Reilly's Return

by Tami Hoag

  Faith cleared her throat nervously. “Yep, I guess we’d better hit the road. We just dropped by to see how you were doing, Jayne.”

  “And you appear to be doing very well indeed,” Alaina said dryly.

  Their voices penetrated the sensual fog around Jayne, causing her brain to begin functioning again. Horrified, she pried her mouth from Reilly’s and wedged her arms between her body and his, trying to apply enough leverage to free herself from his embrace. He only grinned at her, effectively showing off the cleft in his chin and the boyish dimple in his right cheek.

  “Let me go,” she demanded, ignoring the primitive thrill racing through her at being his captive.

  “For the moment,” he said, standing her back from him with a big hand cupping each of her shoulders.

  When he let her go, she swayed as if she might swoon again. His kiss had drained all her strength. She shuddered at the thought, then shuddered again as Reilly planted his hands on her shoulders and turned her so she was standing directly in front of him, facing her friends. She made no attempt to escape his hold, sure that if she tried to take even one step on her own, she’d be back down on the floor.

  “Don’t rush off!” she blurted out, her big dark eyes pleading. The last thing she wanted was to be left alone with Reilly. It was painfully obvious she couldn’t trust herself around him, and she didn’t trust him any farther than she could throw him. Who knew what would happen if they were left unchaperoned? She got a hot flash just thinking about it.

  Faith and Alaina exchanged a significant glance.

  “I really have to go, Jayne,” Faith said apologetically. “I left Shane watching the baby so I could hit the supermarket. You know he’s wonderful with Nicholas, but he’s ill-equipped for breast feeding.”

  Jayne’s gaze zoomed in on Alaina’s face.

  Alaina looked both annoyed and sympathetic, a combination that was natural to her. She was much better at suppressing emotions than expressing them. “Sorry, pal. I’ve got a will to read at ten. Looks like your moon is in the wrong house.”

  Not only was her moon in the wrong house, Jayne thought dismally, her planets were all out of alignment as well. Her whole sense of self had been thrown off its axis. She searched frantically for some excuse to get her friends to stay even just a few minutes longer. “You … haven’t met Reilly yet.”

  They looked at her expectantly while her brain stalled out.

  “Ummm … a … Alaina, Faith, meet Pat Reilly.” She tried to step out of the way, but Reilly held her firmly in place. She shot a glance over her shoulder. His face was unreadable, a polite mask. His hold told her to stay put.

  “Reilly is an … um …” Lord, how did she describe her relationship with Reilly? They weren’t precisely old friends, and acquaintance seemed woefully thin. He was the man she had been wildly attracted to while she’d been married to one of the most wonderful, kind, understanding men on the face of the planet. Somehow, she couldn’t quite bring herself to say that. The burden of guilt was still too heavy for her to confess her sins, even to her best friends. Besides, it would have been a tacky thing to say.

  “Reilly is an … actor.”

  Faith gave her a politely puzzled look.

  Alaina wasn’t so kind. “Oh really? Gee, I thought he looked familiar.”

  Jayne winced. Crimeny, who wouldn’t recognize Pat Reilly? The man was a superstar. Not only was he one of the hottest box office draws in the history of movies, his face was regularly plastered all over the tabloids—usually beside the face of some dazzling starlet. Less than a week had passed since WE magazine had decorated their cover with his handsome visage and proclaimed him to be the sexiest man on earth.

  Heaving a weary sigh, she pushed past her blunder. “Reilly, these are my friends, Faith Callan and Alaina Montgomery-Harrison.” Once again she tried to step aside and once again Reilly’s hands bore down on her shoulders. She shot him a glare, but it bounced off his smile.

  He nodded pleasantly to Jayne’s friends, his jewel-tone eyes sparkling wickedly. “It was a pleasure meetin’ you, ladies.”

  Jayne gasped at his blatant disregard for manners. “Reilly!”

  Alaina fought back a grin as she backed toward the exit. “Our cue to leave, Faith. Mr. Reilly, I trust we’ll be seeing more of you?”

