Starstruck

by Anne McAllister

  “Damn,” she muttered, but at least she was home free. No need to grope now. She turned the key and eased the door open, slipping into the entryway, which was as black as the hall she just left.

  “Do you know what time it is?” a hard voice rasped in her ear.

  “Oh!” Her head jerked up and collided with his jaw. “You frightened the wits out of me! I thought you’d be asleep.”

  “With you out roaming the streets of Vienna alone?”

  She could feel his breath on her neck, and although he wasn’t touching her, he might as well have been. She had never been more aware of him. And was that anger in his voice? Anger? After he had spent all afternoon with the sexiest French actress this side of the Seine?

  “Where have you been?” he snarled, flipping on the light and dragging her after him into the living room as if she were a piece of furniture.

  “Shopping. Doing a bit more research for Marv’s articles.” She tried to jerk her arm away, but he wouldn’t let go.

  “Till ten-thirty at night?” He sounded outraged,

  “I had a lot to see,” she said defensively. “Why?” She tried to inject a note of calmness into her voice that she was far from feeling. “You weren’t really worried, were you?” How had he had the time?

  “Damn right I was!” he exploded. “You were gone for hours!”

  “I thought I left you quite well occupied,” she said, unable to keep the spite out of her voice.

  “Hardly. Veronique left,” he said in flat tones, “not long after you did as a matter of fact. She was here to deliver another pitch from Luther. He sent her to see if I’d do the Steve Scott flick if she were the leading lady.” He sounded thoroughly annoyed and Liv couldn’t contain a surge of gladness.

  “And would you?” she ventured.

  “What the hell do you think?” he demanded raggedly. “I want to do Pio and Elena. I don’t want to act any more for a while—if ever. Besides, I don’t think she’d do it with me. She thinks chicken pox are disgusting. She thinks I’ll be scarred for life, that my career as a leading man is over.” His voice shook, but whether with fury or with something else, Liv didn’t know. “You’d think I had small pox, not chicken pox,” he mumbled.

  “Joe.” Liv put her hand on his arm, suddenly singing inside, wanting only to love him and reassure him, forgetting completely that she had been cursing him all day long. His day had been nothing like she had imagined— he must have sat alone and brooded for hours while she walked around and did the same. Oh, was she a fool! Her fingers curled around his forearm.

  “You’d better get changed,” he said gruffly, shrugging her arm off. “You’ll get pneumonia, otherwise.”

  Helpless, baffled, she watched as he turned and stalked out of the room. The bedroom door shut behind her and she was alone. Confused, she stood and dripped on the Oriental carpet, wondering where his anger had gone and, even more important, what emotion had replaced it.

  Shutting off the light, she opened the door to the bedroom and went in, glancing over at his still form huddled in the dark beneath the eiderdown. Joe made no sound at all, so she gathered up her gown and robe and disappeared into the bathroom without breaking the silence.

  They ought to be falling into one another’s arms right now. Why weren’t they? She shook her head wearily, puzzled. Lying back in the tub, soaking in neck-deep frothy water, she wondered what to do next, but no answers appeared. The long, hot soak was soothing as far as it went, but she was no nearer understanding Joe now than she had been when she began. Sighing she got out, drying off and then brushing her hair, putting off the moment when she would have to return to the room they shared. He might be asleep, she thought. But when she tiptoed back in, she knew she was hoping to find him sitting up, wanting to talk to her. But he hadn’t moved. The lump under the eiderdown was as inert as it had been before. Sighing she slipped under her own comforter and lay unmoving as her eyes adjusted to the darkness of the room.

  The rain beat a steady tattoo on the windowpane, and she thought how appropriate it sounded, damp and dismal like the feelings growing inside her. Tomorrow they would go home. Home to what? She felt a dull ache begin somewhere behind her eyes, tears pricking. But she held them back, forcing herself to swallow hard, blinking for all she was worth. She needed to look about the room, not cry, to memorize the black shapes and shadows, to store up images and memories so that she could take them out and see them again when Vienna, and possibly Joe Harrington, were only a part of her past. She bit her lip.

