Honey Moon (24 page)

He grabbed her arm before she'd taken two steps. "Don't you walk away from me when I'm talking to you."

"Mount Rushmore finally wants to talk," she scoffed. "Well, forgive me very much, but I'm no longer in the mood to listen."

The stable hand was watching them curiously, so Dash pulled her toward the house. The moment they were out of sight of the paddock, he lit into her.

"I never thought I'd see the day when you'd misplace your integrity, but that's just what you're about to do. You seem to be losing all sight of who you are.

There's right and there's wrong, and you're not the kind of person who should be jumping into bed with somebody you don't love."

He spoke so fiercely that some of her anger faded. No one except Dash Coogan had ever given a damn about what she did. As she saw the lines concern had drawn in his face, her temper dwindled into a warm, cozy flame. Without thinking about what she was doing, she lifted her hand and flattened her palm against his shirt where she could feel his heart thudding beneath the damp cotton.

"I'm sorry, Dash."

He jerked away from her. "You should be. Start thinking before you jump into things. Think about the consequences."

The way he recoiled from her touch made her angry ail over again. "I'm going to the doctor for birth control pills," she shot back at him.

"You're what? You're doing what?" Before she could respond, he launched into a tirade about young people and sexual promiscuity and was so obviously outraged that she almost wished she hadn't baited him. Even so, she couldn't stop herself from prodding him further.

"I'm ready to have sex, Dash. And I'm not going to be casual about protecting myself."

"You're not ready, dammit!"

"How do you know? I think about it all the time. I'm—edgy."

"Edgy isn't the same thing as being in love, and that's the question you have to ask yourself. Are you in love?"

She gazed into those hazel eyes that had seen it all and the word yes sprang to her lips, only to be bitten back before it could escape. The truth she had been trying so hard to shut out of her conscious mind refused to be contained any longer. At some point along the way, without knowing exactly when it had happened, her child's love for Dash Coogan had changed into a woman's love.

The knowledge was new and old, wonderful and terrible. She couldn't meet his eyes so she gazed at the brim of his Stetson, just above his ear.

"I'm not in love with Scott," she said carefully, her voice sounding thin to her own ears.

"Then that should settle the issue."

"Were you in love with Lisa when you slept with her? Do you love those women who leave makeup smears in your bathroom sink?"

"That's different."

Heartsick, she turned away from him. "I'm going home."

"Honey, it really
is
different."

She looked back at him, but this time he was the one who wouldn't meet her eyes. He cleared his throat. "I'm sort of worn out when it comes to women. But it's not the same with you. You're young. Everything's new for you."

Her response was flat. "I haven't been young since I was six years old and I lost the only person who

ever loved me."

"You're not going to find love in some stranger's bed."

"Since I haven't been able to find it anyplace else, I guess I might as well give it a try." She shoved her hand in her pocket and pulled out her car keys, angry with herself for sounding so self-pitying.

"Honey—"

"Forget it." She began walking to her car.

"If you'd still like to make some lemonade, I wouldn't object."

She looked down at the keys in her palm and wanted to cry. "I'd better go. I've got some things to do."

It was the first time since they'd known each other that she was the one to walk away. As she looked back up, she saw that she had surprised him.

"You bought some new clothes."

"Liz and I have gone shopping a couple of times. She's making me over."

For some reason this seemed to reignite his anger, and his hazel eyes grew as hard as flints. "There

wasn't anything wrong with the way you were."

"It was time, that's all."

As she climbed behind the wheel of the car, he held on to the top of the door so she couldn't close it. "You want to drive over to Barstow with me on Friday? A friend of mine wants to show me some

quarter horses he's raising."

"Liz and I are going to the Golden Door for a week."

He looked at her blankly.

"It's a spa."

A muscle ticked in his jaw, and he released his hold on the door. "Well, now. I sure wouldn't want you

to miss an intellectual experience like that."

She started the car. Her tires spit gravel as she sped down the drive.

