‘I was referring to a dictation and typing test, which seemed very reasonable. Dare I ask what you thought I meant?’
‘I think you know.’
‘Yes. You thought I meant a quick tumble on the mattress,’ she said indignantly.
‘Before you start letting off steam, I didn’t take you up on it.’
‘I’m wondering why,’ she scoffed.
‘I didn’t hold you that cheap.’
‘I’ll go along with that. The check you gave me would have made it quite an expensive little get-together. I thought the fee was high for shorthand and typing duties. Perhaps it’s normal for the service you had in mind.’
‘Why are you insulting me?’ he asked, his voice grating with anger. ‘I haven’t insulted you. I have never paid for sex in my entire life. I couldn’t believe my ears when you insisted on putting it on a commercial footing. I gave you every chance to have second thoughts. I didn’t expect to see you at Nassau airport.’
‘I know,’ she admitted, sighing heavily. ‘It’s all been a terrible mix-up. I was stunned when we had connecting rooms at the hotel in New Providence, with no apparent sign of a key.’
‘It might help if you told me just how you arrived at the crazy idea that I needed a shorthand typist.’
‘I thought you were someone else. I went to that party for the sole purpose of meeting Lucky Chance, because Lois, our hostess, said that he was on the lookout for someone to type his manuscripts. It was Lois who pointed him out to me. Of course, at the time he was talking to you. So numbskull here picked the wrong man. I jumped to the conclusion that you were the author and then, when you confirmed it—’
‘Hold it right there. You’ve just lost me again. You said I confirmed it? By what mistaken notion did you latch on to that?’
‘I asked you if I should call you Lucky.’
‘I don’t believe it!’ he groaned. ‘If my memory serves me correctly, I said, “You tell me.” I was hoping I’d be lucky.’
‘I guess, party atmosphere or no party atmosphere, I should have stuck to formality and addressed you as Mr. Chance.’
‘It would have straightened me out. I know I quite fancied you, but you’d been giving pretty heavy stand-off signs and I didn’t know whether or not I’d be lucky enough to make it with you.’
‘Make it with me! Did you really think you’d get me into bed as quickly as that? I find that disgusting!’
‘It’s no good talking like that. It won’t help matters any. We’ve got to consider where we go from here.’
‘I know where I go from here—home. I don’t know how long it will take me, but I promise to pay you back in full.’
‘You don’t owe me a thing. The money’s not important. I accept now that you didn’t deliberately set out to fleece me.’
‘It might not be important to you, but it is to me. It’s a matter of honor for me to pay you back, and the sooner I get home and start earning, the sooner that can be achieved.’
‘Catherine, this is difficult enough as it is, so will you let me finish saying what I have to say without interruptions? That is not a request, it’s an order. Is that understood?’
‘Perfectly. It may have been unknowing on my part, but I entered into a contract. I sold my body to you. I am yours to command. Whatever you desire of me, I must do.’
‘If you aren’t the most infuriating female I’ve ever known . . . If you don’t button up for five minutes, I just might exercise my rights in accordance with the terms of the contract as I thought them to be, instead of offering to negotiate fresh ones. Are you prepared to listen, damn you?’
‘Yes!’ she snapped belligerently.
‘When you propositioned me—as I thought,’ he was quick to add when her mouth opened as if she was going to protest, ‘it came like a gift straight from heaven. Normally I would have sent you off with a flea in your ear, because I like to do the propositioning. But your timing was fantastic. I was all set to come out here, not particularly looking forward to stirring up all the old gossip, when you dropped the perfect solution into my hands. Bringing you here would scotch it before it even started. You’re with me? You know what I’m talking about?’
‘Mmmm. Coral Cay was the location for Edge of Paradise. A sequel is about to be made. You’re here in connection with that.’
‘Carry on, you’re doing just fine,’ he encouraged.
