Second Chance Reunion

by Irene Vartanoff

  “Are you sure that’s all?” he whispered huskily. His lips moved dangerously close, and Sara involuntarily held her breath.

  Just when it seemed as if her control would break and she would move the half-inch required to meet his mouth, Lucas pulled away as swiftly as he’d attacked.

  Sara stiffened as he casually draped himself on the edge of his desk, nearer to her than his chair. This close, his effect on her was overpowering. His thighs, in faded jeans that stretched with movement, almost touched her stocking-clad legs. Why she had chosen impractical, ultra-feminine attire for their first meeting was not something she wanted to examine closely. She shivered in her thin silk dress, feeling vulnerable and very female.

  She was nearly close enough to catch his scent. Could it be separated from among the other male scents of this very masculine room? Leather and smoke, and something sharp and clean. Mentally she shook herself and forced herself to concentrate on his words and show nothing of her wayward thoughts. Lucas's powerful chest was outlined by his soft gray pullover. When he took a breath, Sara held hers.

  He said, “You’ve changed less than I expected. Your eyes still have stars in them.”

  As he calmly examined her face, she strove to hide how desperately close tears were. She forced her lips together so she wouldn’t burst out with an inappropriate declaration of her feelings.

  He seemed to shake himself out of his sentimental mood. “Are you married or living with someone now?”

  “How could I? I’ve never—”

  Before she could finish her impulsive declaration of love, Lucas finished her sentence for her. “Taken a break from building your career?” His eyes clouded briefly as he continued, “Maybe that’s wise. Too bad Jennifer preferred conquering multiple men to becoming a better actress.”

  He still thought about his dead ex-wife. Sara shivered. Six years ago she hadn’t wanted to squander her love on his loneliness, and perhaps now wasn’t the time, either. At least he could mention Jennifer’s name calmly. That was a sign of mental health, surely. Except for his eyes, Lucas looked good. If she didn’t know for a fact that he hadn’t touched a film in five years, she’d think he was his old self, ready to plan his next directorial triumph.

  “I want to help you with Desert Wind,” she said.

  “Don’t. Don’t start with that.” His lips closed in a taut line. “George talked me into letting you come here and stay for a while, but that’s all.”

  “Isn’t it time to finish the film?”

  “I don’t care about Desert Wind.” His words reflected the cold expression on his face.

  She drew a breath. What to say next? “You never before let a project remain half-done.”

  “Except you, Sara. We never finished. We almost had our moment in time, but it all went wrong.”

  “I—I didn’t think you’d want to remember,” she murmured, lowering her gaze. Hope blazed. After all the years of longing and despair, she still had a chance with Lucas.

  “Does that mean you want to forget?” he asked quietly. “I thought our one night together meant as much to you as it did to me.”

  “That’s unfair,” Sara cried. “Don’t play with me. We’ve been apart six years, not six hours.” She turned her face away from him in desperation. Her words were muffled as she fought tears and bitterness. “You never contacted me.”

  “I was going through hell.” He rubbed the back of his neck, unconsciously easing strain.

  The familiar gesture turned her heart. Her physical reactions to this man were as dangerous as ever.

  “I couldn’t promise you anything, and I didn’t have the right to take anything, either, or so you said,” he finished with narrowed eyes.

  “You stayed married.”

  “Until she left me.” His hand pushed some papers on his desk impatiently. “Why are we rehashing the past?”

  The strain eased and Sara found her hands uncurling somewhat. “Today is what counts. And tomorrow.”

  “Let’s not play games. George hopes you can use your womanly wiles to soften me up.”

  “That’s about right,” she sighed. “Probably he thinks there was some big romance between you and me.”

  A hint of a smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. “George has a vivid imagination.”

  She let out a confused laugh. “I don’t know what he thinks happened.” She raised her hands, seeking help.

  He looked at her probingly. “You had feelings for me?”