He stood in front of the house and watched until the rooster tail of dust grew too small to see. A spa. What in the goddamn hell had gotten into Liz, taking Honey to someplace like that? She was just a kid. Smaller than a peanut. Not even as old as his daughter.

And the thought of her in bed with some good-looking young stud fill him with rage.

He turned his back to the road and stalked toward the stable. He told himself it was natural to feel protective toward her. For the past three years, he had been the closest thing she'd had to a father, and

he didn't want to see her get hurt.

That was the reason he was upset. He cared about her. She was tough and fragile and funny. She had a conscience as big as all outdoors, and she was the most generous person he knew. Look at the way she treated that band of parasites she called a family. She was smart, too. Damn, she was smart. Good-hearted and optimistic, always certain there were at least three pots of gold at the end of every rainbow. But her optimistic nature made her vulnerable. He hadn't forgotten the crush she'd had on that bastard Eric Dillon, which was exactly why he didn't want to see her jumping into bed with the first young stud who caught her eye.

Now if the boy were somebody decent, someone who really cared about her and wasn't just looking to put a celebrity notch on his bedpost, he'd feel different. If she fell in love with somebody decent who would be good to her and not hurt her, he'd—

Smash the sonovabitch's face in.

The craving for a drink hit him hard. He pulled off his hat and wiped the sweat from his forehead with his shirtsleeve. He had just turned forty-three. He had three ex-wives and two kids. Already in his lifetime he'd lost more money than most people ever dreamed of making. Life had thrown him a second chance when he'd stopped drinking, but when it came to women there was an empty place inside him that had been formed when he was a child being moved from one family to another. He couldn't love the same way other men loved. Women wanted intimacy and fidelity from a man, qualities he had proven time and again that he couldn't give.

Disgusted, he slammed his hat back on. She was just like a pesky little termite, gnawing her way bit by bit through his different layers. But he couldn't deny that she made him feel young again. She made him believe that life still held possibilities. And he wanted her. Damn did he want her. But he'd put a bullet right through his brain before he'd let himself hurt that little girl.

* * *

"Lilly, sweetheart."

Eric watched Guy Isabella weaving through a rain forest of long silver streamers trailing from the huge crimson and black helium balloons that bobbed at the vaulted ceiling of his Bel Air home. Impeccably dressed in formal wear, he smiled at Lilly and then looked at Eric with distaste.

Obviously, Eric's tuxedo didn't make up for his stubbly jaw.

Everything about Lilly seemed to glow at the sight of her father. She hugged him and kissed his cheek. "Hi, Daddy. Happy birthday."

"Thank you, angel." Although he was speaking to his daughter, his attention was still on Eric.

"Daddy, this is Eric Dillon. Eric, my father."

"Sir." Eric carefully concealed his contempt as he shook Isabella's hand. Blond and boyishly handsome, both Guy Isabella and Ryan O'Neal had spent most of the seventies competing for many of the same roles. But O'Neal was a better actor, and from what Eric had heard, Guy had hated his guts ever since Love Story.

Guy Isabella represented everything Eric detested about motion picture actors.

He was a pretty face, nothing more. He was also said to have a problem with alcohol, although that might not be anything

more than rumor since Eric had also heard that he was a health nut. His worst sin in Eric's eyes was professional laziness. Apparently Isabella didn't think it was important to work at his craft, and now that he was pushing fifty and no longer capable of playing male ingenues, the parts were getting more difficult to come by.

"I saw that spy movie you made," Isabella said to him. "It was a little too gritty for my taste, but you did some fairly good work. I understand you're filming something new now."

Isabella's condescension set his teeth on edge. What right did an aging male bimbo have to pass judgment on his performance? Still, for Lilly's sake, he tempered his reply. "We finish shooting next week. It's gritty, too."

"Too bad."

Eric turned away to study the house. It was built in the style of a Mediterranean villa, but with a heavy Moorish influence that indicated it had been constructed in the twenties. The interior was dark and opulent. He could imagine one of the old silent-screen vamps being at home with the narrow stained-glass windows, arched doorways, and wrought-iron grillwork. The living room had priceless Persian rugs on

the floor, custom-made chairs with leopard-skin upholstery, and an antique samovar over the fireplace.

