by Nora Roberts
5
By five-thirty the offices were like a tomb. Johanna was happy enough to have an extra hour to herself. Paperwork that never seemed to diminish during the normal working day could be gotten through in an uninterrupted hour. Questions for Monday’s taping had been chosen and checked, but Johanna took the time to go over them herself to be certain they were as entertaining as they were educational.
She answered a pile of memos, read and signed letters and approved a stack of bills. The beauty of game shows, she thought as she worked, was that they were cheap to produce. In a big week they could give away over fifty thousand dollars and still come in at a fraction of the cost of a thirty-minute situation comedy.
She was still determined to get her other concept on the air, and was ready to make her pitch for the pilot so that when things clicked the show could debut in the fall. And they would click, Johanna promised herself. One more success, one more solid success, and her own production company could begin its struggle for survival.
Garden Variety Productions. She could already see the logo. Within two years others would see it, as well. And remember it.
She’d continue to do the games, of course, but she’d begin to expand her own horizons, as well. A daytime drama, a couple of prime-time movies, a weekly series. She could already see it building, step by step. But for now she had to concentrate on getting through the rest of the day. And the evening.
After her desk was cleared, Johanna brought out her secret. She’d hidden the bag in her bottom drawer, behind the office stationery. There’d been enough commotion over her bringing an evening dress to the office. Now Johanna pulled the box from the bag, opened it, then read the instructions through twice. It didn’t seem that complicated. She’d make it an adventure, she told herself, even if it was silly. She’d told herself it was silly even as she’d let the clerk talk her into buying them.
Johanna set her equipment in orderly lines, with the instructions handy, then examined her hands, back, then palms. The clerk hadn’t been wrong about her nails being a mess. And what was wrong with trying something new? Johanna picked up the first fake fingernail and began to file it. She tested it often, placing it on her short, unpainted thumbnail until she was satisfied that the length wasn’t extravagant. Only nine more to go, she thought, and began to attack the rest.
As she worked, she slipped out of her shoes and curled her legs under her. It was a position she never would have permitted herself to take if anyone had been in the office. Alone, she switched to it without thinking. Once she had ten uniformly filed nails on her blotter, she went on to the next stage.
The instructions told her it was easy, quick and neat. Johanna peeled off the adhesive and pressed it against her nail. Easy. With the tweezers she carefully caught the tip of the backing and began to peel it off. The adhesive rolled into a ball. Patiently Johanna removed it and tried again. The third time she managed to make it stick. Pleased, she picked up the first nail and aligned it carefully over her own. After pressing down, she examined the result.
It didn’t look like her thumb, but it was rather elegant. After she painted it with the Shell-Pink Fizz enamel the clerk had sold her, no one would know the difference.
It took her twenty minutes to complete one hand, and she had to resort to digging out her reading glasses—something else she never would have done unless completely alone. She was swearing at the clerk, at herself and at the manufacturer when the phone rang. Johanna hit line one and popped the nail off her index finger.
“Johanna Patterson,” she said between her teeth.
“It’s John Jay, honey. I’m so glad you’re a workaholic.”
Johanna glared at her naked index finger. “What is it?”
“I’ve got a teeny little problem, sweetheart, and need you to come to my rescue.” When she said nothing, he cleared his throat. “Listen, it seems my credit card’s at the limit and I’m in a bit of an embarrassment. Would you mind talking to the manager here at Chasen’s? He says he knows you.”
“Put him on.” Disgusted, she ran her hand through her hair and popped off another nail. It took less than two minutes to squeeze John Jay out of his embarrassment. After she hung up the phone, Johanna looked at her hand. Two of the nails she’d meticulously placed were gone, and her fingers were smeared with adhesive. Letting out a long breath, she began to remove the rest.
She was an intelligent, capable woman, she reminded herself. She was a hop and a skip away from being thirty and she held down a complex and demanding job. She was also probably the only woman in the country who couldn’t attach fake nails.
The hell with it. She dumped everything, including the bottle of enamel, into the trash.
She did what she could with her hair in the women’s lounge. Then, because she was feeling unfeminine and klutzy, she went dramatic with her makeup. Dressed only in thigh-high stockings and tap pants, she unzipped the garment bag. She’d only worn the gown once before, a year ago. It was strapless and clingy, a far cry from her usual style. With a shrug, Johanna stepped into it, and shimmied it up, then fought to reach the zipper. She swore again and wondered why she’d allowed herself to be talked into going out at all. Once the dress was secured, she tried to see as much of herself as possible in the waist-high mirrors.
It was a good fit, she decided as she turned to the side. And the color—which, she remembered grimly, would have matched the enamel now in the trash—was flattering. Though she couldn’t see it, the hem skimmed her knees in the front, then graduated down to full-length in the back. Johanna changed her everyday earrings for pearl-and-diamond circles, then clasped on a matching choker.
