A Wilder Name Page 6

“Never mind that. You don’t need me.”

  “Luke, what’s got into—”

  Luke entered the room. From the hall Nina could hear the two men’s voices hashing over a disagreement. Finally Luke reappeared.

  “No problems?” Nina asked brightly. His look was sheepish, but he didn’t respond. He shrugged into a denim jacket and took her hand.

  Looking her up and down he remarked, “I have some objections to your outfit, but it suits you.”

  She had chosen the only outfit she owned which she thought her nieces would find “cool” enough—she didn’t want to embarrass them. She wore a tan leather jumpsuit, tan gloves, and matching boots. The severity was relieved by a silver metallic belt at her waist and some heavy silver jewelry. She had actually forgotten that wearing excessive leather might annoy him.

  “If you don’t like it, tough.”

  “Oh, I like it well enough,” he replied, eyeing the way the material clung to her body.

  “How do we get out of here?” she asked.

  “I’m parked in a security area over there. Let’s hope it’s still secure,” was his reply.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well, sometimes fans who couldn’t get into the concert can get a bit out of hand, a bit excited, a bit over-enthusiastic—”

  “You mean they act like hooligans.”

  “Well, yes.”

  They stepped out the door and started walking toward the parked cars. First there was the flash of a camera and then a shout.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Is it Gingie?”

  “No, it’s Luke Swain!”

  “Luke! Luke!”

  “Oh no,” said Luke. He sounded more depressed than worried. None of the stars had been expected to leave this early. Consequently, Luke, Nina, and her nieces became the sole focus of attention for a lot of bored fans who’d been waiting outside for a few hours.

  Nina would never forget what happened next. Hundreds of people rushed forward, many slipping under the barricades and past security guards to reach them. She pushed her nieces behind her with one hand and gripped Luke tightly with the other, hoping he would know how to handle it.

  As the fans mobbed him he was trying to shield Nina and the girls while simultaneously shouting, “All right, back off! Security! Get these girls out of here!” It had happened too fast for Nina and the girls to run back to the building.

  People piled into the crush. Nina had let go her hold of Luke since he seemed to be the center of the storm. When she lost her hold of Maria and Angela she panicked. She couldn’t even see her nieces through the throng of bodies.

  “Maria!” she shouted.

  “Who’s she?” asked someone, looking at Nina.

  “She’s with him!”

  Suddenly people were pulling at Nina’s hair, tugging at her clothes. Someone grabbed her belt.

  “Don’t do that!” she snapped.

  But finding her nieces in the midst of this insanity was more important than protecting her clothes. As she pushed her way through a solid wall of girls all squealing Luke’s name, she felt her belt and jewelry being removed, her sleeve ripped off, her neckline torn and one of her boots yanked off. Someone jumping up and down accidentally hit her in the face so hard she saw stars. That girl actually apologized and helped her sit down on the pavement.

  “Maria! Angela!”

  She heard police whistles and deep masculine voices. Someone shoving their way through the crowd fell on top of her. Nina was too enraged to lose consciousness. When she hauled herself to her feet, the mêlée seemed to be breaking up as fast as it had begun, with policemen dragging people away and placing them behind the barricades.

  “Nina, are you all right?” It was Angela’s voice.

  Nina grabbed her by the shoulders. “Yes, yes. Are you all right, honey?” Angela was streaked with mud and axle grease and she was missing buttons, clothes, hair ribbons, and all her souvenirs.

  “Yeah! Isn’t this neat?” She grinned in exultation.

  Someone else knocked Nina over. She stayed on the ground this time, completely defeated by the follies of pop culture.

  She was still sitting there fuming minutes later when Luke came over to her, followed by Angela and Maria. The glee on their faces and their attitude of having been “blooded” fed her fury and completely counteracted the concern on Luke’s face.

  “Nina, are you hurt? Are you okay?” He knelt down beside her.

  “I’m fine. Does this happen to you often?” Her voice was like ice.

  “It hasn’t happened to me for a while,” he said tiredly.

