A Summer Fling (45 page)

Dawn tore her eyes away from him. If only she was free, things would be so different. But she wasn’t. This was so wrong.
But why does his body feel so right against me?

Al stepped back. His hands left her shoulders.

‘You have seven and a half days until I leave for London. You have seven and a half days to pack your suitcase, grab your guitar and come with me to live a life you know you want. Hell, it won’t be a life of luxury, but you’ll be singing and you’ll be happy and you’ll be loved more than you ever would be if you stayed.’

‘Al—’

‘Seven and a half days,’ he cut in. ‘I’ve said all I should say. It’s not what I do, Dawny. I’m a decent man but I’m in love with you and if you don’t come, then that will be my punishment for moving in on another man’s woman.’

Then he leaned in and kissed her full on the mouth under the big moon, and afterwards Big Al Holly walked away, leaving Dawn trembling like a leaf in a tornado.

Anna was woken up at seven thirty the next morning by a big leather-clad bloke on a motorbike. A courier, who had a small square package for her. She knew this one wasn’t from Tony because it had the Corona Productions logo on the top. Intrigued, she opened it hurriedly to find a disk case and a folded-up note.

Out-takes? She slipped the disk into her DVD player and waited for it to begin.

After the official Corona Productions logo, Vladimir Darq’s body filled the screen and she felt herself begin to melt, even though he was striding up and down saying, ‘She drives me crazy!’

Then the camera panned onto him and he was sewing blue beads onto
that
corset.

‘This,’ he explained, ‘is a goodbye present for Anna.’

‘It’s very intricate,’ came the disembodied voice of Jane.

‘
Desigur.
Of course. She is worth it.’

Then Vladimir was back to his passionate self, talking Romanian to Leonid, and then Leonid faced the camera and asked Bruce, in English, if he was filming.
What did they send me this bit for?
thought Anna.
My Romanian extends no further than a ‘no’, and ‘of course’ and a few choice swear words, thanks to Maria.

Then Flip was saying to Jane, ‘I thought we’d got a dead seed here but we’ve got a flower, haven’t we?’

‘A fucking big perfumed one,’ Jane replied with a delighted smile. ‘It’s absolute magic. And I really like her too, so I want her to look gorgeous.’

Then Flip was doing some practise filming on the handheld camera, spying on Bruce and Mark talking.

‘Do you think he really is a vampire?’ Mark was whispering.

‘Before I came, I would have said, “Don’t be so fucking stupid”, but now I’m not so sure.’ This from Bruce. ‘Have you seen his eyes? Scar-ee!’

‘Those fangs are real as well.’

Bruce secretly slipped in a pair of huge false fangs, threw himself on Mark with a growl and scared him to death. The pair of them descended into giggles like two naughty schoolboys.

Then Vladimir was fastening Anna into a corset from the back and his eyes were transfixed on Anna’s neck. He was inhaling the scent from her skin, wetting his lips with his tongue. He looked as if he might devour her at any minute.

Then Vladimir was ranting at Mark.

‘I would like to get all women like Anna Brightside in a group and bang all their heads together. She drives me crazy!’

Then the action switched to Leonid, smiling fondly as he watched Anna and Jane be interviewed in the distance. He was talking quietly to Bruce.

‘Vlad could have found no one more perfect to model for him. She is wonderful. She will drive this campaign to the stars. Perfect.’

That was the end.

Anna had an idiot smile on her face. That was so sweet of Leonid, especially because he didn’t know he was being filmed. And the way Vladimir looked at her neck! It was scary and thrilling and something to remember always, that he had once really desired her – even for a few minutes. Even as a meal.

Anna put the disk back in the case and the note with it. It was then she noticed there was writing on both sides. She turned over to the unread side.

