TURN ME ON

by Kristin Hardy

  Moodily, he sipped more coffee. Well, he'd wanted to get her out of his system. What did it mean that she was now on his mind more than ever? He couldn't stop wondering if things had finally changed. And he couldn't stop wanting more.

  He looked up and felt something click within him. Across the room, he could see Sabrina on the other side of the glass barrier that separated the coffee bar from the main restaurant. She rubbed her temples with one hand and then glanced restlessly around. Do it now, he thought to himself, and waved.

  She paled. He swore he saw her square her shoulders, but she got her coffee and walked through the restaurant to his table.

  Working out, he figured, looking at her standing there without a speck of makeup on, her cheeks still flushed and her hair raked carelessly back from her face. The urge to tumble her back into bed took him by surprise. "Good morning."

  "Good morning." She swallowed. "Having breakfast?"

  "Sure. Care to join me?"

  "I'm a mess. I've been running."

  "I noticed when I woke up this morning," he said, his eyes on hers. "Funny, you never used to be the type to run away from things."

  "I meant—"

  "I know what you meant. And you know what I meant. Why don't you sit down and talk to me?"

  She hesitated, then slid into the booth. "It wasn't meant to insult you. I just thought it would be easier for both of us."

  "Maybe ditching a one-night stand is par for the course, but with the history we've got and our current circumstances, it doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense."

  Sabrina opened her mouth to protest and then subsided, waving off the waitress with the menu. Instead, she cupped her hands around her coffee cup and stared at the rising steam as though trying to tell the future. "I was going to talk to you, just when…"

  "Yes?"

  "Look, what happened last night wasn't a particularly smart thing for either of us." Her voice tightened. "I mean, considering what we were filming, it's not all that surprising, but it was foolish. I think we're best off now if we just call it good."

  What she was saying made sense. He should have listened to it. He wondered why he didn't. "Do you think this happened for no reason other than being at Candy?"

  "No," she said slowly. "I think it's been coming on for a while. We've both been wondering what it would be like after all this time and we found out."

  "And?"

  "And now it's done."

  Stef drummed his fingers and looked across the room, then he looked back at her. "I'll tell you what I think. I think it's very far from done. I'm not entirely sure myself what we do about it, but I can tell what I'm not going to do and that is sweep it all under the rug again."

  "In case you haven't noticed, there are two of us involved here."

  "Trust me, it was pretty hard not to notice that there were two people involved here last night."

  A flicker of impatience showed. "Stef, last night was great, but that doesn't automatically mean we start back up again. Have a little self-control. Think how it's going to look to the crew. Besides, we have a history."

  "And I think that history is precisely why we shouldn't just cut this off."

  "Give me one good reason why we should keep going," she demanded.

  "Because if we weren't in a public place right now, I'd have you stripped out of those running clothes so fast it'd make your head spin, and don't even pretend that you wouldn't be right there in it with me."

  Her eyes darkened for an instant, then she got up from the booth. "If I were, I'd be out of my mind," she said grimly.

  "Maybe … but we'd do it anyway. And we will, you know."

  Sabrina pressed her hands on the table and leaned as far into his face as she could. "No, Nostradamus, we won't."

  "Why?"

  "Why? Because last time around, one evening in particular, you took great delight in telling me I wasn't good enough for you. And if you think that all it takes to fix that is some sympathy and a night of good sex, then you're the one who's out of his mind."

  * * *

  Sabrina thumped her makeup bag into her roll-on. Normally, travel put her in a good mood. Now, all she wanted to do was get on the plane and get home, preferably without seeing another living soul. Failing that, she'd settle for avoiding Stef. Of course, given that she and Kelly were sharing a cab to the airport with him, she'd just have to resign herself to dealing with him. It was the mature thing to do, she told herself. After all, they still had to work together. He'd realize pretty quickly that he wasn't going to get back with her and that would be that.

  There was a knock. "Just a minute," Sabrina called. She opened the door to find Kelly. "Hey, come on in."

