With her, however, he took the gloves off. With her, he gave as good as he got, unstintingly, furiously, unshielding the nuclear blast of his own powerful personality to tower in his brilliance and his own glee.
Just as she had never pulled any punches with him, or tried, to avert the furnace of her heated, temper but threw it at him without reservation. All of it. Without diminishment or being destroyed, in fierce exhilaration.
The things she had thought she knew about men had been why she’d chosen with such cold-blooded determination to slap Adam’s face the first time she’d met him, for she had thought, mistakenly, that his male ego would never be able to survive the injury to his reputation and. his pride. Instead he had stood unflinching and faced her down and won the day in a good, clean fight. Perhaps the honour in it had been a little tarnished, but Yvonne found she wasn’t bothered at all by a little tarnished honour. Heaven only knew, hers wasn’t immaculate.
She looked out at the passing flat, desert-shrubbed scenery and thought it was the most transcendent expression of respect she had ever experienced. Adam found her a worthy opponent, worthy enough to shout at, worthy enough to shed his cool fagade and show her who he really was.
‘Now what are you thinking?’ he sighed wearily, and in her hypersensitive state she thought she felt him brace himself.
‘I’m thinking,’ she said slowly, ‘that I owe you an apology.’
The very quality of the frozen silence emanating from him was a statement of the depth of his surprise.
‘What for?’ he said then, sounding almost bored.
She didn’t believe what she heard. He wasn’t bored, for the incredible heat was still radiating from him; he was as tense as a high strung stallion ready to kick out and rear in screaming defiance. ‘For being a liar,’ she replied wryly, and she laid her head back against her seat. ‘For lying to you, but lying to myself most of all.’
After a moment, Adam said in a very quiet voice, ‘Thank you.’
Her head rolled on the head-rest and she looked at him and whispered, ‘I’m scared of losing myself. I’m scared that if it happens this time may never find myself again.’
She saw a muscle in his lean jaw flex once, spasmodically, and he unclenched one of his fists to grope for her hand, and to hold it hard. ‘Do you know what I think?’ he said, his tone still very quiet but underlaid with a savage bite. ‘I think you were unfortunate enough to be surrounded by selfish, greedy people that last year you acted who didn’t care about human cost as long as they achieved the end product. Anyone with an ounce of sensitivity can recognise someone on the brink. All they had to do was reach out a hand and pull you back.’
‘Who knows? Maybe you’re right.’ She gave a shrug, and then simply amazed herself, by saying, in pain, ‘I’m, sorry l’m not the quality of actress you wanted.’
His intake of breath was as sharp and unshielded as if she’d laid into him with a whip”. Then he said harshly, ‘It doesn’t matter, not any more.’ .
She regarded him in bewilderment. It had mattered enough for himcto shout at her. ‘It matters to me.’
‘Then don’t let it. Listen to me talk about insensitive louts, when I’ve been the biggest one of all,’ he said, managing to gentle himself as he felt her confusion. He sent her a brief, frowning glance. ‘Yvonne, you decide what you want to bring to the film. The technique will be quite enough if that is what you choose. To do any better, you would have to lose yourself; a true actor becomes his part, not merely plays it. That’s a leap of faith from you that I haven’t got the right to demand.’
She closed her eyes and shook all over her body, vibrating under his strong, warm hand, which tightened in silent reaction.
He was a man who would always live by his own dictates as long as others allowed him to, and then he would be as stern and as mercilessly impartial as a judge. And he had promised “her that he would not push her beyond her own limits, and she had told him, in truth that time, in harshest unforgiving self-truth, that he wouldn’t have to, for she managed it quite well enough on her own.
She had done it before, hadn’t she? She had been Celeste, Mary, Elizabeth .
‘What if I try?’ she whispered.
Unseen, unfelt by her, his chest moved hard. ‘If you would try,’ murmured Adam, his body rigid, ‘if you would trust me that far, I would bring you back to yourself.’
‘You would?’ She opened her eyes.
His face was rock-hard with assurance. ‘Every time, Yvonne.’
