Phoenix Falling

by Mary Jo Putney

  He drew another step closer. "Sarah, this may seem sudden, and yet I feel as if I've been waiting for this day my whole life."

  He took her hands in his and looked at her with Kenzie's green eyes. Rainey blinked, disoriented, as her mind broke character. Hoping the camera outside the gazebo hadn't caught her lapse, she gazed at her suitor raptly, as Sarah would have.

  "You were the sweetest and prettiest of little girls, and now you've grown into the sweetest, loveliest young woman I've ever known." He raised her hands and kissed them. "The only woman I can imagine spending my life with. I love you, Sarah. Will you marry me?"

  She caught her breath, stunned by the words she'd dreamed of hearing. This magnificent man wanted her for his wife.

  Didn't he know that she would give him anything he asked, even the heart from her breast? "Yes, Captain Randall," she whispered. "I will gladly marry you."

  His expression turned from uncertainty to exhilaration. "What, no protestations that this is so sudden? No requests for time to consider the matter?"

  "I've never been surer of anything in my life."

  "Oh, Sarah, Sarah, that honesty is part of what I love about you." He drew her into an embrace. "You must call me John when we are in private."

  She turned her face up for his kiss, not certain what to expect. The warm, gentle pressure of his lips was deeply pleasing. As her eyes drifted shut, she became acutely aware of him through her other senses. The taste of his mouth, the warmth of his body, the roughness of his breathing, his provocative male scent. From this day on, she would know him from every other man in the world even with her eyes closed.

  The kiss lengthened, became joined by caresses that made her blood pump urgently through her body.

  Once more her concentration broke. She'd been a fool to think she could play this scene without personal emotions erupting. Sarah's innocence took Rainey back to the night Kenzie had asked her to marry him, and for a brief, mad moment she'd dared hope it would work.

  But it hadn't. The sorrow of that was so intense that even her actor's discipline couldn't keep tears from her eyes. When his hand brushed her breast, she lost Sarah entirely and stepped back with a gasp that wasn't in the script.

  Kenzie's expression showed that he was also having trouble separating himself from the role. Improvising dialogue, he drew her down beside him on the bench that circled the gazebo. "I'm a beast," he said with suppressed violence as he stroked the tears from her cheeks. "You're so pure, so innocent, and I have frightened you."

  "I'm not frightened," she assured him. "Just—overwhelmed by happiness."

  Moving back to the script, he said, "I wish we didn't have to wait to marry, but next week my regiment sets sail for North Africa."

  He would leave her so soon to go into battle? "How long will you be gone?"

  "Only a few months. We're being sent to quell a rebellion by some fanatic natives, so it shouldn't take long. When we've rolled up the rebels, I'll resign my commission and come home to you." He smiled tenderly. "I've had enough of adventures. Now I'm ready to build a home and family with you."

  Despite his reassurances, she felt an icy chill down her spine. Not sure if it was a premonition or simply concern, she said intensely, "However long it takes, I shall wait for you, John."

  "My dear, dear girl." He kissed her again. This time, she kissed him back with a fervor born of fear.

  Alter a few seconds had passed, Rainey pulled back and said, "Cut." Shaken by the emotions searing through her, she said, "Don't print this. We're going to have to reshoot from the time I enter the gazebo."

  Greg frowned. "I dunno, Rainey, I thought it looked pretty good. Come check it on the video monitor."

  No way was she ready to watch herself lose control, but neither could she ignore Greg's professional judgment. "Okay, print, but we'll do another take on the gazebo scene."

  So low only she could hear, Kenzie said, "Doing several more takes should safely take the excess emotion out and reduce the scene to nice, clean actor's skill."

  She scowled. "Don't try to tell me that you won't prefer that."

  "I'd much rather act this role at arm's length," he agreed. "But will that give you the movie you want?"

  "What I don't want is a devil's advocate!"

  "Comes with the package, TLC." He gave her a wintry smile, then rose and left the gazebo while Greg prepared for the next take.

