He himself had work to do, too. Martin Robles’s new script, Rampage, had potential but it needed major revisions. Rafael wanted to read it one more time before he decided whether to fix it himself or let Martin have another go at it. Unlike the big studios, where script doctors were paid millions of dollars to fiddle with a few lines here and there, at Aztec Sun Rafael himself was the script doctor. If a screenplay could be repaired easily and quickly, he did it. If not, he sent it back to the writer. He’d already paid the option money. The writer could take care of his bills with that until the script was in green-light shape.
Maybe, if he finished reviewing Martin’s script early enough, he’d stop by Building B and see how things were going on the White Angel set. Melanie’s mood swings worried him. So did Diego’s apparent inability to keep the damned woman in line. As long as she wasn’t doing drugs, Rafael wouldn’t see his studio get dragged into the gutter from a scandal. But her cold-turkey jitters were almost as troublesome as drug use would have been.
Almost. But Rafael could weather anything, even an actress freaking out from the symptoms of cocaine withdrawal, as long as she wasn’t actually using the junk.
Why had Sandra asked him about drugs? Had she heard the rumors about Melanie’s past indulgences? Or was she simply firing questions into the dark and hoping luck would steer them to a target?
She didn’t strike him as the sort to leave professional matters to chance. She wouldn’t fire blindly. She had to know something.
But what exactly did she know? And how did she know it?
And how—short of kissing her again—could he lead her to a different story?
Of course, he realized with sudden insight. Sandra needed a story. If Rafael provided her with a good one, she would be satisfied. He had to stop antagonizing her and give her something she could use. If he did, she would earn her byline and disappear.
That was the way he’d handle her: he’d include her in the filming, show her how exciting making a movie could be. He would never be able to outdo Diego in charm, but he’d give Sandra the opportunity to write a story that wouldn’t do him or Aztec Sun any harm.
He didn’t want to. He didn’t even want to see her again. He didn’t want to think about the warmth and depth of her eyes, the velvet texture of her skin, the way her hair had sifted through his fingers, black and fluid like the wind at night. He didn’t want to think of the way her mouth had felt beneath his, the way her tongue had lured his, the way her breath had merged with his and her heart had pounded against his chest.
He didn’t want anything to do with her at all.
But for the sake of his studio, he’d give her a good story.
*
AN HOUR LATER, HE’D WOLFED DOWN A SANDWICH, finished skimming Martin Robles’s script, jotted some notes, and locked up his office. The executive lot was nearly empty when he left the building, but he spotted Diego’s fancy Mercedes parked a few spaces away from his T-bird. Sandra’s sedan was parked in the visitors’ lot.
At the sight of her car, he was assailed by a mixture of apprehension and delight. Apprehension that the woman had returned to his studio to lurk, to snoop, to pry open locked doors and dissect his secrets.
Delight that he would see her again.
Tonto, he chastised himself. Stupid. Seeing Sandra Garcia again would be useful only if he could feed her a story so meaty she’d be willing to leave the rest alone. Delight had nothing to do with it.
Except that he’d kissed her—in anger, in frustration, in downright rage, but when he remembered the lush softness of her lips against his, all he felt was delight.
The woman was going to make him crazy, if she hadn’t already.
He hoped she was with Diego, at least. He hoped she was totally unhinged by their kiss, if not by his threats. If she was, she wouldn’t be asking anyone irksome questions about Rafael’s family. She would be sitting next to Diego, subdued and docile, writing whatever Diego told her about how Aztec Sun went about making profitable movies.
He entered Building B. The light above the door to the main sound stage was glowing red, indicating that filming was in progress. He impatiently waited until the bulb went dark, then opened the door and stepped inside.
On the set, Melanie and Antonio Torres were being ministered to by the make-up and hair people. Larry Seldes was marking the slate for another take; Jenny was rearranging props for continuity according to the notes on her clipboard; Bob Jorgensen was doing a sound check; Gina was wandering among the technicians with a tray of coffee in paper cups. Rafael knew everyone in the room.