‘I thought, while I was still laboring under the misapprehension that you were an author, that you were here to do the screenplay. It’s obvious that you’re a very important member of the film crew, so you must be the director. The one who—?’ She held tightly to her intrepid tongue.
‘You can finish it without fear of reprisal. You don’t have to spare my feelings; after all, nobody else does. Or, if you’re too squeamish, I’ll do it for you. I’m the sucker who directed his girl into the arms of another guy.’
‘I’m sorry. Zoe is very beautiful and it must have been particularly distressing for you to have to sit back and watch them falling more deeply in love every day.’
‘Putting the lines in their mouths, even, creating a conducive atmosphere and demanding sizzling realism in the love scenes. You could say that it was not one of my better times,’ he admitted wryly. ‘So you see how intolerable my position would be if you suddenly packed up and went home.’
‘Now that you point it out to me, I do. So what are you suggesting?’
‘That you stay and earn your fee. And before you start biting my head off again, I don’t mean under the sheets. You gave quite a commendable performance this evening as the new woman in my life. There were times when you looked at me as though you really had taken a terrific tumble for me. I was most impressed. I want you to stay and keep up the pretense that we’re having an affair. If you can bring yourself to tolerate my attentions in full view of an audience, you have my solemn word that I won’t step out of line in private.’
She blinked. Tolerate him? Didn’t he know the effect he had on her? He had only to look at her to make her melt; at his touch her normally sane system went crazy. And, as if she didn’t have enough to deal with, now that she understood the reason for his attitude to women, why he held her sex in scorn and contempt, even her dislike of the kind of man he typified no longer had any potency. No wonder he was like he was. Her heart ached to think what Edge of Paradise had cost him. It must have taken him to the edge of hell to have to guide Zoe, the woman he loved, through all those torrid love scenes. The critics had raved about her talented performance, but he had known that her brilliance in the role owed everything to realism, that every tender look and unbridled burst of passion was a genuine portrayal of her true feelings for her co-star. On top of that, he’d had to endure the knowledge that he was both an object of pity and the laughingstock of the entire unit. No wonder he wanted her to stay. He wouldn’t want to subject himself to the mockery of the cast and crew for a second time by having another girl walk out on him.
There was no question of her leaving him in the lurch. She had to support the belief that she was his woman. But what would that do to her, knowing that he only wanted her to remain because of her usefulness, not because he felt anything for her? What he asked her to do in public would be easy. The difficulties would arise when they were alone and she had to feign indifference. Feeling as vibrantly aware of him as she did, with no drama school training behind her to fall back on, how was she going to pull that one off? Where was her support to come from? The answer to that popped unbidden into her mind. She still had her pride. That would keep her from revealing how she felt about him.
‘What do you say, Catherine? It will mean putting on a bit of a show when the others are present, but I’ll try not to do anything objectionable. I’m sure you won’t find it too onerous to play up to me, put on an act that you care.’
She could confidently guarantee the performance of a lifetime. It wouldn’t even be acting.
‘I’ll give it a try,’ she said.
‘Thank you. I could have handled it, but the situation might have been somewhat uncomfortable if your decision had gone the other way.’
‘Would you have accepted the alternative answer?’ she asked, just a little wearily.
‘I think not,’ he replied, back in top arrogant form. ‘You won’t lose out. In private, I’ll treat you like a kid sister. But at the end there’ll be a bonus for you. A trinket, the kind of appreciative thank you a brother would never give to his little sister.’
‘I’ll get a good holiday out of this. Give your appreciative thank-you gift to someone who’s earned it. I don’t want a trinket for services I haven’t rendered,’ she said savagely.
* * *
Some members of the film crew began to arrive the next day. Within three days the full team was in residence, not in Gus’s house, but in the makeshift village that was set up a gentle ten minutes stroll away. Gus’s spacious home was taken over and made into a mini studio with rooms renamed production office, wardrobe, make-up, props department and so on. Wide new roads, made to accommodate the bulky impedimenta of filming during the shooting of Edge, were recleared and, in some instances, fresh ones made, with due care taken to preserve the nature-run-riot setting. necessary for Return to Paradise.
