Three Marie Ferrarella Romances Box Set One Read online

  But Nick had the good grace to keep a straight face. “Yes, very special.” His warm breath caressed her face, leaving no doubts in her mind as to his meaning. She liked his answer, yet couldn’t quite bring herself to believe it. Not when Nick Rutledge could have his pick of any woman in the country.

  “Shane, you’re going to have to learn how to relax around me,” Nick told her.

  “Like this morning?” she asked archly.

  His smile was beautiful. Men weren’t supposed to have beautiful smiles. Men were supposed to be rugged, macho—yet Nick had a beautiful smile, she thought again. “This morning at the pool was nice,” he said.

  “This morning at the pool was a mistake,” Shane said. She was uncomfortable and wanted to look him square in the eye yet didn’t dare to. His eyes did those strange things to her.

  “Okay,” Nick said evenly. His tone surprised her. “Let’s talk about it.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  He took her hand. “Kind of close-mouthed when it comes to your emotions, aren’t you?”

  She wanted to take back her hand, yet found that she had no power to do so. “I’m a careful planner,” she said slowly. “I don’t like becoming involved in things that have no possible future.”

  He shook his dark head patiently, disagreeing with her last comment. “Things can’t have a future if they don’t have a present.”

  “That sounds like a Chinese fortune cookie,” she couldn’t help retorting.

  “There are some wise things stuffed into fortune cookies,” he said lightly. She was glad he didn’t take offense at her comment. He turned his head and peered out. “I think we’ve arrived.”

  The car came to a halt before a pier on Marston Lake, and they got out. Several yards away were canopied party boats with gleaming white lacquered chairs set up on their decks for the guests. On the shore were six tables laden with food. Salads molded in the shape of different animals rested on beds of ice, and were complemented by platters of cold meat. Music provided by a small band floated about the gaily decorated area.

  “Nicky, darling!” came a squeal as Nick and Shane went toward the buffet. Shane looked around to see a starlet type in a silver lame dress that looked painted on. She wiggled over to kiss Nick, then flitted on to another important person who caught her eye.

  Nick cleared his throat, a trifle amused at the expression on Shane’s face. “Always wondered how women could walk in clothes that tight,” he said, taking her elbow.

  “Her type slithers, I expect,” Shane commented dryly. Nick’s warm laugh encircled her.

  His warm laugh was practically all she had of Nick that evening as she watched one woman after another come up to him and fawn. To his credit, she had to admit that although he seemed to like their attention, he appeared unaffected by it all. Was it that he was used to this kind of attention, or perhaps, as she hoped, he really didn’t care about it? Shane scribbled down the thought on a cocktail napkin. At least she had come up with one printable observation today, she told herself.

  “Is that some sort of code?” Nick’s deep voice asked. She glanced up to see him looking over her shoulder at the napkin she was about to tuck into her purse.

  “Just notes,” she said casually. “I am working, you know.”

  “You have terrible handwriting.”

  She shrugged. “I can read it . . . most of the time,” she admitted, smiling up at him. “What, no worshipful lady on your heels?” she asked in amusement.

  “Dance with me, vixen,” he said, then took her into his arms without waiting for her answer.

  “Yes, sir,” she said, saluting smartly.

  “I take it you’re bored.”

  “I’ve spent more interesting evenings.”

  “I’ll see what I can do to liven things up for you,” he said, whispering into her hair. That set off a series of vibrations that touched every part of her.

  “Do you think you’ll be able to tear yourself away?” she asked, nodding at the women around them who eyed her enviously.

  “This is just typical Hollywood party stuff. Doesn’t mean a thing,” he said.

  “Uh-oh, here comes another groupie.”

  “Rock stars have groupies. I have admirers,” he corrected.

  “You seem to have more than that,” she commented wryly.

  “Well pretend we don’t see her,” he said, whirling her around past several dancing couples. But there was another eager-looking starlet on the other side. With smiling grace, Shane took her hands from Nick’s and allowed the woman to cut in. She looked on quietly as the starlet smiled appealingly into Nick’s face, her throaty laugh filling the air. Nick must have said something amusing like “hello,” Shane decided.

