Sweetly Contemporary Collection - Part 2 (Sweetly Contemporary Boxed Sets)

by Jennifer Blake

  Logan, when he tapped on the connecting door and stepped into the room, had also returned to formal wear. After days of wearing nothing but casual clothing, he seemed like a stranger. It may have been a trick of the light, but she thought there was something withdrawn about his features as he turned to her.

  “I see Janine called you,” he said, nodding at her long dress. “I wanted to check and be sure you knew we were dining with her and Marvin, and tell you they are expecting us for a drink first.”

  “Yes, I know,” Clare answered.

  The temptation to ask if he knew Marvin Hobbs meant to bring to dinner a contract for the production of the screenplay was strong. However, there was always the possibility that he might resent her knowing before he did. In addition, there was no guarantee that Hobbs would not change his mind again before she and Logan could get downstairs.

  “We don’t have to go if you don’t feel up to it,” Logan said.

  “I’m fine, really I am.”

  “Then why are you so pale? Did Marvin say something to upset you?”

  “What?”

  “I know he was here. I started to come in earlier to ask you about dinner, but I heard voices, one of them male. It didn’t take much in the way of detective work to find out it was Marvin.”

  “You spied on me?” Clare asked.

  “I wanted to know who it was,” he said with disarming simplicity. “Don’t change the subject. What did Marvin want?”

  “If you must know, it seems Janine has had a change of heart and is now trying to get back into her husband’s good graces. She told him there had never been anything between the two of you, and he was of two minds whether to believe her. He wanted to know what I thought.”

  “And what did you tell him?” There was the sound of tension in that quick question, despite the easy way Logan stood waiting for her answer.

  “I told him you had said much the same thing, and that I trusted you, therefore I believed you.”

  “Was it the truth?”

  Clare smiled, lifting one brow. “I think it must be. You had no reason to lie. At the time, you wanted nothing from me.”

  “Are you sure?” he queried.

  “No, but what of it, so long as Marvin Hobbs thinks I am? If you expected to have some use for me, then you also offered something of yourself in return, so we are even.”

  For an instant Clare thought she saw a shadow of disappointment move across his face, and then he spoke. “So we are,” he murmured. “A good way to leave it for now.”

  Had she imagined those last words? The promise they seemed to hold was tantalizing. As Clare, leaning on Logan’s arm, made her way slowly to the Hobbses’ rooms, she slanted a quick glance at him. The light overhead in the elevator alcove shone on his hair with the gleam of old gold coins and cast his features in bronze. It made him look remote, unfeeling, like an ancient idol seen from afar. The arm under her fingers had the hard support of a steel beam, and was just as impersonal. No, she must have been mistaken. Never by word or deed had Logan promised her anything, not ever.

  Janine was slender and chic in a black jersey designer gown with draped lines and practically nonexistent shoulder straps. It was not a good color choice for her. It failed to make the most of her tan complexion and threw into relief the twin spots of color that burned in her cheeks.

  “Come in,” she cried as she opened the door to them. “I was about to send out a search party. Logan, how handsome you look, and you are pretty too, Clare, in that darling little dress. I do love it on you.”

  “Thank you,” Clare said, her gray eyes clear. “It is one of my favorites.”

  Janine gave a trill of laughter that had a forced sound. “Do sit down, and Marvin will fix you a drink, won’t you, darling?”

  Marvin Hobbs stood beside a small wet bar in one corner of the room. “What will you have?” he asked by way of greeting. Logan told him, then led Clare toward an armchair drawn up near a cocktail table at one side of the room. When she was seated, he moved to the near end of the couch that flanked her chair.

  “Are you still favoring that ankle?” Janine inquired with a touch of acerbity. “I would have thought exercise was good for it.”

  “All in good time,” Logan answered. “It won’t mend overnight.”

  “Few things will,” Hobbs said, and handed a glass of chilled white wine to Clare and a mixed drink to Janine before returning to the bar for the glasses for Logan and himself.

