Three Marie Ferrarella Romances Box Set One

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental. All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

  Copyright © 2015 Marie Ferrarella

  Cover images from Shutterstock.com

  Marie Ferrarella’s Originals:

  Irresistible Forces &

  No Way To Treat A Lover &

  December 32… And Always

  Marie’s Originals are reprints of romances published earlier by Bantam’s Loveswept line or Berkley/Jove, made available again in e-book form.

  Irresistible Forces

  Irresistible Forces

  By Marie Ferrarella

  Marie’s Originals

  Book 1

  Marie’s Originals are reprints of romances published earlier by Bantam’s Loveswept line or Berkley/Jove, made available again in e-book form.

  Chapter One

  The thready voice of Theodore Banks, editor-in-chief of Rendezvous, piped through the smoke-filled air in the ash-paneled conference room. Shane McCallister’s deep blue eyes never left the gaunt face of the tall man at the head of the table as he gave out assignments for the next issue of the magazine. And then, suddenly, Shane went rigid with shock, her expectations crumbling, her well-ordered plans flying all over the place like smashed smithereens.

  “Anderson, I’ve chosen you for the key interview.” A half smile slashed across Banks’s face as he glanced at Shane before quickly redirecting his gaze to Anderson. “With the President,” he added— for unnecessary emphasis, Shane thought. “There’ll be a secret service man waiting to meet you at National Airport. He’ll inform you of all the dos and don’ts—see if you can get around them.”

  Bill Anderson, a heavyset man in his fifties, looked surprised at the plum assignment. Well, more than surprised, really. He looked stunned. Everyone had been sure Shane had the interview in the bag.

  So had Shane.

  “And as for you, McCallister,” Banks said, his piercing eyes pinning her once more, “I want a story on Nick Rutledge.”

  “The movie star?” Shane asked, shock making her voice quaver and her eyebrows rise perilously close to her hairline. This was unbelievable. The kinds of interviews the magazine usually ran were concerned with the movers and shakers of the world. Shane hardly thought that Hollywood—and Nick Rutledge, especially—was an appropriate subject for a classy magazine like Rendezvous.

  “That ‘movie star’ is single-handedly responsible for bringing romance back into the movies.” Banks steepled his fingers, then looked at Shane over the pyramid they made. “He’s become a legend after only five years. He’s the stuff that Valentino and Gable were made of. The readers,” he pronounced with imperial authority, “will be interested in learning about him. And,” he added, an expression touched with whimsy flitting across his face, “this needs a ‘woman’s touch.’ “ His satisfaction with that last comment was only too obvious.

  Shane struggled to keep the bitterness from showing—and lost the battle. How she hated his patronizing her this way! “Then why don’t you give the assignment to Anderson?” she asked, her voice very low, yet firm with anger. “His prose is much more flowery than mine.”

  “McCallister,” Banks said in a slow, threatening roar before growing snappish. “I make the decisions around here.”

  “Then, you’ve made a wrong one,” Shane insisted, rising. Her fingers fanned out on the oak table as she leaned forward, her five-foot two-inch frame challenging him the way a mongoose challenges a cobra. “That assignment was mine, and you know it! As a senior writer—“

  “You are senior writer only if I say so, young woman. And I do not say so.” Banks’s thin eyebrows were drawn into one straight, angry line across his pale forehead.

  “Why not?” Shane demanded.

  Everyone else in the conference room had grown still with apprehension over this virtually unprecedented confrontation.

  A nasty smile now creased the sharp features of Shane’s editor-in-chief. “Because, McCallister, unlike the old editor, who was a soft touch, I do not believe that you are ‘ready’ yet to be a senior writer. After all, it takes more than time and the juiciest of assignments to accomplish that. It takes a certain talent, an ability to turn the ordinary story into an extraordinary one!” He seemed to savor the cutting words. Ever since his first day at Rendezvous, there had been animosity between him and Shane. She sensed it without understanding the whys of it. “Now, be a good little writer and do as you’re told. A good writer, in case you don’t know,” he added archly, “is supposed to see the opportunity for excellence in an apparently routine assignment.”

