Phoenix Falling (7 page)

Rainey sighed. "Those are the core elements of the story. The reason Randall is so torn when he returns home is because he's discovering more ambivalence inside himself than his rigid world view allows. Take that away, and there's no movie."

"Then find an actor who really enjoys playing tortured characters."

She offered a hesitant smile. "If you're feeling tortured about taking the part, you should be very convincing in it."

Exasperated, he began to prowl the living room. Rainey had decorated the place in her own charmingly eclectic style, but it was too small. Suffocating. "You don't know what you're asking."

"Apparently not, but it's clear from your reaction that this is way outside your comfort zone. What exactly bothers you about this story?" she asked. "Is it something personal, maybe the fact of playing a character so vulnerable when I'm directing? Or is it professional anxiety, the fear that you'll fail?"

He didn't want her to think more about personal reasons, though she was painfully accurate in guessing that he hated the idea of being stripped bare emotionally in front of her. She already knew him too well. "The personal and professional intersect. The combination of this particular role and working with you is more than I can handle. You've created a great opportunity for yourself. Don't ruin it because of some misguided belief that I'm essential to your success."

"Unfortunately, you
are
essential."

He turned to face her. "Truth time. Are you sure your conviction that only I can play John Randall doesn't have anything to do with our disintegrating marriage?"

She flinched as if he'd slapped her. "You think this is all an excuse to spend time with you?"

His smile was wintry. "Nothing as simple as that. I won't pretend to understand the workings of your convoluted mind. Only you can say for sure."

She bit her lip and thought about his question. "To the extent that being married to you gave me a better sense of your talent and potentials, it's personal that I want you for this movie. And... there's a small, sick part of me that loves the idea of working with you again. A much larger part would rather dodge trucks on the Santa Ana Freeway."

As always, her stark honesty undermined his defenses. Taking another tack, he asked, "Is the potential payoff for this movie worth the psychic cost of working together?"

"I think so, or I wouldn't put us both through this." Her changeable eyes were pure, cool gray as she regarded him. "Let's take it one day at a time, Kenzie. Don't think about the whole movie all at once. A day's shooting only amounts to a few minutes of usable film, and surely for those few minutes you can handle this role. There's nothing like slicing a story into hundreds of takes to grind the primal fear away."

She had a point. If he thought of this strictly as a matter of craft, performed one take at a time, it was more manageable. Acting didn't have to be personal, and probably was better if it wasn't. Maybe American Method actors felt the need to immerse themselves in ice water before playing a winter scene, but no well-trained British actor had to do that.

You're kidding yourself.
The voice in his mind was the one that couldn't be denied, that knew him in all his weaknesses. He
was
kidding himself, but he was caught between a rock and a hard place. Wanting to help Rainey, he'd given his word without checking the project out carefully enough. It had never occurred to him that the story would be one that gave him cold chills.

But he couldn't back out now without causing enormous damage to Rainey, and that he couldn't bear. He'd have to make the blasted movie, no matter how painful the process. "You win," he said reluctantly. "I won't quit, but don't blame me if my performance doesn't live up to your expectation."

"Thank God. You had me scared out of my wits." She approached and laid a hand on his wrist. "I'm sorry I didn't handle this better. I should have made sure you'd read the script before sending the contracts."

"The fault was mine." He looked down at her hand, feeling her touch burning through him. More than anything on earth, he wanted to take her in his arms. Just... hold her, as they'd once held each other at the end of long, exhausting days.

Impossible, of course. Someday, when the fires of passion had burned out and she'd married someone else, it might be possible to embrace as friends, but not now.

With effort, he moved away. "Even though I trust your judgment, ultimately the responsibility for reading the work was mine."

"Apart from horror at having to play Randall, what did you think of the script?" There was more than a trace of uncertainty in her voice.

"Very powerful. Good characters, good structure. Classic storytelling, which the movies need more of. I'd love to see it with, say, Laurence Olivier in his prime playing Randall."

"I'd have taken him if he was thirty and available. You're the next best thing."

"Compliments will get you... somewhere." Wanting to compliment her work in return, he said, "Your dialogue is excellent. Very incisive and British. Often witty."

"Most of the dialogue came from the book. I'm no writer. I just pulled the best bits out of the novel."

"There's an art to adapting a novel into a script. Give yourself credit."

"That's hard when I remember how insane I am to tackle a project this large and expensive with so little directing experience. Did I mention that I insisted on final cut?"

He rolled his eyes. "No wonder you needed a name brand actor to get financing. Why didn't you try to produce the movie in a smaller way, or for television? It would have been a lot easier."

"I wanted to make the best possible movie, and reach the latest possible audience. There's great, creative work being done for cable, but the budgets are usually tight and the audiences smaller. Doing it this way may be hard, but if it works, the result will come much closer to my vision of how the story should be made."

Gloomily he addressed the wall, which was covered with a mixture of paintings, framed prints, and flattish objects like antique rug beaters. "Why did I have to choose a profession where I'm surrounded by obsessed creative types?'

"Because you're one of us, of course, even when you try to pretend that acting is just another business. Movies are more than that. They spin dreams and hopes and fears. So do the actors who make them, which is why you're recognized all over the world."

"The downside of success." There were actors who enjoyed having women plead for sex, but Kenzie wasn't one of them. He loathed knowing he was a fantasy sex object for God knew how many women. And men.

He said good-bye and left, thinking how he'd arrived at her house determined to withdraw from her project. Yet here he was, still committed.

