He's So Shy

by Linda Cajio

  “Too bad we didn’t have anyone videotaping your performance today for your class,” he said, casually taking her hand in his. He felt like a kid on his first date, all nervous and making calculated moves. He’d never acquired the knack for the body language involved in a man-woman relationship, the years of shyness having blinded him to the adolescent lessons on the subject. If it was required of a character, he had no hesitation. Real life was another matter altogether.

  To his relief, she didn’t pull her hand away. “Actually, Libby promised to put the jump on videotape for the kids. She said she’d spring for something called a film-to-tape transfer. Does that sound right?”

  Richard nodded.

  “Gee, I’m so thrilled.”

  He chuckled. “You’ll have your very own video of a classic moment.”

  The streets of Blairstown, even on a fine summer’s night, had little traffic; the town was always dead with the summer vacation at the academy. Richard had heard the grumbles of complaint about the lack of amusement for a cast and crew used to the twenty-four-hour day, sophisticated fast-paced life in Los Angeles or New York. No wonder Libby was pushing the filming, to keep them all from exploding with boredom.

  But he liked it, this little stretch of small towns, large farms, and steep, wooded mountainsides. The pace was leisurely, not frenetic. He felt he could make his own mark here, without pretense—no acting, no hiding behind characters, nothing but being his own true self. Pen had made it, that was obvious. She was comfortable with herself and her life. He envied her.

  The old waterworks building loomed ahead, its architecture faux-medieval. They ducked underneath an arch, then turned along the path running parallel to the side of the building.

  The sky had deepened to a blue that matched Pen’s shirt; the rush of water spilling over the man-made fall was almost musical; the iron and wooden footbridge directly above at the neck of the pond looked like a miniature train bridge in the lower light of sunset. White bubbles churned in the foam as the water was swept along into the culvert under the town. The gentle roar of it overlaid all other sounds. The first star twinkled overhead.

  Richard escorted Pen up a cement path to the stone steps that climbed back up the hillside on the left side of the stream. The first buildings of Blair Academy rose at the crest of the hill. The high walls along the steps built sixty years before enclosed them as they made their way.

  “Every time I walk here, I expect Dracula to appear suddenly on the landing up there,” Pen said, smiling. “Or Barnabas Collins from ‘Dark Shadows,’ the Ben Cross version.”

  “It’s got all the elements of a gothic,” Richard replied, smiling wryly at her choice of vampires. She would pick Ben. He had tested for Chariots of Fire when he’d been in England and lost out to the man. He continued, “Ominous buildings on the hill … shortcuts along the pond … nice dark night to cover the series of murders.”

  “You make it sound like Friday the Thirteenth, Part Forty-Seven.”

  “Is that what they’re up to now? I didn’t know.”

  “Hmm, must be. Too bad the girls from the college are all at home. Or you wouldn’t be walking this path. You’d be running for your life.”

  “I wouldn’t mind being a sex symbol,” he said, thinking of his teenage years when he’d been skinny and gawky and withdrawn.

  “Be careful what you wish for,” Pen reminded him. “Or you just might get it. Ask Fabio.”

  “Who?”

  “Never mind.”

  He stopped her on the first landing, the one she envisioned as Barnabas’s staging platform. “Pen.”

  “What?” Awareness came into her eyes even as she murmured the word.

  Richard drew her to him. He kissed her, gently at first, then with more fervor as the softness of her lips sent his head spinning. Her tongue played with his, in a prelude to a more intimate dance between man and woman. Her shirt was no barrier to the feel of her body, her nipples already hard against his chest. Her skin was warm on his palms, heating his own flesh even more, and her fingers gripped his shoulders, clenching and unclenching. Her perfume overwhelmed his senses. He knew the scent of her would stay with him forever.

  He finally raised his head, but only to return again for another devastating kiss. He curved his hand around her breast, feeling the hardness of her nipple along the pad of his thumb. She moaned in the back of her throat at his touch.

