by Sandra Brown
“Because I want everything to be exactly as it was when the two of you lived here.” As docile as a puppy, he padded along behind her. “Everything except the sleeping arrangements that is.”
She stopped so suddenly that he almost bumped into her. “What do you mean by that?”
Surprised by her knee-jerk reaction, he studied her face for a moment. “I mean that we won’t be sleeping together. Will we?”
His timing was one thing that made him such a good actor. He was touted for the masterful way he delivered dialogue. Now, between his sentence and the question that followed it, there was a strategic pause. Brief, but obvious enough to drive a Mack truck through.
He had intended to tease her again. But as he watched Kirsten brush back her feathery bangs, he found himself waiting for a serious answer. The fantasy of sleeping with her had been lurking in the back of his mind. Suddenly it had jumped out at him from behind its cover like the spring-triggered monster in a spook house. It was instantly there, unavoidable and vivid and full-blown.
He wanted this woman.
“Mr. North, some women might welcome that remark. I don’t. I’m not at all flattered that you invited me to sleep with you.”
One of his eyebrows arched into its characteristic point. “I didn’t invite you to sleep with me. If I had, it wouldn’t have been so subtle. I would have come right out and asked.”
There was only the slightest breathless pause before she said, “Well, save yourself the trouble.”
Turning, she continued to lead him through the sprawling house. Effectively put down, he followed, remarking on her house, saying how much he liked it.
“Thank you,” she answered. “It was my first choice when Charlie and I started shopping for one. I think he wanted something more traditional, but I talked him into this one.”
Rylan realized now why he liked the house so well. It wasn’t cluttered with carpeting and drapes and furniture. The beauty of the house lay in its starkness, the white walls, the tall ceilings with their bare beams, the terrazzo tile floors. Furnishings and decorating had been kept to a minimum, but every piece was perfect for its setting. Nothing detracted from the spectacular scenery beyond the glass walls.
“Did you always get your way?” he asked.
She stepped aside to allow him to enter the guest bedroom before her. She didn’t quite meet his eyes when she answered softly, “No. Not always.”
“Was the house a concession for an argument you lost?”
Instead of answering she pointed to the mirrored closet doors. “There’s a bureau in the closet. You can either unpack yourself or leave it for Alice to do. The bathroom’s through there.” She indicated the connecting door. At the built-in bookcase, she slid open a louvered panel to reveal a wet bar with a small refrigerator. “I think you’ll find everything you need. If not, let Alice or me know.”
“Why do I feel like I’m being left at camp for the summer? ‘Got your toothbrush? Got your extra blanket? Good, then say good-bye to Mommy.’ ”
Kirsten ignored him. “Mel said you wanted to go through Charlie’s photo albums. I left them out for you in his study. It’s through the door at the end of this hall. If you’ll excuse—”
“Why don’t you like me?”
Dammit, he’d had enough. He could think of a lot of occupations for her mouth to be engaged in, and issuing instructions like a drill sergeant was at the bottom of the list. He didn’t concentrate too hard on what he would put at the top of that list because he was still dressed only in a towel, but he crossed the room in three angry strides to stand directly in front of her.
His bluntness caught her off guard. She kept her eyes on a level with his chest when she said, “I like you fine.”
“You sure have a funny way of showing it.”
“I’ve been hospitable.”
“Hospitality I can get at the Holiday Inn.”
He had backed her up against the glass wall, which ran the width of the room and afforded a spectacular view of the ocean. His body almost went into shock when she eased herself from between him and the glass, by necessity brushing the front of her body against his. He learned two important things: she wasn’t wearing a bra, and, in addition to being teased too hard, she didn’t like feeling cornered.
“What do you want from me, Mr. North?”
If she knew what a loaded question that was, she wouldn’t have asked it. He couldn’t give her the obvious answer, so he latched onto the first thing that came to his mind. “I want you to call me by my name.”
“I do.”
“You call me Mr. North, not Rylan.”
