Moving fractionally closer, not wanting to spook her, he ran his finger through the shaggy hair at her neck. As he had expected her to, she reacted quickly by springing into a sitting position on the edge of the bed.
She turned her head and looked at him over her shoulder through teary eyes. “That’s not the way it happened.”
It took him a moment to decipher her meaning. When he did, his heart sank like a lead ball in his chest. “With Rumm, you mean?”
She nodded. “We were supposed to be recreating our last night together, weren’t we? Well, that’s not the way it happened.”
So what the hell was that supposed to mean? Rylan thought as he watched her get up and slip into the bathroom without saying another word or giving him so much as a backward glance.
Had that night two years ago been better? Worse? Happier? Sadder? Sexier?
Impossible. Nothing had ever been sexier. Was she comparing Rumm to him? Comparing them as lovers? Comparing the way she felt for each of them?
What,
for godsake?
Dammit, the woman was going to drive him nuts!
He was angry and felt he had every damn right to be. Who did she think she was, to toss out an oblique statement like that—while he’d been lying there, a goosey smile on his face, his toes still curled with pleasure—and then disappear into the bathroom without an explanation? He had put up with a helluva lot of crap from her, but she’d gone one step too far this time. He damn sure wasn’t going to let it pass.
He lunged off the bed and stormed across the room, cursing vividly when a corner of the sheet, which was twisted around his calf, refused to let go despite his kicking efforts.
At the bathroom door he stared down at his white-knuckled grip on the doorknob. He could hear the water running in the shower. If he barged in there without his pants on, ranting and raving like a maniac, he’d look like a damn fool, especially if she was composed enough to be taking a shower.
In less than sixty seconds, he was standing beneath the shower in the guest bathroom. It didn’t take him long to dress. Even so, she beat him to the kitchen. She was swathed from her chin to her ankles in a white terry-cloth robe and couldn’t have been more covered up unless the robe had had a hood. Her hair was adorably wet and spiky around her face, which was colorless except for her eyes. She was barefoot, but the look she shot him as he stamped in was anything but vulnerable.
His temper was simmering, his nerves were frayed, and he was gutsick in love with a woman whose heart remained a mystery even though he knew her body intimately. So, he said the first hurtful thing that sprang to his mind. “You refused your husband, right? On the night before he died, you refused to have sex with Rumm. Is that it?”
“No.”
“Sure it is,” he said, advancing on her menacingly, backing her into the corner. “You pulled one of your famous freeze-up acts and wouldn’t let him touch you. That really screws up a man’s head, ya know? So the next morning Rumm takes off in an airplane and decides to kill himself because of you.”
“No!”
“How many times had you done it to him before?”
“Stop it!”
She planted her hands firmly over her ears, but he worked them off and held her wrists within the iron grip of his fingers. “Last night you gave me what you withheld from poor ol’ Charlie. Was that your way of making recompense? Is your conscience clear now?”
“I had nothing to feel guilty about,” she shouted.
“You made your husband a sexual beggar, denying him what was his right.”
“I did not!”
“No?”
“No. It was Charlie, not me, who—”
She sucked in her breath and jerked her hands free, then whirled around. He caught her by the shoulder and spun her back to face him. “What did you say?” he asked incredulously.
Her face was extraordinarily pale. She gazed back at him fearfully. “Nothing.”
“It was Rumm who
what,
Kirsten?”
She moistened her trembling lips. “It was Charlie who . . . who didn’t make love.”
He stared down at her, hearing only the thudding of his own heart. He watched heavy, luminous tears slide from her eyes and roll down her cheeks.
“You mean he . . .”
“He couldn’t.”
Rylan felt he’d been dealt a stunning blow to the head. Once he’d played a boxer. His sparring partner, a boxing coach, had gotten a little overzealous to make the final fight look real for the cameras. He’d made solid contact with Rylan’s jaw and for the next thirty minutes Rylan had seen stars and heard bells. That’s how he felt now. Like the planet had just been yanked out from under him and he was adrift in a black void.
Kirsten stepped around him and shakily poured herself a cup of coffee. He lowered himself to one of the kitchen stools. “Ever?” he croaked.
