Ty set his brush down then and glanced over at her. His face lit up with genuine pleasure. He rose and crossed to her. "Hey, you," he said, sliding one hand around the nape of her neck and pulling her close to linger over her mouth until she felt herself melting.
Those lips, those eyes. Lethal. Absolutely lethal, Trish thought, when the silliness went away. "So." She surveyed the studio. "The Secret Life of Ty Ramsay?"
His grin was quick and crooked. "Not secret," he disagreed moving back over to his worktable. "Just low-key."
"Very low-key. I guess the prints you had me take in for framing were yours, huh?" Trish followed him.
Even in a paint-spattered shirt, with his hair spiky and disordered from being in bed, he had a presence about him, something larger than life. Then he smiled at her, his eyes crinkling, and she relaxed. It wasn't someone larger than life, it was Ty, and everything was going to be okay.
"What did you think of them?" he asked, his voice a bit too casual as he added a final dash of color to his canvas.
"I was impressed." And touched by the fact that he was just a little uncertain about his art. "They stuck with me. They made me want to see them again. So why don't you talk to the press about it? I've never read anything."
He scrubbed a hand through his hair, leaving a paint streak that made him look like an '80s punker. "It's not like it's a state secret or anything. I just don't talk about it a lot."
It puzzled her. "Why not? You must know you've got talent." She leaned her elbows on the table, her face level with his.
"It's a little like saying you're a mime or something, isn't it?" Ty said in amusement. "As far as most people are concerned, I'm an actor. That's the slot they want to put me in. Like I said, I just keep it low-key."
"Well, there's low-key and there's low-key. The desert image hanging in your living room is yours, isn't it? You didn't even sign it."
She'd been seduced by his charm, enthralled by his looks. She never expected to find his bashful grin endearing.
"I knew when I finished it that I was going to want to have it out where I could see it. It's not like I'm going to forget who did it."
"But with your talent and your visibility, you could be hugely successful."
Ty reached out to brush his fingertips against the ends of her hair, already curling in the dry California air. "So your hair is really curly, huh? How did you get it so straight the night we met?"
"Cilla has magical powers. Don't think you're changing the subject, though."
"Oh, no?" He stroked his knuckles against her cheek.
Trish straightened up hastily. Letting him touch her would change the subject really quickly. "No. Answer the question."
Shaking his head, Ty carried his dirty brushes over to the sink and began to wash them. "I don't know. I'm not exactly in need of money, so what's the point? To have a big crush at the opening? Don't need it. And I don't want to do inferior work and have it sell out just because it's me. That'd make me an opportunistic hack."
"But you know it's not inferior work," Trish protested, following him. "That's not just me talking. Jocasta thinks so, too, and you've gotten some good reviews."
Ty flicked her a sardonic glance. "Trust me, after eight years in film, I've learned exactly how relative the worth of a review can be," he said, pressing a brush dry with a soft cloth before reaching for the next one.
"So, have you done a show before?"
"Jocasta's hung some of my work in the past, but just as a side thing. I haven't trotted myself out for the circus before."
"Circus, hmm?" Trish leaned one hip against the counter. "So why show your art now, since you obviously don't believe in it?"
To let it breathe? Ty began to wash the last brush, the silky bristles between his fingers reminding him of the feel of Trish's skin. "Art shut up in a studio isn't alive. It needs to be seen. Besides, Jocasta and I go way back. Her gallery could use the boost."
"It's a chance to introduce what you're doing to the broader art community," Trish pointed out. "That doesn't seem like such a bad thing."
"I suppose."
"You don't sound all that convinced. Are you worried about how they'll take it? You shouldn't be, you know your work is solid. Besides, this should be familiar territory for you. You put yourself out there every time you do a film."
"Not the same. It's…"
"More personal?"
"Maybe." Ty kept his eyes on her. She'd dressed with little apparent vanity, shoving the sleeves of her sweater up to her elbows, leaving her hair a damp tumble of curls. How was it she was more enticing to him than ever?
