Sapphire and Shadow (A Woman's Life) (5 page)

Determined, she parked the leased vehicle behind the huge building and slipped inside the sound stage. The dimness enveloped her and she took a moment to let her eyes adjust before finding someone to give her directions.

Johanna saw him from a distance, his head bent close to the script girl’s and she couldn’t help wondering if the buxomy redhead had entertained her husband last night. The woman wore a tight skirt and looked like his type. Young and eager and available.

With deliberate force, Johanna pushed the thought out of her mind. She hadn’t driven here on a journey that confused her in a car she detested to confront her husband with accusations and recriminations. She had come with her heart in her hand to start out fresh, to be the supportive wife the way she always felt she was. Paul was somewhere over the ocean, flying home and Harry had lost his best man. He was going to need her now more than ever. Maybe he’d finally realize that.

The sound stage was thick with people all hurrying off somewhere else. Carefully, Johanna tried to pick her way through the tangle of cable wires that snaked their way across the huge floor. The area was humming with carpenters and technicians getting in each others’ way. Sets were being created out of nothing, illusions formed that lived and died in a moment. There was a vitality here. It was, she thought, not unlike the very act of creation. Something would come from all this, something large and full with a beginning and an end and people would pay to see it. She was proud of what her husband did, proud of him. At least, she had been.

Johanna kept her eyes on Harry as she made her way forward. Suddenly, there was a shout behind her and a rumbling noise. Johanna felt herself being physically thrown against the wall. Her body was pressed hard against it and there was no room for movement, scarcely room for breath. She was surrounded by a tall, hard male body. Startled, disoriented, hardly knowing what to say or think, Johanna tried to raise her head up. The wind was almost gone from her lungs, but she managed to gasp out. “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Sorry, luv, but your head’s far too pretty to be separated from your shoulders.”

And then Johanna did look up, up into the softest brown eyes she had ever seen. The stranger made absolutely no movement to back away and she felt his rather intense reaction to her. It was startling and at the same time, oddly exhilarating. The grin on his face told her that he wasn’t embarrassed by it.

She knew she should have been, but she wasn’t either. That in itself embarrassed her.

Chapter Five

There was something forceful and yet gentle in the way he held her. She felt protected, yet there was a tingling, alert sensation running through her entire body that definitely didn’t allow her to relax. Something was happening here.

Johanna gathered her wits about her and looked up at the stranger’s face. She thought his manner was at odds with the impression the rest of him created. The dichotomy she sensed in his actions was intensified by what she saw in his face. Overall, it was a strong, manly face. But the eyes, the eyes gave him a kind, sensual appearance. He had large, expressive, inquisitive brown eyes framed with long dark lashes. Amused eyes. Dangerous eyes. And yet, somehow, young eyes.

But even with those eyes, he appeared to be someone powerful, someone strong. Someone who would always stand his ground. It was in the square cut of his jaw, the wide, sturdy planes and angles of his face. The confident air of his body.

“Wouldn’t want you to be hurtin’ yourself, luv,” he repeated. The definite lilt of a cockney accent flirted with the deep strains of his voice. There was a definite appreciation of the situation—and of her—as well as a concern in his eyes.

A crowd was quickly forming around them. Johanna was just beginning to realize how close she had come to being seriously injured by a piece of scenery as it was lowered into place.

Her eyes grew wide as she looked at it now and the near miss settled into her awareness. “Oh,” was all she could manage. She just stood there, unable to think of anything else to say. She didn’t know if her reaction was caused by the fear of being hurt, or the sensation of having his body pressed so closely up against hers.

“Would’ve been a mite more than the word ‘oh’ if that thing had hit you, luv.”

He inclined his head as he spoke, but made no effort to release her. There was a twinkle in his eyes. On someone else, it might have been interpreted as a leer. But on this man it qualified as a twinkle. Whether it was harmless or not she had yet to determine.

“You ought to know better than to be walkin’ round without lookin’, luv.” The open face sported a huge smile as he looked at her, one of his hands braced on the wall above her head. “I haven’t seen you around before. You new?”

