Читать книгу A Modern Cinderella - Kate Hardy - Страница 14

THEY’D spent most of the day at the studio, so it meant they had to spend the next few days digging in. To Cassidy’s amazement it was going pretty well, all things considered.

Will’s guided tour had indeed given her an extra dimension of insight to the logistics of each scene they came up with, and—even though she knew he hadn’t intended it—it had also got her creative juices flowing. When they started getting words down on paper she felt as if she was getting a part of herself back again. It was exhilarating, and it boosted her self-confidence no end. Heck, she was even starting to have fun.

That would be the reason she would cite later for not having seen the danger coming her way before it arrived. Because if she’d been paying more attention…

When they couldn’t agree on what should happen at the end of an action scene, Will came up with the idea that they read the lines aloud. Nothing unusual about that, she had thought at the time. It wasn’t anything new, after all. When they had worked on the first of Nick Fortune’s adventures they’d often acted out a scene before they’d even put words down, and sometimes they’d become so absorbed in the roles they were playing that it had added a dimension to the fictional characters they might never have thought of otherwise.

But back then they’d had a very different relationship. And it never occurred to Cassidy to take that into consideration when they got to their feet with their matching sheets of script in hand, hot from the printer.

Nick and Rachel had got themselves into trouble, and had been arguing about whose fault it was they were in the mess they were. They were minutes away from being tossed off the edge of a cliff by armed terrorists…

‘“I suppose you’re going to kill us now?” That’s what you asked them? Why didn’t you just offer to shoot us too?’ said Will as Nick.

‘Oooohhh,’ laughed Cassidy as Rachel. ‘Believe me if I had a gun right now I’d be more than happy to shoot you!’

She grinned when Will changed his voice to read one of the terrorists’ lines. ‘Would you two shut up? You’ve got about five minutes to make your peace.’ He threw her an all too brief smile before jerking his chin at her to indicate it was her line.

Cassidy lifted her sheet and tried to find where they were. ‘Just make sure he goes first. He’s the one that got us into this mess.’

‘Me? I’m not the one who screamed and gave away our position!’

‘That spider was the size of Moby Dick!’ Cassidy couldn’t help but laugh again at the line. She loved that line. It was her line; she’d thought of it. She was back! What had made her think she couldn’t do this again?

Will became Will again. ‘Which brings us to the part under debate…’

The original idea had been to have Nick and Rachel fight their way out of the situation by distracting the terrorists with increased arguing. Cassidy had wanted it to be Rachel’s idea; funnily enough Will had wanted it to be Nick’s. Will suggested Nick should wink at Rachel, to let her know what he was doing. Cassidy said Rachel was too mad at him to play along with anything he came up with.

Suddenly Will looked at her, with a gaze that made her heart jump out of rhythm.

‘What?’ she asked a little breathlessly.

‘I have an idea.’ He stepped closer. ‘Play along.’

Cassidy turned her head and eyed him with suspicion. ‘What are you doing?’

‘They get to the edge of the cliff. They’re still arguing. Guns at their backs.’

‘Uh-huh…And then…?’

Something dangerous shimmered across Will’s eyes as he closed the gap between them, his deep voice lowering to a husky-edged rumble. ‘Then, just before they’re pushed over the edge, Nick asks for a last request for a dying man…’

‘And that request would be…?’

Will smiled that smile and knocked her on her ear again. ‘He asks to kiss Rachel.’

Cassidy’s eyes widened. ‘He what?’

‘Just for the record, her face looks exactly like yours does right now…’

Somewhere in the foggy haze of her completely distracted brain Cassidy knew it would ramp up the scene to a new level, but that wasn’t what made her heart thunder loudly in her ears and her body temperature rise. No. It was the fact that Will was staring down at her with a darkening gaze.

He wasn’t seriously going to—?

Thick dark lashes lowered slowly as he took the last step to bring his body within inches of hers. And as she swayed a little on her feet he angled his head, his gaze lowering to focus on her mouth. Oh, God. He was. But why? He couldn’t—

Cassidy’s lips reached for his of their own volition when he was less than an inch away, like a flower lifting towards the sun. His mouth was full and firm and hotter than she remembered from the hundreds of times she’d kissed him before, but no less familiar. When his large hands framed her face, she took a deep breath through her nose. When he leaned into her she exhaled against his lips, her heavy eyelids closing…

If anyone had told her a month ago that some time in the very near future Will Ryan would be kissing her again, and she would be feeling it in every cell in her body, she’d have laughed out loud at the ridiculousness of the notion. But he was—and she did.

