“For,” she said softly, looking at her slim hands, “a very simple reason. I’ve lost it. There’s nothing to write any more. I haven’t anything to say.” She watched her wristwatch, a birthday present from Helen, wink in the light. “I don’t know, maybe I pushed too hard. Maybe I was too ambitious. I—used to walk away from my typewriter so damned tired I could hardly see straight. I was on fire; I knew just where I was going and how to get there.” Her lips pulled into a faint smile, as her voice mocked herself. “Ah, I knew I was good! Every word I put on a white page was magic, gold in my fingertips. I had so many themes, meanings and images crowding me, I didn’t know what to write first.” A pause, while he waited with a statue’s stillness, this stranger, this friend, this man whose insight she knew, and absolutely nothing else. She rubbed at her full bottom lip with her index finger, slowly, staring with blind eyes into nothing. “I’ve lost it,” she said again, simply.
He came forward swiftly, and sat as he said reassuringly, “No need to panic, Devan. You’ve just got a writer’s block. People get them from time to time—they’re damned upsetting, they’re scary, they’re unpredictable. But sooner or later, they go away.”
She turned her eyes to him, focusing on his face with those direct, light, compelling eyes; the frowning sincerity, his grim assurance. She smiled faintly and said, “No.”
“How can you say that?” he shot back, very fast. “Have you ever experienced one before?”
Those wide shoulders leaning forward, that big hand clenched into a fist on the table. She closed her eyes as she felt the pain pricking at the back of them. “You still don’t understand,” she whispered. “This isn’t a block. It’s a burn-out.” She felt against her sensitive lip her pulse beating in the end of her finger, one, two. Paris shook his head with flattened ears and then laid it back down again, to sigh gustily. Moths, attracted to the interior light, bashed senselessly against the screen of the back door, white fluttering specks against black. “You pushed yourself to exhaustion,” said Ryan then, persistently. “Give yourself time. Take life easy! Then, when you’ve got a new perspective on things—”
She slammed both hands down on the table so hard, she felt pain in her shoulders, and she cried out, “I’ve given myself a goddamned year!” His facial features clenched together with the pain in her outburst, raw and throbbing; her pain was always raw. Distantly she registered quick, light footsteps on the stairs. “Ryan Forrester,” she then said, savagely, through her teeth, “do you have any idea how long a year is? Do you have any idea how many times I’ve gone to the typewriter to sit and try to get the words to flow? Do you know what it’s like to live, day in, day out, trying to keep busy, trying to patch your life together for just a little longer, trying to have faith and hold on to anything, any hope, any glimmering of an idea, anything at all that will keep you sane and help you to believe in the future? I do. I don’t have any more faith.”
Rawness like bared, wounded flesh; raw despair. She had to laugh inwardly, bitterly, at herself. She had had the fine idea of keeping herself aloof, distant from her past. Then along trots her editor and she spills her guts out, all over the table. No dignity at all in that!
Helen’s voice came tentatively from the doorway, worriedly, as she looked at the two in the kitchen. “Devan?”
They both ignored her. And if Devan had thought she had felt pain before, if she had thought she was in pain now, she must have been mistaken, for it was as nothing compared to what he made her feel when he said then, with great gentleness, “I do.”
She said, before she could help it, “I bet you go to church, too.”
She drew in a swift breath, appalled at herself, and then he said with an audible thread of amusement, “Sometimes, yes.”
She turned her head to the side, and saw Helen still hovering in the doorway, wrapped to the throat in her dressing-gown. She said to Ryan, “Finish your coffee.”
At that he went to the sink and dumped his cup. “That,” he said succinctly, “is an impossibility. Even with the brandy, that brew tasted like sin.” He’d meant to make her smile, but she didn’t have it in her, and after a moment he turned to the doorway and acknowledged Helen’s presence with a smile of his own, and a nod. “Hello, again. I’m Ryan Forrester, Devan’s editor.”