  “Ahhh … I shouldn’t,” she whispered, her arms wrapped tightly around his shoulders. “But I can’t help myself with you.”

  He raised his head. “You have no idea how that makes me feel.”

  She pressed her hips to his. “Oh yes I do.”

  His physical reaction to her might be all-encompassing, but that was only a part of what she made him feel. Invincible was the other. Emotionally invincible.

  He brought his mouth down to hers again, the kiss going wild now.

  Voices from above them, faint but drawing closer, finally caught his attention. Richard reluctantly let Pen go. Her hair was half out of her ponytail, and her shirt was rumpled. He had a feeling his looked no better.

  “You’re a mess,” they both whispered at the same time, then laughed softly together.

  Richard raked his fingers through his hair to tame it while Pen tucked in her shirt. She was still fiddling with the ribbon in her hair as they began to climb the steps again. Above them, several people walked into view. Richard recognized them as members of the crew.

  Everyone said hello and passed by each other, a couple of the men grinning at Richard in the process. He shook his head. Crews that worked well together were like family, a bunch of brothers and sisters; there was always a lot of teasing and playfulness in such a crew. He’d just have to live with the ribbing he was bound to get, he decided, watching the sway of Pen’s derriere as he mounted the steps behind her. He certainly wasn’t about to give her up.

  The end of filming and his going away were becoming more and more repugnant to him. Yet it was far too soon to think seriously of other things … wasn’t it?

  He was pondering the question when they came to the top of the stairs. Pen led them out to the middle of the bridge and they turned to watch the pond, its water oddly still as the water in the man-made stream behind them continually rushed. Ducks were dark shapes on the surface of the water. Old Victorian homes, their lights winking, dotted the steep banks of the pond, which was in their backyards. Higher up on their left was the academy.

  “Beautiful,” Richard murmured, gazing at Pen’s profile as she leaned against the narrow iron railing of the bridge.

  She turned her head slightly and smiled at him.

  What was he going to do?

  Pen walked hand in hand with Richard. She was surrendering with every step of the walk home. Hell, she thought, it hadn’t even been a decent fight in the first place. She’d wanted him, right from the beginning, moodiness or not. And in moments like these, when the veneer slipped aside to reveal the quiet, shy man underneath, she was an absolute goner. If he had been slicker, more sophisticated, her resolve would have been intact, because she would have known that sex was all there was to his interest. But she knew a deeper relationship was possible with Richard. Very possible. And completely doomed. They were from two entirely different worlds now, each alien to the other. How could they overcome that? She pushed the thought aside, hating it.

  They meandered through the streets of Blairstown, just enjoying the evening and each other’s company, lingering along as if neither wanted the walk to end. But in the back of Pen’s mind was that ending and how she would not be able to resist inviting him into her house. And into her bed. Need had come that far that fast for her.

  When they reached her house, he kissed her at her door, under her porch light. Sensations wrapped around her, insulating her in their drugging warmth.

  When he finally lifted his head, his breath was harsh to her ears, as if he couldn’t get enough air into his lungs. She had made him that way, s
he thought in triumph at her feminine power.

  “Richard, come inside,” she murmured, kissing him lightly.

  His arms tightened around her. He buried his face in her hair. “I … I can’t.”

  She blinked. He let her go, all but her hand. He held it tightly, as if it were a lifeline.

  “I want to,” he said. “You don’t know how much I want to. But we’re not kids, Pen. I want more than sex with you. I want it right. I can wait until you’re sure.”

  “Richard, I …” But she couldn’t say what she was sure about because she wasn’t sure about anything.

  He smiled. “I can wait.”

  He left her with a last kiss that had her melting into the step. She stared after him until he crested the top of the hill and disappeared over the other side.

  “Dammit,” she muttered, even as she sighed.

  She’d finally found an honorable man.

  “Okay, today’s scene is the semi-love scene, kissus interruptus, if you will,” Libby said, chuckling at her own joke.

