The Spiral Path (8 page)

Exasperated,
he began to prowl the living room. Rainey had decorated the place in her own
charmingly eclectic style, but it was too small. Suffocating. "You don't
know what you're asking."

"Apparently
not, but it's clear from your reaction that this is way outside your comfort
zone. What exactly bothers you about this story? Is it something personal,
maybe the fact of playing a character so vulnerable when I'm directing? Or is
it professional anxiety, the fear that you'll fail?"

He
didn't want her to think more about personal reasons, though she was painfully
accurate in guessing that he hated the idea of being stripped bare emotionally
in front of her. She already knew him too well. "The personal and
professional intersect. The combination of this particular role and working
with you is more than I can handle. You've created a great opportunity for
yourself. Don't ruin it because of some misguided belief that I'm essential to
your success."

"Unfortunately,
you
are
essential."

He
turned to face her. "Truth time. Are you sure your conviction that only I
can play John Randall doesn't have anything to do with our disintegrating
marriage?"

She
flinched as if he'd slapped her. "You think this is all an excuse to spend
time with you?"

His
smile was wintry. "Nothing as simple as that. I won't pretend to
understand the workings of your convoluted mind. Only you can say for
sure."

She
bit her lip and thought about his question. "To the extent that being
married to you gave me a better sense of your talent and potentials, it's
personal that I want you for this movie. And ... there's a small, sick part of me
that loves the idea of working with you again. A much larger part would rather
dodge trucks on the Santa Ana Freeway."

As
always, her stark honesty undermined his defenses. Taking another tack, he
asked, "Is the potential payoff for this movie worth the psychic cost of
working together?"

"I
think so, or I wouldn't put us both through this." Her changeable eyes
were pure, cool gray as she regarded him. "Let's take it one day at a
time, Kenzie. Don't think about the whole movie all at once. A day's shooting
only amounts to a few minutes of usable film, and surely for those few minutes
you can handle this role. There's nothing like slicing a story into hundreds of
takes to grind the primal fear away."

She
had a point. If he thought of this strictly as a matter of craft, performed one
take at a time, it was more manageable. Acting didn't have to be personal, and
probably was better if it wasn't. Maybe American Method actors felt the need to
immerse themselves in ice water before playing a winter scene, but no
well-trained British actor had to do that.

You're
kidding yourself.
The voice in his mind was the one that couldn't be
denied, that knew him in all his weaknesses. He
was
kidding himself, but
he was caught between a rock and a hard place. Wanting to help Rainey, he'd
given his word without checking the project out carefully enough. It had never
occurred to him that the story would be one that gave him cold chills.

But
he couldn't back out now without causing enormous damage to Rainey, and that he
couldn't bear. He'd have to make the blasted movie, no matter how painful the
process. "You win," he said reluctantly. "I won't quit, but
don't blame me if my performance doesn't live up to your expectation."

"Thank
God. You had me scared out of my wits." She approached and laid a hand on
his wrist. "I'm sorry I didn't handle this better. I should have made sure
you'd read the script before sending the contracts."

"The
fault was mine." He looked down at her hand, feeling her touch burning
through him. More than anything on earth, he wanted to take her in his arms.
Just ... hold her, as they'd once held each other at the end of long, exhausting
days.

Impossible,
of course. Someday, when the fires of passion had burned out and she'd married
someone else, it might be possible to embrace as friends, but not now.

With
effort, he moved away. "Even though I trust your judgment, ultimately the
responsibility for reading the work was mine."

"Apart
from horror at having to play Randall, what did you think of the script?"
There was more than a trace of uncertainty in her voice.

"Very
powerful. Good characters, good structure. Classic storytelling, which the
movies need more of. I'd love to see it with, say, Laurence Olivier in his
prime playing Randall."

"I'd
have taken him if he was thirty and available. You're the next best
thing."

"Compliments
will get you ... somewhere." Wanting to compliment her work in return, he
said, "Your dialogue is excellent. Very incisive and British. Often
witty."

"Most
of the dialogue came from the book. I'm no writer. I just pulled the best bits
out of the novel."

"There's
an art to adapting a novel into a script. Give yourself credit."

