One Night With You (13 page)

"Hide what feelings?" Desi said. What feelings had Dorothea seen with her sharp black eyes? Which of hers hadn't she been able to hide? What feelings had Jake shown besides the coldness and the polite indifference that was all Desi could see?
Were
there others? Could there possibly be others?

Jake's voice floated in to them over the noise of the rain coming down, hard now, on the metal roof. "Damn it! Where is Weston?" they heard him bellow. "I need her. Now." There was the loud, resounding bang of a door.

Desi hurried from the warm, dry haven of Dorothea's trailer and ran across the wet, slippery pavement to Jake's. She turned the door handle and stepped inside without bothering to knock. Jake, after all, was expecting her.

"Glad you decided you could make it," he said, standing as he pulled up the zipper of a pair of blue dress slacks.

Desi stood stock-still in the open doorway, staring at him. Obviously he was changing into costume for the next scene. Obviously he had only gotten as far as the slacks. His feet, beneath the hem of the blue pants, were bare and his chest was bare, too. Desi gulped, a sudden vision of the last time she had seen him so scantily clothed flashing through her mind.

He had been standing in the soft light of the morning sun as it filtered through a curtained window, quietly pulling on his clothes, trying not to wake her up. But she had been startled awake in spite of his efforts. More from the sense of being alone in the bed than by any noise he might have made.

She had reached for him in her sleep, coming abruptly awake when her arms clasped only emptiness.
He's gone
, had been her first panic-stricken thought as she lay there dreading to open her eyes.
It's Sunday morning and he's gone. Without a word. Without even saying goodbye.

"Jake." Her voice was soft, the word almost a moan, and tears pressed against her closed eyelids.

"Go back to sleep," she heard him say quietly. "It's too early for you to get up."

Her eyes flew open, focusing blindly on him as he came around the side of the bed. The sun, she remembered, had made a flickering pattern on his bare arms and shoulders as it streamed through the loose-weave curtains of their hotel room.

"Jake." The word was a soft exclamation of joy. She sat up in the middle of the big bed, heedless of the blankets that fell away from her. "I thought you'd gone."

"Not yet." He sat down on the edge of the bed, his hands moving to rub lightly up and down her bare arms. "But soon. My plane leaves at 8:30."

"What time is it now?"

He glanced at the digital clock on the nightstand, his hands never leaving her arms. "Six."

"Then you have two and a—" she'd begun, and then stopped. No, she would not keep him. She knew he had to leave this morning. It was no surprise. He was due on location. He had to leave.

"Plenty of time," she heard him say softly. His voice had the lush, sensuous quality of a purring cat. No, a purring tiger. And his eyes—those dark, dangerous, mesmerizing eyes—were devouring her. "Plenty of time," he repeated.

Fascinated, she watched his eyes as his hands caressed the curves of her shoulders and neck. She felt his fingers whisper along the nape of her neck, his thumbs making slow, small circles just in front of her ears at the point where the delicate line of her jaw began. His eyes were hot, hot and burning with desire. His hands were hot, too, against her pale, willing flesh.

"Mmm, that feels good," she murmured. Her eyes closed and her head dropped back, like a flower too heavy for the fragile stem of her neck, inviting further pleasures.

Jake took the offered pleasures, ravishing her neck and shoulders and breasts with tender hands and a hot, avid mouth. And then he gave the pleasures back tenfold with the thrust of his body. She had gone to sleep again, after their lovemaking, with her cheek against his chest and his hand slowly stroking her hair. When she woke for the second time that morning, he was gone.

"Close the door, Weston, before it's as wet in here as it is outside," Jake ordered.

Desi snapped back to the present with a start, her delicate complexion flushed with betraying color. She let the trailer door swing shut. "Sorry," she said, her voice low, her eyes looking anywhere but at him.

"Come on, Weston, get to it."

She looked up to see him sitting in front of the lighted makeup mirror. There was a white towel slung around his neck, startling against the bronze glow of his bare arms and the black mat of his hair-covered chest.

"We haven't got all day." His voice held the snap of impatient authority.

Desi nodded silently and hefted her makeup case up onto the counter, snapping it open with nervous fingers.

Stop it, she told herself sternly, rummaging around, head down, among the various pots and tubes for the appropriate Pan-Cake color. She'd made up his face innumerable times in the past two months. There was nothing different about this time. Nothing.

But, much as she tried to convince herself otherwise, there
was
something different about it. She was more aware of him... No, call it by what it was. She
wanted
him more than she ever had. She burned for him. She ached. She was, she realized, literally shaking with the force of her desire.

"Are you all right?" She heard Jake's concerned voice through a fog. "Desiree?"

She looked up at that, a makeup brush slipping from her nerveless fingers. He had called her Desiree.

Their eyes touched. Held.

"You're not coming down with Dorothea's cold, are you?" he asked, but his eyes held a different question. "You look flushed." His fingertips touched her cheek gently.

She closed her eyes against the question in his, shaking her head. "No." The words were barely audible. "I'm fine."

His fingers moved from her cheek, brushing an errant strand of hair behind her ear. "Desiree," she heard him say again and then, as if he couldn't help himself, he slipped his hand to her nape and drew her face down to his.

The touch of his lips was so tender, so incredibly sweet, so eager Desi was overwhelmed by the tentative stirrings of hope. He had kissed her like this before. He had touched her face, just so, before. Maybe he wasn't as indifferent to her as she had thought. Maybe.

Then she ceased to think at all as the tenderness of his kiss turned to passion. Desi took fire immediately, her body feeling as if it was going up in flames, and she made no protest when he drew her closer. And closer still, until she was standing between his legs.

