Starstruck (24 page)

“I imagine she’ll have eyes only for you,” Liv said tartly. “Besides, I’ve seen very little of Vienna and we leave tomorrow. I think I’ll do a bit of sight-seeing.” She had no intention of sitting in Mrs. Carvalho’s living room like a lump of coal while Joe charmed Veronique Moreau. And she didn’t doubt that he would, either. She knew him well enough now to know that he could do it without even trying. The only unsusceptible woman was a dead one, and at last glance, Veronique Moreau was anything but that.

Liv stepped past him and went through to the bedroom, opening the closet to find the dress she had hung there. “Excuse me,” she said sharply when she turned, dress in hand, to bump right into his chest, “but I am dressing in here. Will you kindly wait outside?”

Joe’s eyebrows lifted speculatively, but he didn’t comment, just smirked, while Liv herded him backwards through the door and shut it firmly in his face. He might want to entertain his French floozy in nothing more than Uli’s well-worn bathrobe, but she had no intention of meeting Veronique Moreau, however briefly, in nothing better than cotton slacks and her navy T-shirt
.
She took a quick bath and slipped into the bright blue-and-green dress she had brought with her. It was a vibrant print, a sort of gauzy, East-Indian creation, which she bad bought last spring in Chicago and which contrasted nicely with the fairness of her hair and brought out the delicacy of her features and the blue highlights in her gray eyes. Not bad, she decided, as she took one last glance in the steamy mirror. But definitely not Veronique Moreau.

When she opened the door to the bedroom she heard Joe’s voice in the living room, followed by what could only be described as low, sexy feminine laughter. She even laughs in French, Liv thought, and grabbing her purse, she lifted her head with more self-confidence than she felt, and marched into the living room.

“This is Olivia,” Joe was saying to the most gorgeous woman Liv had ever seen. She wished she had stayed in slacks and a T-shirt Then it wouldn’t have looked as though she’d tried—and failed. But she managed a tight smile, which was returned in blinding kilowatts by the striking brunette seated on the sofa next to Joe.

“Hello, dear,” the actress said, her eyes skating over Liv with a wariness and curiosity that made Liv think that Veronique was sizing her up, rather like a skater would probe a pond for thin ice. “Joe has been telling me of your sterling devotion. You must have been frightfully bored.”

Liv bit her tongue before she could retort, “Bored? With Joe Harrington?” Instead she nodded a bit lamely. “Not really,” she allowed as soon as she found her voice. “But I will be glad to get a little sight-seeing in
before we leave. So if you’ll excuse
me—”
She shrugged into her raincoat and opened the front door. “Nice to have met you, Miss Moreau.”

“And you, dear.” But Veronique was already looking back at Joe, Olivia and her sterling devotion already banished from her mind.

“When will you be back?” Joe demanded, following her to the door.

Liv shrugged. “Who knows? I’m sure you and Miss Moreau will have plenty to keep you occupied,” she said, wishing she felt more satisfaction as she shut the door firmly in his face.

She wished she could have shut him as easily out of her mind. But he shadowed her the whole day. She could feel him peering over her shoulder in the toy store on Mariahilferstrasse, making suggestions about presents for the boys and Jennifer as effectively as if he’d been with her. He seemed to share her
Sachertorte
at the small sidewalk caffe, and he dogged her footsteps through an art exhibit in a side gallery at the Opera House, until finally she knew that, try as she might, she was not going to succeed in escaping him.

But knowing it didn’t stop her from trying. Liv trudged up and down endless streets in the driz
zle, lurked in the underground O
pe
rn
passage until she was sure someone would have her arrested for loitering, and stood on the street corner at the end of Uli’s block absorbing the rain for so long that she thought it possible that the neighbors might come to think of her as just another bit of local sculpture. But finally, shortly past ten that night, she could wait no longer. At last there was no light on in the living room of the flat, so she thought Joe might have gone to bed. She hoped so. She had no desire to see him, to hear about his lovely afternoon with Veronique or, worse, not to hear about it but be met by awkward, embarrassed silences instead.

