Playing With Her Heart (23 page)

“Yes.” I’m barely
in this restaurant anymore. I’m some place else with him, a dark
and desperate place, as he cups the back of my head, and brings my
face to his neck, so my mouth is near his ear. “Now pretend you’re
home, and you have to be quiet, but it’s so fucking hard to be
quiet, because you’re picturing my cock in your mouth, and your
beautiful lips wrapped around me.”

“You’re killing
me,” I pant out. “I want you so badly. I want to do that to you.”

“And I want to see
your gorgeous mouth on me. I want to thread my hands into your hair
and feel you take me in. I want you to know what you do to me.”

It’s all I can see,
all I can picture, and I want to touch him, to know how hard he is,
if he’s as turned on as I am right now, because I’m well past
caring about anything except the way my body screams for him. I could
hike up my dress, unzip his pants, and slide on top of him right now.
I could ride him right here in the far back corner of this
too-cool-for-school restaurant and I honestly wouldn’t care if
anyone saw me, because I am mindless with my desire for him. I am
adrift in lust, and all I want is release, and I start to cry out
because it feels so good. But he silences me quickly, rasping his
knuckles against my lips. “Bite down when you come.”

And I do, as my fingers
fly and an orgasm starts deep in my belly and then spreads through my
body, making me quiver and shake and want to shout and moan and
thrash, but instead I bite down on him to muffle my sounds as I
shudder and come for him in the restaurant where we’ll be eating
dinner any minute.

Finally, when I can
breathe and speak and make contact with reality, I look at him, and
he has the most satisfied grin on his face when he shows me the bite
marks I left on his knuckles.

“I’m so sorry,” I
say.

“Don’t ever be
sorry for that.” Then he takes my hand, and he presses it against
his pants so I can feel his cock straining against the fabric. He
unzips the fly, locks my fingers into his, and brings my hand inside
his pants, then down his boxer briefs, and I nearly combust when I
touch him for the first time. He’s so hard and big and velvety
smooth. He’s throbbing in my hands, and I can tell how much he
wants me to touch him.

“Let me,” I plead.

He gives me a smirk,
then shakes his head playfully as if I’ve been naughty.

“God, when are you
going to sleep with me?” I ask because I’m so keyed up and so
frustrated. “I want you inside me.”

He removes my hand from
his pants, then zips them up and fastens the button.

“When I can fuck you
and make love to you at the same time, Jill. Like I want to. Because
that’s what I want from you,” he says, so matter-of-factly he
could be giving me a note on how to do a scene better in the show.
This is what he wants. This is what he expects from me. This is what
I’ll have to deliver. “That’s how I want to have you. Now it
looks like our food is here and I’m hungry.”

The waiter serves our
fish, and Davis says thank you, and all I can do is mumble a thanks.
He is so cool and collected and yet I’m the one who got off. This
man vexes me with the way he takes care of me so thoroughly, and
protects his own heart so fiercely.

But then, I suppose I
know what that’s like. I’ve been doing it for years.

He slices his fish and
spears a forkful. “Now, I want to ask you to go out with me again.”

“A second date?” I
ask, as he takes a bite of his dinner.

“Yes. Come with me to
the Broadway Cares event.”

“It’s one thing for
me to be at a restaurant with you. But there will be people there we
know.”

He huffs out a sigh.
“Fine. You’ll come in a restaurant for me, but you won’t attend
a formal event where I have to say a few words about the
fundraising,” he teases, shaking his head.

“It’s not the
same,” I try to point out, but my argument seems invalid, even to
me.

“You’re right,
Jill,” he says, playing along, as he places his fork and knife down
to take a drink. “That’s why it’s a good thing I have access to
extra tickets. Perhaps you can go with Shelby, and I can look at you
across the room and pretend I don’t know what you look like and
sound like and feel like when you come for me.”

A charge races through
me, and I’m about ready to grab him, pull him into the bathroom and
insist on what I want right now.
Him.
But instead, I try my
hand at negotiation. “I’m pretty good at acting. Maybe I’ll go
and act as if I’m not dying to have you. Maybe then you’ll
finally let me.”