  Richard kept the impatience he felt from showing on his face. The set was an open one, the scene today fairly innocent. That still didn’t make the intimacy required easy to maintain in front of others. In front of Pen. He was wishing that she, not Julie, waited to do the love scene with him. Instead, he had Julie, looking stricken from Libby’s earlier chastising for not showing up for the jump. The whole mix made Richard anticipate a long, uncomfortable day.

  He concentrated on Ezekiel’s emotional frustration as Libby went over the blocking for the scene. But his concentration failed him often, and his gaze kept shifting to Pen. He surveyed the creamy skin at her throat, the smile playing along her full lower lip, the guileless expression in her vivid blue eyes. How, he wondered in disgust, could he have left her last night? That damned Ezekiel must have surfaced with all his frontier chivalry. She’d asked him inside, into her bed. There was no mistaking the invitation. She’d asked him.

  And he’d refused out of a sense of nobility. He wanted more with her, but he’d wind up with nothing if he wasn’t careful. Next invitation—

  “Got it?”

  Richard glanced sharply at Libby, who was peering back at him skeptically. Julie looked half determined and half scared, obviously knowing this was a big break for a young actress to play a scene with the lead. And the lead had only been listening with half an ear to the director. The commercial was right, he thought. Never let them see you sweat. He said, “Got it.”

  Libby’s smile was more of a knowing leer. “Good. Positions, then. Ready on the set!”

  Everyone immediately took up his place. Richard closed his mind to everything except the scene and his character. Libby shouted, “Action!” and they did their bit of dialogue. Then he grabbed Julie’s hand and strode forward at a fast clip toward the woods ahead, taking her away from the other “settlers.” They were supposed to move under the shelter of the trees, then begin to “make love” against the trunk of a large and very old oak. Julie giggled on cue behind him, amused at Ezekiel’s haste as he pulled her along. She provided just the right amount of resistance to make her seem coquettish, yet the woman of easy virtue she was playing.

  Richard brought them both to the first tree and turned to Julie. She tilted her head up, her expression all wanton invitation. Richard inclined his head in a way he knew would give the camera a good angle of the kiss, but hide the acting, then put his lips to hers and wiggled his head from side to side in a fair imitation of passion. The mock kiss went on for about a minute, with either he or his partner moving their hands around each other’s back and shoulders. Richard sensed Julie was as conscious and as careful of camera position as he. He refused even to think about Pen, knowing the acted kiss might very well turn real for him if he did. He wanted only real kisses with the real thing, not a substitute.

  “Cut!”

  Richard parted immediately from Julie—and he didn’t look at Pen, knowing he had to keep himself focused as an actor.

  “Okay, that was great,” Libby said, coming toward them. “Now on to the second kiss. I want you, Richard, to sweep your hand down her back, like this.” Libby took his hand and illustrated on Julie’s back. “Julie, your hand goes to Richard’s hair, thread your fingers through it, then move your hand to his shirt and begin fiddling with the opening. You’re more the aggressor here. Richard, you put her back against the tree trunk and rub your body against hers. Make it more desperate than passionate, because you are trying to get rid of your feelings for Charlotte through this woman.”

  Libby called for action, and they followed her direction to a tee. Richard put desperation into his movements. A corner of his mind was amused as always in these scenes, knowing how realistic they looked on screen and exactly how each gesture was choreographed through a series of cuts and takes.

  Libby called cut again when she was satisfied.

  “Okay,” she went on. “on this next kiss, Richard, your hands go to her bodice to unlace it, and that’s when you hear the noise. A faint snap, unnatural in the forest. You freeze. Your head comes up. You belatedly sense the danger. You grab the girl and run. Julie, you resist, keep asking what’s wrong. Richard, you don’t answer, you don’t have time, just keeping yanking her along. Got it?”

  Richard nodded.

  Libby called for action again, and the scene followed its course, right to the point where Pen’s jump meshed with it. Richard sighed with relief when it was over.

  “Thanks,” Julie said, smiling in gratitude.

  “You did a good job,” he told her.