Johanna put her hands on his arms and with a bit of reluctance created some space between them. Hard. Firm. Something apart from her consciousness was pleasured.
 

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, pawing my wife!” Harold bellowed. Oblivious to what had almost happened to her, he came charging at them.

Johanna immediately felt a pain in her temples. Harry made her feel so tense lately. With a sinking feeling, she knew a scene was coming.

The stranger took a cautious step back, his hands raised high in the air. It was clear that he was surprised and that he would leave the explaining up to her. But there was no sign of intimidation in his manner. She liked that. Harry, she knew, didn’t. If he couldn’t frighten, couldn’t bully, he took the absence of these reactions as a threat to his position.

“He just saved my life,” Johanna answered quickly, the nervous agitation still in her voice. “That backdrop—“ She pointed at it as she let her voice trail off. It was still swaying.

“Well, what are you doing wandering around here anyway?” Harry raged. He was annoyed at having his set disrupted in this manner. It seemed harder and harder to get things together these days.

She had gotten more attention, more expression of concern from a stranger, she thought. She felt color rise to her face and she damned Harry for it.

“Looking for a way to make you a widower,” Johanna snapped before she knew she was going to say anything. The crowd had stepped back, clearing room for the three main players in the center.

Johanna turned slightly and saw the look the young props carpenter gave her. She wasn’t sure if there was sympathy or pity in his eyes, but she wanted neither. Johanna ignored Harold and put her hand out to the stranger. “Thank you, Mr. —“

“Reed.” The grin was wide, guileless and strictly for her. “Tommy Reed. Just Tommy.”

Johanna was looking at Harry, yet sensed Tommy’s long, appraising, approving look as it touched all parts of her. For a moment, just for a moment, she forgot that Harold was there, or rather, that he was already walking off, leaving her behind. Perhaps that was why she appreciated Tommy’s look so much. It had been a long time since she had felt so feminine, so much like a woman. Harold made her feel like a beggar, old, haggard, and unappealing.

The look in Tommy’s eyes was not one reserved for a haggard old woman. It was clearly sexual, even if he had no idea that it was there, and she suspected that he might. She nestled the kernel of pleasure it created to her breast and smiled at him again.

“Thank you, ‘just Tommy.’”

“My pleasure, luv.” He nodded his head and returned to work. The others in the crowd gradually melted away and the din of work resumed.

She stood still a moment. She had come to talk to Harry and should be following him. Yet she watched the tall, muscular young man as he picked up the toolbox he had dropped when he had hurled himself against her and pressed her to the wall. The muscles of his shoulders rippled beneath the washed out blue tee-shirt.

Abruptly, she turned and walked after Harold, taking much more care as she picked her way across the heavily littered stage. Harold looked unapproachable, angry, not like a man whose wife had just been saved from injury but a man who was annoyed at the very reminder that he had a wife.

Johanna wet her lips. “Harry?”

“I’ll talk to you later, Michelle,” he said to the script girl.

The redhead literally glided away. Johanna didn’t miss the guilty look Michelle had on her face.

“Are you through ogling the hired help?” Harold demanded coldly, his voice low, but not low enough. He jerked his thumb in Tommy’s direction.

She opened her mouth to defend herself, but knew it would be useless. Better to ignore his remark. Otherwise they would be involved in another circuitous argument that had no resolution, no end. Besides, she knew that he was only trying to divert her attention, accusing her of what he was guilty of himself.

“I didn’t come all the way out here to argue with you, Harold.”

He glared in Tommy’s direction. “No, it looked like you came here to take your pick of the litter.”

The words hurt, even after all this time, even though he hadn’t touched her in so many long, lonely months. How could he have once loved her and think that of her now?

“He just saved me from getting hurt, that’s all. Can’t you be grateful for that?”

His eyes cut her to ribbons. “I think you’re grateful enough for both of us.”

He began to walk away. The two leads were rehearsing a scene and he wanted to listen in. He had no doubts that it wouldn’t go right without him.

Momentarily, she thought of giving it all up. But she hadn’t come all this way, hadn’t flown over the ocean to begin with, to run off now with her tail between her legs. She put her hand on his arm, taking a firm hold. “Harry, I want to talk to you.”

