“Then everybody get out of its damn way. I ought to sue you, you bastard,” he yelled down at Rylan, “for taking a chance like that. Helluva job though,” he added, chomping on a new cigar. “Helluva job. Everybody in the audience will be peeing in his pants.”
“Here come the paramedics.”
“Everybody stand back.”
“Rylan, they’ll take you to the hospital right away.”
Someone pressed a cold cloth to his forehead. It was useless to fight them. And, God, he was tired.
Where was Kirsten?
Kirsten, Kirsten.
“You’ll be glad to know there’ll be no scars,” Pat told him as she entered the private hospital room where he’d been treated. “The doctor says the burns were superficial, even though I know they hurt like hell. Keep that antibiotic salve on them for the next few days and take these pills for pain if you need them.” She set a small container of medication on the bedside table. “They’re harmless and will only produce a mellow state of well-being, or so I’m told by frequent users.”
Rylan didn’t even crack a smile.
Pat chatted on, undaunted by his moody silence, which she figured was a delayed reaction to the potentially fatal accident. “Our esteemed director called to tell you that this crash sequence and your escape from it is the most exhilarating piece of film he’s seen in all his days in Hollywood. I think he considers your scorched hands of no more consequence than the sacrificial cigar he lost. The flowers are from him, by the way. The crew sent—”
“What was she doing there?”
Pat looked at him with perplexity. “What? Who? Who was where?”
“Kirsten Rumm. What was she doing on the set?” he asked darkly.
Pat lowered her bulk into the only available chair and looked warily at the man sitting on the edge of the hospital bed. The sullen mouth and hooded eyes weren’t due to pain and delayed fear, she realized now. They were the offspring of controlled fury.
“Was she there?” she asked.
“Yes. I saw her from the cockpit.”
“Maybe you just imagined—”
“I saw her!” he shouted. “What was she doing there?”
Pat quailed. “If she was, I guess it was my fault. I called her.”
“Why?” His whisper was rife with menace.
“To . . . to . . . We really needed that script, Rylan. I asked if it was there at her house. She went to check your room and came back to say that yes it was.”
“And you asked her to bring it to the set.” Disregarding the tightness of the skin on the backs of his hands, he clenched them into fists.
“No, no, I didn’t,” Pat countered firmly. “I offered to send a messenger out there to pick it up, but she— Where are you going?”
“Home.”
“Back to Los Angeles?”
He realized the slip he’d made, but didn’t take time to ruminate on it now. There would be time enough to think later. After he’d seen Kirsten. “To her house. I can be reached there.” He shed the hospital gown as he headed toward the narrow closet. Someone, probably maternal Pat, had had the foresight to bring him a change of clothes.
She pushed herself out of the chair. “But you can’t leave the hospital!” she cried helplessly as she watched him dress. “The doctor ordered you to stay overnight for observation.”
Rylan had a crude and anatomically impossible suggestion as to what she and the doctor could do with his order. He left the room and the hospital without breaking stride. Since his motorcycle was still at the set, he hired a taxi outside the hospital to drive him to La Jolla.
Even from the bottom of the hill, he could see that Kirsten’s house was dark. “Doesn’t look like anybody’s home, pal,” the cabbie remarked over his shoulder. Rylan, wearing his opaque sunglasses, had gone unrecognized.
“She’s here,” he said with conviction. When they rounded the last curve in the winding driveway, he saw her Mercedes parked in front of the house. “Thanks.” Whoever had provided the clothes and sunglasses had also stuffed some bills into his trouser pockets. He tossed a more than adequate amount of them into the front seat of the cab and got out.
The front door was locked. He went around to the back of the house and tried each sliding glass door until he found one that was unlocked. He braced himself for the burglar alarm to go off. When it didn’t, he made his way through the darkened rooms.
He found her in her bedroom, lying across the wide bed, which made her look incredibly small by comparison. Her shoes were on the floor, toes pointing toward the bed, as though she’d stepped out of them and had lain down in one movement. She was curled into a fetal ball, her knees drawn up, head bent so drastically that her chin almost touched her chest.
