Sandra Marton
Lovescenes
Copyright © 1987, 2012 by Sandra Marton
CHAPTER ONE
The oversized bed was a dimly lit oasis centered in the surrounding darkness. Its soft pillows and down quilt were the boundaries of the universe for the man and woman lying, limbs tangled and intertwined, amid the silken sheets.
The soft strains of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons filled the room, its delicate rhythms a counterpoint to the abandonment of the couple on the bed.
The woman’s eyes were closed, her thick, black lashes lying like dark shadows against her pale skin. The man beside her smiled and touched his lips to her slender throat.
‘I want you, darling,’ he groaned, his hand roaming over the curving line of her hip, outlined softly beneath the pale peach sheet. ‘I’ve wanted you from the moment I saw you.’
The woman sighed. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, ‘yes...’
‘You were all I could think about tonight. I thought of this moment a hundred times. Tell me you tought about it, too.
’It’s true,’ she said softly. ‘I couldn’t keep my mind on anything else... ’
The laundry, she thought, tangling her hands in the man’s thick, blond hair. Dammit, I forgot to pick it up last night! And my blue silk dress is still at the cleaners.
The man shifted his weight and drew her against his chest. ‘I’ve never felt this way before,’ he said.
‘Darling,’ she whispered. Her eyes fluttered open and she smiled. ‘I don’t know what’s happening to me...’
... aside from the fact that I don’t have anything to wear tonight. By the time I finally get away from here, the cleaners and the laundry will both be closed. Well, I can always wear jeans or my grey wool trousers. It’s not as if I’m going somewhere special...
‘I’m going to make you know the meaning of passion,’ the man said huskily. He caught a handful of the woman’s long, black hair and leaned towards her. ‘You’ll never forget this night.’
She smiled again and clasped the back of his head with one hand. ‘Neither of us will,’ she promised.
She pulled his head down to hers and their mouths met in a long kiss.
The grey wool trousers, she thought. She was only going to dinner with her agent—they’d probably go to that little Italian place near the studio— but Claire had mentioned that she wanted to make a quick stop after dinner. She had to see a new client or something...
She grunted softly as the man rolled his body across hers. There was something sharp in the damned mattress and it was digging into her hip. And the pillow was harder than a bag of cement...
‘Come on, Shannon! The least you can do is pay attention during a seduction.’
The deep voice broke the woman’s line of thought. She rose on her elbows and stared into the darkness.‘What’s the matter?’ she asked hesitantly. ‘Did I miss my lines?’
‘No,’ the voice admitted. ‘It’s... Harry, bring up the lights, would you? OK, everybody. We’ll take a five- minute break.’
The couple on the bed broke apart as the studio lights blazed on and the music shut off abruptly. The man sat up, the sheets falling below his waist and past his baggy sweatpants.
‘Hell,’ he groaned, scratching his bare chest, ‘I think I’m allergic to this damned quilt. It’s got to be the feathers. The sacrifices we make for All Our Tomorrows! Whoever said daytime TV drama wasn’t a legitimate art, anyhow?’
Shannon Padgett nodded in assent as she scrambled to her feet.
‘It was probably the last poor actress who spent an hour lying on her back in this studio, Tony.’ She tugged the straps of her flesh-colored bodysuit up over her arms and then rubbed the small of her back. ‘This isn’t a mattress, it’s a rock pile.’
Tony Richmond flicked his dark hair from his forehead. ‘Do me a favor, sweetie. Don’t let any of my fans hear you say that, okay? All those little housewives out in TV land would die if they knew you were thinking about your bad back while I made passionate love to you.’ A grin curved wickedly on his handsome face. ‘I can promise you that my date last night didn’t think about anything so mundane.’
‘You’d better hope the mikes are off when you say something like that,’ Shannon laughed. She snatched up her terry-cloth robe and slipped it on. ‘Maybe it’s just as well this was only a rehearsal.’
Tony turned towards the man standing beside the sound boom. ‘You wouldn’t let anything like that happen to me, would you, Jerry? You’re too good a director to let me fall on my face.’
The director of New York’s longest running television daytime drama laughed.
You mean, I’m too good to let All Our Tomorrows fall on its face. Go on. Take a quick shower. You’ll scratch yourself raw if you don’t get those feathers off you.’
'Right. Thanks, Jerry. I’ll be ready in five minutes.’
Jerry Crawford waved his hand in the air. ‘Take your time. I want to talk to Shannon, anyway.’
Shannon arched her dark eyebrows. ‘That sounds ominous,’ she said, hoping she sounded less concerned than she felt. ‘Is there a problem, Mr. Crawford?’
The director smiled at her and draped his arm across her shoulders. ‘That’s what I wanted to ask you, Shannon. And please call me Jerry. We’re informal here. You should know that by now.’
She nodded, thinking she should know a great deal after two weeks on the set, but the truth was that she still felt like an outsider.
Who wouldn’t?