  “Count on it,” Reilly said, shooting her a conspiratorial wink.

  He took note of the measuring gleam in Alaina’s eyes. She was sizing him up to decide whether or not she could trust him with her friend. For the moment she was deciding in his favor; she continued moving toward the door. Faith Callan didn’t seem nearly so sure. Her brown eyes were full of worry as she glanced from him to Jayne to Alaina, but she said nothing and continued shuffling reluctantly toward the exit.

  It pleased him to know Jayne had such good friends. He had the fanciful feeling they had looked after her in the year he’d stayed away.

  “Good-bye,” Jayne called forlornly, her stomach sinking.

  “G’day!” Reilly called cheerfully.

  “Are you going to let go of me now?” Jayne asked as the door closed behind her friends.

  “I guess I will,” he said, but instead of letting her go he drew her back a step toward him. “I was only trying to protect your delicate feminine sensibilities, you know.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, I didn’t figure you’d want your girlfriends to see just how happy I am to see you again.” Pulling her back another inch, he wrapped his brawny arms around her waist and eased his hips forward.

  “Oh, my goodness!” Jayne said with a gasp. Her eyes rounded like twin full moons. Heat rushed under the surface of her skin. Reilly’s rigid manhood pressed into the small of her back. It was all she could do to keep from leaning back into the delicious pressure or, worse still, turning around in the circle of his arms.

  Lord have mercy, she was turning into a wanton! Appalled with herself, she bolted forward, breaking free of his loose hold. She pressed her palms to her flaming cheeks and tried to gather together some scrap of composure. She was going to have to be a heck of a lot tougher if she was to survive this visit from Reilly with her heart intact.

  Swallowing down the wild fluttering in her throat, she straightened herself and faced him, riveting her eyes to the third button on his khaki shirt.

  “They might have guessed something from the way you kissed me,” she said tartly.

  Reilly gave her his patented I-can-see-right-through-your-clothes grin, and said, “And they might have guessed somethin’ more from the way you kissed me back.”

  Jayne narrowed her eyes, peeved. How indelicate of him to point that out. Well, there wasn’t a shred of the gentleman in him. She’d always known that. Pat Reilly was rough and rowdy, an Australian version of the great American cowboy. He looked the part, too, she decided as her gaze wandered. He wore a battered leather bomber jacket and a khaki shirt open at the throat. His jeans were faded from repeated washing and wearing rather than trendy chemicals. They were also indiscreetly snug around that part of his anatomy she wasn’t supposed to be looking at. She pushed her gaze downward to his beat-up cowboy boots.

  “I had a bad feeling this was going to happen,” she mumbled, shaking her head. “I’ve been having the strongest premonitions.”

  She rubbed her fingers over her bracelet, but felt nothing except fine gold links beneath her fingertips. A certain sense of panic tightened in her chest.

  Reilly snorted. “Premonitions my as—”

  “Ask anyone,” Jayne said defensively. “I have them all the time.”

  “Superstitious bunk,” Reilly scoffed. “I told you I was comin’ back, Jaynie. It was only a matter of time.” He licked his bottom lip as if savoring the taste of her and grinned. “I’d say I waited just long enough.”

  “I don’t want you to ever kiss me like that again,” Jayne announced primly, turning on her heel and marching across the stage to retrieve the bucket she’d bounced off his head.

&nb
sp; Reilly chuckled. “Now, don’t go sayin’ things we both know you don’t mean, luv.”

  Of all the arrogant …! The man was a rampaging chauvinist. Jayne ground her teeth. Somehow, in Reilly those qualities seemed almost endearing. It didn’t figure any more than his rugged features adding up to handsomeness did. She scowled at him. His two-tone hair was disheveled into a punk look. Even that was somehow appealing. She was doomed.

  “Why the disguise?” she asked, resigning herself to having a conversation with him. The coward in her would have much preferred to run away, but facing him was her karma, that was plain enough.

  Reilly made a face of genuine chagrin. “That bloody article in WE. I should have never agreed to it. ‘Sexiest Man on Earth.’” He gave another rude snort and jammed his hands at the waistband of his jeans. “What a lotta rubbish. Now I’ve women trailin’ after me everywhere I go, like a pack of rabid dingoes.”

