by Tami Hoag
“Poor old guy,” Reilly said, sinking to his knees in the lush grass. He scratched behind the dog’s ears. “Done in by an overgrown goat. Good thing your mates weren’t here to see it.”
Jayne went to her pets to reassure them and to scratch their long necks as each vied for her attention. Reilly joined her momentarily. Rowdy slinked away in disgrace.
“Why llamas?”
“Because llamas are wonderful.”
As if that explained everything. Reilly gave her a look and leaned back skeptically as Jodhpur reached toward him with a curious light in his eye. “They smell like wet rugs and spit in your face. I don’t see anything too bloody wonderful about that.”
“Hush,” Jayne scolded. “Llamas are very sensitive. They’ll know it if you don’t like them.”
“Yeah, well, I think they’re weird,” he said, taking another step back just in case. “What good are they?”
“They’re loyal and sweet,” she said, stroking her pets who were viewing Reilly with cool looks. “They have very nice wool—”
“Which you never harvest,” he speculated smugly.
Jayne narrowed her eyes at him, knowing he enjoyed teasing her. There was always going to be some of the boy in Reilly, ever eager to tug a girl’s braids. “I’ll have you know that llamas are wonderful pack animals.”
He lifted a brow. “These llamas?”
She dodged his gaze and committed a minor sin of omission. “I have a full compliment of packs and camping gear for them.”
“Is that a fact?”
She crossed her arms over her chest and nodded. “It is.”
“Well, I guess they’re nicer than tarantulas,” Reilly said, chuckling as he worked one of her hands free and tugged her away from her strange pets. She trailed reluctantly after him, pretending to have her nose out of joint.
“Is it time to leave for rehearsal already?” he asked.
“No.”
“Just couldn’t stay away from me, eh?” he teased, tweaking her nose.
Jayne batted his hand away but couldn’t quite keep from grinning. She plopped down on the ground beside him and arranged her full skirt around her. It was unnerving the way he made her feel like a teenager with her first boyfriend. The feeling was alternately marvelous and terrifying. It was so very different from what she’d felt with Mac. With Mac she had felt peaceful and safe. He had been the bedrock of her existence. Reilly was more like an earthquake, rattling her to her spiritual foundation. She couldn’t stay away from him, and she still couldn’t decide if that was ultimately good or bad.
Reilly looked at Jayne and shook his head in wonder. She wore an old navy-blue Notre Dame sweatshirt, yet another of her wildly flowered skirts, and a wide-brimmed straw hat tied down with a long white silk scarf. She looked absurd, but absolutely beautiful. He couldn’t begin to explain it.
Impulsively, he reached over and tugged the scarf loose so that her hat fell off, spilling her wild mane around her shoulders in glorious disarray.
“So what brings you to the outlands, Calamity Jayne?”
“Bad news, I’m afraid,” she said, making an apologetic face. “Remember how you wanted your presence in Anastasia to remain essentially a secret? Well, I just got a call from a stringer for one of the tabloids asking if I knew anything about your getting involved in a play up here. I told him no, but you know how they are….”
Reilly scowled. He certainly did know how they were. They were parasites, piranha, putrid abscesses feasting on the flesh of celebrities. His broad shoulders rose and fell on a long sigh. He didn’t relish the thought of being hounded by reporters and the fans that would follow them. These last few days of relative anonymity had been wonderful. He had been able to relax and let his guard down. He’d been able to concentrate on Jayne rather than the pressures of his career.
Jayne leaned over and kissed his cheek. “I’m sorry.”
“It was bound to happen, luv. I guess I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner. It’s not your fault.” He flashed her a sudden brilliant grin, his dimple winking at her as he leaned close. “I wouldn’t object to your tryin’ to console me, though.”
“Oh, no,” Jayne said, leaning back. “I don’t want you smiling at me like that, Pat Reilly.”
He turned up the wattage on his famous grin yet another notch. “Why’s that?”
“Because,” Jayne said, trying to catch a decent breath, “when you smile at me like that, it gets me right here.” She pressed a hand to her tummy and shuddered. “And I get all flustered and it goes to my head and I can’t think straight.”