What the devil was it about Rainey that always made hash of his intentions?

* * *

She dropped into a chair, shaking, after Kenzie left. For a terrible few minutes, she'd thought her movie was doomed. She didn't understand his reaction to the script, but his distress was quite genuine. Odd. He was one of the least temperamental actors she'd ever met, saving his emotions for the camera. But John Randall had gotten under his skin badly.

Though she'd been able to talk him into continuing with the project, she could see that she'd have to chivvy him along every step of the way. Just what a new director needed—a skittish lead who was in virtually every scene of the movie.

She'd take it one day at a time. Kenzie might have to be encouraged or threatened to keep going, but she'd get a great performance out of him if it killed them both.

* * *

Needing to burn off some of his restless frustration, Kenzie spun his car eastward out of the driveway to head deeper into the hills. Damn Rainey! Her creative passions and her willingness to put herself on the line for what she believed in still entranced him.

His response to her celluloid image was pallid compared to the impact when they met at her audition for the
Pimpernel
. Acting with Rainey was like playing tennis with a champion who anticipated his every move and returned each shot with something extra. They brought out the best in each other, both professionally and personally. With her, he was someone he'd never been before. A man who was almost free.

He thought back to the evening they'd spent together after she won the role. The excitement of discovering a uniquely compatible spirit had been mellowed by a sense of familiarity, as if they'd known each other for a dozen lifetimes. Though he'd been alarmed by the way she slid past his defenses as if they didn't exist, that night he was almost reckless enough not to care.

He'd deliberately avoided seeing her again before production started. The next time they met was in the wardrobe department when they were being fitted for
Pimpernel
costumes. Garbed as Sir Percy, he wandered into the room where the costume designer was supervising as her assistants tucked and tacked a low-cut chemise and frothing, lace-trimmed petticoats around Rainey. The effect was deliciously provocative even though the garments covered her far more thoroughly than modern clothing.

"Your unmentionables look very authentic," he observed.

Rainey grinned. "I'll bet you learned a lot about period undies when you did work for the BBC. These have to be right since they're going to appear on camera."

The knowledge that he would peel that chemise from her slim body accelerated his pulse, even though there would be a production crew present when that happened. "Making a television version of
Les Liaisons Dangereuses
was a graduate course in eighteenth-century lingerie. In the process I learned that it's powerfully arousing to remove layer after layer to find the hidden woman."

"Really? I thought men found it powerfully arousing when females wear only about two ounces of nylon."

"That, too."

A young female assistant wrapped a boned corset around Rainey and began tightening the laces. "Now we'll fit the ball gown over this, Miss Marlowe."

Rainey gasped as the corset tightened. "I may die of suffocation!"

"There's a trick to corsets," Kenzie said. "Inhale deeply while she pulls the laces, and you'll have an inch or so more room in the gown."

She promptly sucked in a lungful of air to expand her chest and waist. The costume designer on the other side of the room said disapprovingly, "An inch more on the corset will look like two inches on camera."

"Better a live, chunky actress than a thin, dead one," Rainey retorted.

The designer smiled at the idea that Raine Marlowe could ever be considered chunky. "You can see why women in this era weren't very liberated. It took most of their energy just to breathe."

"The men weren't much better off." Rainey studied Kenzie's long satin coat, striped waistcoat, tight breeches, and high, gleaming boots with more than professional interest. "Amazing how long it took the human race to invent jeans and T-shirts."

Kenzie gave her his best courtly bow. "Ah, Marguerite, much elegance has been sacrificed to the squalid little god of comfort."

She immediately dropped into her role. Expression sultry, she lifted a carved ivory fan from a table and waved it languidly. "I vow, my lord, that you quite outshine me, as the glorious peacock outshines his drab peahen."

"My plumage has but one purpose, and that is to attract the most desirable female in the land." On impulse, he pressed his lips to the slender nape exposed by her upswept hair. Her skin was warm and silky firm.

She shivered and caught her breath, yearning and vulnerability apparent on her face. When he stepped back, their gazes caught as wordless messages hummed between them. Messages, and promises.

A poster of a similar kiss was used to illustrate the movie. It embodied such tender, erotic power that it ended up in the bedrooms of hundreds of thousands of schoolgirls. Critics raved that the onscreen chemistry between the
Pimpernel
leads threatened to melt the film stock.

But that was later. At the time, Kenzie had known only that Raine Marlowe was like a spun glass butterfly—delicate, strong, and utterly captivating.

* * *

He rounded a tight curve and found a straight, empty stretch of road ahead. He accelerated the Ferrari in a long, smooth surge of power, wishing he had the time to drive to the Mojave. There was something deeply purifying about the desert. But for now, the Santa Monica Mountains would do.

Flashing lights appeared in his rearview mirror.
Bloody hell.
Swearing at himself, he pulled onto the shoulder.

Behind him a motorcycle cop braked in a shower of gravel. After checking Kenzie's license tag in his computer, he swung from his bike and swaggered to the car. No doubt he was enjoying the prospect of proving that a badge was more powerful than an Italian sports car. Kenzie opened the driver's window and resigned himself to receiving a richly deserved speeding ticket.

"Do you know how fast you were going, sir?" The patrolman loomed over the low car, his tone less polite than his words. His name tag read sandoval.

"Not exactly, but certainly far too fast."

Officer Sandoval, rather young under his helmet, looked nonplussed at such ready agreement "Your record is pretty clean for someone who drives as if he's looking for a runway to land on."