Bad Boy Heroes Boxed Set

by Patricia Ryan

  “She’s having so much fun working with us,” Salazar remarked.

  Spin doctor, Sandra muttered under her breath. If the actress had taken a swan dive and plunged through the fake window in the rear wall, he’d find a way to portray it positively.

  “Does her part call for a lot of giggling?”

  “I think it’s nerves. That woman would have sold her soul to be able to work for Rafael Perez.”

  “Her soul? Really?” Maybe Sandra was grasping at straws, but his statement gave her an inkling, an angle. A possibility that there actually was a story in this assignment. Why would a TV star be willing to sell her soul to appear in a B-movie made by a second-tier studio? What hold could a man like Rafael Perez—no matter how cool a dude he was, no matter how many churches he kept afloat with his largesse—have on a pretty, talented starlet like Melanie Greer?

  As if Salazar could read her mind, he said, “Lots of people would kill to work for Rafael. He’s fair, he’s smart, and people look up to him. And he doesn’t tie you up for months. Our movies come in on schedule and under budget. Now this movie, with an actress of Melanie Greer’s stature, has a bigger budget than any other film we’ve ever produced. It’s going to launch Aztec Sun up to the next level.”

  “Oh?”

  “Wider distribution. Bigger promotional push. Previews. We’re going to do this one big. And Melanie Greer is an essential part of it.”

  “Will I have a chance to talk to her?” Sandra asked.

  “Of course. Whatever you want. I’ll set it up, no problem.” Abruptly, Salazar fell silent, his gaze drifting past Sandra and across the vaulted sound stage.

  Rafael Perez had entered.

  She knew it; everyone in the building knew it. Somewhere behind her, approaching her, was the man himself, the cool dude people looked up to, the fair, smart man people would sell their souls to work for.

  In her dozen years as a professional reporter, she’d interviewed business moguls, socialites, criminals, politicians, artists, beach boys and party girls. One cool dude shouldn’t faze her. Even so, she took a deep, steadying breath before she turned around.

  She was shocked to find him standing only a couple of feet from her, and even more shocked to acknowledge how powerful an impression he made. His eyes were dark but searing, like black coals glowing with heat. They were set deep beneath a forehead half-obscured by a sweep of long black hair that scooped over his ears and fell below the collar of his loose-fitting linen shirt. He had a triangular nose, a square jaw, and thin lips that barely hinted at a smile as he scrutinized Sandra.

  Nothing about him announced that he was a successful executive. The flashiest part of his outfit was the belt circling his slim-fitting black jeans: tooled leather held shut by a silver buckle inlaid with turquoise. His only jewelry was a plain wristwatch—black face, black strap. His shoes were soled leather moccasins. He stood about six feet tall, and his physique lacked the sort of cultivated bulk that lurked under Diego Salazar’s much fancier apparel. Rafael Perez was lean and lanky, restrained yet alert. Sandra imagined a puma, sleek, vigilant, ready to pounce.

  No question about it: the man could create atmospheric disturbances with his presence. He exuded power, intensity. Sandra couldn’t define it, couldn’t figure out its source. His wary poise? The tawny undertone of his complexion, the midnight black of his hair? His height? His eyes?

  They locked onto hers, holding her gaze so firmly she could almost visualize the sloping line of his vision connecting him to her. She was five-feet seven, yet with him she felt petite and dainty.

  She hated feeling petite and dainty.

  Another deep breath helped to nullify his effect on her. “How do you do?” she said in a bright, brave voice as she extended her right hand. “I’m Sandra Garcia from the Los Angeles Post.”

  “I know who you are,” he said, and for one brief, crazy moment, as his hand closed around hers, strong and hard, she believed he knew everything there was to know about her. Even though there was nothing much to know. Even though he was the subject of this meeting, the reason behind it, the heart of her story, and who she was didn’t—shouldn’t—matter.

  Any man who could stare at her with such immobilizing force, who could clasp her hand with so little effort yet leave her unable to pull away… Any man who could transform the world around him the way Rafael Perez could knew far too much.

  After an endless moment he released her. Without thinking, she wiped her palm on the edge of her blazer. “Mr. Salazar promised we would have a chance to talk,” she said.