Reilly leaned a little closer, his brilliant blue eyes dancing with teasing lights. “Here I thought that was your natural state.”
Jayne gave him a look, but swallowed hard as her gaze was caught in the tractor-beam of his magnetism. He reached over and covered the hand she’d pressed to her stomach with one of his own.
“You feel it right here?” he asked, his voice as seductive as black satin sheets. Slowly he slid both his hand and hers upward to cup her breast. “Are you sure you don’t feel it here?”
Her only answer was a weak moan. Beneath her own palm she could feel her nipple harden with excitement. Erotic sensations zipped through her at the speed of light. Reilly manipulated her hand with his, squeezing the soft globe of her breast, rubbing across the tightening bud of her nipple, all the while watching Jayne’s face intently. Her eyelids grew heavy. She wet her lips as she tried to gulp in a breath of air.
Leaning over her, Reilly lowered her to the lush carpet of grass and stretched out beside her, propping himself up on his free arm.
“Do you like that, luv?” he asked in his dark voice. Slowly he drew her hand down across her belly to the apex of her thighs and exerted a gentle pressure there, wringing another moan from her. “Or do you like this better?”
“Reilly,” Jayne managed, “don’t. Not here.”
“Why not?” he asked, lazily massaging her with her own hand.
“We’re right out in the open. Anyone could come along and see us.”
“That’s half the fun, sweet. Doesn’t it excite you to think someone could catch us at a crucial moment?”
It did, but Jayne couldn’t quite bring herself to admit it. Credo of sexual honesty or not, she’d still been raised a Baptist. “You’re wicked.”
“Uh-huh,” he admitted readily.
His hand found its way under her voluminous skirt and swept up her silken thigh. Regardless of her protests she opened her legs for him ever so slightly as he slipped two fingers inside the leg of her panties and began to explore her most sensitive flesh.
Jayne gasped and made an effort to squirm away from him. “Reilly, not here,” she begged. “The llamas are watching.”
He looked over to find that the shaggy creatures were indeed watching. It was a little disquieting but not enough to thwart his hormones. He wanted Jayne, and his appetite for her was strong and immediate.
“They’re just llamas, Jaynie. What do they care?”
“Well … what if they’re not just llamas? What if they’re beings in their third or fourth incarnation? That could be my Grandma Bessie watching us!”
Reilly’s hand stilled. He looked down at her in utter disbelief. “What?! Where do you get this malarkey?”
“It’s not malarkey,” she protested. Sitting up she pushed his hand out from under her skirt and primly tucked her legs beneath her. “Many of the great religions were founded on the principles of reincarnation,” she said, her dark eyes solemn. “I haven’t quite decided if I believe in it or not. I’m sort of leaning toward the pool of life energy theory. But, just in case …”
She was serious. Reilly sat up, propping his elbow on his knee and plucking his chin in his hand. He watched Jayne tie her hat back on, torn between anger, frustration, and laughing out loud. He chose the latter, laughing wearily as he rubbed a hand across his face. She was so sweet and so earnest in all her goofy convictions, he couldn’t bring
himself to be angry with her. His body was throbbing with frustrated need, but Jayne would ease that later, when they were in the privacy of her room.
He pushed himself to his feet and offered her a hand up.
“Aw, Jaynie, you’re one of a kind. I love you,” he said simply, as casually as if he’d said it every day of his life.
Jayne stopped dead and stared at him as he started to walk away toward the barn. He loved her. Just like that. No hoopla, no ceremony. He just loved her. No big deal.
Questions and anxieties buzzed around in her head like a swarm of angry bees. Was it a big deal, or did Reilly casually toss off declarations of love to whomever? Love wasn’t something she took lightly, but Reilly didn’t seem flustered in the least.
He shot her a glance over his shoulder. “Come on, sheila. Shake a leg or we’ll be late for rehearsal.”
