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The memories of their long-ago love had stirred within him. He could not remember ever feeling such passion before or since. It had torn out his heart to leave her. The fact that he was sure he was doing the right thing, the noble thing, hadn’t made the pain any less. There had been many times when he had given in and phoned her, ready to beg her to come to New York and be with him, but, fortunately, he supposed, she had refused to even speak with him.
Michael sighed. Apparently Isabelle still despised him just as much. He thought about the moment when he had first seen Isabelle today, standing there on the soundstage with the others. He had known that he would see her, but the actuality of her stunned him. She was beautiful. Over the years he had come to believe that he had exaggerated her beauty, but now he knew that he had not. If anything, she was even more lovely than he had remembered. Time and experience, he realized as he came closer to her, had given her perfect features a character that they had lacked when she was eighteen. His palms had started to sweat and his heart had begun to pound when Danny Archer guided him across the floor to meet her.
He turned away from the window and flopped down on his bed, linking his hands behind his head. He closed his eyes, remembering the first time he had ever seen Isabelle. Then she had been standing on the stage in Virginia, helping set up a flat of painted scenery for the background. Her black hair had tumbled down her back, and her jean shorts and cropped T-shirt had done little to hide her curvaceous figure. He had known as soon as he saw her that she was trouble: far too gorgeous and far too young. He had been right. She had been only eighteen, and she had the kind of beauty that haunted men. Within a month he was desperately in love with her.
A faint smile touched Michael’s lips as he thought about lying stretched out on his bed in his room with her that summer, naked arms and legs entwined, their perspiration mingling as they kissed and caressed and moaned. He could still remember the thrum of the ancient air-conditioning unit that barely cooled the air as their bodies moved together. He could remember the taste of her skin, warm and damp, smelling sweetly of perfume, the delicious weight of her breasts in his hands, the utter glory of being buried deep within her.
Michael groaned softly and rolled onto his side. Just recalling the moments of making love with her had been enough to arouse him. He wondered if it would still be as heavenly to go to bed with her.
Not that he was likely to get a chance, he reminded himself wryly. Isabelle obviously wished to have nothing to do with him. This morning when Danny introduced him, Isabelle had looked straight through him, her face as cold and remote as an iceberg, and greeted him as if he had been someone she had once barely known. Afterward, in the parking lot, she had told him so straight out, just in case he hadn’t gotten the message. Their love affair had been a long time ago, and she hadn’t even thought of him in years.
Michael grimaced. He didn’t know what he had expected. A woman doesn’t greet you with cries of pleasure when you’ve left them in the past, even if it was with the best of motives. And after ten years, well, it wasn’t very likely that she’d have any feeling about him one way or another. He wasn’t even sure how he had hoped she might react. He wouldn’t have wanted her to have missed and mourned him all these years; after all, one of the main reasons he’d left had been because he knew she was too young to really be sure she was in love. He’d wanted her to be able to grow up, to go to college, to meet a man and fall in love for real, forever, not be stuck with an eighteen-year-old’s infatuation. No, he hadn’t hoped that Isabelle would be sad or holding a grudge.
But he had hoped that she would not dismiss him so coolly or quickly. He had thought that perhaps she would feel the same tingles of excitement he had at seeing her again. There had lurked in him some faint, strange, unreasonable idea that when they saw each other again, sparks would be struck again. That fate might have brought them together to give them another chance.
Michael shrugged and stood up. He was, after all, too old to believe in fate or second chances. He had a job, and it started tomorrow. He better get ready for that. As for Isabelle Gray...well, she wanted to keep him at arm’s length, and that was exactly what he would do. They might work together, but that was all. He’d take care to avoid her the rest of the time.
Still, he couldn’t help but remember her kiss....
Three
Isabelle took the script Tish handed her and quickly perused it to get a sense of her scenes the following week. All around her in the lounge, other actors and actresses were doing the same thing. She sneaked a glance at Ben Ivor. He was running his forefinger down the pages, counting under his breath. She cut her eyes toward Felice McIntyre, sitting beside her. Felice, who played the sweet, perennially martyred Townsend sister, Christine, on the show, put her hand up to stifle a giggle. Ben Ivor’s obsession with the number of lines he was given per week was a running joke between them. He played one of the minor regular characters on the show, the resident bartender who also got up now and then to sing on the nightclub’s small stage.
“Fourteen lines!” Ivor exclaimed in disgust. “I can’t believe it. I thought last week was bad enough, but fourteen!” He jumped up, slamming the script shut and started out the door. “I’m going to talk to Karen.”
He stalked out of the lounge to find the head writer of the show. Felice pulled a cigarette out of the pack on the table before her and lit it languidly. “If Karen’s smart, she’ll have left the building already.”
Isabelle chuckled. “I heard that last week she was forced to resort to hiding in the women’s rest room to escape him.”
“I heard. Poor Ben. Since they wrote Selman out, he hasn’t had anyone to compare lines with. He has nothing else to do except harass Karen.”
Felice flipped through the pages. “Oh, God, they’re going on with this hypnosis thing. I can’t imagine what else Christine could possibly dredge up from her past. She’s had every illness and tragedy known to man.”
