‘What are your thoughts on location, Jared?’ Mike asked.
‘Well, I’ve taken a look at the list of locations,’ Jared replied, ‘and the research footage of each, and I rather favour Mustique at the moment…’
They continued to discuss the film for the rest of the meal.
‘Yes, I agree,’ Mike was saying as they ate poussin with grapes, ‘Lelie is a manipulative little whore. Intensely sexy, though. Every man in every cinema in every town all over the world will want to take her to bed.’
‘Great box-office,’ agreed Jared, his eyes glittering at Christie.
She ignored him studiously, but inside she was still a raging maelstrom of conflict.
Across the table, she saw that Simon and Nessa were having a similarly tempestuous evening. Concern rippled through her for poor Simon. He looked absolutely furious, his normally calm grey eyes blazing with passionate emotion. Nessa Vale looked like Countess Dracula, leaning back in her chair, a vituperative smile on her red lips as she delivered some insult to Simon which made him suddenly grip her by the wrist, leaning close to her, biting out a fierce reply under his breath. She had never seen him like this before. It was quite a revelation to see that elegant facade crack clean across to reveal a passionate lover. It suddenly dawned on her that there was far more to his relationship with Nessa Vale than had at first met the eye. She also remembered how evasive he had been when she’d asked how long his involvement with Nessa had lasted. Was it possible that Simon had been lying to her about his past life? And if so, why? He was clearly very deeply involved with Nessa. This was no faintly smouldering ember of an old flame: this was raging like a forest fire, and she was suddenly prepared to bet that Simon was very heavily in love with Nessa Vale.
‘So you definitely want the role?’ Mike’s voice drew her back into the conversation.
‘Yes, I…’ She looked up as the coffee was served.
‘Of course she wants it,’ Jared declared beside her, admiring contempt in his dark eyes. ‘She’s perfect for it, and we all know it.’
‘Yes, I’m beginning to think I am perfect for it!’ Christie turned to look at him with a tight smile. ‘Lelie may be amoral, but at least she doesn’t subjugate herself to the men who want to manipulate her!’
There was a tense little silence.
That remark was for Jared, and he received it with a cool smile, eyes narrowing as he seemed to study her even more intently.
‘Or hadn’t that role reversal,’ Christie said under her breath, ‘occurred to you before, in your great scheme for revenge?’
He leaned close, murmuring tightly, ‘Keep your voice down, behave yourself, and don’t bring anyone else into our private war. Or I’ll make you wish you’d never heard my name.’
‘Too late,’ she retorted under her breath. ‘I reached that point about an hour ago!’
Their eyes warred angrily.
‘Anything wrong?’ Mike asked suddenly, watching them.
Jared lifted his dark head. ‘Nothing at all,’ he re- turned coolly, getting to his feet with a smile. ‘Just that Miss McCall and I were planning to discuss the film in greater depth tonight, and we’ve decided to combine our conversation with a breath of fresh air. All this wine… I think a walk on the beach—don’t you, Miss McCall?’
Cornered, Christie had no real option other than to smile sweetly and say, ‘What a lovely ideal’ Getting to her feet, she met Simon’s startled gaze as he looked up. ‘Don’t worry, darling. We’re just going to talk about Tigresse. Besides, you know I’m yours, and I can assure you Mr Buchanan is most definitely not my type!’
‘That’s not what I’ve heard,’ said Nessa Vale.
Christie gave her a filthy look, and left the dining- room with Jared. Outside, the marble hall was cool, their footsteps echoed on its black and white surface, and far above the chandeliers swayed gently.
‘And you accuse me of being manipulative,’ Christie said, walking beside him, gold high heels click-clacking as her ivory silk dress rippled loosely on her slender body. ‘That was very neatly done—getting me out here for a private conversation while pretending it was for the sake of the film!’
‘It is for the sake of the film.’ He strode with his usual dynamism. ‘Regardless of our personal differences, we will have to work together on Tigresse, and we’ll have to find a way to bury the hatchet.’
‘I shall refrain from the obvious reply!’
