Passion's Bright Fury

by Radclyffe

  “There’s a film crew doing a documentary in the trauma unit.”

  Maddy glanced over, trying to read Saxon’s feelings from her expression because her voice rarely revealed anything, but she hadn’t really expected to be able to. Her granddaughter, she knew, had learned as a child to hide her feelings. That distance probably served her well in the highly volatile environment of the trauma unit, but it was very frustrating for anyone who wanted to know her.

  “That’s rather unusual, isn’t it?” She dropped a bit of batter on the griddle to test the temperature. “It seems like it would be a terribly difficult place to film. How on earth could you have any kind of order on the set?”

  “It’s not like what you were used to,” Sax said with a laugh. “No elaborate scenes, no retakes, and no catering to spoiled starlets.”

  “I’ll have you know that I was never spoiled,” Maddy said haughtily. “I was always the epitome of refinement.”

  “That’s not what it says about you in the stories I’ve read.”

  Placing a couple of steaming waffles in front of Sax, Maddy said curtly, but with a laugh in her voice, “Those reports were greatly exaggerated.”

  “At any rate,” Sax turned her attention to the home-cooked meal, “this is more what you would call cin…ma v…rit….”

  Maddy carried a cup of coffee over and sat down opposite Sax. “Must make things pretty hectic if they’re filming while you’re working.”

  “I thought it would be, but the director has been good about keeping her crew out from underfoot, so far.”

  “A woman director?” Maddy remarked in surprise. “I’ve always wished I had been able to do that rather than act. Or maybe along with it.”

  “Really?” Sax felt the pressure in her chest easing with the familiar rhythm of their banter. “I never knew that.”

  “It just wasn’t possible then—or maybe it was, and we just didn’t know to try.”

  Sax reached across the table and touched her grandmother’s hand. “I’m sorry.”

  Maddy laughed. “Oh, no need to be. I haven’t been pining about it all these years. But I’ll look forward to seeing what she does with you.”

  “It’s not about me,” Sax swiftly clarified. “She’s focusing on my new trauma fellow, Deb Stein.”

  “Hmm, yes, and I imagine you just fade into the background.”

  Sax caught the end of a fleeting smile and chuckled. Her heart was suddenly lighter than it had been in weeks. No one had ever been able to make her laugh at herself the way Maddy did. Maybe because no one had ever made her feel so...loved. “I don’t think Jude Castle would agree with that. I’ve given her a hard time, I guess.”

  “Why?” Maddy asked seriously, wondering if this was the reason Saxon had come. It had been her experience that eventually her solitary granddaughter would work her way around to what was bothering her, even if she didn’t realize it herself.

  Sax turned in her chair to look out the window, noting that one of double doors on the garage was hanging askew. “I’ll have to replace that hinge,” she remarked absently.

  Maddy waited.

  “Photography is a treacherous thing,” Sax said softly, almost to herself. “It’s merciless and unkind in the way it captures the moment, exposing—no, revealing—the truth without the benefit of pretense or masks. You can’t hide from it, not forever.”

  “Yet, there is no judgment in simply recording events,” Maddy pointed out. “It’s a neutral process.”

  “No,” Sax responded vehemently, shaking her head. “It would be neutral if it weren’t selective, but it is. Jude Castle directs the camera—she determines what the film will reveal, what moments will be emphasized, what story will be told. She has all the power.”

  “Ah.” Maddy thought of how many years it had taken Saxon to feel she was in control of her own life, and safe. “She frightens you.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  Sax looked at her in astonishment, ready to protest once again. She met those blue eyes so like her own and felt the words die on her tongue. It was true, and it wasn’t just her fear of what Jude Castle might see when she looked at her through the unvarnished eye of Melissa Cooper’s camera. It was realizing how badly she wanted to be seen.

  *

  “Saxon!” Maddy pulled the shawl tighter around her shoulders as she peered up at the shadow moving on her rooftop. “You have to stop. That lantern is not enough light. You’re going to fall off and break your neck. Besides that, it’s the middle of the night.”

