by Daphne Clair
‘What are you doing now, Shannon?’ Con asked. ‘Got another film in the works?’
‘A full-length feature,’ she said.
‘It’s a Victorian mystery,’ Devin interposed.
Shannon listened in surprise as he described the script succinctly but with obvious, if restrained, enthusiasm.
Con asked, ‘When will we be able to see it?’
‘We start shooting soon,’ Shannon told him. The production manager and art director were frantically hunting through antique and junk shops for period furnishings, and the wardrobe department was already working overtime.
‘Shannon’s in a hurry to get it finished,’ Devin said dryly, casting her a glance that made her flush.
She said, ‘It will be next year before it’s released.’ And reached for her coffee.
Amy said, ‘What a lovely bracelet.’
‘It’s her birthday present,’ Devin said.
‘Gorgeous!’ Amy said enviously. ‘Happy Birthday. Devin has very good taste.’
‘You betcha.’ Con chuckled. ‘Can’t understand why he let this woman slip through his fingers.’ Turning to his friend, he added, ‘Better hold on to her this time, mate.’
‘I intend to.’ Devin’s voice was perfectly level. Shannon didn’t dare look at him.
The after-effect of the music, the wine, the company of people she’d forgotten she liked so much, and Devin’s manner—that of a devoted husband—threatened her resolve not to lose sight of the reality. On the way home she found herself fighting a curious mixture of poignant memories and simmering resentment.
Once there, Devin said, ‘Join me in a nightcap?’
An order, or an invitation? She sat on the edge of a couch and watched as he poured brandy into snifters.
‘Thank you,’ he said, handing one to her.
‘Isn’t that my line? Why should you thank me?’
‘I thought you might not want to have dinner with my friends.’
Nervous and unsettled, she said, ‘You’ve no need to thank me for fulfilling my obligations.’
For an instant the hand lifting the glass to his mouth stilled, before he completed the movement and swallowed some brandy. ‘Obligations?’ he queried softly.
‘Under our agreement.’
He looked away, seemingly gazing at nothing for a second or two, then his eyes homed in on hers. ‘Why do you need to remind me, Shannon? Or yourself?’
He was right, but she said, ‘I don’t have to remind myself that I’m here under duress, Devin.’
‘So why spoil a pleasant evening?’
‘I’m sorry.’ Perhaps she was being mean-spirited. The birthday treat had been an attempt to soften things for her, but it didn’t change the stark facts. ‘I just can’t forget that…this whole situation is artificial. And I don’t know exactly what you hope to gain by it.’
‘The only thing artificial about it is your determination to keep me at arm’s length.’
‘I don’t agree.’
He laughed shortly and finished his drink. ‘Well, we’ll see how long it will last.’
Was he so confident of her eventual surrender? Did he realise how humiliating it would be for her if she succumbed? She was haunted by the fear that he wanted to see her humbled, her pride in tatters.
Suppose she gave in, and he threw her aside afterwards, having gained his point, and a sweet revenge?
‘Thank you for my birthday treat,’ she said huskily, standing up. ‘I had a lovely evening.’
Devin stood up too, but didn’t make a move toward her. ‘I’m glad,’ he said, and when she left the room he was still where she had left him, looking after her with enigmatic eyes.
CHAPTER SEVEN
DINNER with Amy and Con was relaxing and fun. Con had a way of making Devin seem more open, younger. Shannon supposed Devin could let down his guard with his old schoolmate.
Amy cheerfully allowed her guests to help her serve mouth-watering dishes and clear up afterwards. There was another couple too, the woman a children’s book illustrator and the man a painter who specialised in big, splashy acrylic works for public buildings.
Devin seemed to get on well with both of them, listening intently to the painter’s description of techniques, questioning him about the theory of abstract and surreal art.
At the end of the evening Devin said, ‘You must all come and have dinner with us. Shannon?’
‘We’ll arrange a date,’ she promised.