  Was it over between them? Had her foolish excursion until all hours of the night, while he sat here and fumed, finished something that she now felt had barely even started? What else could she think? She had known great joy when she had discovered that he had spent the day alone, that he had been worried about her, angry at her. But her joy had turned to pain when, inexplicably, he had turned away. Why? She frowned into the darkness, puzzled, wondering.

  “Liv?” It was almost a whisper, so soft that if a car had been passing in the rain-slicked street below, she never would have heard him. But she did, and her eyes flew to the figure across the room as he shifted in the darkness.

  “What?”

  “I… I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled at you.”

  Yell away, she thought. She rolled onto her side and stared across the shadowy room at him, seeing only the shaggy outline of his hair and the bare arm propping him up. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, fingers clenching around her comforter.

  For a moment she thought he would lie down and go to sleep, but then he sighed. “It’s been quite a week… I’m sorry for that, too.”

  “Don’t be.” It had been a wonderful week in its way—just the two of them together.

  “It wasn’t what I’d planned at all,” he said ruefully and sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. “There were so many places I wanted to take you, to show you…” His voice drifted off into an aching void that pained her and she shook her head, about to deny again that it mattered. But suddenly he stood up, hesitated a second, and then crossed the room, sinking down to sit on the edge of her bed. Instinctively, pulses hammering, heart racing, she inched over to give him room beside her. “Did you have a good time today?” he asked somewhat wistfully.

  “Um, yes,” she croaked, her leg sliding against his as his weight depressed the edge of the bed. “But I wish you had been with me,” she added. Her hand crept out from beneath the comforter, daring to move close to his bare thigh but not touching it.

  “Not like this, you wouldn’t,” he said, rubbing a week’s growth of brown beard.

  “I like your werewolf look,” she said, smiling. “Anyway, it’s your company I value, not your handsome face.”

  He smiled then. She could see the curve of his cheek change in the profile view she had, and his hand found hers, squeezing it gently, then tracing delicate patterns on the sensitive inside of her wrist. She felt a shiver of anticipation run through her. “Veronique would have run screaming if I’d touched her,” he said softly.

  “I’m not Veronique.” Another time Liv would have bristled at the comparison, but tonight Veronique was of no more significance than the leaky faucet back home. This was the night she had waited for; this was the man she loved. She drew his fingers to her lips and kissed them one by one, delighted to feel him shudder against her.

  “No, thank goodness, you’re not,” he murmured and closed his eyes. Her lashes fluttered against his hand as she drew it against her cheek and then kissed the palm of it, darting out her tongue to tease its warmth. He sucked in his breath sharply and his fingers trembled. “I imagined all sorts of awful things when you didn’t come back,” he said raggedly. “You hurt. You gone. You—” He shuddered again. “I thought you weren’t coming back.”

  She reached for him then, pulling his head down, finding his lips with her own, and the tight rein of control that he had hung onto all week snapped completely. He kissed her with a hunger that astonished h
er, his lips hard and demanding, his tongue seeking, probing, tasting, his hands drawing her up against him so that she could feel the heavy thudding of his heart. The blood pounded like white water through her veins.

  “Liv! Oh, Liv!” he mumbled against her cheek, his beard brushing her face softly, smooth one way, rough the other. “This week’s been torture! Hell, for months it’s been torture! Please, Liv—” But whatever he was going to say was never spoken, and the feverish, desperate fees began again, and Liv was drowning along with him. There was no one to save her now.

  He slid into the bed alongside her, their bodies touching from toes to mouths, hardness and softness melting together, seeking a unity too long denied. For a fleeting instant Liv remembered Tom’s telling her that she wasn’t the passionate sort and thought, he should see me now. But her giggle was muffled in the warmth of Joe’s lips.

  “What is it?” he muttered.

