Beauty and the Brain (35 page)

“Oh, no I’m fine. Just got some dust in my
eye, that’s all.” She laughed. “Whew! Those trucks sure do kick if
up, don’t they?”

“Yes,” Martin said, still watching her with
keen interest. “They sure do.”

Thank heaven for Martin Tafft. He didn’t say
another word, but smiled at her and strolled over to the set. She
knew he knew something was wrong with her, but Martin never pried,
bless him.

Colin walked away without a word. Brenda’s
heart felt as if it had been ripped out of her chest and trampled
in the dust.

The filming was almost over. Martin had told
Colin that the whole picture would be wrapped up in another day or
two. That meant he was going to have to work fast if he expected to
get Brenda to succumb to his charms.

Colin frowned. What charms? Obviously, he
didn’t have a single charm to call his own if she had so little
difficulty resisting him Dash it, his failure to lure Brenda into
his bed had been the most dismal failure of his entire life up to
now This morning, for instance, she wasn’t even willing to talk to
him She hadn’t even offered him a “Good morning.”

He hadn’t offered her one, either, he
reminded himself.

But that wasn’t odd. After all, he was known
for failure to pay attention to anything but books. And even if he
was beginning to notice the world around him a bit more than he
used to do, he was still just another fellow working for Peerless.
She was the big name here. She was the star of the event. He was a
nothing. A zero. A big, fat, empty, blank spot on the face of the
earth.

That was no way to think. He had to buck up.
While Colin had never been conceited about anything at all, much
less his masculine prowess, he’d never felt like nothing before,
either. His life had been spent as he’d wanted to spend it: in
pursuit of knowledge. He was living exactly as he wanted to
live.

Except that he’d failed to conquer the one
woman he’d ever really wanted. It was a lowering reflection. He sat
on a stump in the shade, his eyes directed at the activity on the
set, while his mind whirred in confusion.

Dash it, she hadn’t reacted at all the way a
female was supposed to react to the male’s mating ritual. She’d
even told him she wanted more than a brief fling before she’d agree
to a sexual union.

The awful thought occurred to Colin that
perhaps this was the way female humans were supposed to react to
the male’s courtship rituals. Perhaps, the human species being what
it was, the female had instincts that weren’t so well developed in
most males Perhaps they instinctively sensed that, in order to
raise their young properly—and young sprouts often resulted from
mating—they had to manipulate males into a commitment lasting
longer than one night. Gad, what a dismal thought.

Or was it? Colin was squinting at the set
construction, not really watching it, when a man cried out,
startling him out of his muddled thoughts and making him pay
attention.

“Look out! I can’t keep my grip on it! Hold
on, Carl!”

The man who’d yelled had been balanced on
the top rung of a tall ladder propped against a taller tree. He’d
been holding one end of a huge wooden platform-like contraption.
Colin couldn’t tell what it was from where he sat so he stood up,
shaded his eyes, and watched, his heart pounding with suspense.

A gasp came from the others watching the
scene when the man lost his grip on the wooden thing. It fell from
his hands, jolting him and making him lose his balance. He was
barely able to cling to the ladder and to the limb of the tree
against which the ladder was balanced. The ladder swayed
perilously. Colin stared, appalled, still stunned and unable to
react more cogently. Then his glance darted to the ground beneath
the wooden thing.

Good God. His brother George stood, directly
underneath that gigantic slab of wood, staring up at the man on the
ladder. Another man, poised on the edge of an outbuilding’s roof,
clutched the other end of the slab in both hands, but only
barely.

“I can’t hold on to it, either!” the man on
the roof cried out in dismay. “Look out below! It’s going to
crash!”

“George!” Colin roared. “Run!”

To Colin’s horror, George turned to look at
him instead of taking his advice. Colin waved his arms frantically
in an effort to get his brother to run from underneath that heavy
board. For what seemed like hours, George looked from Colin to the
man struggling with the board, before he recognized his own danger,
turned, and started sprinting to safety.

It was too late. Colin’s face screwed up
into a grimace of consternation and his hands flew to his head,
even as he took off running toward George.

