‘If the room...’ His eyes widened. ‘Really? Is that what they’re waiting for?’ She nodded her head and a smile lit his face. ‘Damn it, that’s terrific!’
‘There’s nothing terrific about it. I don’t want to burst your bubble, Cade, but those people are going to be very disappointed.’
‘That’s it,* he said, flashing her a quick, uncertain smile. ‘Give me a vote of confidence and then snatch it back. I thought you said they weren’t waiting to see me fall on my face.’
‘My, what an ego we have, Mr. Morgan. Didn’t you hear me? Those people are watching us, not just you. I’m the one who’s supposed to be the pro.’ She laughed shakily. ‘Hasn’t it occurred to you that no matter how well we play that scene, it’s not going to be good enough?
Cade shook his head. ‘I don’t understand. If you’re an experienced actress and if they’re not waiting for me to bomb...’
‘Dammit, nobody’s the least bit interested in us as actors. They want to see us together. That’s what I meant when I said it’s not going to be good enough. Everybody’s expectations are so crazy.. Shannon’s words stumbled to a halt as a crooked smile flickered across his face. ‘What is it?’
‘I wish to hell I’d known all this before,’ he said softly. ‘I’d have told you there isn’t a thing to worry about.’
‘Of course there is. It’s as if everybody’s forgotten we’re acting. They’re bound to be disappointed.’
Cade took the empty glass from her hand. She watched as he set it on the table.
‘Let me show you something,’ he said, twining his fingers through hers.
‘Show me what?’ Her voice was wary, but she let him draw her toward him. ’
‘Nobody’s going to be disappointed,’ he said. ‘Not Jerry, not that crowd of gawkers...’
Her heart thumped erratically. ‘No, don’t...’
‘Not anybody, Shannon. I guarantee it.’
His eyes were narrow slits of blue darkness and his fingers steel clamps around hers. She shook her head, her body tensing instinctively as the space between them lessened until finally they were only a breath apart.
‘Cade, please...’
His hand tangled in the cascade of her hair as he bent his head to hers and her whispered plea was lost against his mouth.
For an instant she struggled against him, and then her blood grew thick in her veins. She made a sound that was half moan, half sigh as Cade gathered her against him, crushing her until she felt that she was molded to him.
She leaned into his embrace, burrowing into the hardness of his chest, stretching herself against the hard length of him, as if her legs might collapse under her.
His lips teased at hers, urging her to open her mouth to him, urging her to taste and be tasted, and she made soft, inarticulate sounds as she did as he demanded.
He tasted just as he had the first time he’d kissed her, she thought, only now there was the added tang of the wine on his tongue, blending with the taste she remembered as his and his alone. She freed her hand from his and spread it on his chest; the other moved to the nape of his neck. She wanted to feel the heat from his body burning through her palm, through her fingers...
A horn blasted in the street below, shattering the stillness that had settled around them. Cade growled at the interruption, but Shannon grasped it as she would a lifeline, pulling free of his. embrace and backing away from him. Only his eyes followed her, dark indigo stones set in his face. She could feel the heat of his probing stare spreading over her skin. She tried to speak, but her throat was constricted.
What in God’s name was happening to her? She, who was always in control, she who was so disciplined...
‘Why did you do that?’ she whispered.
He had a thousand answers; he had no answers. In the end, all he could do was make a half-hearted attempt at lightening the tension that had suddenly filled the room.
‘Nobody’s going to be disappointed,’ he said huskily, reaching out and running his finger across her lips. ‘Now you can relax.’ .
His voice was as warm as his breath. For a fragment of eternity, her eyes closed and she swayed towards him— and then his throaty whisper sorted itself into words she could understand.
Of course, she thought, the love scene! The scene won’t be good enough, she’d said, and he’d taken her in his arms to prove her wrong.
But he’d proved more than that, she thought in sudden panic. He’d proved that he could turn her world upside down each time he touched her. And he knew it—he knew it...
The realization set her pulse pounding.
‘I almost forgot the knack you have for getting into your character,’ she said in an artificially bright voice. ‘I’m glad of that; I work better that way, myself. I guess Eli’s really been working you hard to refine that technique, hmm?’
Cade shook his head. ‘Listen, Shannon, Eli’s got nothing to do with this. I...’
‘Oh, I know you did a lot of this on your own. I mean, I remember the day you auditioned. Well, I know you said you weren’t, not consciously, but on a subconscious level, you wanted to impress Jerry... Look, I’m not angry about it, Cade. I understand. I’m an actress, after all. I believe in illusion. It’s the way I make my living...’
Stop babbling, you fool, she thought fiercely. There’s no point in wondering why he affects you this way. What matters is that the two of you are going to be the next Brad and Angelina. On the screen, not in real life.
Their love scene was going to sizzle. She was Cade’s ticket to success, and he was hers..
As for anything more than that.. it was the wine. She’d had far too much to drink, and on an empty stomach.