A sense of wonderment stole over her. Dear God help her, she believed him.
He signalled and turned the car down a dusty dirt road that they followed for a few miles until they came upon the location site; she recognised the immense cluster of trucks bearing the studio logo, and the trailers where the cast and crew would live for the duration of the filming.
Off to one side, by a lazy thread of river and a copse of trees, green and lush in the dry bowl of land, was the house and outbuildings that was the movie set.
She stared at it, drawn by a copper-tasting sense of excitement and fear. Adam pulled the BMW to a halt, the powerful car engine idling, and looked at her.
‘Don’t trust me blindly,’ he said with a suddenness that shocked her, his grey eyes devouring every nuance of her expressive face. ‘Put me to the test. A very small one.’
She swallowed drily-as she looked at him, and hesitated. He was waiting, vivid and intent and the only thing real, in the drowsy heat of the early Arizona evening. She plunged. ‘All right.’
He gunned the car in swift, abrupt reaction, and the BMW raced towards the movie set. Yvonne breathed in hard, and held it, and gritted her teeth as they came to a stop near the quiet, waiting house. Her terror and her eagerness would not let her wait for him to come to her, and they both climbed out of the car at the same time, and he walked over to her and stopped at her side, and watched.
It was up to her.
In typical impetuous fashion, she turned and ran home. Up the wooden steps, through the unlocked door and into the front room.
It was eerily familiar. It would be already, for she had seen the sketches of the set designs. She whirled through the rooms, touching things, putting them down. Her things, in the bedroom; her hairbrush, and shabby mirror. A few ribbons. She opened the wardrobe and looked in. Her clothes.
Hannah sat on her bed, and breathed deeply. The quiet of the day stole into her limbs. An unobtrusive voice asked her from the doorway, ‘What are you doing?’
‘Dreaming,’ said Hannah, who tilted back her chestnut head. Her lips pulled into a private, untouchable smile. ‘I always dream in the afternoon. It’s too hot to do anything else.’
‘What are you dreaming about?’ asked the quiet voice.
‘Oh, fine things,’ she whispered, and shook her head at the useless fancy. ‘Servants, and a lovely ball-gown, and a man to dance with me.’
‘Your husband?’
Hannah laughed a little, a tired, gentle sound, and didn’t answer. Her eyes opened suddenly, and she frowned in puzzlement at the evidence in the room around her. Then she leaped to her feet in agitation and hurried to straighten the room. The serenity her face had gained while she had sat dreaming fractured into delicate distress. It wasn’t right, wasn’t right.
‘Now what are you doing?’ asked the voice, patiently.
‘I wouldn’t do this,’ said Hannah, who was upset by the disorder. ‘I wouldn’t leave my room like this. Everything has to be put away, in its place, everything has to be neat and tidy. There ‘isn’t any room for dreaming. here. It makes a mess of your life. It makes you want things you can’t have.’
‘What else’ isn’t right, Hannah?’
Everything was better now. She turned and walked out of the bedroom’ to look, and she hurried through the house rearranging, explaining as she went.
The kitchen had to be as spartan and as straight as the rest of the house, until she turned to the golden slant of the sun as it entered
the window, and she stood slender as an arrow as dust motes danced around her body in a fairy waltz.
The man who had followed her like a fiery shadow stood and stared at the sight, transfixed.
She was unaware of him. She whispered, ‘I’m going to lose it all, aren’t I? Everything I loved, everything I’ve hoped and dreamed for, my father, no children, my husband whom I cannot love no matter how’ I try, my looks, my God, my face. This God-awful place will take my youth away.’ She slumped in exhaustion, and her face slowly bent to her chest, and her massive eyes closed in eloquent despair.
Her unnoticed watcher, the man of legendary control, moved uncontrollably.
Almost immediately, Hannah straightened in her pride and pain, and whispered, ‘It doesn’t matter. I’m too busy for it to matter. Everything has to be put in its place.’
Gentle arms came around her. She started violently at the intrusion. Adam pulled her close, and held her hard, and his face came down to rest on the top of her drooping head. The sensual evidence of his touch was too powerful. She groaned as Hannah splintered.