  As she shook her head in exasperation, her shoulder-length chestnut hair brushed against the beige suit jacket she wore. “All right, I’ll do your fluffy story. And when my copy is in print,” she vowed, “no one will pay more than scant notice to the fact that the issue of the magazine under discussion has an interview with the President in it!” With that, she spun around and stalked out of the conference room.

  That was a dumb vow, Shane, she told herself as she marched into her office. She slammed the door so hard that the glass threatened to shatter and fall at her feet. Banks had given her this assignment to hurt her pride. He knew how much she wanted that presidential interview. He had been dangling it in front of her like a carrot for the last two months. But she had picked up the gauntlet. And she felt herself more than equal to the challenge he had hurled her way.

  Damn Banks, though! She sighed.

  Frustrated, she sank into her chair and ran her hand absently over her ancient laptop. They had come a long way, this laptop and she, all the way from Hunter College, an eternity ago. She looked out the window at the cloud-strewn sky and imagined the hundreds of scurrying figures on the busy New York street twenty-two stories below. She’d come such a long way just to write a story about some so-called “hunk” who was probably as mindless as he was supposedly gorgeous? What a waste of her intellect, her journalistic ability! She crumpled the printed pages of the latest story she’d been working on, then immediately regretted it.

  “Oh!” she cried out in anger at her own impatience.

  Meg, her short, slightly overweight blond secretary, looked at her a little uncertainly.

  “Should I be waving a flag of truce?” she asked, peering around the room, then at last fixing her gaze on Shane’s scowling face.

  “I’m really just mad at myself,” Shane confessed. “So come on in.” She shrugged. “Honestly, Meg, I should have realized that Banks would never give me that assignment. He thinks only men are capable of interviewing presidents.”

  Meg’s wide face broke out into a sunny smile. “Personally, I think you got the better end of the deal. Just think.” She paused, gave a long sigh, and allowed the expression on her face to grow wistful, dreamy. “Oh dear Lord ... to be with Nick Rutledge . . . even for a day. Why—“

  “Wait a minute,” Shane interrupted. “Rutledge is just a man like any other. He puts his pants on one leg at a time.”

  “Yes, but what legs ...” Meg’s voice trailed off.

  “Meg, knock it off. He’s a product of Hollywood hype, that’s all. Sure, he’s probably good raw material in the looks department, but don’t forget he’s got an excellent makeup man and an excellent lighting technician at his disposal. If you ran into him in the grocery store—if he were the checker, or th
e butcher—I bet you’d hardly notice him,” Shane said. “How much you want to bet the guy’s a runt and they either dig a hole for his leading ladies to step down into or provide a stepstool for him to climb up on?” She snorted. “Probably has a Napoleonic complex to complement his subnormal IQ and stud mentality.”

  “Oh, Shane,” Meg wailed. “So cynical. So unkind. That’s not like you.”

  Shane relented. “Sorry Meg,” she said humbly, a warm gleam in her eyes for her fellow employee and friend. “I’m just licking my wounds ... or opening them. It’s time for the phoenix to rise out of the ashes. I’m going to make a damn good story out of this! Just wait until Banks sees the job I do!”

  Meg slipped out of the office as Shane stared across the room at nothing in particular, but with a triumphant grin on her face.

  It was raining when Shane landed in Denver.

  “Anderson gets a secret service man to meet him, I get rain,” she muttered. She juggled two suitcases that had taken her half an hour to retrieve from the luggage-hungry but lethargic maws of the baggage-handling system. Passengers jostled her on either side, all apparently in a hurry to cross over into the Denver city limits. But Shane refused to rush. This assignment was going to take a long time. Why should the prisoner race to her jail sentence?

