Wild Honey (10 page)

The words were quietly spoken, but Sasha felt their power. His smile, superficially casual, had an energy that slipped past her thoughts and spoke to her emotions.

“There’s something I want to show you at the studio,” he added mysteriously. “Bink is waiting outside. He’ll drive the limo back and we’ll take the Corvette.”

Sasha’s protest was halted by an indrawn breath as his fingers pressed into the sensitive flesh of her inner wrist and a spark of sensuality flared in his eyes.

“Sasha, it’s important.”

Her heart was hammering, her curiosity piqued. Timing
is
everything, she thought to herself, and this man had an infallible instinct for it. There was no way she could say no. “I’ll get my purse.”

Their trip back to the studio proceeded in silence while Marc battled the rigors of rush-hour traffic. Several times Sasha was on the brink of bringing up the incident from earlier that morning, but there didn’t seem to be any polite way to ask a man what all the rage and passion in his eyes had been about.

As for his dismissing her from the set, though it was an easier subject to broach, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know why he’d done it. He was so pointedly silent, she’d half begun to wonder if he was taking her back to present her with her walking papers. More than likely, she told herself, it was going to be another coaching session, complete with lectures on giving herself over to the character. If there was to be any more kissing involved, she thought ironically, glancing at him, she wanted hazardous-duty pay.

The studio was dark and deserted when they drove up an hour and a half later. “What are we doing here now, Marc?” Sasha asked, glancing around the ten-acre lot, only absently aware that she’d never called him by his first name before.

“All will become clear in a minute.” He slammed the car door and came around to help her out. “Come on,” he said, taking her by the hand.

He led her into a small projection room, deposited her in a cushioned seat in the middle row of the theater, and went back to the booth to rewind the film. Finally the lights went down and the footage they’d shot that morning began to run. A moment later he joined her.

Uncomfortably aware that it was her director next to her, Sasha watched the scene with Carlos unfold before her eyes. At first she resisted the experience, distancing herself emotionally, but gradually the performances began to compel her in ways she didn’t fully comprehend. Before it was over, she had compressed her hands into a ball against her stomach, and there were tears in her eyes. The scene’s tension was palpable. Its emotion had left her shaking—Jesse’s rage, Lisa’s agony, their desperate passion.

“It’s good, isn’t it?” Marc stated quietly, not looking at her.

“Yes, but I thought—”

“I was wrong.”

“What?” Sasha watched him rise, turn on the lights, and disappear into the booth to shut off the projector. He was back in the aisle, waiting for her, shortly afterward.

“As soon as I saw the dailies, I knew I’d made a mistake,” he said, his shrugged shoulder and upswept hand a very European gesture of contrition.

“About me? I was good, then?”

He stared at her from halfway across the room and gazed at her for a very long time. “You weren’t good,” he said, “you were stunning. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. You have the quality of an opal that has to be held in a certain light to see the fire.” He pointed to the large silver rectangle in front of them. “That screen is your light. Your fire comes through.”

Sasha released a breath and felt the warm air shaking in her throat. She was laughing, trembling from the impact of his compliment. She’d had no idea how much it would mean to her. For one fleetingly emotional moment she recalled the eight-year-old girl who’d taken the blue ribbon at an intramural track meet. That serious, amber-eyed child had worked most of her young life for the scraps of her stern father’s praise, and had finally, unexpectedly, received a pat on the head.

“I thought I could infuse some energy into the original by editing it with cuts of your scene,” he went on. “But I’m not going to bother with that now. This scene is too good not to use. Lord—” He laughed almost bitterly. “It’s the best damn scene in the movie.”

He walked to her and took hold of her wrist. His grip was casual, but it was too proprietary a gesture to be dismissed.

“I know what you need,” he said.

A quick curl of excitement whorled in the pit of her stomach.
I’ll just bet you do,
she thought, wondering if she had either the will or the strength to resist him. Every nerve and fiber of her body resonated to his closeness. If he wanted to ravish her there, on the projection room floor, she would undoubtedly surrender without a whimper.

A faint twinkle telegraphed his intentions. “You need some rest,” he said.

