Seduced and Betrayed (7 page)

She was just on the verge of it, just on the end of forgetting all the reasons why she shouldn't even be with him now, let alone go swimming at some secluded beach with him. He was arrogant and oversexed and...

"Come with me, Laura."

Laura?

Ariel's heated little fantasy burst like a bubble. Zeke wasn't holding
her,
kissing
her,
trying to coax
her
into giving in to temptation. It was Judd holding Laura; Judd kissing Laura; Judd whispering sweet tempting words that had been written by someone else for him to say to Laura.

Ariel felt her cheeks heat with embarrassment. She stiffened in Zeke's arms.

He tightened his hold on her. "Come with me," he said again.

"I... I don't have my bathing suit," Ariel stammered, belatedly remembering her line.

"That's all right. I won't look. I promise. I'll turn my back until you're in the water." He kissed the corner of her mouth again. "Say yes, Laura."

"I..." She squeezed her eyes shut and prayed for the courage to see the scene through when all she wanted to do was run and hide. "Yes," she said and pressed her lips to his, playing it exactly as it had been written in the script.

She held the final kiss like the trooper she was, her arms around Zeke's neck, her breasts flattened against his chest, her nerves screaming with tension and embarrassment, waiting for the director's indication that he'd gotten everything he wanted from the scene. It seemed to be taking forever.

"And... cut," Hans said, finally. "Print it."

Zeke stood up and thrust her away from him with his hands at her waist. "For Crissake, Princess, next time try to remember your lines," he snarled, and brushed past her as if he couldn't get away fast enough.

Ariel stood there for a shocked moment, blinking back hot, confused tears and hoping no one had noticed. Not his inexplicable rudeness, nor her own brief, embarrassing lapse into the fantasy they'd been creating for the camera.

* * *

They'd filmed the love scene at the lake less than a month later, in the man-made pond on one of the studio's back lots. It had gone much more smoothly, with no forgotten lines and no embarrassment except for what an eighteen-year-old girl might normally be expected to feel at being asked to surrender the top of her bathing suit once she'd gotten into the water with a film crew as witnesses.

It would look better for the cameras, Hans had said, enhancing the illusion that Laura had succumbed to Judd's blandishments and was swimming naked. She'd hesitated at first but the water was murky and no one would really see anything—and Zeke had challenged her by taking his trunks off underwater and flinging them onto the shore.

After the first three takes, Ariel almost forgot she was topless beneath the water. She played the scene over and over, as many times as Hans asked her to, beautifully. She was shy and giggly one minute, bold and flirtatious the next, as Laura and Judd played a teasing game of sexual retreat and advance. And when it came time for her to surrender herself to his embrace, she went easily, naturally, into his arms, letting him press her bare breasts to his chest, his bare belly to hers, while he cupped her head in his hands and kissed her senseless. She remembered feeling his erection, pressed against her stomach under the water, but there was no fear, no maidenly shock or revulsion. They were lovers by then, and she was used to his hands and his mouth and the feel of his lean hard body. Used to the heat they created in her....

* * *

Ariel rolled over in the water with a low moan, feeling that heat again—
still!—
and dived toward the bottom of the pool in an effort to alleviate it. But the coolness she sought was just an illusion, temporary at best, and the heat inside her was soul deep. She swam to the edge of the pool and levered herself out of the water in one smooth motion.

There was only one way to deal with the pain and the memories, to dissipate the heat. Work. Hard work and lots of it. Maybe it was time to take a long, serious look at one of those movie scripts her agent was always trying to tempt her with. Or maybe she'd see how much clout she really had with the studio heads and suggest the idea for a documentary-style series on women entrepreneurs she'd been thinking about; they'd been trying to entice her to come back to prime-time TV ever since she'd walked away from
Maggie and Me
in its sixth successful season.

Or, hell, she thought recklessly, bending over to pick up her nightgown on her way back into the house, maybe she'd just take a lover. She'd had enough offers over the years. Just that afternoon, one of the young hotshot executives at Gavino Cosmetics had made it more than clear he was interested, if she was.

Maybe she'd take him up on it. Someone young, handsome and virile might just be able to keep her too busy to even
think
about Zeke Blackstone, let alone break her heart over him again.

Chapter 4

With her usual good taste, manic efficiency, and attention to detail, Zeke's secretary had apartment 1-G painted and cleaned and ready for him to move into two days after Jack and Faith Shannon moved out. She'd gone with vintage Mission furniture against a soothing color scheme of sand, sage green, and dusty sunset shades of peach and aqua that perfectly suited the building's mood and architecture. She'd turned the smaller of the two bedrooms into an efficient high-tech office with three phone lines, a fax machine, and a computer system, complete with laser printer. There was a Nordic Track in a corner of the bedroom for his morning workouts and the refrigerator was stocked with Evian, imported light beer, a selection of good-for-you snacks, and frozen low-fat gourmet meals. She'd had sturdy new locks installed on the doors and windows, supplemented by a sophisticated alarm system that was controlled by a keypad in the bedroom. Everything was rented—from the expensive designer furniture in the rooms, to the art on the walls, to colorful Fiesta ware in the kitchen, to the alarm system—and everything would be gone two days after Zeke moved out again.