  Rafael Perez exchanged a look with Diego Salazar. When he turned his gaze back to her, his mouth was curved into a cryptic smile. “Mr. Salazar shouldn’t make promises he can’t keep,” he said, his voice as soft as velvet, as hard as steel.

  He turned away in time to see the pretty blond actress bounce across the room to him, still giggling. “Rafael!” she squealed, sidling up to him and looping an arm casually around his waist.

  Next to him, Melanie looked downright tiny. Sandra estimated she couldn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds. Her cheeks were hollow, the bones in her arms as slender as willow branches. She turned her dazzling smile to Diego Salazar and then to Sandra, apparently anxious for everyone to be as happy as she was.

  “Melanie, this is Sandra Garcia from the L.A. Post,” Diego introduced her. “She’s writing a story on Aztec Sun and White Angel.”

  Melanie’s smile relaxed and she leaned toward Sandra, although she didn’t let go of Rafael. “Well, listen, let me tell you, this place is great. No b.s., no star trips, no rubber checks. I love the way Rafael does business.”

  “That’s nice,” Sandra said, then glanced at Rafael. He seemed unmoved by Melanie’s glowing praise.

  “Look at this,” Melanie went on, nudging a reluctant smile out of Rafael. “You can’t even suck up to this guy. He refuses to react. What am I going to do with you, Raf? How am I going to make you fall in love with me?”

  “I’m sure you’ll think of something,” he said blandly, although he gave Melanie’s shoulders a squeeze. “When are you going to start filming?”

  “John’s the boss,” Melanie said, gesturing toward the director, who stood on the set with his arms folded across his chest in a classically impatient stance.

  “Wrong,” Diego interjected. “Rafael is the boss. Always.”

  “Silly me. Of course he’s the boss.” Melanie chirped a laugh and snuggled deeper within the curve of his arm. “I love working with this guy,” she told Sandra, then pulled a face as John Rhee bellowed for her to quit wasting time and get her ass back on the set. “Him I’m not so sure about,” she muttered, jerking her thumb in Rhee’s direction. “He’s a slave driver.”

  Evidently he was a slave driver with keen hearing. “I wouldn’t be on your case if you didn’t keep missing your marks, sweetheart,” he scolded as Rafael gently turned her around and sent her back to the set. “You stumble over that chair one more time, and I swear I’ll—”

  “Be kind,” Diego shouted to Rhee. “She’s an artist.”

  “So am I,” Rhee retorted.

  Diego turned to Sandra and grinned knowingly. “And they both have artistic temperaments.”

  “How’s her temperament?” Rafael asked, his gaze following Melanie.

  “It’s good. Real good.”

  “No problems?”

  “None.”

  Abruptly remembering that Sandra was there, Rafael sent her a swift, incisive smile, then nodded. “Nice meeting you,” he said curtly. He pivoted on his heel and sauntered across the sound stage, his long legs carrying him through the room with arrogant grace.

  Sandra realized that while Diego Salazar might want her to do a story on Aztec Sun, Rafael Perez didn’t. The cool dude, the fair man, the earthquake waiting to happen… He didn’t want the free publicity Sandra could give his new movie.

  Was it something about her? Something about the movie? Something about Aztec Sun?

&n
bsp; Or was it something about Rafael Perez?

  Sandra’s journalistic instincts quivered to life. This assignment might turn out to be interesting, after all.

  Chapter Two

  *

  “I WANT HER GONE,” he said.

  Diego lit a cigarette and closed his lighter with a metallic click. Silver and onyx, the lighter had been a gift from a lady. Rafael doubted Diego remembered her name. He loved the lighter, though. He always made a big production of hauling it out of his pocket, opening it, flinting an oversized flame and then snapping the thing shut so loudly no one could possibly ignore it.

  Others might find Diego’s showiness irritating, but Rafael didn’t let the small stuff get to him. There was too much big stuff to worry about.

  Like women. Two women, in particular.

  “Trust me on this one, amigo,” Diego said, dropping onto the sofa and flicking his ashes into the ceramic ashtray on the coffee table. “This reporter, she’s going to give us tons of ink. You can’t buy the kind of publicity she’s providing for free. All we’ve got to do is handle her right.”

