“Fantastic!” Jerry said. “Again. Now right. Again. Again. Again!”
She responded to Jerry’s commands with a precision that always managed to look spontaneous, intimate.
That was Shannon’s trademark. She had a flexible, unrehearsed beauty that made photographers fight for the opportunity to work with her.
“Okay. Break for reload.”
Jerry looked up at Holly, perched precariously above him on a jumble of boulders.
“Not enough time to climb down, lovey,” he said, “unless you need some more sunscreen.”
She tossed back her hair so that it didn’t cling to her hot cheeks. With unconscious grace she shifted to a more comfortable position.
“I’m all right for another half hour,” she said.
“Water?” Roger called.
“Not yet,” she said. “My back teeth are floating as it is.”
The crew smiled and moved even more quickly.
From Holly’s high perch, she could look beyond Jerry, past the technicians and their lights and reflectors, the makeup man and hair stylists, the colorful sultan’s tent where she changed from one desert-inspired outfit to another.
The view was exquisite to someone who loved the desert as she did. The slanting light of late afternoon turned granite boulders into soft textures of gold and made even the smallest pebble leap out of its sandy background.
Beyond the hubbub of the set, desert animals were beginning to move cautiously out into the coolness of late afternoon, released from the sun’s seamless prison.
Linc was off to the left, well out of the way of the technicians setting up more reflectors. He sat on the sorrel stallion, relaxed and powerful in his waiting, as patient as the desert itself.
Holly forced herself to look away. Jack was close to Linc, standing in the stirrups, peering behind the boulders where she was. Beth’s horse stood near a large clump of brush, but she was not in the saddle.
On the far side of Holly’s pile of boulders, Freedom suddenly started barking. Just as the sounds reached a frantic pitch, Beth’s scream ripped through the afternoon silence.
Instantly Holly started for the girl. Heedless to the height and the danger of falling, Holly leaped from boulder to boulder. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Linc and Jack spur their horses into a dead run.
But they had a long way to go and Beth was still screaming, her voice raw with terror.
As Holly scrambled over the top of the boulder pile, she saw what Linc and Jack had already seen. Beth was frozen in terror, staring down at the ground where Freedom barked and made passes at a rattlesnake coiled in the sand.
The snake was trapped between the screaming girl and the snapping, snarling dog. It divided its reptilian attention between the two threats.
Beth stopped screaming as suddenly as she had begun. She swayed forward alarmingly, on the verge of fainting.
Holly leaped off the last rock and started running hard. If Beth fainted, she would fall on top of the snake. Then it would strike mindlessly, again and again, for that was the nature of a frightened snake.
The rattler could hardly miss Beth’s face and her neck, the points of greatest vulnerability.
Freedom barked and started toward the snake.
Holly skidded to a stop, hoping that the dog would keep the snake’s attention off the pale, terrified girl.
“It’s all right, Beth,” she said in a reassuring voice.
As she spoke, she eased forward, measuring the distance between girl and snake.
Not enough.
Any sudden movement could trigger the snake’s strike.
I can’t risk yanking Beth out of danger, Holly realized. I’ll have to get between her and the rattler.
It was the only way to be certain that Beth wouldn’t fall onto the snake if she fainted.
The girl moaned and swayed, drawing the snake’s black-eyed attention.
Seeing an opening, Freedom rushed in, then leaped back as the rattler struck at him.
Holly slid between Beth and the snake just in time to catch the girl as her knees gave way. She hadn’t quite fainted, but she was no longer able to stand.
Bracing herself, she supported Beth, trying to hold both of them absolutely motionless.
Only then did Holly realize what she had done. She was standing in silk shorts and sandals less than three feet away from a coiled, buzzing rattler.
A snake can’t strike more than its own length, she reminded herself firmly.
Unfortunately, she had no way of knowing how long the rattler was.
In blank fascination, Holly stared sideways at the snake, trying to guess its length from the thickness of its coils.
That’s a damned big snake, she thought distantly.
Beth gave an odd moan.
Through stiff lips, Holly murmured reassurances and held the girl more tightly. Any movement from them would take the snake’s attention off the snarling, leaping dog.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Linc’s Arabian race by and come to a rearing, plunging stop well behind Freedom. A hatchet blade flashed vividly in the sun as Linc leaped off.
“Freedom,” he said coldly. “Heel.”
Whining, obviously reluctant, the dog retreated and came to heel.
“Stay.”
Linc’s voice compelled obedience. The dog froze in place as though nailed to the ground.
With the odd, gliding grace of a stalking predator, Linc moved toward the rattlesnake from a direction opposite Beth and Holly. The steel head of the hatchet burned gold above his hand. His eyes were intent, focused on the deadly, poised head of the rattlesnake.
The reptile watched the man’s approach with unblinking attention. The snake quivered along its thick length, making a sound like pine needles shaken in a paper bag.
Under normal conditions, when Linc met a rattlesnake he simply turned aside and let the snake go its way, as much a part of the desert as the sun itself.
But there was nothing normal about these conditions.
Slowly, Linc raised the hatchet above his head.
