Reilly's Return (10 page)

Reilly wore an expression of outrage. “It’s none of your bloody business what’s risin’.”

Marlene ignored his outburst and turned toward Jayne with a shrewd expression. “You’ve got your hands full, honey.”

“Don’t remind me,” Jayne grumbled.

“I’d love to read your palm sometime,” Wanda
said in a husky voice, reaching out toward Reilly’s hand. She had inch-long blood-red nails and a ring shaped like a spider.

Wide-eyed, Reilly squeezed away from the wall and dodged Wanda and Marlene. He grabbed Jayne by the arm and dragged her a few feet away, all the while keeping a wary eye on his attackers. Marlene looked like an upright freezer with a fading blond braid. He’d seen less formidable foes in tag-team wrestling matches. And Wanda was enough to give Vincent Price the shivers.

“Reilly, I like having
two
arms,” Jayne protested, squirming in his grasp.

He loosened his hold, but didn’t let go. His eyes blazed like sapphires. His square jaw jutted forward aggressively, showing off the cleft in his chin. “Everyone in this bloody town is cracked. That’s it, ain’t it? Psychics and palmists. Everythin’ here is turned around back to front and upside down. It’s just like in that movie where all them wives turned out to be witches, ain’t it?”

“Oh, calm down,” Jayne said. She smoothed her hands down the arms of his jacket, subtly aware of the hard muscled strength beneath the battered leather. “Marlene didn’t hurt you. She was just reading your aura. I told you it was a very sensual experience.”

“Superstitious rot,” he grumbled. “Scared the bloody bejeepers out of me, she did.”

He straightened his broad shoulders, tugging down the waistband of his jacket as if resettling the cloak of his dignity. Indignant, he gave Jayne a sideways look. “She touched my aura. Here I was, savin’ myself for you. Now I feel cheap and tawdry.”

He was putting her on. The realization struck Jayne with a burst of good humor and a touch of uneasiness. He’d shifted gears so smoothly, she hadn’t even noticed.

She gave him a look and called out, “Places, everyone! We’re going to walk through the first act. That’s called blocking. I want you to follow your scripts, read your lines on cue, and move where I tell you to move. Don’t worry about doing it perfectly.” She smiled beguilingly at her amateur actors. “Remember the main reason we’re here—to have fun!”

Cybill, who had the lead role, not only forgot to have fun, she forgot how to speak. The woman opened her mouth for her first line and nothing came out but a mouselike squeak. After the third try, she turned to Jayne, purple with embarrassment, tears pooling in her eyes, and murmured, “I guess I’m a little nervous.”

“Honey, there’s nothing to be nervous about,” Jayne assured her, patting her arm. She didn’t miss Cybill’s furtive glances at Reilly, who was lounging offstage since his first appearance in the story didn’t happen until midway through the first act. A pang of sympathy ran through her. She certainly knew what it was to lose all sense in Reilly’s presence. Poor Cybill had been literally struck dumb by the mere sight of the superstar.

Reilly seemed to understand it as well. He pushed himself out of his chair, crossed the stage, took Cybill by the arm, and led her a couple of steps toward stage left. Jayne thought the woman looked ready to faint dead away, but Reilly appeared unconcerned.

“Everybody gets nerves from time to time, luv,” he said gently, smiling down indulgently into her adoring gaze. “All you have to do is remember how simple this is. You get cast for a part, you read the lines, do what the director says. It’s simple.” He gave her a conspiratorial wink and nodded toward Jayne. “Mind you, don’t let the boss know how simple it is. She’s liable to replace us with trained monkeys.”

Cybill’s frigid fear dissolved into nervous giggles.

Jayne felt her heart melt into a gooey puddle in her chest. How sweet of Reilly to set Cybill’s self-conscious
fears aside. Most of the actors she’d known were too wrapped up in their own insecurities to worry about anyone else’s.

She thanked him with a private little look as he sauntered by on his way back to the wings. He slowed his stride just enough to murmur, “Thank me later,” in a black satin whisper. Fanning herself with her script, Jayne turned back to the actors onstage.

This time when Cybill opened her mouth, her line came out. It was wavy and warbly, but the next one was better, and the one after that was pretty good. The first scene proceeded without a hitch. Midway through the second scene Reilly made his first appearance.