In the car he said, ‘I hope you’re not annoyed at me asking them without consulting you first.’
‘I’ll look forward to seeing them again.’
‘They might enjoy meeting some of your friends.’
‘My friends?’ She blinked at him.
Before, when she had entertained her film-world friends he’d been courteous but aloof. Once or twice she’d detected a tremor of quickly hidden astonishment when he was confronted with a particularly striking example of dress sense, or a hair-raising account of some personal adventure in the trade or out of it.
Deducing that Devin disapproved of her flamboyant companions, Shannon had gradually taken to seeing them elsewhere than the home she shared with him.
At the apartment when Shannon turned toward her bedroom, Devin said, ‘Don’t go yet.’
‘What do you want?’
‘You seemed to be having a good time tonight.’
‘Con and Amy were always fun. And they accepted me from the first. Not like—’
‘Like…?’ he queried.
‘Most of your friends couldn’t understand why you married me.’ She looked away from him, a sad smile curling her lips. ‘Well, neither could I.’
‘I married you because I was in love with you! Blindly, insanely in love.’
The words he’d used were a dead giveaway. Like her, he’d been caught up in an attraction so powerful that their differences in background, in careers and lifestyle and long-term goals, seemed mere trifles to be swept away by the sheer force of their mutual desire. His family’s reservations and the surprise of his friends and business associates had apparently passed him by. He had eyes only for her.
‘Both of us were insane,’ she acknowledged.
‘You were keen enough at the time.’
She had been. ‘It was nice while it lasted.’
‘Nice?’ He laughed. ‘That isn’t how I would have described it.’
‘I’m sorry if I disappointed you.’
He looked irritated. ‘You were never a disappointment, Shannon. Maddening, exhilarating, stubborn, provocative—but never a disappointment.’
‘I couldn’t be the corporate wife you needed.’
‘I never expected that of you.’
‘No?’ she queried sceptically. ‘Everyone else did.’
‘Who the hell cares about everyone else?’
‘You did. You wanted me by your side at all the dinners and business functions, making small talk and being charming and polite.’
‘I wanted you by my side,’ he agreed, ‘because I missed you when you weren’t there, and because I was proud of you, proud that I was your husband, that you’d chosen to spend your life with me—as I thought then.’
‘I thought I would,’ she said, around the lump in her throat. ‘I intended to, you know that.’
‘How could I? I have no idea what was in your mind when you married me.’
Her mind hadn’t had a lot to do with it. Her heart, her body, had been so dazzled by him that her brain had gone into hibernation. ‘We should have known it would never work out.’
‘It might have if you’d been willing to try a bit harder.’
‘If I’d been willing?’ Her head jerked up. ‘There were two of us in that marriage, Devin.’
‘This marriage,’ he emphasised. ‘It isn’t over yet.’
‘There’s no going back.’
‘We could try going forward…together.’
‘I…’ Doubt warred with an insidious hope. Was he serious
about giving their marriage another chance? Could there be more than damaged pride and a desire to salvage it behind his outrageous terms?
‘I know I coerced you into this,’ he said, ‘and maybe that was a mistake, but I’d like us to try again.’
‘Why?’ she asked, suspicious and wary.
‘Maybe,’ he said slowly, ‘because I don’t like to admit failure. Because I believe our marriage deserves another chance.’
She studied him doubtfully.
He allowed a spasm of exasperation to cross his face. ‘You seem convinced I have some kind of power complex, that I want you on your knees. For God’s sake, Shannon, do you really believe I’m that vindictive?’
Maybe she’d been unfair, mistaken. ‘No,’ she said slowly. ‘I guess not.’ Their marriage hadn’t lasted long enough for real intimacy on other than a sexual level. She hadn’t known him well enough to be certain of his motives.
‘Then give it a chance, Shannon. I won’t pressure you, but we had something good for a little while. We can make it good again.’
He walked toward her and his palms shaped her shoulders. ‘What do we have to lose?’