  “I can’t stand to be an invalid myself,” Janine declared in an offhand manner. “I am generally so healthy it drives me wild.”

  A small silence fell. The woman sent a sharp glance from one to the other of those present, then lifted her glass and took a large, almost defiant swallow of her drink. The ice tinkled against the sides as she lowered it again, stopping only as she reached quickly to set the glass on the cocktail table and clench her hands in her lap.

  Hobbs cleared his throat. “Are your drinks all right?”

  Clare nodded, taking a small sip of her wine to prove it.

  “Perfect,” Logan answered.

  “Well, let’s not all talk at once, please!” Janine said, crossing one knee over the other as she forced a laugh. “I would have thought, no more than we have seen of each other these last few days, that we would have a thousand things to discuss.”

  “That’s right,” Hobbs said. “We haven’t seen you on the lifts or trails a single time the last three days, Logan. I thought you were a real buff, out from dawn to dark. Have you burned out on it, or is there some other attraction keeping you in the lodge?”

  Logan smiled at the other man’s attempt at humor. “I’ll go again when Clare can come with me.”

  “That’s real love for you,” Hobbs said on a chuckle.

  “Yes, isn’t it?” Janine said, reaching for her glass once more. “Somehow, though, I had the idea you were spending your time working on your screenplay. I think it was Marvin who told me you were changing the characters or something.”

  “No,” Logan said shortly. “That’s been done.”

  “You are through with it, then?”

  “Yes.”

  Janine turned to her husband. “In that case, I don’t see what we are waiting for, Marvin. Why don’t you tell Logan what you brought him here to tell him?”

  A frown of annoyance crossed Marvin Hobbs’s face, then was gone. “I may as well,” he said pleasantly. Moving to a briefcase that lay on a nearby table, he removed a set of papers and brought them back to where they sat, placing them in front of Logan.

  “What is this?” Logan asked, reaching to pick up the legal documents.

  “Can’t you guess?” Janine asked, leaning toward him, her eyes bright. “It’s the contract for your screenplay. Marvin has finally quit dragging his feet and agreed to get behind the project.”

  Logan sent her a hooded look. “I thought you were the one against it.”

  “No, not really. Oh, I will admit I was annoyed with you for leaving California in the middle of the discussions concerning it, but I have always been on your side. Come on and sign it so we can open the champagne.”

  “No hurry,” Hobbs put in. “Take your time and read it first.”

  “I intend to,” Logan said with a tight grin for the producer. Taking up the contract, he glanced at Clare, his blue eyes dark with what seemed to be reluctant elation. Clare let her lips curve in a warm smile. For an instant a corner of his mouth tugged upward in response; then he settled back.

  Clare sipped her wine. Marvin Hobbs consulted Janine as to the time their table was reserved for dinner and got a snapped reply. At last Logan turned the last page.

  “Three and a half million, ten percent of the gross, casting discretion, editing provisions, script consultation — it couldn’t have come closer to what I wanted if I had dictated it myself. It’s a fine offer, Marvin.”

  “For a fine piece of property. I expect to make a lot of money on it, especially with you starring — an
d right up front during the promotional campaign.”

  “That last is included too, is it?”

  “I’m afraid so, but I’m sure you have an extra interest in making this picture a success.”

  “You make it hard to refuse,” Logan said, his tone dry.

  “You are not going to turn the contract down?” Janine demanded, her voice rising to a shrill pitch. “Not after all I’ve done?”

  Logan barely glanced at her. “No,” he answered, his face bleak. “I’m not.”

  The pens were brought out. Logan slashed his name at the bottom of all copies of the contract, and Clare, as a matter of legality, witnessed his signature. When the papers were put away, Hobbs brought out the champagne, popped the cork, and poured it bubbling into chilled glasses.

  “A toast,” Janine cried, lifting her glass with such an impetuous gesture that the wine splashed over the rim. “To dreams that come true.”