  Jayne couldn’t help but chuckle. He seemed so put out. She would have thought Reilly more than used to having women staring at him—and more than pleased by it. “Oh, you poor man. Women chasing after you. What a horrible fate!”

  He wagged a finger at her. “I’m telling you, Jaynie, it ain’t funny. Some of those sheilas are cracked. I’m liable to end up like that poor bugger in Fatal Attraction.”

  She knew all about fatal attractions herself, Jayne thought, sobering. “Then maybe you should have gone back to Australia to lay low for a while.”

  “I couldn’t,” he said, his neon-blue gaze trapping hers as if in a tractor beam. “The year was up.”

  He was very good at his craft, Jayne thought, the critic in her trying to detach itself from her emotional self. He knew instinctively just how long to pause between sentences to make the utmost impact. He’d had her giggling just seconds ago, but with that one well-delivered line, he had her holding her breath and trembling with anticipation. The man was a natural. His movies might have been horrible, but he was never horrible in them.

  That was one of the things that had always irked her about Reilly. He had a wealth of talent and regularly wasted it on scripts that required nothing of him. He was handsomely paid to look irresistible and act tough while this abundance of ability simmered inside him just begging for some capable director to draw it out. He could have been great. Instead, he chose to be lazy.

  “What are you doing here, Jaynie?”

  She pulled out of her musings at the sound of his voice. He had wandered off and stood with his hands on his hips, looking at the wall she’d been washing.

  “I helped organize the community theater group,” she said. “I’ll be directing our first production, but cleaning up the place comes first. This theater hasn’t been used in years, and it seemed a shame. The box office proceeds from the plays will go toward renovation of the building and to our young artists’ program. There are a lot of talented young people here. They deserve every chance to develop those talents.”

  “A worthy cause. What’s the play?”

  “A Taste of Starlight. It’s a romantic comedy with lots of emotion—”

  “I know it,” he said, nodding his approval. “Should draw a good crowd.”

  “I hope so.”

  “And this is what you left L.A. for?” he asked, gesturing to their surroundings. “To join charity groups and hide from me?”

  She didn’t deny the charge. It was true, in part. She had left Hollywood half hoping Pat Reilly would forget about her. But it wasn’t the whole truth. She hugged herself and leaned back against the scaffolding, staring out at the dark, empty expanse of seats. “I didn’t want to handle Hollywood without Mac. Too many sharks in the water. And losing him made me see how precious time really is. I wanted to spend mine with my friends.”

  She had continued writing her syndicated column. Once a week she drove down to San Francisco to screen films. But she’d given up her weekly television show, Critic’s Choice. Her life had taken on a saner tempo. She still kept up on the business and found it was nicer to watch from a distance than to be thrust into the center of the storm.

  Being removed from Hollywood let her feel completely objective. When she’d lived in L.A., there had been a constant stream of people trying to get into her good graces. None of them had wanted a genuine friendship or a real romance. All of them had wanted good reviews.

  Good reviews meant big money. A thumbs up from her could make a movie a runaway hit. A thumbs down from her could kill a film before it even got out of the gate. Her friendly, conversational style and her reputation for honesty had won her a tremendous following among the moviegoing public.

  “And what are you doing here, Reilly?” she asked. “I thought you’d signed on to do Road Raider Part III.”

  He wouldn’t quite meet her eyes when he said, “Yeah, well, the deal … fell through.”

  The truth of the matter was he’d backed out. He was sick of sequels and shoot ’em up action pictures. In his heart of hearts he wanted to do a movie that demanded something of him. But he was terrified of doing just that. What if he took on a part that demanded something of him and he found he had nothing to give?

  For months now he’d lived with the horrible, choking fear that one day the whole world was going to figure out that he wasn’t really an actor at all, that he was just a jackaroo from a sheep station near Willoughby, Australia. Then Hollywood would send him packing, and he’d have to return to a home where everyone had grown to depend on him for everything.