  Sax pounded another nail into the flashing around the chimney and called down, “I’ll be done in a minute.”

  She hadn’t been able to sleep. Or rather, she’d fallen asleep soon after dinner and had awakened in a sweat around midnight. She’d been dreaming. It had been a very vivid dream. Her body was still tingling with a combination of arousal and fear as she sat up in bed, breathing hard, trembling. She’d dreamed of a woman leaning over her, holding her down with the barest of touches while she turned her blood to fire with a kiss. She’d awakened still aching with the memory of that kiss.

  And when she couldn’t get the image of the red-haired woman with the emerald eyes from her mind, she’d vaulted from the bed, pulled on her jeans, and sought some chore to distract her from the insistent throbbing in her belly. It hadn’t worked, but at least she didn’t feel as if she were going to explode.

  Resolutely, she climbed down the ladder and headed back upstairs to her bed. She hated to admit it, but part of her hoped that Jude Castle would visit her dreams again.

  Chapter Nine

  July 3, 2:40 p.m.

  “Are you sure you can’t stay longer?”

  “I need to get back.” Sax straddled her motorcycle, her helmet cradled under one arm. “I’m on call again tomorrow.”

  “I know very well that you don’t have to take call so often, not since you’re the boss,” Maddy pointed out, shading her eyes from the morning sun.

  She’d heard her granddaughter prowling the house half the night and wondered now if she’d slept at all. It had been years since she’d seen her this restless and agitated—not since those first few months right after Saxon had come to live with her, back when she’d still had her Manhattan apartment. That period had been so difficult, she wasn’t sure either of them would ever sleep again.

  “You could let some of the others fill in for you.”

  “It’s the fourth, and that’s always a wild one,” Sax explained, even though she knew Maddy was right. “Plus, there’s more work if I’m not there, just piling up and waiting for me.”

  And you wouldn’t know what to do with yourself if you weren’t working. Maddy stepped forward and stroked Sax’s arm. “Come back sooner next time.”

  “I will,” Sax replied. “Call me if you need anything. And make that list of things that need repair.” She leaned to kiss the other woman’s cheek. “I love you,” she murmured.

  “And I you,” Maddy replied. “I’ll work on that list.” She would, too, although she could easily afford to hire a handyman to keep the place in working order. But she knew that her granddaughter needed the excuse to pull herself away from the demands, and the repercussions, of her work.

  “Why don’t you bring that film director with you sometime? I’d like to hear what things are like in the industry these days,” Maddy added. She didn’t see the surprise in her granddaughter’s eyes because Sax had already lowered the smoke gray visor over her face.

  “Sure,” Sax responded automatically, almost laughing at the absurdity of that thought. She couldn’t imagine that a busy, cosmopolitan woman like Jude Castle would have any interest in spending an afternoon with her and a reclusive, aging movie queen out in the middle of nowhere, sitting on the porch watching the corn grow.

  July 3, 8:53 p.m.

  “It’s good, Jude.” Melissa leaned back in her chair with a sigh. The two of them had been sitting shoulder to shoulder in front of the desk in their on-call room for
a good part of the afternoon and evening. They’d set up a computer to screen the videotapes from Melissa’s cameras and had been reviewing the first footage from the trauma alert two nights before. “I was there, and I still held my breath in places watching it again today.”

  “Yeah,” Jude consulted her log and then keyed in the digital markers to find a scene she wanted to view again. She muted the sound on the computer and watched Deborah Stein and Sinclair lean over the small blond child, comforting her while simultaneously examining her, quickly and proficiently.

  “Do you see that?” she asked. “Watch the difference from here...to here.”

  Melissa moved closer, following Jude’s instructions. “Yeah?”

  “Everything changes when they start examining her—see there—even their expressions. Something clicks in...or off.”