It was surreal. And at the same time it was like coming home.

Long fingers slid down her cheeks, around her neck and into her hair. The taste of him was on her lips and the heady scent of clean laundry and pure Will was surrounding her. Cassidy forgot about the script, forgot about the fact they were playing the part of Nick and Rachel, forgot about the danger in what they were doing. She forgot all those things.

Instead she dropped her sheet of paper and reached for handfuls of the shirt above his lean waist, while he slipped a hand up to cradle the back of her head, his fingers threading into her hair as Cassidy drowned in the sensations flooding her body.

She’d missed kissing him. How she’d missed it. It was as if her body had been asleep like Snow White’s, and only now, with the right man, was she being kissed back into life. But then no one had ever kissed her like Will kissed her. He could make the world tilt on its axis beneath her feet. Always. From the very first time he’d kissed her. He’d caught her similarly off-guard as they’d walked over the O’Connell Street Bridge in Dublin, after taking photographs of possible locations for a short film they’d been working on for their class. With no warning he had taken her hand, tugged her to him and kissed her. Because he had to, he had told her afterwards. As if it had been as vital to him as breathing or drinking water, or any of the other things a person had to do to survive…

When he slowly drew his lips from hers, her mouth followed his back for the inch she’d closed, her eyes opening wide and searching his with a combination of wonder and fear.

After a brief moment of studying her with a dark unreadable gaze, Will rested his cheek against hers, whispering into her ear in a husky voice, ‘Then Nick says, “You take the one on the left”.’

Cassidy’s heart plummeted to the soles of her feet.

Will released her and stepped back, turning abruptly and informing her in a flat, businesslike voice, ‘That works better. So, we’ll add that in and jump straight to the fight and the chase scene…’

‘Right.’ Cassidy nodded dumbly while she tried to get her breathing under control. The script. Nick and Rachel. Not Will and Cassidy. That was what the kiss had been about. He hadn’t kissed her because he’d wanted to. He’d just forgotten they didn’t have the same relationship now they’d had before when they would have played out similar Nick and Rachel scenes—apparently.

Bending down to retrieve the sheets of paper on the floor, she took a deep breath and puffed out her cheeks as she exhaled. She could only pray he wasn’t planning on acting out the love scene they had planned for Scene Three…

She didn’t think she could survive Will Ryan breaking her heart twice in one lifetime. She wasn’t entirely sure she’d got over the first time.

The kiss changed things. At least it did for Cassidy. She tried not to let it, but she couldn’t stop it—partly because she couldn’t seem to get it out of her head…

What she needed to do was focus on what they were doing. Heck, at this point she would even take a stab at rebuilding some kind of platonic friendship with Will. After all, she had to work across a desk from him every day. How was she supposed to do any of those things if every time she looked at him she was thinking about how it had felt to be kissed by him and to kiss him back? Why was she so obsessed by it anyway? It wasn’t as if she’d kissed him back because she’d wanted to—at least she told herself it wasn’t. She’d been playing a part, the same way he had, thinking on her feet, reacting to what he’d done—that was all. It didn’t mean anything.

Darn it, he was looking at her again. She could feel it. Every time he did it the hair on the back of her neck tingled.

‘Stir crazy?’

She kept pacing around the room, the same way she had for most of the two days since they’d kissed. ‘I’m fine.’

‘Well, I’m not,’ his voice rumbled back. ‘All that pacing is making me crazy.’ Will sighed heavily. ‘You’re not used to sharing space with someone these days, are you? I never pictured you as that much of a loner…’

Cassidy stopped dead in her tracks and angled her head. ‘Excuse me?’

‘Lived with someone else after me, did you?’

Her jaw dropped. What business was it of his who she had or hadn’t lived with? She could have lived with twenty men. Not that she had lived with anyone else, barring the time she’d lived in her father’s house while he was ill. But that wasn’t the point.

