Wild Honey (20 page)

But the crux of his call, it soon became apparent, was a warning. “I hope you haven’t forgotten our agreement, Sasha. If word gets out that you were involved, we’re taking the official position that you were a stand-in. You did a few long shots, action shots, nothing more. That should be your position as well, of course.”

“Of course.” Her voice was toneless as she wondered what she was going to do when the picture came out. Seeing it was out of the question. Even a glimpse of the clips on television would be an excruciating reminder of everything she’d been trying to forget. “What do you hear from Marc?” she asked, regretting the question as soon as it was out.

“Marc?” Paul’s sigh was low and exasperated. “Who knows? We’re lucky to make contact once a month—and then we have to track him down....”

Seconds later, staring at the phone she’d just hung up, Sasha wondered numbly if she’d said goodbye. The memory of her last encounter with Marc flooded her, and suddenly she was clinging to him again, swaying with him in the antique chair, whispering his name. Her throat tightened, and tears stung her eyes. She turned and walked out of the office without another word to anyone and went straight to her car.

Once in her apartment, she began cleaning, the range first, then the refrigerator. The phone rang several times, stopping abruptly, starting again. She ignored it and poured on the elbow grease. It didn’t matter a fig that the kitchen was virtually spotless. Cleaning
was action
. It was movement. It took the deliberate use of her brain to decide whether a liquid cleanser or a chlorine-based powder was the agent of choice for catsup stains. It forestalled what frightened her most—sinking back into the pit it had taken her months to crawl out of.

The phone rang again.

Her stampede into the kitchen ended with a choked, helpless cry as she stared at the bleating machine. “What is it?” she blurted out, grabbing up the phone.

“Sasha?” Lou Ryan’s raspy voice assaulted her nerves.

“Oh, Lou, not now,” she said.

“Not now? What’s that supposed to mean, not now? I’ve got the role of a lifetime for you! Listen to me, it’s a star vehicle for Paramount—Paramount, Sasha—but there’s just one catch. These guys want a name actress, a rising star.”

“Then why are you calling me, Lou?” Sasha felt a wrench of regret for the childhood dream that would never be realized. She was never going to be a star, rising or otherwise, that much was certain.

“Haven’t you heard? Word is out that Tell Me No Lies is fabulous. If we could convince the Gemini people to let you go public, imagine the publicity! Marc Renaud’s mystery woman! Sasha? You there?? This is a window of opportunity situation. Sasha?”

Marc Renaud’s mystery woman? Star? The labels buzzed raucously in her head, reminding Sasha that this was how it had all started, with a call from Lou Ryan. She’d hung up on him then—and made the mistake of picking up the phone the next time it rang.

“Good-bye, Lou,” she said, her aim deadly as she hooked the phone in its cradle. She wouldn’t make that mistake again.

Tell Me No Lies
was a smash hit when it premiered two weeks later. Quietly amazed at the rave reviews and around-the-block lines at the theaters, Sasha didn’t know what to think about it all. She was sad. She was proud. She was overwhelmed, especially by the fact that the critics were most ecstatic about her performance. They’d called the action shots “spellbinding,” the love scene “hauntingly torrid” and “ineffably beautiful.” Of course, they thought they were reviewing Leslie, but Sasha knew who had done the work, and the Gypsy child in her blossomed under the affirmations that it was good.

Lou Ryan sent her flowers and besieged her with phone calls. “Please, Sasha, go public! It’ll put us both on the map!”

Sasha firmly refused. Beyond her agreement with Gemini, she had her own code of honor. She would never break a promise for reasons as self-serving as personal gain. Nevertheless, the pull of bright lights and poignant memories was strong in the days to come. Though it brought her pain, she found herself watching the trailers that ran on television and poring over the reviews. Every day she teetered on the brink of actually going to see the movie, standing in line, sitting in the theater, crying her heart out. No, she couldn’t do it.

She’d nearly waited out the run of the film when she found herself home early one evening guiltily thumbing through the entertainment section of the newspaper. The television talk show she always watched droned in the background as she dunked fresh vegetables in yogurt dip and perused the movie listings. There was a seven o’clock showing she could still make. To go or not to go??? In the midst of her dilemma, a voice drifted through her consciousness.

