Once in a Blue Moon

by Kristin James

  Isabelle continued flipping through the script while Felice perused the fight scene. When Isabelle reached the following Friday’s filming, she froze. Both hers and Michael’s names jumped off the page at her. She began to read, and with each line she grew stiffer and tauter.

  “No! I can’t.” She looked up and glanced around the room, even though she knew it was useless to seek out one of the writers there on the day they handed out the scripts. They were usually out of the building, leaving the head writer to deal with the actors’ complaints.

  “What is it?” Felice glanced up at her, startled by the note of real panic in Isabelle’s voice. “What have they got down for you?”

  “They have me trying to seduce Curtis Townsend.”

  “Michael Traynor?” Felice grinned. “What are you complaining about? Most of the actresses on this show are panting for a chance to do a love scene with him. I’m just sorry I play his sister. I heard Sally was in Carol’s office the other day trying to persuade her that her character was a much better one to pair Michael with than Lena’s. Of course, he and Lena haven’t exactly lit up the screen. I hear Danny is really disappointed with the lack of interest the viewers are showing in their couple. They get tons of letters about Michael, but most of them think he and Lena together are a yawn. That’s probably why they’re trying to spice it up by having you seduce him.”

  Isabelle hardly heard Felice. All she could think of was the scene on the paper before her. She simply could not do it!

  Naively, she realized now, she had been congratulating herself on how well she had handled Michael’s presence on the show. Most of the time she had avoided the snack area and lounge, the place where she was most likely to run into him. If she did happen to find herself in the same room with him, she had made sure that she stayed on the opposite side of it. When she met him in the halls, she gave him a nod or a terse hello in greeting. Fortunately, he had not attempted to talk to her again, other than their stiff, formal greetings. She had, finally, grown accustomed to seeing him, so that it was not the same shock to her nervous system whenever she came upon him unexpectedly.

  Their first scene together had come two weeks after he arrived, and Isabelle had been stiff and nervous, mentally braced to ward off his charm. After they shot it, she had almost cried in her dressing room, sure that it had been the worst performance she’d ever given. But when she’d looked at it later, she had seen that it hadn’t been bad. The edginess and faint atmosphere of hostility had worked well. Michael’s character was, fortunately, written as her enemy; he was about the only male in the fictional town of Lansfield who saw through her beauty to the wicked character beneath. They had had a few scenes together since then, and Isabelle had found it easy to portray the antagonism between them. She was beginning to believe that everything would work out all right. She could handle the intermittent, hostile scenes with Michael, and the rest of the time she could avoid him.

  But now this....

  Isabelle stood up abruptly. “I have to talk to Karen.”

  Felice gaped at her. “Are you serious?”

  “Of course I am. I don’t want to do this. It—it isn’t right.” She glanced down at her friend and, seeing her astonished expression, added hastily, “For the part, I mean. They’re enemies. There’s no way Jessica would make a play for him.”

  Felice shrugged and said wryly, “Then he’d be the only one in town.”

  Isabelle grimaced. “Well, she’s a slut, of course, but she isn’t stupid.” She turned and started for the door.

  Just at that moment, Michael Traynor, sitting across the room, raised his head and turned to look at her. His face was impassive, but when his eyes met hers, Isabelle knew that he had been reading the same pages she had. His dark eyebrows, distinctively straight, quirked up into a humorous inverted V, and a faint smile touched his lips.

  Isabelle’s stomach lurched, as if she’d taken a sudden step down. She could feel a blush spreading up her face and it infuriated her, which only made her blush worse. She pressed her lips together and jerked her eyes away from his. Keeping her face straight ahead, she strode from the room and out into the hall.

  Karen’s office was on the floor above. Her secretary gave Isabelle a fleeting glance and pushed the intercom button, announcing her in a bored voice. A moment later Karen opened the door to her office.

  “Isabelle!” She looked puzzled. “I’m surprised to see you. Come in, come in.”

  She ushered Isabelle in with good humor. Isabelle had rarely come to her to argue any point about the scripts; she was an easy actress to work with, and it wasn’t difficult to be pleasant to her.

