“That’s where you met those girls with brass balls?”
“More than a few. I cut my teeth on their dramatics. It was never dull.” He peered at her intently. “I can’t say that you’re like them. Not really. You’re steel-cut like them, yet earnest, too. I don’t know that I’ve ever known a practical dreamer. Yet here you are.”
“How do you know that I’m practical? That makes me sound wrong and not in the right way.”
He stared at her, her searching eyes fixed on him, her lips parted. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “It’s the strangest thing, that I should know you so well when we have only just met. But I think I do.”
By a barely perceptible degree, she shrunk away from him, pulling her hand from his. She peered out the window across the aisle from them and he turned back to his window.
“You never said,” she began after some time, turning back to him, “what it was about movies.”
“I shouldn’t tell you. It’s a little embarrassing.”
“Now you should tell me because it’s embarrassing.”
“I told you I shadowed my dad and spent a good time in the theatre district. It seemed we were always around performers. My father calls them his birds. ‘Their pretty feathers liven up the place,’ he’d say,” Jack said, affecting his father’s voice. “’On the whole,’” he continued in his father’s voice, “’they’re vile and ridiculous, but don’t think for one minute there’s not a place for them. They make me money. On stage, in the lobbies of my hotels. Theirs are large personalities and generally beautiful. People like to be around that. Makes them think they’re large and beautiful, too. That’s the secret of hospitality. You don’t beat them in with a sandwich board and a grating holler. You seduce them in with a leggy blonde.’”
“He sounds sweet,” she said in deadpan earnest.
Jack threw his head back and laughed. “Sweet. No,” he choked on his laughter. “To a man, I don’t think anyone would call Seamus O’Drassen sweet. But that’s only part of it. This is the embarrassing part. Promise not to laugh?”
“No. Now you’ve really got me intrigued.” She leaned in, a fist pressed under her chin, her eyes rapt, affecting exaggerated anticipation.
“I love,” he paused and lowered his voice to a whisper, “radio soapies.”
She sat back, her chest shaking in unvoiced laughter until it broke. “How marvelous! I think I love you.” It was a light and careless utterance.
“You promised not to laugh.”
“No. I didn’t.”
“My mom always has them on. You stand still for a few minutes in our house and they can’t help but get into your ear. Then you have to know what happens. So you stick around. And you come back. And you keep coming back. My mom thinks I’m the most dutiful son; always around.”
“But it’s the soapies.”
“The damn soapies. She was devastated when I told her I was moving to LA. Who will talk Betty and Bob and The Romance of Helen Trent with her?”
“Oh.” She threw her head back. “I love Helen Trent. She carries such a torch for Gil.”
“Will she ever become an important Hollywood costume designer?”
“She has such moxie. Of course she will. She has to. And win her Gil besides.”
“Anyway,” he sat back, “I love stories and I always thought it would be neat to work with performers. Really respect them, ya know? Not like my dad. But make money, too. I’m no communist. Producing just seems like the perfect fit.”
“It does,” she agreed.
“So,” he took her hand again, studying it in his, his thumb skimming over the pale top, so fine and smooth. His fingertips in her palm grazed hard callouses and he turned it over to look, but she winced and tried to pull it away. “Ah-ah.” He added his other hand to grasp it more firmly, examining first one, then the other. Then his eyes slowly climbed to meet hers. “These are the hands of someone who doesn’t own gloves.”
Her lips were parted to speak, her expression inscrutable. “I-I was gardening without my gloves,” she finally croaked out.
“Really,” he said, his voice tight and skeptical. He sat back against the window, his head resting in a splayed hand and his face cold and blank. “Tell me about your love of gardening.”
“What have you to say about my hands?” she asked, her brows furrowed in anger. Just as quickly her face and body relaxed and she sighed. “I’m tired. Sleeping on these couches is perfectly wretched. I think I’ll move over there—” she pointed to the couch across the aisle, “—and stretch out for a nap.”
