‘You’re trying too hard,’ Jerry had said that afternoon, looping his arm loosely around her shoulders and walking her to a quiet corner of the set. ‘Just take it easy, OK?’
‘Sure,’ she’d said, as if she hadn’t been trying to do just that all morning.
The scene, an easy one, was set at a cocktail party, and all she had to do was look across the set at Cade and see him for the first time. Meeting her eyes, he was supposed to shoulder his way through the room to her side.
‘I’m sorry, but I don’t think we’ve met,’ was her line.
‘Oh, but we have,’ he was to answer, ‘you’ve been in my arms in another lifetime.’
But they never got that far.
‘Have we met?’ she’d asked once. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t know you,’ she’d said the next time. And once she had simply stood mute, staring past him into the distance. And that had bothered Jerry as much as the fact that she kept forgetting her line.
‘You’ve got to look right at Cade when he reaches you, Shannon,’ he’d said. ‘I’m going to bring the camera in tight—I want every housewife from here to California to feel what you fed.*
So far, all she’d felt was stupid. She kept wondering how long Jerry’s patience would last before he screamed or shouted or wrote her out of the part. When Claire had arrived, unexpectedly, at coffee-break time that afternoon, Shannon had immediately suspected Jerry had sent for her.
‘Jerry asked you to come by, didn’t he?’ she’d asked. ‘He called you and said I was making a mess of things.’
Claire shook her head. ‘No, of course not. I just happened to be in the neighborhood.’
‘Come on, Claire, you don’t really expect me to believe that, do you?’
‘Believe what you like,’ her agent had answered with a noncommittal shrug. ‘I’m only responsible for your professional life, not your mental condition. If you want to be paranoid, do it on your own time.’
‘You’re not going to joke your way out of this, Claire. Did Jerry tell you I’m doing badly...’
‘He never said that. He just said you seemed...tense,’ Claire sighed. ‘OK, OK, you got me. Yes, Jerry called. He said you seemed to have some sort of block, so I decided to drop by. What’s so unusual about that? You know I have only your best interests at heart.’
Shannon nodded. ‘The way you did when you neglected to tell me they’d hired Cade Morgan?’
‘Oh, come on! You’re not still ticked off about that, are you? I was going to tell you about Morgan, but you ran off before I got here.’
‘I bet you think I’ll believe that story if you repeat it often enough.’
‘It’s the truth,’ Claire insisted, her eyes sliding away from her client. ‘Just because I made the mistake of telling you it was a good career move, you’re convinced I didn’t try and talk Jerry Crawford out of it, but...’
‘Funny, that’s not Jerry’s story. He says you were hot for it.’
‘Look, Jerry had already made up his mind. Besides, what’s the difference? You and Morgan buried the hatchet, didn’t you?’
Shannon sighed heavily. ‘I’m not having problems with Cade. It’s—I don’t know, I just have this feeling everybody’s watching us all the time... ’
Claire had rolled her eyes. ‘Ach, mine child, I was right. Ve have here a case of galloping paranoia, yah?’
‘It’s the truth..’
‘And a terrible thing it is, too, my paranoid friend. After all, why should anybody watch an actress act?’
A truck rumbled by in the street below and the living- room windows rattled. Shannon sighed and tilted the jelly glass so the last drops of wine slipped onto her tongue.
Claire’s gentle teasing had helped enough so that later in the afternoon, when they started rehearsing the scene again, she’d felt almost comfortable—until she’d noticed people gathering around the periphery of the set, some of them people she’d never seen before.
Hey, she’d wanted to yell, what are you doing? Are you all expecting something special? A bolt of lightning, or... or...
Of course they were expecting something, she thought, pouring more wine into her glass. The story about her and Cade and that stupid kiss must have made the rounds everywhere. Probably half the people who’d heard it were convinced Cade had swept her into his arms and carried her off, while the other half believed God only knew what. Everybody was watching and waiting, waiting and watching. It was enough to make any person edgy as a tightrope walker with a blister.
The harsh buzz of the doorbell made her start. Finally, she thought, setting her glass down on the coffee table, her grocery order had arrived, and not a moment too soon. Her stomach was growling. Even frozen shoe-leather would taste good by now.
‘Just a second!’ she called, rattling the chains on the door as she opened them. ‘I’d almost given up hope, Mario. What took you so...’
Cade Morgan grinned at her from the open doorway. ‘Hi,’ he said, thrusting a bottle of red wine into her hands. ‘Have I missed dinner?’
‘... long?’ she finished lamely.
‘I’d have been here sooner if I’d known you were waiting.’
Shannon swallowed drily. ‘I didn’t mean you. I was expecting Mario.’
He grinned again, his eyes sweeping from the tousled curls pinned on the top of her head, to her tattered robe, to the Mickey Mouse feet peeking out from beneath the hem.
‘Lucky Mario,’ he said.
