by Susan Lewis
Contents
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Susan Lewis
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Copyright
About the Book
Corrie Browne is an ordinary girl with extraordinary ambitions. Determined to find the father she has never known, her search takes her from the quiet Suffolk village where she lives, to a new life in London, a fastpace television career – and to three people who come to dominate her life.
Luke, charismatic, blond and charming, is the only one to make Corrie feel welcome at TW TV and the only one to recognise her talent. Cristoff, an internationally famous film director, is the man who teaches her everything he knows about sex and passion. And Annelise is her boss and friend – a woman about whom Corrie knows a secret that must never be revealed. Three colleagues – all of whom are to play an important role in Corrie’s search for love and success. One of whom intends Corrie’s ultimate destruction…
About the Author
Susan Lewis is the bestselling author of twenty-seven novels. She is also the author of Just One More Day and One Day at a Time, the moving memoirs of her childhood in Bristol. Having resided in France for many years she now lives in Gloucestershire. Her website address is www.susanlewis.com
Susan is a supporter of the childhood bereavement charity, Winston’s Wish: www.winstonswish.org.uk and of the breast cancer charity, BUST: www.bustbristol.co.uk
Also by Susan Lewis
Fiction
A Class Apart
Dance While You Can
Stolen Beginnings
Darkest Longings
Vengeance
Summer Madness
Last Resort
Wildfire
Chasing Dreams
Taking Chances
Cruel Venus
Strange Allure
Silent Truths
Wicked Beauty
Intimate Strangers
The Hornbeam Tree
The Mill House
A French Affair
Missing
Out of the Shadows
Lost Innocence
The Choice
Forgotten
Stolen
No Turning Back
Losing You
Memoir
Just One More Day
One Day at a Time
For Gary, Jill and Grace Elizabeth Lewis
and
for Denise Hastie
– Acknowledgements –
To begin with I should like to thank Dr Martin Atkinson-Barr, his wife, Sue, and Kevin and Jo Connor for their hospitality during my stay in Los Angeles. Also I should like to express my gratitude to Matthew Snyder of CAA for the invaluable contacts he gave me. A very special thank you to director, Jonathan Kaplan and producer, Chuck Gordon, who allowed me to spend so much time on their set and patiently answered an endless string of questions. To Di McClure for taking me to that delightful monstrosity of a Beverly Hills house and to David Rousell of Universal for giving me the benefit of so much knowledge.
My thanks also to the staff of the Castle Combe Manor House Hotel in Castle Combe and to Bridget Anderson for helping me with so much in the South of France.
And lastly, a very special thank you to my friends Lesley Morgan and Elaine Matthews for the contacts they gave me.
An entire world of sin lived in her eyes, a whole universe of pleasure in her body. Her pale lips spoke silently and unmovingly of excesses unknown, her skin glistened with a vibrancy that set his very soul on fire.
As he watched her, watching him, through a forest of glittering, baubled humanity he could feel her sensuality as though it were lazily curling itself around the heated core of his lust. It was as though he was being sucked in by her wild immorality, consumed by a stormy sea of intemperance. Her limpid eyes swam with the promise of unimaginable carnality, her exquisite mouth curved with a smile of untold depravity and wantonness.
Suddenly he was afraid. Memories started to dig into the chaos of his mind. Images of the past ballooned grotesquely before his eyes; the terror, the screams, the pain, the nightmare of endless violence ripped through him.
‘Darling, are you feeling all right?’
He turned, as though in a trance, to see the aging and concerned face of the woman who adored him. Thirty years his senior, she could so easily have been his mother. He wished she were his mother, that she would rescue him from the fear that now blighted him. Dear God, if only she would rescue him, for his real mother never had.
‘You’re awfully pale, darling. Is something the matter?’
He loved her voice. He loved her kindness and selflessness. He cherished her.
‘Everyone’s talking about you,’ she giggled.
He hated her. She didn’t understand, would never understand. All she saw was an eighteen-year-old boy, a plaything, a stud, an ornament for her fleshy arm. He needed to be loved, not worshipped for his beauty, nor adored for the prowess of his young body. He needed her kindness to extend a hand of compassion; instead it bought him with riches beyond his comprehension. She had housed him, fed him, groomed him and educated him. She had shown him a world he might never have known, a world that glittered, a world so far from the pain. For that he would always be grateful.
Together they moved through the party. He smiled at her girlishness though inside he was repulsed. He laughed at her coquettishness while his heart contracted with pity. He was here to impress her friends, to instill in them a jealousy that would reassert her status in their society. Her self-doubt, her fear of growing old and her pathetic loss of worth, touched him. All she had now was a tremulous hand on a dead husband’s past glories – and him. She could no longer stand alone in this cocoon of sybaritic strangers, not even her wealth could save her. He was her only hope, without him she would fall; she would descend into the abyss of ignominy and nonentity she so dreaded.
He felt the clutch of her need as though her hands were encasing his heart. He knew the stifling desperation of her fear as though she breathed with his lungs. Yet he felt a tenderness for her that surpassed all else.
