Snowflakes on the Sea

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Suppose you have lost her. What would you do?”

  “Book more concerts. And I have, Jeff—this time, I have lost her.”

  “Maybe, and maybe not. If I were you, I guess I wouldn’t even try to sort all this out until the concert is over and Mallory’s off that soap opera. Then, old friend, take your wife away somewhere, alone, and work this out, one way or the other.”

  “It’s hopeless,” Nathan said in despair. “There are two ladies in my life—music and Mallory—and one of them has to go.”

  Sunday was a crummy day for Mallory, from start to finish. She stumbled through it blindly, ignoring both the telephone and the doorbell, knowing instinctively that none of the callers or visitors would be Nathan. She tried repeatedly to study the script Brad had brought to her, but the lines ascribed to her character made even less sense than they normally did. At the rate she was going, she thought dismally, she was going to have to ad lib every scene.

  At dinner time, she made a quick search of the cupboards and was not really surprised to find them bare. The refrigerator contained only what remained of Nathan’s carton of milk, and hot tears smarted in Mallory’s eyes as she remembered how close she’d felt to him that day, how she’d soared in his arms.

  Glumly, Mallory took the carton from the refrigerator shelf and tossed it into the trash compactor. Despite her jangled nerves and her heartache, she was hungry, and yet she certainly didn’t feel like venturing out to a restaurant or even a grocery store.

  After some moments of deliberation, she finally called her favorite Chinese restaurant and ordered a meal. She would shower and wrap up in a cozy bathrobe and, by the time her supper arrived, maybe she’d feel better. Maybe she’d even be able to learn her lines.

  Her shower taken, her old, red corduroy bathrobe soft against her skin, Mallory was brushing her hair dry when the doorbell rang. “Dinner,” she said with forced cheer as she pulled open the door.

  “You shouldn’t do that,” Pat said, arching one eyebrow. “For all you knew, you could have been opening the door to a rapist or even a vacuum cleaner salesman.”

  “Horrors,” Mallory replied, eyeing the cartons of Chinese food sheltered in Pat’s capable arms. “Since when do you deliver for Chow May’s?”

  “Since I bribed the kid in the elevator. Mall, damn it, how come you aren’t answering your phone or your door?”

  “Maybe because I want to be alone,” Mallory said archly, reaching for the cartons.

  Pat withheld them and stepped past her sister-in-law to enter the penthouse. “Not so fast, hungry person. I charge one egg roll and two fortune cookies for my delivery services.”

  Mallory sighed and followed after Pat as she walked resolutely through the hallway to the living room. She put the cartons down on the coffee table and turned to glare at her brother’s wife.

  “What are you trying to do, Mall—scare all your friends and relations to death? I’ve been here twice and called four times, and I’ve been getting calls from Trish and Kate all day.”

  Stubbornly, Mallory folded her arms. “I don’t feel guilty, if that’s what you want from me.”

  “Far be it from me to inspire guilt,” Pat retorted smoothly. “I mean, just because I thought you jumped out of a window and Trish thought you slit your wrists—”

  “What was Kate’s guess?” Mallory broke in irritably.

  “She was going for the head-in-the-oven tactic. You and Nathan are on the outs again, aren’t you?”

  “Permanently,” Mallory said, opening the sweet and sour pork and dipping in with a finger. “And don’t try to talk me out of it.”

  Pat’s bright blue eyes were flashing. “I wouldn’t think of it,” she said, taking an egg roll from one of the cartons. “You’re both idiots, as far as I’m concerned, and I wash my hands of you.”

  Mallory made a face and then wandered off toward the kitchen for plates, knives and forks. And even though she and Pat didn’t exchange a civil word while they were eating, she was still glad for the company.

  10

  Monday morning was a disaster.

  Mallory arrived at the studio half an hour late, and all the makeup in the world wouldn’t have disguised the pallor in her cheeks and the quiet torment in her eyes. To make matters worse, the set was crowded. Several fans had been admitted, and there were reporters and photographers from one of the magazines specializing in the doings of soap opera performers. Mallory’s lines sounded wooden when she delivered them, and she couldn’t remember her cues.