“Is that your real name?”
“No, but it’ll do.”
She turned away to gaze outside at the geraniums blooming profusely in whiskey casks that lined the border of the deck. “All right. And you can call me Kirsten.”
“Thanks. Now, why don’t you look at me?”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“I look at you.”
“No, your eyes slide over me occasionally, but you haven’t fully looked at me since I got here.” He was thinking that if he could look at her, her mouth, her figure, her bare feet, and threaten to disgrace himself behind the towel, then she could sure as hell look at him. His desire fueled his impatience with her. “Why don’t you look at me?” he repeated angrily.
“I’m not a groupie. A gawker.”
“I don’t expect you to be, Kirsten.”
She did look at him then. At the sound of her name, she raised those serious blue eyes to his. He felt himself sinking into them.
“Celebrities don’t awe me,” she said. “I was married to one. He was human and so are you.”
He was human, all right, he thought. His entire body was quivering with the desire to demonstrate basic human needs. He wanted to press her cool, white clothes against his sun-warmed skin, to cup her hips in his hands and draw her against that part of him that was tenting the towel despite his efforts to keep it relaxed.
“You resent my being here, don’t you?”
“Yes,” she responded bluntly.
“Then why did you let me come?”
“I was under pressure from Mel.”
“Your attorney?” He laughed shortly. “I only met him once, but it’s obvious that he’s gaga over you. He would take a flying leap out his twenty-story office window if you asked him to.”
“I listen to his advice and this is what he advised me to do.”
“Under the threat that I might leave the picture?”
“You admit that that was a possibility?”
“I’ve done it before.”
“Well, I didn’t want to be responsible for it happening this time. I want the movie to be finished as soon as possible.”
“I see. Your sacrifice was for the sake of the movie.”
“Yes. I’ll cooperate with you, because I want you to get what you came for and leave as soon as possible, but don’t expect me to entertain you.”
She was doing it again, assuming that superior tone that grated on him like a metal file. He’d have to break her of it, but how? She didn’t like to be teased, and the honest and forthright approach hadn’t worked. Shock maybe? He decided to let her talk without interruption, giving her some slack before he yanked the rope hard.
“As I see it,” she concluded haughtily, “the only way we can make the best of this awkward situation is to keep our dealings with each other on a strictly professional level.”
“That’s the way you see it, huh?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Hmm. Then I have a suggestion.”
“Well?”
“Start wearing a bra.”
“Wha—”
“Because I find it hard to think of you on a strictly professional level when I can see your nipples through your shirt.”
He’d gone this far. He decided to go for broke. It would serve to show her that he didn’t respond to bitchiness and at the same time gratify
an impulse that had been tempting him all afternoon. He raised both hands and lightly raked the backs of his fingers over her breasts, over the prominent crests of them.
Her reaction was almost violent. She swatted his hands aside and spun away from him, then faced him with her arms as straight and rigid as flagpoles at her sides and her fists clenched. She was breathing harshly. “Don’t ever do anything like that again.”
“You didn’t like it?”
“Obviously I didn’t.”
His gaze moved down to her chest. Her nipples were hard, making dark, pointed impressions against the soft cloth of her shirt. “Obviously,” he said hoarsely.
She marched from the room, but her bare feet were soundless on the tile floor and robbed her royal exit of its impact. She made up for it by slamming the door behind her.
“How long has she been resting?”
“She was in her room with all the shutters drawn when I came home,” the housekeeper, Alice, told Rylan.
“Maybe you ought to check on her.”
The look she gave him was scolding. “I made her take two aspirin for her headache and—”
“She had a headache?”
“That’s what she said. I put a cold compress on her forehead and told her to lie down until dinner.” Alice wagged a carrot stick a few inches from his nose. “She’s working too hard on that book, that’s what’s wrong with her.”
Rylan was unsure that hard work was all that was wrong with his hostess. Hard work and a headache weren’t solely responsible for driving her into the privacy of her bedroom. He was. What he’d done.