  “Gosh, someone even stole your boot, Nina!” exclaimed Maria.

  Unforgivably, Luke started to laugh. Angela and Maria joined him.

  “What’s so damned funny?”

  “Oh, come on, Nina. You have to laugh. I mean, look at us all.” He’d gotten the worst of it by far: His jeans and the remaining half of his shirt were torn, disheveled, and mud-and-grease-stained. “I know you’re shaken up,” he said, “but it’s no big deal. It happens to rock stars all the time.”

  “I’m not a rock star,” Nina snarled, jumping to her feet. “And if I wanted to be mauled, robbed, and hit on the head, I could walk through the Bowery after dark! Why the hell did you offer to drive us home if you knew this sort of thing was going to happen?”

  “I didn’t know,” he began angrily.

  “Well, if it happens ‘all the time’ to rock stars, you bloody well should have known!”

  “I didn’t think—”

  “Obviously!”

  “Nina, don’t get upset,” said Maria.

  “Everyone’s okay, Nina,” chimed in Angela.

  Their defection to his side was too much. Enraged, Nina whirled on them both, “You keep out of this! How am I going to explain this to your father?”

  “I’ll explain it,” said Luke placatingly.

  “Mind your own business!” snapped Nina, beside herself.

  “Nina, for God’s sake, nobody meant any harm! They just wanted—”

  “To grab my clothes, jewelry, and hair because I happened to be leaving with you. If you like that sort of brutal, mindless, vulgar idolatry that’s your business. I don’t!”

  He seemed to be counting to ten. Finally, he said, “Come on. I’ll drive you home.”

  Not wishing to travel by train missing one boot and half her clothes, Nina agreed only because she had no other way of getting home. But the ride took place in charged silence. By the time they reached her apartment, Nina couldn’t stand the tension.

  She hustled the girls out of the car and sent them into the building, then looked at Luke who stood pensively on the sidewalk, hands in his pockets, jacketless in the chilly October night.

  “We can’t talk now,” he said quietly. “I’ll call you—”

  “No, don’t,” Nina interrupted.

  He looked at her.

  “I’m calm now. I—I lost my temper before. I seem to do that around you.”

  “So I noticed,” he said dryly.

  “Look, Luke. I can’t handle that kind of thing. I don’t like it, I don’t want it, I’ve worked hard to get away from it.”

  “It doesn’t—”

  “I’m not cut out to get involved with a rock star, Luke. I don’t want to see you again.”

  “Is it just because of what happened tonight?”

  “What else could it be?”

  “What else, indeed?” He studied her speculatively, his dark eyes giving nothing away.

  “Goodbye, Mr. Swain,” she said softly and turned to go inside.

  Not many people would have recognized the ultra-elegant Nina Gnagnarelli in the disheveled figure that limped into her building that night.

  Luke stood in the street staring at the empty lobby long after Nina had gone inside.

  Four

  The opening night of Rigoletto was a triumph. It was also a great professional success for Nina. In those final days of reh
earsal she had tapped a depth of fury and sorrow she hadn’t known existed in herself.

  If she regretted telling Luke Swain she wouldn’t see him again, she successfully ignored the feeling during those final, intense days of rehearsals and fittings.

  She received flowers, telegrams, telexes, cards, handshakes, hugs, congratulations, and champagne. Friends, family, fellow professionals, famous faces, and influential figures dropped by her dressing room to wish her well, and a host of reporters was waiting as she and other singers left the opera house.

  The opening night party was a gala champagne affair. This, she thought, looking around at the elegant surroundings and happy guests, was where she belonged. It was the antithesis of Luke’s world of badly dressed, rebellious performers and mass hysteria. Regrets were a waste of time.

  “You look distracted,” said Elena.

  “Just thinking,” said Nina.

  “Have some caviar.”

  “Excuse me,” said Giorgio Bellanti in heavily accented English. “I want this wonderful girl to meet some friends.” Nina smiled affectionately at his description of her as he dragged her away.

