The Winter King

by Amanda Carpenter

  Adam said to the make-up artist, ‘I want her naked.’

  The stark words were like a blow to her unsuspecting solar plexus.

  Sheer shock quivered over her face, and she stood unmasked before him and before herself, but his attention was mercifully on the other woman. What did this evidence tell her?

  The internal crisis was too much, the revelation too exposed to the raw, hot-lit air. She shut down all systems, closed her eyes, stood like a statue and refused to know.

  The conversation between Adam and the make-up artist continued over her unnoticed silence. He was saying, ‘No, not even so much as a dusting of powder. Nothing, I tell you—the camera close-ups would pick it up. Her skin is fine and flawless enough. It’s not often we get a chance to take advantage of such incredible natural beauty, and I intend to make the most of it. Wash it all off, and be quick about it; we start shooting in fifteen minutes.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the artist.

  Adam made a move as if to go, then his glance fell on her frozen stance, and he hesitated. ‘Yvonne? What’s the matter?’

  He sounded preoccupied, impatient, ready to get on with the long, bruising schedule of the day.

  She whispered through bloodless lips, ‘Nothing. Just go away.’

  She had shut herself blind in the dark confinement of her soul.

  She didn’t see the expression in his grey eyes as he ‘stood just behind her shoulder, staring at her, not touching her—almost touching her, as his hand came up to halt in the air just above the unchecked chestnut fall of her hair. The masculine hand clenched into a fist and he looked terrifying with ruthless intent, the hair falling in searing, untamed fire on to his brow, the expression on his hawkish face insatiable and atavistic. He looked predatory, poised on the brink of falling ravenously upon her.

  The make-up artist was witness to it all and her mouth fell open in a silent gasp. Adam’s ferocious gaze shot to the other woman. He lifted up a pre-emptory finger at her and shook his head warningly, and she nodded in vigorous response. Then he pivoted, an extraordinarily neat movement in such a confined space, and left.

  Yvonne relaxed bonelessly as she heard the door of the caravan shut. She would have brooded then, in smoky swirling terror, except that her attention was snagged on a very odd occurrence.

  The make-up artist, heretofore a voluble and gossipy individual, was completely reticent. She creamed Yvonne’s face and wiped away all traces of the make-up with a light, deft touch that would not redden her fine-grained skin, and she did it all without saying a single, Word.

  Yvonne watched her in mild puzzlement. She would almost have believed that the other woman was a different person entirely, had she not the evidence of her own eyes.

  Could things go from bad to worse, when they had started out so very badly?

  The dispute over her make-up-or lack of it—had happened on her very first day of filming, and that had been over two weeks ago. Since then the atmosphere between her and the winter king fulminated with impending crisis.

  She didn’t understand it, refused to think about it, was damned if she would obsess any more over inexplicabilities, her own most of all. She wasn’t in the State of Arizona any longer; she was in a state of denial, and as she adjusted to the demands made upon her she threw herself into her work with heedless, extravagant passion, and when she wasn’t working she was mightily, dangerously bored.

  She was her own worst enemy when she engaged in stress-related behaviour.

  If hell was a place with absolutely nothing to do, then they were in the very pit of it. The nearest civilisation was a sleepy little town in the throes of shock over the flamboyant arrival of the film crew, who were under strict orders to be on their best behaviour in public.

  Once one toured the tiny post office and the grocery store, which carried everything from food, medicines and paperbacks to magazines and newspapers and doubled as the local bag and feed centre for the farmers, there were only two other places to go, the bars in cut-throat competition with each other and located at opposite ends of town.

  Yvonne had prowled through it all, including the bars. She bought paperbacks and newspapers, aspirins, made friends with the locals, had two beers, one in each bar, and got invited to several different homes for a variety of reasons both reputable and disreputable. She turned down family dinners and the other, more unorthodox offers with the same practised, unperturbed charm.

  That killed one afternoon dead.