‘Enough,’ he whispered. ‘Yvonne, for pity’s sake, that’s enough.’
Yvonne lifted her head and looked at him. His grey eyes were wide. He was so beautiful, and so strong, and so impossible to deny, this man she had made Hannah dream about, who had danced with her under the moonlight. He seemed to be labouring under the influx of a powerful emotion.
‘I’m back,’ she said simply, and her expression transformed in exultant rediscovery.
‘Oh, darling,’ he said in a deep voice, and he held her fiercely. ‘Well done!’
It was the first praise he had offered her since they had started work together, and-the ring of truth in it was unmistakable. Yvonne laid her head on his shoulder and was content.
CHAPTER FIVE
IT WAS the beginning of the second month, and the whirlwind machine had coalesced into the brilliant laser pin-point of one undeniable, inexorable man.
Nothing was good enough for him. He did not shout it, or explode into harsh impatience. He dictated in awesome, unrelenting quiet. Retake after retake. His cast struggled under the ruthless request for their highest performance, and gave him what he asked for. One soft-spoken word from him, and his crew leaped to obey.
The first few weeks were terribly exhausting for Yvonne, who had fallen out of the habit of remembering what a long day of filming could entail. Her private trailer became a haven that she stumbled into at night, to fall into bed and plunge into a deep, dreamless sleep. The days when she was actually acting started before dawn.
Her hair was washed and arranged, and she suffered under endless attention to the detail of her dress. Every aspect had to be correct in order to maintain veracity from one scene to the next, and, since they did not shoot in chronological order in the story but followed the best schedule for utilising personnel and times of day and specialeffects, that meant consulting long, detailed lists that were excruciatingly meticulate.
The first time Make-up had a go at her was an abysmal failure.
Adam took one look at her face, at the expert and delicate artifice that enhanced her already unique, adamant features into a stunning display. His face darkened. He roared, in an undiluted, rampant display of temper that was all the more terrifying for. being so uncharacteristic.
‘What the hell have they done to your face?’
She nearly leaped out of her skin. She shouted back, more startled than anything else, ‘I haven’t the faintest idea!’
He growled, low in his chest, his forceful features clenched into a scowl. Unbeknown to either of them, the busy crew going about their individual preparations for the day had halted and watched the heated interplay in immense fascination.
‘Well, dammit, why didn’t you pay attention to what they were doing to you?’ he snapped, resting his fists on his lean. hips and glaring at her. ‘You’re wrong, you’re all wrong!’
Unconsciously she mimicked his stance, stood practically toe to toe with the man, thrust her angry face into his and snapped back, ‘It’s not my job to oversee Make-up!’
‘No,’ he said grimly, his grey eyes throwing bolts of silver lightning, ‘it’s your job to see that Hannah’s character remains consistent. Can you honestly tell me that when you looked in the mirror you saw Hannah’s face looking back at you?’ .
‘I didn’t look in a mirror!’ she yelled furiously, glaring up at him. Where was the Iceman now, Yvonne? Where was his soft-spoken patience?
At her words, Adam’s eyebrows shot up in incredulity. He stared at her as if he couldn’t believe his ears, and laughed out loud, a short, disbelieving bark. ‘You mean to tell me you didn’t look in a mirror once this morning? My God, what kind of a woman are you?’
Her lush, subtly painted mouth fell. open and she gasped audibly. ‘I’m more woman than you’ll ever get the opportunity to know, you insufferable man!’ she raged, beside herself with fury at the perceived insult.
To her escalating amazement, Adam creased up. He laughed in uncontainable amusement,. and she glared at him, and gnashed her teeth and wondered incoherently how she could strike back with enough force to knock that delighted smile off his handsome, infuriating face.
‘What were you doing in Make-up all that time?’ He was trying manfully to get a grip on himself. ‘Counting sheep?’
She nearly hit him. Her fist was curled, cocked back and thrumming with tension as she looked at the line of his lean jaw with narrowed eyes and thought of planting it there, right there. Oh, such a lovely. thought. ‘Mornings,’ she said in a deadly voice, ‘are not my best time of day.’