  “I would rather drink to hard work that pays off,” her husband said, “but I suppose it’s all in how you look at it.”

  His wife sent him a scathing look, then drained her glass. As the others drank, she set her glass down and walked quickly to a closet in one wall. From it she took a large leather handbag and drew out what appeared to be a folded section of newspaper. Replacing the handbag, she turned toward them.

  “Marvin is not the only one with a surprise,” she said, the words coming out jerky and hard. “I was in Aspen this morning and stopped off at the supermarket for cigarettes. Guess what I found at the checkout counter? This!”

  Unfolding the paper, she threw it down on the table. It was not a newspaper but a half-sized gossip sheet printed on newsprint. On the front was a blown-up picture of Logan. Grainy and faintly blurred, as if taken from a distance, it showed him coming from a hotel with a woman at his side. Emblazoned across it was the lead title:

  SNOWBOUND WITH LOGAN LONGCROSS: TWO DAYS OF LOVE — A PERSONAL ACCOUNT BY THE WOMAN WHO LIVED THEM.

  Inset in one corner was a smaller picture of his house overlooking the gorge covered with snow. The woman beside Logan was Clare.

  Clare stared at the picture with a feeling of sickness in the pit of her stomach. It could not be. It could not, but there she was with Logan’s hand under her elbow, and her hair, blown by the wind, clinging to the rough material of his coat for a look of unbelievable intimacy. When had it been taken? The morning they transferred from the hotel in Aspen to the lodge? It must have been. But who had written the story? Who had dared to write it?

  Slowly Logan turned to look at Clare. In his eyes there burned an anger so fierce that she felt her heart leap in her chest.

  “No,” she whispered. “No, Logan, I didn’t.”

  “A personal account? Besides, who else knew?”

  “I don’t know, but I did not write it,” Clare repeated, her eyes level, and yet with a hint of pleading in their gray depths.

  “Oh, come, Clare,” Janine chided. “You should be proud. What is all this modesty? This tabloid is a national publication. Your story will be read all over the United States.”

  The grim lines of Logan’s mouth tightened.

  “Janine…” Hobbs said warningly.

  “Well, I must say I never expected this reaction,” the woman said, ignoring her husband. “Where is your sense of humor, Logan? Things like this are written about actors and actresses every day. People in public life are fair game. If Clare had not written it, someone else would, and I don’t doubt they would have done a much more shocking job of it. Maybe you ought to read the piece before you go off the deep end.”

  To have Janine champion her cause, even in error, was so unexpected that Clare sent her a questioning look. The other woman’s smile was so coldly triumphant that Clare drew in her breath in sudden understanding. Who had known that she had spent two days in isolation with Logan? Other than Logan and herself, only Beverly and John, and Marvin and Janine were aware of the episode. And Janine had an excellent reason for wanting to cause a rift between Logan and the woman she thought he was going to marry. It was revenge.

  “Two days of love,” Logan said, his voice like a whiplash. “I don’t have to read it to know what it’s like.”

  He spoke to Janine, but Clare knew his words were for her, their sting a reminder that there had been no love between them, and precious little friendliness, during those days.

  “Really, Logan, don’t be so old-fashioned!”

  “I think,” Janine’s husband said deliberately, “that it would be better if we left Logan and Clare to thrash this out alone.”

  “Don’t be silly! There’s nothing to thrash out. Clare just wanted to let everybody know that she had caught the elusive Logan Longcross. She is proud of the fact that he is in love with her, and what woman wouldn’t be? She used her talents to spread the news, and now Logan wants to make a big thing out of it. The only question is whether he means to shrug it off and go on, or if it is important enough to come between him and the woman he loves. Until he decides, talking will do no good. We may as well go on with our dinner.”

  Clare could endure no more. She got to her feet. “You will have to excuse me,” she said, forcing the words through the tightness in her throat. “I am not hungry.” She nearly fell as she put her weight on her injured ankle; then she recovered and began to move toward the door. Her teeth were clamped tight with pain and her determination not to limp.