“Rest?” It was a simple enough concept, but its literal meaning eluded her for a moment. “As in shut-eye?” She was completely unprepared for the friendly warmth in his smile.

He laughed, nodded. “Tomorrow’s another rough day,” he reminded her. “We’ve got some location shooting scheduled down in Newport Beach, running and swimming shots. You’re going to need your strength.”

Sasha’s face must have fallen, because he stopped and studied her, his brows lifting. “Something wrong?”

Only her expectations, she thought, shaking her head. “What could be wrong? A girl can always use a good night’s sleep, right?”

The new moon floated restlessly through cloud cover, highlighting drifts, transforming them into meringue desserts ladeled into the shiny black bowl of the sky. It was a luminous night, unseasonably warm and muggy for January, and Marc Renaud couldn’t sleep.

He pulled a couple of pillows behind him and sat up, leaning his head against the kingsize bed’s bamboo headboard. A pack of cigarettes, a bottle of Courvoisier, and a balloon glass of the expensive cognac languished on the night table beside the bed. He’d considered all three several times, and had abstained. He wasn’t sure why exactly, but he suspected it had something to do with Sasha’s sermonizing. It struck him as ironic that a woman might still have that kind of civilizing effect on a man, even in the eighties.

She sure as hell was the reason for his insomnia.

He draped one arm along the back of the headboard and stared at the ceiling, remembering what had happened to his composure when he’d first seen the rushes of her scene with Carlos. A tiny bomb had exploded in his chest—and in his brain. He’d reviewed the footage more out of curiosity than from any expectation of being able to use it. And yet from the first frame he’d been rocked by what he saw. She burned up the screen, a woman possessed and yet terrified of where her passions were taking her. She
was
Lisa. Why hadn’t he seen that on the set?

The answer that came to him confirmed what he already feared—he couldn’t trust himself to be objective where she was concerned. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to let himself believe she could respond to Carlos the way she had to him. Because if he believed that, it would force him to admit she might have been acting, that the trembling passion had come from the actress, not the woman.

He glanced at the pack of Gauloises, the urge too strong to ignore this time. Tapping one out, he lit it and let the smoke curl up in front of his eyes. Aware of the cigarette’s shape, its texture in his mouth, he took a long, slow drag and watched the embers flare to crimson, the paper curl back. Its slow, smoldering fire made him think of her.

His body responded to the image, to its uncoiling sensuality. Heat warmed his throat and brought a tightening pleasure to the base of his jaw. He blew a smoke ring and let it fade, watching its contours form the soft, misty curves of a woman’s body. Crazy, he thought, he was seeing things the way he used to years ago, when he was still driven by passion rather than by obsession. His mind was alive with vivid impressions. He could feel her skin in the cool sheets that draped his lower torso. He could see her fire in the gold streams running through the cognac.

His next smoke ring drifted into the shape of the lush, supplicant fullness of a woman’s breast. It shook slightly in some hidden air current, and the movement drove Marc’s thoughts back to his own sweet pain when he’d ripped her dress earlier and felt her delicate flesh beneath his fingers. A sparkle of electricity awakened the nerves of his palm.

His body wanted to take him further. The current of pleasure in his groin demanded he replay it all in his mind...her reaction when he’d cupped her breast, the way she’d gasped and then arched back as the fire took her, thrusting herself into his hands. The act had enflamed him beyond belief.

He could feel himself hardening with the automatic surge of blood to his loins. She was down the hall, his body told him. A few doors away, lush and warm, scented with sleep and dreamy sensuality. Within seconds the blood was beating in every nerve center of his body, in his hands, in the cords of his neck, even in the soles of his feet. The hard throb in his groin reminded him that fantasy had its price.

He sucked in a breath, flicked on the light, and reached for the glass. Deep muscles clenched in protest as he drank the fiery brandy down and invoked the mythical willpower of the gods. They
must needs go whom the Devil drives,
he thought, remembering Cervantes’s warning.