Now that work had commenced, Catherine was conscious of an electric change in the atmosphere. Her fears of how she would carry off her deception of being indifferent to Paul when she was alone with him proved to be groundless. As the days passed they were hardly ever alone. He was the generator on which the others charged themselves up. He rose before everyone else and went to bed later, every second packed to capacity, and if he could have stretched the day to fit in more work, Catherine felt that he would have done so. Not knowing anything about the exorbitant daily running costs of making a film and the tightness of the budget he was operating on, she felt that he was driving himself too hard and heading, by deliberate intent, for a nervous breakdown.
But when she expressed this fear to Cleopatra, the genial face broke into its customary white-toothed smile. ‘Bless you, no, Miss Catherine. It’s always the same when filming starts. Work, work, work. No time for fun, only snapping tempers. Always the feeling that it’s never going to come right. But it always does.’
As Catherine hadn’t yet managed to be up in time to share breakfast with him, the only occasions she managed to share with Paul were lunchtimes and the evening meal. The latter they took at Gus Strindberg’s table, alongside Zoe and Jeremy. Sometimes another member of the cast or crew would be invited to join them; always the talk concerned some aspect of the day’s shooting which Catherine knew nothing about, and so she was precluded from taking part in the conversation. But Paul occasionally picked up her hand and kept it for a while—and she didn’t mind one tiny bit having to eat her food with only the use of one hand. Or he’d send her a smile of sweet intimacy that would turn her stomach over, even though she knew it was a bond specially created for the benefit of the others.
The constraint she had sensed between Zoe and Jeremy was now no longer a suspicion in her mind but a cast-iron certainty. Their boredom with one another was embarrassingly obvious; if they hadn’t already made the break, the rift was certainly getting wider every day. It was Catherine’s firm belief that they were now lovers on the set only.
In one of her many idle moments she had managed to get hold of a copy of the shooting script, and read it with mounting excitement. Edge of Paradise had been acclaimed as exceptional, but Return had a few interesting twists of its own and promised to excel a film that, they had said, couldn’t be bettered. Edge of Paradise had ended with the hero and heroine doing the right thing and going back to their own partners. Return took up the story to show that their partners had not led celibate lives in their absences and their coming back brought its own crop of problems and frustrations, although the hero and heroine each assumed that the other had returned to marital bliss. Unknown to one another, they returned to the island they had lived on as castaways and there followed a reunion scene that was passionate and poignant, tender and tempestuous. Catherine wondered cynically if they were managing to inject the required amount of feeling and fervor into their lovemaking as demanded by the script. Acting was their business, so they could probably fake it. She knew that she would have found it repulsive to lie with someone and simulate feelings that had cooled.
She further wondered if Paul was aware that Zoe had lost interest in Jeremy, or that the dynamic brunette beauty was now using her wiles to get him back. Strictly speaking, Zoe’s mouth was too thin to be called sensual, but she’d learned how to make the most of what she’d got and could pout to enchanting effect. And she pouted more often at Paul than discretion permitted. When Paul told her about a performance that hadn’t been up to scratch, she had a way of pushing out her lower lip a fraction and achieving a tiny tremble that matched the hurt and the heartrending plea for leniency in the liquid dark depths of her oloroso-colored eyes. If Paul was affected by this he kept it under guard, but it was noticeable that he never lost his temper with her. With amazing patience he would painstakingly go over a point he thought she might have missed. But then again, neither did he show any outward sign of antagonism toward Jeremy. It seemed as though he had cast all personal issues aside. Nothing in Paul’s manner showed that the leading man had stolen Zoe from him, which, Catherine supposed, was a sign of his true professionalism.
In contrast to the elaborate evening meal, the lunchtime arrangements were casual and relaxed. Each member of the team collected a box lunch and ate it on the set. Catherine made herself responsible for Paul’s lunch box. She checked the daily call sheet each morning to find out where filming was taking place that day, and then she’d set off to that part of the island.