EIGHT
JAYNE HAD NEVER lived through anything quite like the two weeks following the press’s discovery of Reilly’s whereabouts. After the initial call from the tabloid reporter, the leak in their security quickly cracked wide open. In short order Anastasia was overflowing with reporters and fans, all eager for a glimpse—or a piece—of Pat Reilly.
It was a case of mass hysteria unlike anything Jayne had ever imagined. They followed him everywhere. Mobs of them. It had become necessary to post guards at the theater doors. Reilly had reserved rooms in every motel, hotel, and inn in the area to keep everyone guessing as to where he was actually staying.
“Something like this happened on Star Trek once,” Jayne said as she and Reilly met on a deserted side street three blocks down from the theater. Even from there they could see the swarms lying in wait at the building’s main entrance. “Captain Kirk and the whole landing party went onto this planet where once a year the whole population just went nuts and ran around the streets screaming and carrying on.” She frowned at the similarities. “I never thought that would happen here. Isn’t life strange?”
Reilly preferred a stronger word for it, preceded by a string of colorful adjectives. He’d damn near had it with being the centerpiece of a three-ring circus. He hadn’t anticipated the interest his absence from L.A. would spark. Everyone in the business or clinging to the fringes of it wanted to know why he was in Anastasia doing community theater for el zippo money when he could have been stuffing his pockets with his advance for Road Raider Part III. On top of that was the interest that blasted article in WE had generated. He was going to strangle his publicist for arranging that. Not once in his thirty-two years had he yearned to be known as the sexiest man in the universe.
And the worst part of all this hoopla was the way it was interfering with his courtship of Jayne. Things had been progressing so well until the press had descended on them. Suddenly they were living in a fish bowl, and Jayne hadn’t taken to it at all. She had pulled back, retreated to her role as observer rather than participant, watching the mayhem swirl around him, but not allowing it to touch her.
She had not pulled away from him physically. They had managed to outwit the hordes so far; no one had yet discovered where Reilly was staying. They managed to escape the madness for a few hours every night after returning to Jayne’s house via an elaborate escape route. And every night she willingly came into his arms. But emotionally she had begun to distance herself. He could sense the hesitancy in her. She was having second thoughts about being involved with him, and Reilly didn’t like it one bit. His patience, which was limited at best, was frayed right down to the nub.
“It’s creepy the way people follow you around,” Jayne grumbled, giving voice to some of her own impatience. It unnerved her the way fans—particularly female fans—sought Reilly out. They were willing to do literally anything to get his attention. Hotel keys and frilly bits of lingerie had been left at the stage door for him every night, along with sacks full of fan mail, written marriage proposals, and proposals that weren’t anywhere near as honorable.
It was intimidating in the extreme. For a few days Jayne had allowed herself to believe she could have Reilly all to herself, and that had been wonderful—to pretend she could be the center of his universe and he could be hers. But that was not the case. She was going to have to share him with an overly adoring, mostly female public. If she was going to have a relationship with him, she was going to be swept up into the madness that surrounded him. The sense of peace and sense of place she had worked so hard to attain would be blown right out of the water.
And where would she be left if one of the many lovely ladies ready to throw themselves at Reilly’s feet, or any other part of his delectable male anatomy, snagged the actor’s attention? Jayne loved him, but she would never bathe him in the kind of blind adoration some would, the kind actors of her acquaintance had demanded from their partners—one after another after another.
“I didn’t invite them here,” Reilly snapped.
“I didn’t say you did,” Jayne snapped back.
Stewing, they stalked off down the deserted side street. They took the secret route to the theater, creeping through a series of alleys and buildings that adjoined the theater building. Jayne carried a gigantic ring of keys which she sorted through as they went. She let them into the hardware store, where they had to go down into the basement to get into Liebowitz Deli, where they had to go through a meat locker to get to Babbette’s Hypnosis and Tanning Parlor. The last leg of their incredible journey was to climb out a second-story window at Marx Appliance Barn and scramble down the fire escape then dash across the alley to the side door of the theater.