  “Don’t tell me you’re unhappy with your script,” she commented as she went back around to sit behind her desk. “We’ve given you two crackerjack scenes next week.”

  “I know. I’m sure they’re wonderful.” Isabelle sat down stiffly. Now that she was here, she wasn’t sure what to say. They were good scenes. Most of the actresses on the show would be delighted to have two such prominent scenes in one week. How was she to explain that she simply could not play a seduction scene with Michael Traynor?

  “Then what’s the problem?” Karen frowned.

  “There isn’t one with the fight with Felice. It’s very funny and vicious and full of great lines.”

  Karen smiled, pleased. “Judy Weinburg wrote it. I’m really pleased with her work. I’m giving her more and more of Jessica’s scripts.”

  “That’s great. She writes very well.” Isabelle forced a smile. “It’s the seduction scene that worries me. I—well, it doesn’t ring true to me. Why would Jessica try to seduce Curtis? They thoroughly dislike each other. She knows what he thinks of her and that he’s undermining her influence with Mark.”

  “It doesn’t have anything to do with her being attracted to him. She’s trying to find some way to control him, like she does with everyone. Why, it’s the most natural thing in the world for her to do. He hasn’t fallen under her spell like all the other men, so she’s decided to bring out the heavy guns. It’s the way she gains power over men. Curtis is a real eye-opener for Jessica, the first man who has been able to resist her charms. I think we’re going to have a lot of fun with that.”

  “But—” Isabelle thought frantically “—but why would she risk doing that with Mark’s brother? I mean, Mark has been taking her side when Curtis tries to make him see what she’s like. She has a good hold on Mark and his money, and she wants it to stay that way. She wouldn’t risk Curtis telling his brother what she had done. And you know Goody-Two-Shoes Curtis would run right over and tell Mark.”

  “Nah. He’s too noble. He couldn’t bear to hurt his brother that way. He’ll turn her down and despise her all the more for it, but he’ll keep his mouth shut. And Jessica is desperate enough to risk it because Curtis is convincing Mark to go work at that medical mission in Central America. She’s afraid she’ll lose him.”

  “I know—what is all that stuff about this medical mission? Where did that come from?”

  “Jim Ehrlich’s taking a leave from the show in a few weeks, so we have to find some reason for Mark to disappear for a month. We figured he should do something noble like go work in a medical mission in Cen-tral America. Then we can tie it in with the drug-smuggling story, and the timing’ll be perfect for May sweeps.”

  “Oh. I see. I didn’t know Jim was leaving. But why do this scene with Curtis? I mean, he and Jessica don’t have any real story together. They just sort of touch peripherally because of Mark.”

  “Right now they don’t,” Karen said significantly, and her words sent a chill through Isabelle. “But we’ve got to do something with Jessica while Mark’s gone. I figure sparring with Curtis would be a good way to fill some of her time. We’ve been getting good viewer response on you and Michael.”

  “What?” Isabelle looked at her blankly. “But we’ve only been in a few scenes together.”

  “Yeah, but the chemistry’s good. Viewers like a good feud
almost as much as a good love story—maybe better. Whenever you and Michael are on screen together, the sparks fly. We’ve had a lot of fan mail saying they’d like to see more of Jessica and Curtis. Lena and Michael’s relationship isn’t progressing the way we’d planned. We may have to take them along slowly, give the fans more time to build an interest in them, and in the meantime we’ll play up the hostility between Curtis and Jessica.”

  “So—” Isabelle had to stop and clear her throat before she could continue. She felt as if her vocal cords had tightened into rigidity. “You mean that Michael and I will be having more scenes together?”

  “Yeah. We’re going to change the story line some. People love Michael—they think he’s a hunk. So we have to be careful to keep them watching him. We can’t let them get bored with his romantic story.” She paused, then hastened to assure Isabelle. “It’ll be great for you, too. Otherwise, you’re hanging in limbo while Mark’s out, with nothing to work on but that old resentment of Christine, and that’s getting kind of tired.”

