Once in a Blue Moon (4 page)

* * *

“There!” The hairdresser stepped back, opening her hands in an expansive gesture, and beamed at the reflection in the mirror.

Isabelle looked into the mirror. Debbie had done an even better job than usual. Her hair was a sexy tangle of gleaming curls. Combined with the low-cut, clinging black cocktail dress she wore, it created the perfect image of a beautiful, wild female predator on the prowl.

Isabelle’s hands felt cold as ice. She did not want to do this. But she said only, “You’ve outdone yourself this time, Debbie.”

“Well, you know, your first big scene with Michael...” She grinned conspiratorially.

Isabelle thought sourly that Michael had obviously wrapped the hairstylist around his finger.
Of course, the same could be said for most of the women involved in the soap opera.
Sometimes Isabelle felt like revealing to them what a heartless, self-absorbed bastard he was—but, of course, she would never open up her personal life to such intimate inspection.

She stood and smoothed down the tight-fitting short skirt. She had to admit that Amanda had done a great job of finding just the right dress, too—devastatingly sexy without crossing over the borderline to sluttish. It was perfectly suited to her figure and also revealed a tempting amount of her long legs.

Isabelle clutched her script, as she had all during the time she had been in Makeup and Hairstyling. The slim blue-bound book was now permanently curled up from being twisted in her hands. She set off down the hallway to the soundstage, trying to look both nonchalant and businesslike—and not at all as if her knees were quaking.

She had worked all week to prepare herself for today’s shooting, but now that it had arrived, she found herself feeling as anxious as she had when she first learned about it. She was flushed and overheated one moment and the next, freezing. Her mouth was dry as cotton. At the moment she could not remember a single one of her lines. All she could think about was the fact that she was going to kiss Michael, that she was going to have to radiate sexual invitation toward him, to lure and seduce him and put herself right back in the danger of his arms.

Rationally she knew that nothing was going to happen. It was, after all, a scene for TV, and it would be shot in front of a director and crew. It wouldn’t be real, and she had shot many such scenes before without a qualm. There would be no emotion in their kiss; it would be faked. Besides, there was no danger of her feelings for Michael returning. She had gotten over him years ago; there was no feeling toward him left inside her except antipathy. She was much too mature now to be conquered by a sexy kiss—not that he would even try to make it sexy. Surely Michael had no more interest than she in trying to rekindle the fire that had once burned between them.

But all the reasonable arguments in the world couldn’t stand up against the ice in the pit of her stomach.

She walked onto the soundstage, where the crew was bustling around making adjustments to lights and cameras. Isabelle carefully picked her way over the snaking obstacles of thick cables and cords. The set was the living room of Jessica’s condo. On the set next to it, the elegant living room of the Townsend house. They had just finished shooting a large party scene, and a few of the actors were still strolling away from it.

Paul, who played the lawyer ex-husband of Christine Townsend, Chase Manning, caught sight of Isabelle, and his eyebrows vaulted up exaggeratedly.

“My, my, my, don’t you look yummy,” Paul said. “You know, Izzy, sometimes I get so used to seeing you every day I forget how incredible-looking you really are.”

To her chagrin, Isabelle felt a blush creeping up her neck into her face. She rolled her eyes. “It’s the hairstyle and the dress.”

“Yeah, right.” Vivian laughed. “I wish I had that hairstyle and dress.”

Isabelle couldn’t help turning her eyes toward the condo set, where Michael sat, waiting, his script in his hand as if he’d been going over his lines one last time. But he was not looking at the script. He was looking straight at Isabelle. His eyes flickered down her body for a fraction of a second, then returned. She lifted her chin and walked, stony-faced, to the set.

“Isabelle,” Lyle Gordon, the director, said in greeting and came over to join them. “You look great.” His eyes skimmed over her in a professional, asexual way. “Perfect. Okay, let’s block and run through it quickly. It’s a pretty simple scene—just you two.”

Isabelle nodded, trying to keep her attention on him. Her gaze kept wandering traitorously toward Michael, and her nerves were jumping like live wires. She had to get herself under control. She could not let Michael see how nervous doing this scene with him made her. She concentrated on pulling herself into her character. It was difficult to do today; all her acting skills seemed suddenly to have deserted her.

“Okay,” Lyle went on. “Now, Jessica is furious because Mark has decided to go work in the medical mission in San Pedro. She’s sure it’s all Curtis’s fault. But, of course, being Jessica, she hides that anger and is going to try to get even with Curtis, as well as cancel his influence with Mark. So, Isabelle, remember to let some of the anger peek through now and then.”