‘Mario is the delivery boy from the market down the street,’ she said automatically, pulling the lapels of her robe together. Why am I explaining anything, she thought, and what on earth is Cade Morgan doing here? ‘Did you--did you want to see me?’
Brilliant question, Padgett. Why else would he be standing outside your door? Get hold of yourself.
Cade nodded. ‘I hope you don’t mind my dropping in. I was in the neighbourhood...’
One dark eyebrow arched upward. ‘You’re the second person who’s used that line today, and I didn’t believe it then, either.’
‘Look, I was out walking...’
‘Walking? Here? Nobody walks here after dark unless they have a Rottweiler with them.’ She peered past him and her eyebrow arched upward again. ‘And I don’t see any four-footed friend by your side.’
‘OK, I confess,’ he said, putting his hand to his chest. ‘I was just sitting around my hotel room, bored to tears, and I decided it was time for some exercise, so I said to myself, Morgan, 1 said, where in this city can you work up your pulse rate just by outrunning the muggers.? And then tone up your muscles by jogging a dozen flights of stairs...’
‘It’s only five...’
‘And end up standing in a doorway, verging on cardiac collapse, desperate for a drink of the wine you’ve brought—a vintage year, madame, not that you care, apparently—while a beautiful woman wearing Mickey Mouse on her feet tells you she’d rather you were a delivery boy named Marco.’
A smile pulled at the corners of Shannon’s mouth. ‘Mario,’ she said. ‘His name is Mario. And you’re not verging on anything. You’re not even breathing hard.’
Cade’s eyes flickered over her and he grinned. ‘I can’t imagine why not,’ he said. ‘That sexy outfit you’re wearing is enough to drive a man insane with lust.’
She chuckled softly. ‘Mario likes it,’ she said, and then she opened the door and stepped back. ‘OK, you can come in for a minute. How can I turn away a man with such discriminating taste? I just hope none of my neighbors saw you. They’ll beat my door down.’
Cade shook his head as the door closed behind him. ‘Nobody saw me, except for the group of kids sitting on the stoop downstairs. They were so busy looking at my bike that they didn’t pay much attention to me.’
‘Your bike? But they’ll...’
‘They’ll guard it with their lives,’ he laughed, unzipping his jacket. ‘I paid them ten bucks to watch over it and I promised them another ten if it’s still in one piece later.’
There was a moment’s silence and then Cade’s eyes swept over her again, lingering on the curve of her hip and the swell of her breast, clearly outlined beneath the somewhat damp robe. ‘Did I get you out of the bath or something?’
‘No, no, I...’ She swallowed hard, suddenly aware of the fact that she was naked under the robe. ‘I was just going to get dressed,’ she lied, backing towards the bedroom. ‘Why don’t you open that wine while I... ’
A slow smile spread over his face. ‘Yeah,’ he said, turning away from her. ‘That’s a good idea. Do you have a corkscrew anywhere?’
‘There should be one on the kitchen counter,’ she called from behind the bedroom door.
Her heart was tripping into overdrive. Well, anybody’s would, she told herself, stripping off her robe with trembling hands. After all, the man had taken her by surprise.
She pulled open the wardrobe door and stared at the clothing in it, but her mind was blank. Jeans, she thought finally, and a sweatshirt and my sneakers. At least, that didn’t take any planning. OK, she thought, OK, that’s it...
Not quite, she thought with a groan, catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Her hair was a disaster. She yanked out the clips that held it up and it tumbled around her shoulders. Quickly, she combed through the tangles and fluffed the dark curls around her face. The ends were damp, but it would do.
Do for what? she thought, but the question was more than she wanted to deal with just then. Right, Padgett, she thought, taking a last deep breath. You’re on.
Cade was standing at the window, gazing down at the street. He turned towards her and smiled.
‘I should have asked you to keep the slippers on,’ he said, holding a glass out to her. ‘Mickey is one of my favorite people.’
Cade Morgan, famous musician, she thought, drinking what is probably a very expensive wine out of my very best jelly glass. She bit back a nervous laugh and smiled at him.
‘Thanks. I’d offer you some cheese and crackers, but I’m afraid the cupboard is bare.’
‘Look, you don’t have to mince words, Shannon. You must be wondering what I’m doing here.’
‘Well, yes, you could say that.’
He flashed her a quick, boyish grin. ‘I don’t suppose I could convince you that you’d forgotten you invited me for supper... No, I didn’t think so,’ he said. ‘But it was worth a shot. Would you believe me if I said I’m not exactly sure, myself? I really was just out for a ride— well, worrying and riding. I was going over that damned scene we rehearsed today and...’
‘The scene we didn’t rehearse, you mean,’ she said, sinking down in an ancient upholstered armchair. ‘Look, I’m really sorry about that. I told Jerry I’d get it right tomorrow.’
‘What a hell of a day it was,’ he said, sinking down on the couch opposite her.. ‘The rehearsals, the taping, the make-up, the costumes ... Is it always like that?’