  That was true, Isabelle knew. People would get a kick out of this fight between them next week, but their conflict was from the past, and people would soon grow bored with it. The worst thing about all this was that Karen was right. A running feud with Curtis over his brother would spark up her story as much as Michael’s. She knew how damaging it could be to one’s popularity when one’s love interest left a show. There had been one actor who was quite popular on “Tomorrows” whose storyline had died because his wife had been killed off. He had drifted around being sad and having people commiserate with him for a few weeks, but his scenes had grown fewer and fewer, and fan mail for him had tailed off. Finally he had been written out, too.

  Isabelle sighed. “I know. You’re right.”

  Karen gave her a puzzled look. “Then why so downcast? What’s the problem?”

  How could she tell Karen that the thought of doing any kind of love scene, even a rejected seduction, with Michael Traynor scared her right down to her toes? Isabelle thought of kissing Michael, and her stomach turned to ice. She could remember vividly the way his lips had felt on hers, the feverish shivers that had run through her every time he kissed her. What if she still reacted that way? It would be so humiliating!

  Worse than that, it might stir up old feelings, feelings whose size and intensity frightened Isabelle. She had promised herself long ago that she would never again be so vulnerable to a man as she had been to Michael Traynor. It frightened her to think that if she kissed him, even in pretense for the show, she might once again feel as she had when she had been a girl of eighteen. That she might open up even the tiniest crack in her emotional armor.

  But it wouldn’t do to let the head writer know that she was allowing her personal feelings to interfere with her role on the show. “Nothing, really. I guess I get tired of Jessica trying to solve all her problems by sleeping with some guy.”

  “But that’s what people love about Jessica!” Karen responded brightly, chuckling. “She can always be counted on to inject some sex into the hour.”

  What Karen didn’t know was that sex was the last thing Isabelle wanted injected into her nonrelationship with Michael.

  “Thanks for talking to me about it.” Isabelle forced a faint smile and stood up. There was nothing else she could do to stave it off. More strenuous objections to the scene with no more reason than she had would appear strange to the writers and the producers and would probably stir up the kind of gossip she always strove to avoid. All she could do now was prepare herself—strengthen her defenses for the scene next Friday.

  * * *

  “There!” The hairdresser stepped back, opening her hands in an expansive gesture, and beamed at the reflection in the mirror.

  Isabelle looked into the mirror. Debbie had done an even better job than usual. Her hair was a sexy tangle of gleaming curls. Combined with the low-cut, clinging black cocktail dress she wore, it created the perfect image of a beautiful, wild female predator on the prowl.

  Isabelle’s hands felt cold as ice. She did not want to do this. But she said only, “You’ve outdone yourself this time, Debbie.”

  “Well, you know, your first big scene with Michael...” She grinned conspiratorially.

  Isabelle thought sourly that Michael had obviously wrapped the hairstylist around his finger. Of course, the same could be said for most of the women involved in the soap opera. Sometimes Isabelle felt like revealing to them what a heartless, self-absorbed bastard he was—but, of course, she would never open up her personal life to such intimate inspection.

  She stood and smoothed down the tight-fitting short skirt. She had to admit that Amanda had done a great job of finding just the right dress, too—devastatingly sexy without crossing over the borderline to sluttish. It was perfectly suited to her figure and also revealed a tempting amount of her long legs.

  Isabelle clutched her script, as she had all during the time she had been in Makeup and Hairstyling. The slim blue-bound book was now permanently curled up from being twisted in her hands. She set off down the hallway to the soundstage, trying to look both nonchalant and businesslike—and not at all as if her knees were quaking.

  She had worked all week to prepare herself for today’s shooting, but now that it had arrived, she found herself feeling as anxious as she had when she first learned about it. She was flushed and overheated one moment and the next, freezing. Her mouth was dry as cotton. At the moment she could not remember a single one of her lines. All she could think about was the fact that she was going to kiss Michael, that she was going to have to radiate sexual invitation toward him, to lure and seduce him and put herself right back in the danger of his arms.