  Then she turned her attention to the film cast and crew. Sally, her ‘sister’ in the film, and she had become good friends, much as she had predicted they would. They had managed to do so by virtue of the fact that they had absolutely nothing in common with each other. Rochelle, her ‘mother’, was a tough nut that didn’t want to be cracked; Yvonne left the older woman alone. Her relationship with her father Christopher was already intimate with a lifetime of loving familiarity. Richard was Richard, and as such didn’t merit more than a fragment of her restless, hungry attention.

  The crew, however, had some merit. One particular special effects fellow, Jerry, she had already met some years ago. He was excellent at his job, and under-utilised at the moment since the film didn’t call for many effects, a scamp of the first order, and as bored as she was; Yvonne was delighted to renew his acquaintance.

  They fell into an argument one sultry afternoon, and, since there was nothing better to do, Jerry offered to take her out in his battered car to prove his point.

  She agreed enthusiastically but wanted to drive. That was good for another argument. They climbed into his Chevy and took off down the dirt road, and when they reckoned they were far enough away and downwind from the film site to avoid disrupting the shoot Jerry pulled off the road with a clattering bump.

  Then he proceeded to teach her how to do doughnuts. He was right, too: they didn’t need an icy pavement to do it on. Yvonne hung on to her seatbelt for dear life and shouted with glee. The body of the car was a hopeless mess, but Jerry kept the engine in beautiful condition. They roared over the bumpy ground, and twisted and flung about, and it was better than a carnival ride. Then she managed to persuade him to let her try, and took the wheel, and within minutes was flinging the car around in circles with the expertise of a professional.

  Jerry shouted that he was impressed. Yvonne grinned and yelled her thanks.

  A rock shot up and shattered the windscreen.

  The transparent glass exploded into opaque, spider-webbed white. Instantly she jammed both feet on clutch and brake for a precipitate emergency stop, even though she knew intellectually that they were probably quite safe, for there wasn’t anything in the flat desert-like expanse for them to hit, except for more rocks and dirt. The sharp screeching halt of the car brought the shattered glass down on them, in a brilliant sun-sparkled cascade.

  ‘Nice reflexes,’ said Jerry in the ensuing silence.

  She shot him a repentant glance. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. I’ll buy you another.’

  ‘Another car?’ he asked.

  The delighted incredulity in his dancing eyes made her burst out laughing. She was still laughing, an infectious, light-hearted sound, as she climbed out of the car with extreme care, scattering false diamonds generously with each slight movement.

  They were both preoccupied with inspecting the damage done to the car. Neither one was prepared when the wrath of God descended upon them.

  ‘I have never in my life seen such criminal, irresponsible behaviour,’ said the lethal quiet voice from behind her.

  Jerry had the advantage. He was on the opposite side of the car and all he had to do was look up; Yvonne jumped a good foot into the air and landed facing the most furious man she had ever seen in her life.

  She had witnessed Adam angry before. Adam beside himself with rage was like nothing she had ever before experienced.

  He was dead white, down to the taut, twisted snarl of his lips, and his eyes were glazing beacons in that rigid, awesome mask. He was breathing h
ard, and must have raced like a madman from the dirt road where he had left his BMW slewed to one side, the driver’s door still flung open. She fell back an instinctive step as he strode over to her, and tilted up her chin with gentle fingers that shook.

  Those terrible eyes ravaged her face. ‘Are you hurt?’ he murmured almost absently. ‘Cut anywhere?’

  She shook her head numbly in a sprinkling downfall of glass splinters. She looked like a dusty, dishevelled elfin queen, a proud creature born of the summer wind, and sunshine adored her long, graceful body in sparkling, incandescent brilliance. ‘

  Adam detonated. He roared deep-throated at Jerry, who flinched as if he’d been shot. The subject matter was disjointed; it had something to do with retribution, and lawsuits, and imminent death, and the force of it distended the powerful tendons in his neck.

  Shaken and astonished, she tried to stem the flood, to calm the raging beast. ‘Adam,’ she said with an attempt at calm.

  Apparently he couldn’t hear her over the noise he was making, and so she raised her voice. ‘Adam?’