  She sat unmoving on the bench, mentally cataloguing the number of scenes between Sarah and Randall yet to come. If she ever came face-to-face with Jane Stackpole in the future, she'd throttle the girl with her bare hands.

  At least, she would if she managed to survive this movie.

  * * *

  By the end of the day, Kenzie felt as if he'd been drained dry and crushed for recycling. Each of the scenes between him and Rainey had required several takes, with the quality deteriorating every time. The first takes were invariably the best, but every one was wrenched painfully from his and Rainey's viscera.

  His mood was not improved when he returned to the pleasant country hotel that had been temporarily taken over by The Centurion. His efficient, unobtrusive assistant, Josh, had carefully laid that morning's edition of the Inquirer on the antique desk in Kenzie's sitting room. Blaring across the corner of the tabloid was a flash proclaiming, "Kenzie's Past Revealed!"

  Praying this was a false trail, he turned to the story inside. At the top was a sexy photo of Jenny Lyme looking misleadingly earnest and reliable. "Kenzie's longtime ladyfriend tells all!" If the Inquirer wasn't careful, they'd run out of exclamation points.

  Jenny's "revelations" were the tragic, colonial past she'd invented the night they had dinner. Though she mentioned that she was only making an educated guess, Nigel Stone was willing to race off with her speculations.

  He also managed to imply that Kenzie and Jenny had been lovers more or less continuously since their student days, including during his marriage, but once again the reporter avoided saying anything actually libelous. Kenzie tossed the newspaper aside. With any luck, Stone would follow that red herring off to Africa, and the newspaper campaign would gradually fade away.

  But he couldn't escape the uneasy feeling that his luck wouldn't be that good.

  Chapter 19

  Kenzie stood at attention as organ music rumbled through the church. The elaborate arrangements for Randall's wedding reminded him of why he'd asked Rainey to elope. If he'd had to go through these complications in real life, he'd have lost his nerve and bolted.

  Of course, even if he and Rainey had chosen a formal wedding, he wouldn't have received a personal message from Queen Victoria commending him for embracing wedded bliss, and looking forward to more fine sons to defend the Empire. Having been pressured to go through with the marriage by his beloved, both families, his sovereign, and the British press, John Randall was a basket case by the time his wedding arrived.

  Flower girls, bridesmaids, a maid of honor. It was the Victorians who'd invented the modern white wedding. They'd even started the custom of having the bride dressed in a gown that resembled a wedding cake.

  As the music crescendoed, Rainey appeared at the far end of the church aisle on the arm of Richard Farley, who looked mightily distinguished as her father. She was a beautiful bride, radiant with the absolute certainty usually found only in the very young. Kenzie forced himself into John Randall again.

  As he watched his bride approach, guilt almost overwhelmed him. He was filthy, tainted, unworthy of this bright, pure girl. Allowing this marriage to take place was criminal weakness. As he took her small hand and they pledged eternal vows, his mind and spirit were hammered by the dark drumbeats of despair.

  It was easy to express that. He'd felt the same at his own marriage.

  * * *

  The wedding scenes went so smoothly that there was time to return to Morchard House for more shooting. The production had made up the time lost in New Mexico, and gained a full day on the original schedule. To Rainey, having
a cushion of extra time was better than money in the bank, though she wouldn't have minded some of that, too.

  The wedding was followed by the wedding night. In an elaborately decorated bedroom, Sarah waited in a canopied bed, dressed in foaming layers of lace and virginal white silk sheer enough to hint at the equally virginal but eager body underneath.

  She sat against the pillows, fingers locked tensely as the minutes ticked away. Her mother had told her what to expect of her wedding night. Peculiar though marital activities sounded, Sarah trusted her husband to guide her. But where was he?

  She awoke from a doze with a start when he finally entered the bedroom. His hair and garments were subtly disheveled, his expression unbearably bleak.

  He swallowed hard before starting to speak unthinkable words. He'd been wrong to marry her, and they must seek an annulment. He'd take all the blame, and she'd be left unsullied, free to marry another man.