  Rationally she knew that nothing was going to happen. It was, after all, a scene for TV, and it would be shot in front of a director and crew. It wouldn’t be real, and she had shot many such scenes before without a qualm. There would be no emotion in their kiss; it would be faked. Besides, there was no danger of her feelings for Michael returning. She had gotten over him years ago; there was no feeling toward him left inside her except antipathy. She was much too mature now to be conquered by a sexy kiss—not that he would even try to make it sexy. Surely Michael had no more interest than she in trying to rekindle the fire that had once burned between them.

  But all the reasonable arguments in the world couldn’t stand up against the ice in the pit of her stomach.

  She walked onto the soundstage, where the crew was bustling around making adjustments to lights and cameras. Isabelle carefully picked her way over the snaking obstacles of thick cables and cords. The set was the living room of Jessica’s condo. On the set next to it, the elegant living room of the Townsend house. They had just finished shooting a large party scene, and a few of the actors were still strolling away from it.

  Paul, who played the lawyer ex-husband of Christine Townsend, Chase Manning, caught sight of Isabelle, and his eyebrows vaulted up exaggeratedly.

  “My, my, my, don’t you look yummy,” Paul said. “You know, Izzy, sometimes I get so used to seeing you every day I forget how incredible-looking you really are.”

  To her chagrin, Isabelle felt a blush creeping up her neck into her face. She rolled her eyes. “It’s the hairstyle and the dress.”

  “Yeah, right.” Vivian laughed. “I wish I had that hairstyle and dress.”

  Isabelle couldn’t help turning her eyes toward the condo set, where Michael sat, waiting, his script in his hand as if he’d been going over his lines one last time. But he was not looking at the script. He was looking straight at Isabelle. His eyes flickered down her body for a fraction of a second, then returned. She lifted her chin and walked, stony-faced, to the set.

  “Isabelle,” Lyle Gordon, the director, said in greeting and came over to join them. “You look great.” His eyes skimmed over her in a professional, asexual way. “Perfect. Okay, let’s block and run through it quickly. It’s a pretty simple scene—just you two.”

  Isabelle
nodded, trying to keep her attention on him. Her gaze kept wandering traitorously toward Michael, and her nerves were jumping like live wires. She had to get herself under control. She could not let Michael see how nervous doing this scene with him made her. She concentrated on pulling herself into her character. It was difficult to do today; all her acting skills seemed suddenly to have deserted her.

  “Okay,” Lyle went on. “Now, Jessica is furious because Mark has decided to go work in the medical mission in San Pedro. She’s sure it’s all Curtis’s fault. But, of course, being Jessica, she hides that anger and is going to try to get even with Curtis, as well as cancel his influence with Mark. So, Isabelle, remember to let some of the anger peek through now and then.”

  “I will.” Anger, she thought, would not be the hard part.

  They walked through the scene, blocking it, setting marks for the camera angles. Then they ran through it once, rehearsing it. Isabelle was edgy and stiff. Even though rehearsal didn’t require pulling out all the acting stops, she felt as though she were merely stumbling through it. She couldn’t seem to get hold of her character.

  Michael was standing very close to her. Isabelle looked up at him, very aware of the shape of his mouth, the faint, thin grooves that bracketed the corners of his lips, the way his eyelashes shadowed and darkened his eyes. She forgot her next line.

  She backed up slightly, and Lyle barked, “No, no, no. Don’t turn away from him there, Izzy. You’ve got to pin him with those magnificent eyes. Like you could just suck him right in. Cassie, give her the line.”

  Isabelle nodded. Cassie Shumway, one of the assistant directors, prompted her, and she plunged in again. They made it through the rest of their lines. Then they moved back to their original positions to start it all over again, this time with the camera rolling.

  Isabelle was miserably aware of the fact that she was not in control of the character. She did not feel as she usually did when she acted. Rather, she felt as if she were outside herself, moving somehow by remote control. She was sure that Michael must sense her nervousness. She hoped that he didn’t guess why. It was absurd for a mature, experienced actress to be so nervous at the thought of an on-screen kiss. It didn’t mean anything. It wasn’t real! She was behaving like someone in junior high drama class, she told herself.