Still holding her hands, Martin leaned forward across the table. As if she were a pile of puny metal shavings and he a powerful magnet, she leaned forward to meet him When he kissed her, she knew the days of her maidenhood were numbered.
Eight
Never, in his entire ten-year career in the pictures, had Martin Tafft taken advantage of an actress. Never. Ever. Not once.
Sure, he’d been tempted. Women were always throwing themselves at the producer or the director, hoping in that way to boost their careers. Martin had always considered such tactics pitiful, and the directors who took advantage of them no better than wolves preying on unwary lambs.
So why was he now sitting in a bar across from Christina Mayhew and kissing her?
Because he wanted to make love to her so badly, his whole body ached. He wanted to carry her upstairs to his room and stay with her until the rest of the world went away. He wanted to chuck Peerless, Grandmother Mayhew, Pablo Orozco, Egyptian Idyll, and everything else that wasn’t Christina out a window and forget about it.
Pulling slightly away from her, he first tried to focus his eyes on the table. He didn’t quite dare look her in the eyes yet.
In hands that shook, he held hers, then again lifted them one at a time to his lips. Her skin felt like magnolia blossoms against his—whatever magnolia blossoms felt like. Martin tried to shake the prose-purple fancies out of his head, but couldn’t. If anyone deserved an excess of flowery language, it was this woman.
“Christina . . .” He didn’t have anything to say; he only loved her name. It felt good on his tongue. Special. Perfect. So he said it again. It flowed like honey or spiced wine. “Christina.”
“Martin . . .” She didn’t continue after speaking his name, either. Perhaps she felt the same way about him.
He dared to lift his eyes and gaze at her face. Her eyes were closed and there was an expression of rapture on her face. Martin imagined it mirrored his own expression. Rapture with a hint of frustration.
“Christina, I . . .”
This attempt at coherence was no better. He still didn’t know what to say.
Her eyelids fluttered open, and he found himself staring into her huge, beautiful eyes. They appeared almost green in the dim lighting of the saloon.
“You what?” she whispered.
“I—I—” He wanted to go to bed with her was what he wanted. He couldn’t say it. It was too tawdry. Too lurid. Too unlike him. With a monumental effort, he managed to pull away from her. He couldn’t let go of her hands, though That was too much to ask of a mere mortal male “Um . . . would you care for another drink?”
He couldn’t believe he’d asked her such a monumentally mundane question. From flowers to ashes in one or two simple statements. He must be more rattled than he’d thought—and he’d thought he was pretty rattled. He wished he could back up and say something else. Something that made even a little bit of sense. He wasn’t surprised that she first blinked at him, and then withdrew slightly.
In a voice so polite it all but gleamed with polish, she said, “No, thank you.”
Lord, he was botching up this scene as badly as he’d botched the water-from-the-well scene yesterday. And this one was important. He shut his eyes for a moment, trying to unscramble his thinking processes. It was no use. They wouldn’t unscramble. Unable to resist, he lowered his head until it rested on Christina’s hands. He felt like an idiot, and he couldn’t have stopped himself if he’d tried. “Christina,” he whispered, loving the sound and feel of her name on his lips and tongue.
“Oh, Martin.”
He felt her lips gently press against his forehead and he shut his eyes, his feelings too close to the surface for comfort. He was a man. Men weren’t supposed to get carried away by their emotions, for pity’s sake.
But there was something about Christina. Something inside him reacted to something inside her, and when the two somethings combined, all the worries tumbling around in him settled as if he’d taken a tonic. It was—it was almost like magic.
Which was really stupid. It was more likely lust.
That lowering reflection spurred him to raise his head. He felt foolish for having allowed himself to succumb to what he considered a weakness. After a second’s struggle, he managed to produce a fairly respectable grin. “Sorry, Christina. I guess I got carried away there for a minute.”
After what looked like a second’s struggle on her own part, she returned his grin. “I guess I did, too.”
He licked his lips, a sign of his discomfort, of which he didn’t approve. “I—I’m sorry.”
She gave a tiny shake of her head. “I’m not. I love the way I feel when you touch me.”
Oh, Lord. Martin stared at her, thinking that was a very dangerous thing for her to have said. If she said anything more of a like nature, he might not be able to control himself. He’d never felt so near the breaking point as he did this minute. “Um . . .”
But again, he couldn’t think of an appropriate comment. He agreed with her, but it wasn’t right to say so. It would be ungentlemanly to admit to how much he wanted to make love to her. Martin had always prided himself on being a gentleman, even in the face of the new morality that seemed determined to bulldoze its way into the motion picture community. Telling a woman to whom he wasn’t married that he wanted to ravish her was definitely not a gentlemanly thing to do.
“I want to make love with you, Martin.”
It was as if a bomb exploded in Martin’s brain. He stared at Christina in pure awe.
Merciful heavens, you’ve done it now Christina Mayhew.
She took note of Martin’s shocked face and thought the rest of him looked as if it had been turned into a pillar of stone. She thought acidly that this must be how Medusa felt after cementing her victims to the earth, except there were no snakes involved in this instance.
