Does it change Derek? Does it change the trajectory of the script and color his actions and motivations going forward? No. So why is it there? Page eighty-two— What are you smiling at? No. Don’t write that down. I’m asking you a question.”
Sarah’s gaze jerked up from the page, and there he was, looking at her with those tawny, gold-flecked eyes. “I . . .” Suddenly she was aware of the late hour, the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra or underwear. Had grabbed the robe and dashed out of the door. She swallowed and forced her gaze back to the page, trying to ignore the liquid heat coursing through her. Sarah tipped her chin down so her hair shielded her from his scrutiny. “I was enjoying the work.” A partial truth. “Hearing your insights on the script. It made me want to read it.” She could see through her makeshift curtain that he was still watching her as if she were a puzzle he was trying to solve. What would it be like to not have to hide, disassemble, to be able to stand tall in who I am, to hold a man’s gaze and proudly invite him to do more than look? The thought was as effective as pinching the lit wick of a candle, snuffing out the flame. A wave of weariness washed over her. Will I ever be able to be more than a mirage? Sarah felt her eyes heat but stuffed the emotion down. Clamped her teeth together, poised her pen over her paper and awaited his next note. She felt like a ghost, hovering on the fringes of life, constantly being forced to reinvent herself. Living an imaginary life where everything she did, every word she uttered was tinged with the acrid taste of falsehoods and lies in her mouth. And the odds of being able to return to who she was, to anything familiar, seemed highly unlikely.
16
It had been only a week since Sarah had landed on Mick Talford’s doorstep, and yet it felt
as if she had been living there much longer. There was a familiar comfort to the place. It felt as if the home and the grounds, with their lush, fragrant gardens, had scooped her up into their embrace, making her feel safe and cared for.
Sarah was folding the top sheet over the comforter on Mick’s bed when the dryer chimed down the hall in the laundry room. She hastily pulled the fresh pillowcases over the pillows, fluffed them. Then she propped them up against the headboard, gliding her hands over them to smooth the pillowcases. She tweaked the corners so they would stand correctly, then placed the small accent pillow just so. Stood back, looked it over. Good.
She scooped the pile of old linens off the floor and headed down the hall. The whole ritual, stripping his bed, remaking it, felt oddly intimate. That he had slept in that bed. She knew from his laundry hamper that he didn’t wear pajamas. And no matter how hard she tried, her mind would go to the image of his long, lean, sun-kissed limbs lounging in the front doorway with an insolent smirk on his face. How she wished she didn’t know what he looked like without his clothes. Once seen, it was impossible to forget. His body reminded her of Michelangelo’s statue of David. She had seen it in Florence with her parents when she was twelve and curious. It was the first naked male body she had seen. It was magnificent. The marble seemed to breathe, to glow with an inner light as David paused for a second in that moment before a tremendous output of energy that would determine if he were to live or die.
Mick’s naked body framed in the doorway had reminded her of that work of art, but Mick’s sleek muscles were made of warm flesh and blood. At night, sometimes sleep would refuse to come and she’d find herself staring up into the darkness, her traitorous body heating with the knowledge that he was sprawled naked among his sheets. If she closed her eyes, she could almost taste the salt of his skin.
