Demon Rumm (7 page)

Instinctively he angled his head in the opposite direction of hers and sealed their lips together with just the right amount of possessiveness and pressure. If Charlie had given her several closemouthed, tight-lipped, dry kisses before working up enough courage to use his tongue, then Kirsten was no doubt surprised with Rylan’s indelicacy. His tongue arrowed into her mouth with one swift thrust. It stroked her evocatively, unapologetically, masterfully.

Rylan knew that for as long as he lived he would never forget this first taste of her mouth. Lord, she was sweet. Her mouth opened up to his like a flower, then her lips closed petal soft around his intrusive tongue, hugging it.

He delved deeper, fearing that he might be going too far, but desperate for more, more. She responded. Her hands clutched at the waistband of his jeans, then her arms slid around his waist. Her body curved invitingly against his. He tilted his hips forward, until her thighs parted slightly and cuddled his hardness between them. Reacting strictly on impulse, he began lightly slamming into that marvelous softness with rhythmic movements.

Finally it penetrated his passion-fogged mind that her frantic movements weren’t engendered by a desire to get closer, but to escape. He released her so suddenly they both swayed. For a moment they only stared at each other, lips moist and swollen from the power of the kiss, chests heaving, breaths rasping.

There were a thousand things he wanted to say to her. She gave him no chance. Spinning on her heel, she fled the room. He reached for her but clutched nothing but air.

“Kirsten!”

He chased after her, but knew it was hopeless. Even if he caught her, what would he say? That he was sorry? He wasn’t. He would kiss her again, and just as passionately, if given the chance.

So, cursing himself, his impulsiveness, and the situation, he watched her retreat into the safety of the bedroom she had shared with her husband until the day he died in an airplane crash.

Four

Rylan had already been up for an hour when she made her first appearance in the study.

Nursing his third cup of coffee and a dull headache due to lack of sleep, he was reclining on one of the short sofas. Several pillows were piled beneath his head. He had been reading an article about Demon Rumm in a back issue of
People
. His feet, propped up on the arm of the sofa, were bare. So was his stomach between his sawed-off T-shirt and his denim cutoffs. He had dressed for comfort. But it wouldn’t matter to Kirsten Rumm what he wore. She wouldn’t like him anyway. Because she didn’t like men.

That was the conclusion he had reached last night after hours of sleeplessness. Kirsten’s reaction to his kiss hadn’t been strictly aversion. Fear had been involved. Obviously she had some kind of deep-seated dislike for men and sex. Why else would she bristle like a porcupine every time one came near her? No wonder Rumm had had a long-standing death wish. The poor sucker had had an ice cube for a bedmate.

When he heard her enter the room, Rylan tipped the folded magazine toward his chest and, over the top of it, watched her hostile progress toward her desk. “Good morning.”

“Good morning.” She set down her cup of coffee and lowered herself into the chair.

Her unfriendliness miffed him. Frigid or not, a woman could be polite, couldn’t she? “You’re not a morning person, I guess.”

“No.”

“Good. Neither am I.”

He rudely raised the magazine and began reading again, effectively cutting off any chance for conversation. A few minutes later, during which he hadn’t retained a single word he’d read, he peeped at her around the edge of the magazine.

She was gazing out the window. Apparently she didn’t know or care that he was alive. Her mind was a million miles away. Rylan took advantage of the opportunity to study her profile. Her features were neat, he decided, clean and pure. Her neck was long and graceful, a perfect pedestal for her small head.

She sniffed, idly scratched her cheek, then scribbled something in the margin of her manuscript. Her tongue darted out to moisten her lips. At that, he felt a spear of desire deep in his gut.

Dammit, he still wanted her.

She had every characteristic of a sensual woman. Why then the cold nature? Of course, there wasn’t a frigid woman alive who couldn’t be melted if handled by the right man.

Or maybe Kirsten wasn’t frigid. Maybe her sex life with Rumm had been so fantastic that he was the only man she could see. Still. Either way, Rylan figured that he owed it to himself to find out.

He grinned slyly. He’d always loved a challenge and had never failed to rise to meet one.

Kirsten had become so immersed in her work that when he walked up to her desk a couple of hours later, she stared up at him vacantly through her glasses.

“What?” she asked after bringing him into focus. “Did you say something?”

“I asked if you were hungry.”

She looked blankly at the tray he was carrying, then glanced over at the sofa he’d been lying on earlier. He answered her question before she asked it.

