Reilly's Return (12 page)

Reilly shook an accusatory finger at her. “You
trashed every one of these films in your column. You hated them and you hated me in them.”

“I did not!”

“Oh? Ha!” His laugh was pure derision. “Tell me you liked
Raider’s Revenge.”

“I didn’t. It was dreadful. I’m amazed Jamison Roswold can direct himself out of bed in the morning. The script wasn’t fit to wrap fish in. But I
never
said I hated your portrayal of the Raider.”

“Well, you did,” Reilly insisted. “You’ve never thought I could act worth a damn, and you’re probably right. But it irks the hell out of me you get to say so in a hundred and thirteen newspapers every bloody week.”

Jayne ignored the second part of his outburst. Her attention zeroed in on the first part. There had been a certain strain in his voice, a certain flash of vulnerability in his eyes. She’d seen it before and hadn’t quite been able to interpret it. She concentrated on it now, holding herself very still. Out of habit her fingers of her right hand toyed with the bracelet she never removed from her left wrist. It was silent, but Reilly’s expression told her everything she needed to know: Big, tough, cocky Pat Reilly was having a crisis of faith.

He shifted uncomfortably under her steady stare. Jayne felt a surge of sympathy and compassion.
Poor Reilly. If anyone was ill equipped to have an attack of insecurity, it was Pat Reilly. He would see it as a weakness. He would hate himself for it. He would demand more of himself and deliver less, and the circle would spiral down and down.

Unable to stop herself, Jayne reached out and laid a hand on his rigid forearm. The need to reassure him was too strong to resist. She didn’t really want to resist it anyway. She liked Reilly. It hurt her to see him hurting.

“I think,” she said quietly, earnestly, “that you have a wealth of talent. I think it’s a shame that talent has been wasted on second-rate stories. I think it’s a shame no director has been astute enough or shrewd enough to help you tap into it. I think you’re a very good actor, that with the right project and the right director, you could be great.”

Reilly stared down at her warily, wanting to believe her but not quite able to. The conflict built within him until his chest was so tight he could hardly breathe.

“You certainly wowed ’em tonight in that scene you played with me,” she said with a touch of irony.

“There wasn’t much acting to that,” he admitted quietly. “I was too wrapped up in you to concentrate. When I’m with you, I’m no actor at all, Jayne. I’m just a man.”

His choice of words made a tiny smile turn her lips. Her heart pounded a little harder as those words sank in. He hadn’t been acting. What he gave her was honest emotion. Another of her shields against him fell by the wayside.

Jayne ran her hand up the steel-hard muscles of his arm, frowning prettily. “Look how tense you are. No wonder you can’t sleep. Come over here.”

Reilly let her lead him along down the steps to the U-shaped sofa. When she ordered him to sit on the floor with his back to the couch, he raised an eyebrow but complied. Jayne settled herself cross-legged onto the soft cushion directly behind him.

“Have you ever had a psychic massage?” she asked. “You tune yourself in to your body and your psychic energy until you achieve harmony with the life energy of the world around you.”

“What a lot a crap, Jaynie,” he grumbled. “Skip it and get on to the massage part. I could do with some of that.”

Jayne made a face at the back of his head. “Take your shirt off.”

Reilly shot her a look over his shoulder that was brimming with that old Pat Reilly devilish charm. To her own credit as an actress, Jayne remained impassive. As he peeled the T-shirt off over his head and discarded it, warmth radiated
through her midsection. The man had a body that could stop traffic. And she was about to lay her hands on it. Drawing in a long, thin breath, she tried to steady herself, telling herself she was doing this for Reilly’s spiritual benefit.

What air her lungs had managed to retain vanished the instant she touched him. His shoulders were like marble, hard and smooth. His tanned skin was warm and vibrant beneath her fingertips. Touching him had nearly the same effect on her as having him touch her. A low groan tried to rise up out of her throat and she just barely managed to suppress it. She did her best to focus her attention on working the knots out of Reilly’s muscles and ignoring the knots of sexual tension coiling in her lower body and at the tips of her breasts.

Methodically, her fingers kneaded his shoulders, working down the slope from his neck to his upper arms and back up again. Her thumbs rubbed up and down, gently coaxing the corded muscle to release its tension. Reilly groaned and sighed, unable to hold on to the stress.