“I will.” Anger, she thought, would not be the hard part.

They walked through the scene, blocking it, setting marks for the camera angles. Then they ran through it once, rehearsing it. Isabelle was edgy and stiff. Even though rehearsal didn’t require pulling out all the acting stops, she felt as though she were merely stumbling through it. She couldn’t seem to get hold of her character.

Michael was standing very close to her. Isabelle looked up at him, very aware of the shape of his mouth, the faint, thin grooves that bracketed the corners of his lips, the way his eyelashes shadowed and darkened his eyes. She forgot her next line.

She backed up slightly, and Lyle barked, “No, no, no. Don’t turn away from him there, Izzy. You’ve got to pin him with those magnificent eyes. Like you could just suck him right in. Cassie, give her the line.”

Isabelle nodded. Cassie Shumway, one of the assistant directors, prompted her, and she plunged in again. They made it through the rest of their lines. Then they moved back to their original positions to start it all over again, this time with the camera rolling.

Isabelle was miserably aware of the fact that she was not in control of the character. She did not feel as she usually did when she acted. Rather, she felt as if she were outside herself, moving somehow by remote control. She was sure that Michael must sense her nervousness. She hoped that he didn’t guess why. It was absurd for a mature, experienced actress to be so nervous at the thought of an on-screen kiss.
It didn’t mean anything. It wasn’t real!
She was behaving like someone in junior high drama class, she told herself.

The thought served to stiffen Isabelle’s spine.
She was not going to let Michael Traynor upset her so that she couldn’t do her job!
She turned away, drew a deep breath and focused on the scene and her character.

When she turned back, Jessica’s smolderingly sensual expression was on her face, her eyes huge and glittering, her mouth slightly pouting. When Lyle said, “Places,” she took her position at the window of her apartment. The cameras began to roll. Isabelle looked around the living room, fluffing up a pillow on the couch, making sure the wine and glasses were ready, letting her face convey a subtle combination of controlled anger and determination.

The doorbell rang and she walked across the room to open it, casting a last glance of inspection down at her sexy dress and giving the neckline a little tug to make it lower. Then she wiped all the anger from her face, replacing it with a faint, almost teasing smile, and opened the door.

“Jessica.” Michael stood outside, looking puzzled and impatient. “I’m here. What was so important that you couldn’t discuss it on the phone?”

“Curtis...come in. Let me have your coat.”

He looked for a moment as if he would refuse, then sighed and shrugged out of the overcoat, handing it to her. His eyes swept down her body, taking in the dress. “Rather...elegant for a fireside chat, aren’t you?”

Heat flickered through Isabelle at the touch of Michael’s gaze, and she felt a moment’s panic that she was going to forget her line again. She was unaware that the inner heat showed in a softening of her lips and darkening of her mouth that was subtly seductive. When she spoke, the line coming instinctively to her mouth, her voice was slightly husky.

“Like it?” she asked, smoothing a hand over her hip and upper thigh, every curve revealed by the tight material.

“What man wouldn’t?” Michael countered lightly, turning away. “But it seems a trifle formal for a chat with your future brother-in-law, that’s all.”

“I just got back from a party,” Isabelle explained. Then she added, “Would you rather I changed into...something more comfortable?” She cocked an eyebrow and braced one hand on her hip, shooting him a challenging look.

Michael glanced at her sharply, his brows drawing together, his blue eyes hard. “No. I really haven’t the time. Why don’t you tell me why you asked me to come here?”

“Oh, Curtis.” Isabelle pouted prettily. “You’re always in such a rush. Sit down.” She gave him a playful push onto the couch. “Put your feet up.” She grabbed his legs and lifted them to prop his feet on the coffee table. She didn’t like touching Michael, didn’t like being this close. It made her feel too jumpy, too vulnerable.

He promptly put his feet back on the floor and said, irritated, “I would like to go home and get some rest. It’s been a long day. Could you please get to the point?”

Ignoring his words, Isabelle walked in her signature Jessica catwalk, sleek and smooth and sexy, to a serving table where the wine and glasses stood. “Relax a little, why don’t you? Have a glass of wine.” She pulled the cork from the bottle and began to pour.

“I don’t want any wine,” he protested, but she poured it anyway and returned with the glasses.

Looking exasperated, Michael took the glass and sipped. Isabelle took a small taste of it, too, and set her glass on the coffee table, then sat down on the couch beside Michael, facing him, with her legs curled beneath her. She laid her arm along the back of the couch, her hand almost touching him. He looked at her suspiciously and shifted away from her, but was stopped by the arm of the couch.

