by Nora Roberts
had sent him, then passed it to Chuck. “Send her in.”
“Kirkwood,” Chuck mused, frowning over Ariel’s publicity shot. “Kirkwood . . . Oh, yeah, I saw her last summer in an off Broadway production of Streetcar.”
Vaguely interested, Booth looked over his shoulder. “Stella?”
“Blanche,” Chuck corrected, skimming over her list of credits.
“Blanche DuBois?” Booth gave a short laugh as he turned completely around. “She’s fifteen to twenty years too young for that part.”
Chuck merely lifted his eyes. “She was good,” he said simply. “Very good. And from what I’m told, she’s very good on the soap. I don’t have to tell you how many of our top stars started that way.”
“No, you don’t.” Booth sat negligently on the arm of a chair. “But if she’s stuck with the same part for five years, she’s either not good enough for a major film or major theater, or she’s completely without ambition. Because she’s an actress, I’d have to go with the former.”
“Keep sharpening your cynicism,” Marshell said dryly. “It’s good for you.”
Booth’s grin flashed—that rare one that came and went so quickly it left the onlooker dazzled and unsure why. Ariel caught a glimpse of it as she entered the room. It went a long way toward convincing her to change her initial opinion of him. It passed through her mind, almost as quickly as Booth’s grin, that perhaps he had some redeeming personal qualities after all. She was always ready to believe it.
“Ms. Kirkwood.” Marshell heaved his bulk from the chair and extended his hand.
“Mr. Marshell, nice to see you again.” She took a brief scan of the room, her gaze lingering only fleetingly on Booth as he remained seated on the arm of the chair. “Your office is just as impressive as your home.”
Booth waited while she was introduced to Chuck. She’d dressed very simply, he noticed. Deceptively so if you considered the bold scarves she’d twisted at the waist of the demure blue dress. Violets and emeralds and wild pinks; a daring combination and stunningly effective. Her hair was loose again, giving her an air of youth and freedom he would never equate with the character she wanted to portray. Absently, he took out a cigarette and lit it.
“Booth.” Ariel gave him an easy smile before her gaze flicked over the cigarette. “They’ll kill you.”
He took a drag and let out a lazy stream of smoke. “Eventually.” She wore the same carelessly sexy scent he’d noticed the night of the party. Booth wondered why it was that it suited her while contrasting at the same time. She fascinated. It seemed to be something she did effortlessly. “I’m going to cue you,” he continued and reached for a copy of the script. “We’ll use the confrontation scene in the third act. You’re familiar with it?”
All business, Ariel noted curiously. Does he ever relax? Does he ever choose to? Though she was rarely tense herself, she recognized tension in him and wondered why he was nervous. What nerves she felt herself were confined to a tiny roiling knot in the center of her stomach. She always acknowledged it and knew if anything, it would help to push her through the reading.
“I’m familiar with it,” she told him, accepting another copy of the script.
Booth took a last drag on his cigarette then put it out. “Do you want a lead-in?”
“No.” Now her palms were damp. Good. Ariel knew better than to want to be relaxed when twinges of emotions would sharpen her skills. Taking deep, quiet breaths she flipped through the bound script until she found the right scene. It wasn’t a simple one. It stabbed at the core of the character—selfish ambition and icy sex. She took a minute.
Booth watched her. She looked more like the guileless ingenue than the calculating leading lady, he mused and was almost sorry there wasn’t a part for her in the film. Then she looked up and pinned him with a cold, bloodless smile that completely stunned him.
“You always were a fool, Phil, but a successful one and so rarely boring, it’s hardly worth mentioning.”
The tone, the mannerisms, even the expression was so accurate, he couldn’t respond. For a moment, he completely lost Ariel in the character and the woman he’d fashioned her after. He felt a twist in his stomach, not of attraction or even admiration, but of anger—totally unexpected and horribly real. Booth didn’t have to look at the script to remember the line.
“You’re so transparent, Rae. It amazes me that you could deceive anyone into believing in you.”