He said nothing, but went straight to the bed and sat down. Leaning over her, he stroked her hair. For a moment she only lay there unmoving. Then she rolled to her back and gazed up at him through the darkness.
His heart twisted with remorse when he saw that her eyes were swollen from crying. There were smudges of watered-down mascara beneath her lower lashes. Her lips looked bruised. He dipped his head and stroked them with his tongue, then kissed them softly. The most articulate actor in Hollywood couldn’t come up with anything appropriate to say. He kept it simple and to the point. “I’m sorry you were put through that.”
Her lower lip began to tremble. She slowly sat up and inclined toward him. His arms, his soul, were ready to receive her. He held her fragile frame against him and buried his face in her neck. She folded her arms across the back of his neck. Her sobs shook them both.
“Don’t, don’t,” he murmured. “It looked a helluva lot worse than it was.”
“It was ghastly. Awful. Just like my nightmares.”
“I know, darling, I know.” He smoothed his hands down her back. “I saw you. Through the fire. And I—”
It suddenly occurred to him that at that moment, when his death had seemed imminent, he had thought first of Kirsten and the anguish she was suffering. Wouldn’t it have been natural for his first concern to be for himself? Yes, unless she had become more important to him than his own life. Yes, unless he loved her.
He turned his face into her neck and placed a fervent kiss on the softest, most fragrant of skin. The kiss was an unspoken profession of the love he couldn’t declare. She wasn’t ready to hear about it. But he knew it, and he celebrated it. He loved her! It was heaven; and it was hell. Because he didn’t know whom she was crying over.
“I couldn’t imagine what you were doing there,” he said. “I thought I was seeing things.”
Sniffling, she put space between them. “She . . . this lady named Pat . . . called and—”
“I know all about that now. There will be hell to pay.”
“No, no, don’t be angry with her. I volunteered to bring the script to the set.”
“Why? I thought you wanted to stay away from it.”
“Originally I did, but . . .”
Her voice trailed off and she looked away. He cupped her cheek and turned her face back toward him. “Why, Kirsten?”
Her answer was a long time in coming. “I’ve been so confused.”
“About what?”
“About what was going on inside me, what I was feeling.”
“Feeling?”
She lifted tear-laden eyes and looked straight into his. “Feeling for you.”
Rylan’s heart began thudding harder and faster than it had in the burning airplane that morning. “What’s this feeling like?” he asked gruffly.
“I think you know.”
“Give me a hint.”
“When I’m around you, I can’t think clearly. I always make a fool of myself.”
“Never.” His gaze greedily wandered over her face.
“I do,” she said with desperation. “I had everything under control until you came along. Now I’m always flustered and unsure and I don’t know why.” She made an impatient gesture. “I can’t explain how I feel.”
He lifted her hand and pressed it over his heart, inside his shirt. “Is what you’re feeling anything like this?” His rapid heartbeats drummed against her palm.
“Exactly like that,” she whispered. Holding his gaze, she raised his hand and laid it over her left breast. “See?”
Making a low, growling sound, he bent his head and kissed her. She kissed him back, responding in kind to the urgent stroking of his tongue.
Still, there was a hesitancy underlying her kiss. While he could think clearly, he pulled away. “What is it, Kirsten? What’s wrong?”
“You’re too intuitive for your own good.”
“It’s just that when a woman kisses me, I want her to be certain who she’s kissing.”
“You know,” she gasped softly, surprised.
Solemnly he nodded.
She shuddered on the heavy breath she drew in. “That’s what I mean by being confused. We talk about Charlie around the clock. When we’re not talking about him, I’m writing about him. You move like him. Your gestures are the same. You say his words, which I’ve written down. You even use the same inflections. But now, when I think of him, I see your face, not his.”
She looked up at him, profound confusion in her expression. “I don’t know if I’m falling in love with him all over again or if it’s you I’m attracted to.”
Rylan rested his forehead against hers. For once in his life, he wished he wasn’t so good at his craft. It wasn’t unusual for him to take on the mannerisms of the character he was playing for the duration of the filming. He literally became the person he was portraying. He prided himself on that ability. But this was one time he wanted to be seen only as himself, stripped of any affectations and pretenses.