Picking his way around the cables and scaffolding, he glanced toward the window separating the set from the tech booth. He knew everyone there, too: Luis, Diego and Sandra.
Although he was shrouded in the shadows, she spotted him. He saw her straighten her spine and lift her chin. Her eyes glinted with indignation, resentment, and something more, something that made him feel his own passion rise up and devour what little control he had over his baser urges.
He wanted her. He wanted her in his arms again, in the tech booth, in the alley behind Cesar’s, in his bed. He wanted her lips on his, her tongue dueling with his and losing. He wanted her hair spread across his pillow, or raining down on him as she rose above him. He wanted her long, slender legs wrapped around his waist, her breasts filling his hands, his mouth. He wanted…
Control.
He turned away from the tech booth window as if he had no interest in her, and walked over to the edge of the kitchen set, where John Rhee was conferring with one of the cameramen. “How’s it going?” he asked.
John’s baseball cap was on sideways, the visor covering one ear and making him look like a drunk teenager instead of a rookie director. The grin he gave Rafael made him look even younger. “The lady’s lucky,” he replied. “I’m not going to have to flog her this time. She gets to live another day.”
“Then we’re all lucky,” Rafael said, patting John on the shoulder. “You’re tougher than she is, John. You can make this thing work.”
“I want to renegotiate for hardship pay,” John warned, then laughed to show he was joking.
Rafael took a deep breath and pivoted back toward the tech booth. Sandra was watching him. He felt her gaze through the thick, soundproof glass, through the air, through his skin. He felt it burning a hole in his gut.
He was going to behave nicely with her. He was going to demonstrate that he could work with her if she didn’t sneak around behind his back. He was going to make sure she didn’t stray beyond what was safe.
He was going to stay in control of her and her story, the way he stayed in control of his studio, of his life. Out-of-control was too dangerous. He couldn’t risk it again.
Squaring his shoulders, he sauntered across the room to the tech booth and swung open the door. Luis smiled and nodded a greeting without removing his headset.
Diego grinned and said, “Hey, man, you decided to pay a call on the little people?”
Sandra said nothing. She simply gazed at him.
Control , he exhorted himself. “I thought I’d drop by and see if things were going smoothly,” he said.
“Smooth as silk,” Diego reported.
Rafael dragged a folding metal chair over to the window and placed it next to Sandra. He was determined to prove to her—and himself—that he could sit beside her without losing control. “Do you like watching the shoot?” he asked in an amiable tone.
“Yes. It’s interesting.” Was it his imagination, or did she sound slightly breathless?
Suppressing a smile, he studied her in the bright light of the booth. She had put on her blazer, which hid from his view her strong tan arms, the arms he’d caressed, the arms he still ached to feel around him. Silently he thanked her for donning the jacket.
He stretched out his legs and observed through the window as John’s assistant director set up the next take. As intently as he tried to focus on the activity on the opposite side of the glass,
he never lost his awareness of Sandra. He might not be able to see her graceful arms, but his peripheral vision caught her profile: her delicately etched cheekbone, her straight nose, her coal-black hair. A gold hoop earring glinted provocatively through the glossy locks.
He wanted to nibble her ear. Her lips. Her breasts.
“I’m meeting Sloan Palmer for breakfast tomorrow,” he told Diego, so casually Sandra shot him a perplexed look. “He wants to handle the Spanish-language distribution again.”
“He did a good job with Vendetta.”
“I know.”
“Doubled our net. That man knows the South American market like no one else.”
Rafael nodded. Silence settled over the booth.
Damn. He had to say something to Sandra, something that would nudge her in the right direction. Something about the way he made movies, the way he hired local kids, the way he stood as a role model—the very phrase made him wince—for the young punks in the community. Something she could spread across the pages of the L.A. Post without doing him any damage, without mentioning the word drugs.
The telephone next to the light board rang. Luis slid off his headset and answered. He listened, then turned to Rafael. “Someone named Serge Semyonovich wants to talk to you.”
