“Well, I’m not all that happy with you. I’ve got lines to memorize for the next scene, and I’d like a little help here.”
“Don’t you just moan and groan?”
“That’s not funny.” He began pacing the narrow width of the motor home. “In case nobody’s pointed it out to you, Gracie, everything in life isn’t a big joke.”
Was Bobby Tom Denton, the man who never took anything seriously, actually giving her a lecture on inappropriate levity? She stifled her amusement as an interesting thought struck her.
“Bobby Tom, are you nervous about doing this love scene?”
He halted in his tracks. “Nervous? Me? You’d better come over here right now and let me smell your breath because I seriously think you’ve started up on those wine coolers again.” He shoved his fingers through his hair. “I’ll have you know I’ve already played out more love scenes in my life than most men have in their dreams.”
“Not on camera. And not with a whole bunch of people looking on.” She paused as a worrisome thought struck her. “Or have you?”
“Of course not! Well, not exactly. Just never you mind! The point is, as long as I’m making this damn fool movie, I don’t have any intention of looking like an idiot.” He tossed the script at her. “Here. Start with, ‘Those muscles of yours ought to come with a license.’” He gave her a dark scowl. “And not one wisecrack about the dialogue, do you understand me?”
She firmly repressed a smile. He really was upset about this love scene business. As she leaned back against the small kitchen counter, she felt much better than she had only moments before.
After finding the proper place in the script, she spoke the first line in as sultry a fashion as she could manage. “Those muscles of yours ought to come with a license.”
“What’s wrong with your voice?”
“Nothing. I’m acting.”
He rolled his eyes. “Just say the stupid line.”
“It’s not necessarily stupid. Some people might find it provocative.”
“It’s stupid, and both of us know it. Now, go on.”
She cleared her throat. “Those muscles of yours ought to come with a license.”
“You don’t have to read it like you’re in a coma.”
“You don’t know your next line, do you? That’s why you’re criticizing me.”
“I’m thinking.”
“Instead of attacking my performance, why couldn’t you just say, ‘Gracie, sweetheart, I seem to have forgotten my next line. How ’bout you givin’ me a little bitty hint’?”
Her imitation of his accent made him laugh. He sprawled down on the couch. It was too short for his long legs, and he propped his feet, clad in a pair of thick white socks, against the wall. “I’m sorry, Gracie. You’re right. Just give me a hint.”
“You say, ‘You look like—’ ”
“I got it. ‘You look like you should be packin’ a license yourself, darlin’?” Damn, that line is even stupider than hers. No wonder I can’t remember it.”
“It’s not as bad as her next one. ‘Why don’t you search me and find out if I am.’” She looked up from the page with concern. “You’re right, Bobby Tom. This really is stupid. I don’t think the screenwriter likes love scenes any better than you do. The rest of the script is so much better.”
“I told you so.” He sat up on the couch. “Looks like I’m gonna have to throw one of those movie star tantrums you read about in People magazine. We need a rewrite.”
“There’s not really time for that.” She looked back down at the script. “You know, this just might work if the two of you don’t try to play it too cute. Just sort of toss the lines away with a little smile. Both of you know it’s silly. Mild sexual banter, nothing more.”
“Let me see that.” He held his hand out for the script. She passed it over, and he studied it. “You might be right. I’ll talk to Natalie about it. When she’s not going on about that baby, she occasionally shows a few remnants of good sense.”
They spent the next ten minutes working on the script. Once Bobby Tom had decided he wasn’t going to embarrass himself, he proved to be an amazingly quick study, and by the time he was called to the set, he was letter-perfect.
“You’re coming with me for this, Gracie.”
“I’m afraid I can’t. I have too many things to do.” Even though Bobby Tom had no romantic feelings for Natalie, he was a healthy, virile man, and inevitably, all that physical contact was going to turn him on. She didn’t want to be around to see it happen. What sane woman would deliberately watch the man she loved making love with another woman, especially one as beautiful as Natalie Brooks?
“Everything can wait. I want you right there in the canyon with me.” He pulled on a pair of well-worn leather boots.
“I’ll be in the way. I’d really rather not.”
“It’s an order, Gracie. From your boss.” He snatched up his script, grabbed her arm, and headed for the door. But as he reached out for the handle, he paused in midair. Turning, he began to study her in a way that made little prickles of excitement rise up all over her skin.
“Gracie, honey, if you don’t mind, I’d like you to slip off those panties of yours before we go.”
“What!”
“I believe I made myself pretty clear.”
Her pulses raced at the sound of that husky drawl. “I can’t go outside without my underpants!”
“Why not?”
“Because— Because it’s outside, and I’d be . . .”
“You’d be naked underneath that cute little skirt of yours, but as long as you sit like a lady, I don’t see that anybody’s going to know. Except for me, that is.”
Once again, his gaze trailed over her, making her skin feel damp and hot. He didn’t understand that she wasn’t the sort of woman who went around without underwear, not even in her new, made-over version.
