Actresses kiss men like that all the time—and hate most of them, if the gossip is true, she reminded herself savagely.
Surely I can be kissed by a good friend without freezing up.
Yet even as Holly lectured herself, she doubted that she could bear another intimate kiss from Roger without going for his eyes like an outraged cat.
Technicians rushed with frantic speed around her, adjusting lights and reflectors, reading light meters, cursing.
She knew why. The lighting of the scene was crucial. Her face had to be illuminated mostly by the setting sun rather than artificial light. Roger’s face had to be almost entirely in shadow.
And the sunset behind them had to radiate all the colors of desire.
To achieve the three effects at once was a feat that had the technicians in a frenzy.
“Is Roger in place?” yelled the director.
Holly shaded her eyes and looked into the dazzling reflections left on the surface of the sea by the setting sun. The blaze of light blinded her, but she could make out a tall masculine form walking out of the waves toward her.
She fought the coldness creeping up from her stomach. She didn’t want Roger to touch her again.
Not like that.
“We’re ready,” Holly shouted.
“Action!”
Once again she pulled her memories of Linc around her and went through the motions of a woman watching the man of her dreams emerge from the sea.
Once again she held out her hand to him almost shyly, blinded by the dying sun.
But before the man’s fingers touched hers, memories and reality collided.
“Linc!”
He took her hand and pressed her palm against his lips.
Wind swept up Holly’s dress and her hair, wrapping Linc in a sensual caress even as he pulled her into his arms.
His lips were firm, sweet and salt, better than her memories, as wild and beautiful as the setting sun.
She flowed against him, fitting herself to him without reservation, abandoning herself to his potent heat. When she felt his tongue caress hers, she thought she would die of the pleasure coursing through her.
“Cut!” the director yelled. “That was perfect, but I believe in insurance. One more time. Hey, out there! Cut!”
Slowly Linc lifted his head. His eyes were hooded, his mouth still hungry.
“They think you’re Roger,” Holly said breathlessly.
“I know. I’ve been watching him kiss you all afternoon.”
Linc’s voice was as hard as his eyes. Before she could answer, his arms closed around her like iron bars. His mouth came down swiftly, expecting resistance.
She responded with a force that equaled his, dragging his head down to her lips, probing his mouth with her hungry tongue. She didn’t care about the people on the beach, the expensive dress whipping in the wind, the warm sea creaming around her calves.
She only knew that she was starving for the taste and feel of the man who had walked out of the sun to hold her in his arms.
“Shannon! Who the hell is that out there with you?” Roger called indignantly. “How did he get past the ropes!”
Holly ignored the shout, ignored everything but her overwhelming need to drink Linc’s presence into every pore.
When he tried to end the kiss, she held him all the more tightly.
With casual strength, Linc jerked free of her arms and walked back into the incandescent sea.
Shaking, almost wild, Holly held out her hand and called his name again and again.
There was no answer.
Linc dove beneath a wave and vanished into the burning sea.
Twenty-one
“Shannon, are you all right?” Roger shouted.
Holly couldn’t answer.
He ran down the beach toward her.
“Shannon? Can you hear me?”
He didn’t stop running until he was standing right in front of her, forcing her to acknowledge him.
“I’m fine,” she said shakily.
“Who the hell was that?”
“Linc.”
Roger’s lips turned into a thin, downward-curving line.
“I should have guessed,” he said bitterly. “You kissed him like he was a god come to claim you.”
Shivering visibly with passion, Holly didn’t disagree.
Roger took her face between his hands. His eyes noted every bit of the sensual excitement blazing in her golden eyes and the hunger trembling in her red lips.
“If you had kissed me like that,” he said, “I wouldn’t have walked away. Shannon, let me make—”
“Stop it,” she interrupted harshly. “Stop it!”
Trembling, she jerked away from him and stared into the sea where Linc had vanished.
She saw nothing but the distorted, blinding reflections of the dying sun.
The director stormed up. He was waving his bullhorn about like a sword.
“This is a zoo, a bloody zoo!” the director yelled. “I get the best shot of my life and Jerry keeps yapping that it’s the wrong chap!”
“Couldn’t you tell it wasn’t me?” Roger asked irritably.
“Hardly,” the director said, his voice clipped. “A tall, well-built chap walks out of the surf and kisses Shannon, right? It’s been happening all day, right?”
“Right,” Roger snapped.
“The only difference,” the director said angrily, “is that this last time the light was perfect, the wind was perfect, and the two of them damn near melted the lenses off the bloody cameras.”
“You couldn’t see his face, the difference in height?” Roger asked.
“You’re in silhouette, your face is in shadow,” the director shot back. “You have to bend over to kiss Shannon. So did he. Am I supposed to notice that one of you bent down a few centimeters farther than the other?”
“Bloody hell,” was all Roger said.
“Too right,” the director retorted. “One more time.”
