Her Leading Man (21 page)

Martin took a larger gulp of his gin and tonic and
sighed. “I suppose
you’re right.” He seemed to be
trying to shake off his gloomy mood.

When he smiled, Christina discerned lines of stress
around his eyes. She
sat on her hand to keep it from
reaching out to smooth away those clear
signs of tension.

This was absurd. Martin needed her support. He
didn’t need her to
be sitting across from him, fighting
tooth and nail with herself in order to
keep her ill
-
controlled
impulses in check. He deserved more
from
her than
that, if only out of fellow feeling. After all,
she was planning to be a healer.
It was, therefore,
her job to attempt to
remedy distress when it presented
itself to
her.

Besides all that, it would give her a good excuse
to touch
him

She silently shrieked at herself to stop trying to
undermine her better
instincts. Even as she did so,
she pulled her hand out from underneath her
bottom
and
leaned over the table to touch Martin’s furrowed
brow. He jerked his
head up, startled.

If he felt the same electrical tingling she did
every
time
they touched, Christina didn’t blame him for
jerking. “Try to relax, Martin.
Everything will work
out all right.”

“
You think so?” He both looked and
sounded
skeptical.

“
I’m sure of it. You must know by this time that
pictures are always a little confusing while they’re
being
made. After you finish the shoot and go through the
film and edit it,
I’m sure it will be a wonderful picture.”

He only stared at her for several moments, his
large, dark, and
perfectly gorgeous eyes directed at
her face. Christina, who couldn’t even
recall the last
time she’d been ill at ease in the company of
another
human
being, felt like squirming in her
chair.

Martin opened his mouth, then shut it without
speaking. After
another second or two, he opened it
again, and again shut it without speaking.
Christina
didn’t have any idea what he was thinking, but she
wished he’d spit it
out, because she didn’t know if
he wanted her to stop stroking his poor
forehead. She
didn’t want to stop. She loved touching
him
.
Which
was probably a very bad thing.

“
You know,” Martin said eventually, after
another
couple of failed attempts to get words out, “every
time we touch, I
feel—something.”

“
You
do?” Christina felt her eyebrows lift in surprise.

He nodded, as if he were too unsure of his ground
to say anything more
until he found out how she’d
react to his
first
declaration. She
decided to help him
out.

“
I do,
too.”

“
You do?” His smile fairly dazzled her. “I’m
glad.
I thought it was just me.”

After hesitating for only moment, she said, “No.
It’s not just
you.”

She almost swooned when he reached for her hand
as it stroked his
brow and lifted it to his lips. Sweet
Lord in heaven, she was going to die right
here and
now
if he kept that up. She didn’t say so, but only
swallowed.

“
What
does it mean, Christina?”

The way he said her name entered her ears and
trickled through her
body like sweet, warm syrup.
She felt her bones start to melt and languor
steal
over
her.

Her reaction to his touch astonished her. She didn’t
know what it meant.
Was this passion? She’d become
accustomed to thinking of herself as a cold fish
of
a female
who possessed few of the feminine emotions
so common among her earthly
sisters.
Therefore
, this
reaction to him was unaccountable to
her.

“
I—I don’t know.” She also never stammered.
If
this was passion, it was obviously no good for the
mental functions of
those involved.

He reached for her other hand, which had been
gripping the table.
He had to pry her fingers loose.
Christina didn’t know why, either, because
she was
in no
condition to be stubborn about anything, much
less keeping a grip on the
table. He fondled both of
her hands in his and lifted each one in turn to
those
wonderful lips.

“
Your hands are lovely, Christina. So
small and
smooth and perfect.”

Oh
,
God, he was making love to her And she
was
falling
for it. Christina wanted to thrust the table
aside and leap upon Martin Tafft
right here and now
.
Since even in her befuddled condition
she knew that
was out of the question she said, “Erk.”

That wasn’t right
.
It wasn’t even
coherent. She
tried again. “Thank you.” Better. Not great, but
better.
“And
something definitely happens when we
touch.”

“
Yes. It
does.”

Ah, a simple sentence, but an understandable one.
Maybe she was
getting a handle on this stuff.

Martin turned her hands over so that her palms
lay face
up on his and leaned
over to kiss them. Any
slight handle Christina had discerned in the
fog
clouding
her brain slipped away like smoke. Good
God, this was awful. It was
wonderful. It was the
most pleasurable experience in her whole
life.

Still holding her hands, Martin leaned forward
across the table. As
if she were a pile of puny metal
shavings and he a powerful magnet, she
leaned forward
to meet him When he kissed her, she knew
the days of her
maidenhood were numbered.