He laughed, wrenched open the great double doors, and the full moon glowed like a spotlight at a premiere in that deep blue, star-studded sky as they walked out into the grounds. The night was balmy-sweet, crickets chirping in the shrubbery surrounding the house which the sea swooshed gently against the sands.
‘And maybe I don’t want that part, anyway,’ Christie said tightly under her breath as they walked. ‘Maybe it’s not worth the trouble.’
‘Yes, so you claimed at dinner.’ He idly tore a leaf from a shrub. ‘I almost believed you, too. That sincerity in your voice, the hurt look in your eyes… where did you learn the technique?’
‘From you!’ she said thickly, hating him. ‘When you told me you loved me and wanted to spend the rest of your life with me!’
‘I was genuine and you know it,’ he said roughly.
‘Well, your idea of love obviously conflicts with mine, Jared, because, as far as I’m concerned you can’t turn it on and off like a camera or a wind machine!’
‘You have to, if you want to keep your sanity.’ His voice thickened, and as she glanced sideways at him she saw the dark glitter of angry emotion in his eyes.
Was it possible that he still felt something for her? But no—how could it be! He had been such a swine to her since he arrived here. He obviously thought her the lowest form of female life, just because she had wanted to be a success.
‘So when did you decide to keep your sanity and throw away love?’ she asked tightly. ‘Or shall I guess? Was it perhaps the moment you realised I was serious about becoming a famous actress?’
‘Do you really care, Chris?’ They arrived at the gates to the private beach. ‘I mean—does it make any dif- ference to know the exact moment when love turned to hate?’
‘Of course it makes a difference!’ she said fiercely. ‘If I knew when you started to feel this contempt and hatred for me, it would help me deal with my own feelings for you!’
‘Feelings?’ he bit out thickly. ‘You don’t have any feelings!’ He pushed open the gates with an angry shove and strode through on to the little path that led to the sands.
‘Oh, that’s right!’ she followed him, furious and hurt. ‘I don’t have any feelings, do I! I’m supposed to be able to sit back and take your insults, your contempt and your power-hungry manipulations without—’
‘You’ll do it if you want that part!’
‘Well, maybe I don’t want it enough to put up with the way you’re treating me!’ she cried passionately.
He stopped, turning, catching the pain in her voice. For a split-second he studied her, the warm breeze lifting his black hair from his tanned forehead as the sea glit- tered in the moonlight behind him.
‘No,’ he bit out under his breath, and started walking away down the beach again. ‘I won’t fall for it, Chris. Not again. Not ever again. Now, I want to hear the truth for once. Just tell me exactly how you played the game with me three years ago. All of it. I can take it. I no longer love you. I just want to—’
He stopped in the silence, suddenly realising she had not moved.
Turning to stare at her, he was silent, too, unaware that she was blind with tears, pain welling up inside her like a tidal wave. The conflict was reaching a climax inside her, and she knew what was going to happen; she was going to snap, break, tell him she didn’t want the role, and really mean it, but she couldn’t believe she’d do that, couldn’t believe she’d throw away that golden prize just because he was hurting her, but it was coming, the moment was almost there.
‘What’s the
matter?’ Jared asked her tersely, moving to stand a few feet away. ‘Why are you just waiting there like a statue?’
‘My shoes,’ she said thickly, lifting her chin, her mouth trembling. ‘I can’t walk across the sand in high heels.’
‘Take them off. Then you really will be just like Lelie. A barefoot whore on the beach thinking of nothing but fame and fortune!’ He laughed, jeering, ‘I can’t decide whether or not to demand sexual favours from you as well as a full confession! I’m willing to bet you’d turn cartwheels in my bed just to get that part! You did it for me three and a half years ago, didn’t you, when you thought I might put you in one of my pictures? It must have been a shock to realise you’d been wasting your sexual skills on me! No wonder you turned to Simon. He really paid up, didn’t he? How many new skills have you learned with him? Maybe I—’
‘Shut up!’ Christie tore her shoes off and threw them at his head, one after the other. ‘Shut up, shut up, shut up!’
‘Hey!’ He jerked back but the first shoe hit him hard on the side of his head. ‘Ow!’ The second shoe hit him on the eyebrow. ‘Stop it!’