Most of the cast and crew had been together for years. In a business as chancy as acting, that was rare. It was also wonderful—and, thanks mostly to luck, she was being given a chance to become a more permanent member of that cast. What had begun as a bit part that was supposed to last a month might be turning into something more substantial, something that might last at least until spring.
But not if the director was displeased with her, she thought, glancing sideways at the man. Not if he decided she didn’t really fit the part...
‘I guess I forgot to turn my face to the camera after Tony rolls over me,’ she said quickly. ‘I’m sorry, Mr... Jerry. I’ll do it right the next time.’
‘No, that’s not it, Shannon,’ he said, squeezing her shoulder lightly. ‘Look, you know what the writers had in mind for your characters. You and Tony meet, the sparks fly, and you end up in bed together.’ He paused and his arm dropped from Shannon’s shoulder. ‘The thing is, I don’t feel those sparks, my dear. You and Tony go through all the motions, but nothing comes across. No desire, no wanting, no passion.’
‘Maybe if I understood more about why we fall into bed so fast... The script has us meeting at a cocktail party and then, the next thing anybody knows, we’re there, in that bed. I mean, that doesn't seem right for my character, you know? She’s a strong, modern woman, yes, but that doesn’t mean she’d end up in bed with a man when they’ve barely exchanged names.’
Her words drifted into the echoing silence of the high- ceilinged sound stage.
Had she gone too far?
She glanced at the man beside her.
He looked—amused? Annoyed? Well, whatever that twist to his lips meant, it wasn’t good.
Just do what Crawford asks, her agent had said. And don’t overdo the Stanislavsky bit, Shannon. This guy’s got to get a show on tape every day and rehearse stuff still coming down the pike. He’s not into your ‘inner space’ exercises. If he says you feel happy, that’s how you feel. You don’t need to know why.
‘Look, forget I said all that, Mr...Jerry,’ Shannon said quickly. ‘I’m a pro and I can give you what you want. Just give me another chance.’
The director rolled his eyes.
‘Did you think I was going to fire you? Shannon, dear, part of th
e reason we enlarged your part was because we’ve had such good audience reaction to you...’ A peal of female laughter cut across the sound stage and both Shannon and the director looked across the room. ‘You’re a good actress,’ Crawford said, putting his arm around her again. ‘You impressed all of us when you auditioned for that other part last year.
’Rima’s part, Shannon thought, glancing across the room again. She’d tried out for it almost eleven months ago but Rima had got the part instead and what was more, they’d changed it to suit her. She had only one scene to do today and Jerry had already taken her through it. The woman’s performance had been wooden and emotionless, just as it would be later when it was taped for tomorrow’s show.
The director’s gaze followed Shannon’s and he sighed.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said. ‘And you’re right. I am, indeed, demanding more of you than I do of Rima. But only because I know you can give more than you have. Do you understand?’
What he really meant was that Rima didn’t have to give anything more than her name, Shannon thought with a trace of bitterness.
Rima Dalton had been a model when she was ten years old. Her hauntingly strange, child-woman face had been on every magazine cover in the western world.
When she reached thirty, the close- ups that had been so kind to her exotic young features became a cruel parody.
It was then that Rima had decided to become an actress, and, with a name that generated publicity, that was easy. The producers of All Our Tomorrows had rewritten the role Shannon had read for, changing it so they could cast Rima as an older, stereotypical soap opera villainess.
The role didn’t require much talent and, thanks to careful editing, Rima had become a star. Not an actress—at least, not in Shannon’s eyes— but a star.
‘Yes, I understand,’ she said carefully. ‘I’ll get it right the next time.’
‘You have to feel the passion, Shannon. You meet this guy, you talk for an hour or so, he takes you back to his apartment, and wham! The feeling between you is so strong, so powerful, that you fly in the face of every convention you believe in. You fail into his arms and into his bed.’ Jerry gave her an encouraging hug. ‘You and Tony have to make the audience understand that. What I want is... is instant heat. There's an old movie, Body Heat. Did you see it? There’s a scene between the two main characters the first time they go to bed together that just blows the audience away.’
Shannon nodded. ‘I know the scene,’ she said. She certainly did. She’d felt like a voyeur watching it. It had been hard to believe that the man and woman on screen were acting, even for someone with her training in the theatre. ‘All right, Jerry, I know what you want. I...’
A buzz of sound erupted at the entrance door to the studio.
‘What the hell’s all that about?’ Crawford said.
He and Shannon turned toward the door.
A small crowd had gathered around the door. A small crowd had gathered beside it. More and more people joined it until he and Shannon were the only ones at the far end of the huge room.
‘Just what I need,’ he said sharply, taking Shannon’s elbow. ‘A party of VIPs out slumming.’
Shannon hurried along beside him, her bare feet padding softly across the floor. The crowd was babbling with excitement; the sound guy and the cameramen were staring as if royalty had just stepped into the room. The script girl and the make-up woman—all the females, in fact—had grins on their faces.