  Rafael paced to the window and stared out at the expanse of asphalt stretching between the office building and the sound stages. Sandra Garcia was right that minute sitting in a soundproof tech room overlooking the sound stage in Building B, watching Melanie Greer careen around the set like a steel marble in a pinball machine. God help them all if the reporter caught the scent of a story there.

  Raking his hand through his hair, he sighed. He didn’t mind taking a risk with Melanie. Her name—her azure eyes, her creamy skin and golden hair but mostly her famous name—had enticed the investors. White Angel was a big step up for Aztec Sun in budget, in marquee value, in respect.

  Rafael had earned it. He deserved it. And he couldn’t afford to let anything go wrong.

  “Melanie Greer,” he said, turning back to Diego and extending his thumb and forefinger a fraction of an inch apart, “is this close to screwing up.”

  “I’m on top of it,” Diego swore, sitting higher and snuffing out his cigarette. “I’m in her face all the time. She can’t sneak anything past me, Raf. You know that.”

  “Then why was she all over the damned set? Why couldn’t she walk around a table without crashing into it?”

  “Nerves.”

  “And now we’ve got a reporter from the L.A. Post in her face, too. Looking for something to make a headline out of.”

  “Hey, you want bad news? Sandra Garcia isn’t interested in making a headline out of Melanie. She wants to make a headline out of you.”

  “Me?” Rafael asked, his tone low but lethal. “What about me?”

  “What do you think?” Diego sounded as amused as Rafael was annoyed. “Greaser makes good. After you left the sound stage, she said she wanted to talk to Melanie, and I said fine, great, no problem. Then she says, ‘But the real focus of my story will be Rafael Perez, how he’s a hero to the Hispanic community.’”

  “Jesus.” Rafael’s voice grew softer. Whenever he got angry he pulled back, held everything tight inside. Unleashed rage was too dangerous. He wasn’t sure what he might do if he let go, so he made it a point not to let go.

  “Son of wetbacks runs a studio. You’re her story, pal.”

  “I’m no hero.”

  “You’re rich. You’re famous.”

  “I don’t want her digging up my past, Diego.”

  “Relax, hombre,” Diego said in an ameliorating voice. “I’m going to feed Sandra Garcia the story we want. I’ve got press releases for her, hype about White Angel and the studio. All she’s got to do is rearrange a few words and hand it to her editor. Easy for her, easy for us.”

  “She’s a reporter,” Rafael stressed, wishing he could knock some sense into Diego. He drew his voice lower and tauter. “You know how reporters are. They pick at scabs, they peek behind closed doors.”

  “Hey, man, nobody gives a damn about you and your ugly life. So we come from the streets, okay, no big deal. She’s more interested in where you’re going, not where you’re coming from.”

  “If she gets nothing on me, she’ll go after Melanie Greer. One person slips—you or Melanie or someone else—and the Post is going to print it, and the investors are going to be in this office screaming for my head on a platter.”

  “Don’t be so negative,” Diego said, cranking up the charm. By now he ought to know that Rafael was immune to his dentist’s-dream of a smile, but he resorted to it instinctively. “Melanie’s clean. I’ve been on top of things. She could pee in a bottle, no one would find a trace of anything. All our girl reporter has to know is that a pretty blond star is appearing in an Aztec Sun production. There’s her story.”

  Rafael shook his head.

  “She’s one of us,” Diego insisted, rising and shaking the legs of his pleated trousers down. “She’s a chica, hey? She’s got loyalties.”

  “She’s a freaking reporter.”

  “I’ll take care of her,” Diego promised.

  “You’re going to take care of her and Melanie?”

  Diego’s grin turned wolfish, and he jerked his hips in an obscene motion. “Hey, man—taking care of two women is nothing for me, you know? Piece-a-cake.”

  In spite of himself, Rafael smiled. But as soon as Diego left the room, closing the door behind him, Rafael dropped the smile.

  Something was going to go wrong. Diego might not know it, but Rafael did.