  “Hi, I’ve been watching you.”

  Shane looked around to see Miles Donovan, Nick’s costar. He was not quite as tall as Nick and lacked a good deal of his presence, but he could be termed handsome nonetheless. The expression on his face made her think of someone’s cocky younger brother. She imagined it must be hard to be in Nick’s shadow, even for one picture.

  Shane extended her hand. “I’m—“

  “Shane McCallister. Yes, I know. I make a point of finding things out,” he said. “So, how do you like it so far?” he asked, gesturing toward the milling people. “It’s a little tame for me,” he confided, “but then, this isn’t Hollywood, or Vail, for that matter, so you make do,” he said philosophically, downing his drink quickly and taking another glass from a passing waiter’s tray.

  “You go to many parties?” Shane asked, not really interested. By and large, she found small talk boring, even though it was a necessary evil in her line of work.

  “As many as I can find. That’s how you get yourself known. Best parts come out of knowing the right people. I met Nick at a party, although he’s a devil of a person to be in the same movie with,” Miles told her, his brown eyes intent on her over the rim of his glass.

  “Oh?” Shane asked, warming to the subject. Maybe this malcontent would supply the chink in Nick’s armor for her.

  “Sure,” Miles confirmed impatiently. He sounded as if he had had more that just a couple of drinks, she thought. “All the women always flock to him and he gets all the best parts. But he’s not all that good. I figure my day will come. I’m just as good as he is,” he said, jutting out his square chin. “Actually, better,” he said with a leering wink.

  “I’m sure you are,” Shane muttered. What she needed was a graceful way to extricate herself.

  “Hey, how about dinner tomorrow night?” Miles asked suddenly. “I’ll let you interview me.”

  “Thank you very much, but I only do one interview at a time,” she told him, trying to walk away. He made a grab for her arm.

  “Here,” he said, shoving a piece of paper at her. “Here’s my number. Should you find old Nick is too busy frolicking to say anything to you, this is where you can reach me.” He pressed the paper into her palm. “Any time.”

  Shane took it, promising to call if she had the opportunity. Anything to get rid of him.

  Nick came up just then and rescued her, Miles almost slinking away. “He annoying you?” Nick asked, nodding toward Miles.

  “No, he’s just trying to make himself known,” she answered.

  “Not with you, he’s not,” Nick said. Shane felt a rosy glow spread through her at the sound of those words—despite all her best attempts not to.

  The rest of the evening was a haze of faces and bits and pieces of conversations for Shane. Except for Miles, she did not find anyone who had a bad word for Nick. Everyone seemed to like him. It was getting to be a very large club, she thought, as she curled up sleepily next to him in the limousine on their return trip to her hotel. To her surprise, Nick did not ask to come in, but left her at her door with a tender kiss lingering on her lips. She felt somewhat let down as she closed the door behind her.

  Sunday turned into an empty, barren day. There were no calls from Nick, no roguish figu
re appearing at an ungodly hour in her doorway, no plans typed in on the schedule. Nothing. Shane spent it restlessly trying to regroup her thoughts on paper and ran into an incredible case of writer’s block, a malady she had once claimed did not exist.

  By Monday morning, some of her spirit was back. She told herself that she had gotten carried away with the aura that hung about Nick Rutledge and had allowed herself to be swept up in the so-called legend.

  She almost had herself convinced by the time she reached the set, but then she saw him again and her careful facade began to crumble away bit by bit. He stood in the middle of the makeshift set, listening to the director give him last-minute instructions. He looked tired. She sat on a director’s chair and wondered if some late-night tryst had taken its toll on him. She felt a harsh pain and reminded herself firmly that her curiosity was strictly professional!

  He caught her eye and came over to her. “Been keeping late hours?” she asked casually.

  He dropped into the folding chair next to hers, his long frame stretching out before him. “Yesterday was an incredibly long day,” he said.

  “Oh? Tell me about it. I’m all ears,” she said with a slight edge to her voice.