“I finished reading the article more than an hour ago and sneaked out. You never looked up.”

She slid her glasses off and rubbed her eyes. “I got involved with this.” She indicated the scattered sheets of manuscript.

“Interesting segment?”

Without waiting for her to grant permission, he set the tray on the edge of her desk and scooted it forward, displacing a thesaurus and a brass cylinder that held a collection of pens and pencils.

“Next to the last chapter,” she answered absently, while mechanically moving things aside to facilitate his unloading of the tray. Suddenly, she snapped to attention, for the first time coming fully out of her writer’s trance. “What is this?”

“Fruit. Blueberry muffins. Alice baked them from scratch. This is—”

“I know
what
it is, Rylan,” she said, her voice laced with impatience. “What’s it doing on my desk? Alice knows that I only snack when I’m working, if I eat at all.”

“Yeah, she told me that.” He hiked a hip onto her desk and plucked a handful of white grapes off their stem. “But as long as I’ve interrupted you, you might just as well eat.”

Flopping back in her chair, she looked up at him with incredulity. Before she could recover, he asked, “Why did you live in the background?”

“In the background of what?”

“Rumm’s life. I was particularly interested in that
People
article because it is one of the few that has anything about you in it.”

“Charlie was the star, not I. He was the one everyone wanted to read about.” She drew one foot up into the chair and wrapped her arms around her ankle. Her posture was sweet and submissive, but her attitude was defensive.

“Didn’t he like sharing a spotlight? Even with his wife?”

“He wasn’t like that.” She viciously plucked several grapes, but she played with them instead of eating them. “There was no competitiveness between us. I didn’t want to share his spotlight. But even with those who did, he was generous with publicity. Ask other stunt pilots. They’ll tell you the same thing.”

“So it was by choice that you stayed out of the public eye as much as possible?”

“Yes.”

“Why? Were you jealous of the groupies who were always flocking around your husband?”

“Don’t be absurd.”

“Hmm.” His expression was doubtful. “We filmed one scene in the movie where Rumm’s career was just getting off the ground.”

“No pun intended.”

He saluted her cleverness. That she could tease him at all was a good sign. Maybe he was making progress.

“As I was saying,” he continued, “after this particular air show, Miss Airhead—I can’t remember her official title—trots up to him wearing a bikini and a banner—which was the wider of the two—and kisses him full on the mouth. She offers him unrestricted use of her body in the nearest motel room. Her dialogue goes something like, ‘I’ll show you acceleration and high-tech performance like you never dreamed of, Demon.’ Fact or fiction?”

Kirsten dipped a spoon into a bowl of yogurt and fresh strawberries and stirred it, but didn’t eat it. “It’s a composite. Things like that happened all the time.”

Rylan was watching her closely. “It didn’t bother you?”

“This book and movie aren’t about me, they’re about Charlie.”

“You’re sidestepping the question, Kirsten.”

“Which should be your first clue that I don’t want to talk about it.”

“So these incidents with other women
did
bother you.”

She sprang out of her chair and clearly enunciated each word. “They were nuisances, Mr. North. Aggravations. Invasions of our privacy.”

“Which I am now.”

“Thank heaven! You finally got the message.” She pushed back her bangs with a frustrated flick of her hand. “Stop badgering me about my personal life with my husband. It has nothing to do with Demon Rumm the aerobatic pilot.” She rounded the desk. Rylan followed her across the room.

“You’re wrong,” he said. “A man lives with a woman. Whether he loves her, hates her, or is indifferent to her, she’s bound to have some influence on his life.”

He tracked her through the various hallways until they stood outside her bedroom. She turned to confront him. “All right, granted. I would like to think that I had a very positive influence on Charlie’s life. He did love me. He did need me. He even
liked
me, which is rare in most marriages these days.”

She drew a deep breath. “But, I repeat, the book and the movie aren’t about our courtship or marriage. They’re about his career. If you want to talk about that aspect of his life, fine. If not, you’re wasting your time and mine by being here, which I told you last week in Mel’s office. Now, please excuse me.”

She went into her bedroom and closed the door. Fifteen minutes later, having exchanged her slacks for a pair of shorts, she emerged only to find Rylan leaning against the wall waiting for her. He doggedly picked up the conversation exactly where they had left it.

“Did he talk to you about his work? About flying?”

“All the time.”

“Did he ever tell you that he was afraid?”

His question brought her up short, but she hadn’t taken umbrage as he expected she might. She had stopped to consider her answer carefully.