Crawford muttered something as he shouldered his way through the crowd, Shannon beside him.
‘Come on, people,’ he said, ‘get back to work. We have a final shoot for tomorrow’s show in a little while, and I want to finish rehearsing before—' Crawford stopped in mid-sentence. 'Well, I’ll be damned!’ he said softly. ‘! I didn’t expect to see you today.’
Shannon fell back as Crawford moved towards the man in the center of the crowd. ‘Why didn’t you let
us know you were coming, Cade? I’d have had the welcoming committee out.’
The man separated himself from the group surrounding him and stepped forward.
‘This looks like a pretty good welcoming committee to me,' he said, grinning as he took Crawford’s outstretched hand in his. ‘How've you bee, Jerry?’
‘My God,’ Tony’s voice drawled softly in Shannon’s ear, ‘it’s Cade Morgan.’ He shook his head and droplets of water rained on to her face. ‘Isn't he one gorgeous sight?'
Usually, Shannon laughed at Tony’s overblown adjectives, but not this time.
It was hard to quarrel with Tony’s description, although she wouldn’t have used the word to describe Cade Morgan.
Gorgeous was a word that conjured up images of softness, and there was nothing soft about this man.
He was a world-famous musician and she’d seen him dozens of times before—on television, in magazines and newspapers—but never in person.
‘Did you see him on the tube with the Boston Pops the other night?’ Tony whispered. ‘How can a guy head a group like the Marauders one day and play classical guitar the next?’
It was an interesting question, Shannon thought, staring at Cade Morgan, one which had intrigued music critics for years. Only Morgan’s admiring fans asked no questions. They were content simply to pack his concerts and buy his CDs, whether they were blues, rock, or classical.
And, yes, she'd watched him with the symphony. Dressed in black tie, he’d been incredibly masculine and almost heart-stoppingly handsome.
Today, he was all that and more, although the formal outfit had been replaced by a black leather motorcycle jacket, tight, faded jeans, and dusty black leather boots. Add amazingly sexy to the list of words that described him, she thought, watching as Jerry led him through the excited crowd. The two of them were talking but Morgan still managed to pause and smile, shake hands and exchange pleasantries.
‘Somebody’s going to whip out a piece of paper and ask him for an autograph any second,’ Tony whispered. He chuckled softly. ‘You’d never think we were a bunch of pros, would you?’
No, Shannon thought, you certainly wouldn’t. Even Rima was gushing like a schoolgirl.
Clearly, Jerry wasn't going to hold to his usually rigid five-minute break—although it wasn’t rigid when Rima wanted to take time out for coffee or to have her hair fixed or her make-up touched up and it evidently wasn't rigid for the Cade Morgans of this world, either.
"Told you," Tony said when somebody thrust a script and a pencil in front of Morgan’s face. ‘Can you imagine the future I'd have if I looked like that?’
He grinned. ‘I’m not modest, love—you know that— and I like what I see in my mirror, but there’s something about that man. You’d think Hollywood would have picked him up by now, wouldn’t you? Jeez, if I were in his shoes, I’d be beating the studios off with a stick.'
Shannon looked up sharply. Tony, too, she thought with disgust.
‘Do you think Jerry will introduce us?’ he asked. ‘I’m not sure the peasants get a shot at visiting celebrities...’
‘We’re not peasants,’ she said sharply. ‘And I’m not going to stand around waiting. Cade Morgan is a guitar player, that’s all. That’s why Hollywood hasn’t bothered with him. They have more sense than we do. Why people with stage credits and years of training should make fools of themselves over someone like that... ’
Her words seemed to echo through the sound stage, bouncing off the walls of the cavernous room. Shannon’s face turned crimson with embarrassment. Somehow, what she’d intended to be a whisper had turned out to be a roar. Every head in the room turned toward her; every eye fastened on her.
‘Bye, bye, kid,’ Tony whispered in a mocking tone ‘it’s been nice knowing you.’
She felt him move away from her. In fact, everyone seemed to have moved away from her—except for Cade Morgan. He had turned at the first sound of her voice and now he was standing a few feet away, smiling politely.
‘We
re you speaking to me?’
His voice was low and husky, but she was sure it carried into every nook of the room.
‘No,’ she said, trying to sound calm, ‘I wasn’t.’ '
Cade Morgan smiled and moved towards her. ‘About me, then. You were speaking about me, Miss... ?’
She tilted her chin up and her eyes met his. ‘My name is Padgett,’ she said clearly. ‘Shannon Padgett.’ He was smiling, but his eyes were cold. What color were they, anyway? Blue? Black? Indigo, perhaps. ‘And I didn’t mean what I said—not quite the way it sounded.’
Morgan stopped inches from her. ‘Really?’ He grinned lazily. ‘You mean, you don’t have stage credits?’ She shook her head and his smile broadened. ‘Then, perhaps you’ll explain which part you didn’t mean the way it sounded, Miss Padgett. That you’ve had years of training? Did you mean that?’
LOVESCENES Page 1