It was worse than an E. F. Hutton commercial, Jayne thought. The only sound was the distant clank of the building’s ancient heating system. Every eye in the place was glued to Reilly—Reilly, who suddenly looked a little pale beneath his tan. She watched him closely herself, but for very different reasons from those of the rest of the cast and crew.

Something was wrong. She could feel it. She could sense it in the way he moved. His fluid, athletic grace had fled. A muscle twitched in his jaw.
He plowed through his first nine lines with all the finesse of a bear dancing in high heels.

No one else seemed to notice his lack of grace and style, probably because their own performances were devoid of either quality. But they were amateurs in their first play. Jayne didn’t expect them to be anything other than awkward. Reilly, on the other hand, was a world-class talent, and she was a world-class critic.

“Let’s take a coffee break, everybody,” she said as Reilly ended the act on a note that, to Jayne, was as flat as an anvil. She almost winced when he delivered it. “There’s coffee and cookies backstage.”

As the others gravitated toward the coffee maker, Jayne pulled Reilly aside. “Is something wrong?”

Nerves gelled into a lump in his stomach. She’d seen it. She’d found him out. He should have known this would happen. If anyone could spot him for a no-talent phony, Jayne could. He must have been temporarily insane to volunteer to be in a play she was directing.

“What?” he asked defensively, suddenly angry with her for her oft-stated opinion of his meager talent. He felt an instinctive need to lash out, and Jayne was destined to get the brunt of it. She was
the root of all his problems—the object of his desire had been his best friend’s wife, a woman now bent on keeping a distance between them, a woman now directing this bloody play. “What? I didn’t dazzle you? As if I ever could.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Don’t expect anything more here than you see on the screen, Jayne.”

Jayne felt as if she’d just walked in on the middle of a foreign film; nothing he was saying made any sense to her. “I just thought you seemed a little tense, that’s all.”

A gross understatement if ever there was one, she thought. Reilly looked like a human time bomb about to go off. He loomed over her, the tension vibrating in the air around him.

He spoke from between clenched teeth. “Lack of sex. Care to do anything about that, sheila?”

Jayne scowled at him, crossing her arms over the front of her plum-colored sweater. Her booted toe tapped impatiently against the worn wooden floor of the stage. “You blame everything on a lack of sex. I swear, if you went bald overnight, you’d blame it on a lack of sex.”

“Yeah, and it’d be true. I would’a torn it all out by the roots.”

“Well, maybe you should channel some of that
pent-up energy into your acting, because what you’re giving me here is flat,” she said, hoping to goad him into performing.

Her strategy worked a little too well. Reilly hooked an arm around the small of her back and hauled her up against his body. Her eyes widened at the feel of him as her hips pressed against his.

“Luv,” he said on a growl, his mouth just inches from hers, “believe me, what I want to give you is definitely not flat.”

“You are an absolute vulgarian.” Her words were as stiff as her body in his arms as she fought the urge to melt against him.

“I’m a man, Jaynie. A man has needs … just like a woman does. Tell me you don’t need it, Jaynie,” he demanded softly, his tone of voice a lesson in seduction. Of its own volition his free hand came up to comb her wild hair back from the delicate line of her cheek. “Tell me you haven’t lain in bed every night for the past year aching for it the way I have.”

He could tell by the flare of desire in her eyes she had. Her body betrayed her if her words didn’t. The longing was there in those obsidian depths, just beneath surprise. “Yeah, I’ve waited that long, Jaynie,” he admitted. “I’ll warn you—I’m not inclined to wait much longer.”

The fine trembling that coursed through her was an intoxicating mix of fear and anticipation. Jayne stared up at him with doe eyes, the coward in her wishing she could be anywhere else in the universe. But along with the fear and the anticipation was a dark sense of inevitability. She couldn’t be anywhere else in the universe because what had begun between her and Pat Reilly while she’d been MacGregor’s wife was far from over.

The noisy return of the cast broke the spell that had wound around them. Reilly released her and strode away. Without a word to anyone he headed for the coffeepot with his hands in his pockets, hoping to disguise his state of burgeoning arousal.

The plan to woo Jayne slowly was shot to hell now, but then he’d never been much for plans anyhow. His impulsiveness just now had gotten more of a reaction out of Jayne than three days of playing the gentleman had. They were never going to find out anything about what could be between them if they went about this Jayne’s way, he reflected as he poured himself a cup of coffee and added gagging doses of sugar and cream.

