Free Three Marie Ferrarella Romances Box Set One by Marie Ferrarella Page A

like Adrienne Avery.
    On the third take, with the heavy emotion of so-called make-believe passion charging the air, Shane rose from her chair. She went in search of unoccupied crew members to ply with questions about Nick.
    She never looked back.
    But the answers she got here took on the same hues of admiration as those she’d gotten at Saturday’s party. Everyone genuinely liked Nick. There wasn’t a bad word to be offered by any of them. Several of the old-timers, the people he had kept with him since the first movie, bent Shane’s ear with story after story about Nick. She began to fear that readers would fall asleep reading her article.
    When the cast broke for lunch, Shane took it upon herself to try to corner John Bowman. The director was not known for his patience or his gentle manner. In his time, he had sent many an actress off the set in tears, and many an actor had threatened him with physical harm. John Bowman thrived on it.
    “I don’t have time to waste talking to a gossip columnist,” Bowman snapped as she entered his trailer.
    Shane kept on coming anyway. “Magazine writer,” she corrected him. “Mind if I sit?”
    “Yes!”
    “Fine, thank you,” she said, sitting down on one of the two chairs in the trailer. She glanced about quickly. It looked like a monk’s cell.
    “I don’t like distractions,” Bowman rasped, as if reading her mind. “The only thing in my life while I’m on a picture is that picture. Now, what is it?” he demanded, lighting up a rather foul-smelling cigar, one of the two he allowed himself each day.
    “I’d like your opinion of Nick Rutledge,” Shane said simply, fishing out her tape recorder and turning it on. Her bag fell with a thud beneath it.
    “Turn that thing off,” Bowman ordered. “If you can’t remember what I tell you, you shouldn’t be in this business.” She did as he bid her. “Nick’s a man’s man,” he told her flatly. “I know all you ladies have palpitations each time you see him,” he said, waving his hand dismissively in her direction. Shane bit her tongue and swallowed a retort. “But for all that, he’s a rugged, honest, high-principled human being. None of this ‘god complex’ garbage that plagues so many of those fly-by-night jerks we have in Hollywood. They happen overnight and disappear that way too. Nick’s going to be around for a long, long time. Comes early, knows his lines, stays out of trouble. If he thinks a scene should be played differently, he comes and tells me so. No grandstanding.”
    Shane tried not to cough as wreaths of cigar smoke floated her way. Her eyes smarted a little. “Isn’t it true that actors are generally overgrown, insecure children, just pretending, acting out lives that they don’t have the nerve to live out on their own?” Shane prodded, thinking of all the preconceived opinions she had formed before she had ever met Nick.
    “I don’t have time for that psychology junk. Some of them deserve to have the stuffing knocked out of them—but Nick’s not one of them. I worked with him on his first picture, and I’m working with him now. There’s no difference—except that he’s gotten better.” Bowman rose abruptly, unfolding his long, lanky frame. “That’s all I have time for,” he told her. “You can go.” It sounded like a command. He was definitely a man used to being obeyed, Shane thought, gathering her things and shoving them into her purse before slinging it over her shoulder.
    She thanked the director and made her exit. As she swung the door shut, the shoulder strap of her bag caught on the doorknob. Her momentum was such that it threw her off balance, and she tripped down the three steps leading away from Bowman’s trailer. Shane was spared the embarrassment of finding herself sprawled on the ground by two strong arms that encircled her just before she landed.
    “I thought you didn’t fall at men’s feet,” Nick teased, pulling her upright.
    Shane felt the warm waves