He was so persuasive in this mood. So…reasonable. As he had been when he’d first tried to talk her into throwing in her job, insisting she had no need to work, he could look after her every need.
He’d been perplexed at her refusal, laughing a little at her determined independence. Only later, as she continued to stick to her resolve despite her pregnancy, he’d become increasingly cold and implacable.
If that happened again she had a lot to lose. She wouldn’t, she had sworn, be pushed into the same dilemma again, forced to choose between her career and her marriage. It had been agonising and she didn’t think she could stand a repetition.
Excuses crowded her mind, born of a deep and paralysing inner panic. She was unable to cope with the implications. ‘I can’t deal with this now,’ she said, drawing away from him. ‘While I’m involved in the film I don’t have the energy to become embroiled in a relationship.’
He stepped back, releasing her. A chillingly familiar anger hardened his voice. ‘I see. You still put your work above all else.’
‘That’s what you couldn’t stand, wasn’t it?’ she flashed at him. ‘That I wouldn’t be the little woman sitting at home and waiting on her lord and master’s pleasure.’
‘I simply couldn’t see that filming needed to consume every waking moment, especially when you were pregnant!’
When they met she had just finished working on a film and was hoping for another, filling in with casual jobs that left her free to be with him almost anytime. Then she landed an assistant director’s place and Devin had suddenly found her chronically unavailable.
‘I warned you how it would be,’ she reminded him now. She’d explained that filming was often weeks and months of frantic activity followed by a lull, and he’d accepted that. ‘I had no choice.’
She’d missed him and felt guilty, but she was determined to make the best of the opportunity.
‘You had choices,’ Devin argued. ‘You chose your career over our marriage.’
‘It wasn’t as simple as that!’ She had, in fact, spent months juggling them.
‘Forgive me,’ he said with an edge of sarcasm that made her bristle, ‘but to me it looked exactly like that.’
‘You don’t understand. You never really wanted to.’
Anxious to do well despite a project beset with problems and personality clashes, and a difficult director, she’d been stressed and tired. Devin became impatient, and when she’d unexpectedly got pregnant he had decreed with increasing insistence that she ought to work less, rest more, even give up altogether and let him look after her. He could well afford it.
They had argued about her early morning starts and long days, but having longed for this opportunity to show her skills she was determined to carry it through.
And then she lost the baby and everything turned to dust.
Devin drew in an audible breath. ‘You didn’t seem to care that you were endangering your health, and the baby’s! What was I supposed to do? Stand by and let you do it?’
Stricken, she was silent, and he reached out a hand to her.
‘God, Shannon! I didn’t mean to hurt you.’
She pulled away. ‘You were jealous.’
He made a dismissive gesture. ‘Maybe that was part of it, at first. I’d have dealt with that if you hadn’t been growing thinner, developing hollows under your eyes, obviously driving yourself too hard.’
‘I could have done with some support,’ she cried, ‘instead of bullying!’
‘Bullying?’ Unusually, emotion was raw in his face. Shock and fury whitened his cheeks. ‘I was trying to protect you!’
She supposed he had been, but it had only added extra pressure to those she already felt. ‘It didn’t help,’ she said bitterly.
He shook his head. ‘I don’t know what else I could have done.’
The telephone rang, he glanced irritably at his watch and strode over to answer it, barking his name into the receiver.
Gathering it was a business call from overseas, Shannon seized the chance to escape. By the time the murmur of his voice ceased she’d switched off her light.
Early the following morning the phone rang again, waking Shannon from an erotic dream in which Devin figured vividly. They were lying in tall, waving grasses, and she could hear the sea nearby. Devin was touching her, tickling her cheek, her neck, between her breasts, with the silky head of a grass stem. They were in swimsuits, and his bare chest gleamed with salt water. She took the grass from his hand and ran it across his skin, and he laughed down at her, then bent to her and kissed her breasts, above the minimal bikini top she wore. Looking up at a blue, blue sky, she sighed, closed her eyes, and then miraculously there was nothing between her and Devin, only cool water slicking their skins as they came together and she arched her back against his hand, her body shaped to his, his mouth claiming hers.
