Temptation's Kiss (8 page)

Patrice was dumbfounded. She was aware that the director chose which scene to shoot based on lighting and based on weather conditions, and it was always his prerogative, but why the love scene first? It wasn't as if they would be out in inclement weather. According to the script, it would take place in a cabin in the fictional black township of Quincy.

She sighed, hoping T.K., sitting beside her, was just as uncomfortable shooting the love scenes so early in filming.

It turned out, he was. “Mike, what's your reasoning on shooting the love scene first? I'm sure Patrice and I would both feel more relaxed if it came later on down the line.”

“It's warm now,” Mike explained. “The weather in these parts drops ten degrees or more with each successive month. As you know, there is no heating on the makeshift sets they threw up to represent the township of
Quincy.” Patrice couldn't believe Mike Whitcomb was blushing. “You and Patrice will be quite scantily clad for the scenes. I don't want my stars catching cold.”

Everybody laughed except T.K. and Patrice, who looked at one another and smiled regretfully. “Well, you tried,” Patrice whispered to T.K., indicating that she was grateful for his chivalrous efforts.

Soon after, the meeting broke up, and the two of them went to breakfast, which they'd earlier skipped. Over bagels and coffee in the inn's dining room, T.K. took her hand in his. Their eyes met. “I had them put your trailer next to mine. I hope you don't think that was presumptuous of me. I want you near so I can look out for you. The area we'll be going to is about 40 miles west of here. They call it the Badlands, but what they are is wasteland, arid, rocky, hell to hike on and ride on. It's pretty isolated, so if somebody has an accident, it's going to take some maneuvering to get them out of there and to help. Of course, they have so-called experts, horse wranglers and other stunt coordinators who're supposed to make the stunts safe for everybody, but I've done thirty films and I know accidents happen.”

Patrice was touched by his concern. “I'll be all right. Don't worry about me. But it's nice to know you care. By the way, what happened to Mark? I thought he'd be at the meeting.”

“He only came yesterday to smooth things over with local officials. He's gone home.”

T.K.'s brown eyes swept over her face. He wanted to
tell her he cared about her. Already his mind was in a near panic because tomorrow they were going to have to enact a love scene that, when he'd read it, had made him wonder how he would ever get through it without embarrassing himself. Could he be detached enough tomorrow to hide the fact that even sitting across from her at a table in a dining room he was getting aroused? God, help him.

He'd worked with Mike on several movies, though. If Mike saw that he was getting into trouble, he would call “Cut!” and allow him time to fix the problem.

Patrice smiled at him. “This will be my first love scene in a film,” she said shyly. “I might need your help to get through it.”

You might need my help?
T.K. thought ruefully.
I'm going to need a minor miracle in order to get through that scene tomorrow.

He smiled gently and said while squeezing her hand reassuringly, “Relax, there's nothing to it.”

“Seriously?” she innocently asked.

“Sure, it'll be over before you know it. Believe me, after so many starts and stops with all the technical stuff, you'll be bored out of your mind before it's over.”

 

“I want a closed set as much as we can get it!” yelled Mike the following morning. “Only those essential to the shoot need to remain.”

Patrice, standing beside T.K. on the set that was designed to look like the bedroom of a rustic nineteenth-
century cabin, was relieved. She watched as thirty people left the area. She was in costume. Extensions gave her a head full of curls. Underneath the frilly red dress, she wore a corset that was cutting off her breath. She was almost eager for T.K. to rip it off her. The dastardly thing had so many fasteners on it that there would be no ripping, though. He would have to carefully remove it, as the script dictated.

When Mike was pleased that he had a closed set, he gestured to T.K. and Patrice. “All right, guys. Let's get this show on the road.”

Patrice smiled up at T.K. He looked handsome in his marshal's uniform of jeans, a black denim shirt with Western buttons, his silver badge on his left breast pocket and boots. They'd given him a handlebar mustache that looked authentic, and it gave him a tough, utterly masculine appearance.