A few times over the years she’d considered advertising for a flatmate, but by then she’d got used to having her own space. Living on her own, she didn’t have to worry about someone else’s opinions on things like what TV channel to watch, or how loud she could play music, or any of a dozen other compromises a person made when they shared living space.

‘Compromises…’

Cassidy frowned when he said the very thing she’d just thought—as if he’d somehow stepped inside her head. ‘What?’

‘I said living with someone involves compromises.’

‘It does.’ She nodded. ‘And forced intimacy…’

‘Shared responsibilities…’

When he looked up at her she turned away and began pacing again, the words quietly slipping off the tip of her tongue. ‘Never being alone.’

She frowned sideways at him when she said it, confusion clouding her vision as he studied her with a curious expression that almost said he suspected why she’d been so uneasy with him of late. She hoped he didn’t! But while he continued staring at her there was an inexplicably heavy tension in the room.

Her chin lifted. ‘Okay. Fine. You’re right—all are things I suck royally at. Barring the last one. I excel at being alone these days—it’s what I do best.’

‘Cass…’ He kept his voice low. ‘Living with someone is nothing like what we’re doing now. You know that. And being alone isn’t—’

‘Of course it’s nothing like this. This is artificial. And temporary.’ Cassidy tried to figure out why that felt so bad and couldn’t seem to find an answer. Maybe being alone for so long had affected her more than she’d realized? She started pacing again. ‘This isn’t sharing space. It’s temporary. A charade.’

‘A charade?’ he repeated dryly.

She glanced sideways at him again as she changed direction. ‘Oh, come on. It’s miraculous enough that we’ve managed to work together this last while…’

‘We shared space before and it was never this much of a problem…’ Will reached for his mug and frowned when he discovered it was empty. ‘You want coffee?’

He didn’t wait for an answer, reaching across the large desk for her empty mug and pushing his squeaky chair back. ‘I don’t think this has anything to do with sharing space with me. I think trying to keep me at arm’s length is starting to take its toll on you.’

When he left the room her feet immediately followed him. ‘And what exactly is that supposed to mean?’

‘I think you know what it means.’

How dared he assume he knew her every thought? Just because nine times out of ten he was in the ballpark area, it didn’t mean he could read her damn mind.

She followed him across the living room. ‘So if I’m not throwing myself at you it means I’m fighting some inner battle, does it? How do you get that head of yours through doors?’

Setting their mugs down on the breakfast bar, Will went about refilling the coffee-maker, replacing the filter and spooning in coffee granules. ‘Doesn’t have anything to do with throwing yourself at me. You’re determined not to allow yourself to even be friends with me again. It’s childish, frankly. We’re both adults.’

Placing her hands on her hips, she stopped dead at one end of the breakfast bar, speechless.

With the coffee set to percolate, Will turned around, leaning nonchalantly against the counter-top on the opposite side of the kitchen from her and calmly folding his arms across the studio logo on his T-shirt. ‘You’re different. The Cass I met in the Beverly Wilshire just over a week ago isn’t the girl I knew in Dublin. The girl I knew in Dublin was open-minded and honest to the point of bluntness, and she would never have let something brood in her the way you have since you got here. So let’s just clear the air and get it over with, shall we?’

Cassidy opened her mouth to tell him to go straight to—

But he looked her in the eye and knocked the air out of her lungs by saying, ‘You blame me for our break-up, don’t you?’

He wasn’t done, either. Not content with opening the can of worms, he then twisted the knife she felt she had in her chest by adding, ‘Maybe you should just take a minute and remember who it was that did the breaking up before I left…’

The sharp gasp of air hurt her already raw throat.

Then a muted doorbell sounded, and the door at the top of the stairs was flung open. ‘Hello? Anybody home? Time to put down the keyboard!’

Cassidy had a brief glimpse of the frown on Will’s face before she snapped her head around to watch with wide eyes as Angelique appeared. If it wasn’t surprise enough finding out that the woman had a key to Will’s house, there was then a thundering of footsteps and a small blonde-haired ball of energy ran down the stairs, across the wooden floor, and launched itself into Will’s waiting arms.

‘Uncle Will!’