  People were scrambling for taxis, so she set down her suitcases and waited for a few minutes before whistling loudly to get a driver’s attention. Soon she was sitting inside a dry cab, the musty smell of the cab driver’s wet wool sweater encompassing her. And even sooner, it seemed, she was standing before the registration desk of the Plaza Cosmopolitan Hotel, where a rather frantic young man in a green-and-white sweater asked questions of the man behind the desk.

  Shane drummed her fingers and let her gaze wander aimlessly around the lobby. Suddenly, though, she was caught up short.

  “Don’t you have a reservation for a Mr. Shane McCallister?” the youth at her elbow asked.

  Shane turned to stare at him. He was an amiable-looking guy of about nineteen, with a thatch of blond hair that kept falling into his eyes as he spoke.

  “The magazine said he’d be here. And I already missed him at the airport,” the young man said, apparently trying to read the guest register even though it was upside down. “Could you check and—“

  Shane put her hand on his shoulder. “I’m Shane McCallister.”

  The heads of both the desk clerk and the young man swiveled in her direction. After a moment’s perusal the desk clerk displayed only mild interest; the young man, however, was riveted—and obviously quite surprised. “You—you’re Shane McCallister?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you’re not a man!”

  “Really?” she asked wryly. “Sorry to disappoint.”

  His eyes swept over her curvaceous body, came to rest on her face, then blinked rapidly in embarrassment. He awkwardly stuck out his hand, wiping the palm first on the denim covering his thigh. “Hi. I’m Scottie.”

  “Well, Scottie,” Shane said patiently, shaking his hand, “what can I do for you?”

  “It’s what I’m supposed to be doing for you!” he said, with such an earnest and emphatic inflection that Shane could scarcely repress a smile. “I was supposed to pick you up at the airport, but I was looking for a man with a press card—“

  “Tucked into a reporter’s slouch hat?” she asked, amused. “Ah, Scottie, I can tell you’ve been watching too many 1940s movies on television.”

  He grinned. “Well, nobody described you, and—“

  “Why don’t you tell me the rest of it in the car?” she asked abruptly. She’d glanced at her watch, noting that it was almost four, and she’d hardly have time to get to the set and meet her quarry if they didn’t hurry. She waved away his comment and hastily checked in, asking to have her bags taken to her room. Then she turned back to Scottie, a brilliant smile from her putting him at ease. “Lead, on, MacDuff,” she said . . . and he did, straight through the lobby and out to a limousine drawn up to the curb.

  Well, Shane thought, at least she’d be riding in style.

  “I’ll sit up front with you,” she announced, then let him open the passenger door for her.

  Scottie slid into the driver’s seat, his manner a little more relaxed. “Boy, is Nick going to be in for a surprise,” he told her.

  “Why?”

  “He was expecting a guy,” Scottie told her with a chuckle. “I never knew any girl, um, lady named Shane before.”

  She understood and smiled. “My father was planning on a boy. Once I made my appearance, the name just stuck.”

  She looked out the window as they reached Denver’s outskirts and kept going. The windshield wipers worked overtime on the large raindrops, slapping them away just in time for the next set to take their place. “Where are you shooting?”

  “Due south of Denver, just outside of Kiowa. We were at a standstill when I left,” he told her, “what with the rain and all.”

  She nodded, taking out her pad. No time like the present.

  “Tell me all about Nick Rutledge,” she said in a confidence-inspiring, enthusiastic tone.

  “He’s just the best there is,” Scottie answered, his face beaming as his voice, too, brimmed with a smile.

  Shane studied his guileless profile for a moment. Of course he’d say something like that. The pencil in her hand, poised above the pad, quivered. Damn. Nothing new in that angle . . . hm-m, yet! She smiled. Digging, she reminded herself. That’s what it would take to make this report sizzle. Yes, digging. And letting everyone talk until a true picture emerged of this so-called movie god. Tentatively she entitled her article: “The Truth About Nick Rutledge.”

