Sandra's Classics - The Bad Boys of Romance - Boxed Set

by Sandra Marton

  ‘Four months,’ Shannon repeated in a soft, wistful voice. ‘I never had an acting job that lasted that long.’

  Cade cleared his throat. ‘Well, of course, that won’t happen now, will it?’ He smiled apologetically. ‘I mean, I’m going to tell Jerry that I’m not taking the part. Besides, even if I stayed—even if you and I got along— you wouldn’t want to see your part enlarged just be­cause I’m a “star”.’ Laughter glistened in his dark eyes but his expression was grave. ‘You wouldn’t want to take advantage of something like that, would you, Padgett?

  Shannon tried not to smile.’ She put her elbows on the table and propped her chin in her hands. ‘OK. I deserved that.’

  ‘And me? Could you live with me that long?’ He grinned and leaned back in the booth. ‘That’s just a figure of speech, of course. What I meant was, could you play opposite me that long without feeling you’d compromised all your principles?’

  A flush rose to her cheeks. ‘Don’t make me sound so.. .so pompous. I admit, I resented you at first...’

  ‘At first,’ he said, nodding.

  ‘I suppose it’s fair to admit that what you do onstage is a kind of acting. I mean, you’re not yourself up there, are you?’

  He laughed and shook his head. ‘No, not by a long shot. The real me is always sitting out in the audience somewhere, wondering what the hell the other me is doing onstage.’ He lifted his mug to his lips and sipped at the cold coffee. ‘It’ll be even worse if I take the Tomorrows role. Crawford wanted us to start re­hearsals Monday and tape later in the week. I have this nightmare that ends with him telling me to get off the set and make room for a real actor.’

  Shannon looked at him and smiled. ‘Don’t push your luck,’ she said in a soft voice. ‘I already told you that workshop scene was pretty good. One compliment a day is about the best I ever manage.’

  ‘Then you’re over your allotment,’ Cade said with a wicked grin. ‘I seem to remember you said something complimentary about my kiss.’ Her cheeks turned a pale pink and he touched her hand gently. ‘Sorry about that. . I just couldn’t resist. Anyway, you’re right, I was fishing for another compliment. I was scared to death when Eli asked me to read.’

  ‘Were you, now?’ she asked softly, remembering the look of terror in his eyes. ‘But you were a convincing Stanley, anyway.’

  ‘Well, thanks for that. But I know Streetcar. All Our Tomorrows is another thing. I keep looking through that scene where we meet... ’

  ‘Well,’ she said lightly, ‘I’m glad Jerry’s given one of us a script.’

  ‘I really thought he’d told you,’ Cade said. ‘He promised he would.’

  ‘Is it the cocktail party scene? That was the one Tony and I had been rehearsing.’

  ‘That’s the one. I told Jerry it didn’t make sense to me. And he said...he said I should remember what happened the day we met.’ He stared at her for a long moment and then he cleared his throat. ‘Look,’ he said gruffly, ‘if the director thinks we can do it—I mean, what the hell, Padgett, what have we got to lose? I can always go back to travelling from gig to gig, never knowing what town I’m in... ’

  ‘The glamorous life of a musician, hmm?’

  ‘Yeah, exactly. When this came along, my agent said I’d be a fool not to give it a shot. I’ve wanted to try my hand at acting—there just never seemed the time for it. You’ve got to keep cranking out the music and the records if you want to stay on top.’

  ‘And now?’

  Cade shrugged. ‘And now, I figure I’ve been around long enough to take the chance.’ He looked at her and grinned. ‘If I make a fool of myself, I’ll survive.’

  Shannon took a deep breath. ‘Would you really give up the part because of me?’

  ‘Hey, don’t make me sound like a martyr. If I do the guest shot instead of this part, I can go back to sleeping nights. No more cold sweats, no more bad dreams.’

  ‘Eli says there’s no growth without pain,’ she said brightly. ‘Cold sweats and bad dreams will make you a better actor.’

  ‘Are you suggesting I need improving, Padgett?’