Shannon smiled. ‘Sometimes it’s worse. It’s not easy to do a one-hour show, five days a week, and juggle so many storylines and characters.’ She tucked her legs up beneath her. ‘But daytime drama must be easier than doing concerts. At least we stay in one place.’
Cade sighed. ‘That’s the truth. I haven’t done that since I was at school.’
Shannon sipped her wine and then rested the glass on her leg. ‘Princeton, right?’ He looked at her in surprise and she blushed. ‘Well, your life story isn’t exactly a secret,’ she said. ‘Every magazine on the stands has done something about you at one time or another.’
‘And hardly any of it the truth,’ he said.
‘Is Princeton the truth?’
He grinned. ‘Yeah, Hard believe, right? Me, a music major at a place like that...’
‘Easy to believe, after seeing you play with the Marauders last week.* She blushed again and he smiled.
‘That’s nice,’ he said softly.
‘What?’
‘That blush. I didn’t think women did that anymore.’
To her horror, she felt the color in her cheeks heightening.
‘An inherited trait,’ she said lightly. ‘All the women in my family blush. My mother, my aunts, my cousins...’
Cade laughed. ‘And where are these hordes of blushing females? How come they haven’t America by storm?’
She rose and padded across the room. ‘They’re back home in Kansas,’ she said, refilling her glass.
‘Waiting for you to win an Emmy or a Tony or an Oscar?’
‘Waiting for me to give all this up as a bad idea and come home,’ she laughed. ‘I think they’ve heard too many stories about starving in the name of art. Would you like more wine?’
Cade nodded and held his glass out to her. ‘It’s true, though. For every musician making a living, there must be fifty who aren’t.’
‘Is that why you didn’t stay with classical guitar?’
‘The money?’ he asked and she nodded. ‘No, it wasn’t that. Well, it was, at the beginning... Are you sure you want to hear this?’
‘If you want to tell me.’
He sighed and leaned back against the couch. ‘I was a scholarship student, which meant I was broke most of the time. I started playing at clubs near school on weekends—my own stuff, mostly—and after a while I realized that I’d always love classical guitar but, I don’t know, there’s a reality to other music...’ He laughed softly. ‘How’s that sound? Pompous? Pretentious? Trite?’
‘Honest,’ Shannon answered, smiling at him. ‘I just wish there were as much reality in the soaps. But then, who would watch them?’
‘Yeah,’ Cade said with a sigh, ‘I noticed. My character—Johnny Wolff—seems awfully one-dimensional. Nobody can be that evil.’
‘Alana Dunbar can,’ Shannon said. ‘My girl’s a cold, calculating shark. In fact, the first time she really thaws is... is when she meets Johnny.’
‘Ah yes, back to today’s horror show. I don’t know if I’ll ever get that scene right. I told Jerry...’
‘It wasn’t your fault, Cade. I never even gave you a chance to say your lines, but tomorrow, I...’
‘Does the entire population of Manhattan always stand around watching a rehearsal? I’m not sure I want a chance to get to my lines tomorrow if it means every adult this side of the Continental Divide will be leering at us.’
She looked at him in surprise. ‘You noticed?’
Cade laughed. ‘I’ve seen fewer people at one of my concerts. I kept expecting someone to sell popcorn.’
Shannon let her breath out and slumped down on the couch beside him. ‘So much for paranoia,’ she muttered.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I told Claire—my agent—virtually the same thing and she said I was crazy. But I knew I wasn’t. I’ve never seen an audience like that at a rehearsal.’
‘Well, that’s because it wasn’t an audience. It was a bunch of gawking idiots, waiting to see me make an ass of myself.’
‘What? Don’t be silly, Cade. That wasn’t it at all. Those people...’
He sprang to his feet and stalked across the room. ‘Come on, Shannon, we both know that those people think of me as an intruder.’
‘An intruder?’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘You know what I mean. All those actors and technicians, watching me, knowing I got a chance some of them would give their right arms for.’ He took a deep breath and swung around to face her. ‘I don’t blame them for wanting to see me mess up. But, damn it, you can’t blame me for not wanting to give them the satis...’ He broke off in the middle of the sentence and Shannon rose from the chair and walked towards him.
‘Cade,’ she said gently, ‘you don’t understand. Those people weren’t there to see you fail. They heard about... about what happened the day we met, you see, and about all the things people said about it, and...and...’ She took a deep breath. ‘They want to see us together,’ she said finally. ‘They want to see if what they’ve heard is true.’
He looked at her blankly. ‘Wha
t they’ve heard?’
Her eyes narrowed. If he’s playing games with me, she thought, if he’s putting me on... But Cade was looking at her as if she were speaking another language. My God, she thought, is he so terrified of failing that he thinks the whole world is watching him?
‘Sparks, remember?’ she said with false brightness. ‘They want to see if the room lights up when we play our love scenes.’
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