Her bejewelled fingers slipped from his as someone led her away. He was alone, and the eyes of the she-devil still watched him. An arcane shiver of memory juddered through him once again, but the pull of her gaze was too strong and he found himself turning. Then, as his eyes came to rest on her, it was as though every fibre of his being was melting in shock. Her glorious white gold hair glistened and sparkled like the blurred light of a halo. It was as though she were looking right through him, into the very depths of his heart. He felt the touch of her empathy as though it were healing fingers reaching out for his pain. She knew, she understood, and her earlier look had been meant to show him. He felt himself start to sway at the staggering realization of what was happening. She had come in the guise of a
demon, letting him see in her eyes, her lips, her skin the reflection of his torment, and now, as though she were an angel from God, she was showing him his salvation.
He waited as she moved towards him, every part of his body responding to the divine illusion of her sensuousness. Her perfume reached him, an ephemeral fragrance, that made him lightheaded, almost drunk, and her hand slipped between their bodies, lovingly stroking his genitals.
She took his hand, leading him beneath the chandeliers to the wide, sweeping staircase. At the top she turned and, like a celestial being, surveyed the sinful world of plenty below. He watched her, unexpurgated love pounding through every pulse. His desire was excruciating, his fear sublime.
The bathroom was made for a Roman goddess. Marble and gold and onyx. As she turned from the door the light fell upon her; she was an ethereal vision of Elysian radiance. He wanted to fall to his knees in reverence, but it was she who dropped to her knees, then to her back until she was lying before him.
‘I am yours,’ she whispered. ‘Do as you will.’
He took her, and the extremity of pleasure transcended everything. He had prayed that one day God would send someone to save him, and now He had.
Three weeks passed by. Each day saw the coming together of their bodies and the enmeshing of their minds. He knew nothing about her beyond the majesty of her beauty and the sublime sorcery of her body. She controlled him, consumed him, fornicated with him and revered him, until at last he knew he could do it. At last he could confess the atrocities, and she, as God’s own messenger, would absolve him.
She listened, her youthful head bent in concentration as he spoke. It was a long story, as painful in the hearing as it was in the telling. Not until he had finished, had expunged his soul of every torment and abomination of his short life, did she look up. And it was in that instant, as her eyes moved to his, that he discovered she was not his salvation at all; she was his damnation.
– 1 –
‘WHAT! YOU’VE GOT to be joking!’ Corrie cried, swinging round from the fire and brandishing the toasting fork with its smouldering slice of toast.
‘I don’t see why. In fact I think it’s a bloody good idea, don’t you Edwina?’ Paula said, turning to Corrie’s mother for support.
Edwina’s pale brown eyes were swimming in mirth, her cheeks rosy red from the fire.
‘If you agree with her …’ Corrie warned.
‘Why don’t you just give it a shot?’ Paula said, wincing as she tried to make herself more comfortable. ‘I mean, what have you got to lose? Not your virginity, that’s for sure.’
Corrie eyed her dangerously and Edwina laughed out loud. All three of them were very well aware that Corrie had lost her virginity to Paula’s husband, Dave. Of course Paula and Dave hadn’t been married then, but they had been seeing each other. And in a way it was Paula’s fault, for if she hadn’t started giving Dave the run around then he and Corrie might never have got it together. As it was, in an attempt to make Paula jealous Dave had switched his interest to Corrie. Paula had insisted that she couldn’t care less, so Corrie, who was twenty-one at the time, and simply dying to be rid of the virginity that was threatening to become a permanent fixture, had set about seducing their old school-friend, who was by now the local car mechanic. It hadn’t been a particularly memorable occasion, both of them had been too drunk to remember much about it, but Corrie did recall not feeling too good about herself after, particularly when Dave took it upon himself to tell Paula what had happened. Wasn’t it just like a man to go and confess? If he’d kept it to himself Paula might never have known, but he didn’t, and Corrie and Paula, who had been as close as, if not closer than sisters all their lives, hadn’t spoken for three months. Now, five years later, they all, including Edwina, laughed about it.
‘All you have to do,’ Paula said, settling her plate on the mound of her heavily pregnant belly and sinking her teeth into a succulent slice of toast, ‘is answer an ad. No one’s asking you to put one in yourself. Well, you couldn’t really could you? I mean, if they were to ring here Edwina might get arrested for pimping.’
From where she was sitting on the floor Corrie looked up at her mother, who, still laughing, was easing herself out of the chair to empty more coal onto the fire. While her back was turned Corrie and Paula exchanged glances. Paula winked and Corrie smiled.
‘Mind you,’ Paula said, yawning as the warmth of the small sitting room enveloped her, ‘perhaps your own ad is a better idea. That way you can specify your requirements. To begin with, a nice big willie …’ she broke off as Corrie threw a cushion at her. ‘What’s the matter with that?’ she said, her pretty blue eyes rounded with seriousness. ‘I can assure you it’s an essential …’
‘You’re an outrage,’ Corrie laughed. ‘And big willie, small willie or no willie at all, I don’t want a man.’
‘Huh!’ Paula snorted.