As if on cue, the doorbell rang.
‘My groceries, at last,’ she said, snatching her shoulder-bag from the table. ‘I’ll just be a minute.’ She opened the door and smiled at Mario. ‘I’m so glad to see you,’ she whispered, taking the groceries from him. His teen-aged face puckered in surprise as she pushed a five dollar bill at him. ‘For you,’ she said. ‘And here’s the money for the groceries.’ The boy was still staring at her as she closed the door and turned back to Cade. ‘How does this sound?’ she asked, smiling over the top of the bag. ‘One frozen chicken dinner, one frozen Salisbury steak, frozen yoghurt sundaes and coffee.’
His eyes moved over her face, pausing when they met hers.
‘Instant coffee, I hope,’ he said, deadpan.
‘What else?’
‘Sounds perfect,’ he said, returning her smile.
‘I forgot that I was talking to the king of the road,’ she laughed, heading towards the kitchen. ‘A man who knows his way around every greasy spoon in the United States probably thinks frozen foods are home cooking. Well, come on back here and open some boxes. You don’t think this is going to be a free ride, do you?’
Cade tossed down the last of his wine .
‘No,’ he said, following after her, ‘a free ride’s the last thing I’d expect.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
The bed squeaked ominously as Shannon eased herself down on it. ‘It’s still making funny noises,’ she called into the shadowy darkness surrounding the lighted set.
Someone chuckled in reply.
Shannon could feel her cheeks reddening, but she kept her chin up and her eyes never wavered from the spot where she knew Jerry Crawford was standing.
‘I just don’t want to waste any more time,’ she added carefully. ‘Otherwise, I wouldn’t mention it...’
‘It’s OK, Shannon,’ Crawford said. ‘It won’t collapse again.’ There was another giggle and then a soft laugh. ‘Quiet,’ Jerry barked, ‘or I’ll clear the damned set. We’ve got work to do.’
Please, Shannon thought, please, let something go right. Maybe someday she’d be able to look back at today and laugh—from the start, things had gone like a skit from Saturday Night Live—but right now she felt closer to tears than laughter.
At nine o’clock, the mike boom had collapsed for
no apparent reason. They’d no sooner fixed it than Rima the Prima had gasped and dropped to her knees. For a few panicked seconds, everybody had thought she’d had a heart attack. But it turned out that Rima had lost a contact lens, and the cast and crew had spent twenty minutes crawling around on the floor, looking for the darned thing, which, of course, they never found. What they did find was that the famous Rima the Prima’s emerald eyes weren’t emerald at all. Without the artificial color added by the contacts, they were a pale, near-sighted brown.
And then it had been time to rehearse the scene and, as the time had grown near for the first run-through, Shannon had started to feel the cold touch of panic. Who would be on that bed with Cade Morgan? Shannon Padgett or the character she was playing?
Cade’s assurance that the scene would sizzle was suddenly not comforting at all.
Why hadn’t it occurred to her that knowing he could draw such a passionate response from her was dangerous? If she wasn’t going to be an actress playing Alana Dunbar, who would she be? Crawford had hated the way she’d played this scene with Tony. No passion, he’d said, but that had been safer than losing control of herself in Cade’s arms...
At least they hadn’t been in costume for the first rehearsal.
If Jerry had told her to change into the flesh- colored bodysuit, she’d never have been able to walk to that awful bed, much less sit down on it. As it was, she’d moved towards it with all the grace of a badly controlled marionette. She’d managed to say her lines when Cade had materialized before her, but even she knew her delivery had been wooden.
And when he’d smiled and walked towards the bed, his eyes and voice caressing her as if they were a man and a woman alone in a real bedroom in a real apartment, panic had exploded deep inside her.
‘You’re going to feel the planet spin when I touch you.’
That was Cade’s first line. Would it? An actress couldn’t afford to lose control. She couldn’t afford to lose control.
He’d come down beside her and then the damned bed had swayed, groaned, and with a shriek of rending metal, it had collapsed in a heap, tumbling them to the floor in an undignified spill of pillows, sheets and blankets.
There had been a second of stunned silence, and then everybody, including Cade, had burst into peals of laughter.
Everybody but her.
Well, Jerry hadn’t laughed, either, but it wasn’t because he’d been mortified the way she’d been. It was because he was angry at all the delays. And there were more to come.
‘Fix the freaking bed,’ he’d snarled, stalking off the set. While the grips had hammered and sawed, the make-up man had scurried over and said he’d been asked to make her eyes look darker.
Wearily, Shannon had closed her eyes while he applied some new shadow and liner.
‘Smashing, darling,’ the make-up man had cooed, but by the time the bed was in one piece again and Jerry had waved her back to the set, her eyes were tearing and red.
‘It’s probably just a little allergic reaction,’ she’d said desperately, while she tissued the make-up off. ‘Really, it’s nothing.’