  Diego never sensed these things. He scampered through life like a frisky puppy, figuring that if he looked cute and smiled enough, the world would scratch his belly and feed him steak. He never saw the shadows, never noticed the storm clouds riding the horizon. What he did he was good at, and Rafael would be forever in his debt. But Rafael had faced the worst before. He knew the shadows, he knew the clouds, and he knew that luck could be bad as often as good.

  Maybe this time he’d aimed too high. Signing an Anglo TV star, giving the film an eight-figure budget, blueprinting a major promotional thrust with wide distribution… Maybe this time he was reaching too far, wanting too much.

  He carried the ashtray into the kitchenette adjacent to his office and rinsed off the sooty residue. He used to smoke himself, but once he’d quit he’d lost his tolerance for the odor of dead ashes. Setting the dish on the counter to dry, he left the kitchenette for the main room of his office. The couch could open into a bed; the credenza hid drawers of spare clothes and other necessities. He frequently worked late, and he’d designed his office suite so it could double as an apartment when he was too tired to drive home for the night.

  During the day, however, it was just an office, with a broad teak desk, shelves full of pretty but useless objects that Carlotta dusted every week, and a door leading to a separate storage room filled with shelves of scripts, locked cabinets full of budget analyses, financial records, paperwork—exactly the sort of material a reporter would love to get her hands on.

  Sandra Garcia wouldn’t have to come to his office to do her snooping. Between Melanie Greer and the streets of East L.A., she would find plenty of leads juicier than anything in Rafael’s storage room.

  He crossed back to the window and stared down at the parking lot. The cars below his window shimmered in the afternoon sunlight; the painted white lines marking the spaces seemed to waver in the heat.

  Rafael sighed. He was used to the pressure. Diego had promised to hold Melanie together for the duration of the shoot, and the investors believed they would get their money’s worth from Aztec Sun. Rafael had never lost money on a picture. Never.

  He didn’t intend to lose money on this one, either. It had a box office draw in Melanie, enough romance to bring in the women and enough violence to bring in the men. John Rhee knew his way around car chases and nude scenes. White Angel was going to be a hit—as long as nothing went wrong.

  Sandra Garcia.

  Hell.

  He visualized her as she’d looked when he’d last seen her, standing near the sound stage i
nside Building B. He pictured her ginger-colored skin and her wide, cinnamon lips and her eyes as sweet and warm as melting chocolate. And her hair, long and straight and black like the silence of a moonless night, all darkness and texture. He wanted to feel that texture, drown in that darkness. He wanted her.

  Hell was right. He must be out of his mind, thinking about her that way. Even if she weren’t a reporter who could make serious trouble for him, she’d issued no invitations and offered no hints. In her crisp slacks and blazer, she was dressed about as provocatively as his sister Rosa, and Rosa was a nun. Like Rosa, Sandra Garcia wore no make-up, little jewelry, not even a whisper of perfume. She was definitely not a woman on the make.

  Which might be the sexiest thing about her, Rafael admitted. Not her exotic mestizo features—the high cheekbones, flat nose and angled eyes. Not her full mouth and slim hands and long legs, not her clear, direct gaze, but the fact that she hadn’t come on to him.

  He was used to women making plays for him, and he knew better than to take their advances seriously. Women were turned on by his wealth, by the fact that even though the college-educated critics turned up their noses at his movies, they made oceans of money. Aztec Sun knew its audience and delivered the goods. And in a company town like Los Angeles, that kind of success made Rafael a powerful man.

  Power attracted two kinds of people: those who wanted to benefit from it and those who wanted to decimate it. What troubled Rafael more than Sandra Garcia’s unadorned beauty, more than her lithe, statuesque body and her proud posture and the erotic tension she aroused in his gut without even trying, was the understanding that she was a reporter. Reporters made their names by destroying powerful people.

  A muted beep from the speaker on his phone tore him away from the window. “Martin Robles is here,” Carlotta’s voice squawked through the box. “You’re booked with him till three-thirty. After that you’ve got a conference call scheduled with Tracy Hester at Freeman, Barr.”

  Screenwriters pitching scripts, attorneys dissecting contracts. Rafael had no time to think about the reporter with the prim apparel and the alluring eyes.