At her hesitation, he released that overly patient sigh he used when he was about to manipulate someone. “I can’t believe we’re arguing about this. Apparently the fact that there’ve been so many distractions these past couple of weeks has made you forget we still have an agreement. You know as well as I do that I own what’s underneath that skirt.” Another sigh. “I never thought I’d have to give you—a former Sunday School teacher—a lecture on ethics.”
Fighting back the urge to giggle, which would only encourage him to be even more outrageous, she tried to sound reasonable. “Former Sunday School teachers don’t go around without their underwear.”
“You show me where it says that in the Bible.”
This time she did laugh.
“I’m losing patience, sweetheart.” The sparks in those midnight blue eyes made her feel breathless. “Take ’em off, darlin’, or I’ll take ’em off for you.”
Oh, Lord. His smoky drawl slithered through her body like an intimate caress, and she knew a moment of pure recklessness. A lifetime stretched ahead of her where she could be plain old Gracie Snow. For now, she was a wild woman.
Skin burning, she turned her back to him, slipped her hands under her skirt, and pulled off a pair of buttercup yellow panties.
Bobby Tom chuckled and whipped them from her hands.
“Thank you, darlin’. I think I’ll bring these along for inspiration.”
He shoved the panties deep into the pocket of his jeans, and they were so tiny they didn’t even make a bump.
“Those muscles of yours ought to come with a license.”
“You look like you should be packin’ a license yourself, darlin’.”
“Why don’t you search me and find out if I am?”
Natalie and Bobby Tom smiled as they tossed away the silly lines, making them sound cute, but not cloying. They were reclined on the blanket Gracie had fetched earlier, which lay spread out in a small glade shaded by sycamore and oak.
“Why don’t I just do that.” Bobby Tom kept smiling as he settled Natalie deeper into his embrace and tugged open the drawstring on
her peasant-style blouse.
And why shouldn’t he smile? Gracie thought, looking away as the fabric slipped off Natalie’s creamy shoulder. He was a master at turning sex into an amusing little game.
The warm breeze trickled up under her skirt, caressing her bare bottom. Her hypersensitive skin prickled. She was both aroused by her nakedness and afraid that a sudden gust of wind would flip open the skirt’s sarong-style front and expose her secret to the world. This was all Bobby Tom’s fault. It was bad enough that she’d let him talk her into going out in public nearly naked, but while he and Natalie had rehearsed, he’d added to his sins by looking over at her and deliberately touching the pocket of his jeans, reminding her what he had there. She’d never shared a sexual secret with a man, and his teasing made her feel both lightheaded and feverish.
The trees rustled above her, and the air in the canyon carried a faint hint of cedar. The dialogue continued until it was broken off by the soft sounds of a kiss. Despite her vow to act professionally, she couldn’t bring herself to look. She wanted to be the woman in his arms on that quilt. All alone, just the two of them. Naked.
“Oh, shit!”
Natalie’s exclamation interrupted her reverie. “Cut!” the director called out. “What’s wrong?” Gracie looked over in time to see Bobby Tom pull away from his beautiful co-star. “Did I hurt you, Natalie?”
“My milk let down. God, I’m sorry, everybody. I’m leaking. I need a new blouse.”
Bobby Tom leaped to his feet as if he’d just been exposed to a deadly disease.
“Ten minutes, everybody,” the director announced. “Wardrobe, take care of Miss Brooks. And you’d better get a change for Mr. Denton, too.”
Bobby Tom froze.
His head dropped.
An expression of abject horror appeared on his face as he saw two damp circles on the front of his own shirt.
A bubble of laughter slipped through Gracie’s lips. She didn’t think she’d ever seen anyone unbutton a garment so quickly. He thrust it at the wardrobe assistant and immediately made his way to Gracie’s side.
“Come on.”
Eyes narrowed and jaw set, he pulled her through the trees and around a rocky outcropping, walking so fast she stumbled. He drew her closer, but didn’t slow his pace. Only after they were well out of sight of the others did he stop and lean back against the trunk of a walnut tree.
“This is turning into the most terrible experience of my life. I can’t do it, Gracie. I would rather eat rats than go out there and take that woman’s blouse off. I cannot make love to a nursing mother.”
He looked so miserable that Gracie couldn’t help feeling a certain amount of sympathy for him, even though he’d offended her feminist sensibilities. She tried to use her most reasonable tone of voice, not a simple task when she was standing so close to him. “The primary function of the female breast is to nurture the young, Bobby Tom. It doesn’t speak well of you that you find that offensive.”
“I don’t say I found it offensive. It just makes it impossible for me to forget that I’m kissing somebody else’s wife. Making love to Natalie Brooks gives me the willies. Contrary to what you might have heard, I don’t mess around with married women.”
“No, I don’t imagine you would. In your own peculiar, male-chauvinistic way, you have a lot of honor.”
Some men would have regarded that as a questionable compliment, but Bobby Tom seemed pleased. “Thank you.”
They gazed at each other for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was husky. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to put me back in the mood if I have any chance of doing a decent day’s work out there.”
“Back in the mood?”