The giant board hurtled through the air. As
Colin watched, he could have sworn the blasted thing had a mind of
its own. It was probably his own fright for George making him think
the board aimed at his brother, even going so far as to turn end
over end, thereby zeroing in more directly on George.

The board struck with a sickening thunk.
George dropped like a stone to the hard earth. It seemed to Colin
that the world stopped spinning on its axis for a second. The sound
of the board hitting George and then the earth smote his ears, and
then there was a moment of absolute silence. Then all hell broke
loose.

“George!” a woman screamed. Colin’s brain
registered Brenda’s voice.

“George!” Colin bellowed, terrified on his
brother’s behalf.

“Good God!” From out of nowhere, Martin
raced onto the set.

Others streamed over to George from all
sides. The man on the ladder made his shaky way down. The man on
the roof, his mouth having fallen open into a horrified O, stared
at the chaos beneath him in patent distress.

Colin got to his brother first. George lay
face-down on the ground, the infamous board weighing him down. With
a strength he hadn’t known he possessed, Colin upended the gigantic
slab of wood and heaved it away from his brother’s motionless body.
Falling to his knees in the dirt, he reached for George.

“Be careful. Better not move him yet.”

It was Brenda. Colin turned to yell at her
to shut up before he realized she was only being sensible. He
passed a hand over his face and fought panic “Right. Better check
for broken bones first.”

“And concussion.”

Brenda knelt in the dirt, too, her
concentration completely on George, not giving a thought to the
beautiful blue silk day dress she wore. She bent close to George’s
face. “George?” she said gently. “George? Can you hear me?”

No answer. Colin’s heart went cold.

She glanced up, worry plain on her face.
“Martin, please get the lodge’s doctor out here quickly.”

“Right.” Martin didn’t bother to check
George’s condition for himself, but wheeled around and sprinted
like a deer to the lodge. Fortunately, the Cedar Crest had a doctor
on staff. Most luxury resorts did these days.

“George?” This time it was Colin trying to
determine his brother’s state of consciousness. “Can you hear
me?”

No answer.

He looked across George’s inert form to find
Brenda staring back at him He shook his head. Her lips pressed
together tightly. He feared for a moment that she might cry, but
she was made of sterner stuff than that. He ought to have known her
better by this time.

She licked her lips. “I’ve had a little
experience with this sort of thing. Let me check him over.”

Colin wanted to protest, but he couldn’t pry
his tongue from the roof of his mouth where it seemed to be stuck.
So he watched instead as Brenda first of all checked George’s
breathing by holding a leaf before his nostrils.

The leaf fluttered, and she looked up and
gave Colin a brief, strained smile “He’s still alive.” As tenderly
as if she were dealing with a. hurt child—which, to all intent and
purposes, she was, dash it—she checked his pulse. Her smile looked
more natural when she reported the results. “His pulse is strong
and steady.”

Colin’s breath left him in a whoosh, and he
feared for a second that he might pass out. It was probably only
his masculine pride that saved him. He’d be dashed if he’d faint in
front of Brenda and a motion-picture crew. After she’d determined
George’s status as a still-viable human being, she very tenderly
palpated his limbs, being particularly careful with his back. “You
never know about these things,” she muttered. “I couldn’t see
clearly, but it looked as if the board hit him on the shoulder. I
think it missed his head.”

“Thank God,” Colin whispered, the words
yanked from him by a force outside himself.

“Yes,” Brenda said, sounding somewhat wry,
“unless it clipped his back. The spine is a vulnerable thing. If
that dratted board caught him in the back and damaged his spine, it
might be bad.”

“D-don’t—don’t—” But Colin didn’t know what
he wanted to say. In truth, he supposed he wanted to tell Brenda
not even to hint at such an awful possibility, but the words
wouldn’t come. She didn’t glance up at him, but continued to test
George’s limbs one by one.

Suddenly, she turned to the crowd standing
by. “Get me a bucket of water, somebody. Hurry.” Several men ran
off to do her bidding.