"That's
hard when I remember how insane I am to tackle a project this large and
expensive with so little directing experience. Did I mention that I insisted on
final cut?"

He
rolled his eyes. "No wonder you needed a name brand actor to get
financing. Why didn't you try to produce the movie in a smaller way, or for
television? It would have been a lot easier."

"I
wanted to make the best possible movie, and reach the largest possible
audience. There's great, creative work being done for cable, but the budgets
are usually tight and the audiences smaller. Doing it this way may be hard, but
if it works, the result will come much closer to my vision of how the story
should be made."

Gloomily
he addressed the wall, which was covered with a mixture of paintings, framed
prints, and flattish objects like antique rug beaters. "Why did I have to
choose a profession where I'm surrounded by obsessed creative types?"

"Because
you're one of us, of course, even when you try to pretend that acting is just
another business. Movies are more than that. They spin dreams and hopes and
fears. So do the actors who make them, which is why you're recognized all over
the world."

"The
downside of success." There were actors who enjoyed having women plead for
sex, but Kenzie wasn't one of them. He loathed knowing he was a fantasy sex
object for God knew how many women. And men.

He
said good-bye and left, thinking how he'd arrived at her house determined to
withdraw from her project. Yet here he was, still committed.

What
the devil was it about Rainey that always made hash of his intentions?

She dropped into a
chair, shaking, after Kenzie left. For a terrible few minutes, she'd thought
her movie was doomed. She didn't understand his reaction to the script, but his
distress was quite genuine. Odd. He was one of the least temperamental actors
she'd ever met, saving his emotions for the camera. But John Randall had gotten
under his skin badly.

Though
she'd been able to talk him into continuing with the project, she could see
that she'd have to chivvy him along every step of the way. Just what a new
director needed--a skittish lead who was in virtually every scene of the movie.

She'd
take it one day at a time. Kenzie might have to be encouraged or threatened to
keep going, but she'd get a great performance out of him if it killed them
both.

Needing to burn off
some of his restless frustration, Kenzie spun his car eastward out of the
driveway to head deeper into the hills. Damn Rainey. Her creative passions and
her willingness to put herself on the line for what she believed in still
entranced him.

His
response to her celluloid image was pallid compared to the impact when they met
at her audition for the
Pimpernel.
Acting with Rainey was like playing
tennis with a champion who anticipated his every move and returned each shot
with something extra. They brought out the best in each other, both
professionally and personally. With her, he was someone he'd never been before.
A man who was almost free.

He
thought back to the evening they'd spent together after she won the role. The
excitement of discovering a uniquely compatible spirit had been mellowed by a
sense of familiarity, as if they'd known each other for a dozen lifetimes.
Though he'd been alarmed by the way she slid past his defenses as if they
didn't exist, that night he was almost reckless enough not to care.

He'd
deliberately avoided seeing her again before production started. The next time
they met was in the wardrobe department when they were being fitted for
Pimpernel
costumes. Garbed as Sir Percy, he wandered into the room where the costume
designer was supervising as her assistants tucked and tacked a low-cut chemise
and frothing, lace-trimmed petticoats around Rainey. The effect was deliciously
provocative even though the garments covered her far more thoroughly than
modern clothing.

"Your
unmentionables look very authentic," he observed.

Rainey
grinned. "I'll bet you learned a lot about period undies when you did work
for the BBC. These have to be right since they're going to appear on
camera."

The
knowledge that he would peel that chemise from her slim body accelerated his
pulse, even though there would be a production crew present when that happened.
"Making a television version of
Les Liaisons Dangereuses
was a
graduate course eighteenth-century lingerie. In the process I learned that it's
powerfully arousing to remove layer after layer to find the hidden woman."

"Really?
I thought men found it powerfully arousing when females wear only about two
ounces of nylon."

"That,
too."

A
young female assistant wrapped a boned corset around Rainey and began
tightening the laces. "Now we'll fit the ball gown over this, Miss
Marlowe."

Rainey
gasped as the corset tightened. "I may die of suffocation!"

"There's
a trick to corsets," Kenzie said. "Inhale deeply while she pulls the
laces, and you'll have an inch or so more room in the gown."