He pulled her against his chest and pressed his mouth to hers as if he wanted to devour her. Her response was immediate. Flames raced through her blood, and she met his passion with her own. His mouth was open, his tongue aggressive. She sank her fingers into his thick hair just as he slipped his hand under her skirt. His big hands cupped her bottom and lifted her from the ground. She wrapped her legs around him and felt the harsh abrasion of denim against the sensitive skin of her inner thighs. He turned her so that her back was pressed against the tree trunk. She felt his arousal, thick and hard, press against her and some wanton part of her wanted to tear open the front of his jeans so there was no longer a barrier between them.
Years of deprivation pushed her to the limits of her control. Famished, she moaned and clasped him tighter between her thighs.
She heard a soft curse. He gentled his grip on her bottom and lowered her until her feet touched the ground. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I keep forgetting how susceptible you are. I shouldn’t have started this.”
She sagged against him. He clasped the back of her head and drew it against his bare chest. He smelled so good, like soap and sunshine. She squeezed her eyes shut, wishing she had shown more restraint.
“Give me back my underpants, please.”
She was afraid he’d refuse, but apparently he realized he’d teased her long enough. He released her to reach into his pocket. She kept her eyes on his chest as he handed over the scrap of buttercup yellow nylon. When he spoke, all the laughter had faded from his voice and it was steely with determination.
“Tomorrow night nothing’s going to stop the two of us from finishing what we’ve started.”
Before she could reply, he walked away.
She took several minutes to put herself back together and reluctantly returned to the area where they were filming. Natalie had donned a fresh blouse, and Elvis lay cradled in her arms. Bobby Tom, still bare chested, stood between her and the director, who appeared to be giving them some last minute instructions. The director turned away to address a cameraman, and one of the makeup people approached Natalie with a container of hair spray.
Natalie held up her hand. “Just a minute. I don’t want Elvis breathing the fumes. Hold him, will you, Bobby Tom?” Without waiting for his consent, she thrust the chubby baby into his arms and stepped away to have her hair sprayed.
Bobby Tom’s eyebrows rose in alarm. At the same time, his body reacted with the instincts of an All-Pro wide-receiver, and he automatically tucked the baby into his chest.
Elvis gave a happy gurgle. Feeling the familiar brush of skin against his cheek, he instinctively turned his head toward Bobby Tom’s bare, well-shaped pectoral and opened his greedy little mouth.
Bobby Tom fixed him with a stern glare: “Don’t even think about it, pardner.”
Elvis chuckled and sucked his fingers instead.
14
The next evening as dusk gathered, Gracie and Bobby Tom sat in the top row of the wooden bleachers behind Telarosa High, gazing out at the empty football field. “I can’t believe you never went to one of your high school football games,” he said.
“There was a lot to do at Shady Acres in the evenings. It was hard to get away.” Even to her own ears, her voice sounded strained. Yesterday in the canyon he’d said that tonight would be the night they finished what they’d started, and she was so nervous she could barely hold herself together. At the same time, he was as cool and collected as ever. She wanted to kill him.
“It doesn’t seem like you had much fun as a kid.” He brushed the side of her leg, and she jumped. He gave her an innocent look, then reached farther over to pick up a drumstick from the tub of fried chicken he’d bought for them, along with french fries, containers of salad, and a basket of hot biscuits.
Maybe his touch had been accidental. On the other hand, knowing him as she did, it was quite possible he was deliberately driving her to distraction. He must know she’d been on tenterhooks ever since she’d opened the door of her small apartment and seen him standing on the other side in a pair of jeans, a straw cowboy hat, and a faded Telarosa High School Titans T-shirt that might have fitted him fifteen years earlier, before he’d developed such spectacular chest muscles, but was definitely too tight for him now. Since Bobby Tom was impeccable about his clot
hes, she knew the old T-shirt was deliberate, part of his attempt to recreate a high school date.
She nibbled on the end of a fry and, when he looked away, slipped it through the opening behind her legs and let it fall to the ground below the bleachers because her stomach was too agitated to hold food. “You miss it a lot, don’t you?”
“High school? Not hardly. All those homework assignments put a serious dent in my social life.”
“I’m not talking about the homework. I’m talking about football.”
He shrugged and discarded the drumstick, rubbing against the side of her arm in the process. She felt as if a shock wave had passed through her. “Sooner or later, I had to quit. A man can’t play ball forever.”
“But you hadn’t planned on quitting so soon.”
“Maybe I’ll do some coaching. Just between the two of us, I’ve talked to a couple of people. Coaching seems a likely next step for me.”
She expected to hear some enthusiasm in his voice, but she heard none. “What about your film career?”
“Some of it’s all right. I like the action stuff.” His mouth twisted in disgust. “But I sure will be glad when all this love scene business is over. Do you know they actually expected me to take off my pants today?”
She smiled through her agitation. “I was there, remember? And by the time you were finished with all your chin rubbing and head shaking and ‘aw shucks’ing, I don’t think Willow or the director or anybody else had the slightest idea what you were saying.”
“I got to keep my pants on, didn’t I?”
“Poor Natalie didn’t.”
“Gettin’ naked is a woman’s lot in life. The sooner you accept that, the happier you’re gonna be.” He patted her bare knee, sending a shiver of desire through her as he let his hand linger there a moment longer than necessary.