Uncle Will? Cassidy couldn’t help it; her jaw dropped. Not just at the sight of the little girl throwing her small arms around the column of his neck. What really amazed her was Will’s expression as he held her. He was transformed. Gone was the intense, unreadable, pain-in-the-rear Will, and in his place was a man who looked as if he’d just shed five years. Light danced in his eyes, he grinned broadly, and there was the sound of deep, rumbling, happy laughter before he made an exaggerated groan and leaned his head back to look down at her.

‘Hey, munchkin.’

‘We brought a picnic!’

‘Did you, now?’ He lifted his dark brows as he looked in Angelique’s direction, ‘Did I know we were having a picnic?’

‘It’s a surprise, silly!’ the little girl informed him.

‘Indeed it is,’ he answered dryly.

Angelique had made it to Cassidy’s side. ‘This is what happens when you two stand me up for dinner. Script or no script, you still have to eat.’

Will looked up as he bent to set the child on her feet. ‘We have managed to feed ourselves on our own. Ever hear of a little thing called a phone, Angie?’

‘Ah, but if we’d phoned ahead it wouldn’t be a surprise, would it?’

‘Remind me to ask for my key back some time.’

Cassidy was rapidly putting two and two together. She even found her gaze sliding across to the little girl who was tugging on Will’s jeans to see if she could see any similarities between them. Having had such vivid images of miniature Wills in her mind since she’d arrived in his gorgeous house, she felt the ragged edges of her heart grate painfully at the thought of finding any. She didn’t want Will to have any children she might be forced to look at. The thought of him having them with any woman who wasn’t her was apparently painful enough.

Which made no sense whatsoever, considering how much she currently disliked him and how close they had been to a major argument not five minutes earlier.

‘Uncle Will?’

He hunched down to look the little girl in the eye; the thoughtfulness of the simple act made Cassidy’s heart hurt all over again. ‘Yes, munchkin, what can I do for you?’

‘The picnic’s for the beach.’

‘Is it indeed?’

She nodded enthusiastically. ‘And I brought my swimsuit and my bodyboard.’

‘Ah.’ Will pursed his mouth into a thin line and frowned almost comically at her, before taking a deep breath through his nose. ‘We’d better go check the sea is still there, then, hadn’t we?’

The little girl giggled, and Cassidy found herself smiling at them as Angelique linked their arms at the elbow and lowered her voice conspiratorially. ‘Sometimes I wonder who has who wrapped around their little finger. I hope you’ve brought a bikini with you?’

The thought of publicly displaying her body on a Malibu beach next to the goddess that was Angelique Warden made Cassidy want to curl up in a ball and die. That was not happening in this lifetime. Not that she owned a bikini to begin with, but still…

‘Will could give you a surfing lesson while he’s helping Lily bodyboard.’

Cassidy’s gaze shifted sharply and crashed into Will’s as he stood to his full height. Then her troublesome imagination revisited the image she’d had of him emerging from the surf and she swallowed hard. For a moment she even thought she could hear herself making a gulping noise.

Thick lashes blinked while he stared at her. The intensity returning to his gaze was even fiercer than before. Oh, please, please don’t let now be one of the times when he can read my mind, she silently pleaded. There was only so much humiliation she could take.

Then he nodded. ‘You’ll need sunscreen. Beach towels are in the laundry room. Angie knows where everything is.’

Before Cassidy could protest, he turned his attention to Lily. ‘Right, then. While Cass and I get changed, you and your mom can go get this picnic we’ve been promised. Are there cookies?’

‘Duh, Uncle Will.’

Despite many, many, many carefully worded protests, Cassidy found herself on the beach—thankfully in a swimsuit rather than a bikini. Even that was covered by a thigh-length light shirt. Smothered in the highest factor sunscreen she’d packed, she also had the large-brimmed straw hat Angelique had left behind on her last visit to Will’s house on her head. She had the prerequisite sunglasses on, and had bent one knee as artfully as she could manage as she sat on the large blanket beside the bikini-clad Angelique. If people squinted Cassidy reckoned they might look like nineteen-fifties movie star next to modern-day goddess. Hopefully. After all, women had been adored for their hourglass figures back then—which meant, as always, her timing was severely off. Not that it made her feel any more comfortable in her own skin.