Never, in his entire ten-year career in the
pictures,
had
Martin Tafft taken advantage of an actress. Never.
Ever. Not
once.

Sure, he’d been tempted. Women were always
throwing themselves
at the producer or the director,
hoping in that way to boost their careers.
Martin had
always considered such tactics pitiful, and the
directors
who
took advantage of them no better than
wolves preying on unwary lambs.

So why was he now sitting in a bar across from
Christina Mayhew and
kissing her?

Because he wanted to make love to her so badly,
his whole body
ached. He wanted to carry her upstairs
to his room and stay with her until
the rest of
the world went away. He wanted to chuck Peerless,
Grandmother Mayhew,
Pablo Orozco,
Egyptian Idyll
,
and everything else that wasn’t Christina out a
window
and
forget about it.

Pulling slightly away from her, he first tried to
focus
his
eyes on the table. He didn’t quite dare look
her in the eyes yet.

In hands that shook, he held hers, then again lifted
them one at a time
to his lips. Her skin felt like
magnolia blossoms against his—whatever
magnolia
blossoms felt like. Martin tried to
shake the prose-
purple fancies out of his head, but couldn’t. If
anyone
deserved an excess of flowery language, it was this
woman.

“
Christina . . .” He didn’t have anything to
say;
he only loved her name
.
It felt good on his
tongue.
Special. Perfect. So he said it again. It flowed
like
honey or
spiced wine. “Christina.”

“
Martin . . .” She didn’t continue after
speaking
his name, either. Perhaps she felt the same way
about
him
.

H
e
dared to lift his eyes and gaze at her
face. Her
eyes were closed and there was an expression of
rapture
on
her face. Martin imagined it mirrored his own
expression. Rapture with a hint
of frustration.

“
Christina, I . . .”

This attempt at coherence was no better. He still
didn’t know what to
say.

Her eyelids fluttered open, and he found himself
staring into her
huge, beautiful eyes. They appeared
almost green in the dim lighting of the
saloon.

“
You
what?” she whispered.

“
I—I—” He wanted to go to bed with
her
was
what
he wanted. He couldn’t say it. It was too
tawdry. Too
lurid. Too unlike him
.
With a monumental
effort, he
managed to pull away from her
.
He
couldn’t let go
of her hands, though That was too much to ask of
a mere mortal male
“Um
. . .
would you care for another
drink?”

He couldn’t believe he’d asked her such a
monumentally
mundane question. From flowers to ashes
in one or two simple statements.
He must be more
rattled than he’d thought—and he’d thought he was
pretty rattled. He
wished he could back up and say
something else. Something that made even a
little bit
of
sense. He wasn’t surprised that she first blinked
at him, and then
withdrew slightly.

In a voice so polite it all but gleamed with polish,
she said, “No, thank
you.”

Lord, he was botching up this scene as badly as
he’d botched the
water-from-the-well scene yesterday.
And this one was
important
.
He shut his eyes for a
moment, trying to unscramble his
thinking processes.
It was no use. They wouldn’t
unscramble. Unable
to resist, he lowered his head until
it rested on
Christina’s hands. He felt like an idiot, and he
couldn’t have
stopped himself if he’d tried.
“Christina,” he whispered, loving the sound
and
feel of
her name on his lips and tongue.

“
Oh,
Martin.”

He felt her lips gently press against his forehead
and he shut his
eyes, his feelings too close to the
surface for comfort. He was a man. Men
weren’t supposed
to get carried away by their emotions, for pity’s
sake
.

But there was something about Christina. Something
inside him reacted
to something inside her, and
when the two somethings combined, all the
worries
tumbling around in him settled as if he’d taken a
tonic. It was—it was
almost like magic.

Which was really stupid. It was more likely
lust
.

That lowering reflection spurred him to raise his
head. He felt
foolish for having allowed himself to
succumb to what he considered a weakness.
After a
second’s
struggle, he managed to produce a
fairly
respectable
grin. “Sorry, Christina. I guess I
got carried
a
way there for a minute.”

After what looked like a second’s struggle on her
own part, she
returned his grin. “I guess I did, too.”

He licked his lips, a sign of his discomfort, of
which he didn’t
approve. “I—I’m sorry.”

She gave a tiny shake of her head. “I’m not. I
love the way I feel
when you touch me.”

Oh
,
Lord. Martin stared at her, thinking that
was
a very
dangerous thing for her to have said. If she
said anything more of a like
nature, he might not be
able to control himself. He’d never felt so near
the
breaking
point as he did this minute. “Um
. .
.”