“If you had met me some other place,” he began slowly, “say I was the telephone repair man who had come to install your phone, would you have been attracted to me?”
She actually laughed. “I’m not dead, Rylan. I have hormones. Is there a living, breathing woman who wouldn’t be attracted to the way you look?”
“That doesn’t count,” he grumbled. “Would you be attracted to
me,
the man?”
“I don’t know,” she moaned, rolling her forehead from side to side against his, brushing noses. “I think so. The most honest answer I can give you is that I find you fascinating.”
“I’ll settle for fascinating.”
She smiled at his quip. “You’re not at all what I expected you to be. You’re much more serious. Oh, you swagger. You appear not to give a damn about anything but yourself. But I realize now that you’re not aloof to
people,
only to superficiality.”
He liked what he was hearing. He laced his fingers together at the back of her neck and kissed her temple. “Tell me more.”
“You have much more depth than I imagined you would. More caring. Your human side makes your audacity tolerable.”
“Have I been audacious?”
She tilted her head to one side, allowing his lips better access to her neck. He pecked light kisses on it. “You know you have been. You kissed me the first night you were here.”
“Who did you kiss back? Me? Or Rumm’s memory?”
“Don’t ask me that, Rylan. I’m not sure. Maybe I only responded because I hadn’t been kissed in such a long time.”
He sighed with dissatisfaction. “You were jealous before you found out that Cheryl was my sister. Admit it. It bothered you to think that Dylan was my baby, didn’t it?”
She nodded. “Yes, I was jealous. Unreasonably so. That only confused me more. I had no right to be.”
He settled his hands on her shoulders. “Kirsten, let me ask you a question.” She met his penetrating gaze. “Today, when you saw that burning airplane, was it me inside there? Or Charlie Rumm? Were you terrified for me, or was your reaction left over from him?” He ran his thumbs over her tearstained cheekbones. “Who were you crying for?”
Her chest swelled with a deep breath. Gradually she released it. He felt it against his lips.
“You, Rylan. You.”
Groaning deeply, he pulled her against him again and slanted his open mouth over hers. He sent his tongue spiraling down into the sweet silk of her mouth, and, as he did, pressed her back onto the pillows. Following her down, he partially covered her body with his.
They kissed endlessly. Her active participation, for once free from restraint, made him deliriously happy. Each time he started to withdraw, she initiated another kiss.
When finally their mouths separated so they could breathe, he pressed his face against her neck and sank his fingers into her hair. “Your hair’s going to smell like this crap they put on my hands.”
“I don’t care,” she whispered. “Do they hurt?”
“Not much.”
“I called the hospital, and they told me you were all right. I wasn’t sure if I could believe them.”
“I’m fine. There’s only one part of me that’s hurting right now and I’m counting on you to make it well.”
She laughed against his lips; it was the sexiest sound he’d ever heard. He groped for the buttons of her shirt. When they were undone, he snarled impatiently at the front fastener of her brassiere. Deftly he unhooked it and peeled it back to reveal her breasts. Her nipples were delicate and dusky pink. He covered one with his mouth while he lightly fanned his fingertips over the other.
“Rylan.” Beneath him, Kirsten arched her back to push herself deeper into his mouth.
“You’re so sweet.”
He used his tongue to make quick, stabbing thrusts against her nipples, then sucked them gently. His hand moved beneath her skirt. The skin on the inside of her thighs was a realization of every adolescent fantasy he’d ever had. He followed that satiny path up to the cleft. The purring sound Kirsten made when he idly stroked her was all the encouragement he needed to work his fingers beneath the elastic leg of her panties.
He gave a hoarse cry when his fingers encountered the warm honey of her sex. He sent his fingers deep into her, knowing that he’d never get as deep as he wanted to be. He stroked her rhythmically and used her own slipperiness to heighten her pleasure in his caresses.
He was so full he strained against his clothing. To relieve the aching pressure, he unfastened his trousers and shoved down his underwear. “Touch me like you did before,” he said hoarsely. He guided her hand down toward his rigid flesh. It was hard and warm with the love he so desperately wanted to express. He folded her fingers around himself. “Kirsten, Kirsten.”