  Horrified, she slid from the bed and went to him, touching his chest as she begged for an explanation. His voice faltered, then died away as he stared down with hungry eyes. One shaking hand lifted to stroke her arm. Driven by Eve's instinct, she stood on her toes to kiss him.

  His control shattered and he pulled her down onto the bed, kissing her frantically, crushing her with his weight. Alarmed, she resisted in an unspoken plea for him to proceed more gently. He halted, face frozen, groaning, "May God forgive me!"

  He rolled from the bed and stumbled across the room. Folding to the floor, he wrapped his arms around his belly and retched violently.

  Kenzie was improvising again. Afraid to speculate what had inspired a gesture so powerful and disturbing, she joined him on the floor and drew him into her arms. Their wedding night faded out on the image of his head pressed against her silk-clad breasts as he wept with unholy despair.

  * * *

  By the time Rainey and Greg had all the coverage they needed for the wedding night scene, Kenzie's internal demons were out in full force, howling and slashing. Desperate to get away, he escaped from the house as soon as the shots were finished.

  He was halfway to the gardens when the assistant director intercepted him. "There may be time to set up and shoot another scene, Kenzie. Will you be in your trailer?"

  He bit back an oath. "If you want to shoot more, find another target." His assistant approached, but one look at Kenzie's face and Josh stopped dead in his tracks.

  Kenzie cut into the carefully manicured woods. He'd walked this way before and knew the path led to the farthest reaches of the private park. To solitude.

  Rainey had said that Randall's violently physical reaction to his wedding night was brilliant. Pure inspiration.

  Yet even as she praised his performance, Kenzie could see her worry about the murky depths that had spawned his inspiration. If only she knew.

  Thank God she didn't.

  He retched again as images of bare limbs and violated innocence swamped his mind. He clung to a tree, gasping for breath, until the cool air steadied his stomach, then he blindly continued along the path.

  The wedding night scene was bad enough, and worse was yet to come. He hadn't the faintest idea how he'd get through the rest of the movie. Inhabiting John Randall was chipping away at the defenses that made it possible for him to function.

  Rainey was right that this was the kind of role that won Oscars. John Randall was so tormented, so antiheroic, that the industry professionals who voted for the awards would be impressed at Kenzie's willingness to degrade himself so thoroughly

  It bloody well wasn't worth it for a stubby little statuette.

  Though John Randall was a neurotic mess, he was a better man than Kenzie Scott, because he'd tried to resist entering into a doomed marriage. If Kenzie had rejected the impulse to propose, he and Rainey could have gone their separate ways, perhaps met now and then with fondness instead of living in purgatory. We'll always have Paris. Or in this case, the Northern California coast.

  He reached the end of the path and found himself in a sunny clearing rimmed with flowers. In the center circular patterns were embossed in the turf. This must be the labyrinth Rainey had mentioned. What had she said? That it was a path to finding oneself.

  That was the last thing he needed—he knew who and what he was, and had spent a lifetime trying to bury that knowledge. He started to turn away, then remembered that she'd also said that walking a labyrinth was a way to find peace. That he could use.

  As he located the starting point, he wondered what one was supposed to do during a labyrinth walk. Pray? Meditate? Try to empty the mind, zen-style?

  He inhaled deeply several times, consciously letting go of the tension in his body. Then he started walking, looking downward to stay on the curving path. That simple act helped focus his mind and quiet his churning thoughts.

  His consciousness gradually narrowed down to the act of walking while physical awareness increased: the pulse of his blood, the steady pump of air in and out of his lungs, the woodland scents in his nostrils.

  By the time he reached the middle of the labyrinth, his demons had largely fallen silent. That was good enough. He knew they'd never go away entirely, for they were the forces that defined who he was.

  But he was also a survivor. Instead of self-destructing, he'd built a comfortable, satisfying life. Even achieved a bizarre degree of success. Every now and then the demons would wake and rip at him, but eventually they returned to their slumbers. They would this time as well. In a few weeks the Centurion shoot would be over, and he could go on to his next project. He'd never even have to watch the finished movie.