Colin wasn’t sure, but he suspected that at
this moment, she was being more sensible about George’s catastrophe
than he. He was so aghast, he couldn’t even think, much less act.
He blinked as she began to tear at her waist. It took him a second
or two to realize she was taking off the sash tied there.

She held it up “This is cotton. It will hold
water, and perhaps he’ll regain consciousness with cool water on
his head. If he can talk, he’ll be able to help us help him.”

Three buckets full of water appeared as if
by magic at Brenda’s side. She offered the carriers one brief,
brilliant smile and said, “Thank you,” as she dunked her sash into
the closest bucket. She squeezed the excess water out, folded the
sash into a pad, and, leaned over George again.

As she very gently pressed the cool cloth to
the back of George’s neck, then his cheek, and then his forehead,
Colin heard the sound of running feet. Turning, he saw Martin
racing back to the set, accompanied by a portly man in a dark suit
who carried a black bag.

“Thank God,” he breathed. “I think it’s the
doctor.”

Brenda straightened, still holding the cloth
to George’s head. She, too, whispered, “Thank God.”

It was only then that Colin realized how
scared she’d been. And still was. He stared at her, stunned. Had
her cool-and-collected attitude been only an act? Had she carried
on so splendidly in spite of her fear? Had she been as frightened
as he underneath?

When she withdrew her hand so that the
doctor could have access to George, Colin saw that her hand
trembled. She stood and actually swayed a little on her feet, and
he understood that her poise and self-assurance
had
been an
act, and an extraordinary one. She was a by-God heroine.

His admiration for her soared like an eagle.
Instantly, he stepped up to her and held her arm so she wouldn’t
fall. She shot him a quick glance and whispered, “Thanks.
I—ah—don’t feel so good all at once.”

He leaned close to her. “Thank you, Brenda.
You were wonderful.”

She seemed to sway into him for no more than
a second, but his other arm went around her and squeezed her close.
He didn’t care what anybody thought. She might well have saved his
brother’s life, and he wanted her to know how much he valued her
assistance.

Assistance? Dash it, she’d done everything
herself. She was no assistant. She was a heroine.

Her voice came to him, small and breathy.
“Um, I’m afraid I might be a little sick, Colin. Please let me go
into those trees for a minute.”

He’d be dashed if he’d let her go now She
might have saved his brother’s life. He led her off into the trees
himself.

“Please,” she said, her voice a little
stronger. “I hate being sick in front of people.”

“I’m not people.” The statement made no
sense, and he knew it even as the words left his mouth. But,
whatever it meant, it was the truth. Colin didn’t want to be
“people” to Brenda. He wasn’t ready to admit what he did want to be
to her, but he knew darned well it wasn’t simply “people.”

“Here,” he went on. “Lean over and put your
hands on your knees. That might help. Put your head down.”

He might have been useless in helping her
with his brother, but he knew what to do when one felt sick whilst
on the trail. He was pleased when she did as he’d advised and
without even arguing with him first. Colin could still see the set
through the trees, and even as he lightly helped Brenda to keep her
balance, he watched the doctor. His heart nearly leaped out of his
chest when he saw Martin and the doctor help George to his feet.
His body must have jerked along with his heart, because Brenda
spoke.

“I’m sorry I’m taking so long. My stomach
isn’t cooperating this morning.”

She sounded apologetic. Colin couldn’t
believe it. He turned and stared down at her. “No, no,” he assured
her. “I’m not being impatient. It’s only that George seems to be
all right. He’s standing up.”

“What?” She jerked upright. “Where?”

“There.” Colin pointed at the scene.

Slowly, slowly, Martin and the doctor were
walking George toward the lodge. Colin pushed his glasses up his
nose and peered through them, wishing his eyesight were better.
“Does it look to you as though his arm’s hanging at an odd
angle?”

She clutched at his arm with a viselike
grip, peering hard herself “I think so. It looks as if the doctor’s
got it in some kind of sling-like thing. That’s probably only to
hold it in place until he can get him inside.”

Suddenly recalling why they’d come into the
trees, Colin turned toward Brenda, who lost her footing and fell
against him. “Are you feeling better?” He didn’t want to rush her,
but he had a compelling need to see to his brother’s welfare.