And every time he drove into her, he repeated how much he hated her.
Eight
The sound of voices bounced off the rows of paint-ladened canvases, lifted to the high ceiling, and returned to fill the long gallery of SwanSea. Liana didn’t hear.
Rosalyn, who was newly discharged from the hospital and who had insisted on resuming work, fussed with Liana’s hair, trying to achieve the disordered look of the woman in the painting that hung high in the second tier of art on the wall. Liana didn’t feel.
Sara tugged at the folds of the blue gown she had donned for this series of pictures. Liana didn’t notice.
Steve shoved a light meter toward her face. She didn’t flinch.
With great force of will, she had retreated to the place in her mind where their hands, their voices, their gazes didn’t intrude. She had determined that she was through with hurting.
Briefly, foolishly, she had opened herself to Richard and, in the process, had allowed herself to become too vulnerable. No more.
Even the fact that Richard was among the spectators gathered around them didn’t bother her overly much. She accepted his brooding presence, just as she accepted the fact that he would kiss and hold her again.
She didn’t have the strength to refuse his love-making; there were times when she wanted him more than she wanted to live one more moment. But she had decided she could enjoy the interlude of their passion with relative safety if she kept her eyes on the rapidly approaching time when they would both leave SwanSea and go their separate ways. In a matter of days she would be alone again in her little house deep in the French countryside. She would be safe there. Until then, she had to protect herself.
“She needs flowers in her hair,” Clay said, eyeing her critically.
Rosalyn bent down to a florist box on the floor. “I have them right here.”
Sara draped an almost transparent blue stole around her shoulders; Rosalyn began to weave small cream-colored flowers through her hair. Liana endured their attentions patiently, understanding that their aim was to make her look as much like the young women of the art nouveau period as possible—the women with their flaring veils and streaming hair, who had posed for the posters and paintings of the period.
“The wind machine is ready,” Steve said to Clay.
Clay looped a camera around his neck and made one last check of its settings. “Okay, now, Liana, I want you to stand on that ladder over there so that I can get both you and the painting in the frame. Can you do that?”
"Of course.”
“Good." He patted her arm, then turned his attention to his crew. ‘Time is getting critical, people. The climax of this shindig, the ball, is tomorrow night, and we’ve got an awful lot of work to do yet. We can’t afford any more delays, so let’s all give our best. Liana, the ladder. Steve, the wind machine. Sara and Rosalyn, get out of the way. Let’s go.”
Liana stepped onto the first rung of the ladder. As soon as the wind hit her, the feather-light fabric of her gown began to pulsate around her in sinuous swirls and undulations, and she set about to capture the sensual, languid mood of the first painting Clay had chosen to spotlight.
“Go higher,” he called.
She stepped onto the next rung and the next. The sturdiness of the ladder allowed her to pose freely without the fear that it would tip over. Holding onto the top of the ladder, she arched backward so that her hair and dress flowed outward with the wind’s current.
“Beautiful, beautiful,” Clay murmured, snapping away.
She climbed higher, and when she’d gained the next to the highest rung, she released the top of the ladder and threw her hands upward.
The cracking sound barely intruded on her concentration, but then she felt herself begin to slip and she realized the rung she was standing on had broken.
The splitting wood halved and her feet dropped through to the next rung, but her high heels couldn’t gain a purchase and she kept slipping. Just as she made a grab for the top of the ladder, her shinbone struck the edge of a crosspiece and pain lanced through her. Onlookers gasped their alarm, her dress ripped, and then she was falling backward to the floor.
When she opened her eyes, she saw a clearly enraged Richard kneeling over her.
“Don’t move.”
What was he mad about now, she wondered dimly, as Clay’s face swam into her view, then Steve’s. Both looked worried and concerned—completely different emotions from Richard’s.
For some reason the whole thing struck her as funny, and she began to laugh. But the breath had been knocked out of her, and the laugh turned to a cough, then a sob, then a groan.
“Are you in pain, Liana?” Steve asked quickly. “Do you need a doctor?”
“I’m sure she does,” Clay said. “Go call for one.” She felt Richard pick up her hand, his fingers stroking it gently. His voice, however, sounded like he had swallowed broken razor blades. “Where the hell did that ladder come from?”
“Right here,” Clay said, throwing a strange look over his shoulder at Sara. “We borrowed it from the hotel. Sara went and got It this morning.” “That’s right,” the younger woman said.
Sara looked pale, Liana thought absently, as she came to stand over her.
“One of the maintenance people told me where the ladders were kept,” Sara continued, her words rushing out in a nervous tempo. “I went before we started this morning and took the only one that was there.”
“Didn’t you look to see if there was anything wrong with it?” Richard asked her. It wasn’t until Liana's soft gasp penetrated his agitation that he realized his grip had tightened on her hand. He eased his hold.
“No. I just assumed—”
“Well, you assumed wrong, didn’t you?”
Clay’s gaze had been going between Richard and Sara, following their conversation. “For heaven sakes, forget the damned ladder. The Important thing Is Liana.” He looked down at her. “How are you, honey?”