“There’s incest,” Isabelle pointed out. “They’ve never dropped that on her.”
“Incest? In the saintly Townsend clan? Get real. Besides, they just did the incest thing with Lena last year.”
“That’s right. I’d forgotten. Oh, well, that’s never stopped them yet.” Isabelle thumbed through her pages. “Hey, you and I get into a cat fight on Wednesday.”
“Really?” Felice looked delighted. “What page? Is there any physical stuff? I always like a real knock-down drag-out.”
“Mmm. I slap you, and you turn a bowl of soup over my head.” She made a face. “Great. Why is it that I’m always the one who gets drinks thrown in her face or food dumped in her lap?”
“Because you always have to get your comeuppance in some form, my dear. After all, Jessica always manages to slither out of the consequences for the nasty things she does.”
Isabelle continued flipping through the script while Felice perused the fight scene. When Isabelle reached the following Friday’s filming, she froze. Both hers and Michael’s names jumped off the page at her. She began to read, and with each line she grew stiffer and tauter.
“No! I can’t.” She looked up and glanced around the room, even though she knew it was useless to seek out one of the writers there on the day they handed out the scripts. They were usually out of the building, leaving the head writer to deal with the actors’ complaints.
“What is it?” Felice glanced up at her, startled by the note of real panic in Isabelle’s voice. “What have they got down for you?”
“They have me trying to seduce Curtis Townsend.”
“Michael Traynor?” Felice grinned. “What are you complaining about? Most of the actresses on this show are panting for a chance to do a love scene with him. I’m just sorry I play his sister. I heard Sally was in Carol’s office the other day trying to persuade her that her character was a much better one to pair Michael with than Lena’s. Of course, he and Lena haven’t exactly lit up the screen. I hear Danny is really disappointed with the lack of interest the viewers are showing in their couple. They get tons of letters about Michael, but most of them think he and Lena together are a yawn. That’s probably why they’re trying to spice it up by having you seduce him.”
Isabelle hardly heard Felice. All she could think of was the scene on the paper before her. She simply could not do it!
Naively, she realized now, she had been congratulating herself on how well she had handled Michael’s presence on the show. Most of the time she had avoided the snack area and lounge, the place where she was most likely to run into him. If she did happen to find herself in the same room with him, she had made sure that she stayed on the opposite side of it. When she met him in the halls, she gave him a nod or a terse hello in greeting. Fortunately, he had not attempted to talk to her again, other than their stiff, formal greetings. She had, finally, grown accustomed to seeing him, so that it was not the same shock to her nervous system whenever she came upon him unexpectedly.
Their first scene together had come two weeks after he arrived, and Isabelle had been stiff and nervous, mentally braced to ward off his charm. After they shot it, she had almost cried in her dressing room, sure that it had been the worst performance she’d ever given. But when she’d looked at it later, she had seen that it hadn’t been bad. The edginess and faint atmosphere of hostility had worked well. Michael’s character was, fortunately, written as her enemy; he was about the only male in the fictional town of Lansfield who saw through her beauty to the wicked character beneath. They had had a few scenes together since then, and Isabelle had found it easy to portray the antagonism between them. She was beginning to believe that everything would work out all right. She could handle the intermittent, hostile scenes with Michael, and the rest of the time she could avoid him.
But now this....
Isabelle stood up abruptly. “I have to talk to Karen.”
Felice gaped at her. “Are you serious?”
“Of course I am. I don’t want to do this. It—it isn’t right.” She glanced down at her friend and, seeing her astonished expression, added hastily, “For the part, I mean. They’re enemies. There’s no way Jessica would make a play for him.”
Felice shrugged and said wryly, “Then he’d be the only one in town.”
Isabelle grimaced. “Well, she’s a slut, of course, but she isn’t stupid.” She turned and started for the door.
Just at that moment, Michael Traynor, sitting across the room, raised his head and turned to look at her. His face was impassive, but when his eyes met hers, Isabelle knew that he had been reading the same pages she had. His dark eyebrows, distinctively straight, quirked up into a humorous inverted V, and a faint smile touched his lips.
Isabelle’s stomach lurched, as if she’d taken a sudden step down. She could feel a blush spreading up her face and it infuriated her, which only made her blush worse. She pressed her lips together and jerked her eyes away from his. Keeping her face straight ahead, she strode from the room and out into the hall.
Karen’s office was on the floor above. Her secretary gave Isabelle a fleeting glance and pushed the intercom button, announcing her in a bored voice. A moment later Karen opened the door to her office.
“Isabelle!” She looked puzzled. “I’m surprised to see you. Come in, come in.”
She ushered Isabelle in with good humor. Isabelle had rarely come to her to argue any point about the scripts; she was an easy actress to work with, and it wasn’t difficult to be pleasant to her.
“Don’t tell me you’re unhappy with your script,” she commented as she went back around to sit behind her desk. “We’ve given you two crackerjack scenes next week.”