Where did he get off, touching her like that? he asked himself. He wasn’t a fanny pincher. Lechery had always disgusted him. It made him embarrassed for the women who had to suffer it. He sympathized with them.
So what had made him touch Kirsten? Granted, he’d been sufficiently provoked on several levels, professionally, sexually, emotionally. Still, he shouldn’t have done it.
She had every right to be spitting mad. Anger he could deal with. What he couldn’t understand, and therefore what disturbed him the most, was the fear he’d seen on her face. Or had it been fear that caused her upper teeth to clamp down on her bottom lip? Dismay perhaps? Over what? His caress? Or her immediate physical reaction to it?
Damned if he knew. The elusive answer had haunted him while he showered and changed and spent an hour in the study looking through memorabilia on Demon Rumm.
Alice had found him there and, hoping to glean some information about Kirsten from her, he had followed her into the kitchen to chat while she prepared dinner. Rylan had taken an instant liking to the housekeeper. Like her employer, she hadn’t fawned over him, but had fussed about the sandy jeans he’d left on the terrace. Her bossiness endeared her to him.
Where the Rumms were concerned, Alice proved to be loquacious, but discreet. She hadn’t betrayed any confidences, if indeed there were any. Avidly curious about movies and moviemakers, she asked him about her favorite actress, whom he had costarred with.
He set up his favorite story about that particular actress while Alice grated cheese into a bowl. “So she walks over to the bed, as we had blocked it. I’ve got my back turned to her, see? I take off my shirt.”
“I remember that. It was a yummy love scene.”
“Thanks. Finally it came out that way. But on that particular take, just as I got my shirt off, she let go this bloodcurdling scream. I thought, ‘My God, has my back broken out with leprosy?’ But it seems that the crew thought it would be hilarious to put a Gila monster under the covers and—”
“No!” Alice exclaimed.
“Yes. When she whipped the covers back, there it was in all its horny, ugly glory.”
Alice was raptly attentive. “What did she do?”
“After that initial scream, nothing. She laughed and went along with the joke. But the next day she paid them all back.”
“How?” Alice asked, giggling.
Rylan popped a ripe olive into his mouth, sucking on it as he talked. “She got up early and while everyone was still sleeping sent her kids—they were on the set with her—around to steal their shoes. By breakfast, she had a pile of Reeboks and Adidas and Nikes, with all the shoelaces tied together. Ever try to sort out forty or so pair of sports shoes and stay on a tyrant director’s rigid schedule?”
“Who would ever have thought she could be such a cutup? She seems so elegant.” Alice glanced at something behind his shoulder and smiled. “Hi, there. Headache better?”
Rylan swiveled his head around to see Kirsten standing in the doorway. She avoided looking at him as she answered her housekeeper. “Yes, thank you.”
He had difficulty catching his breath. The afternoon had culminated in a fabulous sunset. As Kirsten moved between him and the view of it, he could see her slender body silhouetted against the gauzy sundress she was wearing. The bodice crisscrossed in front over her breasts and tied behind her neck, leaving her back bare. It would have been impossible to wear a bra with that dress. Only his preoccupation with her fluid figure prevented him from laughing out loud. She had worn the dress in defiance. He wanted to congratulate her on her gumption, but the sight of her left him momentarily mute.
“Dinner’s almost ready,” Alice said, turning her back to them to reach for something in the refrigerator.
Rylan used that opportunity to say, “Nice dress, Kirsten.”
“Thank you.”
He could tell from the way she looked through him that she didn’t approve of his dinner attire. The jeans he was wearing were clean, but in no better condition than the pair he’d arrived in. His white T-shirt had a blurred, laundry-faded image of the shark that Steven Spielberg had immortalized yawning from it. He had tied his bare feet into a sad pair of tennis shoes. Long ago, he’d begun dressing to please himself. He wasn’t averse to wearing a tuxedo if the occasion called for it, but his “casual” bordered on “sloppy.”