Her brief hysterical period had passed; a throbbing ache that seemed to encompass her entire body had set in. “I’ve been better.” She tried to sit up, but grimaced when she felt sharp twinges in various parts of her body.
“Don’t move,” Clay and Richard said simultaneously.
“Trust me,” she said dryly. “If I don’t move now, I may never move.” Her second attempt to sit up was a success.
Clay reached out a hand to support her back. “You may have broken something. Liana. We need to get you to a doctor.”
This conversation sounded vaguely familiar, she thought dryly. She shook her hair out of her face, sending a dull pain through her head and flowers showering to the floor. “Nothing's broken. I’ve just managed to collect a few more bruises, that’s all. ” She glanced at Richard. “Help me stand.”
When he hesitated, she moved to stand by herself.
“Dammit, Liana,” he said, reaching out to her. Once she was on her feet, her knees buckled, but then braced to hold her weight. She fixed a determinedly bright expression on her face. “See? I’m fine.”
Richard muttered a curse under her breath. “I’ll take you up to your room. ”
“No, I’m going to continue working. Clay, which dress do you want me in next?”
Clay looked at her as if she had lost her mind. “What?"
She managed a grin. “Why are you so surprised? You’re the one who told us how much we have left to do and how little time we have left to do it.”
“That was before—”
Richard’s fingers closed around her upper arm. “Liana, quit being so stubborn and let me take you upstairs.”
She pushed his hand away. “I’m here to work, Richard. I told you that right from the first day.” She glanced toward Rosalyn, whose concern for her had made the blotches on her face more pronounced. The quickest way to wipe the anxious look off her face, Liana knew, was to give her some way to feel helpful. “Rosalyn, do you have any aspirin?”
Rosalyn snapped into action. “I
n the makeup bag. Come on, honey, I’ll give you a couple and we’ll get you into the next dress.”
Clay eyed Sara for a moment, then shrugged. “Okay, people, let’s set up for the next shot.” Steve and Sara set to work.
Richard strode down the long gallery toward the door, his brow knit in thought. There seemed to be a lot of bad luck on this shoot, and all of it was being experienced by Liana. It could be a coincidence. Then again . . .
Richard went to several maintenance people before he found the man with whom Sara had spoken. The man wore a uniform with the name Bill mono-grammed over the chest pocket. Richard passed a hundred dollar bill to him to assure he would be the only one getting this man’s information.
Bill pocketed the money with a smile. “We have more than one ladder, and as I recall, when the lady came to ask me where they were and if she could borrow one, all but two were in use. ”
“Two? Are you sure?”
Bill nodded. “Sure I’m sure. I told her to help herself.”
“Were they both in good repair?”
Bill looked vaguely shocked. “Absolutely, Mr. Zagen. This is SwanSea. We wouldn’t tolerate any broken ladders.”
Liana gave a sigh of pure bliss as she sank into the steaming hot water of her bath and rested her head on the rim of the tub. She was exhausted and it felt as if every bone in her body hurt. But at least, she thought, she had the satisfaction of knowing she had managed to complete the day’s shooting schedule.
The heat of the water penetrated through to her bones, and slowly her knotted muscles began to loosen. Her mind drifted, and against her will, her thoughts returned to the moment when she had heard the crack of the rung as it broke in two. How was it that the topmost one had broken when the others hadn’t? The wood must have been rotten or weak or . . .
She remembered how Steve had come to her after she had fallen down the grand staircase. He had intimated that the light might have been rigged.
Despite the heated water, she suddenly shivered. The thought that someone might actually be trying to hurt her was incomprehensible. She had discarded the idea once before and she did so again. She didn’t have an enemy in the world.
Unless she counted Richard. She discounted that idea as quickly as it had come to her. Richard certainly made a formidable enemy, but causing her physical harm wasn’t his style. He might cut her to pieces with slashing words, but he never left any visible scars. And he might give her sexual pleasure so intense she sometimes feared she would die. But after he was through making love to her, she fell into a deep sleep, not into death.
But what if someone else . . .
She heard the outside hall door to her bedroom open and knew it was Richard. Her first impulse was to speak to him about her doubts, but the impulse was immediately squelched.
She felt threatened and a little frightened, but Richard was the last person to whom she could show any weakness. He had the power to hurt her, the kind of hurt that wouldn’t kill or bruise, but would go much deeper and cause irreparable harm.
When he appeared in the doorway, she smiled. “Hello.”
He leaned his shoulder against the doorframe and crossed one ankle over the other. Staring at her, he felt the familiar stirrings of desire, the powerful, blood-boiling kind that only she could make him feel.
Tonight yet another satin ribbon tied her hair atop her head, this one blue, and its ends mingled with her wheat-colored curls. His gaze dropped below the clear bath water to her breasts and their taut rosy peaks. In two steps, he could have one of them in his mouth, he thought, and Lord knew he needed the succor he would receive.
He forced himself to look at something else. The triangle of pale hair low on her body drew his attention, and then her legs. Just looking at those long, lovely legs and remembering how they felt around him made his gut clench. Every inch of her skin that he could see had a pearlescent sheen to it, and a fragrance, vaguely floral, vaguely haunting, rose from the water and permeated the air. If he didn’t do something and quick, he would lose himself in her for the rest of the night.
