by Nora Roberts
gone. She’d only needed to lean on someone for a moment, draw on someone else’s emotional strength, to have her faith return. Her head was clear again, her nerves gone. With a laugh, she turned into Booth’s arms and kissed him hard.
“Ice cream does that to me.” She was still laughing as she dropped down to a swing. “And sunshine.” She leaned way back and kicked her feet to give herself momentum. The tips of her hair nearly skimmed the ground. It was pale, exquisitely pale in the slanting sun. As it fell back, it left her face unframed and stunning. Her skin was flushed with color as she pushed off again and let herself glide.
“You seem to be an expert.” Booth leaned against the frame of the swing as her legs flashed by him.
“Absolutely. Want to join me?”
“I’ll just watch.”
“It’s one of your best things.” Ariel threw out her legs again for more height and enjoyed the thrill that swept through her stomach. “When’s the last time you were on one of these?”
A memory surged through his mind—of himself at five or six and his primly uniformed, round-faced nanny. She’d pushed him on a swing while he’d squealed and demanded to go higher. At the time he hadn’t believed there was any more to life than that rushing pendulum ride. Abruptly, he appreciated Ariel’s claim that she enjoyed being a child.
“A hundred years ago,” he murmured.
“Too long.” Skimming her feet on the ground, she slowed the swing. “Get on with me.” She blew the hair out of her eyes and grinned at his blank expression. “You can stand, one foot on either side of me. It’s sturdy enough—if you are,” she added with just enough of a challenge in the tone to earn a scowl.
“Practicing your psychiatry?”
Her grin only widened. “Is it working?”
She was laughing at him again, and knowing it, Booth took the bait. “Apparently.” He stepped behind her to grab the chain with his hands. “How high do you want to go?”
Ariel tipped back her head to give him an upside-down smile. “As high as I can.”
“No crying ‘uncle’,” Booth warned as he began to push her.
“Ha.” Ariel tossed back her hair and shifted her grip. “Fat chance, DeWitt.”
She felt him jump nimbly onto the swing as they began to fly, then threw her body into it until the rhythm steadied. The sky tilted over her, blue and dusted with clouds. The ground swayed, brown and green. She rested her head against a firm, muscled thigh and let the sensations carry her.
Grass. She could smell it, sun drenched and trampled, mixed with the dusty scent of dry earth. Children’s laughter, cooing pigeons, traffic—Ariel could hear each separate sound individually and as a mixture.
The air tasted of spring—sweet, light. An image of a watermelon ran through her mind. Yes, that was what she thought of as the breeze fluttered over her cheeks. But overall, most of all, it was Booth who played with her senses. It was him she felt firmly against her back, his quiet breathing she heard beneath all the other sounds. She could smell him—salt and soap and tobacco. She had only to shift the angle of her head to see his strong, capable hands around the chain of the child’s swing. Ariel closed her eyes and absorbed it all. It was like coming home. Content, she slid her hands higher on the chain so that they brushed his. The contact, warm flesh to warm flesh, was enough.
He’d forgotten what it was like to do something for no reason. And by forgetting it, Booth had forgotten the purity of pleasure. He felt it now, without the intellectual justifications he so often restricted himself with. Because he understood that freedom brought vulnerability, he’d doled it out to himself miserly. Only on those rare occasions when he was completely alone, away from responsibilities and his work, had he allowed his heart and mind to drift. Now it happened so spontaneously he hardly realized it. Bypassing the dangers of relaxation, Booth enjoyed the ride.
“Higher!” Ariel demanded on a breathless laugh as she leaned into the arch. “Much higher!”
“Much higher and you’ll land on your nose.”
Her sound of pleasure rippled over the air. “Not me. I land on my feet. Higher, Booth!”
When she turned her head up to laugh into his face, he lost himself in her. Beauty—it was there, but not the cool, distant beauty he saw on camera. Looking at her now, he saw nothing of his Rae, nothing of her Amanda. There was only Ariel. For the first time in longer than he cared to remember, he felt a twinge of hope. It scared the hell out of him.
“Faster!” she shouted, not giving him any time to dwell on what was happening inside him. Her laughter was infectious, as was her enthusiasm. They soared together until his arms ached. When the swing began to slow, she leaped from it and left him wobbling.
“Oh, that was wonderful.” Still laughing, Ariel turned in a circle, arms wide. “Now I’m starving. Absolutely starving.”
“You just had ice cream.” Booth leaped off the swing to find himself breathless and his blood pumping.
“Not good enough.” Ariel whirled around to him and linked her hands behind his head. “I need a hot dog—really need a hot dog with everything.”
“A hot dog.” Because it seemed so natural, he bent to kiss her. Her mouth was warm, the lips curved. “Do you know what they put in those things?”
“No. And I don’t want to. I want to stuff myself and feel wonderful.”
Booth ran his hands down her sides. “You do feel wonderful.”
Her smile changed, softened. “That’s about the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me. Kiss me again, right here, while I’m still flying.”