With that he turned and stalked back up the beach, yelling through his bullhorn with every step.
Technicians scattered.
One of the light men walked up to the director, pointed to the sun. It was now barely a fingernail above the horizon. Then the technician pointed toward the beach where lighting equipment waited amid an orderly tangle of cables.
The director made an angry gesture at the technician and waved everybody into place.
Holly turned back toward the sea, but saw only Roger’s retreating figure heading into the water. She looked up the beach, beyond the ropes where people stared and pointed at her and the cameras.
There was no tall, powerful man among them.
There was no one at all between her and the shimmering expanse of sand and rock leading to the cliff-top hotel.
It was as though she had conjured up Linc out of her own tearing loneliness, but he had been too potent to be held by her spell. He had pulled all the colors of her desire around him.
And vanished.
“Wake up, Shannon!” shouted the director. “I said action!”
Empty, she turned and waited for the wrong man to walk out of the sea to her.
Like a nightmare, the scene repeated itself endlessly.
The dark outline of a man coming out of the scarlet sea.
The meeting of hands.
The kiss.
Each time it was worse. Each time it was harder for Holly not to show the rebellion of her mind, her body, her very soul at having to endure another man’s touch.
It was Linc she wanted.
Only Linc.
The nightmare continued. Warmth drained from her body even more quickly than light drained from the sky.
When the director finally decided that there was no point in continuing, the sky held only a faint blush of orange.
Shivering, aching, chilled despite the heat, Holly walked beyond the reach of the luminous waves.
And Roger.
Quickly he caught up with her. H
e walked very close to her, but was careful not to touch her. His brilliant blue eyes watched her every movement, measuring her strain in the tightness of her body and the bleak lines of her face.
Common sense told Roger that she should have looked less appealing to him now that she was strained, almost haggard.
Yet she didn’t.
Holly simply looked withdrawn, mysterious, her beauty heightened by the darkness that moved just beneath her golden surface.
Silently Roger cursed the man who had gotten past Holly’s legendary guard, only to cut her to her heart.
When the director would have come over to her, Roger waved him off.
“But we could try it with—” began the director.
“Stuff it,” Roger said curtly. “Can’t you see that she’s dead on her feet?”
Without another word he led her through the bustle of technicians to the tent she used for changing costumes.
Inside the tent hung three more dresses just like the one Holly wore. They were expensive insurance against the random leap of waves. Two of the gowns showed stains of salt and water at the hem, testimony to the unpredictable ocean.
Roger began unfastening Holly’s dress with the deft, impersonal fingers of a man who made his living clothing women.
Abruptly she came out of her daze.
“No,” she said.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “I’ve undressed you a thousand times—and dressed you, for that matter.”
She stepped beyond his reach.
“Not this time,” she said flatly.
“I’ll wait outside, then.”
“You don’t have to wait.”
“I’m taking you to supper,” Roger said.
“No.”
“That’s an order, Shannon, not an invitation. I’ll be damned if I’m going to take in those dresses again.”
“But Linc—”
“If Linc wanted to be here, he would be here, wouldn’t he?” Roger interrupted.
Holly looked away, unable to meet the anger and compassion in Roger’s blue eyes.
“He’s probably at the hotel, waiting for me to finish working,” she said.
Roger grabbed a cordless phone off a wardrobe trunk and turned his back on her.
“Change your clothes,” he said curtly.
After a moment of hesitation, Holly began taking off the clinging dress. She heard Roger talk to the hotel desk and waited with her breath held while Linc’s room was rung.
No one answered.
Roger asked for Lincoln McKenzie to be paged in the hotel restaurants and lobby.
No one responded.
“Right,” Roger said.
He hung up and put the phone back on the trunk.
Holly didn’t say a word.
“Linc must be having supper somewhere else,” he said.
His tone said with someone else.
Numbly she pulled on the soft, loose cotton float she had worn down to the beach that morning.
“Supper,” Roger said firmly.
She went past him, headed toward her room. All she wanted was a shower and the peace of an empty room.
Not quite all, she admitted. What I really want is Linc.
But Linc had disappeared as unexpectedly as he had appeared in the first place.
Roger walked Holly to her room. Along the way he made conversation that she didn’t really hear and didn’t bother to answer.
Eagerly she unlocked her door. If she couldn’t have Linc, she wanted the solitude that waited just inside. But before the door opened more than a few inches, Roger put his hand on her arm to prevent her from slipping past him.
“I’ll pick you up in forty-five minutes,” he said.
“I’m not hungry.”
“How would you know? You haven’t tried eating for five days. You might find you’re starving.”
Holly shrugged.
He looked closely at her. His eyes changed, darker now, the color of twilight.
“If not food, then something else,” he said. “Invite me in, Shannon. You’ll never be hungry again. I guarantee it. You know how good I am with a woman’s smooth body.”