“That’s it, honey,” Jayne murmured softly. “Let all that tension go; you don’t need it. Just relax. Doesn’t that feel nice?”

“Mmmmmm …,” he purred lazily. “I can
only think of a couple of things that would feel nicer. Care to try them?”

Jayne reserved comment and went on with the treatment. “Breathe deep and relax. You have to find your center of being. Stress throws off your cosmic balance.”

“Jayne …”

His warning tone told her she was going to have to take a different approach. Reilly’s beliefs were grounded in things that could be seen and touched. Cosmic life energy was too abstract a concept for him to trust.

“You’re a good actor. You’re a wonderful actor. I’m sorry you got the impression I thought otherwise. Do you think you’re a good actor?”

There was a telling pause before he said, “I do okay.”

“You’re good,” she insisted. “Say it.”

“Jayne—”

“Say it, or I’ll stop massaging.”

“You’re bloody cruel, sheila.”

“Say it.”

“I’m a good actor,” he said flatly.

Jayne lifted her hands slightly from his shoulders. “Say it like you mean it.”

He heaved a sigh but took her direction. “I’m a good actor.”

“You’re a very good actor. You’ve just made lousy decisions about projects. Why did you do
Road Raider?”

“They offered me a potful of money, and my folks were heavy in debt. They were maybe gonna lose their place. I had a chance to help them out, so I took it. Then
Deadly Weapon
came along. The director was a pal of mine whose last two projects had gone belly-up.”

Jayne bit her lip. Her hands slowed, the therapeutic massage drifting into slow caresses. Reilly had made his choices out of a sense of duty. She felt ashamed of herself for ever having thought that he had chosen the pictures he had as an easy way to line his own pockets. She should have known better. He’d never lived extravagantly in Hollywood. Certainly, he’d done his share of partying, but he didn’t throw cash around on sports cars or lavish mansions or any of the other customary accoutrements of stardom.

Perhaps she had known better deep down. It had simply been easier to believe the worst of him because that had given her a weapon against the attraction she’d felt for him when she’d been married to Mac. She wondered now what other of her opinions of Reilly were misconceptions, deliberate or otherwise.

“The movies did well enough and nobody seemed willing to offer me anythin’ better,” Reilly said, confiding in someone for the first time since he couldn’t remember when. He’d never even confided in Mac, and Mac had been his best friend. Somehow, just now, with the lights down low and Jaynie rubbing his back, with the fog bank swirling outside and the cozy den full of warmth, it didn’t seem all that hard to confide in Jayne. “Besides, I had three brothers and three sisters to put through college, and relatives comin’ out of the woodwork, all of them needin’ somethin’ or other.”

Tears rose up in Jayne’s eyes. Her heart swelled in her breast until she thought it would burst. What a dear, sweet man he was. She lifted her hand and stroked it over the back of his head, letting the silky strands of his hair sift through her fingers.

“You’re a good man, Pat Reilly,” she said, leaning toward him, but holding back the urge to wrap her arms around him and hug him.

Reilly turned and looked up at her, his beautiful blue eyes glowing with intensity in the soft light. “Where I come from a man stands by his family and his mates. Bein’ good’s got nothin’ to do with it; that’s just the way things are.”

“Stubborn man,” Jayne complained with a
fond smile. “Didn’t your mama ever teach you how to take a compliment?”

“Nope.” He turned around and kneeled before the couch, planting a hand on either side of Jayne’s hips. He grinned, showing off his famous dimple. “She was too busy chasin’ me out of the kitchen, scoldin’ me for swipin’ her biscuits before they were cool.”

She chuckled softly, completely disarmed by his rough charm, completely aroused by the sight of his thickset bare chest. Muscles rippled with his slightest movement. A light furring of tawny hair curled across his pectorals and arrowed down in a line over the washboard muscles of his abdomen, disappearing into the low-riding waist of his sweatpants.

“I suspected as much,” she murmured.

“Did you now?” He inched closer.

“Mm-hmm.”

He leaned toward her, and it seemed only natural for Jayne to meet him halfway. When his lips captured hers, she didn’t allow herself to ask questions, she simply enjoyed. She enjoyed the taste of him, the feel of his whiskers beneath her fingertips as she framed his face with her hands. She enjoyed the subtle textures of his mouth—firmness, silken softness, the velvety rasp of his
tongue against hers. It was a gentle kiss, not angry or demanding or possessive. It was wonderful.