There were a few words of dialogue as they entered the bedroom. As Bella, Patrice looked up at T.K., as Bass, and said, “After everything I've been through, I couldn't stand it if you didn't treat me kindly.” She looked beseechingly up at him. Bass's expression was tender. In it, she saw that he didn't regard her as a used woman but something precious.

“I'll treat you like the angel you are,” he said in his rough yet tender voice. Then they kissed, and Bella held her head back so that he could kiss the lovely lines of her throat.

Patrice's bosom was pushed up to such an extent by
the tight corset that she was afraid her breasts would spill out of it. She concentrated. When T.K.'s hands went to her chest, she told herself,
I'm Bella. Be Bella. She isn't timid. She knows how to please a man and is bold enough to show a man how to please
her.

Mike allowed them to move through the script on their own, not saying a thing. It was quiet on the set. In the make-believe bedroom, Bass and Bella were kissing tenderly as if both of them were wounded souls and had to be nurtured. He rained kisses down her throat, ending with his lips on the crevice where her breasts came together in the corset.

Patrice trembled with pleasure. Bella aside, she was turned on by T.K. Bass removed Bella's corset and her breasts, perfect, heavy and hard-tipped, fell into his big hands. For a moment, T.K. forgot the role he was playing, and he saw only Patrice. He felt as if he were doing something bad, when she hadn't given him permission to touch her so intimately. Still, that thought didn't stop the erection that followed.

Bella unbuttoned Bass's shirt and ran her hands over his smooth, muscular chest. Patrice's hands touched T.K.'s hardened nipples, and she felt herself growing moist between her legs.
I'm not going to make it,
she thought, panicking. She closed her eyes, and T.K. kissed her. She didn't recall a kiss being in the script at this point.

This was no false kiss either. You could tell when an actor was holding back and not putting himself into
it. Oh, God, she couldn't take it. She kissed him back. Then she thought, I get to kiss him! It was like getting a get-out-of-jail-free card. She could kiss him and not be accused of breaking the rules and losing the bet.

She recalled everything from the script, how Bella gestured without speaking, indicating where she wanted Bass to touch her. It was wonderful. In Bella, she'd found free expression. It was almost like making love to T.K. When they mimicked full-on intercourse, there was a thick cloth between them, but they were each naked from the waist up, and their chests were rubbing. What she did for art! They screamed in ecstasy, and it was over. They fell onto the bed, exhausted but satisfied.

Mike yelled, “Cut!”

Patrice grabbed a blanket and wrapped it around her. T.K. remained covered by the sheet, not moving for fear it would be quite apparent that the scene had been a difficult one for him. He prided himself on his control, but this time he'd lost it.

“Please tell me you got that in one take,” he said to Mike.

Mike laughed shortly. “All I need now is a cigarette.”

Patrice was mortified. Had it been that erotic? She thought she had gone someplace else for a minute there, that she had been Bella instead of herself. She was sure that T.K. had lost himself in the scene, too.

“I'm just joking,” Mike assured them. “The scene went beautifully. I'll take a look at the rushes and let you know
if we need a reshoot, but I sincerely don't think so. Get ready for the canyon scene.”

Patrice went and sat on the side of the bed. She wasn't ignorant. She knew why T.K. hadn't moved yet. “Nothing to it, huh?” she whispered accusingly. “That was not a piece of cake. I could have made love to you right then and there. I was totally into you.” She rose, piercing him with a stare. “No wonder actors fall in love on location.”

With an exasperated huff, she stormed off the set.

T.K. sat there a few more minutes and contemplated the scene. She wouldn't believe him if he told her he'd never before gotten an erection during a love scene. It was all Mike's fault. Usually the director was yelling, “No, that wasn't right, do it this way,” or, “Cut,” making the scene mundane. Mike had allowed them to play out the scene and had remained silent. The one time T.K. would have welcomed constructive criticism from his director he hadn't gotten it. Patrice was going to think he was a horn dog.