  She replied, “Nothing,” and was overjoyed to realize that it was true. Tom was over, past. What he thought totally ceased to matter. What mattered was Joe, only Joe. Now and forever, Joe. And she rolled over onto him, pressing him into the sheets, feathering kisses across his chest.

  “What are you doing?” he gasped, catching her face between his hands.

  “Kissing your scabs.” She grinned at him in the moonlight that peeked suddenly through a break in the clouds as the rain stopped. “I think if I do a thorough job of it, I just might cover your whole body.”

  “You might,” he growled, grinning back. “But don’t expect me to last that long.” But he didn’t object further, lying back and letting her have her way a while longer, watching her with a kind of glazed astonishment on his face, and she remembered that Veronique wouldn’t have touched him. She smiled, her tongue slipping between her lips to trace a circle around his navel and then dip inside.

  His strong arms suddenly engulfed her, pulling her up against his chest and then tugging the nightgown over her head, so that she lay naked against him. Gently, skillfully, his hands molded her to him, smoothing down her back and over the curve of her hip, running lightly up the inner sides of her thighs, so that she ground her hips against his, aching for him, her desire as strong as his. Her fingers slipped inside the waistband of his shorts, and she lifted herself to her knees above him, sliding the shorts down over his narrow hips and strong thighs. Joe kicked them away impatiently and pulled her down again, rolling her over and lying on his side against her. His right hand came up to cup her breast, to stroke it to a taut peak before his lips came down to caress it with liquid softness. Liv tossed her head, burning, needing, aching.

  “Do you know what it’s like to envy a bunch of little kids?" he groaned, his mouth still planting kisses on both breasts.

  “What?”

  “Your kids. They’d known you for years, hugged you, kissed you. Cripes, at my house Jennifer even slept with you,” he muttered. He got to his knees, hands still moving over her, memorizing her body. Then he bent his head, showering her abdomen with kisses, his hands going before him, smoothing the way, increasing her anticipation, her readiness, sending flames of desire shooting through her.

  “Joe!” She tugged at his hair, her fingers twining in the dark, unruly locks, dragging him up against her, needing his warmth, his passim, his love. “Joe, please—”

  “Mmmmm.” His hot breath caressed her ear as he lifted himself slightly, then gently lowered, fitting between her thighs as Liv welcomed him, drawing him down, urging him on. She was gripped in a wild, tempestuous delight, an ecstasy that knew no name, and her arms and legs tightened around him, fitting to his rhythm, mindless of everything but Joe now. She knew neither past nor future—only this—that this loving was the proper, the deepest, expression of what she felt for him. She loved him wholly and completely, holding nothing back. Her back arched, stars blazed, spirits soared and they became one together.

  Weakened, spent, yet whole at last, Liv tasted the salty perspiration on Joe’s shoulder, felt his galloping heart next to her own and smiled. A sense of completeness, of inevitability overwhelmed her. She had shown him her deepest feelings; she had given him her love. Her hand drifted down his sweat-dampened back, stroking the smooth skin and rough scabs, loving them all. “I love you, Joe,” she whispered and settled easily onto her side, curving her back into his chest and wrapping his arms around to hold against her. She felt his cheek against her hair. “I love you,” she murmured again, sleepiness overcoming her. “I do.” And her eyes flickered shut and she slept, content and at peace in his arms.

  It was Joe who lay, eyes open, for the remainder of the night.

  Chapter Eleven

  The bright morning sun said it all. Liv hummed as she set out the cups and sliced the bread, her movements quick and deft, her lips curved into the smile she’d been wearing since she’d awakened an hour before.