  He started to round the front of the Chevy. Dear God, it looked as if he meant to throttle the other man. She screamed ear-splittingly at the top of her lungs. ‘Adam!’

  Well, that got his attention, at least. He looked at her with silver-shot, blinded eyes and shouted hoarsely, ‘What—damn it?’

  Once he’d focused on her, however, she wished she had kept her mouth shut, but it was too late now, and she would die before she backed down. She cleared her throat and asked tentatively, ‘Er—what are you doing away from the shoot?’

  His hand shot out in a wide sweeping arc. The movement had the savagery of a lion striking with out-stretched claws. ‘Chasing the path of your fall-out, what else?’ he bit out.

  She looked up in concern, as did Jerry. The dark cloud of dust they’d stirred up hung lazily in the air, an ominous yellow-tinged spiral, but it had gone nowhere near the movie set. She considered pointing that fact out to him, but felt he might not be in the mood to appreciate it.

  Instead she said with the sweet voice of reason, ‘Well, at any rate, stop taking it out on Jerry. He was only teaching me how to do doughnuts. I was the one who was driving.

  ‘God give me strength,’ he whispered. Then, without looking at the other man, he told Jerry flatly, ‘Get out of here.’

  Jerry climbed into the Chevy and got. Adam turned the ungovernable vitriol of his rage on to her. ‘You stupid woman, don’t you know what damage you could have done to yourself? You could have been scarred for life—you could have been blinded—’

  ‘Well, I wasn’t, was I?’ she exclaimed, her eyes very wide. Inwardly she was terrified at being left alone with him this way. Thinking to lighten the fearfully dangerous moment, she gave him a quick grin and shrugged, her hands outstretched, and said merrily, ‘Besides, I’m insured.’

  Wrong.

  He made a strangled, inarticulate sound at the back of his throat, took two great strides towards her, fastened his greedy hands on to her shoulders in total disregard for the danger that he might cut himself, and he shook her. Hard, long, and continuously.

  She bowed before his fury, flinging her narrow hands out to grasp the tight bulge of his biceps, devastated at the actuality of his physical release, and her own total helplessness in the face of it. The world tilted, and nothing was sane, and a cry broke from her parted lips.

  He stopped, and hauled her without mercy against the ungiving hardness of his chest and snarled. in a low monotone that was even more terrible than his previous shouting had been, ‘So you’re bloody insured, are you? I’m sure it would be a consolation to your parents had that damned car rolled over and you’d been crushed to death.’

  Her gaze widened even further as she felt the tremor that shot through his strong body, and she wondered with deep, self-inflicted bitterness just how stupid she could possibly get.

  He’d actually been afraid; that was fear for her screaming at the heart of his fury and violence, and everything she had said to him had been absolutely the worst possible thing to say.

  She lifted an unsteady hand and laid it along his face. He had been so intent on snarling at her that he hadn’t seen it coming, and he flinched reactively when her fingers touched his overheated skin. ‘Adam,’ she said, and for this one man in such a state she was gentle. ‘It was an accident. Nobody was hurt. We were sensible, wore our seatbelts, and we were enjoying ourselves, and it—just—happened.’

  ‘Sensible,’ he repeated grimly, then he uttered a foul expletive.

  But he was still at last, and listening. And wonder followed upon wonder; first she discovered gentleness, and now she found patience. She pointed out quietly, her great eyes searching his, ‘Windscreens shatter all the time on the open highway from rocks thrown up by passing trucks. We weren’t even doing twenty-five miles an hour, and there was nothing for us to run into.’

  ‘You don’t know what it looked like,’ he said harshly, his mouth twisted. ‘The car was whipping about, the engine roaring. Then I heard a horrible sound, a great loud crack, followed by the scream of brakes, and the whole car seemed to disappear into the great gusts of dirt billowing from the rear tyres. Damn it, Yvonne, I couldn’t see what had happened.‘

  ‘My God,’ she said, appalled, and then sighed in remorse. ‘I’m sorry. It must have looked awful.’