“What is it you want?” he demanded gruffly.

“Why, Curtis, I want us to be friends.”

His brows shot up. “What? That’s what you called me over here for? Honestly, Jessica...”

He started to rise, but she planted a firm palm on his chest and pushed him back down. She did not remove her hand. Michael glanced down at her hand, then up at her, suspicion and confusion on his face.

Isabelle was very aware of the warmth of Michael’s chest beneath her hand, even through his shirt. It sent strange tingles through her to touch him. Her heart was skittering, and her palms were damp. He stared at her in that long gaze so typical of soaps.

She wondered if he felt anything. It was hard to tell from the actor’s mask of his face, which reflected nothing but what his character felt. But Isabelle noticed that she could feel the thud of his heart through flesh and clothes, and it was beating too hard and rapidly to be entirely normal. It gave Isabelle a curious sense of satisfaction to think that perhaps he, too, was not entirely unmoved by this enforced intimacy between them.

“Cut!” Lyle said. “Great. That was great.”

Isabelle pulled back from Michael immediately and jumped up from the sofa, turning away from his bright blue gaze. Her heart was racing. She was annoyed with herself and Michael and the entire complement of writers. But, more than that, she was scared. The past scene was only the beginning of the seduction. If it had affected her this much, how was she going to make it through the rest of the day of shooting the seduction?

Numbly, she turned away.

“I
sabelle? Are you all right?” She heard Michael’s voice close behind her, and then his hand was around her arm.

She stopped and looked back up at him. He was frowning down at her with concern. His fingers were warm against her bare flesh.

“What?”

“Are you feeling okay? You looked pale all of a sudden.”

“Yes. I’m fine.” Isabelle eased her arm out of his grasp and quickly walked away. She was glad to see that he did not try to follow her.

They had to repeat two portions of the scene so that the camera could shoot it from the other side to get the other person’s reaction. Then, after a break, they blocked and rehearsed the next scene. They began to shoot.

This scene took up exactly where the other one had ended, with Isabelle’s hand pressing against Michael’s chest to keep him from rising. She scooted closer to him on the couch.

“Don’t go,” she said huskily. Remembering what Lyle had instructed her, she turned the full force of her eyes upon Michael. “I mean, since we’re both so close to Mark, it doesn’t make sense that we should argue. We ought to be together, to...unite to help him however we can.”

“If you’re trying to convince me to persuade him not to go on the medical mission,” Michael said, his voice a trifle uneven, “you can forget it. It’s what he wants, and it’s a wonderful project. I’m not going to use my influence with Mark to keep him from doing something that means so much to him.”

Isabelle’s hand moved slowly up Michael’s chest to the hollow of his throat. “I’m not asking you to do that,” she assured him softly, her eyes never leaving his. “I just want us to be friends.”

Now her fingers trailed down the middle of his shirt, lingering over each button. Michael gazed into her eyes, seemingly unable to tear his gaze away. His breath came harder and faster.

“There’s no reason for us to be enemies,” Isabelle went on in a low, sexy voice, and as she talked, she moved her face closer and closer to his. “Come on. Can’t we kiss and make up?”

She leaned forward to kiss him. For an instant, his face moved toward hers, too, but then he stopped and grasped her shoulders with his hands, thrusting her away from him. He jumped up and walked away to the window, then whirled around.

“What in the hell do you think you’re pulling, Jessica?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Isabelle replied, visibly smoothing the irritation from her face. She left the sofa and slinked across the set toward Michael. “Why are you so jumpy?”

“I’m not jumpy. But you were...” He gestured toward the couch.

“I was what?” she asked, rounding her eyes innocently.

He glared at her. “You know exactly what you were doing, but I’ll feel like a fool if I say it.” He released a long breath. “I’d better go.”

“No. Please. We haven’t finished talking.”

Michael grimaced. “I think we’ve more than finished. I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but it won’t work. This is one man who doesn’t fall for your wiles.”

“Oh, really? And why is that?” Isabelle smiled, and she ran her eyes slowly down his body. “Funny, you look like you’d be fully...functional.” She cocked an eyebrow teasingly.

He stiffened, and his eyes sparked, but then he raised his hands as if holding something back and said, “No. You’re not going to get to me that way, either.”

“Why, whatever do you mean?” Isabelle moved closer, and Michael did not step back. She was only inches away from him, and she gazed deeply into his eyes. “I think that you must have misunderstood what I said.” She began to play idly with one of the middle buttons of his shirt.

“I don’t think so.” His voice came out a little choked, and he moved back.