“...And after a word from our sponsors, we’ll be right back for a chat with the director of Tell Me No Lies.”

Sasha spun around to the television in confusion. Director? They couldn’t have meant director. He was an entire continent away. Producer maybe? Or star? She stared at the screen, adrenaline rousing her heart as the commercial came to an end and the show’s lead-in theme began.

The announcer said it again, the D word—director!—and Sasha’s senses reeled. The hostess’s smiling face materialized, but Sasha couldn’t make out a word of her introduction. All she could do was stare, transfixed. Forgetting to breathe, losing every lucid thought in her head, she followed the camera’s pan to the woman’s first guest: Marc-André Renaud?

Yes! Sasha gripped the back of the chair she was sitting in. Yes, it was him! He was smack on the screen in her own kitchen, every stunning inch of him, making his entrance, shaking the woman’s hand, taking a seat next to her. As the camera focused in on his features, on his melancholy smile and wrenchingly beautiful gaze, Sasha felt a soft spasm of pain. She lifted her head and clenched her jaw, stubbornly fighting the sensation.

In the first few seconds of his polite exchange with the hostess, Sasha nearly died hearing his voice. Would she ever get over him? Ever? Such a flare of anguish filled her heart that she curled a fist in the hollow of her throat. Her other hand found the remote control on the kitchen table. She couldn’t watch. She would have to turn the television off. It came to her then, as she was about to hit the button and send him into oblivion, that she was staring at the man who had ruined her, destroyed her...saved her. Wasn’t she better for having known him? Wasn’t she stronger? Didn’t the pain purify her in some way and give her more compassion?

Her finger hovered over the button as the hostess asked her first question. “Did you come back to promote your movie, Mr. Renaud?”

“No, actually,” he said, “I came back to set the record straight.”

The camera flashed briefly to the hostess’s surprised expression before returning to Marc.

“The movie’s getting excellent reviews,” he explained, “and nobody could be happier about that than I. I just want to be sure that credit is given where credit is due. There’s someone who deserves to take a bow for those reviews right alongside the rest of us who were involved. She’s an excellent actress who came into the project at a difficult time—”

Sasha’s hand froze.

“Are you saying it was intentional that she wasn’t given credit?” the hostess broke in.

“Not intentional exactly, but we had to replace the star before several key scenes were completed. Luckily we found an actress whose resemblance to Leslie Parrish was so remarkable that we could finish the film. It was my decision to keep that actress’s identity a secret. It’s my decision now to give her the recognition she deserves for her work.”

As a freeze-frame shot of Sasha running toward the water filled the screen, Marc’s voice captioned, “You’re looking at Sasha McCleod, the actress who did all the action shots and the critically acclaimed love scene.”

“Mr. Renaud, this is something of a bombshell,” the hostess said. “How does the studio feel about what you’re doing?”

A faint smile crinkled his mouth. “I guess I’ll find out after this show, won’t I?”

“So you’re doing this without their knowledge?”

“You could say that.”

Sasha was nearly ill with astonishment. He was risking his position with the studio in order to give her credit? She stood, less out of reflex than to make sure that she could. Her mind rushed over the reasons he might be doing such a thing—guilt, a sense of obligation, personal publicity—but the only explanation that registered on her bewildered psyche was that he still cared. A man didn’t jeopardize his career over casual feelings.

The hostess continued with probing questions about Sasha and the movie until Marc announced that he’d volunteered all the information he could. Adroitly heading her off with anecdotes about the location scouting he’d been doing in Europe, he steered the conversation to his latest project. The woman was polite throughout, but doggedly persistent with gossipy tidbits, and before the segment was over, she’d delved into Marc’s personal life.

“I’ve been out of circulation for a few months now,” Marc offered.

“I see. Giving up the vices, are we? Wine, women, and song?”

Marc shook his head amiably. “Song, maybe.” He held his hand up, exaggerating the shakiness in his fingers. “I did give up smoking though.” His tone was wry, pained, a man sorely tested. “Haven’t had a cigarette in months.”