  “Wait,” Logan said, coming up off the couch.

  Clare paid no attention. Grasping the doorknob, she pulled the panel open and started along the lower balcony. Once she was out of sight, she swayed and put her hand out to the wall for support.

  Logan strode from the room she had just left, closing on her with swift, silent steps to catch her arm. “Let me help you.”

  “Thank you, no,” Clare said, pulling away.

  “You’ll fall and break your neck.”

  “That should suit you fine.”

  “I might prefer,” he said grimly, “to break it myself.”

  “Leave me alone,” Clare told him through her teeth, evading his outstretched hand. As she stepped back, her heel hung in the hem of her dress, and she winced, grabbing for the balcony railing.

  Instantly he was upon her, scooping her into his arms. They closed around her like steel bands, clamping her to the hard planes of his chest. Stiff with rage, Clare allowed herself to be carried to the elevator. Once inside, Logan set her on her feet while he pressed the button. Clare, her hands clenched at her sides, stood beside him in silence as they rode upward.

  “Will you accept my help, or am I going to have to carry you again?” Logan grated when their floor was reached. Glaring at him, Clare took the arm he offered.

  At her room, Logan unlocked the door and pushed it open. Clare stepped inside, and swung around without a word to close it.

  “No, you don’t.” Catching the panel with the palm of his hand, he followed her into the room. The door vibrated in its frame as he slammed it behind him.

  “What do you want?” Clare demanded, much more aware than she wanted to be of the acceleration of her heartbeats.

  “We have some unfinished business.”

  “Since you won’t believe what I tell you, I have nothing more to say to you.”

  “That’s too bad, because I have something to say to you. I want to know why you did it. Were you afraid I would go back on my word? Or did you think you would get two articles out of this jaunt of yours? The one I had promised you and this other piece of sensational garbage?”

  “You are the most unreasonable man I have ever met!”

  “Unreasonable? What did you think I was going to say? Good going, Clare? Or maybe you didn’t expect me to say anything, because you didn’t expect to be here. Your accident has been an inconvenience in more ways than one, hasn’t it? No wonder you have been so quiet lately. You expected to be gone by now. You thought you would be far away by the time the piece came out.”

  “That isn’t the
way it was at all.” As he moved toward her with leashed violence in his stride, Clare took an involuntary step backward, coming up against the bed.

  “Bravo! You deserve an award, do you know that? An Oscar at the very least. You should be the one before the cameras, not me. I’ve never seen honesty better done, or innocence.”

  “Is that so?” If he refused to believe her, why should she waste breath defending herself?

  “Yes, it is. You had me believing you. I was actually fool enough to be taken in by your story of losing your way and stumbling on my house, in spite of all the evidence that showed plainly what you were after.”

  The contempt in his voice was as much for himself as it was for her. Clare stood still, assailed by pain at the knowledge he had given her.

  “You were smart, I’ll give you that,” he went on. “Such fine outrage at my suspicious mind, such a brave acceptance of danger and hardship, and what a show of being willing to pitch in and make the best of things. I had never met a woman who could smile when she was afraid or hurt. And then there was your friend, your nice, convenient friend, who seemed more afraid for you than awestruck at your chances of getting a story out of me. That was a master stroke — or do you just have her fooled, the way you did me?”

  “Logan, I—”

  “No, let me finish. I haven’t told you the best part. I was so certain you were real, so impressed with your open personality, your quiet and gentle strength, that I made you the model for the women in my script.” His voice dropped a note, and he moved closer to her, reaching out. She flinched slightly, but he only smoothed a strand of her hair back over her shoulder. His tone softer, he went on. “I took what you said of women and drew on what I thought you were to mold my women as lovely and loving, with bright honor and a sense of privacy that protected what they felt from the snickering curiosity of the world. Isn’t that funny?”