Her Leading Man (5 page)

When she glanced up again, she saw Martin Taft
looking at her, a
quizzical smile on his face. Her
heart hitched again. Darn it, why should
her heart,
which had always been a reliable organ, be giving
her trouble now? She
was too young to have heart
troubles.

“
Everything all right, Christina?” he asked.

He had lovely eyes. Soft and brown, but with fire
and a good deal of
steel in them. They were framed
by lush dark lashes and gently arched over
by deep
brown
eyebrows. And his features were even and
pleasant. He wasn’t exactly gorgeous
in the mold of
a Pablo Orozco, but he was ever so much more
agreeable in
appearance than Orozco, and was very
good-looking. Better looking than most of
the men
Christina came across, in school or at work

“
Everything’s fine, thank you, Martin.”

“
Heh!” barked Gran
.

Both Martin and Christina turned their heads to
look at her. She
shared her best, most militant and
eagle-eyed glare with them. “This place is
a pit. It’s
as if the fires of hell are burning day and night.
When will anyone
invent a way to cool air indoors,
is what I want to know?”

“
I think they’re working on it,
Gr
an,”
Christina
said, feeling a little
deflated.

“
Balderdash!”

“
And the overhead electrical fan does help to
a
degree.” Just once, Christina’d like to be able to
have
a
conversation with someone on a movie set without
her grandmother
running interference.

She knew even as she thought it that she’d just
been a victim of
illogical thinking. Her grandmother
came with her because Christina had no
other protection. And as much as Christina prided herself on
her own independence
and ability to take care of herself,
she also knew that women were both
physically
and politically weaker than men. It helped to have
someone with a
reputation for hardheadedness, not
to say a nasty disposition, on her
side.

Christina loved Gran and appreciated her willingness
to chaperone her.
Gran might be small, and she
might be old, but she was an expert at
making
people
—particularly men—keep their distance.
Men
didn’t
like being humiliated by little old ladies. And,
while Christina
understood their point of view in a
way, she also considered the ones who ran
away—and
that
included all of them so far—cowardly for not
fighting back.

Martin smiled winningly at her grandmother as he
took the chair
across from her. “At least this place
does have a fair number of electrical
fans, Mrs. Mayhew.
They help stir the air.”

“
They don’t cool it,” Gran pointed out
emphatically,
as if Martin had just said something stupid.

“
True enough. Maybe by the time the pictures
start
to talk, somebody will have invented a way to cool
air, even in the
summertime.”

“
I doubt
it,” Gran said bitterly.

Christina looked at Martin in frank curiosity.. “Do
you really think the
pictures will ever talk, Martin?
Honestly?”

“
Yes, I do. One of these days, one of the
great
minds who works on such things will invent a quiet
camera and a way to
project sound.” He shrugged.
“Actually, the Edison group has already invented
a
way to
project sound. We only have to be able to
hear it above the cranking of the
cameras. But since
I started working in the business, cameras have come
a long way, too.
We’re using a close-up camera for
some of the scenes in this picture, in
fact. I’m sure
sound is right around the corner.”

Made sense to Christina. She smiled at him in
appreciation
because he hadn’t yet been cowed into
keeping his opinions to himself
by Gran.

After eyeing him sharply in what might or might
not have been
disapproval—it was sometimes hard
to tell with her—Gran said “Heh”
again.

Christina watched her with interest. Her grandmother seldom
fell back on one of her “hehs” unless
she felt she’d lost an argument.
Transferring her gaze
from Gran to Martin, she noted that his benign
smile
hadn’t
wavered.

Good heavens, he reminded her of her father!
Could Martin Tafft
be such a one as Benjamin
Arm
strong Mayhew, the most perfect human male in the
entire world? She
told herself not to be silly. She’d
only just met Martin. She couldn’t yet
know if he
was worth getting her hopes up for or not.

Not to mention the fact that this wasn’t the time
for her to be
entertaining hopes of any sort, no matter
how marvelous or disgusting Martin
Tafft turned out
to be.

An internal compulsion seemed to be guiding her
today, however, and
she couldn’t seem to help herself.
She cleared her throat. “I read somewhere
that people
are experimenting with ice-cooled air. It seems that
it’s possible to
keep ice frozen for a long time using
some sort of electrical process and some
sort of gas,
and that air fanned across ice can cool air quite
well.”

“
I read
about that, too,” Martin said.

He’d been scanning the menu, which was a piece
of paper on which
had been written, in very bad calligraphy,
some dining selections. It looked
to
Christina
as if the Desert Palm Resort was trying
perhaps too hard to appear stylish.
They’d probably
have to do a lot more than make up a fancy menu
in order to impress
Martin Tafft.

Even as she thought it, however, she took note of
Martin’s cordial
expression. He evidently wasn’t one
to disparage the local populace, no matter
how rich
and
important he was.