If she arrived early, which she often did purposely, no one seemed to mind her taking the role of spectator. She was early on one particular day and settled down to watch. Even with her lack of knowledge, she recognized Paul’s worth as a director; he seemed to see things quicker than anyone else, and he knew instinctively when to sharp-talk, bully or beguile to get a reaction. As if it was putty in his hands, he molded each scene to his exact liking. Sometimes he’d ask an actor to step aside and he would say the lines as he wanted them said. It was funny and, predictably, attracted cracks from the camera crew when he took Zoe’s place in a love scene with Jeremy to show her how he wanted it done. But it wasn’t so funny, for Catherine, anyway, when Jeremy was the one he asked to step aside.
‘No, Jeremy, not like that. Move over a second and I’ll show you.’
Why, oh why, had she had to get there early to see this? Catherine asked herself wretchedly as Paul took Zoe into his arms. It didn’t help to see the bright gleam of triumph in Zoe’s eyes that told her the clever star had deliberately maneuvered it. She had been stiff and unresponsive with Jeremy so that Paul would have to take her into his arms to demonstrate how to coax the required reaction from her.
An unnatural hush settled over the set; even the many brightly colored little birds in the trees stopped their incessant twittering as Paul and Zoe went through the preliminary facial expressions, then touched. Paul’s features were expressive of the agony of a man savoring a moment long hungered for. His hands skimmed down from Zoe’s shoulders to trap her hands, possessive, yet deferential. Then he opened Zoe’s arms wide and drew them ’round his own waist, before gently drawing her fully into his arms. The build up of tension was terrific. Yet when he began to kiss her it was as if everything that had gone before had been completely low key.
It was so devouring and real that Catherine couldn’t bear to watch and she realized even more acutely how Paul must have felt during the earlier shooting, when he had known that he was losing Zoe to Jeremy. Did Paul know what was common knowledge to everyone else, that Zoe was making a deliberate play for him? Would he take her back?
The kiss ended, the birds started chirruping again, the team launched into natural activity and everything clicked back
to normal as Paul straightened up, looking as coolly unruffled as if that turbulent demonstration hadn’t taken place.
‘Something along those lines, Jeremy,’ he said.
The rehearsal went satisfactorily enough for Paul to call a lunch break for the rest of them while the cameras were being set up. Observing their usual routine, Catherine and Paul wandered farther down the beach where the scene was to be shot, away from the others. She was hungry, but as she unpacked the box that contained food for two, she felt too emotional to eat. The sun was hot on her face and bare shoulders, but there was a cold hollow feeling in her stomach and her thoughts were in turmoil. A dove cooed loudly in the branches of a sea grape tree. Her eyes took in the beauty of coconut palms, swaying casuarinas, sugar apple trees and more exotic flowers than were within her power to name. So much peace all around her, so much chaos within.
Her jealousy was without cause, she told herself. Theirs was a convenient arrangement; Paul had made no commitment to her.
‘You did very well just now,’ Paul said, having observed, along with the rest of the people who had been there, her smoldering reaction to his scene with Zoe. He was stretched out on his back in a pose of utter relaxation. He bit deep into a sandwich and chewed it thoughtfully before adding, ‘That jealous look was very convincing.’
The words were light; it was the warm way he was appraising her from lazy eyes that sent ripples of feeling through her body and made her want to slide down by his side.
‘You shouldn’t eat while lying down,’ she said. ‘I’m sure it’s not a good thing to do.’
Those lazy eyes, brilliant beneath their frond of sunbleached lashes, flicked over her, kindly scathing in their criticism as his lips delivered a rebuke. ‘Don’t overdo it, kitten-face. I don’t allow women to tell me what is or isn’t good for me.’
‘Sorry! Choke on the crumbs for all I care!’
Edge of Paradise Page 14