There was no warning before he struck. He simply surged forward and brought the hatchet down in the same swift, deadly motion.
The steel edge sliced through the rattlesnake and didn’t stop until it grated on rock buried six inches beneath the sand.
Holly closed her eyes, shutting out the reflexive writhing of the dead snake. She heard Beth’s choked cry as Jack lifted her into his arms. She heard him speaking broken words of fear and relief.
When she opened her eyes, Beth was wrapped in Jack’s protective strength. They stood and held onto each other with silent intensity.
Watching them, Holly felt an instant of piercing envy. Since Cabo San Lucas her life had felt like the time before dawn, neither stars nor sunrise to grace the hollow arch of the sky, only a vast emptiness aching to be filled.
Hands closed harshly around Holly’s arms, spinning her around, shaking her.
“That’s the most stupid stunt I’ve ever seen anyone pull!” Linc said angrily. “Do you think you can’t die? What the hell were you trying to prove?”
She simply stared at him. His face was like the stone she had touched earlier, harsh and unyielding. His eyes were narrowed, blazing with rage. His lips were thinned over his teeth as he yelled at her.
Behind her came Jack’s low words of comfort to Beth.
Sudden laughter wrenched Holly, clawing to be free, a laughter as wild as Linc’s eyes.
She clenched her teeth against the awful laughter. When she spoke, her voice belonged to someone else. Thin, calm.
Empty.
“Beth was going to faint,” Holly said. “She was swaying forward. If she fell on the snake . . .”
Holly saw Linc’s expression change as he realized how close his sister had come to dying.
“Good,” she said distinctly. “I’m glad you can care about somebody.”
Behind them came the sound of Beth’s tears and Jack
’s continuing, gentle words of comfort.
Distantly Holly wondered what it would be like to cry again, to have someone hold me, care about me, taste my tears and make them his own.
Linc had done that for her the night her parents had died.
Linc held my world together with his strength and his caring. I drew on that night for six long years, my secret well of dreams and courage.
She had gone alone into an intensely competitive career in a world far removed from her childhood, and she had conquered it. Then she had come back to share her world with Linc, the world he had given her the strength to build.
But he doesn’t want either my world or me.
And now Holly’s secret well was dry, strength was draining out of her like night draining color and warmth from the day, nothing left but darkness.
God, I’m tired. So tired. Nothing left. Nothing . . .
Holly heard her voice at a great distance and realized too late that she had been thinking aloud.
It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.
She had lost her balance and fallen off the edge of the world, spinning into the darkness below.
She didn’t even know that Linc caught her, breaking her fall, or that he carried her into the dressing tent, cursing her boss every step of the way.
Linc laid Holly carefully on a pile of colorful satin sheets that had been used for earlier shots. He touched her pale, still face with fingers that shook.
Then he stood up swiftly and went to tear a strip off of Roger’s elegant hide for working her so hard.
Holly came back to consciousness with all the colors of sunset blazing and rippling overhead.
That’s wrong, she thought vaguely. Sunset is hours away.
Outside men’s voices were arguing.
Roger and Linc.
“—taking her with me,” Roger said.
“Like hell you are,” Linc snarled. “You’ve been working Holly so hard she can barely hold up her head!”
“It’s not the work, you bloody idiot, it’s—”
She put her fingers in her ears, stopping the sound of voices. She hadn’t the strength to face Linc yet.
She could barely face herself.
A few minutes later she cautiously took her fingers out of her ears.
The arguing had stopped, replaced by the familiar sounds of the crew packing up equipment.
They’ll have to wait for the tent, she thought. I’m too tired to leave right now.
With a long sigh, Holly pulled a flame-colored satin sheet over her head and let herself sink into sleep.
The next time she awoke, the brilliant colors of sunset were still flaring and rippling overhead. This time she recognized them for what they were.
The sultan’s tent, she thought, dazed. Why am I here? I thought we were finished with that part of Desert Designs.
Restlessly, Holly turned her head and looked around.
I’m wearing the wrong costume for the interior script. Shorts, not harem pants.
And why am I underneath one of the satin backdrops?
Abruptly, memory returned.
I fainted.
The realization stunned Holly. She had never even come close to fainting before in her life.
How did I get here?
No memory came to her but that of hearing an argument. She had shut it out.
And then she had slept from sheer nervous exhaustion.
Linc. He was arguing with Roger.
Even as Holly thought Linc’s name, she knew he was nearby, alone with her in the desert. She sensed him watching her, a presence as powerful as the mountains.
And as unyielding.
Gentle fingertips stroked Holly’s cheek. She flinched away, not able to endure being hurt again. Suddenly she wished that she had not awakened at all.
The quiet surrounding the tent was absolute, telling her that Linc had won the argument. Roger and the rest of the Royce Designs crew had left.
Linc had not.
The warmth of his body flowed along her side as he lay down next to her. Protest rippled through her, a spasm of stiffness that passed quickly because she hadn’t the strength to sustain it.
She felt the thick weight of her hair lifted off her neck, only to be replaced by Linc’s kiss burning against her skin in a caress that was all the more consuming for its gentleness.
