The Spiral Path

by Mary Jo Putney

  "Sometimes the suits are right." Naomi's eyes were troubled.

  "Saying I want final cut doesn't mean that I won't listen to anyone else's ideas. I've put together a team of top creative people--including you, I hope--because I want good input. But ultimately this is my movie, and I want the final say. That's why I've kept the budget so tight--to reduce the risk."

  "We're still talking millions of dollars in production costs, and even more millions for promotion," Marcus said. "Always assuming you can make a movie that's fit for release."

  Matching his bluntness, Rainey said, "I can and I will. If I have to, I'll finance this myself even though a flop means I'll have to spend years working to pay the debt off." And that was if her career stayed healthy enough to make the kind of money that could pay off that much debt. In the entertainment business, there were no guarantees.

  "Raine, Raine, the first rule of moviemaking is to use other people's money, not your own," Marcus said with a smile. "But even if you know exactly what you want, the story hinges on having an actor who can successfully play John Randall. You haven't listed anyone in your proposal. Who are you considering--another relative unknown?"

  "Not at all. I got a commitment this morning, too recently for me to add his name." With a flourish, Rainey pulled her trump card from the briefcase and laid it on the table. "Here's a signed letter of intent from Kenzie Scott."

  Naomi whistled as she scanned the letter. "Are you insane, child? Trying to direct a man you're divorcing will be so crazy-making you won't be able work."

  "Kenzie and I are both professionals." Meaning she could work even with her heart bleeding. Ditto for Kenzie, though she suspected his heart was barely dented. "He's perfect for this role, Naomi."

  Marcus took his turn at scanning the letter of intent. "He scratched out the salary, and I can't quite read what he wrote in."

  "Another change for the better. Kenzie said that rather than demean himself by working for a paltry million dollars, he'd do the picture for union scale." And a sizable piece of any profits the film would make, of course, but it had still been generous of him to forgo the upfront money she'd offered. He was always such a blasted gentleman. "Doing that frees up almost a million dollars for unexpected contingencies."

  "You've thought of everything." Marcus exchanged another wordless glance with his wife. "All right, you've got your deal. I can find you the money--I'm pretty sure that Universal will bite, and if they don't, another studio will. I'll act as executive producer, and I'll even guarantee you final cut. In return, I reserve the right to close down the production or prevent release if costs spin out of control or the movie is a dog that would damage all of our reputations."

  "Fair enough. You won't regret this!" Exultant, Rainey hugged first Naomi, then Marcus. She'd gotten everything she wanted--and she prayed she didn't live to regret it.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 3

  By the time Rainey reached home, her exhilaration had been joined by a healthy dose of terror. Dear God, after all her hard work and planning, she was really going to he able to make her movie the way she wanted to! This was a tremendous opportunity--and if she blew it, she might never get another chance.

  At least she didn't have to risk her house by financing the movie herself. She'd bought this canyon cottage with her first real money, and it was the truest home she'd ever had. Tucked into a secluded corner of Laurel Canyon, the simple cedar structure was fragrant from the tangy eucalyptus trees that shaded it, and brightened by sun-baked drifts of drought-resistant flowers. She'd fallen in love the moment she drove up.

  Luckily she'd trusted her instincts and not sold the cottage when she married Kenzie. At heart she'd known their hasty marriage wouldn't last, so she'd rented out her place to a charming pair of production designers who'd taken good care of it. They'd just bought a house of their own when she left Kenzie, so she'd been able to come home. It had been like finding refuge in the embrace of a beloved friend.

  Kenzie hadn't been in the cottage often, so she had few memories of him here. They were uncomfortably happy memories--she'd had no idea he knew how to make great salads until a poignant day when he'd helped her pack her most personal possessions--but the house had remained hers, never theirs. The Broad Beach estate had briefly seemed like it was joint property, but no longer. In the best civilized fashion, each of them was taking from the marriage exactly what they'd brought in, and no more.