The gauntlet is thrown.

Davis

Clay calls as I’m
leaving the Times Square subway station, heading up the steps to the
street.

“Are you emailing me
that new route to work? Because I’m walking precariously close to
the Belasco in about thirty seconds when I cross Forty-Fourth
Street,” I say, and the funny thing is it wouldn’t bother me if I
bumped into Madeline.

“Man, you are just a
tough bastard, aren’t you? But that’s not why I’m calling.”

“Ah, you missed me
even though I saw you an hour ago at the gym,” I joke, as the smell
of pretzels wafts past me from a nearby street vendor.

“Yeah, exactly. So,
I’m calling with a heads up.”

I groan. A heads up is
never good.

“Don is at the St.
James already. He’s got some film producers there to check out
Patrick.”

My shoulders tighten.
“What? Nobody told me about this.”

“It’s the
Pinkertons,” he says, mentioning the names of a pair of British
brothers who bankroll films. “For the second picture in
Escorted
Lives
.”

“The first hasn’t
even started shooting yet. They’re turning that into a trilogy
already?”

“Books were so damn
popular, the Pinkertons are doing all three. And there’s a
new-guy-in-town role for the second film, so they want to consider
Patrick for it. You know his
Crash The Moon
contract is for
ten months, so his agent brought in the producers since they’re in
town for a few days.”

“Do they think
they’re going to watch the rehearsal? Because that’s not how it
works,” I say firmly, my muscles tensing all over. “It’s not a
god damn open rehearsal. If the film producers want to see him play
Paolo, they buy a ticket to the show when it opens in two weeks.”

“I know,” Clay
says, heaving a sigh. “I said the same thing to Don. But you know
Don.”

“Yeah, he’s an ass.
What’s the deal? Is he in bed with the film producers? Is he
getting a cut?”

“I think he’s vying
for some small producer credit on the film. That’s why he brought
them in. It should only be a few more minutes. He’s got that
understudy with him.”

I stop in my tracks.
Like I’ve been punched in the ribs. A woman in a suit and heels
bumps into me, and I mutter an apology, then step into the doorway of
Sardi’s to get out of the way.

“That understudy?”
I ask through clenched teeth.

“McCormick? Is that
her name?”

“Jill McCormick.” I
shut my eyes. My blood feels like it’s boiling and I don’t know
what pisses me off more—Don commandeering the stage or Jill not
mentioning she’d be doing a scene with Patrick for the producers of
a romantic movie.

Rationally, I know
she’ll play many romantic roles throughout her career. Logically, I
would never do anything to stop her. But seeing as she’s
auditioning for all intents and purposes with
him
I would have
appreciated a heads up from her. I don’t know why she wouldn’t
tell me she was reading with him, but the omission sends a hot rush
of jealousy through my veins.

“Patrick likes
working with her, so he wanted to do a scene with her for the
producers. Not from
Crash the Moon
though. Don’t worry about
that. They’re just running lines from the next book.”

“Oh great,” I say
sarcastically. “That just makes it all fucking better.”

“Yeah, sorry, man.”
But he doesn’t know the half of why I’m angry. “And listen, I
know you can’t stand Don. But the show opens in two weeks, so if
you could do your best to let it go that would help me a ton as I
work on what’s next for you. Got a few possibilities I’m working
on. Maybe some
Twelfth Night
in London. Maybe a film.”

“Let me know what you
come up with. I’m always ready for the next challenge.”

I resume my path to the
theater. I turn into the alley, and Don is walking towards me with
the Pinkertons. Don smiles broadly and I seethe inside, but do my
best to follow Clay’s advice. “Davis,” he calls out as if we’re
pals happy to see each other. “Have you met Nicholas and Frederick
Pinkerton?”

I extend a hand,
keeping my anger tightly wrapped inside as I meet the two brothers.
“Pleasure to meet you both.”

Frederick Pinkerton
shakes my hand enthusiastically, and beams a bright smile that takes
me by surprise. “I’m a huge fan of your work,” Frederick says.
“I’ve seen all your shows on Broadway.
South Pacific
, and
Anything for You
, and
The Saying Goes
. Loved your film,
too. And I also saw
World Enough and Time
at La Jolla. Thought
it was utterly brilliant.”