  Though he would miss Rainey bitterly, his life would be simpler. If there were none of the joyous highs he'd experienced with her, there would also be no crushing lows. He could have his comfortable, detached existence back.

  Feeling relatively peaceful, he exited the labyrinth, and looked up to see Rainey. Tension returned with a vengeance. Still dressed in her layered Victorian nightgown, Rainey sat on the grassy embankment with her knees drawn up and her arms crossed on top of them. She looked like a lost waif.

  A sexy lost waif. Despite his distress during the wedding night scene, his damned hormones had reacted to the fact that he'd been rolling around in a bed with the most desirable woman he'd ever known. "Have you come to find me, or lose yourself?"

  "Some of both. I was worried about you. Acting of that caliber comes out of one's marrow."

  "You were doing some high-octane acting yourself."

  "Which was why when I finished, I took one look at the paperwork Val had carefully laid out in my trailer, and decided to run away and hide. I can be a director, or an actress, but it's hard to be both at once."

  He prowled across the clearing, keeping his distance. "Are you glad or sorry to be making this movie?"

  After a long silence, she said, "Both."

  "Nothing like a definitive answer," he said dryly. "What was it about this particular story that made you so determined to make it?"

  Her lips twisted. "I have control-freak tendencies. You may have noticed."

  He had to smile. "I've noticed. So?'

  "This was a way of getting everything to come out right. The characters suffer a great deal, yet ultimately they not only survive, but are better, stronger people for what they've endured. They'll have a better, more honest marriage, too."

  The parallel to their own failed marriage was painfully obvious. Changing the subject, he asked, "Have you seen the latest Inquirer? I haven't yet."

  "Today's installment was pretty interesting. Nigel Stone had two photographs alleged to be you as a child."

  Shock jolted through him. "Did they look like me?"

  She shrugged. "The pictures showed a small, dark-haired boy with a face shaped approximately like yours and a hint of cleft in the chin. It could have been you, but it could have been any number of other men. The pictures were sent in by some fellow in Scotland who claims you're his long lost brother, Hugh MacLeod."

  He exhale
d with relief. "How did the man reach that conclusion?"

  "Apparently his brother joined the army, became an elite SAS operative, and was in a helicopter that crashed into the Persian Gulf during some sneaky operation. There was no body identified, so the brother suspects that Hugh MacLeod was rescued but lost his memory, and went on to Hollywood success."

  "It's a good story. What was Nigel Stone's take?"

  "He rather liked this because it explains why you're so cagey about your past—you don't remember it."

  "As I said, it's a good story. Tomorrow there may be one that's even better. Probably someone claiming I was born in Sherwood Forest and raised by wolves."

  Her brow furrowed. "Are there wolves in Britain? I thought they were wiped out centuries ago."

  "True, but saying I was raised by terriers wouldn't have the same effect."

  "I'm glad to see that you're recovering." She smiled, but it faded quickly. "Are you going to make it through to the end, Kenzie?"

  "I don't know," he said honestly. "If I had the sense God gave a sparrow, I'd walk off the set while I still have my sanity. But the tradition that the show must go on was thoroughly ingrained at RADA. Having started this project, I have a responsibility to finish it." His strongest identity was as an actor. Quitting in the middle of production would betray his self-image of being a consummate professional, and that would be even more destructive than inhabiting John Randall's scalding skin.

  "For the sake of the movie, I give thanks to RADA."

  He studied her pinched expression. "You don't look very relieved."

  "If you walked out, I'd be crazed, but a little relieved, too." She rested her chin on her crossed arms. "I don't want to be responsible for you having a nervous breakdown."

  "I'm going to be rotten company until shooting is finished, but I haven't lost my mind yet, and I don't think I will."

  "I'd like to believe you, but you're a mass of nerves. It's so unlike you to be pacing back and forth like a caged lion. You've always been so laid-back."