  She nodded, squirming. Six years later, she still couldn’t admit it without blushing. “I was young and stupid and in love with love. I was very excited to be working in the film industry, too, and you were a giant in the field. Of course I fell hard for my boss.”

  “All the interns did, or so Jennifer claimed.”

  His ex-wife’s name was a reminder of the barrier that had stood between them six years ago.

  “I promise you, I never did anything to encourage it.” His tone of voice conveyed his sincerity. “There was an air of hero worship in my office and I never knew what caused it or how to regulate it.”

  She shrugged and rearranged her thin skirt to cover her knees. “If your own employees hadn’t been wildly proud to be part of your team, the constant media attention you generated would have created the same atmosphere, anyway. We all felt special to be working for you. With you.”

  He smiled. “Some of you were.”

  “We admired your talent.” She made an impatient gesture with her hands. “True, we each had ambitions, but a rising tide lifts all boats.”

  “What a quaint expression.”

  “I come from a quaint place—the Midwest.”

  He emitted a rusty laugh, then stopped in surprise. “You made me laugh. My god. I haven’t laughed in a long time.”

  He shifted his legs, and she automatically moved hers so they wouldn’t bump. Her silk dress was sheer overkill. She must have been fantasizing heavily about a possible love scene with Lucas when she’d donned a dress for this trip instead of practical jeans.

  Lucas noticed. He frowned. “Still afraid of men?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Why did you move away from me just now?”

  “I…ah, I don’t know.”

  “You say you care about me, but yet you shrink from me. It is because I’ve abandoned the career you used to admire?”

  His accusation cut deep. “I’ve come all the way out here to help you.” Couldn’t Lucas see the sincerity in her eyes?

  “To obey George, more likely.”

  She made an exasperated noise. “He’s your friend. He wants the best for you.”

  “Are you the best for me?” He examined her. “Is that what this little visit is about?”

  She squirmed again. “All I’m trying to do is invoke a—a friendship we had six years ago, to remind you of what you were then and what you had. What you could have again,” she said, leaning forward.

  He shook his head. “No. That’s the past. I’m done.”

  “Did all your artistic talent simply disappear overnight?”

  “My desire to use my talent left me the moment Jennifer died,” he said flatly.

  Her heart sank. The memory of Jennifer Barnes was indeed the enemy. How could Sara vanquish a foe as elusive as a ghost? “Grief temporarily makes us all want to give up. We have to get through those feelings.”

  Lucas tilted his head in an inquiring gesture. “What do you know of grief? Have you lost someone?”

  Now was not the moment to talk about the grief she’d felt over losing him. George hadn’t prepared her to debate Lucas about grief, but she could try. “I lost my father when I was about to launch on the scariest part of life, leaving film school for what everybody said was a cutthroat business. It made me doubly scared to take a chance on a Hollywood career.”

  “Was that why you became infatuated with me? You missed your father and I was old enough to be your father?” He seemed to wince at the unflattering notion.


  “Powerful Hollywood power figures like you always attract young women.” Her tone was rueful. She tried to look directly into his eyes, but he kept looking away, restlessly seeking something else in the room. She continued, “I admired you. Then I idolized you because you were such an inspiration. Someone who knew how to make the most of talent and creativity. A brilliant filmmaker.” She sighed. “When you had troubles in your personal life I felt intense sympathy for you.”

  “Even though you had no life experience to give you an inkling of what was going on.”

  “True.” She’d been young and naïve, not to mention inexperienced.

  “You were a babe in the woods.”

  “Another quaint expression,” she said, smiling faintly.

  He made a cutting gesture with one hand. “We’re getting nowhere. Bandying words.”

  She shifted her legs again, and bit back a sigh. “What do you want me to say?”

  “Tell the truth.”

  “You already know why I’m here. George sent me.”

  He stood. “I have no interest in finishing Desert Wind.”

  “George says you’re stagnating out here.”