‘No, you stop it!’ she shouted hoarsely. ‘Stop hurting me, talking to me like this, calling me all sorts of un- speakable names!’
‘I’m your director and ex-lover! I can speak to you any way I like!’
‘Not any more, you can’t!’ She was on the verge of breaking down completely, her voice shaking. ‘I’m not putting up with another second of this—let alone a whole filming schedule under your vicious command! So you can just stick your lead role where the sun doesn’t shine, because I’d die rather than play Lelie now! Do you hear me? I’d rather die!’ Turning, she walked back to the gate in bare feet, her heart banging so loud she thought it might leap out of her body and land on the sandy path.
Jared raced after her, caught her arm, and spun her to face him. ‘I know what you’re doing! Trying to make me feel guilty so I’ll give you the part and stop treating you as you deserve to be—’
‘Don’t you understand English? I don’t want the part!’
‘Liar!’ His eyes blazed black rage. ‘You’d do any- thing to get it!’
‘Watch my lips! I do not want the part. I do not want the—’
‘If this is some trick to make me—’
‘It’s not a trick! It’s the final straw! I wanted to play Lelie, but if this is a taste of the medicine you’re going to give me, you can get stuffed, because I’m not going to swallow it down like a good girl!’
‘You wouldn’t know how! You’re a bad girl from way back!’
‘Jared, I don’t want the part!’ she shouted, shaking with emotion.
‘I don’t believe you!’
‘Perhaps you will when you wake up tomorrow to find I’ve left Casa Camarra!’
There was a stunned silence. He breathed harshly, staring down into her angry face, seeing the fierce glare of her eyes, the sheen of helpless tears shimmering on them, and the way her whole body trembled with emotion from head to foot.
‘Don’t be absurd,’ he bit out under his breath. ‘You can’t leave without Millie’s say-so, and we both know she’s never going to give it.’
‘I don’t care!’ she said hoarsely, tears threatening to spill.
‘Come on! Of course you care! You’re going for the biggest prize on the list, aren’t you?’ His upper lip curled back in a sneer. ‘Christie McCall, up there in the heavens with Harlow, Garbo, Monroe and Vivien Leigh! A Hollywood superstar!’
‘Why shouldn’t I want to be a star?’ She snapped, lost control, completely lost it, and flew at him, hands slapping and punching his chest as she cried, ‘Why shouldn’t I want to be famous? Why not? It’s all that keeps me alive, all that gets me from day to day, and it always has been, ever since I was a little girl, it’s the only thing I have to live for, the only thing I ever had to live for!’ The tears spilled over her lashes. ‘And don’t tell me other people live for love—I never had love to live for! Nobody ever loved me! You know they didn’t, you know about my family, you know I had no love from—’
‘I loved you!’ he bit out thickly.
‘No, you didn’t, Jared!’ she flung back fiercely. ‘You only loved what you wanted me to be! A woman who would support your career, give you children, and worship nightly at the shrine of the great Jared Buchanan!’
His face ran with angry colour. ‘That’s a lie! I didn’t need you to support my career—I was already a big success when we met, and my career was established. I had a career, Christie, long before we even spoke of marriage!’
‘So did I, Jared!’
‘Yes, but it wasn’t anywhere near as successful as mine!’
‘That’s just about what I’d expect from you!’ she spat in tearful despair, breaking away from him, eyes blazing. ‘It’s all right for you to want your name in lights, it’s all right for you to need fame and—’
‘You know damned well why I wanted to be powerful!’ he shouted angrily. ‘I was an orphan, jumbled up in a children’s home, lost in the shuffle, overlooked at all times! If I wanted money and prestige, it was hardly a selfish drive to have!’
‘Oh, yes, it’s all right for you to have had a rotten life, to have spent your whole childhood dreaming of being famous, of stamping your name so firmly into film history that everybody cowers the minute they hear that great, hallowed name—Jared Buchanan!’
‘Shut up!’
She curtsied mockingly. ‘Yes, Sir Jared!’
He made a grab at her.
She danced out of his way, laughing. ‘Pardon me, Mr Buchanan, for having the sheer nerve to want to be famous myself!’
