Phantom Series Boxed Set (47 page)

Again she touched the sword.

And again nothing happened.

“Sorry,” she apologized. “Maybe I’m doing something wrong.”

“No,” Aiden said. “The exhaustion trapping me in this insubstantial state is hard to fight. Perhaps the magic must rejuvenate during the day.”

“Magic with a time limit? Who writes these rules?”

“Rogan,” Aiden spat. “His motives for creating such a trap in the first place are incomprehensible. And right now I am too fatigued to untangle his intentions. For now I prefer to focus only on you.”

The lights popped back on. Then off. Then on.

“Amazing,” he said on a wonder-filled breath.

“Are you doing that?” she asked.

“Yes,” he replied. “I seem to possess some of Rogan’s magic.”

She couldn’t help but smile, even though Aiden didn’t seem happy about this turn of events. The man was trapped in a curse and fighting intense exhaustion, and yet the light switch amused him; the ability to manipulate it did not.

Still, she understood his conflicting emotions. She hadn’t had a chance to think too hard about last night, but she’d been lonely enough over the last year—hell, possibly the last five—to know how much she’d missed by cutting herself off from the male species. Lauren had never denied her sexuality for so long. Being touched and aroused had always been a welcome escape. The thrill of seduction. The madness of orgasm. Yet before she’d released her phantom lover from the sword, the only satisfying action she’d gotten recently had been in her dreams—dreams of a dark-haired, gray-eyed stranger whose soul had felt as old as time.

Aiden?

Of course.

She glanced at the sword.

All this time he’d been haunting her, reaching out to her. She could kick herself for not defying Ross sooner. The shame she’d fought since she’d finally grown the balls to walk out on the cheating bastard flooded over her again. She’d been so young. Starstruck. Stupid. Ross had played on her vulnerabilities like a virtuoso. Was Aiden doing the same, catering to her sexual needs as Ross had appealed to her fantasies about stardom and financial independence?

Aiden’s invisible hands curved around her, softly pressing against the small of her back with a touch that was both light and erotic. With concerted effort she pushed her desires aside. She needed time to think.

“Will you return inside the sword?” she asked.

“You do not wish that,” he countered.

Despite the ephemeral quality of his voice, she heard his surprise loud and clear.

“No, I don’t wish it,” she admitted. “I’m just wondering where you’ll go.”

“Not far,” he replied.

With a chilled whoosh, Aiden moved away from her, the sensual quality of the air instantly lost in the cold, sterile environment of her trailer. She hadn’t yet had time to personalize her dressing area with more than a few of the leftovers from the last film. Her first Athena costume, encased in glass and hanging on the wall until the charitable donation she intended to make at the premiere of
Wrath of Athena
. The hand-embroidered gold cushions left over from the harem scene in
Athena’s Revenge
. The empty picture frames that used to hold photos of her and Ross. Knickknacks and memories, few of which reflected who she really was anymore.

“Who was that woman?” Aiden asked.

“What?” Did his magic give him the ability to read her thoughts? “Who?”

“The woman you spoke with? The one who intruded on our privacy.”

“Oh, Helen?” Lauren volunteered, happy to address a topic other than her damaged psyche. “She’s my best friend and, conveniently, the casting director on my latest film.”

Lauren marched into her bathroom to turn on the shower. She untied the drawstring on her pants, shaking off the unfamiliar shyness that came from knowing Aiden was watching her undress.

“A film?”

She stopped moving.
Wow
. How did you explain video and film to a man who’d likely never even seen a photograph?

“You said you’d seduced an actress once, yes?”

She could almost feel a wink in his voice when he replied, “I believe I’m up to two now.”

“I meant in the past.”

“Ah, yes. She was portraying Léonide in
Le Triomphe de l’Amour
in Paris when we first met. I was in a regiment assigned to escort an ambassador to the court of Louis the Fifteenth. I was instantly entranced. I found her again in London, where she played Titania in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
.”

Geez, could he have personally known Shakespeare? No, that wasn’t the right time period. Not that she knew shit about history, but she’d seen
Shakespeare in Love
, and Joseph Fiennes had clearly worn pantaloons. Aiden, while briefly in his clothes, had looked more like Jason Isaacs in
The Patriot
.