‘Nothing,’ the make-up man had echoed frantically. ‘Nothing!’ He’d rushed to her side and when he did, he’d tripped over a cable and blew out an entire set of lights.
‘God give me strength!’ Jerry had screamed. ‘What next?’
The heating system was what had come next. The studio was old. So were the radiators that heated it, and they’d suddenly set up a clatter that was loud enough to raise ghosts on Halloween.
Then they went silent.
That was the good news.
The bad was that the whole system had died. Within minutes, the huge studio was like a walk-in refrigerator, so that now everybody was standing around in coats and hats.
But there were still small miracles in the world, Shannon thought, shifting cautiously on the bed. Jerry had wanted a dress rehearsal, which meant that if the heat hadn’t failed, she’d have been sitting here, staring into the darkness, wearing nothing but a flesh-colored bodysuit, feeling naked as the day she’d been born, waiting for Cade, waiting for him to make his entrance and move on to the bed beside her, waiting for him to take her into his arms…
‘Shannon?’
A shiver of apprehension ran through her. Jerry’s voice was a silken sigh, an ominous portent considering the mood he was in. ,
‘Yes?' she asked in a cautious whisper.
‘Is there a problem?’
‘No, of course not,’ she said quickly. ‘I’m just waiting.’
‘For what? A visit to the dentist?’
She cringed at the acid tone of his voice.
‘Passion, Miss Padgett, passion! I want to see longing on your face, not resignation. Is that so much to ask? And where’s Make-up, damn it? Haven’t you got something you can use to kill the shine on her nose? Her nose looks like my mother’s freshly waxed floor!’
Shannon cleared her throat. ‘I... I asked him to go easy on the powder, Jerry. I was afraid I might have another allergic reaction. You see, sometimes these things are cumulative. Once I couldn’t wear make-up for a week, and...’
Crawford threw his arms up in disgust. ‘OK,’ he roared, ‘OK, that’s it. Everybody, go home. Go on, get out of here! What is this, a conspiracy? It’s bad enough I’m freezing my tail off, working in this barn they call a studio while it collapses around me, without having you tell me that we may have to tape tomorrow’s show with you looking like an ad for a bottle of spot remover.’
‘I’m sure I’ll be fine by tomorrow, Jerry. I’ll take an antihistamine as soon as—‘
‘Spare me the details, OK? Just get yourself in shape for an early start. I want you here at six a.m., Miss Padgett. We’ll work straight through until late afternoon and then we’ll tape the damned thing. Is there ' an outside chance you can manage to turn into an actress by then?’
She swallowed hard. ‘Yes, sir. I know I can..’
‘I hope so. Otherwise, I’ll have to assume I made a mistake in casting you. Maybe those sparks were a one-shot. Maybe I’m better off hoping for competency. Maybe I should call casting...’
‘I’ll be fine tomorrow,’ she said quickly. ‘You’ll see.’
‘I’d better see, because I damned well don’t have any more time to waste. You got that?’
Shannon nodded and watched silence as the director tossed his script aside and stalked off the set.
Oh, God, she thought, lacing her trembling hands together in her lap, oh, God, he’s going to replace me. He’s going to fire me. He’s...
‘He’s not blaming anything on you, you know. He’s just frustrated.’
Her head sprang up at the sound of that familiar, husky whisper. ‘Cade?’.
He stepped out of the shadows and sat down on the bed beside her. ‘Stop looking as if Jerry handed you your notice. It was just a bad day for everybody. I think we’ll all feel better when we get this damned scene out of the way.’
‘If we ever do,’ she said glumly. Slowly, she got to her feet. ‘Well, here’s hoping I’ll see you tomorrow.’.
‘Don’t you plan on being here?’
‘Not if Crawford decides to replace me before then.’
‘Don’t be silly. He wanted us as a team, remember? You’re the reason he signed me for this part. He’s just angry.’
‘Sure,’ she said tonelessly. Suddenly, her eyes widened. ‘I wonder if there’s time to catch Eli at the workshop.’
‘Didn’t he say he was going to be in Boston this week with the new Shepherd play? What did you want to do? Read lines with him?’
She shook her head. ‘I know my lines.’
‘Well, then, what’s the problem? If you know them...’
A touch of pink rose to her cheeks and she turned away from Cade’s puzzled face.
‘There’s no problem,’ she said quickly, snatching up her jacket and starting across the studio. ‘I’ll be fine, Cade. Don’t worry. I’ll spend t
he night going over the scene and...*
‘You know what you need, lady? You need to relax. And I know the way to get you unwound.’
She tossed him a sharp glance and he chuckled softly.
‘For shame,’ he murmured, taking her hand in his. ‘Whatever are you thinking?’
She tugged her hand free. ‘Look,’ she said wearily. ‘I’m exhausted. I don’t have the time or the energy for any verbal skirmishes. I’m going home to work on my role.’
‘That’s a mistake. You need to let go for a while.’
LOVESCENES Page 9