Kirsten glanced at him. “I’m going to have a drink on the terrace while Alice puts dinner on the table. Would you care to join me?”
He knew the invitation was issued purely out of politeness, but he accepted it. “Sure.”
“This way.”
She led him through the glass door to a lattice-covered part of the deck that provided a view of the swimming pool and the ocean. Built into a corner of it was a bar. “I’m having a white wine cooler.”
“Soda and lime is fine.”
He read her surprise in the quick look she gave him, but didn’t comment on it. “Thanks,” he said when she handed him his drink. “This is a beautiful place. Maybe I should invest in a home.”
“I thought you had one in Malibu.”
“If the tabloids are to be believed, I have one there, and a ranch in Arizona and . . . hell, I don’t know, an igloo in Alaska maybe.”
“You don’t?”
“I’ve got a one-bedroom apartment just off Sunset Boulevard.”
That disclosure stunned her. “Why?”
Shrugging, he dropped down onto the low wall where she was sitting. Only he straddled it, spreading his thighs wide and facing her. “That’s all I need.” He laughed at her expression of disbelief. “Don’t tell me you believed all that garbage about leopard-skin rugs, mirrored ceilings, and statues of pre-Columbian fertility goddesses.”
“I thought it was zebra skins and Egyptian sarcophagi filled with cocaine.”
She had a wonderful laugh, he decided. The sound of it was pleasurable in itself, but he enjoyed it even more, knowing that whatever anguish he’d caused her earlier was dissipating.
“I promise you that I don’t have the hide of any animal in my apartment,” he said. She lowered her eyes to the rim of her wineglass, which she was tracing with her index finger. “And none of the other either.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“Yes, you did.” He spoke so softly, his words were almost lost on the breeze that carried with it the ceaseless, swishing sound of the ocean.
“With your eyes. Where are your glasses, by the way?”
Their conversation had dropped to an intimate pitch. Kirsten inclined away from him, cleared her throat, and spoke unnaturally loudly. “I only need them when I work. Eyestrain.”
He stared deeply into her eyes, as though searching for signs of fatigue or stress. She stared back, treating his eyes to the same penetrating attention.
After a long moment, she stood up. “Another drink?”
“Okay.”
She fixed them each a refill, pouring more wine than citrus juice into hers this time, he noticed. He eased himself off the wall and wandered around the gazebo, touching the blossoms of the scarlet hibiscus. They bobbed in the wind like cardinals nodding their heads in approval of a pontiff ’s decree. He slid the tip of his finger into the throat of one. It was an innocent gesture, but he was immediately suffused with a rush of sexual heat. Erotic thoughts of Kirsten’s body crowded his brain, pushing aside all others.
He turned suddenly, guiltily, and saw that she was watching his hand. Her gaze met his. The impact was physical, as though no distance separated them. Her cheeks were filled with color almost as vivid as that of the blooms. Rylan knew in that instant that her thoughts were running parallel to his.
However, he knew better than to press the advantage. Instead he asked, “What’s in there?” and tilted his head toward an enclosure.
“A sauna.”
“Sounds wonderful.”
“Feel free to use it any time. It’s never turned off.”
They resumed their previous positions on the low wall. His knee accidentally bumped hers. She didn’t move hers away. He left his where it was. He was finding it damned hard not to stare at her. He studied her over the rim of his glass as he sipped his soda.
“If you don’t want me to read your mind, you’d better wear your glasses all the time,” he remarked. “Your eyes are too expressive for your own good. And very, very blue.”
“What am I thinking?” she challenged.
“About me. You’re worried about what’s fact and what’s fiction.”
“It’s none of my business.”
“I’m living in your house. That makes it your business. Are you wondering if I’m going to whip out drug paraphernalia after supper?” She ducked her head, a silent admission. “I don’t do any drugs, Kirsten. Short of a few pot parties in high school and college, I never have.”