  “I’m aging,” he said, with an ironic twist to his lips. “That’s forward motion.”

  “Very funny.” He was so frustrating. How to reach him?

  “I’ll be fifty in a few months,” he continued. “I’m perfectly fine with the idea of turning sixty or seventy without doing another film.”

  She leaned forward. “But why? You’re such a talented director. A true artist.”

  He seemed to wince. “Old men look back on the mistakes in their lives with the distance and dispassion of time.”

  She sat back. “That sounds very philosophical, but abandoning your art doesn’t make sense to me.”

  “Obviously. You’re practically a kid.”

  “I’m almost thirty. I’m a grown woman now.”

  “Who still moves her legs away from mine rather than let us touch.” He eyed her bare legs as she moved them again.

  His conversational twists made her feel off-balance. “Let’s not talk about me.”

  Lucas looked her straight in the eyes at last, his own dark eyes probing. “Tell me about your first lover after we parted.”

  “What?” she asked, disconcerted by his mercurial change in topic.

  “Did he look like me?”

  Her expression must have shown her horror. How had he guessed? No way would she admit that her first lover had the same dark curly hair, the same intense way of staring that Lucas had.

  “He did, didn’t he?” Lucas said, satisfaction in his voice. “Did you cry out my name when you were having sex with him?”

  His taunting words struck her on the raw. She stood, poised to flee. “I’m sorry. I can’t talk about this.”

  “You won’t talk about some casual lover you picked up off the street or in a bar, solely to live out your fantasy of having sex with me? Why not?”

  The cruel words beat at her. “That’s not how it was.” She blinked, trying to hold the tears at bay.

  “Don’t bother to deny it. I can see from the expression on your face that you’ve indulged in some crude fantasies involving me.” He moved closer. “Some lonely night, you thought about me, and maybe you had a glass of wine. Then you went into your bedroom and lay down on the bed and…”

  “Stop. Please.” She fought not to cover her face, to hide her feelings completely from a man who was a master at evoking displays of feelings from actors.

  “You don’t want me in your space. I’m intruding on your private emotions.” He pulled back, clearly satisfied to have her on the defensive. “Yet you expect me to tell you how I felt about seeing my wife killed in front of me. How I still feel.”

  She practically cringed. He’d made those intimate accusations merely to taunt her.

  His eyes pierced her with contempt. “You have a hell of a nerve coming into my home to preach at me.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, tears in her voice and filling her eyes now. “I’m sorry.”

  She fled the room and didn’t stop until she’d somehow reached her Jeep outside.

  As the intense heat hit her, her head cleared. Lucas was no fool. He’d attacked her rather than let her soften him up. He’d used his knowledge of her naïve crush on him six years ago to scare her off.

  She must find the way to influence him for his own good. He was wasting his life doing nothing. If he kept up his taunting barbs, laughing at her long-held feelings for him, she would have to be on her guard and bury her emotions. She already had to fight from expressing sympathy, even when she ached to. Lucas didn’t want her sympathy.

  Despite flinching at his cruel words, she had seen how tormented his eyes were. He’d played with her almost as an emotional release. What an easy target she was. Her feelings for Lucas had always been more than those of an employee for a boss, and he knew it.

  Lucas was very clever, but she would not give up this easily.

  She marched back through the front door. The housekeeper, a stocky woman with graying hair cut short, stood just inside.

  “My name’s Leona,” she said, smiling. “Glad you’re sticking around.”

  Chapter 4

  Dinner was in a long, cool room with an enormous window that looked out on the desert. The setting sun touched hills many miles away, turning them copper.

  Lucas greeted her briskly. “Why did George send you instead of coming here himself? Too busy?”

  “George is in the hospital. He’s…” she stopped. She didn’t try to hide the sudden moistness in her eyes. “He isn’t doing well.”

  “He never said anything.” Lucas's expression was incredulous.