Anna’s hands were shaking. She took in a deep breath and steadied herself.
OK, let’s get some perspective on this
, she told herself. Actors were always falling for each other on projects, weren’t they? They got the edges between real life and scripts blurred. It wasn’t real; they got infatuated and as soon as the film was in the can they split up. She needed to keep remembering what he had said about that corset: it was a goodbye gift. The key word was ‘goodbye’. She had to get a grip on her excitement before it ran away with her. Although, to be honest, it was already halfway down the M1. Vladimir Darq was grateful to her, that was all. By his own admission, she drove him crazy. By tomorrow morning, she would be merely a memory for him. In a few weeks’ time, maybe not even that.

At 5 p.m. that evening, Anna carefully laid the corset out on her bed. It was stunning. She had hardly been able to stop looking at it since she received it. It was all the intricacies which intrigued her: the hundreds of glittery dark beads, individually applied. Why? Now, after watching that DVD she knew.
She is worth it
, said that voice inside her head: a deep, East European voice with an impatient edge. She shivered with desire for him. But after tonight, who knew if she would ever see him again? But still, she couldn’t get those little beads out of her head.

There was a bing bong at her door. It only ever rang at this time of night because the gormless local pizza delivery service mixed up her house number 2 with 2A next door. She ripped the door open, prepared to tell them yet again that the house they needed to deliver the Supremo with extra mozzarella to was, in fact, the next one along.

But she was wrong. She opened the door to find the
pièce de résistance
present from Tony. Tony himself. Beaming, with his arms wide open and bearing a red rose in his mouth.

‘Babe!’ he said through clenched teeth. He whisked the rose into his hand and then under Anna’s nose. She stood in stunned silence.

Over the past months, she had imagined many times what she would do at this point, and that was to throw herself gratefully into Tony’s arms and cover his lying, cheating face with kisses of forgiveness whilst dragging him over her threshold. But now the moment was here, she didn’t do anything of that sort at all and no one was more surprised than her. She stood there, a stunned statue, while he continued to stick his rose uncomfortably close to her left nostril.

When she did eventually speak, because it was getting a bit ridiculous standing there like a tableau for the benefit of the pizza-eating and the cat-nicking neighbours, it was merely to say his name.

‘Tony.’

‘Yep, that’s me, babe. Oh, I. Have. Missed you so much.’

His arms came about her and she almost staggered backwards with the force of his embrace. His familiar aftershave enveloped her, the aftershave that had once made her go as slushy as a Solero after a minute in a microwave. It certainly wasn’t travelling up her olfactory passages and making her knees knock now though. He’d applied rather a lot of it recently, by the whiff of it, and she could feel a big sneeze building up. He was cooing in her hair like an amorous pigeon. Then he pulled back from her and looked at her as if she had returned from a long absence: back-packing in Australia, perhaps, and he was relieved to see her home again and in one piece.

‘Wow, you look great, babe,’ he said. ‘What have you done to yourself? Had some work done or something?’

‘No, of course I haven’t had any surgery,’ said Anna, still in shock.

‘I’ve come back, babe. I’ve been an idiot. Let’s go inside.’

He tried to push her backwards through the door.

‘Whoa, Tony, slow down,’ she said, extricating herself, not giving a toss about any would-be curtain twitchers now. If Tony got inside the house, she wouldn’t get him out again. And she had her evening to think about. This was Vladimir’s big night. She couldn’t let him down. Tony might have had the gift of the gab, but his timing was crap.

Tony’s eyebrows knotted in confusion. It was obvious he thought that five seconds after ringing her bell, they’d be in bed where he would continue to try and ring her bell. And, a few weeks ago, maybe they would have been. She had cried and drunk herself to sleep playing out the scenario of his coming back all hugs and kisses and open arms so many times and now she had him on her doorstep doing those things, all she could feel was totally detached. No, she wasn’t going to fall back into his arms so easily. She was now a woman worth sewing small beads on corsets for. Tony would need to appreciate that.

‘I’m sorry but I’m going out tonight.’

‘You’re going out? Who with?’

‘A friend.’

‘You’re joking,’ he said, lip curling over with churlish disappointment. ‘Cancel it. Life’s just not been the same without you, babe.’