She shivered. In a good way. A very good way.

“A film is like a play,” she explained, “only it is recorded so that other people can see it later.”

“Ah,” he said, as if he understood.

But how could he? If he was from the past, as he claimed, then he’d have no way of knowing what a movie was. She’d just have to show him. Maybe use the video she’d taken last night.

The video
. She hadn’t turned off the machine, not even after Aiden had materialized. Which meant they’d made love within full view of the camera.
Shit
. She hadn’t removed the tape, meaning that Helen or anyone else who stumbled into the room might soon see exactly what Lauren had been doing…with Aiden. All night long.

Eight

Lauren shot out of the dressing room and nearly knocked over two interns in her dash to the workout room. When she flung open the door, her heart, pounding hard against her chest, dropped like a stone to the pit of her stomach.

“Helen!”

Her friend was standing at the tiny six-inch monitor, her eyes fixed on the screen and a wicked smile lighting her face.

Lauren jumped inside, locked the door behind her and dashed over to where her friend stood, her arms crossed and one manicured fingernail tapping her chin.

“You weren’t supposed to see this,” Lauren said, attempting to turn off the machine.

Helen slapped her hand away. Pleasured moans—clearly her own—issued from the tinny speaker.

“Or hear it,” she said, managing to at least snap off the volume. When she tried to shut down the power, Helen’s hand shot out and encircled her wrist.

“Don’t you dare,” her friend warned.

Lauren tried to laugh it off. “Into voyeurism much?”

Helen’s grin elongated. “Tell me watching other people doing it doesn’t get you hot?”

“It doesn’t,” Lauren lied.

Helen arched a doubtful brow. “Well, it gets me hot. Especially when…” Her eyes widened. “Oh, did he just—”

Lauren twisted out of Helen’s grasp and turned off the machine.

“Spoilsport,” Helen groused.

With a jab, Lauren pushed the eject button and retrieved the tape, which she shoved in her pocket.

“I’m going to forget you ever saw that,” Lauren said.

“I’m not. In fact, as a reward for letting me watch you get what you’ve so desperately needed over the last year, I’m going to cancel the auditions for your next leading man.”

Lauren eyed her friend suspiciously. “How? We start production in two days.”

“I know.”

The cat-in-the-cream expression on Helen’s face was not reassuring.

“Helen Wilhelm Talbot, what are you thinking?”

Helen reached around and patted Lauren’s back pocket, which was now hard and square with the evidence of her tryst. “I’m thinking I just found your leading man, and I’m willing to hire him sight unseen. Well, audition unseen. Otherwise, I’ve seen more than my fair share, and he’s delicious.”

Lauren jumped back as Helen headed toward the door. Her friend had clearly lost her mind. Aiden wasn’t real. Aiden was a ghost. Er, a phantom. Alive, but not completely part of this world. At least, not yet. And it would be damned hard to put him on film, since he was mostly invisible.

“You’re nuts,” Lauren announced.

“Maybe, but the chemistry you two showed on that tape nearly melted the acrylic off my nail polish.”

“That’s not chemistry,” Lauren argued. “That was sex.”

“You can’t have one without the other. The man is gorgeous. And that fight scene! He was holding back; I could see it. Toying with you. It’s been a damned long time since any of your costars looked like they could best you in a fight and make that tough-girl attitude of yours crumble with a touch. Michael is going to kiss my feet,” Helen said, her eyes gleaming now in the particular way they did when she’d made up her mind about something.

Only a few months ago Michael Sharpe, the director, had said something to Lauren about making sure the last film paired her with a hero worthy of Athena’s strength and power. He’d instructed the scriptwriters to pen a romantic story line that would satisfy the hordes of female moviegoers who had become her loyal fan base. Guys flocked to the movies, too, but it was the women who bought the tickets and the merchandise, who dressed their daughters in Athena Halloween costumes and made Oprah’s ratings shoot even higher whenever Lauren appeared on the talk show to promote a film.

Helen rubbed her hands together like the proverbial silent-film villain—only this time she was entirely on Lauren’s side. If the film did well, they’d be hot properties in Hollywood and beyond.