She let herself into the downstairs hallway and, shutting the main door heavily, sprinted for the steps, remembering that Uli told her there would be light for two minutes after she opened the door. If she didn’t make it to her flat by then, she would have to creep along, feeling her way up the walls to find another button and get another two minutes. So she raced as fast as she could, her feet slipping in her damp shoes. Out of breath, she had just inserted the key in Mrs. Carvalho’s door when the lights went out.

“Damn,” she muttered, but at least she was home free. No need to grope now. She turned the key and eased the door open, slipping into the entryway, which was as black as the hall she just left.

“Do you know what time it is?” a hard voice rasped in her ear.

“Oh!” Her head jerked up and collided with his jaw. “You frightened the wits out of me! I thought you’d be asleep.”

“With you out roaming the streets of Vienna alone?”

She could feel his breath on her neck, and although he wasn’t touching her, he might as well have been. She had never been more aware of him. And was that anger in his voice? Anger? After he had spent all afternoon with the sexiest French actress this side of the Seine?

“Where have you been?” he snarled, flipping on the light and dragging her after him into the living room as if she were a piece of furniture.

“Shopping. Doing a bit more research for Marv’s articles.” She tried to jerk her arm away, but he wouldn’t let go.

“Till ten-thirty at night?” He sounded outraged,

“I had a lot to see,” she said defensively. “Why?” She tried to inject a note of calmness into her voice that she was far from feeling. “You weren’t really worried, were you?” How had he had the time?

“Damn right I was!” he exploded. “You were gone for hours!”

“I thought I left you quite well occupied,” she said, unable to keep the spite out of her voice.

“Hardly. Veronique left,” he said in flat tones, “not long after you did as a matter of fact. She was here to deliver another pitch from Luther. He sent her to see if I’d do the Steve Scott flick if she were the leading lady.” He sounded thoroughly annoyed and Liv couldn’t contain a surge of gladness.

“And would you?” she ventured.

“What the hell do you think?” he demanded raggedly. “I want to do P
io
and Elena. I don’t want to act any more for a while—if ever. Besides, I don’t think she’d do it with me. She thinks chicken pox are disgusting. She thinks I’ll be scarred for life, that my career as a leading man is over.” His voice shook, but whether with fury or with something else, Liv didn’t know. “You’d think I had small pox, not chicken pox,” he mumbled.

“Joe.” Liv put her hand on his arm, suddenly singing inside, wanting only to love him and reassure him, forgetting completely that she had been cursing him all day long. His day had been nothing like she had imagined— he must have sat alone and brooded for hours while she walked around and did the same. Oh, was she a fool! Her fingers curled around his forearm.

“You’d better get changed,” he said gruffly, shrugging her arm off. “You’ll get pneumonia, otherwise.”

Helpless, baffled, she watched as he turned and stalked out of the room. The bedroom door shut behind her and she was alone. Confused, she stood and dripped on the Oriental carpet, wondering where his anger had gone and, even more important, what emotion had replaced it.

Shutting off the light, she opened the door to the bedroom and went in, glancing over at his still form huddled in the dark beneath the eiderdown. Joe made no sound at all, so she gathered up her gown and robe and disappeared into the bathroom without breaking the silence.

They ought to be falling into one another’s arms right now. Why weren’t they? She shook her head wearily, puzzled. Lying back in the tub, soaking in neck-deep
frothy water, she wondered what to do next, but no answers appeared. The long, hot soak was soothing as far as it went, but she was no nearer understanding Joe now than she had been when she began. Sighing she got out, drying off and then brushing her hair, putting off the moment when she would have to return to the room they shared. He might be asleep, she thought. But when she tiptoed back in, she knew she was hoping to find him sitting up, wanting to talk to her. But he hadn’t moved. The lump under the eiderdown was as inert as it had been before. Sighing she slipped under her own comforter and lay unmoving as her eyes adjusted to the darkness of the room.