Ariel laughed, rather beautifully, so that all three men felt a chill race up their spine. “I make my living at deception. Everyone wants illusions, so did you. And that’s what you got.”
With a long, lazy stretch, she ran a hand through her hair, then let it fall, pale gold in the late-morning sunlight. It was one of Liz Hunter’s patented gestures. “I acted my way out of that miserable backwater town in Missouri where I had the misfortune to be born, and I’ve acted my way right up to the top. You were a great help.” She walked over to him with the small, cool smile still on her lips and in her eyes. With an eloquent gesture, she brushed her hand down his cheek. “And you were compensated. Very, very well.”
Phil grabbed her wrist and tossed it aside. Ariel merely lifted a brow at the violence of the movement. “Sooner or later you’re going to slip,” he threatened.
She tilted her head and spoke very softly. “Darling, I never slip.”
Slowly, Booth rose. The expression on his face might have had any woman trembling, would have had any woman making some defensive move. Ariel merely looked up at him with the same coldly amused expression. It was he who had to force himself to calm.
“Very good, Ariel Kirkwood.” Booth tossed the script aside.
She grinned, because every instinct told her she’d won. With the long expelled breath, she could almost feel Rae drain out of her. “Thanks. It’s a tremendous part,” she added as her stomach unknotted. “Really a tremendous part.”
“You’ve done your research,” Marshell murmured from behind his desk. Because he knew Elizabeth Hunter, Ariel’s five-minute read had left him uncomfortable and impressed. And he knew Booth. There was little doubt in his mind as to what Rae’s creator was feeling. “You’ll be available for a callback?”
“Of course.”
“I saw your Blanche DuBois, Ms. Kirkwood,” Chuck put in. “I was very impressed then, and now.”
She flashed him an unaffected smile though she was aware Booth was still staring at her. If he was moved, she thought, then the reading had gone better than she could have hoped. “It was my biggest challenge, up until now.” She wanted to get out, walk, breathe the air, and savor the almost-victory while she could. “Well, thank you.” She pushed her hair from her shoulder as she scanned the three men again. “I’ll look forward to hearing from you.”
Ariel walked toward the elevator too frightened to believe she was right, too terrified to believe she was wrong. Up until that moment, she hadn’t let herself dwell on just how much she wanted the part, and just what it could mean in her life.
She wasn’t without ambition, but she had chosen acting and had continued with it for the love of it. And the challenge. Playing the part of Rae would hand her all three needs on a silver platter. As she stepped into the elevator, her palms were dry and her heart was pounding. She didn’t hear Booth approach.
“I’d like to talk to you.” He stepped in with her and punched the button for the lobby.
“Okay.” A long sigh escaped as she leaned back against the side of the car. “God, I’m glad that’s over. I’m starving. Nothing makes me hungrier than a reading.”
He tried to relate the woman who was smiling at him with eyes warm and alive with the woman who had just exchanged lines with him. He couldn’t. She was a better actress than he’d given her credit for, and therefore, more dangerous. “It was an excellent reading.”
She eyed him curiously. “Why do I feel I’ve just been insulted?”
After the doors slid open Booth stood for a moment, then nodded. “
I think I said before that you were perceptive.”
Her slim heels clicked over the tile as she crossed the lobby with him. Booth noticed a few heads turn, both male and female, to look after her. She was either unaware or unconcerned. “Why are you on daytime TV?”
Ariel slanted him a look before she began to walk north. “Because it’s a good part on a well-written, entertaining show. That’s number one. Number two is that it’s steady work. When actors are between jobs, they wait tables, wash cars, sell toasters and generally get depressed. While I might not mind the first three too much, I hate the fourth. Have you ever seen the show?”
“No.”
“Then you shouldn’t turn your nose up.” She stopped by a sidewalk vendor and drew in the scent of hot pretzels. “Want one?”
“No,” Booth said again and tucked his hands in his pockets. Sexuality, sensuality—both seemed to pour out of her as she stood next to a pretzel stand on a crowded sidewalk. He continued to watch her as she took the first generous bite.