It was a half hour and several splashes of brandy later before he’d restored himself to something near normalcy. The power of his obsession was forcing him to come to grips with the situation, to look at it with the ruthless practicality he applied to everything else in life. Sasha McCleod was a mercurial and desirable woman. She also had a backbone of reinforced steel and a hammerlock on her emotions, but when she let her guard down, she was a natural actress. He hadn’t exaggerated. She was stunning on film, and there was no doubt in his mind that, if handled correctly, she could save his movie. That was why he had to get his priorities straight. He would have to do without the woman because his movie
couldn’t
do without the actress.

He thought about her well into the night, about how she had reignited something in him. She was like a power surge, a current fueling him with energy. She had revitalized him and stoked the fire in his belly. Even the film had become important to him again, and for personal reasons rather than for professional ones. He wanted it to be good, not because it was his comeback picture or for the recognition it could bring, but because it was about the agony of choice, the ongoing pain of life and relationships. It was about people,
about him.

His brain percolated with ideas for new scenes he could use her in. Energized, he smoked constantly and worked at the bottle of cognac, finishing off half of it before he could slow his racing thoughts.

Hours later, relaxing into the pillows, he closed his eyes and waited for sleep. When it came it was surprisingly deep and restful, devoid of dreams, a kind of calm preceding the storm. Without moving, barely breathing, he drifted in a cocoonlike state, no more aware of coming danger than the butterfly pupa is of chrysalis.

As the first light of dawn was breaking on the horizon, the deafening crack of a thunderbolt brought him out of the strange tranquility. He jackknifed up, a scream locked in the taut muscles of his gut. Lightning flashed outside, illuminating the wall of windows with quick bright bursts.

Sweat broke out on his forehead as the splitting thunder and the crackling white light conjured up horrors from the past.
An old man, his abundant white hair askew, his rheumy eyes sharp with hate...the flashing metal of a gun barrel, the crack of its report...and then the screams, the piercing, life-shattering screams.

Marc threw off the sheet, strode to the glass doors, and flung them open. He stared out at the sluggish ocean, up at the roiling heavens. As though on cue, the thunderheads split open and the rains began. It was surreal and beautiful, a storm ordered up by a special-effects unit.

His gut was tight with sadness and ancient rage.

His eyes were moist with tears.

Wearing only pajama bottoms, he walked into the torrential downburst, letting it drench his body and pommel the hellish memories away. A racking shudder took him as the cool rain pounded against his face.

That night of screams and gunshots had changed Marc’s life forever. It was the night he had surrendered his last illusion. It was the night he had made a promise to himself never to feel anything again.

W
EARING ONLY HER
white eyelet nightgown, Sasha sat in the alcove of her bedroom and watched the horizon flash on and off with blinding light. A thunderstorm at dawn, she thought, what an eerie way to start the day. She’d been up most of the night, too excited and nervous to sleep. Wired, T.C. called it. Sasha smiled. If she was any more wired, they could string her between telephone poles.

It frightened her a little to be so exuberant. She was still high as Everest from seeing the dailies—and from the compliments Marc had paid her. Stunning, he’d said, a fire opal.

She rose and walked to the windows as the low storm clouds broke open and a monsoonlike downpour began. Dense with rain, the sky was oyster-gray and beautiful. She wondered briefly if the cloudburst would affect their location shooting, but the prospect of a delay didn’t bother her. Nothing could have bothered her at present, she suspected. Besides, the weather matched her mood, dramatic and expectant.

Drawn to the storm, she walked to the patio door and opened it, listening to the rain clatter on the wooden awning overhead. The lightning struck again, illuminating the coastline as she stepped outside and scanned up and down the beach, taking in the splendor. It was only when she swung around to look at the hills that she noticed him.

Marc Renaud stood on the deck off his bedroom thirty feet to the west of her. Startled, Sasha caught hold of the railing to steady herself. For a moment she wasn’t sure if he was a man or an apparition. The sight of him poised in the cloudburst, his arms at his sides, his head thrown back as the rain washed over him, was as staggering as it was unexpected. Water glistened in his dark hair, streamed down his chest, and plastered his thin pajama pants to his body. In the translucent light of dawn he looked mythic and mystical, a pagan god in a fertility ritual.