He’d given up
smoking
? Sasha sank back down in the chair, her head spinning with the ramifications of that incredible bit of news. He’d quit smoking? Entranced, she wanted to hug the television, kiss the screen. For her, she wondered, her mind leaping once more to the only possible conclusion for a woman in her state of delirium. He did that
for her
?

She had to see him was the next impulse that mobilized her. Where was he? How would she find him? What were the call letters of that television station? Thoughts Ping-Ponged through her head, but some tiny inkling of reality held her in place. Whoa, she thought, skidding to a mental halt and scrambling to get back into the realm of logical possibilities. She wasn’t just leaping to conclusions, she was pole-vaulting to them.

What if he didn’t want to see her, she thought, alerted by a little bell ringing insistently in her head. What if his motive were guilt or obligation? What if Lou Ryan had contacted him? Her enthusiasm drooped. Suddenly the ringing in her head was drowned out by pounding. Someone was at her front door.

She wasn’t sure what she said when she opened it and saw Marc there—or if she said anything at all. The single bell had become a thousand pealing chimes, doorbells, alarm bells, wind crystals, all singing out a beautiful chorus of sheer astonishment and sweet, wild hope. It was him. Breathing the same fragrant spring air she was. He was smiling faintly, gazing down at her.

Her throat swelled to bursting.

It came to her eventually, as she stared at him with a splash of a smile, that she was also pointing at the television where his interview had gone off only seconds before. “How did you get here so quickly?”

“I taped it this morning,” he explained, his blue gaze capturing hers. “I’m glad you saw it, Sasha. I was hoping you would.”

His voice was husky, the undercurrents so rich with resonance, she could have floated on them. “Are you going to be in trouble now?” she asked. “With the studio?”

“It wouldn’t be anything new, would it? I’m always in trouble with the studio.”

He moved into the room, and somehow she felt his fingers graze the inside of her wrist and enclose it in the heat of his hand.

“Sasha,” he was saying, his voice caressing every letter in her name, “I want you to go to the movies with me. I think you’re going to like the one I’ve got in mind. There’s this incredibly beautiful woman and this moody, pain-in-the-neck guy who makes her life a living hell.”

“A movie?” she whispered, hardly able to keep from flinging herself at him. “Why do you think I’d like it?”

“Because it has a happy ending.”

“Really?”

“It’s kind of a universal theme...troubled guy gets his life straightened out with a woman’s help. Circumstances split them up, but he finally sees the light...and hopes it’s not too late.”

All she could do was shake her head and gasp as he swept her into his arms. “Marc,” she cried softly, tangling her arms around his neck, pressing herself to him.

“Sasha,” he said with a groan, “Sasha, I’m sorry. I had to go back. I had to deal with it alone, do you understand?” He brought her face up, kissed her eyes. “You were right, I was running. I had to go back and face my father’s death, the guilt, the nightmares, or I would have kept running, from
everything
...from you.”

Tears streamed down her face as she pushed back to look at him. The sadness, the rage, were gone. The lights in his eyes were shimmering with heat and passion, the sweet, crazy need of a man for a woman. The touch of his hand on her waist made her ache for him. “Maybe we can go to a late show?” she suggested.

“You read minds too?” He pulled her closer, pressed his lips to her temple. “Did I tell you that in the movie the guy falls in love with the girl and asks her to marry him?”

“What’s her answer?”

“She turns him down.”

“What?”

His voice dissolved in a soft groan and his eyes flared with desire as he picked her up and swung around with her in his arms, eyeing the living room couch. “She turns him down, which forces him to make mad, passionate love to her until she changes her mind.”

Sasha gasped, laughing and crying as he lowered her to the couch. “And does he? Change her mind, I mean?”

“Yes,” he said, his eyes full of fire and tenderness, “but it takes him a long, long time, because she’s an amazingly strong-willed woman.”

Sasha arched up to meet his mouth, her body already melting. “Strong-willed, but very shrewd,” she murmured.

It was almost too late in the game when she asked him, too late for a sane question, a reasonable answer. She was so drugged with passion, she barely cared what his answer was going to be, but curiosity, the tenacious little voice that was and had always been her bête noire, made her ask. “Why did you do it, Marc? Why did you put your career at risk for mine?”