Rafael curled his lip. Serge Semyonovich was a professional busybody. He lived in Bel Air, wore hand-stitched leather loafers without socks, and wrote a who-was-seen-where column that people in the film industry seemed to think was important.
Rafael met Diego’s eyes above Sandra’s head. “Yeah, sure,” Diego said with a laugh. “I’ll talk to the old boy. I’ll take it outside.” He stood, winked at Sandra, and strode out of the booth.
Luis put his headset back on, cutting himself off from Sandra and Rafael. This was Rafael’s chance. He had to start pushing her toward a story he could live with.
He twisted slightly in his chair, and swallowed at the sight of her shimmering brown eyes, her delicate lips. A hundred silent curses spun through his head. He wondered if she used her beauty when she was pursuing other stories—or whether she was even conscious of using her beauty at all.
“The thing with drugs,” he said, grimacing at the abrupt sound of his voice, “is that they’re all over the industry—and all over the city. Let’s face it—this isn’t news.”
“I know.” As brusque as he sounded, her voice was gentle. He envied her poise.
“But with Chicanos…with anyone who isn’t Anglo… We have half as much and we have to work twice as hard, and stay twice as clean,” he explained. “And drugs—they’re a death sentence. I come from the barrio, I’ve seen what drugs can do. That’s why I have such a hard line on this.”
“I respect that, Rafael.”
God, she was too close. He watched the motion of her hands in her lap, her fingers long and tapered, her thighs sleek. He wished she were wearing a skirt so he could see her knees and calves and ankles. In her neatly tailored trousers he could only imagine what her legs looked like, and his imagination was on fire.
“I want the community to prosper,” he said. “Drugs destroy people.”
“How did you grow up so strong?” she asked.
If she’d made a move to pull out her blasted recorder, he would have believed they were back in an interview mode. But she simply sat next to him, her hands once again folded and calm in her lap, her eyes radiant as she studied him.
Usually he felt strong. But not now, not with her looking at him that way, with the smooth bronze skin of her throat just begging to be kissed. “My mother,” he managed to say.
“Your mother?”
“She raised me to be strong.”
“Tell me about her.”
Even without the recorder running, he realized that this was an interview. But his mother, like his sister—like his entire family—was off limits. “There’s nothing to tell,” he said curtly.
Sandra seemed about to question him, but he was spared by the return of Diego, who bounded into the tech room, flopped onto his chair and beamed a grin at Sandra before filling Rafael in. “Serge called to inform us he saw Martin Robles dining at Spago with an executive from Carolco.”
Rafael snorted. “I hope Martin ordered the most expensive dish on the menu.”
“Serge thinks you ought to worry. He thinks Robles is shopping his new script around.”
“I’ve got his new script sitting on my desk,” Rafael told him. “If he wants to shop it around, that’s his business. I’ll offer him my deal and he can take it or leave it.”
“Don’t you feel competitive with other producers?” Sandra asked.
Rafael shrugged. “I offer something they don’t offer. They offer something I don’t offer.”
“Like dinner at Spago?”
He chuckled. “I’d rather eat my mother’s cooking. Or maybe your mother’s. Did you know—” he leaned around her to address Diego “—that Sandra’s parents run a restaurant in Berkeley?”
“No kidding! Let’s charter a plane and fly up for dinner sometime.”
“Sounds good to me.”
Sandra’s gaze shuttled between the two men flanking her. She smiled hesitantly. “It’s amazing how you two can work with each other and still remain such good friends.”
“Who says we’re good friends?” Rafael joked. “I hate his guts.”
“Yeah, right,” Diego scoffed. He located a plastic ashtray, pulled out a cigarette and ignited it with a flourish. “I’ve saved his butt more times than you can count.”
Diego had saved Rafael’s butt only one time that really mattered, and to relate that incident to Sandra would be to invite disaster. She’d hear about the violence, the gangs, the past Rafael had worked so hard to outgrow.