  “They’re working, Jude. What did you expect?” Melissa was not sure she understood what the director wanted her to grasp. “They’re just focused.”

  “I know that,” Jude said with a hint of frustration, “but that’s the whole point. In order to do the work, they have to turn something off—shut something down inside. They have to sever the emotional connection, the...the empathy that most people would feel—are compelled to feel—just because that’s what makes us human. What did you feel while you were watching?”

  “I was working, too,” Melissa pointed out adamantly. She didn’t want to admit how relieved she’d been when Jude had told her to take off as soon as the trauma team had transported the motorcycle victim up to the OR the previous day. She’d needed some air, and that had shaken her.

  “So was I.” Jude fixed her with an unyielding stare. “And it was still hard to take. Stop avoiding the question.”

  “We’ve seen horror before,” Melissa insisted, shifting uncomfortably in her chair. “Come on, tanks on fire, buildings crumbling on top of us—not to mention twenty-five-year-old guys who looked eighty, taping their final moments. What’s the difference?”

  “The difference is that in Eastern Europe there was physical distance between us and the events, and from the victims, too. When we did the AIDS feature, we knew going in what we would be filming. We had time to prepare.”

  “Right. So?”

  “So, there’s an immediacy, an uncertainty, to what happens in the trauma unit. You don’t know what to expect, so you can’t ever be ready.”

  “And I got that on tape,” Melissa said. “Just look at the way we’ve got the wide angle arrival—boom, through the doors, a whole crowd of people and somewhere in there is the patient. Then we zoom in, cutting back and forth from patient to patient and from doctor to patient. It’s all there—the motion, the energy, the frantic pace. For crying out loud, the camera movement alone tells the story.”

  It was clear from her tone that she was very happy with the tape and the way things had gone.

  “Exactly,” Jude agreed. “And next time I want you to slow it down.”

  “What?”

  Jude grinned. They’d been at this place before, where what Melissa saw, and what she captured on film, wasn’t precisely what Jude wanted to emphasize. The director’s role, as Jude saw it, was to shape the bits and pieces of events into a cohesive whole with a clear message, thereby leading the viewer unconsciously to the same conclusion. That happened by virtue of what she included, and very often, by what she excluded from the hours and hours of footage they accumulated during the course of a long project. It would make her job easier if she and Melissa were looking for the same thing right from the start.

  “Mel, what’s the purpose of this project?”

  “I can’t do this on an empty stomach,” Melissa growled, abruptly rising to pace in the twelve-foot-square space between their beds. She barely refrained from pulling her hair.

  “Do what?”

  “Do this goddamned mind-melding thing you always insist we do at the beginning of a shoot. I should have known that’s why you got me over here this afternoon. Need I remind you that tomorrow Deb is on call again, and we’re going to be here for another thirty hours or so?” She flopped onto the small bed, which she had a feeling she would not be spending much time in, and grumbled, “Besides, it’s a big holiday, remember? I had hoped to get out of here in time to go home, shower, climb into something irresistibly hot, and go out cruising for someone wild and wanton.”

  “You can still do that. I just want to get us on the same page before we get too far into this and discover we’re missing the shots we need.”

  “I always get the shots!”

  “You do, I know,” Jude responded soothingly. For almost four years, Melissa Cooper had been her DP on every major project she’d done, and she couldn’t imagine doing something of this magnitude without her on board. The photographer’s skill and vision were second to none. Plus she was a lesbian and her friend, and there had been a time, a long time past, when for a few fevered weeks she’d come close to being more. “But it will be simpler, don’t you think, if you had some insight—”

  “Oh, God, I hate that word. I hate it. You’re going to make me process next, aren’t you?” Melissa pulled the pillow over her head and shouted obscenities into it.

  When her associate had finished her meltdown, Jude smiled her most charming smile and asked, “Is there any chance we can avoid the part where you say you can’t work with me again, and where you tell me to find another fucking photographer because I’m too controlling? Also, by the way, how can you manage to stay in shape when you eat as many times a day as you do?”