  * * * *

  Nina felt exhausted and depressed during the following days, not an unusual reaction for her. It was a natural comedown after the intensity of rehearsal and the high of opening night. She felt a bit out of sorts when her depression didn’t ease off with the exhaustion. What on earth was the matter with her?

  She lay in bed and closed her eyes.

  He was there, waiting for her. He had been waiting in other quiet moments recently. Rich brown eyes stared into her very soul, a warm, firm mouth touched hers—

  “Get out of my mind!” she gasped.

  They lived worlds apart, and she wanted no part of his. He was argumentative, ill-mannered and probably the only person in the world as opinionated as her father and siblings. They brought out the worst in each other. She had all but given up blushing, staring, stammering, and shrieking until she met him.

  For the first time, she saw the suspicion of something else in herself—something he had hinted at when she’d said goodbye to him: a source of vulnerability that he was tapping in her. The cool, worldly, sophisticated woman whom she had so carefully cultivated seemed to desert Nina every time Luke was around, leaving a vulnerable girl in her place. It was as if he had uncovered a part of her she had never developed, hadn’t known existed.

  She picked up the telephone and called her mother to tell her she’d be over for Sunday dinner. That ought to keep your wandering imagination in line, she told herself.

  She sang Rigoletto again the following week. Jesse Harmon had asked her for five tickets to the performance, so she had pulled a few strings to get the best seats. She was looking forward to seeing Jesse. She had agreed to go out on the town with him afterward, but she sincerely hoped he wouldn’t mention Luke.

  She sang again that night from an unleashed, even unpredictable well of passion and sorrow that enthralled her audience. Giorgio was, of course, the international superstar they had all come to see, but he beamed like a proud father when she stepped forward for her applause.

  Jesse and Rebecca stuck their heads through her dressing room doorway as she was accepting congratulations from various well-wishers and a few friends.

  “Jesse!” She was genuinely pleased to see his friendly, wrinkled face.

  “Whoowhee!” He came forward and gave her a hug that knocked the air out of her lungs. “You are something else.”

  “You were extraordinary,” beamed Rebecca.

  “I think,” said Jesse conspiratorially, “that you’ve even converted the heathen.”

  “Hmm?”

  “We brought company.” He winked.

  She looked toward the door and saw Luke. Their eyes met. Nina forgot everyone else in the room. She watched like a trapped rabbit as he glided toward her.

  She hadn’t seen him for three weeks. But she hadn’t forgotten the way his waving hair framed his face, the way one brow drooped slightly, the dazzling contrast of his white teeth in that dark visage when he smiled. He was dressed in elegant evening clothes. He looked devastating. His eyes were appreciative, a little awed as they took in her dramatic appearance in full costume and makeup.

  “Congratulations,” he said softly. “You were incredible. I’ve never seen anything like you.”

  She was lost in his eyes, eyes that were glowing, impressed, and warm for her. She heard herself thank him.

  Luke gave Nina a single white rose. “It reminded me of you,” he teased. “Beautiful, delicate ... thorny.”

  That broke the spell. “Thank you,” she said crisply. She turned to Jesse. “Who else came with you?”

  “My drummer and his girlfriend,” Luke answered her question. He introduced a pleasant looking blond man. “Nina, this is Robin Good. He’s been with me almost from the beginning.”

  “Robin Good?” she repeated. “You must have even more trouble with your name than I do.”

  He shrugged good-naturedly. “It goes with the job.” Robin introduced Nina to his companion, a friendly woman in her late twenties.

  “Giorgio asked me to apologize for not being able to meet you, Jesse. He’s got to leave right away.”

  “What’s he like to work with?”

  “Fantastic,” she said. “He’s the most gifted and sensitive singer I’ve ever worked with. And generous. There can be a lot of nasty competition onstage. I’ve seen selfish stars belittle everyone at rehearsals and try to upstage them at performances. But not Giorgio; he encourages everyone and gives everyone their moment onstage.”

  “He sings like a lion.”