  "Hi. I was packed, so I figured I'd stop by on my way down."

  "Sure. I'm just about done myself."

  "So how are you doing?" Kelly asked, setting her bags against the wall.

  Sabrina gave her a level look. "Just for the record, 'I told you so's' are in really poor taste."

  "Like I've never done something I swore I wouldn't?" Kelly gave an abashed look. "I may give dire warnings, but I gave up 'I told you so' a long time ago." She sat down on the bed and bounced a few times. "So how was it? Did you have fun?"

  Sabrina stopped and gave a rueful laugh. "You ever had fabulous sex that you knew darned good and well you shouldn't?"

  "Sometimes that's the best kind of all. So what happens now?"

  "Chalk it up to experience, finish the project and say night-night," Sabrina said lightly.

  "I suppose if I were a good friend, I'd support you and keep my own counsel."

  "Have you ever in your whole life kept your own counsel?"

  Kelly considered. "Yeah, once. August, 1998, 2:00 p.m."

  "Show me some proof and I'll believe it."

  "All I've got to say is after the way he's been looking at you, don't expect him to back off without a fight."

  "Everybody needs a challenge and that's mine." Sabrina zipped up her bag and grabbed her purse. "Come on, we've got to get to the airport."

  Downstairs, the lobby was full of the usual midmorning chaos. Thank God for express checkout, Sabrina thought, walking past the line of people.

  "So how are we getting to the airport?" Kelly asked.

  "Laeticia and the rest of the crew took the van and the equipment. You, Stef and I can cab it."

  They stood outside in the taxi area, waiting for a cab. "They'll be here in just two minutes," said the doorman.

  "I always thought New York was crawling with cabs," Kelly said.

  "It is. They're just all off crawling somewhere else."

  "Speaking of crawling, where's the Greek god?"

  Sabrina shrugged. "He knows when we're leaving. If he's not here, it's his problem."

  "Hey, Sabrina!"

  The voice came from across the drop-off area, brassy and loud. She gave a quick glance and cursed.

  "What is it?" Kelly asked.

  She turned in agitation. "Where's a damned cab?"

  The speaker was a short, bulky man in Tommy Hilfiger, with dark cropped hair that matched his bristly five-o'clock shadow. He had the blocky-featured face of a second-rate prize fighter gone to seed, conniving and pugnacious all at once. The pitiless morning sun wasn't kind to him, she saw, bringing out a pasty complexion and puffy jowls, earned from a few too many late nights drinking, no doubt.

  Wesley Franzen, ace reporter for the Weekly News, one of the more tawdry grocery store tabloids. The Weekly News specialized in dishing dirt, building stories out of innuendo, rumor and straight-out lies. She knew that for a fact—she'd been their target more than once.

  "So how's your cousin these days? You still making out with him in restaurants?" Franzen asked, following them back to the taxi stand.

  "Up yours, Franzen," she said over her shoulder to him.

  Franzen stepped closer. "You ought to be a little nicer, Sabrina. After all, I'm the one who controls what America thinks of you."

  "Civili
zed people don't read your tripe, Franzen."

  "Are you dissing our readers, little rich girl? That's heartland America you're talking about. They're going to be very upset at you."

  "Nice shirt, Franzen. It looks just like the one you threw up all over. Did you ever get the smell out of that one?"

  "Bitch." His face flushed a dull red and he started after her.

  "I wouldn't," said a hard voice from behind them.

  Franzen blanched and Sabrina turned to see Stef standing there.

  "I don't know what you're trying to do, buddy, but you'd better do it elsewhere. Now." He took a step past Sabrina as Franzen backpedaled, right into the path of an approaching cab. At the honk, Franzen tripped. He was up in a moment, dusting himself off. An ugly sneer twisted his face.

  "Got a new boyfriend, Sabrina? I'm sure it'll break your cousin's heart. I'll have to keep a special eye on you now."

  A cab wheeled up. "Get inside," Stef murmured to Sabrina. "I'll take care of the luggage."

