The Spiral Path (45 page)

"Maybe before, but now ... well, I'd
be a third wheel."

So Val had known about Kenzie and their
Devonshire affair. "You won't be in the way. That little fling is
over." She found the tabloid and tossed it to her friend.

Val frowned as she read the article.
"This is certainly an inducement to celibacy. How do you stand this,
Rainey?"

"Very badly."

"Shall I call this Pamela person
and deny the story? I assume she's after a quote from you."

Rainey's brain began to function again.
"No, I'll call her myself. She'll give me more ink than she would
you."

Val's gaze went to the stack of waiting
messages. "I'll start on these, then."

"Don't. Weren't you planning on
sightseeing today with Laurie, the line producer?" Rainey glanced out the
window, where the sun shone as merrily as it had before everything went to
hell. "Go. It's Sunday, and you've earned some time off."

"Are you sure?"

"Positive." She managed a
smile. "Frankly, I'd rather be alone."

"Okay. We're going to have dinner
out, so I'll be back late." Val vanished into the other bedroom with her
rolling suitcase.

Rainey unpacked her personal belongings,
mentally preparing herself to call Pamela Lake, who clearly wanted an exclusive
interview that could be headlined: "Raine and Kenzie: The Real
Story." But Pamela was a decent sort, and this would be a good place to
start spiking the guns of gossip.

Rainey closed her eyes and spent a
couple of minutes thinking herself into the proper frame of mind: bright,
casual, amused by the grossly inaccurate story. Once you can fake sincerity,
you can fake anything. Then she called Pamela's cell phone number.

When the reporter answered, Rainey said
in a voice that oozed charm and woman-to-woman friendliness, "Pamela, this
is Raine Marlowe. Thanks so much for giving me that paper. Isn't it amazing
what some people will invent to fill pages on a slow news day?"

Pamela Lake caught her breath when she
recognized her caller. "So the story isn't true?"

"Of course it's not true! Trust me,
there is no reconciliation in the works. Kenzie and I enjoy working together,
and we'll probably always be friends, but marriage?" She laughed at the
absurdity of the idea. "For the record, I've never even heard of the woman
who claimed to my confidante, much less had tea with her."

A scratching sound indicated that Pamela
was taking notes as fast as she could. "What about the hotel employee who
saw you going into each other's bedrooms?"

"The rooms were directly opposite
each other, so of course we were both seen going in that direction. But
sleeping together?" Rainy laughed again. "Do you have any idea how
exhausting it is to both direct and act in a movie? By the end of the day, my
fantasies were of a hot bath and a nice glass of wine." And one night, she
and Kenzie had shared just that...

"What about your visit with Charles
Winfield? You did look awfully friendly when you left Ramillies Manor this
morning."

Rainey rubbed her temples, but maintained
her smooth tone. "Kenzie had just lost a close friend, so it was an
emotional time. I'm glad that I was able to be there for him."

The conversation continued, with Rainey
enthusing about what a great movie they were making, how smoothly shooting was
going, how amiable the divorce was, and other official lies. By the time she
signed off, she was assured that Pamela's newspaper would have headlines
refuting the reconciliation story the next morning. Maybe that would calm
things down a bit.

Methodically she began returning her
phone calls. During the production of a movie, Sunday was seldom a day of rest.
She worked till dusk on autopilot, ordered dinner from room service, then went
back to work.

When she was tired enough to sleep, she
took a bath, then popped and swallowed the last birth control pill from the
flat plastic disk that held a month's supply. She was about to toss the holder
in the trash when a thought struck her.

Today was Sunday. Usually she ended a
cycle of pills on a Saturday. Since she'd just taken the last one, she must
have skipped a day in the last four weeks.
Hell,
why now of all times
instead of during the months of celibacy?

Obviously she'd been so busy working
that she'd forgotten. But when? Taking the pills was so automatic that she had
no idea when she might have skipped. There had been plenty of long, disrupted
days when a mistake might have been made.

Even though the chances of getting
pregnant from one missed day were infinitesimal, she couldn't stop herself from
imagining how nice it would be if she was pregnant. There had been times during
her marriage when she'd been tempted to "forget" her pills, yet she'd
never done so because it would have been unforgivable to trick Kenzie that way.
But this missed pill was a genuine error.

Though her dream had been to raise her
children with two loving parents, not as a single mother, she made good money
and could raise a child on her own. She'd never have to ask a thing of Kenzie.
He wouldn't even have to know it was his since he didn't want to be a father.

With a sigh, she relinquished the
pleasant daydream and crawled into bed, hoping that sleep would come. She'd
almost drifted off when the memory of what Charles Winfield had said jarred her
back to wakefulness:
Don't let him push you away.

Was that what Kenzie was doing--pushing
her away because he thought he should, rather than because it was what he
wanted? Could be--thinking back, he'd always seemed unhappy with himself, not
her.

But if he was being noble and
self-sacrificing, like John Randall, it was damned effective. It took two to
make a relationship work, only one to end it.

As he just had. Again.

CHAPTER 26

"
M
ind
if I sit down?"

Val glanced up and saw that Greg Marino
was hovering with his lunch tray. "Not at all. Glad to have you join
me." She smothered a yawn as he sat down opposite. "Do all movie
productions feed you as well as this one? These meals make me want to curl up
and nap afterward."

He dug into his beef Wellington.
"Good food is essential, actually. When people are away from home and
working like crazy for months on end, they need as many comforts as can be
provided."

"Makes sense." Having finished
her curried chicken, she bit into a fresh baked raspberry tart. "If I
weren't slaving away like a workhouse child in a Dickens novel, I'd be a blimp
by now."

"On you, it would look good."

She grinned. "Coming from a man
who's filmed some of the most beautiful women in the world, that's a lie, but a
gallant one."

"Beautiful women are just part of
the job. A lot of 'em are all bones and hyper as race horses. The camera loves
those angular faces, but it's like shooting porcelain dolls--not quite
real." He took another bite and chewed thoughtfully. "I like a woman
who looks like a woman. You do."

Looking sexy and dim was the curse of
Val's life. "Half the reason I went to law school was a desire to shock
people who think I look more like a barmaid than a woman who scored eight hundreds
on her SATs."

"When I was nominated for an Oscar,
I got a lot of juvenile satisfaction thinking about the reactions of all those
people who thought I'd never amount to anything." Greg smiled blissfully
at the thought. "Now that we're within a couple of days of wrapping up,
what do you think of your first moviemaking experience?"

"It's been fascinating and exciting
and I wouldn't have missed it for the world. But I'll be glad to go home."

Greg choked on his coffee. "You're
kidding, right? You really want to go back to Buffalo or Boston or wherever it
is you come from?"

"Baltimore, and yes, I do."
She smiled at him fondly. They'd often hung out together at the end of the long
work days, and it would have been easy to tumble into bed with him. He'd made
it clear he was willing. But she was trying to simplify her life, and men were
never simple. "Fantasy is fun now and then, but reality suits me
better."

"But you're so good at getting
things done. You could make a career in production, no problem. If Raine can't
find you another job, I can. You'd be a hotshot producer making tons of money
in no time."

"If money was that important to me,
I'd have made a lot of different choices along the way. Making movies requires
a touch of the gypsy, and I don't have that. Not to mention the fact that
there's an awful lot of sitting around and waiting for something to happen,
which would rapidly drive me crazy."