  He held her stare and said deliberately, ‘It took ten years off my life.’

  She was hardly aware of how her fingers stroked his cheek, and how his expression had softened because of it. ‘All I can say is that we never dreamed we’d have an audience. We couldn’t know you’d be watching.’

  ‘No,’ he agreed reluctantly, ‘you couldn’t know. Don’t do it again?’

  She shook her head without hesitation, and never even panicked or was the slightest bit concerned at how she was allowing another’s fears to govern her behaviour. ‘I won’t,’ she told him. ‘I promise.’

  He stared at her, in a long, searching silence, and finally the tension left his long body and he sighed. All of a sudden, he looked very weary. ‘That’ll have to do, I guess. Come on, then. Let’s get you back and cleaned up before you do serious injury to yourself.’

  Brought back to realisation of the circumstances, she looked down at herself and was even more appalled. She’d had no idea she was so covered in glass, and Adam had held her without regard. Why, he could have been cut just by touching her. Her flattened hands went out to brush down his front, but he swiftly forestalled her with a warning shake of his head.

  ‘Splinters,’ he said, ruefully.

  Another thought had already occurred to her. She froze, and one stealthy hand tried to creep up to her head, but he caught it and forced it down again.

  Then, of course, she knew, but she had to ask the horrified question anyway. ‘I have the glass in my hair, don’t I?’

  ‘All through it,’ he agreed, and paused to regard her dismayed expression with something perversely like satisfaction.

  Her dark gaze turned to him in anguished entreaty. She breathed, ‘Oh, God, how will I get it all ‘

  Adam threaded his fingers through hers, and led her towards his car. Somewhere along the line his uncontrolled rage had completely died away; somewhere between that moment, and the molten time when he had shaken her, some synchronous chain of events had eased the raging inferno.

  He was serene again, and unhurried, and he told her in a soothing voice, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.’

  ‘But how?’ she cried, half wailed.

  ‘Yvonne,’ said the winter king with a stern and darkling glance, ‘trust me.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘TRUST me,’ he’d said, and by so doing started a subterranean chain reaction inside of her that was unstoppable.

  What happened was that he escorted her to the passenger side of the BMW, took a blanket from the boot of the car, shook it out and placed it on the seat and then placed her on the blanket and dr
ove her back to her trailer.

  Once there he told her to wait outside and Yvonne did so numbly. Then he went inside and came back out a few moments later with a bath-towel and a brush. The bath towel he wrapped carefully around her head in a turban; the brush he used all down the length of her body.

  He attacked her with gusto. She was buffeted by the long, brisk swipes, barely keeping to her feet,and she yowled like a wounded cat at the indignity. Adam laughed at her sound and fury and swept her all the harder. It signified nothing.

  It was all surface noise.

  What really happened was internal and frightening. She studied him through her lashes covertly, noting the play. of the early evening sunshine along the fluid, sculpted shift of muscles of his body, the shift of light and shadow that made his grey eyes so lucid and changeable, the deep fire of his auburn hair that was at such odds with the antique, hammered gold of his stern, handsome face.

  When he had cleaned her up to his satisfaction, he stopped and leaned back, his hands thrust negligently into his trouser pockets.

  ‘OK,’ he said, and considered her with a thoughtful frown.

  She appeared to recover her equilibrium and glared at him warily. It was all an act. It was all spitfire and shadows, and the classic misdirection of a magic show. Please don’t let him look and really see her. Let him see the rabbit out of the hat; let him look on the facade and applaud and be satisfied with it; let the shabby performing clown go unnoticed.

  He was telling her, ‘Don’t touch your hair now. Leave it wrapped in the towel while you strip out of those clothes and shower. I’m going to change as well, and I’ll be back here in about ten minutes.’

  She nodded, her expression serious and attentive. She really did it well.

  His sharp gaze narrowed on her, and he remarked almost idly, ‘I’d give anything to know what was going on behind those secretive eyes of yours.’

  She froze, caught in the act, as it were, her audience unimpressed, the rabbit and the top hat vanishing in a puff of stage smoke.