The rain beat a steady tattoo on the windowpane, and she thought how appropriate it sounded, damp and dismal like the feelings growing inside her. Tomorrow they would go home. Home to what? She felt a dull ache begin somewhere behind her eyes, tears pricking. But she held them back, forcing herself to swallow hard, blinking for all she was worth. She needed to look about the room, not cry, to memorize the black shapes and shadows, to store up images and memories so that she could take them out and see them again when Vienna, and possibly Joe Harrington, were only a part of her past. She bit her lip.

Was it over between them? Had her foolish excursion until all hours of the night, while he sat here and fumed, finished something that she now felt had barely even started? What else could she think? She had known great joy when she had discovered that he had spent the day alone, that he had been worried about her, angry at her. But her joy had turned to pain when, inexplicably, he had turned away. Why? She frowned into the darkness, puzzled, wondering.

“Liv?” It was almost a whisper, so soft that if a car had been passing in the rain-slicked street below, she never would have heard him. But she did, and her eyes flew to the figure across the room as he shifted in the darkness.

“What?”

“I
…
I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled at you.”

Yell away, she thought. She rolled onto her side and stared across the shadowy room at him, seeing only the shaggy outline of his hair and the bare arm propping him up. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, fingers clenching around her comforter.

For a moment she thought he would lie down and go to sleep, but then he sighed. “It’s been quite a week
… I
’m sorry for that, too.”

“Don’t be.” It had been a wonderful week in its way—just the two of them together.

“It wasn’t what I’d planned at all,” he said ruefully and sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. “There were so many places I wanted to take you, to
show you
…
” His voice drifted off into an aching void
that pained her and she shook her head, about to deny again that it mattered. But suddenly he stood up, hesitated a second, and then crossed the room, sinking down to sit on the edge of her bed. Instinctively, pulses hammering, heart racing, she inched over to give him room beside her. “Did you have a good time today?” he asked somewhat wistfully.

“Um, yes,” she croaked, her leg sliding against his as his weight depressed the edge of the bed. “But I wish you had been with me,” she added. Her hand crept out from beneath the comforter, daring to move close to his bare thigh but not touching it.

“Not like this, you wouldn’t,” he said, rubbing a week’s growth of brown beard.

“I like your werewolf look,” she said, smiling. “Anyway, it’s your company I value, not your handsome face.
”

He smiled then. She could see the curve of his cheek change in the profile view she had, and his hand found hers, squeezing it gently, then tracing delicate patterns on the sensitive inside of her wrist. She felt a shiver of anticipation run through her. “Veronique would have run screaming if I’d touched her,” he said softly.

“I’m not Veronique.” Another time Liv would have bristled at the comparison, but tonight Veronique was of no more significance than the leaky faucet back home. This was the night she had waited for; this was the man she loved. She drew his fingers to her lips and kissed them one by one, delighted to feel him shudder against her.

“No, thank goodness, you’re not,” he murmured and closed his eyes. Her lashes fluttered against his hand as she drew it against her cheek and then kissed the palm of it, darting out her tongue to tease its warmth. He sucked in his breath sharply and his fingers trembled. “I imagined all sorts of awful things when you didn’t come back,” he said raggedly. “You hurt
.
You gone. You
—”
He shuddered again. “I thought you weren’t coming back.”

She reached for him then, pulling his head down, finding his lips with her own, and the tight rein of control that he had hung onto all week snapped completely. He kissed her with a hunger that astonished her, his lips hard and demanding, his tongue seeking, probing, tasting, his hands drawing her up against him so that she could feel the heavy thudding of his heart. The blood pounded like white water through her veins.

“Liv! Oh, Liv!” he mumbled against her cheek, his beard brushing her face softly, smooth one way, rough the other. “This week’s been torture! Hell, for months it’s been torture! Please, Liv—” But whatever he was going to say was never spoken, and the feverish, desperate fees began again, and Liv was drowning along with him. There was no one to save her now.