"Do you always leave your door unlocked?”
The serrated edge of his voice caused her to throw him a wary glance. “Not always. ”
“You did early this morning. I came back from running and was able to walk right in. ’’
“As I recall, I didn’t know you had left.” She reached for the soap and washcloth. “I woke up right before you returned.”
He remembered. He had been in agony and had desperately needed to assuage that agony in her sweet, firm body. Just as he wanted to do now. His jaw tightened. “What about tonight? Anyone could have walked in. ”
“But anyone didn’t,” she said, unwilling to tell him that she had left the door unlocked for him. “You did.”
“That lock is there for a reason. Liana. Use it. ”
She skimmed the soaped cloth down one arm and across her chest. “Is there any particular reason why we are talking about whether or not I lock my door?”
His eyes automatically followed the path of the washcloth, but his mind worked on how he would answer her. He had to be careful. If he were wrong about this half-formed theory that someone was trying to harm her, he could end up looking like a fool. And his number-one priority at the moment was to come out of this affair with her, unscathed and with his dignity and heart intact.
He rolled his shoulders in a nonchalant manner. “I just think that locking your door would be a sensible thing to do. Several unexpected things have happened to you lately.” His heart picked up a beat as she lathered soap over her breasts. “You know, it’s funny. When we were together In Paris, I don’t remember you being particularly accident-prone. Of course, that could be because you spent a great deal of time on your back.”
She hurled the dripping wet washcloth at him and had the satisfaction of seeing it land with a smack against his face.
It dispersed a portion of the tension he had been feeling. Smiling, he peeled it off him. “I guess you thought I deserved that.”
“I guess I did.”
His smile grew bigger, and he tossed the cloth back into the tub, where it landed in the water near one drawn-up knee with a plunk. “Okay, maybe I did.”
She sighed. “Just say whatever it is you’re trying to say, Richard.”
He moved away from the doorframe and came to perch on the rim of the tub. Gazing down, he dipped his fingers into the water and absently made figure eights. “You’ve had three accidents since you’ve been here. I can see one, maybe even two—the fact that the road was littered with debris wasn’t your fault—but three just seems a little excessive. And if you consider the face powder . . .”
Disturbed, she shifted position in the water. She had no way of knowing if he were simply talking to have something to say, or if he might be genuinely concerned. If she thought for one minute that he was concerned . . . She shut her eyes. What was she thinking? And why did she keep having to learn the same lessons over and over again. She might love him with all her heart, but he certainly didn’t love her. And if by chance he did hold any concern for her, it was on a strictly superficial level.
“Liana?”
She looked at him again. “I’m clumsy. Things happen.”
She was clumsy, he thought, like a bull was dainty. “If you had broken a leg or an arm or a neck today, what would have happened to the shoot?"
That was a question she had already asked herself, but the answer had given her no help as to what might be going on. “Nothing. They would have brought in smother model and the shoot would have been completed.”
He frowned. “So no one would benefit.”
“No.” She tilted her head and studied him. To be making idle conversation, he was asking awfully specific questions. She couldn’t resist probing, but for her own protection she coated her words with a slightly mocking tone. “You sound worried about me, Richard.”
Immediately he went on the defensive. “I wouldn’t call it worry, more
like curiosity. Sometimes it gets the better of me.”
She sank into the water until it came to her chin. “Its hard for me to believe that anything or anyone could get the better of you.”
His lips formed a hard smile. “That’s the way I like to keep it.” He reached beneath the water and scooped up the washcloth. “I bet you’re sore,” he said, skimming the cloth from her knee, up her thigh, and back again.
She blinked at the sudden change of subject. “A little.”
“A lot, I’m sure. That was a hard fall you took.” “The hot water’s helping.”
He put his hand under her calf and lifted it so that he could better see the dark purple bruise that had formed on her shin. His eyes cut to her, his eyebrows arched.
She shrugged. “It doesn’t hurt much.”
He released her leg without comment and came to his feet. “How much longer are you going to be in here?”
All of a sudden she felt naked, in more ways than one. His strange moods had kept her almost continuously off balance since they had met again here at SwanSea. Tonight she was tired, bruised, and uneasy. She wanted to shield herself in some way, even if it was only with a thin layer of clothes. “I’m through,” she said and stood.
Water sluiced down her body, sheening her with a luster he found hard to resist. Looking at her, he felt himself harden, but no matter what she said to the contrary, the fall had to have hurt her, and afterward, she had gone on to work ten straight hours. He would have to be a blind man not to see the exhaustion in her eyes.
When she stepped onto the bath mat, he reached for a large thick towel and wrapped it around her, then tucked the end of the towel between her breasts. It took him several moments to realize that his fingers were lingering.
Disturbed, he quickly pulled his hand away. She was too easy to touch, too easy to want. He needed to watch himself more carefully.
“Thanks,” she murmured and brushed past him into the bedroom. There she went directly to the bureau inlaid with marquetry work that was set against one wall. From a drawer, she retrieved a candleglow-colored chemise and a matching pair of panties and slipped them on. When she turned to Richard, she found him already in bed, wearing only a pair of black briefs.
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