“I hope you appreciate what I’m going through for you,” Jayne said as she made her way down the fire escape. “I moved here to find spiritual tranquility. I don’t think anybody ever found spiritual tranquility on a fire escape.”
Above her, Reilly ground his teeth. Spiritual tranquility? He had a different name for the reason Jayne had moved to Anastasia—cowardice. But he bit his tongue on that word.
“Oh, pardon me,” he said, unable to keep all his frustration at bay. “Whose stupid play is it I’m donatin’ my time to?”
Jayne dropped the last three feet to the wet pavement and brushed a wild snarl of mist-damp hair out of her eyes. She glared at Reilly as he joined her, looking rugged instead of rumpled. “If you think it’s stupid, then why are you here when you could be throwing your career away on some sorry excuse for a movie instead?”
“I’m here because I made a promise.”
So they were back to that, were they? He’d made a promise and his code of honor demanded he keep it. It wasn’t the line she’d wanted to hear and her expression clearly said so. Beyond that one careless declaration of love delivered two weeks before, Reilly had made no mention of his feelings, and Jayne had been too afraid of getting the wrong answer to ask. She wanted him here because he loved her, not out of some sense of obligation.
Hurt, she stared up at him and willed her chin to stop trembling. “If that’s your only reason, then you can leave,” she said. “You’ve kept your promise.”
“Aw, Jaynie,” Reilly said on a long sigh. His breath silvered the damp night air. He slid his arms around her and drew her unyielding form into his embrace. It was like holding a post. “Don’t let’s fight, okay?” The leather of his jacket squeaked as he rubbed Jayne’s back through the army surplus coat she wore over her dress. “I know the press and the rest are a pain in the neck. They’ll lose interest in a day or two.”
“You said that two weeks ago.”
“Maybe they’ll stay for the performance,” he said, changing tracks. “Think of the money that’ll mean for your young artists. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
Jayne nuzzled her cheek against the warmth of his flannel shirt, breathing in the scents that always made her think of Reilly—leather, soap, and man. She felt unaccountably miserable. “I don’t know what I want,” she mumbled, secretly cursing her bracelet for not providing her with an answer to that question.
“Do you want me?�
�� Reilly questioned in a sexy voice, his hands drifting down to bracket her hips and lift her against him. It was a query with more than one meaning, and he wanted a yes on both counts, but now was not the time to push Jayne. Even he could see that.
Jayne dodged the playful kisses he tried to plant on her mouth and cheeks. She couldn’t help but chuckle. “We’re in an alley,” she pointed out.
“Yeah,” he murmured against her throat. “Ever done it in an alley?”
“No and I’m not going to start now,” she said primly, even though a panorama of steamy alley scenes was playing through her fertile imagination.
Reilly set her down and shrugged as they moved through the shadows toward the theater door. “Don’t know what you’re missing, luv,” he said cockily.
With a wry smile, Jayne shook her head and sorted through her jumble of keys. There was one thing she could always count on: Reilly’s libido.
“There he is!” The cry went up followed by a volley of screams and the thunder of feet on pavement as a crowd stampeded toward them down the alley. “It’s Reilly! It’s Pat Reilly!”
There was another thing she could always count on, Jayne reflected with a sinking heart: Reilly’s fans.
They made it into the building in the nick of time, slamming and bolting the door behind them. The rest of the cast and crew stared at them with looks of mingled amazement and worry. They looked like the occupants of the Alamo, maintaining their vigil while an overwhelming army swarmed outside the gates.
Jayne forced a bright smile. She was, after all, their spiritual leader. She was the one who wanted to encourage people to join the theater and get involved. “Isn’t this fun?”
Marlene Desidarian shook a meaty finger at her, a dozen copper bracelets rattling on her wrist. “I told you you had your work cut out.” She pointed accusingly at Reilly. “His aura glows red.”
“I could have foretold all of this by reading his palm,” Wanda Styles said in a husky voice. She patted her hand against her chest, which was mostly exposed by the low-cut black dress she wore. Her inch-long red nails glowed under the stage lights. Tonight she had a spider ring on each finger.