A
n hour later they were in costumes for the chase scene. T.K. was in his marshal's uniform, and unfortunately, it was a dress complete with a bustle and corset for Patrice. In this scene, they were running from a lynch mob across the Badlands. The horse wranglers hadn't appeared yet with their mounts, so they were standing outside arguing about the love scene. “Have you no shame?” Patrice asked, skewering him with her eyes. “You kissed me for real! That was
not
acting.”

T.K. shrugged. “You kissed me back, so technically I won the bet.”

“I didn't kiss you back,” Patrice denied. “You said that I had to kiss you when it wasn't in the line of duty. I kissed you during a scene that was being filmed. So I didn't break any rules.”

“Tell the truth and shame the devil,” T.K. said with a laugh. “I know when I'm being kissed, and you kissed the hell out of me!”

Patrice gave him a calculated smile. “Prove it!”

But before T.K. could respond, members of the cast and crew flooded the street around them in the fictional town of Quincy. They fell silent. There was no use in making a spectacle of themselves. Patrice let him know with a cutting glance that she wasn't finished with him yet though. The horse wranglers brought their mounts, and they climbed onto their backs. It was time to work.

The cinematographer sat on the back of a truck in a specially made seat that would allow him to move around and position himself at different angles from which he could shoot the action, and Mike was on the back of another truck in a similar seat. He shouted, “Action!” and watched as his actors galloped out of town into the Badlands.

Patrice had the first line. Bella grinned at Bass as they fled. “I'm beginning to think knowing you is liable to get me killed!”

Six men on horseback chased them, shooting bullets that whizzed by their heads, barely missing them, but Bella and Bass seemed to be having the time of their lives.

As the day progressed, Patrice found herself actually tiring of being on a horse. While the actors weren't allowed to do anything that would jeopardize their lives, there was a great need to get as many shots as possible of
them atop their mounts. It was dusk before Mike called it a day, and by that time, Patrice's inner thigh muscles and her butt were sore.

The horse wranglers came and collected the horses, and she and T.K. walked slowly back to their trailers. “Still want to be a movie star?” he joked.

Patrice wanted to rub her pained bottom but refrained. “I wouldn't trade it for anything else,” she said with forced enthusiasm.

T.K. laughed. “Don't tell me you're not sore. I'm aching in places I didn't know I had.”

“I would pay you to massage my butt for me,” Patrice joked.

“I would pay you to let me,” T.K. returned.

Laughing, Patrice turned to look up into his smiling face. “Who do you think I am, Bella?”

T.K. threw his head back in laughter. He pulled her into the crook of his arm as they made their way to the area where the cast's trailers were parked. Patrice momentarily laid her head on his shoulder, and then she placed her arm about his waist. He was dirty and sweaty, just like she was, but he smelled heavenly to her.

After a quick shower and change in their respective trailers, they met at the caterer's tent where many of the cast and crew were enjoying dinner. They sat at a table with four other actors. One of them, Ted Knowles, portrayed Bass's nemesis, Jesse Beaumont, a crooked sheriff who was bent on revenge because he didn't believe Bass, a lawman and a bounty hunter, should be allowed
to bring in white outlaws and collect the bounties. Bass was so good at collecting bounties that he'd become quite well-off from it. This further incensed Ted Knowles' character, and he'd falsely accused Bass of gunning a man down in cold blood, and that's why a posse was after him. Bella was wanted for aiding and abetting Bass.

“I hear that love scene was hot,” Ted joked as soon as Patrice and T.K. sat down.

Lara Miller, a brunette who portrayed a prostitute who worked at the brothel where Bella worked, poked Ted in the side with her elbow. “You're just jealous you weren't in it with Patrice.” She winked at Patrice.

Ted's tanned cheeks darkened in a noticeable blush. He smiled at Patrice, though, and said, “I'm sorry you had to have your first love scene with a guy as ugly as T.K.

“The acting gods should have mercy on you and give you someone like me next time.”