  She entered the living room and kicked off her high heels. The shoes rolled across the polished oak floor, one coming to rest on the thick, richly colored Tibetan rug splashed in front of the fieldstone fireplace. That rug figured prominently in her memories. With his uncanny perception, Kenzie had known she was a little sad to be leaving her loved home, so he'd seduced and made love to her with exquisite tenderness, reminding her why she'd taken the terrifying leap of faith into matrimony.

  By the time she reached her bedroom, she'd stripped off her Armani suit. After hanging it in the huge closet, she paused to study the famous poster of her mother that hung above the love seat. This was the clearest image she had, since her childish memories were blurred by time.

  Clementine at the height of her fame had been all passion and fire, a candle burning at both ends. Her wild mane of red hair was backlit by spotlights as she sang her signature anthem, "Heart Over Heels," a searing confession of a woman who fell in love too often, and always gave away more of herself than she could afford to lose.

  I'm making it, Mama. I'm achieving success on my own terms without destroying myself. Her mother probably would have been glad to know that. But would she have approved of the tense, wary creature her daughter had become?

  Rainey peeled off her stockings and slipped into cutoff jeans and a black T-shirt with a picture of the Buddha on the front. Then she flopped onto the waterbed and reached for the phone. Who to call first? Since her personal assistant, Emmy Herman, the world's greatest organizer, was out of touch on a sailboat with her husband, she'd call her coconspirator in Maryland.

  She hit the autodial button. When her friend picked up on the second ring, she said, "Val, it's me. How are things in Baltimore?"

  "The sun is shining, the weeping cherry is trailing gorgeous pink blossoms outside my kitchen window, and how did it go?"

  Rainey grinned. Val Covington, a friend who dated back to elementary school, had been invaluable in developing The Centurion. She'd read numerous versions of the screenplay, and though she was a lawyer, not a writer, her comments had always been right on the mark and refreshingly un-Hollywood. Together they'd brainstormed the practical and legal difficulties involved in producing Rainey's dream. "You're going to get a production credit on a movie, Val."

  "Hot damn!" Val whooped. "So you've got your deal?"

  "Yep. Marcus Gordon will be the executive producer, he agreed to let me have final cut, and my soon-to-be-ex-husband will star."

  "So Kenzie said yes. I almost wish he hadn't, but with him involved, there's no way you'll lose money. Congratulations, Rainey--your career as a director has begun."

  "I still have to actually make the movie."

  "You can. You will."

  Val's warm voice carried the unconditional confidence that was supposed to be offered by mothers. Sometimes Rainey wondered what kind of relationship she and her mother would have had if Clementine hadn't died. Would they have been friends? Rivals? Enemies? Would she have taken her problems to her mother and known she'd get wise, womanly advice? Impossible to say. Clementine had been an erratic mother. When she wasn't doing concert tours, she was sometimes devoted and playful, other times stoned and inaccessible.

  Feeling her stomach knotting, Rainey said, "Will you be able to visit me during shooting? It would he great to see you in either New Mexico or England."

  "I think I can make it. I have a ton of vacation I haven't taken."

  "I'll expect you then. Heck, I'll cast you as an extra if you want."

  "Short, Rubenesque redheads do not make id
eal extras. Too conspicuous."

  "You're not Rubenesque--you have a great, curvy female figure. You'd make a nice Cockney flower girl in one of the London scenes."

  Val hooted. "Better yet, hooker. Or would that get me disbarred?"

  "Propositioned, maybe, but not disbarred."

  After they hung up, Rainey called her lawyer. She wanted Kenzie's contract drawn up and signed quickly, before he could have second thoughts.

  She needed to call her cast and key crew members to tell them the project was definitely a go. Instead she stayed sprawled on the bed with the phone resting on her midriff. Since it was impossible to keep thoughts of Kenzie at bay, maybe it was easier just to give in and get them out of her system.