"Jake," she breathed when he released her lips. "Jake..." Her voice deserted her as his mouth traveled down the column of her neck and she couldn't form the words she had meant to say. She couldn't even remember what she wanted to say.

"I've thought about you," he whispered, his voice muffled against the softness of her breast. "About how you taste." He nibbled at her collarbone. "How you feel." His hands smoothed down her back, pressing her hips forward into his aroused body. Desi moaned softly. "About the little sounds you make." One hand touched the braid that fell down her back. "I've imagined your hair spread out on my pillow."

"Oh, Jake." She couldn't believe this was happening, that he was holding her, kissing her, loving her again. It was exactly as she had imagined it would be, dreamed it would be. Jake holding her tenderly as he declared his love.

Only, she realized suddenly, he hadn't said he loved her. He wanted her. And she hadn't said anything because—face it—she was afraid he wouldn't want to hear what she had to say to him.

He wanted her. She wanted him. It should be easy, it
would
be easy to fall into bed with him again, to give in to what they both wanted. But nothing had changed, not really. She still hadn't... wouldn't... couldn't tell him about Stephanie. And he had said, hadn't he, that first day on the set, that he wanted no emotion, no feelings? If that was true, then what was this? Just physical? She couldn't do just physical again. Could she?

Oh, she was so confused.

And so weak.

Because if he pressed her now she would give in to him, give in to herself.

"Jake." She put her hands on his shoulders, pushing herself away from him the tiny fraction that his encircling arms would allow. "Jake. The crew's waiting, and I haven't made up Audrey yet."

Almost immediately, as she had feared, he let her go. If he had
felt
anything for her—anything besides physical desire—he wouldn't have let her go so easily.

"You're right," he said a little raggedly. "This isn't the time for indulging myself."

His put his hands on her hips and put her away from him, gently, but firmly and with a frightening finality.

"Let's just forget that this happened. It was a little madness on my part." He rubbed one hand across his face in a gesture of weariness or resignation. Desi couldn't tell which. "A little flight of fantasy." He looked into her face, his eyes unreadable. "You'd better go do Audrey. Tell her I kept you if she gives you any grief."

Chapter 7

"Well, you finally decided to show up," Audrey snapped as Desi pushed open the trailer door. "Where have you been for the last hour?"

"Sorry, Audrey," was all she said as she swiftly, if somewhat shakily, began to redo the makeup that would help to transform Audrey Ferris from a contemporary woman of the eighties into the audacious flapper that had been Dorothea Heller in the Roaring Twenties.

"More kohl," Audrey ordered, almost automatically. She said that no matter how much black liner Desi had used.

"You're going to have to put that cigarette down, Audrey," she said calmly, ignoring the complaint about the kohl as she held a lipstick brush ready in her hand.

Audrey took one more long drag on the cigarette before finally crushing it in the abalone-shell ashtray in front of her.

Desi suppressed the urge to smear the brilliant red lipstick all over the other woman's face... to run screaming from the trailer and never come back. Audrey's attitude, coming on top of what had just happened in Jake's trailer, was almost too much.

Audrey wasn't worth it, she told herself, breathing deeply to calm the turmoil that raged inside of her. She was not worth it. Stifling a sigh, Desi skillfully painted on the exaggerated Clara Bow mouth that had been considered so sexy during the twenties.

Someone tapped on the door. "Two minutes, Miss Ferris," a voice said.

Desi deftly penciled in a beauty mark just under the actress's left eye, then stepped back to survey her work. "Finished," she said. "You look stunning." Audrey always looked stunning. She would be beautiful no matter what style of makeup she wore, Desi thought.

Audrey stood up, running a professional eye over her mirrored reflection. "Thanks, Weston." She tossed the words over her shoulder as she left the trailer.

Ah well
, Desi thought, shrugging at her reflection in the mirror,
that's the way it goes
. The face that stared back at her was even paler than usual, the eyes seeming almost too big for her face, the lips colorless and pinched looking.

"You look sick," she said to her reflection.

"Well, I am," her reflection seemed to answer her. "Sick and tired of this whole mess. Sick and tired of pretending that I don't feel anything. Sick and tired of working on this lousy picture! Of Jake! Of Audrey! Of everything!" She stared into her own eyes. "I should just quit. Just pack up and walk off."

But she knew she wouldn't. There was too much at stake... the professional reputation that she had strived so hard to make for herself, her film credit, her future.

Oh, why did I let that kiss happen? Why did I have to make it harder on myself?
Because now it would be. Every time she had to do his makeup she'd think of...
No, I won't!
she told herself.
Oh, yes, you will
, said a little knowing voice inside her.
All he has to do is look at you like that... touch you....

Why
had
he touched her, she wondered then.
No emotion
, he had said. But what had happened in his trailer if not emotion? Raw, powerful, consuming emotion. She felt absolutely sure that Jake's passion had been real. He had wanted her as intensely as she wanted him. But—what was that he had said?

This isn't the time for indulging myself.

What had he meant by that, she asked herself. Other words, other things he had said began flashing through her confused mind.

What is important is this film. I won't let anything stand in my way. Not personalities, not emotions.

He seemed to think she would get in the way of his making this film. And, if he did think that,
why
?

She looked at her face in the mirror for a few seconds more, as if the answers to her questions might be found there, and then turned and went outside to watch the filming of the next scene.

Jake and Audrey—or rather, Richard and Dorothea—stood under the overhang of one of the big gray warehouses on the south end of the wharf. She was gesturing wildly, trying desperately to explain something to the man who stood there glowering at her, his arms folded across his big broad chest.