“What’s the matter, Curtis? Scared of me?” Isabelle’s expression was mocking and filled with sexual challenge. Holding his eyes with hers, she laid her palms flat against his chest and slid her hands slowly upward. Michael swallowed hard, and his jaw clenched, but he did not step away.

“No, not scared.” His voice was husky. “Just curious.”

“Curious?” She repeated without much interest. All her attention was now focused on his mouth. She moved across the inches that separated them so that their bodies were now lightly touching. The heat of Michael’s body blazed through Isabelle’s body like an electric shock, and she knew that her face was now soft with sensuality, her eyes dark and beckoning, without the least bit of effort on her part.

“Curious about what?” she murmured, linking her hands behind his neck. She turned up her face, offering up her succulent mouth to be kissed. “What it would feel like to kiss me?” Her lips were only a breath away from his now. Her heart was racing, and heat was pooling in her abdomen. “To take me to bed?”

Michael drew in his breath sharply, and his arms wrapped up around her. His mouth sank into hers. He kissed her hungrily, and whatever heat Isabelle had felt before was like nothing compared to the explosion that tore through her body now. His lips were hot and firm, pressing into her, moving her own lips apart. His arms molded her against him. She could feel every solid, muscular inch of his body against hers, and her loins blossomed with heat.

It had been so many years since she had kissed him that she had forgotten how it felt—how hot and fierce his mouth was, how sweet and yet demanding. She had forgotten the hungry, yearning way he wrapped himself around her, as if he would pull her into him and consume her. A shudder ran through her, and she tightened her arms convulsively around his neck.

Finally he raised his head, and for a long moment they stared into each other’s eyes. Then, in a flash of embarrassment, awareness of where they were came back to Isabelle, and she could see from the look in his eyes that Michael, too, had joltingly returned to reality. He drew in a breath, and then he released her, putting his hands on her shoulders and setting her away from him.

“No,” he said in a rough voice. “I wasn’t curious about that. I just wanted to see how far you would be willing to go to get what you want.” He quirked an eyebrow coldly. “I guess I found out.”

Isabelle’s eyes flashed, and her hand lashed out to slap him. They had rehearsed it, but earlier she had not moved with such quickness and venom. Still, he caught her wrist, just as planned, and held her arm motionless.

“Don’t try to take me on, Jessica,” he warned her. “I promise you, that’s one fight you’ll lose.”

He stepped back, dropping her arm, and turned and walked away from her. Isabelle stared after him in outrage and shock. As he reached the door, she broke out of her paralysis and, letting out a shriek, grabbed up a vase from a nearby table. She hurled it toward him, and it hit the wall with a satisfying crash. He was gone by then, but she picked up a book from the table and sent it flying after him. It hit the door with a thud. She sent all the loose pillows of the couch after the book and then flung herself down on the sofa in a paroxysm of rage.

“Damn you, Curtis Townsend!” she hissed fiercely. “I’ll get you for this! Whatever it takes, I’ll get you!”

* * *

Isabelle curled up in the chair in her dressing room, her knees pulled up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them. She laid her cheek against one knee and closed her eyes. She wished she could close her mind, as well, but that kept playing over the earlier scene with Michael. Her cheeks flushed again, just thinking of it. He had known—he had to have known—how quickly and deeply she had responded to his kiss. She had had no perspective, no distance, at all. She had reacted as if Michael were kissing her, not Curtis kissing Jessica. He could not have mistaken the rush of heat throughout her body or the eager way her mouth had pressed back against his. He knew that she had wanted him, as she had years before. No doubt he thought that she would be just as easy pickings for him as she had been then—provided he wanted to take her.

She wondered if the director and crew had recognized the reality of the desire, too. She prayed they weren’t all snickering behind her back at the way she had practically melted when Michael kissed her. She could only hope that they would simply assume that it was one of Jessica’s typical overheated scenes. The character had, after all, been married three times—twice to the same man—and had several affairs. Sex was Jessica’s usual weapon. If she was lucky, they wouldn’t notice the difference between the fake kisses, choreographed by her and the other actor, that were normal for Jessica’s love scenes, and the spontaneous combustion that had ignited today. She hated to think of the jokes that she would be subjected to if they had picked up on the difference.

There was a knock on the door, and Isabelle called listlessly, “Come in.”

The door opened, and Isabelle, her head down on her knees and her face turned from the door, gestured vaguely toward the opposite wall. “It’s hanging up over there.”

“I’m not Wardrobe,” a man’s voice answered.