“No,” Holly whispered. “Don’t.”
Linc heard the pleading in her voice, and the fear beneath it.
“Why?” he asked.
“Nothing’s changed,” she said. Then she laughed brokenly. “Bad to worse. That’s a change, isn’t it?”
“Everything has changed, niná. I love you.”
Holly put her hand against her mouth and bit into her own skin to keep from crying out in protest.
Too late, she thought in anguish.
I can’t believe him.
I can’t let myself believe him, because if I’m wrong, if I let myself hope and love and live again . . .
And lose again.
“No,” she said starkly.
“Look at me,” Linc said.
His voice was as gentle as his fingertips, his kiss.
She closed her eyes and fought against hope.
He kissed her eyelids. Very gently he took her hand away from her mouth. He kissed the livid marks her teeth had left on her skin.
“I knew I would love the girl called Holly from the first time I saw her staring up at me on the trail with her heart in her eyes,” he said. “But I was seventeen and she was only nine.”
His voice was soft, as though he was talking to himself.
“I watched Holly grow up until one night she ran out of my parents’ house and threw herself into my arms. I wanted to kill my parents for frightening her.”
She tried not listen.
It was impossible.
His fingertips were touching her face as though she was a beautiful, fragile dream he was afraid of awakening.
“I took Holly home,” Linc said, “kissed her, kissed her again and again, wanting her until I shook with it . . .”
She tried to say something, to make him stop retelling her own dream in his words.
But he kept talking in a voice that was husky with desire and regret and an emotion she was afraid to name, much less believe in.
“The next night I held my sweet Holly again, but differently. Her parents were dying, and she wept in my arms and I learned that shared grief was as binding as shared desire. She let me hold her, cry with her, love her. And then she was gone.”
Linc paused, remembering. His eyes were dark with pain.
“I never wanted a woman as much as I wanted Holly,” he said, “until six years later in Palm Springs, when a cat-eyed, black-haired model held out her arms to me and promised me . . . everything.”
Holly moved restlessly.
“Don’t,” she said. “I can’t live through it all again. Not now, knowing how it ends.”
Gently, irresistibly, Linc continued.
“Suddenly I understood what had happened to my father,” he said simply. “I no longer hated him, but I knew I would hate myself if I gave in to what I felt.”
She made a small sound and shivered.
“I didn’t see Holly beneath Shannon’s fire,” Linc said. “I didn’t realize that I wanted Shannon because she was Holly. All I saw was a woman beautiful enough to destroy a man’s soul.”
“Linc—no.”
His lips brushed over hers, silencing her with a tenderness that was like a razor slicing through her soul.
“I lashed out at what I saw,” he said. “I was trying to protect myself from the kind of hunger I thought I’d never feel again. But I felt it. God, how I felt it.”
Linc paused, touched Holly’s lips gently, and kept talking, trying to make her understand what he had only just begun to understand himself in the last hundred days.
“I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “I saddled Sand Dancer and set out on the roughe
st trail I could find. It was a wild night and a damn fool thing to do.”
His sad smile tore at her heart.
“But people who love sometimes do foolish things,” he said, “like stand in front of rattlesnakes to save someone else’s life.”
Linc put his fingers beneath Holly’s chin and turned her to face him.
“Thank you for Beth,” he said quietly. “I already had figured out that you weren’t the selfish woman of my nightmares, but I didn’t know just how unselfish you truly were.”
His fingers radiated warmth through her cold body. Her own hand moved, covering his. His hand turned and his fingers laced through hers.
Holly watched him, her eyes tawny in the dying light.
“I had better luck than I deserved the night I rode into the storm,” Linc said. “I woke up next to the woman I loved and thought I’d lost. She fitted against me so perfectly, melting in my hands . . .”
His voice caught and for a moment there was only the sound of the wind teasing the brilliant canopy.
“Then I found out that Holly was Shannon,” he said. “I felt betrayed. Caught like my father. A fool. I took the only revenge I could and proved what an utter fool I really was. I’ll never forgive myself for that, niná.”
She said nothing, only laced her fingers more deeply with his and watched him with something close to hope in her eyes.
“Yet you forgave me,” Linc whispered. “You came to me like a cloud to a mountain, sinking into me like desert rain, giving life to me. But you were Shannon, too, and I was . . . afraid of you.”
A tremor went through Holly at the thought that he had feared her.
“Each time we made love,” he said, “you sank more deeply into me. And then you said goodbye because I couldn’t say the simple truth. I love you. I want you for my wife. I want children with you, a family. A lifetime.”
“Linc,” she whispered.
It was all she could say. Her throat was tight, aching with all the tears that she hadn’t allowed herself to cry since Cabo San Lucas.
Linc looked at Holly’s pale, drawn face and was afraid he had understood himself too late.
“Don’t look so frightened,” he said heavily. “I’m not asking you to stop being Shannon. I want to add to your life, not take away from it. I’ll travel with you when I can, stay home when I have to. Just let me have part of you again. I love you so much ”
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