by Wendy Holden
"Kids?"
"Yeah. You know how busy kids keep people." Mitch was improvising as best he could. "Can't get to the phone or anything…"
"What?"
Mitch wondered why he didn't simply put the phone down on her. Any other agent at Associated would have done so, recognising that Belle needed them far more than they needed her at the moment. What complicated things for Mitch was that he felt sorry for her.
He would never have admitted it to either his bosses or his colleagues. It was probably a sacking offence. It was certainly the last thing an agent should ever feel, he knew. And, no doubt, it was the reason he had never got any further than he had.
He simply wasn't ruthless enough, Mitch knew. He empathised. He winced at the way the Hollywood machine chewed people up and spat them out. And although what had happened to Belle was anything but unusual—he'd seen it many times before—that didn't make it pleasant.
And what made it worse, Mitch thought, was that he felt personally involved. To blame, even. He felt guilty that he had not objected to Bloody Mary as soon as it was mentioned. That he might have had a hand—a very big hand—in Belle's fall.
Because fall she most certainly had. Even though this time last year, after the sensation of Marie, she had been hotter than the earth's core, twelve months was an eternity in Hollywood. Since Bloody Mary, Belle couldn't get arrested in L.A. Mitch even feared her studio was about to drop her.
Studios were laws unto themselves, and Belle's studio, NBS, with the workaholic puritan Arlington Shorthouse at the helm, was more of a law than most. It could afford to be—it had a box-office hit rate second to none in Hollywood and was reportedly planning its most audacious assault yet on the multiplexes of the world.
There had been nothing definite yet to confirm that a space saga, provisionally entitled Galaxia, about an imaginary universe of robots, spaceships, and fabulous creatures with improbable names along the lines of the blockbustering, all-conquering Star Wars, was being planned by NBS. But the rumours were insistent enough for Mitch to wonder if there was anything in it. If there was, the timing could hardly be better for Belle. She needed something—and fast—to turn things around for her.
The fact she was dating Christian Harlow, an actor who had been unknown before he had hooked up with Belle and now was widely tipped to be the new Brad Pitt, was certainly not that something. It was, Mitch thought, fairly obvious that Harlow would dump Belle just as soon as she'd outlived her usefulness.
"Relax, baby," he pleaded with Belle, although he knew there was as much chance of this as of the Californian sun going out.
"I'll call Steven today. Yeah. And Sam too. And Ridley, sure, yeah, mustn't forget him. No. Yeah. No. Promise. See ya." Thankfully, he shoved the receiver back in its cradle and dived back into the refuge of his hot, stewy, and rumpled bed.
Chapter Four
Burdened by luggage, James Bradstock walked slowly down the street leading to his home. He had not seen it for several weeks. Not since setting out on the fact-finding mission in Equatorial Guinea on which his employers in the Foreign Office had seen fit to send him, and from which he had just returned. Not necessarily with the requisite facts, James was aware; the brief had been vague, to say the least. The only things he felt entirely confident about coming back with, in fact, were the pair of pencils with little carved dolls on the top for Hero and Cosmo.
As he went through the small front gate, James felt happy and excited. He had thought of the children constantly while he was away: little white-haired Hero with her serious gaze and determined character, and impulsive and passionate Cosmo. He longed to feel their small but strong little arms around his neck and their faces snuggling into his.
He wondered whether they had grown—but, of course, they would have; there would be something wrong otherwise—and what new words Hero knew. There was sure to be a new interest, as well. When he left, it had been Thomas and trains still, as it had been for some time, but Cosmo might well have discovered something else since. Music, perhaps. He knew Vanessa was starting them on music appreciation classes at—of all places—the Royal Opera House and had high hopes of them becoming virtuosos.
He was looking forward to seeing his wife nonetheless. She scared him rather, but he loved her and was proud of her. Slim, blonde, and always smartly turned out, Vanessa was better looking and better dressed than most of the other Foreign Office wives, most of whom looked like their husbands, only rather more masculine. The fact that Vanessa had a career of her own—her newspaper column— made her even more exotic and special.
James had spoken to Vanessa from the airport and had learnt, rather to his disappointment, that she would be out for the early part of the evening he arrived home. She had a charity-ball committee meeting to attend at which some crucial issue, such as the sandwiches, was being decided. But the nanny would be at home, the new one who had been engaged while he was away. The fact she was still there was, James felt, encouraging.
"She's…okay then, is she?" he had asked his wife earlier.
Vanessa had inhaled disdainfully. "Bit fat and northern, but no, not bad."
Fat and northern, James mused after she had rung off. Well, that sounded good to him. The last nanny, Jacintha, had been all sharp elbows and painfully thin calves. She had been painfully pretentious too, full of references to her ancient and venerable family.
Vanessa had loved the thought of someone who claimed to trace her ancestry back to the Conqueror wiping Hero's bottom. But Jacintha had always made him feel as if the whole family was rather beneath her. Anything—fat, northern, or whatever—was going to be an improvement on that, James felt as he opened the front door.