“I could live off them,” she told him with her mouth full and her eyes laughing. “Good nutrition’s so admirable and so hard to live with. I like to ignore it for long stretches of time. Let’s walk,” she suggested. “I have to when I’m keyed up. What do you do?”
“When?”
“When you’re keyed up,” Ariel explained.
“Write.” He matched her casually swinging pace while the bulk of pedestrian traffic bustled by them.
“And when you’re not keyed up you write,” Ariel added as she took another bite of her pretzel. “Have you always been so serious?”
“It’s steady work,” he countered and she laughed.
“Very quick. I didn’t think I’d like you, but you’ve got a nice sense of cautious humor.” Ariel stopped at another vendor and bought a bunch of spring violets. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. “Wonderful,” she murmured. “I always think spring’s the best until summer. Then I’m in love with the heat until fall. Then fall’s the best until winter.” Laughing, she looked over the blooms into his eyes. “And I also tend to ramble when I’m keyed up.”
When she lowered the flowers, Booth took her wrist, not with the same violence as he had during the reading, but with the same intensity. “Who are you?” he demanded. “Who the hell are you?”
Her smile faded but she didn’t draw away. “Ariel Kirkwood. I can be a lot of other people when there’s a stage or a camera, but when it’s over, that’s who I am. That’s all I am. Are you looking for complications?”
“I don’t have to look for them—they’re always there.”
“Strange, I rarely run into any.” She studied him, all frank eyes and creamy beauty. Booth didn’t care for the stir it brought him. “Come with me,” she invited, and then took his hand before he’d thought to object.
“Where?”
She threw back her head and pointed up the magnificently sheer surface of the Empire State Building. “To the top.” Laughing, she pulled him inside. “All the way to the top.”
Booth looked around impatiently as she bought tickets for the observation deck. “Why?”
“Does there always have to be a reason?” She slipped the violets into the twisted scarves at her waist, then tucked her arm through his. “I love things like this. Ellis Island, the Staten Island ferry, Central Park. What’s the use of living in New York if you don’t enjoy it? When’s the last time you did this?” Her shoulder rested against his upper arm as they crowded into an elevator.
“I think I was ten.” Even with the press of bodies and mingling scents he could smell her, wild and sweet.
“Oh.” Ariel laughed up at him. “You grew up. Too bad.”
Booth said nothing for a moment as he studied her. She seemed to always be laughing—at him or at some private joke she was content to keep to herself. Was she really that easy with herself and her life? Was anyone? Then he asked, “Don’t we all?”
“Of course not. We all get older, but the rest is a personal choice.” They herded off one elevator and onto another that would take them to the top.
This was a man she could enjoy, Ariel mused as she stood beside Booth. She could enjoy that serious, high-minded streak and the dry, almost reluctant humor. Still, there was the part in the film to think of. Ariel would have to be very careful to keep her feelings for one separate from her feelings for the other. But then, she’d never been a person who’d had any trouble separating the woman and the actress.
For now, the reading was over and the afternoon was free. Her mood was light, and there was a man with her who’d be fascinating to explore. The day could hardly offer anything more.
The souvenir stands were crowded with people—different countries, different voices. Ariel decided she’d buy something foolish on her way out. She caught Booth looking around him with his eyes slightly narrowed. An observer, she thought with a slight nod of approval. She was one herself, though perhaps on a different level. He’d dissect, analyze and file. She just enjoyed the show.
“Come on outside,” she invited and took his hand in a characteristic gesture. “It’s wonderful.” Pushing open the heavy door, Ariel welcomed the first slap of wind with a laugh. With her hand still firmly gripping Booth’s, she hurried to the wall to take in New York.
She never saw it as a toy city as many did from that height, but as something real enough to touch and smell from any distance. It never failed to excite and fascinate her. Ariel rarely asked more of anything or anyone. When she was here, she always believed she could accomplish whatever she needed to.