He watched her settle herself across the aisle and thought why he should make any claims and challenges of her. So she worked with her hands? There was nothing wrong with it. It was to be admired, really, and he had made her feel like a fraud, like she was playing at being refined and cared for. He had been an ass.
Soon enough she had curled up, her eyes closed as her breathing evened. He watched her sleep as if her unconscious self could tell him what it was about her that he found so intriguing. So entertaining and so easy. He could remind himself that they had made a bargain. That they were parting in less than two days never to see each other again. That she was merely a distraction, a beautiful and sexy distraction, on a long and boring journey. But increasingly he knew that these were lies.
An hour later she began to stir and he moved over to her couch, leaning in to whisper in her ear. “I’m sorry.”
She startled, her eyes blinking open to find him beside her, his face, his mouth a breath away from hers. Then she pulled herself away and straightened, her eyes blinking as she came fully to.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I love your hands. I’ve decided they’re just like you: part smooth and fine, part tough and world-wise. Forgive me.”
She sighed. “You’re forgiven and it’s forgotten. It was nothing, really.”
“Are you thirsty?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Come on, then.” He grabbed her hand. “Let’s get a drink or seven before dinner.”
Chapter 3
41 hrs. to Los Angeles
After ordering their drinks, Jack turned to Minnie. “So, I meant to ask you earlier, before I made a complete ass of myself—”
She covered his mouth with a gloved hand and he pulled it away, glancing around the lounge car for impressionable children with keen ears. “Ass,” he leaned in and whispered. She nodded. “What is your perfect fit? That is to say, I think mine is producing. What’s yours?”
“I’d like to try to get into movies. Only don’t say anything to Mr. Cohn for me out of some chivalrous gesture. I’m good. Really. Good. But you don’t know that. So…don’t. Please.”
He nodded and put his hands up in muted surrender as the drinks arrived.
“But I don’t know how that’s going to go or how it would feel. What I do know? I love an audience. When I’m on stage there’s this energy to the room. It’s unique to every performance. Flat. Frenetic.
“Frenetic I like because they take me with them. We build on each other. And flat is a challenge I can rise to. I know that might sound peculiar; but it’s really something to surprise people, to make them feel something they hadn’t intended or even wanted.
“That’s why I loved my gig at the Lucky.”
He watched her speak, the dynamism in her face, her body. She was in love. A rare thing to witness. He wanted to love something like that. Someone like that.
“Are you trying to get me stinko?” she asked when the second round arrived.
“Oh, go on. You like them, don’t you?” he asked, twirling a toothpick in his mouth.
“I do.” She took an incremental sip. “Too much.”
“Grand.” He grinned tauntingly. “Nothing so boring as a gal too good to drink. And yes. Yes I am.”
38 hrs. to Los Angeles
After they stuffed themselves in the fine dining car on pan-fried trout, fine Napa wine, and a gourmet dessert, Jack took Minnie’s h
and and brought her to his sleeper.
“Do you want to see?” he asked, standing in the open doorway.
She craned her neck, peering in as far as she could while remaining firmly in the narrow aisle. “Yes,” she said, breathless with fascination. “I’m dying of curiosity. A full bath and all that? A grander home than some tucked on a train?”
He began to pull her in but she stayed her ground.
“But I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
He tipped his head, searching her face for her fears. “Why not?”
“You know why not.”
“I do. I was just wondering if you knew exactly what it was you feared.”
She sucked in a deep breath. “I do.” Then she glanced up and down the narrow aisle.
“No one to see, sweetheart,” he supplied. Still she hesitated. “Just a little privacy is all.” Her chest was rising and falling with exaggerated breaths. “What if I promised to be a saint? Would you come in then?”
She smiled. “No.”
“What if I promised not to be?” Now her smile was unchecked and warm, growing warmer with each passing moment. “Come on.”