  “Sex. Sex burns calories, especially if you do it a lot,” Melissa answered, turning on her side on the bed and facing Jude across the tiny space. “If I do this, will you buy me dinner?”

  “Yes. Yes, anywhere.”

  “Will you go out clubbing with me?”

  “Mel,” Jude said hesitantly.

  They’d had this debate for weeks. Mel wanted her to go bar hopping, and she had resisted. She’d used her relationship with Lori as an excuse, pointing out that she didn’t need to go looking for other women, that she already had sufficient companionship. In reality, she was a little worried that if she accompanied Melissa to one of her favorite hangouts, she might just be tempted to experiment. And she simply didn’t have the time.

  For almost two years, she had been totally committed to working on one project or another. Her production company was young—she was young—and she needed to establish herself in a competitive market where, unfortunately, men still ruled. Lori was perfect for her for a lot of practical reasons, and she didn’t want anything to upset that.

  “I won’t take you to anyplace grungy, just a little edgy, okay? I promise,” Melissa said matter-of-factly. “Otherwise—no deal. I’m outta here.”

  Jude worked at looking affronted, but she was trying not to grin. Mel had always been irresistible. “I don’t think the ink is even dry on your contract yet, and you’re making me regret it.”

  “What contract?”

  “All right. Deal,” Jude relented with a sigh. “Now sit down over here and watch this. Then I’ll buy you dinner.”

  Melissa pulled her chair close to the monitor again and waited while Jude found the section to view again. All business now, she narrowed her eyes and put herself back in the moment. Her vision tunneled to the view she’d had through her lens, and she murmured, “Go ahead.”

  “Watch Sinclair’s face,” Jude said softly.

  The camera had caught Saxon Sinclair in a three-quarter profile as she leaned close to the innocent, vulnerable young girl peering up at her through tear-softened eyes. The surgeon’s full lips moved silently as she spoke to the child, but no sound was needed to convey the tenderness in her expression. There was a world of feeling in the depth of her eyes.

  “God, she’s beautiful,” Jude whispered, without realizing she had spoken aloud.

  Melissa glanced over, stunned by her friend’s tone, and even more astonished by her expression. The way Jude was looking at
the image of Sinclair made her instantly hot. She’d always wanted to see that look directed at her, but even secondhand, it was doing the trick. She definitely needed to find a date later.

  “Jude...” she began tentatively.

  “There! Right there!” Jude pointed at the frame she had frozen on the screen. “She stands up to begin her exam and, bam—look at her now.”

  Melissa looked. The surgeon’s face was cool, calm, completely composed. Sinclair was glacially removed from any part of the human drama raging around her. “Wow.”

  “Yes,” Jude agreed softly. “Wow. Instant transformation—all emotion just...gone. Don’t you see the contradiction in that? She’s supposed to be the healer, only she also has to be—I don’t know—detached and dispassionate. That’s what makes her so good. But God, at what cost?”

  Melissa thought about Sinclair—her obvious capability and her perfect control—and wondered what she was like when that restraint broke. “I bet there’s a powder keg behind those cool blue eyes,” she muttered.

  Jude chose to ignore that remark, but something inside her twisted as she thought about the glimpses of fire she’d seen in Sinclair’s gaze. Clearing her throat, she instructed, “Now, go back and find Deb somewhere.”

  Into it now, excited, Melissa searched the footage. “Okay, here’s where I got her when she first evaluated the little girl.”

  “Watch for that change.”

  After a few minutes, Melissa remarked, “It never happens.”

  “No,” Jude agreed, “I didn’t think it would. But it will, sometime this year. That’s what Sinclair is going to teach her—how to do what needs to be done no matter the cost, to herself or anyone else. That’s the critical lesson.”

  “And that’s the angle,” Melissa said almost reverently.

  “Find me that moment, Mel. That’s the story.”

  Chapter Ten