Booth drew her closer as his lips tasted hers. Fleetingly he wondered why the gentle kiss moved him equally as much as the passion had, yet somehow differently. He wanted her. And along with her body he wanted that energy, that verve, the joie de vivre. He wanted to explore and measure it, and test it for its genuineness. Booth was still far from sure that anyone in the world he knew could be quite so real. And yet, he was beginning to want to believe it.
Drawing her away he watched her lashes flutter up, her lips curve. But he remembered that sense of panic he’d felt from her when he’d first opened his door. If her emotions were as vibrant as they seemed, she wouldn’t be limited to joy and vivacity.
“A hot dog,” he repeated and speculated on how much he would learn of her and how long it would take. “It’s your stomach, but I’ll spring for it.”
“I knew you could be a sport, Booth.” She slipped her arm around his waist as they walked. “I just might have two.”
“Masochistic tendencies run in your family?”
“No, just gluttony. Tell me about yours.”
“I don’t have masochistic tendencies.”
“Your family,” she corrected, chuckling. “They must be very proud of you.”
His brow lifted while a ghost of a smile played around his mouth. “That depends on your point of view. I was supposed to follow family tradition and go into law. Throughout most of my twenties I was the black sheep.”
“Is that so?” Tilting her head, she studied him with fresh interest. “I can’t imagine it. I’ve always had a fondness for black sheep.”
“I would’ve made book on it,” Booth said dryly. “But one might say I’ve been accepted back into the fold in the past few years.”
“It was the Pulitzer that did it.”
“The Oscar didn’t hurt,” Booth admitted, seeing the humor in something he’d barely noticed before. “But the Pulitzer had more clout with the DeWitts of Philadelphia.”
Ariel smelled the hot dog stand and guided him toward it. “You’ll be adding an Emmy to the list next year.”
He pulled out his wallet as Ariel leaned over the stand and breathed deeply. “You’re very confident.”
“It’s the best way to be. Are you having one?”
The scent was too good to resist. When had he eaten last? What had he eaten? Booth shrugged the thoughts way. “I suppose.”
Ariel grinned and held up two fingers
to the vendor. When hers was in its bun she began to go through the condiments one at a time. “You know, Booth”—she piled on relish—“The Rebellion was brilliant; full of clean, hard-hitting, exquisite characterizations, but it wasn’t as entertaining as your Misty Tuesday.”
Booth watched her take the first hefty bite. “My purpose in writing isn’t always to entertain.”
“No, I understand that.” Ariel chewed thoughtfully, then accepted the soda Booth offered her. “It’s just my personal preference. That’s why I’m in the profession. I want to be entertained, and I need to entertain.”
He added a conservative line of mustard to his hot dog. “That’s why you’ve been satisfied with daytime drama.”
She shot him a look as they began to walk again. “Don’t get snide. Quality entertainment is the core of it. If I was handy juggling plates and riding a unicycle, that’s what I’d do.”
After the first bite, Booth realized the hot dog was the best thing he’d eaten in a week, perhaps in months. “You have a tremendous talent,” he told her, but didn’t notice the surprised lift of her brow at the ease of the compliment. “It’s difficult for me to understand why you aren’t doing major films or theater. A series, even a weekly series is dragging, backbreaking work. Being a major character in a show that airs five days a week has to be exhausting, impossible and frustrating.”
“Exactly why I do it.” She licked mustard from her thumb. “I was raised right here in Manhattan. The pace’s in my blood. Have you ever considered why L.A. and New York are on opposite ends of the continent?”
“A lucky geographical accident.”
“Fate,” Ariel corrected. “Both might be towns where show business is of top importance, but no two cities could have more opposing paces. I’d go crazy in California—mellow isn’t my speed. I like doing the soap because it’s a daily challenge, it keeps me sharp. And when there’s the time and the opportunity, I like doing things like Streetcar. But . . .” She finished off her hot dog with a sigh. “Doing the same play night after night becomes too easy, and you get too comfortable.”
He drank down cola—a flavor he’d nearly forgotten. “You’ve been playing the same character for five years.”
“Not the same thing.” She crunched an ice cube and enjoyed the shock of cold. “Soaps are full of surprises. You never know what kind of angle they’re going to throw at you to pump up ratings or lead in a fresh story line.” She scooted around a middle-aged matron walking a poodle. “Right now Amanda’s facing a crumbling marriage and a personal betrayal, the possibility of an abortion and a rekindling of an old affair. Not dull stuff. And though it’s top secret, I’ll tell you she’s going to work with the police on a profile of the Trader’s Bend Ripper.”
“The what?”
“As in Son of Jack the Ripper,” she said mildly. “Her former lover Griff’s the number one suspect.”
“Doesn’t it ever bother you that so much melodrama goes on in a small town with four or five connecting families?”
She stopped to look at him. “Do you know your Coleridge?”
“Passably.”
“‘The willing suspension of disbelief.’” Ariel crumbled her napkin, then tossed both it and her empty cup into a trash can. “It’s all that’s necessary to get along in this world. If you believe it might happen, it could happen. Plausibility’s all that’s necessary. As a writer, you should know that.”