  “What is it you do for him, Scottie?”

  “I’m a gofer.” Scottie grinned. “I run errands for him, take care of little details, you know.”

  Shane suppressed a grimace. “Yes, I know, but do you earn enough money being a gof—I mean, doing these errands to live on?”

  Scottie shook his head. “Of course not. I don’t do this all the time, just summers. I go to school the rest of the year. USC,” he added proudly.

  “Oh, I see. I suppose your folks pay for that.”

  Scottie laughed, flipping a switch to set the windshield wipers on a slower speed. The rain had stopped pelting the car and was now coming at a steadier, more rhythmic pace. “My mom couldn’t afford the University of Southern California. If it weren’t for Nick, I wouldn’t be going at all.”

  “Nick?” she repeated blankly.

  “Yeah,” he responded enthusiastically. He seemed to respond enthusiastically to everything, Shane noted. “He’s paying for all of it. Not only that, but he sends money home to my mom and my two younger sisters.”

  Shane pounced on this information. Had Rutledge had an affair with Scottie’s mother and was now paying her off with conscience money? She made a note to get in touch with the woman. “Why is he being so charitable?” she asked bluntly.

  “Charitable?” Scottie guffawed. “My dad was a stuntman in one of his movies three years ago. Got killed in a freak accident. Nick felt responsible.”

  Ah, an angle! “And was he?” Shane prodded.

  “No,” Scottie said, sounding surprised that she would even ask such a question. “Wasn’t anyone’s fault. Dad was doubling for Nick in a dangerous stunt with a real high leap at the end of it. There was a big wind factor he hadn’t counted on, we guess, and somehow he missed the center part of the air bag. Broke his neck and just about everything else.” Scottie was silent for a moment. “Nick had wanted to do the stunt himself, but the insurance people went berserk at the mention of it. So did the producer. Anyway, Nick knew the stunt was too dangerous and kind of felt he should have convinced them to let him do it. Then, if he had, Dad wouldn’t have been killed. Nick was the one who came and told us about it. He was damned choked up . . . really, well, kind.”

  With his money, Nick could well afford to be kind, Shane thought, but nevertheless she wa
s moved by Scottie’s loss. “I’m sorry about your father,” she murmured.

  He shrugged, obviously trying to push away his sorrowful feelings. “Everybody’s got to die sometime. Dad died doing what he liked best. He loved the business. So do I,” he told her, his bubbly tone returning. “I’m studying to be a director.”

  Shane forced a smile. For a moment she was silent, looking out the window again, straining to see the terrain that was partially hidden from her by a curtain of shimmering rain. “I think I’ve arrived in the middle of your flood season,” she said glibly, to lighten the mood.

  “Yeah, the rain is pretty bad, isn’t it?” Scottie agreed. “Nick’s not too thrilled about this weather. We were ahead of schedule until today.”

  For the next twenty minutes he droned on and on about his idol. Shane took a few more notes and chalked off the rest of it as hero worship. Then they arrived at the set. Scottie brought the car to a stop as close as possible to the entrance of the main tent. He had no way of knowing that it was also next to a puddle of mud. Neither did Shane . . . until she stepped into it getting out of the car. Her right shoe slid into the oozing mass, the mud sucking at her toes through the open, high-heeled sandal.

  Stepping gingerly onto harder ground, muttering an oath under her breath, Shane took it as an omen.

  “Can I be of any help?”

  The deep voice rumbled at Shane, surrounding her on all four sides. She didn’t even have to look up and into his tanned face to know that voice belonged to Nick Rutledge.

  Chapter Two

  Shane stood, lopsided, with the strap of her formerly light brown shoe dangling from her fingertips. Mud oozed from the shoe and plopped to the ground. Her right leg was splattered with a not-so-fine layer of mud, and she didn’t even dare look down at her foot. It felt awful. She definitely wasn’t putting her best foot forward to meet America’s latest heartthrob.