It was safer just to agree with Diego. “Millions of times, amigo. Don’t worry. I keep a tally.”
“That’s why I love him,” Diego confided to Sandra. “He keeps tallies. He can calculate to the third decimal exactly how much he owes me.”
“There must be some things you guys fight about,” Sandra said, her smile a reflection of their good-natured teasing.
“Yeah. My salary,” Diego announced.
Rafael played along. “I pay you too much.”
“Like hell.”
“Come on!” Sandra broke in. Her smile grew, shimmering with a warmth that squeezed something tight inside him. Something not carnal but… affectionate. Tender. Something that made him wish he could let down his guard and really, truly laugh with her.
“We fought once,” Diego told her. Rafael shook his head, wishing he could stop this before it went further, but Diego kept at it. “Man, what a fight that was.”
“Tell me about it.” She turned to Rafael, her eyes round with curiosity.
He wondered how much of this was going to end up in her article. She hadn’t reached for her pad and pen, but he wouldn’t put it past her to memorize everything he and Diego were telling her. “It was over my sister,” he said in a tone dark enough to remind her that his sister was the subject that had led to their kiss in the alley.
A flush of pink caressed her cheeks as she met Rafael’s gaze. “The nun?”
“She’s a nun now,” Diego said, grinning wolfishly. “Back then she wasn’t.”
Rafael didn’t share Diego’s amusement. “She was sixteen.”
“She was a beautiful woman.”
“She was a little girl.”
“Uh-oh,” Sandra murmured, visibly wrestling with a laugh. “Should I duck?”
“No blows this time,” Rafael promised. “I whipped his ass last time. I think he learned his lesson.”
“All I did was take her for a drive.”
“You took her for a ride,” Rafael differentiated. “You took my sweet little sister, who had no interest in you, and you got her in your car and tried to have your way with her.”
“And she said no.”
“She wanted to be a nun. Why would any sane man try to make a pass at a nun?”
“She wasn’t a nun yet,” Diego defended himself. Although he didn’t lose his smile, his face grew red, not like the delicate flush that had skimmed Sandra’s face but a real red, part anger and part humiliation. Almost as soon as the blush appeared it subsided, and he let out a laugh. “You see,” he told Sandra, “Rafael’s sister Rosa was the most beautiful girl in the world. Still is, if you ask me. It’s not like I was the only boy in the neighborhood who had a crush on her.”
“You were the only one who tried to put the moves on her.”
“And you beat the shit out of me for it.”
“You deserved every punch, my friend.”
“He broke my nose,” Diego lamented.
“It healed very nicely,” Sandra reassured him.
“Maybe my nose healed,” said Diego, “but not my heart. It’s still broken. I still carry a torch for that magnificent woman.” He pressed his hand to his heart and gave a melodramatic sigh.
Rafael rolled his eyes. “What a performance. I ought to cast you in my next movie.”
“Only if I get to pick my costar.”
“Who would you pick?”
Diego’s gaze wandered over Sandra for such a long time Rafael felt the urge to break the bastard’s nose again. “Why, Sister Rosa, of course,” Diego said, his eyes still on Sandra.
“Diego, you’re a pig,” she scolded. “Rafael, you’re an overprotective big brother. Both of you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
“If that’s what you think, put it in your article,” Rafael challenged her.
Her mouth was half the distance to a smile when her gaze locked onto his. Even though he was staring into her eyes, he was aware of her lips, full and dewy and slightly curved. He was aware of the angles of her cheekbones, the sharp edge of her chin, her hands once again restless in her lap, as if she were looking for something to hold onto.
It dawned on him that only a fool would challenge Sandra Garcia. She wasn’t the sort who would back away from a dare.
He’d wanted to lead her to safety—his safety. He’d wanted to present himself as the good neighbor, the upstanding citizen, the successful producer. He wouldn’t have minded if her article in the L.A. Post helped to get a positive buzz going about White Angel.
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