Isabelle’s head snapped up and she stared in horror. “Michael!” She glanced down instinctively at herself. She was wearing only an old front-closing robe she often wore between changes or in Makeup. Three of the buttons were missing, and it was short enough that much of her legs were exposed—especially sitting as she was. Quickly she put her legs down and tugged the robe into place around them.

“What are you doing here?” she asked exasperatedly.

“Thank you. Nice to see you, too,” he replied sarcastically.

“Well? It isn’t exactly as if we’re friends.”

“What are we, then, exactly? I have to tell you, I got a little confused today on the set.”

Isabelle’s cheeks flooded with red and she looked away.

“The day I first came to the show, and I tried to talk to you, you acted like I had crawled out from under a rock,” he went on. “I figured, okay, if that’s the way you wanted it, that’s the way I’d play it. I mean, I know you have a right to resent me....”

“Resent you!” Isabelle cast him a scornful glance. “Despise is more like it.”

He looked at her evenly for a moment, then said, “All right. Despise me, then. No doubt I deserve that. Anyway, I stayed away from you, didn’t even talk to you off the set because I thought it was what you wanted. Then, today...”

“Today what?” Isabelle faced him, brazening it out.

“You know what. When I kissed you, it was like it was before with us. It was all I could do to stop and say my lines. All I wanted to do was keep kissing you.”

Isabelle turned away, and Michael reached out and grasped her shoulder, turning her back. He loomed above her, his eyes boring into hers.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t feel it, too,” he went on in a low voice.

“Don’t be absurd,” Isabelle replied breathlessly. “I was acting! We were supposed to kiss, so I kissed you the way my character would. That’s all.”

“You expect me to believe that? You mean to tell me you kiss every man you play a scene with like you’re going to melt and flow all over his skin?”

“Stop it! Don’t say that!”

“Why? Because it’s the truth? Damn it, Isabelle, why are you pretending?”

“I’m not pretending!” Isabelle blazed back, frightened by the weakness she felt at his touch. In another moment, he would be kissing her again to prove his point, and she didn’t think that she could stand that. “It was a scene, nothing more. I was acting. Anything I felt was only what my character would have felt.”

Michael released her shoulder, but he remained where he was, watching her. Isabelle kept her eyes turned away from him, unable to meet his gaze.

Finally he said, “You’re lying. I just don’t know whether you’re lying to me...or to yourself.”

“Please. Go away and leave me alone.”

Michael let out a sigh, then turned and left the dressing room. Isabelle collapsed into her chair and buried her face in her hands.

* * *

“I don’t know if I can continue to do it,” Isabelle said, picking up the glass carafe of coffee and carrying it into the small breakfast room where her friend sat. “I mean, it’s so hard to face him day after day.”

“You haven’t had to kiss him again, have you?” Nancy asked, raising her cup to her lips.

Nancy was sitting in her customary loose, casual fashion, her long legs draped over one arm of the chair and her thin torso sideways in the seat. Her long mop of thick golden-red curls tumbled haphazardly around her face, the result of her having just run her hands through her hair. Nancy Baker had been Isabelle’s best friend for years. They had met when Isabelle had first come to Hollywood, and Nancy had been the fledgling photographer who had taken Isabelle’s photographs for her portfolio. They had shared both a professional relationship and a close friendship ever since.

Nancy was the one person to whom Isabelle felt she could tell anything without fear of it ever being repeated or judged. Nor was Nancy intimidated by or jealous of Isabelle’s good looks. She had been a successful model before she became a photographer, and she understood the problems of being known to the world as a beautiful face. But perhaps the thing that had most cemented their friendship was the fact that Nancy accepted Jenny with complete equanimity; her younger brother had been born with Down’s syndrome and had always been a beloved part of their family.

Nancy and Isabelle had gone shopping together this morning while Irma stayed with Jenny. Now they were enjoying a friendly cup of coffee and a long talk while they kept an eye on Jenny and the dog wheeling around in the concrete driveway and parking area.

“No,” Isabelle admitted, adding, “thank heavens. But every week I’ve had more scenes with him. It’s been three weeks since that seduction scene, and next week I have at least one scene with him every day.”

Nancy shrugged. “You knew you would have to work with the guy.”

“You don’t understand. When he came to the show, Curtis and Jessica had virtually no relationship. But the writers keep building it up.”

“Why?”

Isabelle shrugged. “The other day Judy Weinburg told me that she loved getting to write a scene for Jessica with a man who wasn’t one of her former husbands or a past or present lover or someone who was trying to get into bed with her.”

Nancy hooted. “That makes sense. Jessica is the Slut of the World.”