Helen regarded him with great respect. “You were still outside waiting, then?” she said. “I hadn’t really expected you to last that long.”
Devan said between her teeth, “Full points for persistence.” Her sister sent her a reproachful look, but Ryan just smiled.
He flipped up his watch to check the time and then said, with a sigh, “Look, it’s very late. If you’ll excuse me for saying so, you look like death.” Her shoulders shook once in a reluctant, silent chuckle, and his eyes sharpened on her. “May I come over tomorrow morning?”
At that Devan’s eyes flashed brief and brilliant at him, making his eyes widen and his expression become arrested, but the brilliance and the flash were transitory and her eyes died to dull brown. “For what?” she asked flippantly, remembering her drink, by now quite cold. She went to get it, drinking it for the alcohol, drinking it like a person who needs it very badly. The confrontation was taking more out of her than she cared to admit. Then she wiped her lips with fingers that visibly trembled, and said, “Not more of this post mortem, surely?”
His nostrils flared, and his head reared back. But whatever he might have said was lost, for he shook himself loose of whatever emotion she had prompted in him and said very softly, “I don’t believe in post mortems.”
She bowed her head and turned her face away, in rejection of everything she saw in him. “We have nothing to discuss,” she said, coldly.
He bared his teeth in something not quite a smile, and said between them, “Like hell, lady!” Her hands tightened on her cup, but she refused to look at him. “Somebody needs to take this in hand.”
And then, unexpectedly, Helen deserted Devan to walk over to Ryan and hold out her hand with a friendly smile. As she shook his hand, she said, “I’m Devan’s sister, and I couldn’t agree with you more, Mr. Forrester. You’ll be more than welcome to come any time you like.”
Aghast at this treachery, Devan glared at her calm sister with an open mouth, and then she shut her jaws with a snap. Her expression grew ominous, and she said very softly, “Helen Marie Beardley, you have just made a grave tactical error, and if you think this is the end of it, you’re sadly mistaken—”
“Well, then,” said Ryan, briskly. He clasped Helen’s hand once more and then let her go, and he strode for the back door. He threw over his wide, capable-looking shoulder, “I’ll be here at nine, sharp. Don’t bother locking your doors or shuttering your windows. I know you’ll be here.” At the door, he stopped and turned to consider her, standing tense and defensive at the worktop. Then he said, sweetly, “Nice meeting you, Devan, Helen. I’ll be seeing you.”
He was gone, sending Paris leaping out of his way. The cat streaked towards the front of the house, and Devan and Helen were left staring at the empty black rectangle that was the screen door. Empty, black; and Devan caught herself almost believing, almost hoping. She shook her head savagely, forcing herself to remember past failures, past disappointments.
She rounded on Helen with a near shriek. “How could you do that? Couldn’t you see that I didn’t want him around? For God’s sake, Helen, this is the last thing I need!”
“I think you’re wrong,” said her sister, quietly. Devan dropped her face to her hands. “You see, I’ve given you what peace and support that I can, but it isn’t enough.”
“It is, too!” The words were muffled against her palms.
“No,” Helen said gently. “Because you’re stagnating here, my dear. You and I—we’re two different personalities. You may enjoy the placidity and serenity of our lives right now, but you need a dynamic stimulus to push you out of the rut you’re in. And while I love you, and though you will always be welcome in my house, I know
you enough to realise I can’t give you what you need.” Devan’s hands dropped, and her head rose slowly to stare at her sister’s calm, loving smile. “Good night, love.”
The kitchen was empty. Devan stared blindly at the screen door. Ryan Forrester, out of her past, a faceless name with a cutting mind. And she didn’t know a thing of his motivations, his emotions, his goals or dreams. Ryan Forrester, total stranger. She drained her cup then, with a gulp, and then shook with a fit of coughing as the spirit went down wrong. With a sudden welling rage, she took the cup’s handle in her right hand and threw it with all her force at that black rectangle, both watching and hearing it shatter, the pieces flying in a deadly ricochet. Her breath dragged into her lungs with something terribly close to a sob. After a long, long moment, she pulled away from the worktop and began cleaning up the mess. On her hands and knees by the door, wiping methodically with a wet cloth to pick up the fragments, she let her head sink to her hands while her face broke into a soundless, wordless, formless expression of anguish.