  He seemed to catch it as he looked at her, then grinned, his teeth a stunning contrast to his olive complexion. “And they’re a shade of green.”

  Shane bristled. “What are you talking about? I’m merely—“

  “—jealous,” he said, ending her sentence for her.

  “You’re too full of yourself.”

  “Your eyes are flashing,” he said.

  “It’s the lighting,” she retorted, gesturing at the giant stork-like fixtures that surrounded them as they sat in what was to be the interior of the castle. “It makes everything look like it’s flashing. I’ve only known you for three days. What makes you presume—?”

  “Chemistry,” he told her, again not letting her finish. “I can feel it.”

  “Will you let me finish a sentence?” she cried.

  “Not when I can read your mind.”

  She drew herself up, utterly frustrated. “If you could read my mind, I think you’d be in for a big shock right about now,” she said, trying to leave. She hadn’t given any thought to where she was going to go once she took her initial steps. That would come later.

  But she never got to take her initial steps, as Nick’s hand gripped her wrist. “Can’t you take a little teasing?” he asked. “Or did I strike a nerve?” The question was asked in a very low and sensuous tone. Shane sat back down, but she made no response.

  “As it happens,” he said, “I had to take a quick flight out at 7:00 a.m. Seems the studio heads wanted to hold court and I, for one, don’t believe in trying to buck their authority.”

  “From what I hear, that’s a refreshing change from the usual star complex,” Shane said, hiding behind her notebook as she took further notes. She knew he didn’t owe her an explanation, but she was relieved and glad he was giving her one— and that it didn’t include another woman.

  “They pay me to do a job. If I didn’t like the job, I wouldn’t take it. I see no point in signing a contract and then putting on airs,” he said.

  His voice rang with sincerity and self-confidence. Until she had met him, she had thought she possessed a great deal of self-confidence, and it smoothed the bumpy road of life. But she had the sinking feeling she could not travel through life so easily anymore.

  “Speaking of doing my job ...” Nick said, suddenly getting to his feet. The director, John Bowman, was gesturing for him to join his female costar. “This is where I do some of my finest acting.”

  Shane blinked. It wasn’t like Nick to boast, and she was curious about what the scene entailed. “What do you mean?” she asked forthrightly.

  “This is the scene in which I make love to my costar, a very nasty and unlovable lady in real life,” he said in a stage whisper. He gave her no time to comment, turning quickly to hurry over toward Bowman and Adrienne.

  Shane watched the first two takes of the scene. And she was impressed. How could he look so amorous with someone he professed to dislike? She knew he was an actor, but it was hard for her to believe that he could playact feelings so opposite to his real ones. Didn’t he get any kick from those sensual embraces? And the kisses looked too real. Shane decided that anyone who married an actor was crazy—unless the actor accepted only character roles and never came within lip range of actresses like Adrienne Avery.

  On the third take, with the heavy emotion of so-called make-believe passion charging the air, Shane rose from her chair. She went in search of unoccupied crew members to ply with questions about Nick.

  She never looked back.

  But the answers she got here took on the same hues of admiration as those she’d gotten at Saturday’s party. Everyone genuinely liked Nick. There wasn’t a bad word to be offered by any of them. Several of the old-timers, the people he had kept with him since the first movie, bent Shane’s ear with story after story about Nick. She began to fear that readers would fall asleep reading her article.

  When the cast broke for lunch, Shane took it upon herself to try to corner John Bowman. The director was not known for his patience or his gentle manner. In his time, he had sent many an actress off the set in tears, and many an actor had threatened him with physical harm. John Bowman thrived on it.

  “I don’t have time to waste talking to a gossip columnist,” Bowman snapped as she entered his trailer.

  Shane kept on coming anyway. “Magazine writer,” she corrected him. “Mind if I sit?”

  “Yes!”

  “Fine, thank you,” she said, sitting down on one of the two chairs in the trailer. She glanced about quickly. It looked like a monk’s cell.

  “I don’t like distractions,” Bowman rasped, as if reading her mind. “The only thing in my life while I’m on a picture is that picture. Now, what is it?” he demanded, lighting up a rather foul-smelling cigar, one of the two he allowed himself each day.