“I love heights.” She leaned out as far as she could and felt the frantic current of air swirl around her. “Staggering heights. And wind. If I could, I’d come here every day. I’d never get tired of it.”
Though it was normally an intimacy he would have shunned, Booth allowed his hand to stay in hers. Her skin was smooth and elegant; her face was flushed in the brisk air while her hair blew wildly. The eyes, he thought, the eyes were too alive, too full of everything. A woman like this would demand spectacular emotions from everyone she touched. The stir he felt wasn’t as easily suppressed this time. Deliberately, he looked away from her and down.
“Why not the World Trade Center?” he asked and let his gaze skim over the island he lived on.
Ariel shook her head. “It doesn’t have the same feeling as this, nothing does. Just like there’s only one Eiffel Tower, one Grand Canyon and one Laurence Olivier.” She didn’t bother to brush her hair back from her face as she tilted toward him. “They’re all spectacular and unique. What do you like, Booth?”
A family walked by laughing, the mother holding her skirts, the father carrying a toddler. He watched them pause nearby and look over the wall. “In what way?”
“In any way,” Ariel told him. “If you could’ve spent today doing anything you wanted, what would you have done?”
“Gone sailing,” he said, remembering that moment in Marshell’s office. “I’d’ve been sailing on the sound.”
Interest flickered in her eyes as it seemed every emotion or thought she had did. “You have a boat?”
“Yes. I don’t have much time for it.”
Don’t take much time for it, she corrected silently. “A solitary pursuit. That’s admirable.” She turned, leaning back against the wall so that she could watch the people circle the deck. The wind plastered her dress against her, revealing the slenderness, the elegance of the woman. “I don’t often like to be solitary,” she murmured. “I need people, the contacts, the contrasts. I don’t have to know them. I just like knowing they’re there.”
“Is that why you act?” They were face-to-face now, their bodies casually close—as if they were friends. It struck Booth as odd, but he had no desire to back away. “So you can have an audience?”
Her expression become thoughtful, but when she smiled, it was easy. “You’re a very cynical man.”
“That’s the second time today that’s been mentioned.”
“It’s all right. It probably comes in handy with your writing. Yes, I act for an audience,” she continued. “I won’t deny my own ego, but I think I act for myself first.” She lifted her face so that the air could race over it. “It’s a marvelous profession. How else can you be so many people? A princess, a tramp, a victim, a loser. You write to be read, but don’t you first write to express yourself?”
“Yes.” He felt something odd, almost unfamiliar—a loosening of muscles, an easing of thought. It took him a moment to realize he was relaxing, and only a moment longer to draw back. When you relaxed, you got burned. That much he was certain of. “But then writers have egos that nearly rival actors’.”
Ariel made a sound that was somewhere between a sigh and an expulsion of air. “She really put you through the mill, didn’t she?”
His eyes frosted, his voice chilled. “That’s none of your business.”
“You’re wrong.” Though she felt a twinge of regret when she sensed his withdrawal, Ariel went on. “If I’m going to play Rae, it’s very much my business. Booth . . .” She laid a hand on his arm, wishing she understood him well enough to get past the wall of reserve, the waves of bitterness. “If you’d wanted to keep this part of your life private, you wouldn’t have written it out.”
“It’s a story,” he said flatly. “I don’t put myself on display.”
“In most cases, no,” she agreed. “I’ve always felt a certain sense of distance in your work, though it’s always excellent. And for someone so successful, you kept a fairly low profile, even when you were married to Liz Hunter. But you’ve let something out in this script. It’s too late to pull it back now.”
“I’ve written a story about two people who are totally unsuited to each other, who used each other. The man is a bit of an idealist, and just gullible enough to fall for an exquisite face. Before the story ends, he learns that appearances mean little and that trust and loyalty are illusions. The woman is cold, ambitious and gifted, but she’ll never be satisfied with her own talents. She’s a vampire in the purest sense of the word, and she sucks him dry. There may be similarities between the story and reality, but my life is still my life.”
“No trespassing.” Ariel turned to look back down into the city,