"What drives you to it?"
A good question that deserved a good answer, though he wasn't sure how to explain the compulsion to create. "I don't know," he said finally. "I just have to. When you work on a film, it's dozens of people teaming up, all wanting to stamp their little piece of it with their vision. I need something that's just me. I see these images and I need to make them real." He shook his head. "Does that make sense?"
"Yes." Trish gave him a thoughtful look. "It's a part of you and you want to protect it."
"It's not that." He struggled to clarify it. "I just want it to be given a fair shake."
"You mean you want to be taken seriously."
They were the words he'd resisted saying because he knew just how fatuous they would sound. "It sounds like such a cliché."
"No it doesn't. You've got every right to feel that," she insisted. "People should judge you on what you do, not who you are."
If only it were that easy. "Rights don't really come into it when the media is concerned. I'm an action hero. Why should they give me the time of day as an artist?"
Trish fixed him with her gaze. "It doesn't matter what they do or don't want to do. They won't have a choice. Your art is real, Ty. People are going to see that."
"Sometimes I think I'd be smarter just to leave things as they are, forget about the opening."
"You don't strike me as the type to let anyone intimidate you into giving up something important."
He studied the glow of her skin in the afternoon light. Not just a pretty face, this one, he thought. And it meant something—a lot—that she'd take up for him. "All right," he said, in reluctant amusement, "maybe you've got a point."
Trish's lips quirked. "They'll take you seriously, sooner or later. And you'll enjoy the opening."
"I might if it weren't going to be a mob scene." That was always the rub. His life was open season, no matter how private he wanted things to be. "If I thought it could just be a normal opening."
"Define normal opening. I'm sure Warhol openings were mob scenes, too. Forget the whole celebrity thing," she said impatiently. "Trust Jocasta to take care of it and look at this as a chance to network with a whole different community."
The question was, would the community see it that way or would they hammer him because he'd had the temerity to try to cross fields? "I just don't want to have reviewers or collectors mix up one thing for the other."
"You're nervous."
"And you notice way too much," he said lightly. "I don't know if nervous is the right word. This is something that's been a part of me for a long time. Since way before I got into acting." He dried his hands and tossed the towel into a hamper, then leaned over to kiss her and lost long minutes to the spicy sweet taste of her.
"All right, already," he said finally, straightening. "Enough of talking about my art. We've got more important things to settle here. Let's go out in the living room. We need to talk."
"About what?" The alarm that flitted over her face made him wonder. There were riddles here he'd yet to solve.
"Scriptwriting."
"Oh, that." Her shoulders relaxed perceptibly. "Well, let's go then," she said briskly.
* * *
Warning herself not to expect anything, Trish sat cautiously at one end of the couch. Ty grabbed a copy of the script and flopped down next to her, kicking his feet up on the coffee table.
 
; "I took your script changes in to the rehearsal yesterday," he said, flipping through the pages.
"How did that go?" She wished he hadn't distracted her by sitting so close. She wanted, oh, she wanted, to touch him, but she didn't know if that was part of the understanding they had. She didn't know if they even had an understanding. Maybe their understanding was no understanding, just sex if and when they happened to fall into bed together. She glanced up and saw him watching her with an odd smile on his face. "What?"
"Did you hear anything I just said?" he asked.
"About the script? Um, no."
He grinned and stretched his arm out along the back of the couch to toy with her hair. "Everybody liked your script changes."
Trish gave him a doubtful look. "Everybody?"
"The director, the other cast members. And I did, of course, although admittedly I might be a little biased."
"What about the scriptwriter?"
"He wasn't thrilled at first," Ty admitted. "He agreed that the revisions worked, though. He didn't have a whole lot of choice. Anyway, he's on deadline on another project and probably happy to be shut out of problems with this one." Idly, he stroked the back of one finger along her jawline.