  "Since we're going to work together, how about joining me for dinner so we can get better acquainted?" Kenzie suggested as they left the studio where Rainey had won the role of Marguerite St. Just.

  She accepted with giddy pleasure, and he took her to one of the fashionable restaurants where you had to be Somebody to get a table. Kenzie's fame was the kind that got them instantly escorted to a private corner booth. For three hours they talked back and forth over trendy food that she barely noticed. She asked questions to draw him out, since she'd never met an actor who didn't love talking about himself. He turned the tables by asking about Rainey, and had been genuinely interested in her answers. He had the deeply flattering ability to give a woman total attention, as if nothing in the world was more important than her.

  Soon they were trading stories about the ups and downs of their careers. She described almost getting herself killed riding a motorcycle for Biker Babes from Hell, while he hilariously explained the difficulties of emoting to a blank wall that would later acquire a monster created from special effects.

  Rainey hadn't had so much fun in years, and she didn't hesitate when he suggested they go to his house to rehearse their parts. It was as obvious a pickup line as she'd ever heard, but she felt reckless and willing to take events as they came.

  Outside the restaurant, several paparazzi immediately closed in, cameras flashing and questions snapping. Rainey flinched at the abrasive intrusion on their evening. On her own, she never attracted this much attention. A photographer called, "Hey, Kenzie, who's the classy babe?"

  "We should have gone out the back," Kenzie said under his breath. He put a protective arm around her shoulders and said more loudly, "My cousin, Lady Cynthia Smythe-Matheson. We were childhood playmates."

  The reporters laughed. "No way!" one said good-naturedly. "I know I've seen her around town."

  "I doubt it. Lady Cynthia has been doing relief work with African orphans."

  "Yeah, and Queen Elizabeth is your grandmother!"

  The valet drove up in Kenzie's Ferrari. He helped Rainey into the car, and they drove away while the reporters were still debating her identity. Bemused, she said, "I know you're famous for never giving a straight answer about your personal life, but really--Lady Cynthia Smythe-Matheson?"

  "Would you rather have had your name linked with mine in all the gossip columns tomorrow?" he asked dryly. "It would be good publicity for you."

  "I thought tonight was personal, not professional. I'd like to keep it that way."

  "So would I, for as long as possible."

  She settled back, enjoying the sensation of being swept along in one of the world's most extravagant cars. Kenzie drove with effortless control, rather like his acting. They hardly spoke on the drive to Broad Beach. As they glided past the endless lights of Los Angeles, Bach's Brandenburg Concertos played softly on the compact disk player.

  She felt as if she'd fallen into a dream and would wake to find herself in her first drab Los Angeles apartment, with her recent successes and Kenzie Scott mere wishful thinking. But he was too masculine, too intensely real to be a figment of her imagination. She really was inches away from one of the world's most recognizable and desirable men--and he liked her. Or perhaps just lusted for her, but it was heady stuff nonetheless.

  Surf drummed in the background when he stopped at his gatehouse to punch in a security code. Within the walls, subtle lighting highlighted the palms and flowers of California landscaping in a fair approximation of fairyland. When they parked in front of the house and he came around the Ferrari to help her out, she slid out with impeccable grace, no mean feat in a sports car.

  The biggest shock came when they went inside. He really did want to rehearse.

  In a softly lighted family room overlooking the Pacific, he handed her a copy of the Pimpernel script and they set to work. He already knew all the lines, damn him. She felt awkward using the script, but relaxed as they began running through their joint scenes. He'd had longer to think about the story, so she welcomed his suggestions about what might work for Marguerite. Wonder of wonders, he listened thoughtfully when she made her first hesitant comment about Sir Percy, then tried her idea and agreed that it worked.

  After that, it was like being in drama school, happily batting ideas back and forth as they became comfortable with the characters. The creative thrill of that was more intoxicating than the wine she'd drunk at dinner. Perhaps his desire to rehearse was a subtle and very effective form of seduction, because there was great intimacy in playing lovers, and in the fitting together of their minds and acting styles.