A perfect place for a man with a Valentino complex.

Isabella was still regarding Eric's unshaven jaw with disapproval. His cologne smelled heavily of musk, which mingled with the aroma of the whiskey in the heavy crystal tumbler he was carrying.

"I'll tell you what I like, Dillon. Your TV show. My people are trying to put together something like that for me, but you've got to have a special kid."

"Honey's hard to duplicate."

"Damn cute. She gets you right here, you know what I mean. Right in the heart."

"I know what you mean."

Isabella finally turned his attention to Lilly, who was dressed in pale raspberry silk and asymmetrical

silver jewelry. "So how's your mother, kitten?"

Lilly filled him in on the latest news from Montevideo, where her stepfather was ambassador, while Eric surveyed the gathering. It was an old Hollywood crowd made up of megastars from the fifties and sixties, former studio heads, agents. Everyone eminently respectable. He wouldn't have been caught dead here if it weren't for Lilly.

Tonight marked their third date, and he hadn't even kissed her. Not because he didn't desire her or because he was bored with her, but because he liked being with her so much. It was a new experience for him to be both physically and mentally attracted to a woman.

He and Lilly had so many things in common. Both of them had been raised in affluence. She knew art and literature, and she understood his passion for acting. She was an irresistible combination of beauty and brains, aloofness and sensuality. Even more important, she had an air of worldliness that allowed him to relax when he was with her instead of worrying that somehow he would hurt her.

"Isn't he wonderful?" she said as her father left to greet a guest.

"He's something, all right."

"Most divorced men would have passed their daughters off onto their ex-wives, but my mother was never very maternal and he was the one who raised me. It's the funniest thing, but in a way you remind me of him."

Eric reached for his cigarettes without comment. Lilly's relationship with her father was her one drawback, but he had to admire her filial loyalty.

"Of course, you're dark and he's blond," she went on. "But both of you belong in the Greek god category." She lifted a champagne glass from the tray of a passing waiter and gave him a mischievous smile. "Don't let this go to that swelled head of yours, but each of you has a certain—I don't know—an aura or something." She dipped the tip of her index finger into her champagne glass and then brought it

to her lips, where she sucked it. "Oh, sorry, you can't smoke in here."

He gazed around with irritation and saw that no one else was smoking. He remembered that Isabella was supposed to be a health nut. "Let's go outside then. I need a cigarette."

She began leading him along the limestone paved foyer to the back of the house. "You smoke too much."

"I'm quitting as soon as this movie's over."

"And the check's in the mail." She lifted one of her expressive eyebrows at him.

He smiled. She never

let him get away with bullshit, another thing he liked about being with her.

He gazed up at the coffered ceiling. "How long has your father lived here?"

"He bought the house right after he and my mother were married. Louis B.

Mayer used to own it, or

King Vidor. Neither of them remembers which one."

"Sort of a weird place to grow up."

"I guess."

She led him into the kitchen where she nodded absentmindedly at the help before she took him out through a service door. The grounds, lush with mature vegetation, sloped sharply in the back. Water splashed gently in a hexagonal-shaped fountain covered in blue-and-yellow-patterned tiles. He caught the scent of eucalyptus, roses, and chlorine.

"I want to show you something." Lilly was whispering, even though the grounds were deserted. He lit

his cigarette. She danced ahead of him down along a curved path that ran roughly parallel to the house, her silver-blond hair flying, her skirt swirling around her long legs. He grew aroused just watching her. She was beautiful, but not fragile. And definitely not an innocent.

Recessed lights hidden in the landscaping softly illuminated the leafy branches of the magnolia and olive trees they passed. As the slope grew steeper and the red-tiled roof of the house slipped out of sight, she turned back and took his arm. They rounded a curve and another house came into view—a tiny replica of Snow White's cottage.