  Shannon buttoned her jacket and slid towards the edge of the booth. ‘What I’m suggesting is that it’s going to be hard to play a love scene with a man who calls me Padgett,’ she said, not looking at him as she got to her feet. ‘The only person who ever called me that was my phys ed teacher in tenth grade.’

  A grin creased Cade’s face. ‘OK, then. Miss Padgett.’ He scrambled to his feet and tossed some bills on the table. ‘How’s that sound?’

  She smiled. ‘Check and mate,’ she said, and then she raised her eyes to his. ‘My name is Shannon,’ she said, holding her hand out to him.

  He took her hand in his and shook it with great for­mality. ‘It’s nice to meet you, Shannon. I’m Cade.’

  ‘How do you do, Cade? Thank you for the coffee.’

  ‘You’re very welcome.’ He smiled into her eyes and her heart thudded crazily again.

  ‘Well’ she began.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, and then he suddenly reached out and his fingers closed over the top button on her jacket. ‘You’ve closed it wrong,’ he said. ‘Let me fix it.’

  She drew back as his hand brushed her cheek. The sensation of being touched by flame was so powerful that she flinched.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ she stammered. Her fingers trembled on the buttons but she managed what she hoped was a bright smile. ‘Well, I’ll see you at work Monday. I’ve a dance class in half an hour and I’ll just about make it if I grab a cab.’

  ‘Let me give you a lift.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of taking you out of your way,’ she said as they went out the door. She signaled a passing taxi. It was empty, but the driver ignored her in time-honored New York tradition.

  Cade touched her arm lightly. ‘Where is your class?’

  ‘All the way downtown near Canal Street.’

  ‘Well, then you’ve got to accept my offer. I’m going to pick up my drummer. He lives right near there.’

  ‘No, I...’

  ‘Shannon, really, it’s on my way.’ He took her elbow. ‘You’re going to miss your class otherwise.’

  ‘I...I...’ Shannon took a deep breath. What was the matter with her, anyway? They were going to be working together in just a few days, playing the most intimate scene she’d ever played in her life, and here she was, uncomfortable at the thought of being in a car with him! ‘You’re right. Yes, thank you, Cade, I’d appreciate a lift. Is your car nearby?’

  He grinned. ‘Yeah, it’s in a garage right around the corner.’

  ‘I think I’d better warn you that you’re going to get hung up in some terrible traffic.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he said solemnly. ‘Why don’t you wait here for me? I’ll only be a minute.’

  She nodded and tucked her hands into her pockets, shivering in a sudden chill breeze. She watched him as he walked away from her, his long stride rapidly changing into a trot as he reached the corner. A woman walking by paused and stared after him, then shrugged and hurried on. Had she recognized Cade, Shannon wondered, or had she simply stopped to admire his looks? There was no point in denying that he was terrific-looking—his broad shoulders, the long legs, and, of course, those blue eyes set in that rugged face...

  And he knew he was handsome. That had to be why he wore the tight jeans, the macho motorcycle jacket and boots...

  What kind of car would he drive? she wondered. A Jag, maybe, or. a ’Vette.., Or maybe a Lamborghini. Maybe nothing so sporty. He might show up in a chauffeured limousine. She’d seen that time after time in the mid-town streets; men whose faces she knew from movies and magazines and television uncurling themselves from the backs of Lincolns and Caddies, not bothered by the fact that they were dressed as if they should be riding Harleys in­stead of being driven around in luxury. But style and image counted. Actors and agents and publicists all knew that.

  There was a deep, thrumming roar behind her. She turned
quickly and her mouth dropped open.

  ‘Cade?’ she said, staring at him in amazement.

  He grinned at her from the back of the biggest, baddest motorcycle she’d ever seen.

  ‘How about a lift, lady?’

  ‘Is that thing yours?’ she asked stupidly.

  His grin broadened. ‘It sure is. Here, put this on,’ he said, handing her a helmet, a duplicate of the one he was wearing. She stared at it blankly and he touched her hand. ‘You’d better tuck all that hair up under it. And put the visor down, too. Like this.’