As good as it gets, she thought, and zipped her office clothes in the bag. She’d have her secretary send them to the cleaners on Monday. With the bag slung over her arm, she started back to her office. She’d been wise to have Sam meet her here, Johanna decided. Not only did it make it less like a date, there was the added security that she’d have to be dropped off back in the parking garage so that she could drive herself home.
The coward’s way. She shrugged her shoulders with a touch of annoyance as she walked. The safe way, she corrected. Whatever she was feeling for Sam was a little too fast and a little too intense. Having an affair wasn’t in her plans, professionally or personally. She’d simply lived through too many of her father’s.
Her life would never be like his.
As far as Sam Weaver was concerned, she would be sensible, cautious and, above all, in complete control of the situation.
Oh, God, he looked wonderful.
He was standing in her office by the window, his hands in the pockets of his tux and his thoughts on something she couldn’t see. Pleasure, hardly comfortable, slammed into her. If she’d believed in happily-ever-afters, she would have believed in him.
He hadn’t heard her, but he’d been thinking about her hard enough, deeply enough, that he’d known the moment she’d stepped into the doorway. He turned, and his image of her dissolved and reassembled.
She looked so fragile with her hair swept up off her neck and her shoulders bare. The business-first office had suited the woman he’d first met. The pretty garden and isolated house had suited the woman who’d laughed with him beside the pond. But this was a new Johanna, one who seemed too delicate to touch.
As ridiculous as it made him feel, he had to catch his breath. “I thought you’d skipped out.”
“No.” When she realized her knuckles were turning white clutching her summer bag, she relaxed them. “I was changing.” Because she wanted badly to act natural, she made herself move to the closet. “I’m sorry if I’m a bit behind. I got caught up. Work,” she said, and with a quick glance made certain the fiasco of plastic nails and polish was out of sight.
“You look wonderful, Johanna.”
“Thanks.” She shut the closet door, trying to take the compliment with the same ease with which it was given. “So do you. I’m ready whenever you are.”
“
I need another minute.” He crossed to her, catching the quick surprise in her eyes just before he covered her bare shoulders with his hands and kissed her. He lingered over the kiss, struggling to keep the pressure light, the demand minimal. “Just wanted to see if you were real,” he murmured.
She was real, all right, so real that she could feel her own blood pumping hot and, quick. “We should go.”
“I’d rather stay here and neck. Well, maybe some other time,” he added when he saw her brow lift. With her hand in his, he started out of the office toward the elevators. “Listen, if this is really boring we could leave early. Take a drive.”
“Hollywood galas are never boring.” She said it so dryly that he laughed.
“You don’t like them.”
“I don’t often find it necessary to attend them.” She stepped into the elevator as the door opened.
“It’s hard to be a part of a world and ignore it at the same time.”
“No, it’s not.” She’d been doing it for years. “Some of us do better behind the scenes. I saw one of the early ads for your miniseries,” she continued, changing the subject before he had a chance to probe. “It looked good, very classy, very sexy.”
“That’s marketing,” he said dismissively as the elevator reached the underground parking garage. “It’s not really sexy. It’s romantic. There’s a difference.”
There was indeed, but it surprised her that he knew it. “When you’ve got your shirt off and your chest is gleaming, people think sex.”
“Is that all it takes?” He opened the passenger door of his car. “I can be out of this cummerbund in under five seconds.”
She swung her legs into the car. “Thanks, but I’ve already seen your chest. Why television?” she asked when he’d joined her. “At this point in your career, I mean.”
“Because the majority of people won’t sit still in a theater for four hours, and I wanted to do this movie. The small screen’s more personal, more intimate, and so was this script.” The car’s engine echoed in the nearly empty garage as he backed up and began to drive out. “The character of Sarah is so fragile, so tragic. She’s so absolutely trusting and naive. It knocked me out the way Lauren pulled it off,” he added, referring to his co-star. “She really found the essence of that innocence.”
And, according to the press, he and Lauren had had as many love scenes away from the cameras as they had in front of them. It would be wise, Johanna reminded herself, to remember that. “It’s not usual to hear an actor talk about a character other than his own.”
“Luke’s a bastard,” Sam said simply as he stopped at a light. “An opportunist, a womanizer and a heel. A very charming, glib-tongued one.”
“Did you capture his essence?”
He studied Johanna before the light changed. “You’ll have to watch and tell me.”
Deliberately she turned away. “What’s your next project?”
“It’s a comedy.”
“I didn’t know you did comedy.”
“Obviously you missed my tour de force as the Raisin Crunch man a few years ago.”
The chuckle welled up. “I’m embarrassed to say I did.”
“That’s all right. I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t. That was right before I did the Mano cologne commercials. ‘What woman can resist a man who smells like a man?’”
She would have laughed again if she hadn’t remembered her own reaction to everything about him, including his scent. “Well, no one can say you haven’t paid your dues.”