The first thing he noticed was that the house smelt much cleaner than usual. It smelt of nice baths, shampoo, and talcum powder. It also looked tidier than he had expected—tidier than he ever remembered seeing it, in fact. The great bulging bundle of children's cardigans, bags, coats, and other paraphernalia, traditionally attached in a clump to the hall coat hooks like some multicoloured wasps' nest, had disappeared. One or two coats in regular use hung demurely there instead. James' gaze dropped to a row of children's shoes, neatly arranged and beautifully clean, beneath the coats. His eyes widened. The children's shoes were usually in a muddy heap of wrong sizes and missing other halves. This had been the case throughout the reign of all previous nannies.
It was now that he noticed the delicious smell. James ventured into the kitchen, which, unusually, was pin-neat. On the shining draining board, whose metal surface he did not recall ever seeing before, so choked was it normally with clutter, were two small plates, two sets of spoons and forks, two cups, and a baking dish, all washed. On the otherwise empty and spotless kitchen table, a delicious-looking macaroni and cheese, browned on top and evidently homemade, sat cooling in the twin of the empty baking dish.
He noticed with approval and surprise the two cloth napkins rolled up in their rings and placed tidily to the side. Most nannies instantly gave up trying to impress proper table manners on Hero and Cosmo; not this one, it seemed. His gaze now took in a small bowl in which a few pieces of broccoli, evidently leftovers, had been placed. James did a double take. This nanny could not only cook but had managed to get the children to eat vegetables. And not only vegetables. Broccoli.
The house wasn't silent, James realised now. He could hear something upstairs. A voice, but not one he recognised.
He slowly ascended the threadbare sisal staircase. The sound seemed to be coming from the direction of the large, rather shabby bedroom that Hero and Cosmo shared and the adjoining and even shabbier upstairs bathroom.
James paused outside the children's bedroom door. Someone was speaking loudly and dramatically in a strange accent. It didn't sound northern though. It sounded French.
James was puzzled. Although Vanessa occasionally decided that the children needed lessons in conversational French, he hadn't realised she had done anything about it. He glanced at his watch and felt ev
en more puzzled. If French wasn't off the agenda and a teacher had been appointed, what was he or she doing here at half-past-seven at night? Without Vanessa being around? What was she thinking? He knew she took her charity committees seriously, but this was ridiculous.
James grabbed the round, wooden handle of the white-painted door and pushed it open.
The French accent stopped immediately. James peered into the room.
The next minute, he was bowled over by small bodies running at him full tilt. "Daddy!"
James pulled them to him and hugged them hard. They had both grown, he saw from an initial glance; their faces seemed to have lengthened, especially Cosmo's. They had obviously had their baths, being dressed in their pyjamas with their hair neatly brushed.
He had almost forgotten about the strange French voice, but now he saw that, sitting on Cosmo's bed, was a girl of about twenty with a very pretty face and shoulder-length brown hair. She looked perfectly normal in build, not at all fat, and wore black trousers and a white polo shirt. Her skin was creamy, with reddish cheeks like apples and a pair of large brown eyes that were looking at him enquiringly.
"I'm so sorry," James apologised. "Emma, isn't it? We haven't met. I'm James, Cosmo and Hero's father." He ruffled their neatly brushed heads. "Actually, I hadn't realised you were French." Had he heard Vanessa wrong? Had she said "France" instead of "northern"? But surely the telephone line, even from Equitorial Guinea, couldn't be that bad.
From her comfortable perch on the bed, Emma regarded Vanessa's husband with interest. He was not what she had expected. Not the sleek alpha male she had pictured at all, but tall, thin, bespectacled, and apologetic, his collar awry and his glasses wonky.
"I'm not French," she smiled. "I was just giving one of the characters in Chicken Licken a French accent."
In the dim recesses of James' mind, something stirred. "Oh yes," he said, uncertainly. "That chicken. It goes and tells everyone. It tells Cocky Locky. Is that right? Chicken, um, Licken meets, um, Cocky Locky?"
"And Turkey Lurkey," Cosmo interrupted eagerly, his eyes shining beneath his smooth pageboy fringe. "And Emma does everyone in the story with a different voice."
Emma saw the children's father was frowning slightly, his eyes moving about as if searching for something.
"What's the matter?"
"Oh. Um. I was just wondering. You don't seem to be using a, um, book," James said eventually.
"I don't need a book. I've read it so often to children that there'd be something wrong if I didn't know it off by heart. Time for you two to go to sleep anyway," Emma informed her charges.
James watched as Hero slid a pair of tired white arms about Emma's neck and was carried to her small bed in the corner and laid down with the utmost care. He did not remember them being so tactile with Jacintha, nor Jacintha being so solicitous.
James looked round the bedroom. The furniture had been rearranged in a more sensible, harmonious way: the children's beds had been pushed further apart, and stuffed toys had been arranged in one corner to look like a tea party. Up on the walls were the embroidered names in frames that his mother, a keen needlewoman, had done when the children were born, but which Vanessa had always declared too naff to display.