  She watched as he slid the smoke-colored plastic down over his eyes. ‘I... I’ve never ridden one of these,’ she said finally.

  ‘Then it’s about time you did,’ he said. ‘OK, why don’t you put your shoulder-bag into that carrier?’

  She looked from him to the compartment on the back of the bike. ‘No, it’s OK, I’ll hold it.’

  He laughed. ‘You’ll be too busy holding me.’

  ‘No, I won’t, I...’ She broke off in confusion. Of course she would, she thought, staring at the menacing- looking machine. How else would she keep from falling off? ‘Look, maybe this isn’t such a good idea...’

  ‘You don’t have to worry,’ he said, and she could hear the laughter in his voice. ‘I said you’d be holding me, not the other way around. Come on, Shannon. Hop on.’

  She hesitated briefly and then she took his out­stretched hand and straddled the leather seat behind him. God, she thought, where did everything go? Her hands and her arms and her legs...

  ‘OK? Hang on, now.’ He revved the engine and the bike began to move. She put her hands on his waist and kept her back straight so that their bodies were separ­ated by inches, but then the bike began to pick up speed.

  ‘Cade,’ she said, but how could he possibly hear her? He was wearing that helmet and the engine’s roar drowned out her voice, anyway. And they were moving more and more quickly, heading towards Ninth Avenue and traffic and... ‘Cade,’ she said again. The bike heeled gracefully as they rounded the corner. ‘Oh, lord,’ she whispered, and she wrapped her arms tightly around him and closed her eyes. She felt her breasts flatten as they pressed against his back, felt the brush of his thighs against hers as she hung on to him for dear life. His body was hard and alive under her touch; she thought she could almost feel the heat of him through the leather jacket he wore.

  Wild laughter bubbled in her throat and she fought it back. And she’d worried about being in something as confining as a car with him…

  Then they were flying towards lower Manhattan and she gave herself up to the excitement of the ride and the feel of Cade Morgan in her arms.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The unseasonable, early evening chill seeped through the walls of Shannon’s apartment, crept through the ill- fitting doors and windows, and seemed to linger like the ghosts of years past in the high-ceilinged rooms.

  Still, the apartment had an old-fashioned charm and grace which soothed the spirit. The bathroom, the hand­somest room of all, had Italian marble fixtures, hand- carved moldings, and a huge, claw-footed tub. It was a tub in which you could lie back and let tension drain from your mind and body.

  The only thing wrong with that idea this evening, Shannon thought, shivering as a draft played over her wet shoulders, was that she had forgotten how chilly the room was once the cool nights set in.

  She stepped out of the tub and wrapped herself in a terry-cloth bath-sheet. The long soak had eased some of the weariness from her bones. A glass of sherry would take care of the rest, she thought as she tossed the towel aside, slipped into an old flannel robe and stuffed her feet into a pair of scruffy Mickey Mouse slippers she’d owned since high school.

  What an exhausting few days it had been!

  A week of rehearsing her new part had all but wiped her out—and she had yet to play her first scene with Cade.

  She padded through the dark hallway and switched on the kitchen light. Should she scramble some eggs for dinner? That didn’t sound very intriguing. Well, she could always heat up the leftover Chinese—what was that stuff?—ah yes, Moo Goo Gai Pan. But there were no eggs in the refrigerator and the Moo Goo Gai Pan had turned into a bright green science experiment in bacterial growth.

  Shannon made a face and tossed the container into the bin.

  No problem. The market had promised to deliver her groceries sometime this evening. She’d have a glass of red wine—half a jelly glass, actually,--and by then, her order would have arrived and she could pop a TV dinner into the oven. She’d bought chicken and salisbury steak—or something. It didn’t much matter, when you came down to it. All that frozen stuff tasted the same.

  Then she’d brew a strong pot of coffee and get down to basics, which meant curling up with tomorrow’s script and going through it until she had every word and every stage direction com­mitted to memory. She and Cade had started to run through their first scene, and she’d made a mess of it. She’d blown her first lines so many times that he’d never even got to his.

  ‘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 feel.’

  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.’

  ‘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 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.’