"You can't kill my husband," she instructed, pausing to take a drag on her cigarette. The skinhead standing in front of her watched as she blew a plume of smoke from her ruby red lips.
"She has a tender streak, after all," he complained in a mock-plaintive tone. She slapped away the finger that stroked her full lower lip.
"Focus," she snapped. "I want that bastard crippled, do you understand? I want him useless to that home-wrecking slut! And when she does leave him, maybe I'll put him out of his misery myself!"
"I take it back." The man gave her a grin of malevolent approval. He stepped closer to her in the dank cellar. "You're a little worse than I am."
She turned away in disdain. "Let's discuss payment."
He rubbed his unshaven jaw as he contemplated the sumptuous curves of her body. "Let's."
Without warning, he lunged for her. He smothered her startled scream with a greasy, tattooed hand. Her struggles were met with a cruel laugh as he pressed her to his beefy body.
"Hell yeah, I knew you'd be a fighter! Come on, give me all you've got, bitch!"
He uncovered her mouth in the same instant as he forced a sloppy kiss on her. She beat at his shoulders with less and less fury, until she began to respond in a sexual manner.
Eventually, her hands clasped his face to hers and her bruised lips kissed him back with equal violence. At the very end, she even moaned, and then:
"Cut!"
Zandra Halissey stepped back from her character's attacker and turned her back to him. She pressed her hands to her hot cheeks and closed her eyes, willing herself out of the spell.
"Was that a moan I heard?" A thick arm slid around her waist but this time it was non-threatening.
She turned to face him again. "I was running out of air, Coby. It wasn't a moan."
"It was," Karen, the show's producer, chirped as she walked by them.
Zandra scowled. "It was not."
"Hey everybody," Coby bellowed to the set at large. "Did I get a moan out of her or didn't I?"
"Hell to the yes!"
"Sure did."
"Everybody heard."
Zandra, usually such a good sport in the face of the crew's friendly teasing, now stormed off the set. The crowing replies turned to stunned silence. While there was a certain reserve about her, Zandra was nothing like the icy bitch she played.
Her raging success playing Cassidy Lash, a fiery character the nation loved to hate, had seen her go from a walk-on role to a special guest star billing. None of it had fazed her. She remained as always friendly, professional if a touch mysterious.
Within sight of her dressing room, Zandra almost broke into a run but right then, two hands grabbed her shoulders and halted her.
"What's going on with you, Zandra?" Coby asked, his gruff voice gentle.
She whirled around and faced him with stormy jewel-green eyes and replied in a loud voice, "Nothing, Coby, I just wanna be alone."
"Is this because I teased you about the moaning? Because you know I didn't mean-"
"Yes, I know," she interrupted. Later she would apologize for her rudeness, but for now she was just desperate to be alone.
Coby Fletcher was not the thin-skinned type, though. "Look, how about we do it again?" he suggested with a mischievous grin. "And this time, I'll do the moaning."
In spite of herself, Zandra's lips curved in a reluctant smile.
"Tempting, but I'll be fine. I've just got to get out of here for a few-"
"Sweetie, are you alright?"
She almost grit her teeth in frustration but she managed to give the director bursting in on them a polite smile. "Yeah, Hunter, I'm fine. But listen, can I get a break for a couple of hours?"
"Honey, you've been giving your all since six this morning. Of course you can go, come back tomorrow."
"Thanks, Hunt, you're the best."
Zandra then fluttered her fingers goodbye at Coby and before either man could say something else, she had fled into her room and shut the door. Once inside, her eyes fell on the imitation Ming vase that held the flowers that had arrived two days before. Yellow tulips, her favorite.
But her pleasure at the gift had been irreparably marred by the card.
"No matter what I do, I can't forget you. You'll always be a part of me. Linc."
Lincoln Gage. The only man who could ruin yellow tulips for a girl.
* * *
Determined not to sink into depression over a past failed relationship, Zandra took to the road. She had no destination in mind, she drove for the sheer freedom of it. The weather was gloomy and overcast, making the late afternoon darker than usual. It suited her mood.
She had thought the ride aimless... until she found herself pulling into the driveway of the beach house her mother had left her. The place where her teenage self had promised Linc her love forever. It was because of such memories that she hadn't been here once in the years since her mother had died.
Zandra got out of her silver Beamer after a moment. Slipping out of her high-heeled sandals, she walked past the rambling bungalow and its immaculate gardens to the beach.
The ocean was rough and choppy, reflecting the steely hue of the sky above. Her flame-gold hair, whipping about her petite frame in the high wind, was the only color in the world of gray around her.
The constant unrest of the ocean seemed to resonate with an inner disturbance and she let herself become entranced by its motion. Her silvery long dress was flimsy protection against the cold. She hugged her waist and rubbed her arms but would not, could not leave this spot.
"You shouldn't be out here in this weather."
That long-unheard voice would always be familiar to her ears. She jumped, even before his hand fell to her shoulder.
Zandra spun around, knocking away his dark caramel wrist as she faced him.
"What are you doing here?" she demanded, incredulity making her go breathless.
"Same thing as you, I imagine," Linc drawled, taking a step back. "Taking a stroll down memory lane. First time I've had company, though."
"Oh, I'm not company," Zandra refuted, her voice shaking with emotion. "I'm the woman who's about to have your ass arrested for trespassing!"
He seemed unfazed though a weary look entered his olive green eyes. "A little thankless, all things considered," he replied.
Her jaw went slack. "And what exactly do I have to be thankful to you for?"
"Look around you, Zandra. If I'm not wrong, you abandoned this place and haven't been back since your mother died. Who do you think's kept it in order?"
She refused to look away from his face, but the image of the well-tended gardens returned full blown to her mind. The little pathway, too, had shown a marked dearth of weeds in between the stones, but none of it had registered in her distracted state. The place really should have been a wasteland; that it wasn't showed deliberate effort on someone's part.
"So what if you did?" Zandra asked more calmly but with no less steel. "You think that gives you some right to force yourself where you're not wanted?"
"Not at all, Zandra," Linc sighed. "But I was hoping it's worth at least one civil cup of coffee."
There was a brief silence as she stared at him as if he'd gone crazy. Scorn and disbelief filled her, holding her speechless.
Her expression goaded Linc to fury. That this woman, who had once looked at him with undying adoration, should now regard him as though he had crawled from a sewer made something inside him snap.
"You hate me, Zandra? Huh? You still wanna scream at me? You wanna curse me out and slap me raw?" Linc demanded with such heat that it made her shrink ever so slightly from him. He spread his arms. "Well, now's your chance, Zandra. Here I am! Make me pay for every bit of pain I ever caused you!"
The sheer arrogance of that statement lay in the assumption that she could! How was she supposed to pay him back for walking out on their love and promises, youthful but heartfelt, to each other? How was she to avenge the weeks she had spent in a disconsolate torpor, catatonic with grief after learning of her pregnancy and miscarrying all in the same day?
But he did not even know of the miscarriage. No one except her mother had known. By then, Linc had already flown off to Switzerland with his Ursula. From the first moment she had seen the gorgeous blonde with Linc, Zandra had known she would come between them. She'd been right. And she could rail at him for that.
But would it be fair to blame the worst of her pain on him, when he might be just as hurt by the loss? When he might, in fact, hold it against her for keeping it from him? For the first time, the secret caused her a prickle of unease.
Frowning, Zandra averted her emerald gaze and shook her head slightly in confusion.
"Go on, Zandra, hurt me," Linc goaded, his voice raw. "Hit me with everything you got!"