“No,” she said coolly, matter-of-factly. “When we first got married, everything was wonderful. We enjoyed a healthy, active sex life. That only made things more difficult later.” Using both shaking hands, she raised the coffee cup to her lips and sipped from it.
She looked so helpless and small in that encompassing robe. He wanted to hold her, but knew she wouldn’t welcome his pity, so he remained where he was while she glided over to the glass wall and stared out at the rolling surf.
“What happened to him, Kirsten? An accident?”
Heaven knew there had been plenty of opportunities for Demon Rumm to have been irreparably injured, Rylan thought. His accidents were recorded on the videotapes they had watched yesterday. Numerous times he’d been hospitalized with broken bones, lacerations, burns. His body must have been scarred. But apparently only his wife knew about the most damaging scar.
“His problem wasn’t physical,” Kirsten said, instantly negating Rylan’s theory. “At least I don’t think it was. He—he never would go see a doctor about it.”
“For godsake why?”
She rounded on him. “Would
you
?” Rylan’s hastily downcast eyes provided her with an answer. “That’s right. He was a celebrity. A sex symbol. A superstud. Men like him aren’t supposed to have that sort of problem. He defined virility. One hint that he didn’t live up to his image and his career would have been over. Kaput. So much for Demon Rumm.”
The affliction wasn’t all that uncommon, Rylan knew, even among men who banked on their virility. But Kirsten was right. What man would admit to such a thing, even to a supposedly confidential doctor? To do so would be risking not only his pride, but his livelihood.
“So he just let you suffer.”
“We both suffered,” she said quietly. “His ... incapacity increased in proportion to his growing popularity. I think he felt pressure to live up to his macho image. It would have been impossible to be all he was supposed to be, so he felt defeated before he even tried.” She twined the belt of her robe through her fingers, her expression sad. “Of course I’m only guessing. As I said, he never would consent to see a counselor. At all costs he wanted to keep anybody from knowing.”
“But look what he was doing to you all that time.”
“It was far worse on him than it was on me.”
“I seriously doubt that.”
She pressed her fingers against her forehead as though recalling arguments and turbulent scenes from a marriage in terrible crisis. “I couldn’t do anything to help him. He resented my help. Any encouragement I gave him he took as sympathy. Taking the sexual initiative upon myself only made him feel more inadequate and made me feel like a whore. So I learned not to acknowledge the problem at all. We conveniently ignored it.”
Rylan slid off the stool and moved toward her slowly. “Until that night before his crash.” His gut instinct told him he was right. Her shiver confirmed it.
“Yes. Until that night.”
She had sunk into her well of memory. She stared outside sightlessly and seemed unaware that he was standing beside her. “What really happened that night, Kirsten?”
“Alice had taken two days off. Charlie and I had enjoyed watching the old videos together that afternoon. I had cooked a good dinner. I thought that maybe, since he was relaxed and had been in an affectionate, cheerful mood all day . . .” Her voice dwindled off.
“Did you swim after eating dinner?”
“Yes, I suggested that we swim. I remember thinking how gorgeous he was with the fading sunlight reflecting off his hair. He was showing off, acting silly, falling off the diving board to make me laugh.” She pressed both fists into her middle and squeezed her eyes shut. “I wanted him. I wanted to love him, to have him love me.”
Rylan’s heart went out to her, but he didn’t ply her with any more questions. He let her tell the story at her own pace.
“When we came out of the pool, I lured him into the sauna. I urged him to take off his swim trunks and he relented. I initiated everything because he never even wanted to try. You see, it was humiliating for him to try and not be able to.”
She bowed her head and held her hand over her mouth. She was swallowing hard, trying to clear her throat of emotional congestion. When she picked up the story, her voice was steadier.
“I was so sure that night that I could heal him. I knew that if it happened once, he would be over the psychological block forever. So I kept on kissing him, even when he turned away. At first he was playful, saying things like, ‘Cut it out, Kirsten,’ and ‘What was in your wine?’ But then I started caressing him. He was beautiful to touch.” She exhaled raggedly. “But instead of getting aroused, he got angry. He shouted at me. Told me to leave him alone. And stormed out of the sauna.
