"Maybe, but it wouldn't have helped you this time, chick. 'Cause I've got two jobs for you.One shooting and one dancing."
"Well, great!" Bryn approved enthusiastically. "Who am I shooting, and who am I dancing for?"
"They're one and the same."
"They are?" Bryn queried curiously. "That's strange. Who is this 'one and the same'?"
"Lee Condor."
"The Indian rock star?"
"Half Indian, and he refers to himself as a musician," Barbara said with cool aplomb. "Remember that, sweets."
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"The half Indian or the musician?"Bryn asked dryly.
"Both!" Barbara chuckled. "He never denies the Blackfoot blood, but he doesn't make a big deal of it, either. And he spent two years at Julliard, where his mother was a teacher, then two years at the Royal Conservatory. He has a right to call himself a musician."
"I don't know, Barbara. It makes me a little uncomfortable. I don't tend to care for men with purple hair who behave like sexual athletes and jump all over the stage."
"Honey, his hair isn't purple! It's jet black. And he's never acted like a sexual athlete. He was married for five years, and not even the National Enquirer could make an attack on the relationship. He's a widower now, and besides, you don't have to fall in love with him, just work for him!" Barbara exclaimed with exasperation. "And what's gotten into you all of sudden? You've worked for dozens of males of all varieties and disparaged the interested like the iceberg did the Titanic. Why are you afraid to work for a man you've never met?"
"I'm not afraid," Bryn replied instantly, but then realized that, inexplicably, she was. At the mention of Condor's name, hot flashes of electricity had started to attack her; now they ran all the way up and down her spine. She knew of him, just as she knew of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, DuranDuran , and so forth, but there was absolutely no reason to fear the man or even to be apprehensive that he might be...weird.
Still...she was definitely afraid. Silly, she told herself.Ridiculous. And then she knew where the feeling came from.
A video that he had already done.
The kids had been watching an old Dickens classic on HBO one night, and when the movie had ended, the video had come on.
Lee Condor's video.
There had been no shots of the group with smoke coming from their guitars, no absurd mechanizations, or anything of the like. There hadn't even been shots of Condor or his group playing their individual instruments. It had been a story video; the popular love song was based on a fantasy affair. The scenes had been as good as many movies: knights ondestriers pounding through mist to reach the castle; a great battle; the heroine being rescued too late and dying in her lover's arms.
Bryn had found herself watching the four minutes of tape without moving. And at the very end, there had been a face shot. Not a full face shot, but a picture of the knight with his visor on, gold-glinted eyes staring dangerously through.
She could still remember those eyes--too easily. And even now, the thought of themdisturbed, her.
"I'm not afraid, Barbara," Bryn repeated more staunchly, her irritation with herself growing. "I just don't really get this. Why would Lee Condor come to Tahoe to do a video? What's the matter withHollywood these days?''
"Hey, he went over toScotlandto film his last video. And he doesn't live inHollywood. He has a home in Ft.Lauderdale, and one here." "Here?"
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"Yeah, he's owned it for years. But he seems to be a very private person, so few people know about it, or much about him."
"You seem to know enough," Bryn teased lightly.
"Ummm.I wish I knew a little more."
"You like that hard-rock type, huh?" Bryn kept up with a chuckle.
To her surprise, Barbara hesitated. "He's a strange man, Bryn.Cordial, and quiet. But you have the feeling that he sees everything around him and that...that he absorbs more than most people. He's dynamite to look at, with those gold-tinged eyes and dark hair. Seems like he's long and wiry until you get close to him and see the real breadth of his shoulders..." Barbara sighed. "I admit he does give me goose bumps. I've never come across a man so...so...male...before."
Bryn laughed, but she sounded uneasy even to her own ears. She had known a man like that before.
Known him a little too well. Was that what gave her fever-chills of instant hostility? Had just that flash-fast glimpse of elemental fire in those gold eyes warned her that his sensual appetites were as natural to him as breathing, just as they had been with Joe?
There were signs of warning as clear as neon lights about such men...once you learned to read them.
Signs that might read: Women, beware! He can take you to the stars, and dash you back upon the gates of hell.
But a woman only got messed up with a man like that once in her life, never a second time.