In the grand sleeper, her eyes and hands caressed everything – the bed crisply made, the bath white and scrubbed, gleaming marble floors, mahogany wall paneling – exploring as if luxury were a new world.
“You do have a full bath. Marvelous! So this is how the swells live.”
He came up behind her; in her heels she was nearly as tall as he was. “Do I?” he taunted, his lips so close they nearly brushed the nape of her neck.
“Of course you know,” she said, turning to look at him. “It’s just…something truly beautiful and entirely unexpected.”
Leaning casually in the doorframe, he straightened, pulling his hands from his pockets and cupping her face. He peered into her eyes for the briefest moment, gauging her response, then pressed his lips to hers, lightly at first brush, then bolder, prodding her mouth open to taste, his tongue stroking hers. Timid at first, her mouth met his with increasing enthusiasm.
When he pulled back, his hands still holding her face, they looked at each other. He hoped he was disguising the painful desire that he‘d been cooling for the past day and was now settling heavily into his groin. She appeared both tentative and open.
“I thought you promised to be a saint,” she said in words light and insubstantial as if repeating by rote.
He loosed her and slipped a fingertip down her hairline, smoothing an errant hair back. “If you’ll recall, I promised both; hedging my bets, you see. And you followed me in here with bathrooms in your eyes.”
“Not just,” she said.
“No. Not just,” he said.
They leaned into each other as he put his arms around her waist and pressed his nose to hers, then pecked her lips again, the chaste kiss soon turning into much more. Their mouths wide and wider; tongues bold and bolder. All the while he held her, pressing his hard body into her soft one with a groan.
“You are truly beautiful and entirely unexpected,” he said as he pulled back and looked at her again. He would dip in and pull back in a painful dance if he had to to achieve his final ends. “Let’s sit,” he said, pulling her back to the lounge that had been turned into a bedroom.
“On the bed?” she asked, taunting him.
“We could sit in these wicker chairs,” he said, indicating a pair of them, “but I’ve never understood wicker and I don’t like to indulge the wicker people by using their furniture.”
“Really?” She had a look of genuine puzzlement on her face.
“No,” he said, deadpan, his eyes flat but his lips threatening to curl into a smile.
“How do you do that?” she asked.
“Do what?” he asked, taking off his suit coat.
“Lie so smoothly and about such ridiculous things. Wicker.” She shook her head.
“Well, I really don’t understand wicker as a class of furniture. Tell me you do,” he said as he removed his tie, “but I don’t care enough to have a self-imposed ban against it.
“So what we have left is my couch which is now a bed, as you can see. Good sized and far more comfortable than your silly conversion matter in coach. Still, it’s a bed now.” He shrugged as he gently urged her to sit on the bed.
She groaned as she settled into the mattress. “This is comfortable. And with the lulling sound of the train…suddenly, I’m so sleepy,” she drawled, feigning sleep in her voice.
He nudged her knees open to stand between them. For long moments he kneaded her shoulders and her neck before his fingers threaded through her perfectly coiffed hair, massaging her scalp. All the while she moaned, tension leaving her body as she grew more languid and ripe before his eyes.
“You are welcome to sleep here if you want,” he said, the words light and hesitant. “It cannot be restful to sleep in those couches.”
Her head fell back as she peered up at him. “But for the luxurious bed, I can’t imagine it would be restful to sleep here either.”
He smiled wolfishly. “I could try to behave. No promises, mind you. But for the pleasure of your company, I think I would like to try.” That was another lie smoothly delivered. If he could touch her, taste her, fuck her, he would do it. He was all but certain she knew it, too.
Her eyelids blinked slowly as she peered up at him. “I should go.” It was the right thing to say, but she made no move to stand.
He shook his head. “Stay. Scoot over and lay back. We’ll be chaste as brothers,” he said, following her onto the bed and laying down beside her.”
“Brothers,” she said, her brow knitted skeptically.
“Cousins?”
She arched a brow.
“Distant. Kissing cousins?”