A languid dizziness swirled through her head as Reilly kissed her again and again and again, slowly and gently. She felt herself floating and drifting and wasn’t entirely sure whether the sensation was a spiritual or a physical one or a combination of both. It abated only slightly when her head and shoulders were lowered to the cushion of the sofa and Reilly settled himself above her.

Some of her doubts about him had been erased. Those remaining were being steadily pushed aside by the passion rising inside her. Jayne made no move to stop it. Nor did she make any move to stop Reilly when his hand slid to the sash of her robe.

He looked down at her, his breath burning his lungs. She was so lovely lying there beneath him. Her dark-fire hair fanned out across the white cushion in a rich contrast of color and texture. Her dark eyes gazed steadily up at him, shining like onyx. She was delicate and feminine, and he’d never wanted anything so badly as he wanted to touch her.

He pulled loose the sash, then ran his hand up the neckline of the robe, touching both the silk of the cloth and the silk of Jayne’s exposed skin. His fingertips dipped inside the garment, and he slowly bared her right breast to his ardent gaze. It
was small but plump, as dainty and feminine as the rest of her. Even as he admired it, the dusky peach nipple at the center tightened into an inviting little bud.

Not even trying to resist temptation, Reilly lowered his head and brushed his lips across the knotted flesh. Jayne sucked in a breath. A low groan escaped her when he drew his tongue across it and back again. He raised his head a bit and admired the glow of the wetness his mouth had trailed across her breast and the way her nipple tightened and puckered as the air cooled it. Then he lowered his head again and took the distended peak into his mouth and began to suck strongly and rhythmically.

Jayne stirred restlessly. She clutched at Reilly’s bare shoulders with her hands and shifted her hips as desire coursed through her, unchecked for the first time in forever. It swept through her like a fire, swirling and leaping, licking at the core of her. Sensations assaulted her one on top of the other—the feel of Reilly’s mouth tugging at her nipple, the delicious weight of him bearing down on her, the strength of his arousal pressing into her thigh, the ache of need that throbbed between her own thighs and intensified with each pull of his mouth.

The sensations built and swelled, sweeping her along on a wave that crested abruptly. She gasped, her whole body stiffening and arching up against Reilly’s.

“Oh, Jaynie,” he whispered reverently.

He watched her face as she reached her peak and then for a long moment as her orgasm gradually subsided. That she had reached it so easily and with so little effort on his part surprised and excited him.

His hand was trembling when he brushed her hair back from her damp forehead. He dropped a kiss on her mouth, then stared down into her eyes, his expression a combination of male pride and sexual hunger.

“I want to be inside you the next time that happens,” he said, his voice a graveled purr. “I want to feel you tighten around me. I want you.” He leaned closer and feathered hungry kisses down her jaw to her ear, where he nipped her and teased her with his tongue. “Aw, Jaynie, I want you so bad. I’ve wanted you for so long. Please let me.”

Jayne groaned as Reilly kneed her thighs apart and settled himself intimately against her. The thin fabric of his sweatpants was the only barrier between them. There was certainly no question about him wanting her. She wanted him, too. She
was tired of forcing herself to deny the unique desire she felt for this man. As she stroked the muscled ridges of his back, her bracelet burned between her flesh and his, and she knew again that sense of inevitability. In what direction this step would take them, she wasn’t sure. But this had been their destiny from the first, and there was no point denying it any longer.

“Yes,” she whispered.

Reilly raised his head sharply. His gaze could have burned through titanium. “Are you sure, Jaynie? Once it’s done, there’s no going back. I won’t have regrets between us. I won’t have any ghosts either. I need you like a dying man needs salvation, but I won’t tolerate compromise.”

“No,” she murmured, relieved that she felt no guilt as she made this decision. “I’m sure.”

He stared at her a moment longer, reading every nuance of her expression. Finally he nodded. “All right then.”

He levered himself up off her and off the couch, then offered her his hand and helped her up. Jayne’s knees swayed unsteadily beneath her, but she managed to lead Reilly the short distance across the den and up the steps to her bedroom.