“Perhaps I should. I’ve always leaned more toward reality.”
“If it works for you.” The lift of her shoulders seemed to indicate that all was accepted. “But sometimes it’s easier to believe in coincidence, or magic or simple luck. Straight reality without any detours is a very hard road.”
“I’ve had a few detours,” he murmured. It occurred to him that Ariel Kirkwood had already led him off the paved road he’d adhered to for years. Booth began to wonder just where her twisting direction would lead them. Lost in thought, he didn’t notice that they were in front of his building until she stopped. His work was waiting, his privacy, his solitude. He wanted none of it.
“Come up with me.”
The request was simple, the meaning clear. And her need was huge. Shaking her head, Ariel touched the hair that had fallen over his forehead. “No, it’s best that I don’t.”
He took her hand before she could drop it back to her side. “Why? I want you, you want me.”
If it were only so simple, she thought as the desire to love him grew and grew. But she knew, instinctively, that it wouldn’t be simple, not for either of them once begun. For him there was too much distrust; for her too many vulnerabilities.
“Yes, I want you.” Ariel saw the change in his eyes and knew it would be much more difficult to walk away than to go with him. “And if I came upstairs, we’d make love. Neither of us is ready for that, Booth, not with each other.”
“If it’s a game you’re playing to make me want you more, it’s hardly necessary.”
She drew her hand from his and stood on her own. “I like to play games,” she said quietly. “And I’m very good at most of them. Not this kind.”
Pulling out a cigarette, he lit it with a snap of his lighter. “I’ve no patience for the wine and candlelight routine, Ariel.”
He saw the humor light in her eyes and could have cursed her. “How lucky that I don’t have a need for them.” Putting her hands on his shoulders, she leaned forward and kissed him. “Think of me,” she requested and turned quickly to walk away.
As he stared after her, Booth knew he’d think of little else.
Chapter Seven
It was going to be hard work, with long days, short nights and constant demands on both the body and the mind. Ariel was going to love every minute of it.
The producers of the soap were cooperating fully with Marshell; the network strategy was to everyone’s advantage. The word, the big word, was always ratings. But it was Ariel who had to squeeze in the time for both projects, and Ariel who had to learn hundreds of pages of script as Amanda and as Rae.
Under different circumstances they might have simply written around her for a few weeks on Our Lives, Our Loves, but with Amanda and Griff’s relationship heating up and the Ripper on the prowl, it wasn’t possible. Amanda had a key role in too many vital scenes. So instead, Ariel had to shoot a backbreaking number of those scenes in a short period of time. This would give her three straight weeks to concentrate exclusively on the film. If that project ran behind schedule, she’d have to compensate by dividing her time and energies between Amanda and Rae.
The idea of eighteen-hour days and 5:00 a.m. calls couldn’t dull her enthusiasm. The pace, merciless as it was, was almost natural to her in any case. And it helped keep her mind off the custody trial, which was set for the following month.
And there was Booth. Even the idea of working with him excited her. The daily contact would be stimulating. The professional competition and cooperation would keep her sharp. The preproduction stages had shown her that Booth would be as intimately involved with the film as any member of the cast and crew—and that he had unquestioned authority.
Throughout the sometimes hysterical meetings, he’d remained calm and had said little. But when he spoke, he was rarely questioned. It wasn’t a matter of arrogance or overbearing, as Ariel saw it. Booth DeWitt simply didn’t comment unless he knew he was right.
Perhaps, if it was meant to be, they’d move closer to each other as the film progressed. Emotion. It was what she wanted to give him, and what she needed from him. Time. She knew it was a major factor in whatever happened between them. Trust. This above all was needed—and this, above all, was missing.
There were times during the preproduction stages of the filming that Ariel felt Booth watching her too objectively, and distancing himself from her too successfully.
Ariel found herself at an impasse. The more skillfully she played Rae, the more firmly Booth stepped back from her. She understood it, and was helpless to change it.
The intimate late-night supper was actually taking place at 8:00 a.m. in the presence of a full crew. Sipping lukewarm ginger ale from a tulip glass, Ariel gave a husky laugh and leaned closer to Jack.
She knew what was needed here—sex, raw and primitive under a thin sheen of sophistication. It would have to leap onto the screen with a gesture, a look, a smile, rather than through dialogue. She was playing a role within a role. Rae was her character, and Rae was never without a mask. Tonight, she would project warmth, a soft femininity that was no more than a facade. It was Ariel’s job to show both this, and the skill with which Rae played the part. If the actress Ariel portrayed wasn’t clever, the impact on the character of Phil would waver. The connection between the two was vital. They fed each other, and by doing so, the entire story.
Rae wanted Phil, and the viewer had to know that she wanted him physically nearly as much as she wanted the connections he could bring her professionally. To win him, she had to be what he wanted. Ambition and skill were a deadly combination when added to beauty. Rae had all three and the capacity to use them. It was Ariel’s job to show the duality of her nature, but to show it subtly.