“I know. I’m sure they’re wonderful.” Isabelle sat down stiffly. Now that she was here, she wasn’t sure what to say. They were good scenes. Most of the actresses on the show would be delighted to have two such prominent scenes in one week. How was she to explain that she simply could not play a seduction scene with Michael Traynor?
“Then what’s the problem?” Karen frowned.
“There isn’t one with the fight with Felice. It’s very funny and vicious and full of great lines.”
Karen smiled, pleased. “Judy Weinburg wrote it. I’m really pleased with her work. I’m giving her more and more of Jessica’s scripts.”
“That’s great. She writes very well.” Isabelle forced a smile. “It’s the seduction scene that worries me. I—well, it doesn’t ring true to me. Why would Jessica try to seduce Curtis? They thoroughly dislike each other. She knows what he thinks of her and that he’s undermining her influence with Mark.”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with her being attracted to him. She’s trying to find some way to control him, like she does with everyone. Why, it’s the most natural thing in the world for her to do. He hasn’t fallen under her spell like all the other men, so she’s decided to bring out the heavy guns. It’s the way she gains power over men. Curtis is a real eye-opener for Jessica, the first man who has been able to resist her charms. I think we’re going to have a lot of fun with that.”
“But—” Isabelle thought frantically “—but why would she risk doing that with Mark’s brother? I mean, Mark has been taking her side when Curtis tries to make him see what she’s like. She has a good hold on Mark and his money, and she wants it to stay that way. She wouldn’t risk Curtis telling his brother what she had done. And you know Goody-Two-Shoes Curtis would run right over and tell Mark.”
“Nah. He’s too noble. He couldn’t bear to hurt his brother that way. He’ll turn her down and despise her all the more for it, but he’ll keep his mouth shut. And Jessica is desperate enough to risk it because Curtis is convincing Mark to go work at that medical mission in Central America. She’s afraid she’ll lose him.”
“I know—what is all that stuff about this medical mission? Where did that come from?”
“Jim Ehrlich’s taking a leave from the show in a few weeks, so we have to find some reason for Mark to disappear for a month. We figured he should do something noble like go work in a medical mission in Cen-tral America. Then we can tie it in with the drug-smuggling story, and the timing’ll be perfect for May sweeps.”
“Oh. I see. I didn’t know Jim was leaving. But why do this scene with Curtis? I mean, he and Jessica don’t have any real story together. They just sort of touch peripherally because of Mark.”
“Right now they don’t,” Karen said significantly, and her words sent a chill through Isabelle. “But we’ve got to do something with Jessica while Mark’s gone. I figure sparring with Curtis would be a good way to fill some of her time. We’ve been getting good viewer response on you and Michael.”
“What?” Isabelle looked at her blankly. “But we’ve only been in a few scenes together.”
“Yeah, but the chemistry’s good. Viewers like a good feud almost as much as a good love story—maybe better. Whenever you and Michael are on screen together, the sparks fly. We’ve had a lot of fan mail saying they’d like to see more of Jessica and Curtis. Lena and Michael’s relationship isn’t progressing the way we’d planned. We may have to take them along slowly, give the fans more time to build an interest in them, and in the meantime we’ll play up the hostility between Curtis and Jessica.”
“So—” Isabelle had to stop and clear her throat before she could continue. She felt as if her vocal cords had tightened into rigidity. “You mean that Michael and I will be having more scenes together?”
“Yeah. We’re going to change the story line some. People love Michael—they think he’s a hunk. So we have to be careful to keep them watching him. We can’t let them get bored with his romantic story.” She paused, then hastened to assure Isabelle. “It’ll be great for you, too. Otherwise, you’re hanging in limbo while Mark’s out, with nothing to work on but that old resentment of Christine, and that’s getting kind of tired.”
That was true, Isabelle knew. People would get a kick out of this fight between them next week, but their conflict was from the past, and people would soon grow bored with it. The worst thing about all this was that Karen was right. A running feud with Curtis over his brother would spark up her story as much as Michael’s. She knew how damaging it could be to one’s popularity when one’s love interest left a show. There had been one actor who was quite popular on “Tomorrows” whose storyline had died because his wife had been killed off. He had drifted around being sad and having people commiserate with him for a few weeks, but his scenes had grown fewer and fewer, and fan mail for him had tailed off. Finally he had been written out, too.
Isabelle sighed. “I know. You’re right.”
Karen gave her a puzzled look. “Then why so downcast? What’s the problem?”
How could she tell Karen that the thought of doing any kind of love scene, even a rejected seduction, with Michael Traynor scared her right down to her toes? Isabelle thought of kissing Michael, and her stomach turned to ice. She could remember vividly the way his lips had felt on hers, the feverish shivers that had run through her every time he kissed her. What if she still reacted that way? It would be so humiliating!
Worse than that, it might stir up old feelings, feelings whose size and intensity frightened Isabelle. She had promised herself long ago that she would never again be so vulnerable to a man as she had been to Michael Traynor. It frightened her to think that if she kissed him, even in pretense for the show, she might once again feel as she had when she had been a girl of eighteen. That she might open up even the tiniest crack in her emotional armor.
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