I’m taken aback. I
didn’t expect Pinkerton to be anything but a dick but then, that’s
because he’s guilty by association with Don in my book. “Thank
you very much.”

“I’ve often thought
that play would make a wonderful film adaptation,” he says,
glancing up pensively at the gray February sky. Then he begins
reciting lines from the Andrew Marvelle poem.
“Had we but world
enough, and time. This coyness, Lady, were no crime. We would sit
down and think which way to walk and pass our long love’s day.”

I flash back to the
play. To Madeline playing the lead role. To the days and nights when
those lines and many others from the play were all I lived and
breathed. When I felt that way for her. Now, three years later, the
lines are only lines, the memory just that. Only a memory, and it
doesn’t hurt anymore.

“Helluva poem,” I
say, because it’s true, and because that’s all the poem is
anymore.

Frederick gives me a
serious look. “You know, Mr. Milo. We should talk about you turning
that into a film quite soon. Shall we set up a meeting for later this
week?”

“Absolutely,” I
say, and I’m honestly not sure how the morning is working itself
into such a strange turn of events. I’ve gone from being
blindsided, to being offered a possible next job. But the fact is, I
need to think about what I want to do next. The work of a director is
done once the show opens. The actors keep it going, and I move on to
the next job.

Don and the Pinkertons
walk away, and I head inside the theater as Patrick and Jill leave
the stage. She hangs her head low, and the guilty look in her eyes
makes my heart stop. But she’s desperately trying to make eye
contact with me, and she’s mouthing the words
I didn’t know
under her breath.

Patrick calls out to
me. “Milo!”

He has such a bright
smile on his face that he makes it nearly impossible to dislike him.
Especially when I can’t let my professional side pander to my
personal one. “Hey! That was totally last minute. Agent called late
last night since the Pinkertons were in town, and Don okayed it. Hope
you don’t mind us using the stage for it.”

“Of course not,
Patrick,” I say, in my best calm voice because the last thing I
need is for Patrick to be less than happy. He’s a linchpin in this
show, and if I want it to be the hit it can be, I have to make sure
the leading man has no clue I’ve dreamed of all the ways I can take
him out of the running with Jill. “The stage is always available
for you.”

“You’re the best,
man.”

Then he bounds down the
hall to his dressing room, singing a cappella to a Jack Johnson tune
that must be playing in his head and reminding him of beaches and
sunny skies. I turn around to see Jill standing in the hallway. “I
tried to call you this morning to tell you,” she says quietly so no
one else can hear.

“You did?”

“Yeah. About thirty
minutes ago. I got a crazy call this morning from my agent to be here
so I rushed to get ready, and I called you when I was in a cab. But
you didn’t pick up.”

“Must have been on
the subway.”

“I would have told
you. You have to know that, Davis,” she says and there’s real
worry in her voice that she might have crossed some sort of line. The
look in her eyes is one of genuine concern, and it erases all my
irritation from before. Then it hits me, like a blow I didn’t see
coming, that she can do this to me. That she has this power over me.
That she alone has a direct line to my heart. Where I was jealous and
angry minutes ago, now I am reduced once more to this all too
familiar feeling when I’m with her.

The feeling of not
wanting to be without her.

I press a hand against
the wall, and curse under my breath.

“Are you okay?” She
lays a hand on my arm.

No. I’m totally
screwed.

“Yeah. Just need to
get started. That little stunt cut into the day,” I say, pushing
all my frustration onto Don, even though it’s with me. It’s with
how I feel for her. I head for the stage, leaving her behind. I need
to focus on getting this show ready, because that’s why I’m here.
Not for any other reason.

* * *

Everyone is gone now.
I’m sitting on the edge of the stage, and Jill’s walking down the
aisle of the theater for one of our last private rehearsals.

“Are you still mad at
me?” she asks in a small, nervous voice when she reaches me. It’s
the first time we’ve been alone today. The theater is quiet and her
footsteps echo.

“I was never really
mad at you.”