Yet as soon as they settled, he turned to her, propping his head in his hand. “Tell me more about the Lucky. For the name alone, I think I would like to go there, let alone the entertainment.”
“The Lucky Lounge?”
“When you spoke about it, you became unguarded and bright, like the star you want to be.”
She nodded timidly, as if embarrassed, then began to tell him of her first solo. In church, of course. When someone other than her parents had made mention of her voice. Or how beautiful she was without wanting anything from her in return. The time she first discovered she could make money being a performer. All the small and seemingly insignificant moments in her growing up when weight was added to her dreams. Eyes animated and chest rising, she told him not the story of her life, but the story of her love. As she did this, he watched, unable to take his eyes from her.
“Will you sing for me, darling?” he asked when she paused.
“Yes,” she said, climbing out of the bed to stand before him.
She cleared her throat and began; the high, lilting first notes of Someone To Watch Over Me dancing out of her mouth made him gape. She had an incredible voice, a musicality that only a few possess. When she pulled the raw, husky notes of there’s a somebody I’m longing to see from some deep-souled place inside her, he was utterly lost. Her voice drizzled over him as she sang and when she finished he was slow to clap, slow to do anything because he’d forgotten everything but how to listen.
His breath left in a huff as he sat up and clapped. “You really are a talent, Minnie. An incredible singer. I’m not just saying that.”
“Thank you,” she said, taking a small bow before climbing back into bed.
He might have forgotten that he had intended to seduce her were it not for the floppy bow lying where he wished to lie. Without pure conscious thought, his fingers fell to it and pulled, slow, so excruciatingly slow that he could see her breasts exposed a million times in the pulling.
When it was loosed, he brushed a hand over it, smoothing the limp purple fabric apart to reveal tiny purple satin buttons. His fingers deftly flicked them open, one after another, revealing a pale gold silk and lace bra that strained to hold milky-white breasts.
He heard himself groan, then met her gaze; she lay poised, her lips parted. “This,” he said, kissing the corner of her lips, “what I’m doing,” then moved to her jaw, under her chin, and down her neck, “is all right?”
She issued a shuddered breath, then said, barely audibly, “Yes.”
He groaned again as he pressed a trail of kisses down her chest, her skin rising into goose bumps, floral and pear musk heady in his nose. At her bra he stopped. It looked like spun gold cupping her breasts and if he wasn’t careful, he would rip it off her.
His gaze crawled back up her chest, now rosy with her blood rising, to her face and he saw a dozen emotions flitting across it. Not a one of them was fear, yet nor was there the temptress. Tread lightly, he thought.
He leaned over her, peering into her eyes as his fingertips played lightly with a breast, brushing so excruciatingly lightly that she arched into his hand. He smiled, circling, teasing around a nipple, playing everywhere with just enough and not enough.
Then he leaned down, his lips falling towards hers, but pecking with barely enough pressure to be considered a kiss the corner of her mouth instead. Trailing a feather-light line across the roses of her cheeks. The corners of her eyes. Her temples. In the center of her brows. On her forehead. He kissed her everywhere, teasing, barely-there kisses, all the while his fingertips continued to play with a breast, until he heard her moan. It was so soft, barely audible, that he might not have heard it, but for the fact that it was exactly what he had been waiting for.
“Was there something you wanted, sweetheart?” he asked, dragging wet lips across her face, nuzzling her.
She squirmed underneath him. “Please.”
He pulled back and looked at her, flushed and ready. “Please, what? Please, stop touching my breast? Please, get off me? Maybe please, stop kissing me? Or perhaps please, order me a glass of warm milk and tuck me in to sleep?” He gave her a half-grin.
“Don’t do that,” she said. “Not yet.”
He slowly shook his head. “I wouldn’t dare. Not yet.” He resumed his torment, nuzzling and kissing, touching and playing, too light, too close. “Please, what? What do you want, Minnie?”
The Drazen World: The California Limited (Kindle Worlds Novella) Page 3