Was she wicked to have said such a thing?
Of course she was. She sighed, wondering if she should take it back. Probably she should. After all, respectable females didn’t say such things aloud. Heck, they didn’t even think them, according to popular dicta.
But no. Darn it, she was an honest person, and she wasn’t going to take it back. All people, including women, felt sexual urges. Such impulses were built into human physiology, and it was both ridiculous and prudish to deny that they existed, no matter what society thought. Women were human. Women, therefore, had just as many urges as did men. Almost as many. Christina had yet to meet a woman who behaved like a rutting pig, as the Pablo Orozcos of the world did.
Because she was both surprised and uncomfortable by her own declaration, it didn’t take her long to resent Martin’s stunned demeanor and prolonged silence. She said snappishly, “Don’t pretend to be shocked, Martin. Darn it, you feel the same way, and I know it.”
He swallowed convulsively. “Er, yes. Yes, I do feel the same way, but . . .” His voice trailed off.
Christina thought bitterly that he probably wanted to offer a disclaimer. He wanted to say, but I shouldn’t. Or maybe, but you shouldn’t say so. If he said anything about it being unladylike to admit to harboring human passions, she might just have to thump him.
Good heavens, she really was turning into her grandmother. She closed her eyes and tried to gather her wits together. They preferred remaining scattered, blast them.
Fine. Christina could manage quite well without her wits. The good Lord knew that men did so all the time. Lifting her chin, she said, “We’re both adults, Martin. There’s nothing—” She’d been going to say “shameful,” but nixed it. She guessed what she’d said might be considered shameful by some narrow-minded individuals. “There’s nothing unusual about experiencing these feelings.”
There. That was not only true, but immensely commonsensical.
He swallowed again. “I—I suppose you’re right. But—well, people don’t generally talk about them, right out in the open.”
She felt her lips tighten. “No,” she said in a rigidly
controlled voice. “They don’t, do they?”
He shook his head, as if he didn’t want to try to talk anymore. Christina, on the other hand, felt the words building up behind her teeth. What’s more, since she’d already said the most shocking thing she’d been thinking, she decided she might as well complete her moral destruction in Martin’s mind by spilling the rest of the batch.
“And, quite frankly, I don’t know why they don’t.”
His mouth dropped open before it snapped shut.
A pain had started hammering in Christina’s chest, and it made her angry. She knew it was there because she was afraid her shocking declaration had turned Martin against her.
She went on in a rush. “Because, while I know it’s considered impolite, I believe that people owe each other honesty. I also know, because I’ve studied both human anatomy and human psychology, that all human beings experience carnal desires.”
Christina also believed, although it wasn’t well documented, that most human beings longed for more than that. They wanted emotional commitment. In short, they craved love. She wouldn’t say so. While she might be willing to admit to perfectly natural physical cravings, she’d die before she admitted to her emotional needs.
“I—I—” Martin swallowed yet again. “I don’t think I know what to say.”
She sat up straight and stared him directly in the eye. She wasn’t going to give an inch, mainly because she felt she’d made a blazing ass of herself.
“You might tell the truth,” she said tartly. “If you desire me, and I desire you, there’s nothing shameful in it.”
Well, unless—but Christina opted not to go into society’s guidelines and injunctions. She’d already defied convention too much today.
“Oh, I desire you.” He said it with a smile that made Christina want to crawl straight across the table and rip his clothes off his back. “But I don’t necessarily think it’s a good thing to admit it aloud.”
She blinked at him “Why not?
He heaved a sigh. “Because . . . well, it seems somehow disrespectful to you, Christina.”
“Disrespectful?” She stared at him, dumbfounded. “What’s disrespectful about telling a woman you find her desirable? I find it rather flattering, actually.”
Blast it, she was blushing. She’d bet anything that her grandmother had never blushed in her whole life, but here she sat, Christina Mayhew, modern, independent feminist female and future physician, and she was blushing because a man desired her. Or maybe that wasn’t the reason. Maybe it was because he’d said so to her face, which would disrupt her whole line of argument.
Bother. She was getting all mixed up. If only her chest would stop aching, she might be able to concentrate better.
“Anyhow,” Martin continued, flinging out a hand in a gesture that conveyed confusion to his audience of one, “where would the world be if human beings didn’t control their emotions and desires, but acted on all of them?”
The world would be in a bloody mess, she decided instantly. She couldn’t say so. She thought for a minute. “Good question. But inappropriate to this situation, I think “
He cocked his head, and his smile heated up a degree or two. If it got very much hotter, Christina would probably melt. “Do you? I think I’m afraid to ask why.”
“I’m not afraid to answer, even if you’re afraid to ask,” she retorted. “We’re two adult human beings, Martin. We both know enough about the world and its pitfalls to have seen what happens when people allow their emotions and actions to progress unbridled. We each have goals and ambitions, and are both intelligent enough not to allow our passions—and I use that word on purpose in this context—to get in our respective ways toward achieving them.”
Good heavens, how had she got into this? She didn’t know but decided she’d already sunk too deeply to try to wriggle out now. Instead, she lifted her chin another fraction of an inch, stiffened her spine so hard she feared it might crack in two, and plowed forward.