“ ‘Afraid’ isn’t the term I would use. Cautious. He was always extremely cautious. He calculated each trick aeronautically and mathematically before he ever got into an airplane to try it.”

“What about superstition?”

She smiled. “Oh, yes, he was very superstitious.”

At one of the terrace doors, she reached for the handle. “Don’t you have something to do? Some place to be? When is your next call?”

“Not until next week. They’re shooting scenes that I’m not in.”

“Shouldn’t you be studying lines?”

“I know my lines.” She looked at him with aggravation. He smiled back. “Where are we going?” He followed her through the door she had slid open.

“
I’m
taking a walk on the beach.”

“That sounds great.”

“I usually go alone.”

“Today you’ve got company.”

Without giving her a chance to argue, he encircled her upper arm and helped her down the steep steps.

“I don’t need your help,” she said querulously. “I can negotiate these steps even on moonless nights.”

“You come down to the beach at night?”

“Sometimes.”

“While everyone else is asleep? Why aren’t you?”

“What, asleep?” They had reached the beach. She withdrew her arm. “I have difficulty sleeping.”

She didn’t elaborate and Rylan didn’t press her. He’d learned not to back her into a corner. Barefoot, they struck off down the beach, walking at the water’s edge. The surf foamed around their ankles.

“Let me ask you a question for a change,” she said suddenly, surprising him.

“Fair enough.”

“Did you go into this kind of detail on the other segments of the movie? Segments not related to Charlie’s personal life?”

“Naturally. I spent hours with the crew, chiefly Sam. That guy can put away more beer without falling down than anybody I’ve ever met.”

Kirsten smiled at the mention of the flying veteran who had been Charlie’s mechanic and friend from the day Charlie left the Navy and dubbed himself a modern barnstormer. Sam’s failing eyesight had prohibited him from flying any longer; he had done it vicariously through Demon Rumm.

“I’m sure Sam had some wild stories to tell you,” she said, laughing.

“Didn’t he recount the same stories when you were researching your book?”

“The censored versions.”

“You’re probably right. His language is rather salty.” He stopped and said seriously, “He holds you in the highest regard. He had nothing but praise for you.”

He could tell she was pleased to hear that. It struck him then that she couldn’t have been a detriment to Rumm’s happiness or his best friend wouldn’t have liked and respected her so much. That virtually ruled out the possibility of frigidity. Although, a man would find it hard to admit to another that his wife was frigid. So was she or wasn’t she? Damn! It was still a muddle.

“The actor who’s playing Sam, is he good?” she asked, snapping him out of his musings.

“Yeah, he’s good. He’s bawdy enough. But I don’t think he’s tapped into Sam’s sentimental side.”

“Sam’s crotchety, but it’s a cover-up for his heart, which is as soft as a madonna’s.”

“It didn’t take me long to figure that out,” Rylan said. Then he laughed, shaking his head. “The ol’ sonofabitch sure ridiculed my flying capabilities though.”

“Did you learn to fly for the picture?”

“I already knew how to fly. Sam just talked me through some of the easier stunt flying.”

“So the rumor about you owning an airplane is true?”

“It’s not a souped-up 707, if that’s what you mean. Isn’t it supposed to resemble a sultan’s tent?” he asked with an ironic smile.

“Orgies at thirty-seven thousand feet.”

He looked at her ruefully. “We can laugh about it now, but that story almost ruined the lady involved.”

“The actress?”

“Yeah.” He stopped, picked up a shell, and hurled it far out into the sparkling water. “We arrived in London at the same time to do that picture. What the press failed to point out was that we had arrived in separate airplanes. I’d met her only once, in the director’s office with numerous other people present.”

The wind tossed his hair playfully, but his mouth was grim and his eyes brooding. There was nothing cheerful in either his stance or his expression.

“When all that tripe hit the newsstands, it suggested that we were stoned when we got to Heathrow and in the throes of a scorching affair. Her current boyfriend wired her that they were through. Her mother telephoned across the Atlantic to call her a slut. She was so upset she couldn’t work for days.

“That movie was her first starring role. The director was a bully. She was terrified of him and too damned lenient with her agent and publicist, who were both money-grabbing crooks.” He drew a heavy breath.

“She was so damned innocent. Now I understand that her brain is fried. She needs pills just to get out of bed in the morning, and more to go to sleep. Cocaine has contributed to her paranoia. She’s living up to everything the press prematurely wrote about her. The bastards.”