  Kelly and Sabrina slid into the blessed cool of the cab.

  "Are you okay?" Kelly asked.

  Sabrina nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

  "Want to tell me what that was about?" Stef asked as he got into the cab beside her.

  It still made her tremblingly angry, even though Franzen was a complete scum. She made herself take a deep breath. "Franzen hit on me at a party five or six years ago. He wouldn't take no for an answer. It got loud and it got ugly." The cab pulled out into traffic. "Later on, I came across him throwing up in a corner. Ever since, he's made it his mission to serve up sleaze stories on me whenever possible."

  "I've seen you grace their cover a few times over the years," Stef said.

  "He sneaked into my father's viewing and got a couple of shots of my mother. I was out with my cousin last month at a bar. Franzen got a picture of me leaning in to say something and made it look as if we were kissing. According to the story, we're having a hot and not-very-private affair. He ran it on the front cover alongside one of the pictures of my mother, saying how destroyed she was about us." Sabrina's jaw tightened. "It's one thing when he goes after me. It's another when he goes after my family."

  "Take him to court," Stef said.

  She snorted. "You spend a fortune, they drag your name through the muck, and if you win, there's a tiny little retraction on the last page. It's easier to ignore it." She reached out to brace herself as the cab stopped. "I was starting to think he'd given up. He hasn't done any stories for a while. Guess I disappointed him by getting off the party circuit."

  "You've got better things to do," Stef said.

  Sabrina looked at him with a faint smile, feeling the comforting warmth of him against her. "Yeah, I do."

  * * *

  12

  « ^ »

  It might only have been a weekday evening, but the pedestrian mall that was the Third Street Promenade was crowded with people and activity. Sabrina sat on a bench, watching a pair of street acrobats put on their show. They cartwheeled into sequences of flips, springing at the end over a low wall of cardboard boxes and rising to their feet effortlessly. Finally, one ran toward his partner and the two clasped hands just as the runner flipped up into a handstand, high above the ground on the other performer's hands.

  And held it there, motionlessly, in perfect balance.

  That was what she needed with Stef, Sabrina thought. Perfect balance. She needed to find some way to appreciate the kindness, work with the talent, acknowledge the past, and maintain control of the lust. Most of all, maintain control of the lust. Sleeping with him once she could chalk up to foolishness, to letting things get away from her. More than that was just walking back into involvement, and she was very afraid she was already in deeper than was smart.

  Intellectually, she knew getting involved with Stef was bad news. The problem was, she'd never been one for following her head. Outside of work, her tendency was to just take the leap, to follow her whims and see what happened.

  The upside-down tumbler balancing on his partner's hands wavered and drew an ooh from the crowd. The partner stepped a little to the left, then to the right, struggling to get under him. Sabrina felt a clutch in her stomach. See what happened? That was what happened when you went with your gut in a delicate balancing situation. One false move to upset the balance and you took a header into the bricks.

  Despite his partner's best efforts, the balancing tumbler's body overtilted and he began to fall. Halfway down, though, the partner gave a swift, calculated flip of his hands and suddenly the falling tumbler pulled into a perfect tuck, spinning once, twice, and landing with grace and aplomb.

  Sabrina laughed and clapped her hands as the pair took sweeping bows.

  "You've got to play it for the drama," Stef said, dropping onto the bench beside her.

  Though she'd been expecting him, she still jumped at the sound of his voice. "If you're a street performer, you've got to play it for the cash."

  "I'll remember that. I see you've been making some notes," he said, glancing down at the clipboard on the bench beside her.

  "I've pulled the permits, and arranged for the off-duty police officers and the whole nine yards. We're clear to shoot here for three hours, 8:00 to 11:00 p.m. I figure we'll catch the dinner-and-the-movie crowd, so we should have plenty of raw material."

  "Any ideas about where you want to do the interviews?"

  She shrugged. "Let's walk it and see."