Interesting. Especially when she compared Martin’s
behavior to Pablo
Orozco’s. Orozco walked around
looking as if he’d had his sneer permanently
affixed
to
his face and watching the locals as if he considered
them
vermin.

She told herself not to get too encouraged. For all
she knew, Martin
Tafft had terrible flaws that would
overwhelm his good qualities. After all,
anyone could
present a pleasant facade to the world for however
long it took to eat
a meal.

A glance at her grandmother made her revise her
prior thought.
Almost anyone could present a pleasant
façade to the world. Other people
didn’t want to do
even that much. At present, Gran was scowling at
the menu as if it
had affronted her on purpose.
“See anything you want to eat, Gran?”

Martin, she noticed, had an amused glint in his
sensitive brown
eyes.

Her own choice of descriptive words gave her
pause. Now why, she
wondered, had she decided
Martin’s brown eyes were sensitive? Was she
falling
victim to some sort of physiological imperative that
had somehow been
triggered in her body, and that
had judged Martin Tafft’s body an
appropriate mate
for itself?

Christina, no shrinking violet when it came to
matters
of
human bodily functions, including those of a
sexual nature, considered this
possibility seriously.
She was, after all, twenty-one years old. Most
young
women
her age were at least thinking about getting
married and producing offshoots,
if they weren’t already
in full spawn. While Christina knew that
human
physiology wasn’t so entrenched in animal instinct
as that of most
mammals, she also knew that instinct
was a strong motivating force in most
human activities.

It was, therefore, possible that her body was
telling
her
it was time to mate. Maybe it, in its instinctive
way, had even chosen
Martin Tafft as a likely candidate
for matehood.

Fascinating. She’d have to think about this further.
Study her reaction
to Martin more closely. See if she
could affect it by using the force of her
formidable
brain.

Christina had great faith in herself. She believed
that no matter how
much her body might urge her
to fulfill her function as a reproductive member
of
the
species, she was strong-minded enough to keep
herself from knuckling under to
its pressure. She had
goals. Aims in life. She was going to be a
doctor,
and
her body could just hold its horses until she decided
it was time to
unleash them.

As far as her heart, which kept giving these
disturbing
twinges whenever she was in Martin Tafft’s
company. . . Well,
Christina wasn’t sure what that
meant, but she had trust in herself. She
wasn’t going
to let herself get distracted. She was going to be a
doctor, and that was
that. Everything else could just
wait.

Having cleared up that issue in her mind, she felt
better about life
until she realized both her grandmother
and Martin were gazing at her, as if
they expected
her to say something. Fiddle. She’d been so
engrossed in her own
thoughts, she must have
missed
a question. She arched her eyebrows in a gesture
she
knew
to be quelling. She’d learned it from her
grandmother.
“I beg your pardon?”

Martin, apparently taken aback by her abrupt
question,
tilted his head and lifted his eyebrows, although
he didn’t appear to
be particularly quelled.

Gran wasn’t so circumspect. “Pay attention, girl.
That man asked you
what you want for dinner.” She
pointed at Martin to make sure Christina knew
who
“
that man” was.

“
Oh. I
see.” Christina felt foolish.

Gran grumbled, “I’ve never known you to go off
in a fog, girl. I
think this picture-making nonsense
is warping your character.”

“
Fiddle,” Christina said, feeling heat creep up
the
back of her neck. “I was merely thinking about
something.”

“
Heh,” said Gran. “You were woolgathering,
and
you’ve never done that before. Get a
hold of yourself,
girl.”

“
Care to
share?”

When
she glanced at him, Martin gave her one of
his lovely, warm
smiles. That smile of his fairly
begged to be allowed access to her most
intimate secrets.
Darn it, every time he smiled at her that way,
her heart did its
nonsensical hitching maneuver.
Christina didn’t approve of her heart doing
undisciplined
things. Christina was not given to frivolity. She
smiled back, hoping
her smile looked better than it
felt. “Maybe later,” she
murmured.

“
Well?” Gran snapped. “What do you want to
eat?
I’d avoid the fish, if I were you. Can’t imagine
where
they’d
get fish that’s fit to eat in this hellish place.”

“
No,” Christina agreed. “Not unless they use
refrigerated
cars to ship it in.”

“
Actually,” Martin said, causing both women
to
glance up at him, “I think they do.” He smiled
apologetically.
“Have refrigerated boxcars on some of the
trains nowadays, I
mean. So maybe the fish isn’t bad.
Although I think I’ll have something else
myself. No
sense taking chances on the possibility of bad
fish.”

Gran snorted as if she’d never heard anything more
ludicrous in her
life. Christina noted that Martin’s serene
smile didn’t waver. Good heavens,
except for
her father she’d never met a man who reacted so
little
to
Gran’s obnoxiousness. She wondered if he’d be
able to keep it up, or if he’d
prove to have feet of
clay like everyone else in the world.