If only it were as simple as Ryan and Helen believed! If only it were a question of sitting back and waiting, as he’d suggested. But then Ryan thought he understood the situation, whereas she knew that he most certainly did not. No, by God, he didn’t know the half of it. But don’t, Devan, don’t think back. Don’t think.
Don’t feel. Don’t feel. Don’t feel.
Chapter Three
She fell into her bed ten minutes later with an eagerness that surprised her. Devan, the original night owl, crawling like a wreck under her covers at barely eleven o’clock. Three, four o’clock in the morning—even dawn was no stranger to her. Once she would have looked up in surprise to note the time which had flown by swiftly with the hot pace of her work. Now she couldn’t believe how long, how slowly, how excruciatingly the time ticked by.
But not this night. She felt dizzy before she even sank into a lying position. The buzz she had got from the combined caffeine and alcohol was making the world whirl. When she laid her head down, she knew that this of all nights would not be sleepless.
She awoke to cheery birds singing, interspersed with a loud and insistent knocking. Knocking that sounded rhythmic as if it had gone on for some time. Knocking that brought her to full alertness, as she dragged herself out of bed and threw on her bathrobe to pad down the stairs in bare feet. Knocking that didn’t stop, even as she made her way to the front door. She yanked it open and glared with dry, itchy eyes at Ryan Forrester who leaned against the doorpost, elegantly dressed, neatly shaved and wide awake.
She briefly checked her wristwatch, which she had plucked from atop her dresser on her way out of her bedroom, and she said shortly, “Nine o’clock! Good for you, dead on time, damn you. Excuse me.” She turned around, looking and feeling like a mess, feeling unable to face the sunshine and this man, this day. She said through a yawn, “Help yourself to whatever you like.”
“Where’s your sister?” he asked, coming slowly into the house.
“Dunno.” She started for the stairs.
“Where are you going?” He followed her.
“Back to bed.” She started up the staircase, her eyes looking up their length in dull desperation. Sleep. She felt as if she could sleep for a month. Another wide yawn cracked her jaws. She’d sure as hell give it a try.
His hand was on her arm then, stopping her. “No, you’re not,” he said quietly. She turned very calmly and stared him in the eye, her hair tousled even more than the night before, her expression weary, her eyes wryly resigned.
“Look,” she said politely, removing his hand with her own. For a brief moment she felt warm skin, corded strength, long fingers. “You are a very nice man. I don’t even dislike you after yesterday. You were a wonderfully supportive, intelligent, and, yes, fair editor to me, so thanks a lot. But this is my life, and it’s no concern of yours, so go back to your own and quit meddling in affairs that don’t concern you, all right?” He just regarded her with those light, unreadable eyes. She reached up an insolent hand and patted his cheek. “There’s a good boy. Lock the door when you leave.” She started up the stairs again, hearing nothing behind her, no retreat, no outburst, though she had seen quick and dangerous anger flare in his face when she had patted him. Absolutely nothing. It impelled her to turn around again, to stare down at him standing motionless and staring up at her, his expression blank. She said, as if goaded, “You’re not wanted here!”
And then Devan made her way to her bedroom, not caring. Not caring if he ransacked the house, came up the stairs and stole from under their noses, not caring if he took every single stick of furniture she and Helen owned. She dropped her bathrobe to the floor and climbed into bed, falling on her pillow like a heavy stone, closing her eyes and pulling the covers over her head. Not caring.
Ryan stood at the bottom of the stairs for several moments after she had disappeared, staring up at the empty, shadowed hall. He looked around, noting the rather odd combination of cleanliness and disaster that was the ground floor, littered with toys. His brows rose, mildly. Then, through the open archway that led to the dining room, he spotted a white square of paper. He went to it, curiously.