Focus on the discussion, Trish reminded herself. "You told them the changes were from you, I hope."
"I don't take credit for other people's work," he told her. "You wrote it and that's what I told them." The corners of his mouth, that delectable mouth, tugged up into a grin. "At least once they'd said they liked them. The director's fine with it. A screen credit's a long shot, but you might get a guild card out of it."
Ruthlessly, she suppressed the little surge of excitement—it was a long way from idle conversation to guild cards. "So does the screenwriter hate me for messing with his baby?"
Ty shook his head. "I told you, this kind of thing happens all the time. You don't last long in this business if you have a fragile ego. So will you do it? Will you keep working on the script with me?"
Trish thought of the hour she'd spent the night before working on her own screenplay, feeling the personalities flowing out on the page as she bore witness to the gradual blossoming of Callie, and the tightening of the vise around Michael. How would she feel if some outsider with no knowledge of who they were came in and ran roughshod over characters she cared about? "I don't know, Ty. It feels sort of heartless."
"Even if it winds up being a better movie? He'll get the major credit, even if we rewrite it for him. You're not taking away his glory—or his paycheck. You're just helping all of us make it better."
"You're sure?"
"I'm positive. Trust me."
She studied him. "All right."
"So what about working on a script of your own, as good as you are?"
Trish just smiled and made a noncommittal noise. "Right now, let's work on the script we've got."
He took her hand between his and kissed her fingertips. His lips were soft against them. "All right, where should we start?"
"How about the spanking scene?" she asked, mischief glinting in her eyes.
Ty blinked. "I don't remember a spanking scene."
"You know, the one where the hero gets tied up and the heroine paddles him?" Trish laughed at him.
With a mock frown, Ty shifted her on the couch so that she was lying back and leaned over her. "Oh, we need to cut that scene. I think we should sub in another one with the hero and heroine making love." He brushed his lips over hers.
"We don't want to bore the audience with too much of a good thing," Trish managed, even as she felt herself slipping away into that haze of desire.
"Trust me," he murmured against her lips, "you can never have too much of a good thing."
* * *
9
« ^ »
"You what?"
Trish's laugh echoed in the health-club locker room. "I had sex." She pulled her stretchy blue workout shirt over her head.
"When?" Cilla stood in front of her locker, staring down at her.
"Yesterday. And today."
"Yesterday night?"
"No, morning." A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. "Actually, pretty much all day, now that I think about it. He obviously takes his vitamins."
"I thought you had a glow to you." Cilla leaned down and hugged her. "Oh my God, tell me everything. Where did you meet him? How did it all happen so fast?"
How, indeed? Trish wondered. It felt so improbable that it was as though it was happening to someone else, and at the same time she'd been bursting to tell Cilla. I'm different. I'm a grown-up. I finally understand. "I don't know. It's been a wild ride."
"You look fabulous. Now tell me all about him."
Trish's heart sank. "There's not much to tell." She should have expected that Cilla would want to share in the details of her triumph. It was what they'd always done, not that Trish had ever had much to add. Normally, of course, it would have been a blast to relive every minute in detail. But given who she'd done the living with…
Cilla draped her jacket over the hanger that held her transparent turquoise-and-black Marc Jacobs dress. "Little Trish, doing the wild thing all day." She paused a moment as she slipped out of the foundation garment and zipped it into her garment bag. "Wait a minute, now let me catch up here. How can you be having sex all day? I thought you said earlier you had a new client. Are you playing hooky from Amber?" She pulled on her yoga shorts and then stopped as the light dawned. "Wait a minute, is the love god your client?"
Trish couldn't suppress the grin. "Well, it's sure not the plumber."
"Does Amber know? Never mind," she said before Trish could open her mouth. "Dumb question. Forget I asked. So come on, details."
"There's not that much to tell."
Cilla snorted. "You go to bed with a man after, what, five years, and you say there's not much to tell?"