‘Don’t try to fling that at me! It isn’t like that and it never was!’
‘Then what was it like!’ she demanded, eyes blazing. ‘Come on—you tell me! What was it you said way back when? Oh, yes—now I remember! That I wasn’t tal- ented enough to be as high-and-mighty famous as you!’
‘I didn’t say it like that!’
‘And what has your behaviour been in aid of since we got here? Why all the threats and power-plays, if not to have me eating enough humble pie to feed Lassie for a lifetime!’
‘I just want to know the truth, damn you!’ he said gruffly, and she saw his mouth shake a second before he turned away, running a hand through his thick black hair, staring fixedly at the sand, a glimmering sheen across his dark eyes. He drew a harsh breath, biting his knuckles for a second, before he said raggedly, ‘I just want to know the truth. That’s all there is to it. I admit, I’ve been cruel, and that I—I would like to see you eating humble pie. But what I really want is the truth.’
‘The truth?’ she asked huskily. ‘The truth is that I was in love with you, and thought you loved me. I did tell you, back then, that I wanted to be famous. You can’t say I didn’t. It was all we talked about that first week we met. Don’t say you don’t remember that, Jared. Don’t say you’ve—’ she drew an unsteady breath, her voice cracking ‘—forgotten that.’
‘No.’ His voice was as racked with as much emotion as hers as they stood there, two tormented lovers on the deserted, moonlit beach. ‘No, I remember that first week as clearly as if it were yesterday.’
‘Thank God for small mercies!’ she said hoarsely, and sank down on to the sand, putting her face in her hands, the tears suddenly spilling out over her cheeks. ‘At least you can remember me with some affection!’
He sighed harshly, watched her cry alone for a second, then sank down beside her on the sand. The sea washed in and out in the darkness. The moonlight glowed over her slender body as she cried, the darn breaking now, and flooding her with all the emptiness that had been building in her for weeks, revealing the extent of her loneliness to her for the first time.
‘Why are you crying like this?’ he asked in the end, sounding cool, although his voice was unsteady.
‘Because nobody loves me! Nobody ever has!’ she whispered through her tears. ‘I’ve got no one, I never have had, an
d I can’t bear to face it, even now, when I’ve got all the fame I want…’
‘Ah…!’ He handed her the handkerchief from his top jacket pocket, putting his arm around her, ten- derness suddenly shining in his dark eyes as he said, ‘Nobody loves you, everybody hates you, you’re going in the garden to eat worms.’
‘Don’t laugh at me, Jared!’ she whispered brokenly.
‘You sound so sweet,’ he said deeply, staring at her. ‘Like a little girl!’
‘I am a little girl!’ she said and blew her nose. ‘Just as you’re a little boy.’
‘Vive la diffirence…!‘ he murmured, long fingers playing with the silk of her dress in the cool sands.
‘And that’s what this comes down to, Jared. You think I should be perpetually dressed in pink, playing mummies and daddies in my doll’s house—while you run around in the big jungle of life, climbing trees and fighting battles!’
He laughed softly, looking up, eyes loving. ‘Chris— you’re not trying to tell me, after all this time, that you’re a tomboy?’
‘I just like adventure and excitement and achievement,’ she said huskily. ‘If that makes me a tomboy—then that’s what I must be.’
‘Not you.’ His hand touched her long sensual blonde hair, and his voice roughened. ‘I’ve never known a more feminine woman in my life.’
Her eyes met his, her face dry of tears now, and she felt her heart turn over with the love she saw in his eyes.
‘Chris…’ he said unsteadily, and then he was drawing her towards him, lowering his dark head, leaving her time to pull away, but she didn’t, couldn’t, too be- witched by the mutual spell of love that made her hands move to his broad shoulders, her lips part, her head tilt back and her eyes close. They kissed sweetly, tenderly, his hands sliding to frame her face. He gently kissed the last tears away, then his mouth sought hers again, opening it with growing passion, seemingly hesitant, and then incredulous that she returned his excitement with a passionate, abandoned kiss of her own, her arms locking around his strong neck.
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