And, yet, it felt lived in and familiar. Almost eerily so, Zeke thought, as if the former occupants had left little bits and pieces of themselves behind. Without even closing his eyes, Zeke could see flashes of his past in the apartment. Ethan Roberts was there, leaning negligently against a doorjamb with a beer in his hand, as smooth and suave as if he were posing for an ad in
GQ;
Eric and Jack Shannon were wrangling over something the way they often did that summer; and the women, dozens of them, beautiful, interchangeable and always available in that long-ago era of free love and uninhibited sex. He could see the little Russian makeup artist, Irina Markova, who'd lived on the first floor, fussing around in the kitchen as she fixed a pot of borscht or some of her special Azerbaijan pilaf so that he and his roommates "shouldn't starve" from their own cooking. And there, too, was Ariel, standing in the middle of the living room, just as she had been at eighteen. Lovely, fragile, innocent Ariel.

From the first time he'd seen her on the studio sound stage, something in her spoke to something in him. Stirred and provoked and challenged him somehow. He'd taken one look at her—America's sweetheart, the fresh-scrubbed princess of prime-time television—and immediately decided to see if he could outwit the dragon who protected her and scale the walls of her castle.

Part of it was that she'd irked him at first, a little, with her old-fashioned innocence and her grave good manners. It had to be a put-on. Nobody was
that
innocent anymore, he'd thought, not in 1970, and certainly not anyone who'd grown up in Hollywood during the turbulent sixties, where "sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll" was the rule rather than the exception.

But Ariel was.

He'd known it for sure the very first time he'd kissed her.

They'd been on the set, under the hot lights and the watchful eyes of Hans Ostfield and the rest of the crew. The cameras were rolling and she was supposed to be acting a part. But she wasn't. Her hesitation and uncertainty had been real. And so had her artless surrender. She'd gotten adorably flustered and stumbled over her lines. And he'd gotten a hard-on that almost burst the buttons on his jeans. He'd pushed her away from him the second the scene was over and said something rude to cover his own confusion and embarrassment before stalking away from the set like James Dean on a tear.

After that, she'd become less of a challenge and more of a... cause. He hadn't wanted to storm the walls of her castle anymore, he'd wanted to coax her to come down on her own. He'd wanted to free her from her prison of stifling propriety. It was, after all, 1970, the era of women's liberation and free love, and she was still trapped back in the white-gloved fifties when good girls sat on the sidelines and waited patiently to be asked.

He was an observant young man and it hadn't taken him long to decide
why
Ariel was the way she was. He only had to look as far as her mother. And he didn't like what he saw.

Constance Cameron was a would-be actress with little talent of her own, who'd apparently discovered, early on, that her young fatherless daughter was talented enough for both of them. Constance had given up her own dreams of stardom and concentrated on her daughter's career. Ariel had been working steadily from the age of four, first in commercials and then in prime-time television. She'd never gone to a regular school with other children, but had been tutored by her mother between takes. Her mother was also her manager, her agent, her acting coach, wardrobe and script consultant, as well as constant companion, both on the set and off.

Until
Wild Hearts.

For the first time in her career—and, perhaps, her life—Ariel was out from under her mother's watchful eye.

And smack-dab under the admiring gaze of an experienced hot-eyed young man.

And so, using all his considerable bad-boy charm and the expertise gained in twenty-two years of living, Zeke had begun a determined effort to lure the sheltered young actress into his arms—and into his bed—for real....

* * *

"It's all right, sweetheart. You can come in. None of the guys are here."

"Are you sure?"

"Sure, I'm sure," Zeke said, drawing Ariel into the apartment as he spoke. "They've all got day jobs now. Even Ethan," he added, knowing that Ariel didn't like him very much. "He got that part on
As Time Goes By,
the one he auditioned for a couple of weeks ago? He says it looks like it might develop into a regular gig."

"How wonderful for him," she said politely. "He must be pleased about it."

"Yeah, I guess..." He had no desire to talk about any of his roommates or their careers, not when he finally had Ariel alone in his apartment, away from the cast and crew on the set—and her interfering mother. "Here, why don't you take off your sunglasses and that silly scarf?" He reached out to remove the oversize sunglasses and untie the yellow-and-white print Pucci scarf from under her chin. "I don't think anybody's going to recognize you now."

"No, I guess not," Ariel agreed shyly, looking down as he removed the offending items.

"Much better," he said approvingly, and bent to press a quick kiss on her lips.

She looked up, startled, but he had already turned away to place the glasses and scarf on the coffee table.

"Let me put some music on and then I'll get us something to drink. You like Creedence Clearwater?" he asked as he thumbed through the albums stacked upright in the bookshelf. He glanced back over his shoulder when she didn't answer.

She was standing in the middle of the haphazardly decorated living room looking like a shy little daffodil in a sleeveless yellow Givenchy minidress. It had white piping on all the edges and big, oversize white buttons down the front. Her stockings were sheer white, her shoes were yellow patent leather, ankle-strapped wedgies, and she had a wide white-and-yellow polka-dot bangle on one slender wrist. Something about the way she stood and the wary expression in her big blue eyes made Zeke think of a young deer on the verge of bolting into the safety of the woods.

He put the album on and hurried back over to her, snagging an arm around her waist as he headed for the kitchen. He turned her sideways as they went through the narrow door, shouldering his way through the multicolored strands of beads that hung from the header.

"Pretty slim pickings," he said when he opened the refrigerator. "I've got Coke or orange soda." There was a bottle of wine, too, but he didn't offer that. He didn't want her to be able to say, later, that she hadn't known what she was doing. "Which will it be?"