“I like to think I have, and I’m also aware that the Mano campaign got me a reading for Undercover.”
She was sure it had. Johanna hadn’t missed those particular ads. In them, Sam had been blood-pumpingly sexy, intensely male and cocky enough to make a woman’s mouth water. His character in Undercover had been precisely the same, but with an underlying depth that had surprised both the audience and the critics.
“Those kind of breaks don’t happen very often,” she said aloud. “When they do, they’re usually deserved.”
“Well . . .” He drew the word out. “I think that was a compliment.”
She shrugged. “I’ve never said you weren’t good at what you do.”
“Maybe we could turn that around and say the problem from the outset has been that I am.” She said nothing, but he thought that was answer enough.
Her brow creased a bit as they drove up to the well-lit limousine-adorned Beverly Wilshire. “Looks like quite a crowd.”
“We can still go back to your office and neck.”
She gave him a brief, very bland look as one of the uniformed staff opened her door. The moment she was on the curb, strobe lights and cameras flashed.
She hated that. She didn’t have the words to explain even to herself how much she hated it. With a gesture that could be taken for one of aloofness rather than panic, she turned away. Sam slipped an arm around her and by doing so caused a dozen more flashes.
“They hound you less if you smile and cooperate,” he murmured in her ear.
“Mr. Weaver! Mr. Weaver! What can you tell us about your upcoming television miniseries?”
Sam aimed his answer at the crowd of reporters and personalized it with a smile even as he started to walk. “With a quality script and a cast that includes Lauren Spencer, I think it speaks for itself.”
“Is your engagement to Miss Spencer off?”
“It was never on.”
One of the reporters got close enough to grab Johanna’s arm. “Could we have your name, Miss?”
“Patterson,” she said, and shook him off.
“Carl Patterson’s girl,” she heard someone in the crowd say. “That’s the old man’s daughter. Ms. Patterson, is it true your father’s marriage is on the rocks? How do you feel about him being linked with a woman half his age?”
Saying nothing, Johanna swept through the front doors into the lobby.
“Sorry.” Sam kept his arm around her. She was trembling a bit with what he took for anger.
“You had nothing to do with it.” She only needed a moment, she thought, to calm down. Yes, there was anger, but there was also that stomach-churning distress that swooped down on her whenever she was confronted with cameras and demanding questions about her father. It had happened before and would happen again, as long as she was the daughter of Carl W. Patterson.
“You want to slip into the bar and get a drink? Sit in a dark corner for a minute?”
“No. No, really, I’m fine.” As the tension eased, she smiled up at him. “I’d hate to go through that as often as you must.”
“It’s part of the job.” But he lifted her chin with a finger. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Of course. I think I’ll just—”
But her plans for a brief escape were scotched when several people walked over to greet Sam.
She knew them, some by sight, others by reputation. Sam’s co-star in his last feature was with her husband and happily pregnant with her first child. The elite of the press who had been permitted inside took the photo opportunity.
As they inched their way to the ballroom, others came by to renew an acquaintance or be introduced. Through her father she knew a great many of them herself. There were cheeks to be kissed, hugs to be given, hands to be shaken. A veteran actor with a silver mane of hair and a face that still graced billboards squeezed her. With an affection she felt for few, Johanna hugged him back. She’d never forgotten how he had come up to her room and entertained her with stories long ago, during one of her father’s parties.
“Uncle Max, you’re even more handsome than ever.”
His laugh was low and gravelly as he kept his arm around her. “Jo-Jo. Looking at you makes me feel old.”
“You’ll never be old.”
“Mary will want to see you,” he said, speaking of his longtime and only wife. “She’s run off with a safari to the ladies’ room.” He kissed her cheek again, then turned to size up Sam. “So you’ve finally broken
down and taken on an actor. At least you’ve chosen a good one. I’ve admired your work.”
“Thank you.” After six years in the business, Sam had thought he was immune to being starstruck. “It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Heddison,” he said, and he meant it. “I’ve seen everything you’ve ever done.”
“Little Jo-Jo always had taste. I’d like to work with you sometime. Not many of this generation I’d say that to.”
“Tell me when and where.”
With his eyes narrowed, Max gave a slow nod. “I’ve a script I’ve been considering. Maybe I’ll send it along and let you have a look. Jo-Jo, I’d like to see your pretty face more often.” He kissed her again, then strode off to find his wife.
“I believe you’re speechless,” Johanna commented when Sam only continued to watch Max’s back.
“There’s not another actor alive I admire more than Max Heddison. He doesn’t socialize much, and the couple of times I’ve seen him I didn’t have the nerve to wangle an introduction.”
“You, shy?”
“Intimidated is a mild way to put it.”
Johanna took his hand again, touched that he could be. “He’s the kindest man I know. Once for my birthday he gave me a puppy. My father was furious—he hates dogs—but he couldn’t say anything because it was from Uncle Max.”
“Jo-Jo?”