  Things were getting very tense between Sir Percy and Marguerite when Rainey flipped a page halfway through the screenplay. "The ballroom scene. It will be fun to learn the minuet. I wish I knew it now."

  "Fake it." Kenzie opened a cabinet to reveal hundreds of compact disks. Selecting one, he put it in the CD player and the room filled with the delicate precision of late eighteenth-century dance music. He held out his hand. "Will you dance, my lady?"

  He spoke coldly, a man who loved a woman he couldn't trust Knowing the request was really an order, Rainey gave him her hand but lifted her head haughtily, a woman who didn't understand her husband's withdrawal, and was too proud to show her pain.

  In stony silence they circled each other, gazes locked. Rainey felt a disorienting mixture of Marguerite's emotions and her own. Each of them was unsettled by her partner. In Marguerite's case, the reasons were obvious and would be resolved by the end of the movie, but Rainey's situation was far more uncertain.

  Kenzie Scott was dangerously attractive, and he knew it. There was something very real here, yet he was a stranger to her, a man famously protective of his privacy. A man who could injure her deeply if she wasn't careful.

  To relieve the electricity crackling between them, she said, "You're really good at this. Do they teach period dancing at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art?"

  "Yes, we learned all the major dances in movement classes."

  "I envy your education." She spun away from him, their hands still linked. "The RADA graduates I've met are such good actors, prepared for everything."

  "It's ultracompetitive--hundreds of hopefuls audition for a handful of places." He drew her toward him again. "The rejection is good preparation for an actor's life."

  "You've known less rejection than most."

  "I was a good instinctive actor, but instinct will only take one so far. RADA taught me the craft and discipline of acting. How to let a character play through me, rather than me playing the character. How to hit the same emotional point again and again and have it ring true each time. How to be a professional."

  "You're making me even more envious. I learned piecemeal in various acting classes and workshops."

  "Wherever you studied, you learned well, Rainey. I imagine that RADA students and atmosphere weren't much different from your workshops."

  She laughed. "Everyone obsessed with acting, wildly melodramatic about their lives, and half the class sleeping with the other half, with partners changing regularly?"

  His eyes glinted with humor. "Acting classes are the same the world around."

  The music ended and they both slid back into character. "Farewell, my lady. I do not know if I shall return.
"

  Since the script called for a kiss, Rainey went into his arms. "Don't leave me like this, Percy! What have I done to deserve such coldness?"

  Instead of Sir Percy's swift, unhappy kiss, Kenzie's mouth met hers with gentle exploration. She fell into him like a thirsty woman discovering water in the desert. He was so close that she saw he wasn't wearing contact lenses--that incredible green was real.

  Hollywood had changed her from a rebellious girl to a self-protective woman. She had avoided casual affairs because it wasn't her nature to be casual and she couldn't afford distractions. But dear God, how she had hungered for warmth. Amazingly, under Kenzie's movie star glamour he seemed to yearn for intimacy as much as she did.

  His hands skimmed her back as the kiss deepened. Soft, expert, passionate. Weak-kneed, she whispered in a last halfhearted effort at defense, "I can see why you have a reputation as a terrific lover."

  "If I slept with even a quarter of the women the gossip columnists claim, I'd have died of exhaustion years ago." He tugged her down onto the sofa so that she was lying full-length along his strong, beautifully fit body.

  She buried her hands in waves of dark hair grown long for the part he was going to play. Too many men looked on kissing as merely a step on the road to intercourse. Not Kenzie. His mouth and hands learned her with luxurious patience. No attempts to rip off her clothing or rush to greater intimacy.

  His restraint made her feverish with longing. Even as a hormone-crazed adolescent, she hadn't felt like this. As he kissed her throat, she said huskily, "So we're going to have an affair?"