He stood still, enduring her hold, enduring her. “Can’t it wait until I get back to the hotel?”

She hated that tone he used. “I was waiting until you got back to the hotel. Except you never got back to the hotel last night.”

“So you brought your fight here.” He threw up his hands, ever on the defensive. “That’s all I need, for you to act the part of the irate wife.”

Johanna gritted her teeth together, keeping her voice down. She hated scenes, hated people looking at them so knowingly.

“No one has more cause than I do.”

Damn, this wasn’t going the way she wanted it to.

Johanna saw hatred in Harry’s face. He gestured toward the back where Tommy was working. “So go throw yourself into young Galahad’s arms and get your revenge. I don’t doubt you’ve been doing that with enough other men behind my back.”

She wanted to strike him and curled her fingers into her hands. “There have been no men behind your back or anywhere else. That’s what I came to tell you, damn you. I love you.” He was doing it to her again, making her lose control, stoking her anger when all she wanted to do was to forge a truce.

The condescending look on his face told her that he didn’t believe her. “A wife who’s been faithful doesn’t have to go reassuring her husband that she hasn’t done anything.” He was twisting things around. He always was good with words.

The words poured out before she could stop them. “She does if her husband’s a paranoid coke snorting son of a bitch.”

He turned his back on her, rigid, cold. “I’ve got work to do.”

Again she took hold of him, but this time, he shook her hand from his arm. “This is more important, Harry. This is about us.”

He whirled around, fire in his eyes. She didn’t know him. “There’s nothing more important than the success of this film, do you hear me? Nothing!”

Johanna closed her eyes and let the air out of her lungs slowly as she slid down into a seat. If she didn’t sit, she’d fall. It was as if she had just lost the power to move.

“I guess that just about says it all.” Her voice was distant, lost. Slowly, she began to accept defeat.

He looked at her in silence for a moment, still wondering why she was bothering him this way. A nuisance. She had become nothing more than a nuisance to him.

“No, no it doesn’t. There’ll be a lot more said once I get back to the hotel. Do what you want on your own time, but don’t come wiggling your hips, flirting with my crew and embarrassing me in public.”

“Embarrassing you?” Her head snapped up. She gripped the arms of the seat and rose to her feet. “Embarrassing you? What about me? What about all the times you’ve embarrassed me in public, flaunting those—those tramps, so that everyone knew?”

“Shut up, you’re hysterical.” He looked around, but everyone seemed to suddenly become busy with something else.

“Damn right I’m hysterical. And you made me that way.” Suddenly, it came home to her, the waste, the terrible, terrible waste this all was. One more time. Maybe, just maybe—

“Harry.” She buried her pride and forced her voice to stay calm. “Please, can’t we just forget about everything and start over?”

He was already watching the rehearsal and making mental notes he hoped he could remember when the time came. Nothing seemed to stay put in his mind anymore. “What do you mean, over?”

“I mean, forget about the arguments, forget about—“ She didn’t want to go into details. Details made it harder to forget. And she wanted to forget, desperately, wanted to forget everything that had happened these last ten years. “—about everything. I love you, Harry.”

Funny how forced the words sounded to her ear as she said them. She still loved him. Didn’t she? Or was she only waltzing with shadows of what had once been, afraid to admit that the music was over, afraid to sit down?

The words sounded a little forced from lack of usage, she decided. There was a time she said it every day. As did he.

“We need to rebuild what we had.”

He had wasted enough time with her. He began to walk away, sparing her words only as he moved. “There’s nothing wrong between us.”

She stared at him, wondering if he was so far gone into his own world that he actually believed what he was saying. “How can you say that?”

“Very easily. If there’s something wrong, then you’ve created it. You weren’t supportive enough of me to—“

The dam broke. All the thing she had endured, all the hurts, humiliations she had put up with, she had done because she felt that somehow, someday, he would stop and realize all that she had gone through. For him to say that she wasn’t supportive told her that everything she believed to be true was not. Someday wasn’t coming. He remembered nothing, was grateful for nothing, would never feel any contrition for his hurtful words and horrible behavior.