He said this self-deprecatingly because no one would say Ted Knowles was handsome. He was a big, rugged-looking guy in his late thirties with dark hair that was thinning on top. His eyes were small, and his nose was large. He had thin lips and not much of a chin. He was a character actor who was known for portraying villains the audience loved to hate. He took pride in that. But as villainous as his characters were he was just as sweet in real life. He was the sort of actor other actors loved working with.

“We can't all be as handsome as you are,” T.K. said
with sincerity. “If I were a woman I'd marry you in a second.” And he rose and kissed Ted on the bald spot on the top of his head.

“Aw, now, quit it,” said Ted wiping the spot where T.K. had kissed him as though he were disgusted. “My wife doesn't take kindly to anybody else kissing my bald spot.”

Patrice got up and kissed it, too.

“Well, I don't have to tell her everything,” said Ted.

They all laughed and continued eating.

The cast and crew lived in trailers during the week, T.K.'s being the most luxurious among them. On weekends, they went to Casper, the closest city to them, looking for entertainment. When August ended, September arrived with a twelve-degree drop in the temperature: the lower seventies during the day and the lower forties at night.

During the week, after filming had wrapped, the cast and crew ate dinner together underneath the caterer's tent and then retired to their trailers to chat, watch movies, play cards or amuse themselves in some other way. Patrice noticed that since they had begun work on the film a few couples had formed among the cast and crew. She suspected that some thought she and T.K. were a couple, too; however, even though they'd exchanged keys to their trailers she hadn't succumbed to him yet.

They would take Sam on long walks in the evening, and T.K. and Sam would see her to the door of her trailer.
There, she would give him a warm hug and say goodnight.

In her bed, though, she would burn for him. She didn't know how he was coping, but their bet was beginning to wear on her nerves.

By October, when the daylight hours saw temperatures in the lower fifties, exacerbated by bitter winds coming off the plains and dipping into the lower thirties at night, Patrice's mood turned as dark as the weather. Cast and crew were now walking around outside bundled up and trying their best to stay warm. By November, when temperatures could drop to twenty degrees at night, Patrice felt lonelier and lonelier in her trailer during the long nights.

Everyone flew home for Thanksgiving, and Pa trice was happy to be in the bosom of her family in Albuquerque where they observed all the long-held traditions of the holiday. T.K. went to his parents' home in Beverly Hills. Aisha had given birth to a healthy baby girl two weeks earlier and named her Mira. The doctor gently swabbed the inside the baby's mouth for the DNA test and was able to determine that Mira was indeed Malcolm's child. The McKennas celebrated. And T.K. wondered what Aisha's next move would be now that it had been proven she was telling the truth.

He didn't have to wait long because shortly after Thanksgiving dinner, she asked to speak with him privately, and he found himself in his father's study, standing a few feet from the new mother who was dressed
rather inappropriately in a blouse that was too tight and a skirt that was too short. He knew she had money to buy clothes that fit because he provided her with a generous clothing allowance.

She paced while he calmly sat on the corner of his dad's desk. From time to time, she would look at him as if she were uncertain how to begin. She had a nervous habit of twirling her long, black extensions around her manicured fingers and pouting.

Suddenly she stopped pacing and frowning and blurted, “Now that you know Mira's Malcolm's, what are you prepared to do to keep her in the family?”

Taken aback, T.K. stood up. “What do you mean by that?” Her tone had been belligerent, as though she were issuing a threat, not simply asking a question.

She smiled demurely and walked slowly toward him. “I've seen the way you look at me. I think that as Malcolm's brother you should step up and take his place. I'd make a good wife.”

T.K.'s first impulse was to laugh. Then he got so angry that he wanted to scream at her for making such a ridiculous suggestion. However, he did neither. It was obvious the woman was either delusional or a worse schemer than he'd thought she was.

He kept his tone low as he looked her in the eyes and said, “I don't know what you mean by ‘the way I look at you' because I've never looked at you in any particular way. You're my brother's baby's mother. I would never consider marrying you.”

Aisha was crestfallen. Her lower lip began trembling, and her eyes filled with tears.

“I'm not good enough for you?”