Her wounded ego had a smug moment.
He wants me more than Lynette Bottom
. But it was quickly overridden by the stronger desire to see Vladimir Darq again.

Tony pushed once more and moved in for a snog and she stopped him with a hard hand on his chest.

‘No, I can’t,’ she said.

‘Yes, you can.’

‘OK then, I won’t.’

Tony stopped trying to kiss her.

‘What “friend” is this then that’s so important?’ he asked suspiciously.

‘A designer friend. I’ve been modelling for him. He’s having a party tonight.’

The expression on Tony’s face showed that he didn’t know whether to believe her or not.

‘Modelling? You?’ he said eventually.

‘Yes, me,’ said Anna with a huff. ‘And I’ll tell you something else, Tony Parker, I’m not bad at it either.’

‘What, like nude modelling? For artists?’

‘Nope,’ she said, bristling and thinking,
typical
. She didn’t want to give him details. Whatever she said, he wouldn’t take her seriously. Or believe that she was the face of ‘Every Woman has a Darq Side’.

‘I’ve missed you so much, babe,’ he said. ‘Did you get my presents?’

‘Yes, I got them,’ said Anna. ‘I was beginning to wonder what you were playing at after so long!’

Tony smiled that lopsided, cheeky grin of his. ‘I figured that if I didn’t find them smashed up where I put them that you might still want me.’

Ah, so it
was
a softener. Christie was right. That made sense. He
was
hedging his bets.

Anna rubbed her forehead.

‘Tony, I can’t think about this right now.’

‘I’ll come back later, shall I? After your little do?’

Little do?

‘That is, if you want me to . . . ’ he added in such a way that intimated he was backing off already.

‘Yes,’ said Anna, her voice coming from a last vestige of the old-deserted-lonely Anna place within, but she didn’t know if she truly wanted him to or if it was just some automatic kick-back response.

‘OK, I will then,’ he replied, the grin flooding his face again.

She would sort all this out later, but now she needed to get ready. She wanted to take a long time getting ready too, to be perfect for Vladimir.

‘I don’t know what time I’ll be back,’ she said.

‘I’ll be here at midnight. If you aren’t here by then, I’ll wait.’

Anna looked at him. He was staring at her like he used to do, as if his heart was full of her. He was always so good at the ‘look of love’. She had to avert her eyes, otherwise she might have given way to a basic urge, pulled him into the house and salved her savaged ego.

‘I’ll go then,’ he said, turning slowly away from her, giving her maximum chance to change her mind.

‘I’ll see you later,’ said Anna.

‘Cinderella is going to get her prince back at midnight,’ he said, grinning.

Anna closed the door and thought,
You’ve won, girl! Tony is coming home.

So why wasn’t every part of her body singing about it?

Half an hour later, she was staring at herself in the mirror and uttering expletives.

She looked like she’d put her make-up on in a bumper car. Maria had applied it so easily, but Anna appeared at best as if a big lad had given her two shiners. And it didn’t help that her hand was trembling so much that when she applied her eyeliner she might have been preparing to go to a fancy dress party as a panda with a Goth fixation. She sighed, grabbed the cotton wool and eye make-up remover in order to start again. Why the sodding hell did Tony have to come stirring up her life – today of all bloody days?

The door bell sounded just as she was about to have another go at the eye-liner and her heart nearly stopped with shock.
Please let it not be him. Please make it be another misdelivered pizza.

She opened it to four grinning and wonderfully familiar faces bearing cases and bags.

‘We thought you might need some help getting ready,’ said Christie. ‘And looking at the state of your eyes, I think we were right.’

Dawn was all dolled up herself. She could only stay about an hour because she was setting off on her hen night, and helping Anna get ready was infinitely better than sitting at home waiting to be whisked off to Blegthorpe. It had been her idea to turn up at Anna’s and if she didn’t need their help, at least they’d see her in
that frock
. And they were all dying to see Anna done up like a princess.