Lauren had to admit Aiden was perfect. Strong, clever, sexy. A combination of rogue and warrior. She could easily imagine him pulling a sword over some dishonor or slight, just as easily as she could see him seducing a theater full of women with one heady glance, magnified in breathtaking glory on a silver screen. Oh, and IMAX? The possibility stole her breath.

But she couldn’t forget that he wasn’t real. Even the latest advances in film technology couldn’t get around that little detail. However, the video proved he would show up on camera. If he was filmed at night, at least.

Still strategizing, Helen went on: “With this hunk as your leading man, Michael will get exactly what he wants, and you’ll get a little—well, maybe not so little—action on the side. And affairs between costars can be good for a film if the publicity is handled right. Can you imagine how insane with jealousy Ross will be? Oh! This is so fucking perfect! Now tell me who he is and how I can find him. Who’s his agent?”

“He’s not an actor,” Lauren insisted.

“Oh, well…who fucking cares? He’s got enough charisma, and intensity to pull this off. The rest we’ll fake.”

“Fake?” Lauren wasn’t sure when she had started to get offended by comments like that. It wasn’t as though she’d won an Oscar. But since she’d started playing Athena, she’d worked hard at her craft. Just
anybody
couldn’t pull it off, especially not someone from the eighteenth century.

“The only actor who has to act in this film is you. Everyone else is window dressing.”

“That’s not true,” Lauren insisted. She wanted to feel flattered, but she’d been doing this too long not to understand how having talented costars pushed her to shine. Ross Marchand had spared no expense to bring in A-list actors to play opposite her or to take high-profile cameos. She couldn’t deny that he’d done all the right things to make her who she was—but it was now up to her to keep her reputation golden.

And while that wasn’t the reason she couldn’t pursue Aiden as her costar, the excuse would work great for Helen.

“I think I rate better than amateurs, don’t you?” she asked haughtily.

Helen rolled her eyes. “You can play diva with someone else, Lauren Cole. You just don’t want to share your boy toy with the rest of the world.”

“Does he look like a boy?”

“He looks like heaven, but if you don’t tell me his name and how I can find him, we’re both sunk, and you know it. You could, of course, read with each and every model-turned-actor scheduled to show up in”— she glanced at her watch—”thirty minutes.”

Lauren opened her mouth to argue, but groaned instead. She knew Helen would punish her further by choosing a sensual love scene to read with all the auditioning actors, which would mean hours of awkward chitchat as a prelude to inept fake kissing, moaning and orgasms. She could either waste time with Helen, who would undoubtedly find no one who floated Lauren’s boat, or she could take a chance that she could…what? Work something out with the phantom so he’d be her costar? Demand that they shoot his scenes only at night? She supposed she’d heard of wackier demands in Hollywood. Most people probably wouldn’t raise an eyebrow.

Of course, most people didn’t have Ross Marchand as their producer.

“I’ll talk to him,” she promised, hoping to stall.

Helen’s smile was entirely too confident for someone who’d gotten just a
maybe
. Then again, maybe didn’t exist in Helen’s professional vocabulary. She was the ultimate do-or-die film executive, which was why she had so much on the line with this movie.

So did Lauren. So what did she have to lose by asking?

***

She’d left the door to the trailer open. Despite the increasing fatigue that made it hard for Aiden to remain entirely aware of his surroundings, he could not pass up the opportunity to explore. He’d been trapped in one place so long, he longed to move, survey the landscape and assess his situation from a broader angle. His instinct, born of many duels and battles, could not be waylaid. Rogan’s cursed magic would simply have to wait its turn to torment his soul.

A surge of power shot through him. He gave a cursory glance at the sword, then concentrated and pushed his diaphanous form into this new and fascinating world.

Sadly, the world he anticipated did not exist outside of Lauren’s domicile. The trailer, as she’d called it, stood within a building the size of the cathedrals of Paris or the palaces of London. The ceiling stretched six or seven stories high, and the walls, a dull charcoal gray, were obscured by stage sets the like of which he’d never seen.

To his left he spied the interior of a mountain cavern, replete with dark stone walls and a river of glistening black ooze piping through the middle. To his right a wide expanse of sheer material fluttered in an unnatural wind across walls that shimmered with angelic luster. The furnishings within were all gold-leafed and worthy of a sultan’s harem.