A comfortable-looking chair had appeared from somewhere. Various lamps had arrived; the harsh, overhead light that had been in operation seemed to have been retired. Emma had achieved far more during her first three weeks in her job than he had in Equatorial Guinea, James reflected guiltily. But then, Emma obviously had a sound grasp of what she was supposed to be doing.
"I'll leave you to say good night to them now." Emma slipped past him out of the door, a clean, scented soap smell trailing in her wake. "But I'd leave the lamp on for a while. Hero's afraid of the dark, as you know."
James blinked back at her, stifling the instinctively honest response that this was news to him. Jacintha had been obsessed to the point of hysteria with completely dark rooms being crucial for proper sleep. At her behest and at great expense, they had fitted black-lined curtains and blackout blinds in the children's bedroom, but here was Emma, saying none of this was necessary and with Hero looking more relaxed than he had ever seen her.
"By the way, if you're hungry," Emma said as she passed him, "there's a spare macaroni and cheese in the kitchen. I was going to freeze it, but I like to cook the children something fresh every day, so you're welcome to it if you want it."
James blinked. He was beginning to wonder whether this woman was real or a happy vision. She seemed too good to be true.
Chapter Five
In an apartment more lavish than Mitch's, and in a better part of Los Angeles, a thin, blonde woman slammed down the bedside phone angrily. Damn Mitch for not picking up. Okay, so she'd spoken to him this morning already, only five minutes ago, in fact, but he was supposed to be her agent, at her beck and call. Her call, certainly. Belle was not sure what her beck was.
Still, there were compensations. If Mitch didn't want to pay her any attention, others would. Beside her, across the rumpled expanse of oyster-coloured satin sheets covering the vast bed, a handsome young man stirred. As she watched, Belle's artificially shaped and filled chest, balancing like two melon halves on its thin ribcage, swelled further with pride, albeit this time completely naturally.
He was like a young lion waking, she thought fancifully, admiring the muscled arms—smooth, tanned, and lightly oiled—as they moved upwards, pulling the powerful chest and stomach with its clearly defined six-pack into a stretch. Everything below this was twisted up in the oyster satin, but Belle knew what lay beneath well enough: the powerful thighs, the tight buttocks…she felt a sudden hot rush in which the thrill of ownership combined with lust.
If Christian Harlow wasn't the hottest man in Hollywood at that moment, she'd like to know who was. And he was hers. All hers. Of all the women in Hollywood, he had chosen to be with her. She couldn't be all that washed up, could she?
Her smile widened as Christian lifted his head from where it was squashed into the oyster satin pillow, revealing that impossibly handsome, deeply tanned face with huge lips and black hair, so very black that it had navy lights in it, dropping into smouldering eyes of a different blue, an intense, swimming-pool blue. The face that currently had all of Hollywood excited, Belle knew. That was starting to appear on the front of the men's magazines. All thanks to her. She had given him the contacts he had needed to make his dreams of being a Hollywood star come true.
Christian looked at her, and, as always, just as she had the first time she had met him, Belle felt a tightening in her groin, a rush in the mouth, a tingling in her nipples. He was a prime piece of beefcake. The best.
Their meeting had, she remembered fondly, been a classic ladyand-tramp situation. Or perhaps lady and cramp. It had been at a film industry party where Christian had been a human sculpture, painted silver and striking a pose which, he explained afterwards, had given him chronic leg ache.
He had soon recovered, however, and, that same night, Belle discovered Christian's ability to give her orgasms so intense they made her teeth rattle. Even after all the veneering, which seemed a double achievement.
She watched admiringly as the blue eyes opened for the first time that day, looked straight into hers, and, right on cue, creased in a smile.
"Hey, baby," Christian breathed. He had arranged his features into their usual smouldering, impenetrable pout into which undying devotion or cynical lack of interest could be read with equal ease. Belle always chose to read the devotion. But what Christian's silent smoulder was actually saying was that she really should get some clothes on.
He liked slim—who didn't—but making love to Belle was like screwing a set of steps. And while the odd nip and tuck was fine by him, there were more nips on Belle than a colony of goddamn crabs. It wasn't that Christian particularly prized authenticity, but there was nothing remotely natural about this woman. Belle was all fake, from the cascade of white-blonde hair tossing constantly
about and the equally unremitting blaze of veneered teeth to the stretched skin of her face and the exposed and prominent rounded domes of her breasts—with a gap between them you could park a motorbike in.
Belle always denied she had had surgery, but Christian knew the signs. He didn't think she'd had a fanny tuck yet, but she'd definitely had lipo on her bottom that might have gone to the filling in her lips. And so every time her mouth sought his, Christian wondered if he was quite literally kissing her ass.
"You look gorgeous," he assured her.
There was a growl from beside the bed. Christian raised himself on his elbow and looked with dislike at a small, brown dog with a very big diamond collar. Belle's pet Chihuahua, Sugar, was, as usual, staring at him with enormous and very prominent black eyes.
Caninus interruptus. The dog had got him off the hook. Belle clearly wanted servicing, even though he'd done enough of that last night. Yet Christian could still not look at Sugar with anything other than hatred. He was aware that the animal returned his feelings in full measure.