  “I’d like your opinion of Nick Rutledge,” Shane said simply, fishing out her tape recorder and turning it on. Her bag fell with a thud beneath it.

  “Turn that thing off,” Bowman ordered. “If you can’t remember what I tell you, you shouldn’t be in this business.” She did as he bid her. “Nick’s a man’s man,” he told her flatly. “I know all you ladies have palpitations each time you see him,” he said, waving his hand dismissively in her direction. Shane bit her tongue and swallowed a retort. “But for all that, he’s a rugged, honest, high-principled human being. None of this ‘god complex’ garbage that plagues so many of those fly-by-night jerks we have in Hollywood. They happen overnight and disappear that way too. Nick’s going to be around for a long, long time. Comes early, knows his lines, stays out of trouble. If he thinks a scene should be played differently, he comes and tells me so. No grandstanding.”

  Shane tried not to cough as wreaths of cigar smoke floated her way. Her eyes smarted a little. “Isn’t it true that actors are generally overgrown, insecure children, just pretending, acting out lives that they don’t have the nerve to live out on their own?” Shane prodded, thinking of all the preconceived opinions she had formed before she had ever met Nick.

  “I don’t have time for that psychology junk. Some of them deserve to have the stuffing knocked out of them—but Nick’s not one of them. I worked with him on his first picture, and I’m working with him now. There’s no difference—except that he’s gotten better.” Bowman rose abruptly, unfolding his long, lanky frame. “That’s all I have time for,” he told her. “You can go.” It sounded like a command. He was definitely a man used to being obeyed, Shane thought, gathering her things and shoving them into her purse before slinging it over her shoulder.

  She thanked the director and made her exit. As she swung the door shut, the shoulder strap of her bag caught on the doorknob. Her momentum was such that it threw her off balance, and she tripped down the three steps leading away from Bowman’s
trailer. Shane was spared the embarrassment of finding herself sprawled on the ground by two strong arms that encircled her just before she landed.

  “I thought you didn’t fall at men’s feet,” Nick teased, pulling her upright.

  Shane felt the warm waves of raw desire wash over her as he held her close against his body. He was still wearing the costume she had first met him in, enhancing the picture of an irresistible rogue.

  “Not by choice,” she murmured. She had meant the words to be a flippant retort, but instead they gave testimony to the ambivalent feelings that were beginning to pull at her.

  Nick merely smiled, as if sensing what she was struggling to hide. “Old John throw you out?” he asked, nodding toward the director’s trailer.

  Why was he still holding her? And why couldn’t she think clearly? Right now she was more conscious of the imprint of each one of his fingers upon her body than she was of anything else.

  “Actually, no,” she said between dry lips. “He did spare me a few words. Thinks rather highly of you. Are you going to hold onto me all day?”

  “The thought had crossed my mind,” he said, and grinned. He purposely slid his hands in a languid motion down to her waist, brushing briefly against her hips before he freed her.

  The man could retire from acting and become rich just teaching his technique with women, she thought, trying hard to recover.

  “C’mon, I’ll buy you lunch,” he offered.

  “Last of the big-time spenders,” she bantered back, knowing that no one paid for meals on the set during location shooting.

  Nick laughed and put his arm about her shoulders as they walked to the makeshift commissary.

  The next day was practically the same. Shane came on the set and observed the hectic pace of the everyday work done to create a film. She interviewed several people. The crew became used to having her prowl about, asking all sorts of questions. It occurred to her that she was asking more questions than were necessary for her article. It was slowly beginning to dawn on her that she was trying to learn everything there was to know about Nick’s life. Then too, she found herself angling to be with him as much as possible. But his time was heavily taxed, divided as it was, between takes, rehearsals, and conferences. When he did have a spare moment, Nick usually spent it on the set rather than in his trailer, making himself visible and mingling with the crew. Shane began to see why everyone practically doted on him. He sounded too good to be true, and despite her best efforts, she realized she was falling in love with him.