‘Apparently not,’ he remarked in derision. She nearly let fly with a right hook then, but his light gaze fell down the length of her taut, battle-ready stance. He looked at her fist, and said, ‘Violence, my dear?’
She said from between her teeth, ‘You do seem to ask for it. Why is it you always yell at me? You never shout at anybody else, although they tiptoe around you as if they half expect it—you only shout at me. Why, Adam, why?’
‘I haven’t the slightest inclination to yell at anyone else. You quite satisfactorily draw all my fire,’ he purred with a tight, glittering smile.
He almost wanted her to do it. She could see that and wouldn’t succumb, and forced her hand wide open, the long, narrow. fingers stiff and taloned. She displayed her flat, empty palm to him in mockery and said with intimate malice, ‘Sally’s scared stiff of you.’
His beautiful eyes lifted to hers. They were afire. ‘Sally,’ murmured Adam with ineffable gentleness, ‘isn’t woman enough to stand up to me. You never did tell me.’
She glared at him blankly, not understanding why her chest had become so constricted she could hardly breathe. She was struggling and she didn’t know why.
‘Tell you what?’
‘What you were thinking about when you were in Make-up?’
What in the world was he doing now? His persistence was as stubborn and as incomprehensible as anything she had ever witnessed. She finally got a deep breath into her restricted lungs, and the rushing intake of oxygen made her light-headed and dizzy.
‘I wasn’t thinking at all,’ she grumbled, half embarrassed by the confession. ‘I fell asleep.’
He roared again, this time in laughter. The sound produced in her a gut reaction. She wasn’t even in conscious control of it. Her hand doubled into a fist again, and sprang upwards—and was caught at hip level, in a lightning-swift movement from him that she hadn’t even seen.
He held her effortlessly and seemed to recall where they were.‘ He looked around them and caught sight of their silent audience, who hadn’t heard anything but the loudest of the shouted exchange but were watching the unfolding drama with absorption all the same.
He said to the crew very softly, ‘Don’t you all have jobs that need to be done?’
Indeed they did, and they remembered that fact with great alacrity. Yvonne felt shaken free of some sorcero
us enchantment, and blinked rapidly at the return of sanity. She tried to twist out of Adam’s grip, but the movement only served to draw his attention back to her.
He frowned critically down at her and strode towards the make-up caravan, dragging her along with him. Just once, she thought with longing, her legs flashing swiftly to keep up with his longer stride. Just once she wondered what it would be like to be invited, instead of hauled about like a sack of potatoes, or a battered stuffed toy dragged along in a small boy’s wake.
But at that thought she frowned, and her plaintive little fantasy blew up in her face. Adam was as far from the image of a small boy as chalk was from cheese; he was all man, hard and muscled and sinuous with graceful virility. And if he invited her, what would she do? Would she refuse him contrarily, or would she accept?
Would she?
He stalked up the narrow metal-framed steps, entered the caravan without knocking, and she scrambled along behind him. The make-up artist turned in surprise. Adam ignored the other woman and thrust Yvonne towards the large lit mirror and said tersely, ‘Look at yourself.’
She threw a scowl at him for the sake of principle, then turned to stare at her reflection. She couldn’t seem to concentrate on her own image, however, and her gaze went to the tall, auburn-haired, golden visage of the man who stood at her shoulder. Was that how other people saw them when they were together—her own slender body brought to intense femininity by the brooding power of his masculine presence?
‘Do you see what I see?’ he asked after a moment, and she shook her head in numb incomprehension. She didn’t dare tell him what she saw; she could hardly dare to admit it to herself.
‘What do you see?’ she whispered through dry lips.
His reflection smiled at her. He said quietly, ‘I see fine things. I see servants, a ball-gown, a man to dance with. You’re astonishingly beautiful this way, proud and far too aristocratic. You’re undeniably and irrefutably Yvonne, but not Hannah.’
For the first time she really focused on herself, and understood, and nodded.
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