  Finally, Brad shouted an order to the cameramen, and everyone took a badly needed break. His grasp was hard on Mallory’s arm as he dragged her off the set, through a maze of cameras, light stands and thick electrical cables snaking along the floor.

  “Damn it, Mallory,” he seethed, glaring at her. “Is this your idea of revenge, or what? If you’re trying to sandbag the whole production, you’re succeeding!”

  Mallory wanted nothing so much as to get the taping right and be done with television forever, and her zombielike behavior was anything but deliberate. Tears of frustration smarted in her eyes, and her lower lip trembled. But she couldn’t manage a word.

  Brad’s tension seemed to ease; his bright blue eyes searched her face and then he sighed and raised tender hands to her cheeks. “What is it, button? What’s happened?”

  Even if she’d had a voice, Mallory would have been too proud to explain. She swallowed and shook her head in a reflexive gesture of helplessness.

  It was clear in an instant, however, that Brad had read much of the situation in her eloquent eyes. “Nathan,” he said with angry acceptance.

  Mallory hadn’t meant to cry, but, suddenly, she was doing just that. A terrible sob tore itself from her throat, and Brad drew her into his arms in a brotherly embrace. He was whispering gentle, innocuous words of comfort when his arms suddenly went rigid.

  “Oh, Lord,” he groaned.

  Mallory’s spine stiffened; without turning around, she knew that Nathan was in the studio, that he was striding toward her, that when she faced him, his expression would be murderous.

  A throbbing silence descended, stilling even the jovial conversations of the light crew, the other actors and actresses, the writers and the camera people. When Mallory forced herself to turn from Brad to Nathan, she focused not on her husband’s face, but on the reporters and photographers so obviously anxious to record whatever drama that might be offered.

  “Call Security,” Brad muttered to a gaping script girl.

  Nathan laughed low in his throat, and it was a brutal, terrifying sound. “That won’t be necessary,” he said. “I promise to behave myself.”

  Mallory felt no fear—not for herself, at least. She peered in Nathan’s direction, but his face was hidden in shadows, just as it had been during their last argument that night on the island. There was really no need to see his features; all his disdain had been evident in his voice.

  “What do you want?” she demanded after a long, uncomfortable silence.

  Nathan’s powerful shoulders moved in a deceptively casual shrug. “A few minutes alone with my wife, if that can be arranged.”

  Pride made Mallory square her shoulders and stand tall. “Fine,” she said stiffly. “We can talk in my dressing room.”

  Brad cleared his throat. “Mallory, I don’t think—”

  She cut him off politely. “It’s all right, Brad—really.”

  Nathan offered his arm in a suave parody of good manners, and Mallory took it. The walk to the dressing room she shared with two other actresses was the longest of her life.

  Nathan looked wan when she turned to face him after closing the dressing room door. His thick, dark hair was rumpled, and, as he folded his arms across his chest and leaned back against the wall, a shadow writhed in the depths of his eyes.

  Mallory took in the blunt masculinity of his form with a dispatch that was entirely false. In truth, the corded muscles of his blue-jeaned thighs had a very disturbing
effect on her determination never to surrender to him again. Beneath the expensive cream-colored sweater, his broad shoulders moved in another shrug.

  “Aren’t you going to compliment me on my self-restraint, Mallory?” he asked, his eyes raking over the revealing pink satin robe she’d worn in the last scene. “I didn’t even comment on your—costume.”

  Mallory lifted her chin. “I trust you aren’t here to demonstrate your boundless nobility.”

  There was a change in his face; the deadly white line edging his lips and his jawline faded, and there was a soft look in his eyes. “I love you, Mallory.”

  She would have found a bitter, scathing invective easier to deal with than this simple lie. “Don’t.”

  “Don’t love you or don’t talk about it?”

  Mallory bit her lower lip and refused to look at him, to speak, to react.

  “It’s true, you know. I’ve loved you since the day I met you.” His voice was even, reasonable—so damned reasonable! “Mallory, that incident in the boathouse was a misunderstanding. It was innocent, like that hug you were just exchanging with Brad.”