For a few moments, Devan felt the smoothness and the warmth of her bed, her pillow lying soft and yielding underneath her head, silence reigning through the house. Then she heard a few slight, far-off sounds of someone moving through the downstairs rooms, but they were too faint for her to guess what was happening. Until, out of the clear, sunny quiet exploded the unmistakable, heady strains of “Jesus Christ Superstar”. Devan bolted upright in her bed as though she’d lain on hot bricks, her glossy hair swirling about her face. She panted once, twice, with the shock of it, then blinked. Her album! He was playing her album at top volume, loud enough to wake the dead! She flung her covers off, and they slid to the floor. Then she was off the mattress in a bound, and striding for her wardrobe door, which she ripped open. The door hit the wall and came back to slap her shoulder. She dragged on faded, ancient jeans and a sweater, not bothering with a bra or socks and shoes, dressing as swiftly as possible so she could run down the stairs and confront that strange and infuriating man who was apparently intent on disrupting her life.
Her step faltered for a brief, telling moment as she thought of that. Such as her life was. But then she had recovered and was racing down the steps, taking them three at a time and landing in the hallway with a jar she felt to her teeth. She strode for the open doorway of one of the rooms she’d converted to a library, the one which held her stereo. Ryan was nonchalantly lounging in an armchair and blandly smiled when she appeared in the doorway.
She screamed at him, “What, in God’s name, do you think you’re doing?” His brows rose slowly, and she took the distance from the doorway to the stereo in long paces. Without a thought for the record, she ripped the needle off it, which made the speakers shriek, and then she slapped the arm on the rest.
When she whirled to face him again, he said mildly, “You did say I should help myself to whatever I like.”
She stood there, opening and shutting her mouth like a gasping fish. Then she thrust her hand through her hair, and looked around. “Where the hell is Helen, anyway? Where are the kids?”
He held up a scrap of paper. “She left this on the dining room table. She took the children shopping for the morning so that we could have a little privacy.”
Devan’s jaw spasmodically bunched. She could well understand why Helen had done so. Her sister had most probably guessed, and rightly, that sparks would fly this morning, and she was removing the children from the scene. Devan got a grim hold of her teeming emotions, and then smiled pleasantly. “How old are you?” she asked.
He had faced her calmly, even cheerfully, but he most certainly had not been expecting that. His brows shot up in astonishment as he took in her bland face and the brown eyes that were glittering hard and bright with rage. Then he smiled, in genuine amusement. “I’m thirty-nine,” he told her, placidly. She cocked he
r head briefly at that.
“So young, to be chief editor for a major publishing firm,” she said, admiringly. Then her expression lost all pleasantness and became a vivid, tight indication of her anger. “But you’re a big boy now, and you know what it means when someone says no, don’t you? But you don’t listen, do you? Well, you’d better listen to this, mister. Get the hell out of this house, or I’m calling the police.”
He looked around, as if seeing everything for the first time. “But this isn’t your home,” he said simply.
Quietly. Nothing he had said had been in a loud or raised voice; everything had been said so very quietly. She actually, physically, felt the blood leave her face at what he had said, felt it drain away until she was dizzy and white. A year she had lived here and tried to fit into a different way of life, with different expectations, and quietly he had managed to reach right to the truth with his observations and his words. His light eyes were watching her intently, with some surprise, for her reaction, and she saw him tense. Only later did she realise that he had expected her to faint.
She found her voice, and it trembled. “Don’t you have a job and responsibilities? Don’t you have somewhere better to be? Don’t you have things to do, places to go, people to meet? For God’s sake, go away and leave me alone!”
His eyes were widened in that lean, mature face, and they were recording everything about her. His feet were planted wide apart as though he meant to stay and there could be no doubt of it. Then he said, lightly, “Why, so you can drown in your self-pity?”
Rose-Coloured Love Page 3