  “He may not have much time left. Finishing Desert Wind is very important to him. Will you help?”

  Lucas paced. The carpet showed a path he’d taken many times over the years. “You’re asking a lot.”

  “He told me he wrote the script for Desert Wind. It would mean so much to him to finally see it on the screen.”

  “Let’s eat. We can talk about it tomorrow,” he said, dismissing her urgency. He indicated the table with one hand.

  They ate a simple but elegant dinner. The dining table was one massive piece of maple, matching the maple the architect had used so lavishly around the house. The walls here were plain, to emphasize the window and the large canvases, all of which featured barren landscapes and death totems.

  “Are you a fan of O’Keeffe?” he asked, seeing her looking around.

  “I don’t know much about her. I thought she painted flowers?”

  “I find the stark emptiness of her desert scenes with their occasional skeletons of cattle more evocative. She painted the symbols of mortality.”

  Sara had no answer to such a statement. Although Lucas hadn’t filled the walls with photos of Jennifer Barnes with memorial candles placed strategically underneath, his art choices were a close substitute. He displayed death all around him. Her death.

  Six years ago, Lucas had brilliantly directed movies that celebrated the complexities of life. The characters in his films didn’t always achieve Hollywood happy endings, but there was a definite sense of hope and renewal by the end of each tangled tale. Lucas was a master at tackling the truths behind people’s masks and yet bringing characters into the light, or at the very least showing them a way out of their ruts. A Steel production was always uplifting at the core. Sara, along with many millions of people, had admired his ability to transform the ordinary into symbols of so much more. Now what was left of that genius? Where had his keen eye for hope gone? Who was Lucas Steel today?

  Lucas kept the conversation light at dinner. Although he lived far from the day-to-day action of the movie business, he knew about the latest films, directors, and actors. They discussed recent Oscar contenders and winners. Significantly, Lucas said nothing about his old romantic rival, David Connor, whose star turn in his latest film had resulted in his second no
mination and his first Oscar win as Best Actor.

  Lucas didn’t show anger at her the way he had before, although she kept waiting for him to. After dinner, he didn’t suggest another cozy chat in his study, which was a relief. The small, dark room was too intimate a setting.

  “The desert cools off quickly at night,” he said. “Come for a walk.”

  Lucas took her through the French doors in a living room to his xeriscape garden. A fountain played in the center. The sun had set by now, but the garden was lit by indirect lighting, including around the fountain.

  “How lovely to hear the splash of water,” she said.

  “It’s on a timer,” he said. “Jennifer’s idea.”

  “Really?” She almost tripped, unable to envision that woman caring about anything beautiful other than her own body.

  “She loved fountains. She knew water was a scarce commodity out here, but begged for the fountain to play a few hours at night.”

  Was he making this up? It was the first positive thing Lucas had ever said about his wife. Ex-wife. Dead ex-wife.

  He led her on a path through mounds of native grasses made silver as dusk turned quickly to night. Intense scents rose from smaller plants sprinkled throughout. The effect was charming. Perhaps she could spend some time in this garden while she was here.

  Lucas pointed at the paving stones beneath their feet. “These retain heat and attract animals.”

  Was he trying to scare her? “You mean snakes and lizards?”

  They reached a pergola entwined with vines. Large, five-petaled flowers bloomed white. She pointed at the tangled profusion of petals. “I dare you to drain the beauty of out of this.”

  “These flowers attract big, aggressive wasps.”

  She threw up her hands in exasperation. “A hoe and a can of bug spray will handle all your garden predators.”

  “Is that how you coped with Hollywood after you left me?” he asked. “With lethal weapons?”

  “I didn’t—” she started. Then she regrouped. She shouldn’t let him put her on the defensive again. “I concentrated on learning my craft.”

  “The film business has many distractions.”

  She chose her next words carefully, finally understanding that Lucas was again asking if she’d had affairs during their years apart. “I’ve learned professional behavior.”