“Don’t, Roger,” she whispered. “Please don’t. I—”
The rest of her words were lost in a gasp as the door to her room was jerked open from inside.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to put it on hold,” Linc drawled almost lazily.
But his eyes were cold when he looked at Holly. They were even colder when he shifted his glance to Roger.
“Don’t worry,” he said to Roger. “I can’t stay long. You’ll understand if I don’t invite you in.”
Roger grimaced.
Linc gave the handsome designer a sardonic smile.
“But I do appreciate you warming her up,” he added smoothly. “Like I said, I don’t have much time.”
With that, Linc pulled Holly inside and locked the door.
“That wasn’t necessary,” she said tightly. “I’ve said no to Roger before without your help.”
“Really?” he said, reaching for her. “I didn’t hear a damn thing that sounded like no.”
“Linc—” She turned her face aside, avoiding his lips.
“What’s the matter? Wrong man?”
Linc’s expression was harsh. He let go of Holly and reached for the door.
“I’ll call Roger back,” Linc said.
“That’s not it!”
“Oh?”
His voice was still lazy, and his eyes were still like polished stones.
“Then what’s the problem?” he asked. “Do you need a camera to perform?”
She stared at him, too shocked to answer.
He shrugged.
“That shouldn’t be hard to arrange,” he said coolly. “This is Mexico, after all. A bribe gets you anywhere, even into locked hotel rooms. One camera, coming right up. Or do you need more?”
“Why are you doing this?” Holly whispered.
“Doing what? I cut short my trip to Texas—”
“I didn’t know you were—” she interrupted.
“You didn’t ask about my work,” Linc interrupted curtly.
“I thought the Mountains of Sunrise—” she began.
Linc talked over her.
“I was looking over some Arabians in Texas,” he said, “but I couldn’t stop thinking about you, about what you’d said.”
“About us?”
His eyes became shuttered.
“About modeling,” he corrected. “I realized that maybe I didn’t really know what professional models did for their pay. So I chartered a plane to Cabo San Lucas.”
Holly let out a long sigh of relief.
“Then you understand what it’s like, now,” she said.
Linc’s lips twisted in a travesty of a smile.
“Yeah,” he said. “I sure as hell do.”
A chill went down her spine.
“Just what do you think you understand?” she asked.
“Nothing new. I spent the afternoon watching your half-naked boss kiss you and listening to the men around the rope speculate about what you’re like in bed. Hell of a way to sell clothes.”
“I’m glad it was so exciting for the spectators,” Holly said harshly. “For me, it was about as romantic as cleaning fish.”
Linc looked startled.
“For me they were stage kisses,” she continued in her hard Shannon voice. “All show and no go.”
“All of them?” he asked skeptically. “All afternoon?”
“Except once, when you walked out of the sea and kissed me and I felt like I had fallen into the sun.”
His expression changed as her words sliced through his anger to the hunger beneath.
It was the same wild hunger he sensed beneath the anger in Holly’s words and glittering eyes.
“I doubt that Roger would agree about stage kisses and cleaning fish,” Linc said.
“That is Roger’s problem,” she said, clipping each w
ord.
Linc’s hand rubbed through his hair.
“And my problem?” he suggested quietly. “Is Roger my problem, too?”
“Only if you want him to be.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that I want only one man on earth. You.”
Linc’s breath caught.
“Shocked?” Holly asked. “I don’t play games, Linc. I love you too much for that.”
“Then why won’t you quit modeling?”
Now his voice was neither angry nor hard, simply curious.
“Wrong question,” she said.
“Why?”
“What you really want to know is why I won’t destroy half of myself to please you,” Holly said. “That’s not love, Linc. That’s hate.”
“But—” he began.
She kept on talking.
“If I asked you to kill the part of you that loves the ranch,” she said, “what would you call it? Love or hate?”
Linc drew in a sharp breath.
“Love you, love your modeling,” he said. “Is that it?”
“Modeling is a part of me just as the ranch is a part of you. If you can’t accept that, then you can’t accept me.”
There was a long silence.
“I didn’t come here to argue,” he said.
“Really? Then why did you come?” she asked.
“You know why. You knew it when you kissed me.”
Holly’s eyes widened. Shadows moved in their tawny depths as she remembered the wildness and passion Linc drew so effortlessly from her depths.
“Is that all you want from me?” she whispered.
“It’s the same thing you want from me. Don’t bother to deny it. I’ve never been kissed like that.”
She shivered. “Because I love you.”
Linc gathered her close to him. He groaned deep in his throat as his hands felt her naked warmth through the thin cotton dress.
“Kiss me like that again,” he said. “Send us both falling into the sun.”
“But—”
He pulled her against his thighs, letting her feel his need.
“Tomorrow,” he said thickly. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”
Twenty-two
Holly awoke before her alarm went off.
It was always like that when she was working. She hated the alarm so much that she had developed a mental alarm clock that went off early, just to avoid the mechanical one.
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