‘Then tell us what you do want, sweetheart,’ Edwina said. She was still standing in front of the fire, her back turned to the room, but Corrie could see her flushed, though tired face reflected in the mirror in front of her.
‘Nothing,’ she answered, perhaps a touch too brightly. ‘I don’t want anything. I’m quite happy here in Amberside with you and …’
‘Pppht!’ Paula interjected. ‘Pull the other one. We all know how you can’t wait to get away from this …’ she stopped suddenly as Corrie shot her a warning look, and her face instantly burned with misery.
Smiling, Edwina turned round and surveilled the two of them. So different in appearance, so different in ambition, yet so alike in character. They were devoted to each other. Devoted too, to her.
Her eyes rested on Paula. Everything about Paula, with the exception of her pregnant belly, was small. Her elfin face with those lovely mischievous blue eyes rarely failed to make Edwina smile. And the fluffy white blonde curls that bobbed around her face were almost the same now as they had been when she was a child. Though her beauty now, as a young woman, owed as much to her internal contentment as it did to her angelic features. It was a contentment, Edwina knew, Corrie was far from feeling.
‘The world is out there waiting for Corrie,’ Edwina said, ‘if only she would go to meet it.’
‘The world, at least for me,’ Corrie answered, ‘is right here in Amberside.’
Edwina cocked a disbelieving eyebrow. ‘Living in a little cottage, in a little village, running a little dress shop? Some might be satisfied with that, but it’s not enough for you.’
‘Says who? And if this is your way of trying to get me to advertise for a man to change my life, then forget it. I don’t want to meet a man that way. In fact I don’t know that I want to meet a man at all.’ Her head turned sharply at a loud clattering sound outside. ‘What on earth was that?’
‘If you think it’s Mr Right coming down the square on his white charger on this cold winter night, you might be in for a disappointment,’ Paula said, as Corrie walked to the window.
‘It’s next-door’s bin, blown over in the wind,’ Corrie said, letting the curtain drop back into place. ‘Now enough about finding me a man. Tell us about the baby.’
‘What, how I’m going to squeeze that great big head out of my tiny little bits? It’s giving me nightmares. Let’s change the subject. Are you going to join the aerobics class they’re starting up down at the village hall on Tuesdays? Should be good for a laugh if nothing else, Di Robinson’s running it and you know what she’s like once she gets into a leotard. It’s only two pounds to get in. Say you will, Corrie ’cos I couldn’t bear to go alone with all those geriatric women, but I’ll need to do something when the baby comes to get back in shape.’
‘Oh, God,’ Corrie groaned, ‘do I have to? The very idea of bouncing around that draughty old hall with the likes of Mrs Willis while that backstabbing old cow Linda Morris inspects the current size of my thighs …’
Edwina and Paula exchanged looks.
‘All right, I know what you’re thinking,’ Corr
ie said. ‘And yes, I could do with losing some weight.’
‘Oh, here we go again,’ Paula sighed. ‘Just which bit of your anatomy are you running a hate campaign for now?’
‘How about all of it?’
‘There’s not an ounce of spare flesh on you.’
‘What! Look at me! I mean you could hardly call me svelte, could you?’
‘Not a word that comes instantly to mind, no,’ Paula agreed. ‘You’re more …’
‘If you say voluptuous I’ll see to it that that baby starts squeezing through the small bits right now.’
Paula looked to Edwina for help. ‘What do you say to the girl?’
‘I’ve tried,’ Edwina said. ‘Corrie, sweetheart, you’re just a big build. But you’re tall enough to carry it off. If you were any slimmer you’d be skinny, lanky. You wouldn’t look nearly so good as you do.’
‘I don’t suppose, as my mother, you might be just a touch biased?’ Corrie replied. ‘I’m fat.’
‘Full-figured,’ Paula corrected. ‘And you should let Harriet do your hair more often. She made a really good job of it for Kathy and Steve’s wedding and don’t deny it.’
‘Aunt Harriet is a miracle worker with everyone’s hair,’ Corrie retorted, ‘but I have to admit it did look good.’
She looked at her mother, from whom she had inherited her gleaming chestnut brown hair, and felt a sudden jolt of such painful anguish that her next words caught in her throat.
‘So, aerobics it is,’ Paula said, reading the situation perfectly. ‘We’ll go down to the hall and enroll as soon as I’m out of the hospital – which surely can’t be more than two weeks now.’
Laughing, Edwina said: ‘I don’t think you’ll be ready for aerobics quite that soon, Paula.’
‘No,’ Paula sighed, suddenly glum. ‘I suppose you’re right. No sex either. I’m mad for it, but Dave won’t. He says he’s afraid he’ll poke the baby’s eye out. And speaking of Dave, I guess his darts match’ll be over by now, so I’d better be getting home, you know how he can’t stand to be left with my mum and dad on his own. But he’ll have to manage when I’m in hospital. Thanks,’ she said, as Corrie took her hands and heaved her out of the squashy sofa. ‘Now, remember, I’m doing the veg for lunch tomorrow. I’ll clean it at home and bring it over here. All right? What time?’