  “Innocent?” Mallory whispered. “You kissed her, Nathan. You admitted that yourself! And even if you hadn’t admitted it—”

  “You would have known,” he finished smoothly. “Mallory, I guess I did kiss her, if you can call it that—it was really more of a touch.” He paused, drew a deep breath and flung his arms out in a gesture of frustration. “I needed somebody—anybody. And Diane was there.”

  Mallory was trying hard to hate him, but her love was so fathomless that it threatened all her thinking processes, all her desperate resignation. “In that case,” she replied coldly, “I shudder to think what would have happened if I hadn’t intruded.”

  Nathan’s fingers drummed on the sweatered expanse of his upper arm, but that was the only outward indication of his impatience. “I think you know what would have happened, Mallory, whether you’ll let yourself accept it or not. When I realized what I was doing, what I was throwing away, I backed off.”

  Mallory’s resolve was wavering fast; she wasn’t even sure it mattered whether or not he was lying. “What else could you have done, Nathan? Carried on as if your wife hadn’t just walked in?”

  A muscle flexed in his jaw and relaxed again. “Listen to your heart, Mallory. Forget all the garbage that’s been programmed into you and listen to your instincts. Damn it, you know I’m telling the truth.”

  Mallory turned away, ostensibly to rearrange the jumble of creams and lotions and powders on her dressing table. In actuality, she was fighting tears and a growing need to believe him. “Please go,” she said calmly. “Right now.”

  He said nothing, nor did he move. Mallory lifted her eyes, horrified to see that he’d been watching her reflection in the mirror, reading her real feelings in the tortured planes of her face.

  In a fluid motion, Nathan crossed the small room and turned her to face him, trapping her against the vanity table with the hard pressure of his steel-like thighs, his stomach, his chest. The sound he made, deep in his throat, was somewhere between a moan and a growl.

  And then he kissed her.

  Mallory struggled at first, but then her body betrayed her pride, offering its own surrender. She opened her mouth to the plundering invasion of his tongue, then responded with her own. His right hand moved up her rib cage to cup her breast through the thin pink fabric of the robe. Even as that same hand strayed beneath the robe and the lacy camisole under it to claim the hard-peaked breast hidden there, Nathan did not break the shattering kiss.

  Stormy winds of passion howled through Mallory’s troubled spirit. Gasping, she tore her lips from his and buried her face in the soft, fragrant knit of his sweater.

  He lifted her chin with a rough sort of gentleness. The knowledge that he could play her body in the same accomplished way he played countless musical instruments burned in his eyes, a savage, infuriating flame, and he made no move to free the imprisoned breast.

  Sweet anguish affected every fiber of Mallory’s being; the core of her womanhood was already preparing to receive him. Desire made her conscious of little other than the hardness of his need pressing against her.

  And yet somehow, she found the strength within herself to thrust him away. “No,” she said in a shaky voice. “No.”

  He shrugged, bent his head and nuzzled the satiny flesh on her neck briefly. Then he went to the door.

  “You know where to find me,” he said in a low, flat voice.

  The insulted rage that seized Mallory in that moment was more than equal to the passion of seconds before. She snatched up a jar of cleansing cream and sent it whistling past his arrogant head, and flinched as it shattered against the door. Unruffled, Nathan turned the doorknob and assessed his wife with paradoxically tormented and amused eyes. He recited his phone number in matter-of-fact tones and walked out.

  Mallory stood, hands clenched at her sides, trembling with impotent fury. “Damn you, Nathan McKendrick!” she screamed after him. “Damn you!”

  It was then that a photographer appeared in the doorway and brazenly snapped Mallory’s picture. Blinded by the flash and by renewed outrage, she screamed again and flung a hairbrush at the stranger.

  She had no idea what she would have done after that, if Brad Ranner hadn’t intervened just then. The possibilities didn’t bear even the briefest consideration.

  With admirable composure and aplomb, Brad cleared the set entirely, except for the necessary members of the cast and crew, and recruited two older actresses to put Mallory back together again.