  It seemed one or another of his relatives always had their hand out for something—generally money. And they seemed to think he should feel obligated to dole it out to them willy-nilly just because he had it. He wasn’t a brother or a nephew or a cousin anymore. He was a bloody meal ticket, and he knew they would heartily resent it if the money ran out.

  Jayne watched the emotions play across his face as Reilly stared down at his boots, and her heart twisted in her chest. He looked vulnerable. He looked troubled. She could sense the turmoil in him, and she wanted to reach out to offer him comfort.

  “What happened?” she asked softly, offering him the chance to unburden himself.

  He didn’t take it. Not that that surprised her. Reilly was stubborn, having come from a place where men were men. It wouldn’t be easy for him to open up to a woman. Jayne realized with no small amount of dismay that, if and when the time came, she wanted to be that woman. Feeling that way was just asking for trouble.

  “It just fell through, that’s all,” he said gruffly, setting his granite jaw. He wasn’t about to tell Jayne Jordan he was scared. She’d never thought he had any talent to begin with. It had always rankled that he wanted her in spite of her opinion of his abilities, but want her he did.

  He lifted his eyes and blasted her with their powerful beam of magnetism. “It’s just as well. Now I’ve got all the time I need to concentrate on you.”

  Jayne blinked, feeling like a small fragile animal caught in the mesmerizing gaze of a big golden lion. It took every ounce of courage she possessed just to shake her head. “I don’t want that, Reilly.”

  He took a step toward her, a study in leashed power, and bent his head down toward hers. He hooked a big calloused finger under her chin and whispered in a tone of voice that was like steel sheathed in silk, “Well, that’s just too damn bad, sheila, because I made a promise and I mean to keep it. The year’s up, luv. Now we find out what this thing is that burns between us.”

  THREE

  SHE THOUGHT HE was going to kiss her again. To her shame, she knew a part of her wanted him to kiss her again. But he didn’t. He stared down at her a long moment, saying nothing, gauging her response, she supposed. The air around them seemed so highly charged, Jayne thought it was a wonder her hair wasn’t standing on end.

  This was one of the things that frightened her about Reilly. He had such power, was so overwhelmingly male. There was an intensity in him she couldn’t even begin to handle. And then there was the little matter of his reputation. He’
d been linked in the tabloids with every starlet from Madonna to Molly Ringwald. If only half the stories were true, he’d had a dozen romances in half as many years. She had seen him herself with a number of different women while she’d been living in L.A.

  Actors were notoriously fickle. Jayne had had plenty of first-hand experience with that trait before she’d met Mac. They were generally men whose egos were too fragile to withstand criticism, whose passions changed like the wind. They demanded the undivided attention of their partners, always wanting a captive and enraptured audience, because all of life was a stage to them and they all believed they had the starring role.

  Reilly was stubborn and intense and obviously fickle. That seemed a lethal combination to Jayne. His intensity would burn her up while they were together, and when his interest wandered elsewhere, she would be left in the ashes.

  “I think this is better left in the past,” she said, stepping back from him.

  “How can we leave something in the past when it hasn’t had the chance to happen yet?”

  It was a valid question, but she didn’t want to answer it. Some things were just never meant to be, that was all. The Chinese called it jos—fate, luck. Maybe it just wasn’t jos for them to get together. Of course, Reilly wouldn’t be receptive to that explanation.

  “I came here to start fresh,” Jayne said. “I don’t want ghosts. I don’t want guilt.”

  Reilly heaved a weary sigh. He’d had this argument with himself more than once in the past few months. He speared a hand back through his bi-colored hair impatiently. “Mac’s dead, Jaynie. Dead and buried. There’s no reason for the livin’ to go on feelin’ guilty. We shouldn’t feel guilty that we’re alive and he’s not. We shouldn’t feel guilty that we want each other.” He held up a hand to cut her off when she opened her mouth to protest. “And don’t deny that you want me, luv; I know damn well you do.”

  Jayne bit her tongue on a naughty word. She picked up her bucket again and retrieved the orange sponge that had bounced away.