T.K. didn't want to hurt her feelings further. She had given birth two weeks ago. She was still healing. She might be suffering from postpartum depression for all he knew. “It's not that, Aisha,” he said kindly. “The fact is I'm involved with someone else. Even if I weren't, it's distasteful for me to consider making love to a woman who has made love to and created a life with my brother. That would be dishonoring his memory. I loved Malcolm.
You
loved Malcolm. Let us come to some kind of agreement so that Mira will grow up knowing who her father was and being close to his family. I'm prepared to support you and Mira for the rest of your lives. But my marrying you is out of the question.”

Aisha's tears stopped falling as suddenly as they had appeared. She turned narrowed, hate-filled eyes on him and spoke between clenched teeth. “Marry me or I'll take Mira and disappear. You'll never see her again.”

T.K. sighed and crossed his arms over his chest. He gave her a level stare. “Aisha, if that's what you want to do, you should do it. But I don't think that's what you want to do. You have no discernible skills. The only job you've ever had was as a waitress in a diner in East L.A.”

Her mouth fell open in shock. “You've been checking up on me?”

“I don't let just anyone move in with my parents,”
T.K. told her. “You have been a rap groupie in hopes that someone would cast you in a rap video. You latched on to Malcolm because he was kind to you. That was Malcolm. He had a good heart. You were aware of his mental disability, and you took advantage of it. Let's not hold anything back, if that's how you want to carry on this conversation. You are a liar, and I wouldn't be surprised if you were a thief as well. Malcolm's bank accounts were rapidly dwindling while he was with you. You no longer had access after his death, which I'm sure helped you to decide to accept my offer to take care of you until the baby was born. Have I said enough, or would you like me to go on?”

Tears once again sprang to her eyes. “I can't take care of a baby. I'm twenty-six, and my life is over!” She put a hand over her still-puffy belly. “I'm out of shape. No man is going to want me like this. I have nowhere to go. And who's going to want me when I'm saddled with a baby, anyway?”

“I told you that I'll support you and Mira,” T.K. reiterated.

For a split second, T.K. noted, her eyes took on an avaricious glint. Then, almost instantly, they were back to looking downcast. “How would you support us?” she asked timidly.

“I would buy you a house in or near L.A. and give you a monthly stipend,” said T.K. generously.

He knew that by doing that he would never get rid of Aisha. However, to have Mira in his life, his brother's
only child, he would gladly do it. Already he loved the infant. From the moment he'd held her in his arms, it had felt as if he had a small part of Malcolm back.

“If you wanted to go to college, I would pay for it,” he added.

“College? Why would I want to go to college?” asked Aisha as if it were a preposterous idea.

“To improve yourself, to set a good example for Mira, to increase your net worth,” said T.K. “I'm not made of money, Aisha. After I buy the house, I'll be able to give you fifty thousand a year to live on. If you want more luxuries, you'll have to go to work and buy them yourself.”

“But what about Mira?” asked Aisha. “Will you make her go to work and earn whatever luxuries she might want later on?”

“Mira's education will be taken care of,” was all T.K. said. He had no intention of spoiling Mira with things. He wouldn't be doing her any favors, just helping to turn her into someone like her greedy mother.

“I'll think about it,” Aisha said, and flounced from the room, twirling her hair as she went. T.K. watched her go, wishing he were anywhere but there. To think that she wanted him to marry her! She had plenty of gall.

He went to the phone on his father's desk and rang his lawyer, Saul Abraham. Saul answered on the third ring. He explained to Saul what had just happened and asked him to find out what, if any, rights he or his parents had
to custody of his niece. Saul promised to get back to him as soon as possible.

As he left the study, he yearned for Patrice. He couldn't wait to get back to Wyoming tomorrow, even if they
would
be filming in the snow.

 

When he and Sam left Los Angeles, flying this time for convenience, it had been an almost balmy sixty-two degrees. When they touched down in Wyoming, it was eighteen degrees. Sam didn't even protest when he put on his doggy coat before leaving the terminal.