She was trying to protect herself, he thought as he absently chose a cookie and nibbled on it. He could understand that. He could understand it, but he damn well wasn’t going to allow her to do it.

Jayne resumed her role of director, congratulating herself on a stellar performance. Inwardly, she was a jumble of raw emotions and painful doubts. Outwardly, she appeared to be confident and cheerful, if a little subdued. Ignoring Reilly’s uninspired performance, she took her amateur thespians through Act Two with quiet competence. All went well enough until they reached the pivotal scene between the heroine, Desiree Angel, and her hero, Wilson Mycroft.

It was the first really emotional scene between the two lead characters, the first scene where they actually touched each other. They took their places, standing beside the brass bed. Reilly put his arm around Cybill’s shoulders, keeping a discreet distance between them. Knowing what was in store, Cybill took one look up into Reilly’s famous blue eyes and went mute again. Jayne frowned and nibbled on her thumbnail, at a loss as to how to handle the situation.

“She’s not exactly Meryl Streep, is she?” Candi murmured. She stood beside Jayne, one hand braced against her aching back, one rubbing her protruding belly. “I’d volunteer to take the part, but I don’t think I could get close enough to him.”

Jayne gave her a wry look. “I’m afraid you wouldn’t be very believable as a virginal ingenue.”

“No,” Candi said with a snort. “But at least I can talk.”

“Jayne, I can’t do this,” Cybill whispered, her voice trembling with desperation. She had abandoned Reilly and now grabbed onto Jayne’s arm with a death grip. “That’s Pat Reilly. The script says I’m supposed to
kiss
Pat Reilly!”

Jayne heaved a sigh. “Cybill, honey, he’s just a man.”

Cybill was astonished. “Jayne, are you out of your mind? Rodney Povich at the hardware store is just a man. My husband is just a man.” She jerked her thumb in Reilly’s direction. “That’s
Pat Reilly.”

Jayne’s shoulders drooped in defeat. Candi gave her an I-told-you-so look.

“Why don’t you walk through it with me, Jaynie,” Reilly suggested, his tone thick with dangerous undercurrents. “Show Cybill what a snap it is.”

Jayne glared at him. He was being obnoxious in the extreme. She was beginning to regret her dream come true of directing him. He’d been subtly difficult ever since his first scene. He wasn’t giving her even a small sampling of the talent she knew he possessed, the talent she had been so determined to bring out. If anything, he seemed to be fighting it—fighting her—and she was darn
near ready to give him a swift kick in the seat of his well-worn, indecently snug jeans.

“All right,” she said tightly, picking up her script as if it were a gauntlet he’d thrown down.

She took her place before him, standing beside the fancy brass bed. He pulled her much too close and looked down at her, his eyes blazing with challenge and belligerence and barely leashed passion. A strange recklessness tilted her chin up, and her mahogany-fire hair spilled down her slender back and over Reilly’s arm.

“Put a little something into it this time,” she suggested beneath her breath.

“Oh, I’d be glad to, luv,” he muttered, his eyes flashing at her unintentional double entendre.

“Wilson,” Jayne began, thankful she had memorized most of the play, since she couldn’t pull her eyes away from Reilly long enough to read her lines, “how am I supposed to quit this life? I need the money. If I leave Lucky Louie’s now, Aunt Mabel and Aunt Catonia will lose their home. They’ll be thrown out in the street.”

“I’ll help you, Desiree,” Reilly said stiffly.

“How can you help? You dress up in a chicken suit and pass out handbills on the sidewalk. Don’t tell me—that’s just a hobby. You’re really the third-wealthiest man in America.”

“No, I’m not. But I’d be the richest man in the world if only I could have your love, Desiree.”

As directed in the script, Reilly gazed down into Jayne’s eyes and the earth shifted suddenly beneath his feet. His anger vaporized, slipped through his grasp like smoke. The tension that had had him in its grip since his first line of the evening melted. Awareness of his surroundings dimmed. His focus was wholly on Jayne, on the feel of her in his arms, on the way the light turned her hair to a nimbus of dark garnet around her head.

This was what he wanted. This was what he had craved for so long—to hold her in his arms like this. When she was this close, his heart pounded in a rhythm he didn’t recognize, and his head filled with cotton wool. She was so pretty, so feminine with the wide ivory lace collar of her sweater framing her slender shoulders. And there wasn’t a reason in the world she couldn’t be his.