  Though she longed to sink into a screaming, mindless fit of hysteria, Mallory’s anger sustained her. She would not give in; her self-respect was at stake.

  All the rest of that day, Mallory got her lines right, and she gave the best performance of her short, crazy career.

  Hours later, at home in the plush, lonely penthouse, she stripped off her clothes and stepped under a steamy shower, scrubbing her flesh with fierce motions, letting the hot, hot water soak her hair and stream down her face. Telling herself not to think about Nathan McKendrick was like playing the childhood game of telling herself not to think about blue elephants. His image raged in her mind and spirit like a brush fire.

  When she could bear it no longer, she screamed in wordless fury, doubled her fists, and hammered wildly, senselessly, at the shower’s tiled walls.

  Eventually the hot water soothed her. She stepped out of the shower stall, dried herself methodically with a waiting towel, then slipped into a cozy terry-cloth robe and pink floppy scuffs. When she’d brushed and blow-dried her hair, Mallory walked aimlessly out into the living room. There, at the imposing teakwood bar, she mixed herself an unusually strong drink.

  The aching tension in her shoulders and the nape of her neck eased a little as the bourbon burned her veins. But it did nothing for the frantic tremor in the pit of her stomach or the desolation in her heart.

  She set the drink down with a forceful thud when the doorbell rang.

  Stiffening her spine, Mallory ignored the incessant ringing until it stopped. Then, with resolve, she found the script for the next day’s taping and began learning her lines and cues. She stayed up very late that night, working. When she knew her lines cold, she stumbled off to bed and fell, mercifully, into a dreamless and untroubled sleep.

  She awakened to a stream of sunlight radiating from the huge skylight overhead and a spasm of incredible nausea. One hand clamped over her mouth, she scurried into the bathroom. After that, breakfast was out of the question; she couldn’t even face coffee, and on the set she turned away in horror from the goopy doughnuts offered by the head writer.

  “Are you feeling all right?” Brad asked idly, when she paled at the sight of the fast-food breakfast he was consuming.

  “Flu, I guess,” she said lamely, falling into a canvas chair and averting her eyes. But the scent of the scrambled eggs sandwiched between the slices of Brad’s half-eaten Engl
ish muffin suddenly sent her bounding across the cluttered studio and into the women’s room.

  She was just in time.

  Never one to stand on custom, Brad was waiting when Mallory stumbled out of the stall and approached one of several porcelain sinks. He watched her in silence, his arms folded, until she’d recovered and begun drying her face with a rough brown paper towel.

  “We can do your scenes tomorrow,” he offered quietly.

  Mallory shook her head. The color was coming back into her face, and she felt infinitely better. “I’m fine, Brad.”

  “Slightly pregnant, perhaps.”

  Mallory was stunned, and she gripped the edge of the sink for support. Pregnant? The word seemed to echo in the room.

  She counted calmly, realized that she hadn’t had a period since before Nathan left for Australia. “Oh, God,” she whispered. “Oh, my God—”

  “Uh-huh,” Brad said, with crisp detachment. And then he considerately left the women’s room.

  Mallory tightened her grasp on the sink to keep her knees from giving way. Her emotions spun inside her, hopelessly tangled. She wanted the baby desperately—there was no question of that. But why couldn’t it have been conceived when she still had a solid marriage?

  She drew a deep, restorative breath. “Hold on, McKendrick,” she ordered herself. “Maybe you’re not pregnant. Maybe it was something you ate—”

  And maybe it was that passionate farewell before Nathan flew off to Sydney, taunted a voice deep in Mallory’s whirling mind.

  She remembered, with both remorse and a sweet stirring in her middle. In early November, despite the forbidding weather, she and Nathan had spent a delicious, bittersweet weekend on his boat, exploring Puget Sound. Late that Sunday afternoon, probably dreading their impending separation, they’d argued.

  And Nathan had flung Mallory’s new packet of birth control pills overboard.

  The action seemed significant in retrospect, as Mallory stood, stricken, in the studio rest room, trying to get a grip on herself. At the time, however, it had been nothing more than a gesture of anger.