“Later, after I’d returned to the house, he came into the bedroom and apologized. He even hugged me, kissed me, and lay down beside me. That night we slept with our arms around each other. I remember loving him more then than at any other time. I intended to tell him so the next morning. But when I woke up, he was gone.”
Rylan thought she had forgotten he was there. But she hadn’t. At the conclusion of her dreadful story, she looked up at him with inexpressible despair.
“There you have it, the ugly truth. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
Yes, that was what he had wanted. But now that he had it, he wished he’d left that final stone unturned. Instead of ridding her memory of its poison, the lancing of her wound had only poisoned her against him. For once, his relentless probing had backfired.
Oh, now he knew the motivation behind Rumm’s death wish. Now he knew why the pilot had been fearless and willing to take death-defying chances. Demon Rumm hadn’t really cared if he lived or died. Death was preferable to impotence and living a lie. The hero behind the dazzling smile had been a sham. Demon Rumm had personified the great American male, but he couldn’t make love to his own wife.
Yes, indeedy, it had all the makings of a terrific character study movie.
But at what cost to Rylan?
The woman he loved.
“How will you end your book, Kirsten?”
She laughed mirthlessly. “What difference will it make? The movie will tell the true story. You have the justification for Demon Rumm’s suicide. That’s what you really came here looking for, wasn’t it?”
He stared down at her for a long moment before turning on his heel and walking out.
It was four weeks later when he rang the doorbell of her house. Alice answered the door. She greeted him warmly, but her smile was uncertain.
“Is Kirsten here?”
It was a rhetorical question since her car was parked in the driveway. Apparently Alice saw the futility of lying. “She is, but she’s asked not to be disturbed.”
“Please, Alice.”
Looking into his compelling hazel eyes, the housekeeper weighed her decision. The scale tipped in his favor. She stepped aside. “In her study.”
He walked into the room, immediately recognizing Kirsten’s endearing vacant stare out the window. She was lost in thought and didn’t immediately notice him. Her head came around slowly, then she did a double take. He was gratified to see a flash of gladness in her eyes before she hastily screened them with animosity.
“What are you doing here?”
“Have you seen a pair of jeans lying around? Faded out, holes in the knees, seat wearing thin? I can’t find them anywhere. Did I by chance leave them here?”
“No. I think you took everything with you.”
“Not everything, Kirsten,” he said, dropping his bantering inflection. “I left a vital part of me behind.” He moved toward her desk and tossed down his movie script. “We finished shooting yesterday. Had a helluva wrap party last night. I was the only one who stayed sober and slept singly. Anyway,” he said with exaggerated casualness, “I thought you might want to read the last scene of the script.”
He flopped down on the sofa and laid his head back, closing his eyes and folding his hands across his stomach as though settling down for a Sunday afternoon snooze.
It required all his acting skills to play this scene. He wanted to cover that adored face with kisses, to rub the lavender shadows from beneath her eyes and inquire if her obvious sleeplessness had anything to do with him being away from her.
The last month had been pure hell for him and, consequently, for everybody who came in contact with him. If he’d been a reputed terror on the set before, he’d outdone himself lately. He’d even reduced loving and lovable Pat to tears before she threatened to turn him over her knee and give him the paddling he well deserved. He and the director had more than once threatened each other with everything from castration to litigation.
He had demanded perfection from himself and from everybody else associated with the movie. And because he was deeply in love with a woman who couldn’t stand the sight of him, it had made for an exhausting, emotionally taxing time.
But now that the movie was in the can and he’d gained permission to be consulted on the editing, he could devote himself to winning the reluctant widow.
Through slitted eyelids he watched her poke the script as though it might be a carnivorous animal that was playing dead until she let down her guard. Finally she turned it right side up and riffled through the pages to the ending. Rylan watched her eyes behind her glasses, moving back and forth as she read the script. Even from across the room, he saw them grow glossy with unshed tears. When she glanced up at him, he remained perfectly still and pretended that he hadn’t seen the soft, loving look she sent his way.