  “Look, I’ve got to change and clean up. The wardrobe mistress keeps peering at me through the door.” Nina gestured to her costume. Her hair was largely covered by a long black fall which Luke seemed to find fascinating.

  “We’ll wait outside,” said Jesse. Everyone left the room. Nina was irked that Luke made no attempt to get a moment alone with her.

  Well, that’s fine with me, she thought, removing her costume and handing it to the wardrobe mistress with a few words of thanks. She removed most of her makeup and shook out her hair.

  Naked, Nina stepped into the small shower cubicle in the corner of her dressing room to wash away the dirt, perspiration, and tension of the evening in the steaming hot water.

  When she was done she dried off briskly, wrapped herself in the towel, wiped off part of the steamy full-length mirror and began blow-drying her curly hair into its usual smooth style. She stood facing the big mirror, her back to the door, concentrating on her task, the noise of the hair dryer blocking out all other sounds.

  The door opened behind her. Her eyes met Luke’s in the mirror.

  “I knocked,” he said.

  He closed the door behind him and leaned against it, taking in her near-nakedness.

  She continued to stare at his reflection in the mirror. His eyes locked with hers. She couldn’t breathe. She switched off the hair dryer and lowered her arm. She couldn’t speak. An intense, waiting silence filled the room.

  “Are you sorry I came tonight?” he asked softly.

  She shook her head.

  If only he would move, she thought. But he didn’t, and the spell grew stronger. His gaze burned through the thin cotton towel. Desire flowed between them like a living bond. A sense of danger coursed through Nina. The air was heady with the scent of a hundred flowers and misty from her shower. The dressing room was no longer a familiar, workday place. The steamy mirror obscured most of the room from her view; she could see only herself, half-naked and tense, surrounded by wildly colorful flowers, locked in silent communication with this dark stranger.

  Luke moved toward her slowly, stalking her like some cunning jungle beast. The hair dryer slipped from her hand like a forgotten weapon. Hypnotized, she watched his approach. He stood so close behind her she could feel the warmth of his body, smell his clean male scent.

  “You have beau
tiful shoulders,” he whispered. He caressed one lightly. Nina shuddered.

  Their eyes met again in the mirror, passionate and surprised. Luke studied her expression for a minute, then deliberately lowered his head.

  His lips touched the soft skin of her shoulder. Nina’s breath came out in a rush. She saw the image of his dark head bent over her shoulder, felt the burning heat of his mouth on her flesh, heard the soft, senseless words he was whispering to her as he boldly kissed her neck, nuzzled her hair, nibbled on her earlobe.

  Her breathing was ragged. She moaned softly, helplessly. This is madness, she thought, I’ve got to stop it. But passion was stronger than reason, and she leaned back against him as her knees gave way. His arms came around her swiftly, like a predator enfolding its prey.

  His tanned hands ran up and down her arms, caressing, gently kneading. His teasing fingers lightly traced the towel where it covered the full swell of her soft, white breasts. Her flesh burned beneath the cloth. She moaned in frustration at the slight barrier, wanting to feel his touch against her skin. She was dizzy with rapture, wanting it to go on and on, wanting to lose herself in him and become a part of him.

  “Nina, lovely Nina,” he murmured. His desires were as raging as her own as he slipped his hand through the folds of the towel to stroke and caress the silky skin of her waist and stomach.

  Luke was kissing her, tasting her, whispering feverish words of desire. He touched her lightly, roughly, longingly. Nina tilted her head back and watched her own seduction in the misty mirror, arching her back sensuously as she reached up behind her to stroke his hair and grip his strong shoulders.

  His warm knowing hand stroked her stomach, moving down over her abdomen, down, down ... Nina caught her breath fiercely. She was wild, entranced.

  “I want you,” he whispered unsteadily.

  She was there for him, pliable, vulnerable...

  “No!”

  The word burst from her lips with a force that stunned her as she shoved at Luke’s arms and whirled away from him, clutching the towel protectively.

  They stared at each other in mutual surprise. For several moments only the sounds of their heavy breathing broke the stunned silence.

  Then: “No?”