"There isn't," Trish said awkwardly, grabbing her mat and rising from the bench in front of the lockers. "Anyway, class is going to start in a couple of minutes. We should get into the other room."
"Oh, right, I'm supposed to concentrate on my poses after that bombshell?" Cilla followed her through the door into the asana room.
Bamboo matting covered the walls; the floor was polished hardwood. In a corner, candles flickered on a carved wood table, scenting the air with vanilla. The effect was one of quiet serenity. A soft duet of flute and harp played over the stereo. At the front of the room, the yoga instructor sat quietly in the lotus position with her eyes closed.
Trish walked to an empty patch toward the back of the room and laid out her mat.
Cilla dropped down beside her. "At least tell me your new boy's name."
Trish sat with her legs outstretched before her, raised her hands high over her head, and took a deep breath. "He's not my new boy. He's just someone I'm having sex with."
"Run that by me again?"
"Someone I'm having sex with. Casual sex." She bent from the waist, exhaling and stretching out over her toes. "You and Delaney don't have a lock on it, you know."
"Hey, I've seen your version of the downward dog. I'm sure you can do anything you want to." Cilla lay on her back and brought her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. "Physically, anyway. Emotionally, though? You're a hopeless romantic, Trish. You are not built to just screw around. Are you sure you know what you're doing?"
"I'm sick of waiting around for Mr. Right." Trish straightened, stretching her fingers toward the ceiling and bent again. "I wanted to have sex while I'm still young enough to do it."
"Oh, ancient you."
Trish made a face at her.
Cilla laughed, then sobered. "I just don't want to see you get hurt."
"I'm alive. Being hurt kind of goes with the process, doesn't it? Anyway, it's unlikely in this case," she said briskly. "I'm going into it with my eyes open." She was, wasn't she?
Cilla studied her and then gave a slow grin. "I guess I should have given you a makeover a long time ago. Want m
e to help you pick out some work clothes?"
"He doesn't seem to care what kind of clothes I wear," Trish gave a little laugh, realizing as she said it that it was true.
"Maybe he just wants you out of them." Cilla stretched over to touch her toes. "So what's his name?"
Trish hesitated.
The yoga instructor at the front of the room stirred. "Okay, everyone, let's sit up straight, legs crossed, lotus position if you can manage it."
"Come on," Cilla whispered. "Throw me a bone. What do you call him besides boss?"
It was her own fault for being so excited she had to tell her best friend, Trish thought. "Ty."
"Ty," Cilla repeated, trying for the lotus and settling for tucking one leg against the other. "Very sexy," she said approvingly. "And is Ty—" she stopped. "Ty who?"
"Um, Ty Ramsay," Trish said, wondering why her voice was suddenly so high.
"You're having sex with Sabrina's cousin?" Cilla stared in amazement.
Heads turned.
"Can you say that a little louder?" Trish hissed. She laid her hands on her knees and took a deep breath, and looked for serenity. "Breathe."
"Believe me," Cilla assured her, "I'm trying."
* * *
"Okay," Cilla said as they filed back into the locker room. "You want to try meaningless sex, I'm totally behind you. But Ty Ramsay? Isn't it a little like learning to walk on the interstate?"
Trish shrugged as she dialed the combination on her lock. "Delaney said pick someone totally unsuitable. Well, that would be him."
"No argument there." Cilla pulled out her garment bag and slung it over her arm. "I'm just trying to figure out the why. Outside of the obvious, I mean," she added.
"Simple. I know from the get go that nothing can happen because it never does with him." And she wasn't going to expect anything, she reminded herself.
"But you've listened to Sabrina. He's going to break your heart, honey. That's what he does."
"It's not him, it's what the other women expect from him." Trish slung her workout bag over her shoulder.
"Oh God, you're defending him already."
"I'm not. It just doesn't apply to me. The ones who get their hearts broken are the ones who go looking for more than sex," Trish insisted. "Me, I just want to fool around. I'm channeling Delaney."
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