A mixture of memory and fantasy, she realised, struggling awake to the shrill, insistent interruption. The grass and the nearby sea existed, and they had once made love there, but not without struggling out of wet, sandy swimsuits amid laughter and her not very convincing protests. Devin had turned so she lay on him, his hard-muscled body shielding her from the harsh grass and sand, and afterwards he’d sworn he felt no discomfort and she’d teased that he was too macho to admit to it.
‘No,’ he said. ‘You were so beautiful, all I felt was your lovely body against me and your sweet heat when I was inside you.’
His bedroom door opened, then there was silence.
Shannon, sleeping in a skimpy short nightdress, reached for her cream satin robe as she headed for her own door. Light spilled into the passageway from the kitchen and she followed it, finding Devin, clad only in black shorts, making himself coffee. The kitchen clock said it was four-thirty.
Devin turned as she said, ‘Is anything wrong? I heard the phone.’ Even his overseas calls didn’t usually come through at this hour.
He pushed a hand over his sleep-tousled hair and smiled at her, a spark lighting his eyes as he took in her attire. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Rose got the time difference wrong between here and L.A. I didn’t want to wake you, but she’s willing to do A Matter of Honour.’
‘Oh!’ Astonished, she took a moment to absorb the news. Mixed feelings coloured her response. ‘That’s great!’ she said finally. Of course it was. ‘But can she?’
‘She’s trying to make the time between other commitments. Will a window of five weeks give you time to shoot her scenes?’
‘It’ll be tight,’ Shannon said, already sorting how it could be done. ‘We’ll make it possible…somehow,’ she decided. ‘If necessary, and if she agrees, we could go to shooting six days some weeks without incurring penal rates, and I’m sure the crew won’t mind a few long weeks if it means working with Rose Grady. But did she mention money?’
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��She said she’d do it for what we can afford. She really liked the script.’
‘Oh, that’s…that’s generous.’ Pushing aside all other considerations, she said, ‘Devin, I really do appreciate this. Thank you!’
Reaching out a long arm, he took her hand and drew her closer. ‘Thank me properly then?’ he suggested, taking her other hand and holding them both in a firm clasp.
Her lips parted slightly as she stared up at him, tempted but reluctant. The memory of her dream surfaced—a dream in which they had been making love with all the fierce mutual passion they used to share, their limbs entwined as he penetrated the innermost warmth of her body. A dream rudely interrupted, leaving lingering desire that still tingled in her breasts and made her body heavy and lethargic.
Colour stung her cheeks, and mutely she shook her head. Temptation was a serpent, much too risky to play with.
‘One kiss,’ Devin coaxed, his voice deep and lazy, making her toes curl in response, a slow heat rise in her body. ‘That’s all, I swear. Is it too much to ask?’
He wasn’t forcing her, he was asking. There was even a hint of pleading in his voice.
Reluctantly, she moved closer, not quite touching him, and lifted her mouth to his, briefly touched his lips and drew away.
He still held her hands. His eyes were sombre and very dark. He said sternly, ‘Don’t cheat, Shannon.’ Then his hands moved to her waist, bringing her body into contact with his, and his mouth found hers in a devastating erotic exploration.
She put her hands on his arms, intending to resist. The warm, muscled flesh under her fingers was seductive, and her palms lingered, then slid up to his shoulders until she was clinging to him, her eyes closed. He persuaded her mouth to open for him, and her head tipped back as he explored, tasted, giving her a wild, dark pleasure that dreams could only dimly replicate.
Then he lifted his head, and she heard him mutter, ‘That’s better.’
Rousing a shred of resistance, she opened her eyes and flattened her palms against his chest, and he let her put a few inches of space between them, before his hands reluctantly moved from her waist and she was free.