  As filming halted, Richard ducked around to Pen.

  “I’m glad that’s done,” he said, grinning at her. “Love scenes are grueling.”

  Pen admitted silently that she felt the same. But it hadn’t been as bad as she’d feared. At first, when she realized it would be a love scene, she’d wanted both to protest and run away at the same time. But with the constant cuts by Libby, she realized how directed everything was … how clinical. Viewed without benefit of camera lens angles, the kiss wasn’t even that. Just kind of a “let’s look like we’re really kissing passionately when we’re not.” Acting, she thought. Every love scene in any movie she would see in the future would be a big disappointment now that she knew how it was created.

  “It wasn’t what I expected,” she said finally.

  He chuckled. “Thank God. Actors find them the hardest to do, to look intimate when one isn’t.”

  “As long as one isn’t,” Pen said, then flushed.

  But Richard’s grin only widened. He looked downright happy with that jealous-sounding announcement. Okay, she thought, so she was jealous. But she did have a demonstration today of how little a woman needed to fear from this sort of thing. On the other hand, clinical though it might be, it wasn’t great to watch.

  “There you are!”

  Pen turned with Richard at the sound of the voice. A woman waved at them as she strode their way. She was dressed in an oversize white blouse tied at the waist, her unbound nipples dark under the thin material. Her outrageously tight jeans delineated the cleft at the junction of her thighs. Despite the sunglasses she wore, she was instantly recognizable as Mary Jane Stevens, Richard’s costar.

  With her wide smile, she looked friendly enough, Pen thought, remembering the suddenly closed expressions when her name had come up at Libby’s makeshift dinner party. A moment later Pen discovered just how friendly Mary Jane could be.

  “Nobody kisses my man but me,” Mary Jane said, and plastered her mouth against Richard’s.

  SIX

  Richard knew immediately that Mary Jane was attempting to throw him off balance and gain control of the political food chain on the set. Actors did it in different ways. They could be difficult to work with, or they could skip etiquette and go right to the producer with complaints. Or they could put their costars at some kind of an emotional disadvantage.

  Mary Jane actually tried to wrap her leg around his thigh.
Having had more than enough of the little game, Richard gently pushed her away.

  “Nice to meet you, too, Mary Jane,” he said, matter-of-factly, refusing to give her an inch on the control scale. “I’m looking forward to working with you. This is Pen Marsh, Libby’s cousin and a friend of mine, who’s visiting the set.”

  “Hello,” Mary Jane said coolly, barely turning her head in Pen’s direction.

  “How lovely to meet you,” Pen replied, just as coolly.

  Libby called Mary Jane away before she could do something even more outrageous.

  “Trouble has arrived,” Richard muttered, leaning against his rifle and watching Mary Jane go.

  “Really?”

  He glanced at Pen, who raised dubious eyebrows. He grinned and took her arm. She was jealous, he thought happily. Her earlier remark had seemed to indicate her proprietary feelings for him, although he’d wondered if his interpretation had been overenthusiastic. Now he knew. Escorting her away from the set, he said, “You certainly know how to make a man feel good.”

  “I do?”

  “You do. Let’s take a walk.”

  “I think we’re already doing that.”

  “Good, then I’m on the right track.” He sighed. “I wish actors weren’t so damned insecure.”

  “It seems to go with the territory.”

  “The stunt Mary Jane just pulled was to fluster me and show right from the first that she is really the dominant actor on the set.”

  “Don’t hyenas do that sort of thing?”

  “Very funny.” They were under the shade of the trees on the edge of the meadow, far enough away to be out of earshot yet close enough for Richard to see when he was wanted again. He settled his back against a tree trunk and slid down to comfortably hunker at its base. Pen found a large, fairly flat rock and sat on it.

  “Are you upset about that love scene?” he asked.

  She looked away, then back. “I don’t have a right to be.”

  “What if I give you the right?” His chest tightened with the question, more painful for him to ask than she’d probably ever know. If he felt invincible before, he felt very vulnerable now.