  They rose and began to amble. The Promenade was a pedestrian mall closed to automobiles, dotted with fountains and sculptures and lined with chichi restaurants and the kind of nationwide chains that styled themselves as boutiques.

  "There," she pointed. "I think over by Restoration Hardware should be one of them."

  "Sabrina."

  She kept walking until he put a hand on her shoulder. "Stop a minute and talk to me. You've been avoiding me ever since we got back from New York."

  "I've had work to do."

  "We never finished talking about what happened. Or what happens now, for that matter."

  "Look, you were really nice to help with Franzen and I'm sorry about the way I reacted in the restaurant. I usually have better control of my temper these days." She held his eye. "I'm not sorry for what I said, but I'm sorry for the way I said it."

  "I don't care about the way you said it…" He broke off as a group of teenagers walking by jostled them. He grabbed Sabrina's hand. "We're getting out of here until we're finished talking."

  At first, she only registered the feel of his skin, the contact, and all of its resonances with the other times and places he'd touched her. He steered them down a side street headed toward the bluffs overlooking the beach. Suddenly, it was a relief to get away from the mob of people, and she followed without protest. They had to get it out of the way sooner or later, she supposed. Why not now?

  The setting sun hovered above the horizon. She tugged her hand from his and pulled out her dark glasses. "So talk."

  "All right. You think we should end this. I think we should give it a chance."

  "There is no 'it' to give a chance to, Stef. We were curious, we slept together. End of story." She rubbed her hand absently.

  "No. Not end of story because I don't think either one of us is ready to just let it go."

  "What, the sex or the relationship?"

  "Both."

  "Yeah?" She stopped by a lamppost. "Well, guess what, I am. Deal with it."

  "I don't think so." He turned to face her, determination in his eyes. "The reason I don't think so is because I can feel the goose bumps," he said softly, running his fingertips up her arm. Her breath hissed in. "See, I figure if you really didn't give a damn, you wouldn't react."

  She had a sudden, vivid memory of the two of them wrapped together, entirely naked and utterly abandoned. "This isn't a game, Stef," Sabrina snapped, shaking the image loose. She started walking again, toward the water and the sunset.

  "If anyone's playing a
game, it's you. How long are you going to go on lying to yourself?"

  She rounded on him. "What makes you so sure I am? Don't come in acting like you know me better than I know myself."

  "I'm not. Look, this matters," he said more moderately, "to both of us. And if we don't deal with it, we're going to walk away from this no different than we were two months ago."

  "So what's the problem with that?" she challenged, crossing Ocean Boulevard to reach the railing that marked the verge of the coastal bluffs. Below, cars jockeyed for position on Pacific Coast Highway, just a stone's throw from the broad sand beach.

  Stef came up to lean against the fence beside her. The sun sank toward the horizon, a golden glow of light spreading in a swath across the waves. For a long time, they were silent, watching it set. Finally, Sabrina turned to him. The ebbing light gilded her features and the offshore breeze tossed her hair. She held his gaze, eyes steady on his.

  "We did this before, Stef, and it hurt like hell," she said softly. "Is it so wrong to want to avoid that?"

  "No." He remembered the hurt, but he also remembered the way he'd felt that night in the New York hotel, the sense of inevitability. The sense of coming home. "But things are different now, and you know that."

  "Maybe."

  He blew out a breath. "Look, I'm not the same person I was back then. Yes, film is important, but it's not everything. I see that now. I can look around and want more. And you've changed, too."

  He reached out and brushed gentle fingers across her cheek. She shivered. Yearning flickered in her eyes. "Don't," she whispered.

  "I think about you all the time, Sabrina. I can't stop it. I can't stop wanting you. And maybe you're right, maybe it's foolish, but there's something going on here. It's not just left over from before. This is today, and it deserves a chance to stand on its own."

  He leaned toward her, close enough to see the little flare of alarm in her eyes. He knew that she wanted to bolt. Instead, she stayed in place and watched him until the last minute. Then her lids fluttered shut.