  The temptation to lie in bed and watch Joe sleep had been almost overwhelming. She loved the strong line of his jaw, now blurred with a week’s worth of beard, the slight irregularity of the bridge of his nose where he’d broken it playing football as a boy, the soft mahogany hair that drifted across his forehead, more red than brown in the sunlight shining on it. It was an indulgence that she couldn’t completely deny herself. Too soon she would be bolting out of bed in the morning, hustling the kids off to school, and such luxuries would be as remote as Madison seemed now. So she had watched him, trying to synchronize her breathing with the deep evenness of his, tracing with her eyes the groove in his cheek, the tiny lines from laughter and hard living that fanned out around his eyes. And then, resolutely, she had slipped from the bed without waking him. Noting the dark shadows under his eyes and deciding to let him sleep as long as she could, she took a shower and fixed herself some breakfast. Then she fixed Joe’s breakfast, too.

  She had been fixing him breakfast for days, but this morning it meant more, took on a new significance. It was a small task, but done for the man she loved, the man who knew now without a doubt how much she loved him. She poured herself a cup of coffee and added milk, stirring it absently as she sat in the dining room in the warm sunshine and remembered with even greater interior warmth their lovemaking of the night before.

  “Hi. Pour me a cup, will you?” Joe appeared in the doorway, hair uncombed and eyes bleary, but already dressed in gray slacks and buttoning up a long-sleeved, pale blue oxford cloth shirt. He was barefoot and disgruntled looking, and Liv smiled at him as she poured the coffee. She handed it to him, longing to reach up and kiss his cheek, actually moved to do it, but he said, “Thanks,” and took a long swallow, vanishing again into the bedroom as he did so. She heard him rummaging around in his suitcase, and moments later he reappeared, knotting a regimental striped tie around his collar.

  “Hadn’t you better be getting ready to leave?” he asked.

  Liv felt her brows draw together as she frowned. Where were the good morning kiss and the smile she had been expecting? As if he could read her mind, he suddenly bent down and kissed her hard and quick, then stood up and began buttering a slice of rye, saying, “When we get back to Madison you can move your stuff into my place and put yours up for rent.”

  “What?” She stared, a funny, hollow feeling growing where she had felt comfortably full of breakfast just moments before.

  He flicked her a quick glance, then concentrated on the bread. “I said—”

  “I heard what you said,” Liv told him, feelings of dread building. “What did you mean?”

  Joe stopped buttering the bread. “Move in with me. Live with me. Cohabit.” His voice was calm, matter-of-fact, but he was holding the knife in a death grip, and Liv felt suddenly cold, as if the sun had gone behind a cloud. She dropped a piece of bread into the toaster, not really wanting it, but needing something to do.

  “I can’t,” she said finally.

  He looked at her then. Stared, his brows drawn down in a dark line, his eyes hard and grim like dull jade. “Why?”

  Why? How coul
d she answer that? “Because, because… I thought…” How did you say, “I thought we’d get married? I thought you’d be my husband and I’d be your wife and we’d live happily ever after”? She closed her eyes briefly, groping for the words which seemed to slip further out of reach.

  “You said you loved me,” Joe reminded her. He was leaning against Mrs. Carvalho’s dark walnut buffet, looking fierce and menacing with a backdrop of delicate tea cups and porcelain horses.

  “I do. I do love you.” There was no point in denying it now, even though every rational thought told her to, told her to cover her weaknesses and retreat, defending herself however she could.

  “Well, then—” He was looking annoyed, his fingers busy destroying the bread on his plate, crumbling it into little mounds and moving them around distractedly.

  “First of all, I won’t do it because of the kids. My kids know that I think what Tom did was wrong. I won’t turn around now and do the same thing, too. And I won’t have them subjected to more gossip. Goodness knows, having Tom for a father brought enough of that.” She knew she was making a bad job of it, stumbling, breathless, her voice jerky, not saying the things that mattered the most.

  “The kids like me,” Joe argued.

  “That’s not the point! They deserve a stable life, a—”

  “They were stable with us while they had chicken pox!”

  “For two weeks. How long do you want to live with me? Two weeks? Two months? Two years?” She was shaking and clenched her hands in her lap, hoping he wouldn’t notice.

  “Who knows? Forever, maybe.”

  “Maybe?” Scorn dripped from her voice and she knew it. The knife slammed down on Joe’s plate. The toast popped up, burned.