“That being the case, I don’t see any harm in two people who share those characteristics conducting a discreet—um . . .” Blast it all, why did she have to go and get tongue-tied now? Giving herself a hard mental shake, she blurted out, “That is to say there’s no law barring two adults who desire each other from conducting a circumspect affair.”
There. She’d said it. And she wished she could crawl under the table and hide until one of God’s lightning bolts struck her dead.
A thick, heavy silence greeted her declaration. It lasted so long, Christina had to brace every muscle in her body to keep from writhing in an agony of embarrassment.
She tried to console herself with the knowledge that she’d told only what she perceived to be the truth. Human moral behavior was dependent upon such a variety of conditions that there could be no one single standard for every human being on earth. Cultural moral standards varied wildly. She knew it intellectually, but she was having a devil of a time believing it emotionally. She was positive Martin would turn from her in disgust any second now.
He didn’t. After staring at her, looking as if he couldn’t actually credit the scandalous pronouncements that had just issued from her lips, he cleared his throat. “Um, how old are you, Christina?”
She actually saw red for a couple of seconds. Interesting phenomenon, that. She figured there must be a physiological explanation for it, but she was in no condition to ponder it now. She burst out, “What difference does my age make?”
When the bartender glanced at the two of them, she realized she’d shouted her question, so she leaned forward and hissed, “My age doesn’t matter a hill of beans, Martin Tafft. In case it’s escaped your attention, I’m a very smart woman. I’m a darned sight smarter than most of the actors you’ve come across in your career, and you know it as well as I do.”
He nodded. “Yes. I do know it. And I don’t understand what your intelligence has to do with anything.” His smile seemed both spontaneous and sincere. “There. You see? We’re approaching this from opposite ends of the spectrum. You don’t see what age has to do with it, and I don’t see what intelligence has to do with it.”
Blast him! How could he sound so reasonable under these circumstances?. She scowled at him, unable to think of a suitable rejoinder. Her emotions were in a state the likes of which Christina had never experienced. She was most uncomfortable.
“Therefore,” Martin continued, his voice conciliatory and his expression soft and very gentle, “I think we’d best shelve this discussion until another time. Some time when we’re both thinking more clearly.”
“I see.” She felt as stiff as she sounded. “You believe this is a momentary aberration and will fade away with time.”
He gave that gesture with his hand again. “I don’t know that I’d call it an aberration, exactly, and . . . well, I can’t imagine it fading, actually. After all, you’re a beautiful young woman. Any man would be . . . attracted to you.”
“You mean any man would lust after my body, don’t you?” She couldn’t understand why she seemed compelled to put the most unflattering connotations on his words. Must be some sort of feminine reaction to rejection. She’d have to read some more psychology books. At the moment, she was too upset to think, much less read.
“I didn’t mean it that way, Christina,” he said softly. “Please. You’re a beautiful young woman, and the most desirable lady I’ve ever met. I—I— Oh, hell.” He ran his hand through his hair. “I’m saying this all wrong.”
She didn’t speak, but only sat there, her lips pinched together, praying she would neither burst into tears nor throw a temper tantrum. Where was her renowned Mayhew composure when she needed it?
“What I mean is, there’s nothing I’d like better than to conduct a discreet affair with you.” His little half smile again touched his lips, and again it made Christina light-headed. “Or even an indiscreet one. But I truly don’t think that would be fair to either of us. Especially you.”
It was an effort,
but she managed to pry her lips far enough apart to ask, “Why not?”
“Because you deserve better than that!” His voice had risen. After casting a quick, apprehensive look around the saloon, he lowered it when he continued. “You’re an intelligent, capable, beautiful woman. You shouldn’t throw yourself away so cheaply.”
She jerked, as if he’d slapped her. “Throw myself away? What are you talking about? Are you inferring that you would merely be taking advantage of an innocent darling of a muffinish virgin if we were to conduct a liaison? Do I strike you as a victim, Martin?”
He shut his eyes, and Christina would have sworn she heard him groan softly. After a couple of seconds, his eyes opened. He looked awfully tired, and she would have been sorry to have put him through this torture, except that she was being tortured, too, and she figured he deserved it.
“No,” he said. “You’re the least likely candidate for a victim I’ve ever run across, except maybe your grandmother. I—” He started tugging gently on that lock of hair. Christina wanted to reach for his hand, but didn’t. “I don’t even know what I’m talking about, to tell you the truth. I guess I’ve never been in this situation before and am handling it all wrong”
“If you don’t care to have an affair, Martin, all you have to do is say so. I can take it.” She assumed her smile was brittle, because she felt brittle. In truth, she felt as though she might shatter with the least little provocation.
He shook his head. Christina got the impression he was close to despair. “Good God, no, that isn’t it. If there were nothing to consider except my own desires, I’d make love to you here and now.”
Ah. This was more like it She took a breath that evidently swelled her bosom, because Martin’s gaze seemed to get stuck there for a moment. Christina was encouraged. “I see. Then we’re back to where we started.”
Her Leading Man Page 12