Watching Will playing in the surf with Lily was the worst form of water torture she’d ever been submitted to. It was just plain wrong to be drooling at the sight of him in long swim shorts—bare chest, toned, tanned, gorgeous enough to die for—while he played with a small child. Especially if he was that small child’s father, and she was sitting chatting to the woman he’d made that child with. Cassidy had never had a worse case of the green-eyed monster in all her life.

‘Lily adores him.’ Angelique was smiling at them when Cassidy looked her way. ‘He’ll make a great father some day.’

Cassidy exhaled with relief as quietly as she could manage it. ‘She’s gorgeous.’

‘Obviously I think so. But then I’m a tad biased. Do you have kids, Cass?’

‘Thirty of them.’ She smiled at Angelique’s expression. ‘I’m a schoolteacher.’

‘Ahh. You scared me for a minute.’

Despite a lingering modicum of jealousy over her relationship with Will, Cassidy found herself warming to Angie. She wasn’t at all the way the tabloids portrayed her. And seeing her obvious love for her daughter humanised her.

Turning onto her stomach, Angie swung her feet back and forth in the air and studied Cassidy from behind her sunglasses. ‘Did you and Will ever talk about having kids when you were together?’

It was a very personal question, but by asking it she’d already shown she knew there had been more to their relationship than being scriptwriting duo Ryan and Malone. The thing was, talking about their relationship with someone who might well be in, or have been in, a similar relationship with Will made Cassidy uncomfortable.

So she sought a simple answer. ‘We were young.’

The fact she’d said it with a shrug of her shoulders didn’t seem to fool Angie. ‘Ever since I’ve known Will he’s been reluctant to talk about you. It took us to get him drunk one night before he would even talk about growing up in Ireland…’

He’d talked about his childhood? Wow. Cassidy wondered if Angie knew what a big deal that was for Will. She’d been dating him for nearly a year before she’d got the full story—though in fairness she hadn’t had to get him drunk.

But her brain had latched onto one seemingly insignificant word. ‘Us?’

Angie examined the perfectly manicured fingernails on one hand. ‘Lily’s father—my on-again off-again partner Eric—is one of Will’s best friends. It’s how I got to know Will. And why he’s Lily’s godfather.’

Immediately Cassidy’s gaze sought them out again in the sea. Will was swinging the little girl round and round in circles, while she squealed in delight and he grinned boyishly at her. ‘Oh.’

She’d got that one completely wrong, then, hadn’t she?

There was a chuckle of laughter. ‘Yes, I wondered if you’d thought that. You’re delightfully easy to read, aren’t you? I can’t tell you how refreshing that is in Hollywood.’

Heat built on Cassidy’s cheeks that had absolutely nothing to do with the sun.

‘Can I ask you a question, Cass?’

A sense of dread made her cringe as she looked down at the woman she had a sneaking suspicion was about to ask the one question she didn’t want to answer. ‘Depends on what it is.’

Angelique smiled. ‘I’ve wondered why Will didn’t bring you with him.’

‘When he moved here from Ireland?’

‘Yes. You were quite the writing team, on top of the relationship you had.’

Okay, not the question she’d been waiting for. Maybe that was why she answered it honestly, her chin dropping and her voice lowering even though there wasn’t any chance he could hear her from where he was. ‘I couldn’t leave.’

‘So he did ask?’

‘Yes.’ It was a simplistic answer to a situation that had been very complicated.

There was a moment of silence, then, ‘Do you regret it?’

Cassidy smiled sadly. ‘That’s not an easy one to answer. It’s not a case of regretting; it’s more of a case of what was right and what was wrong at the time, and what was meant to be and what wasn’t. And I have no idea why I’m telling you this…’

‘Maybe you need a friend?’ Angelique waited until Cassidy looked at her, and then she nodded sharply and beamed. ‘I’ve decided I like you, Cass. I think we’ll be great friends. You don’t treat me like a movie star, and that’s a huge bonus.’

Cassidy lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘You are a movie star.’

Angie lowered her voice to a similar level, ‘Shh. Somebody might hear you.’

They were laughing when the sun was suddenly blocked out, forcing Cassidy to shade her eyes with a hand as she looked up at the dark silhouette surrounded by bright light.

‘Ready for your surfing lesson?’