Edge of Paradise (19 page)

‘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!'

She tried to look away. Her nerves were like crossed wires and she was paying scant attention to her own lunch. But she couldn't seem to drag her eyes away from him. The term good-looking was too all encompassing to do him justice and was light-years away from the truth. He was magnificent. The proud, majestic head; the long, lean torso clad in a figure-molding sweat shirt; the long, athletic legs in sand-colored jeans. This Paul was a long way removed from the immaculate man who came to the dinner table each evening; he was somehow far more disturbing. The fierce midday sun shimmering through the treetops with a lacy amber opalescence brightened his hair to pirate gold. The direction her thoughts were taking, as well as keying her up to a heady pitch of excitement, was most appropriate. There was a certain something
about
his appearance in casual garb that made him look—what was the word she was searching for? Swashbuckling! Since coming to Coral Cay he'd grown a beard. How it suited him, even if it did heighten his already considerable male virility and make him look more devil-may-care arrogant than before! Buccaneerish—this Paul would have been at home sailing the seas in the days when the Caribbean had been called The Spanish Main, right down to the cut on his right cheek which he'd acquired somewhere and which looked as though it needed a dab of antiseptic. But she wasn't going to tell him and get another scolding for concerning herself about him. Why, when a woman's feelings for a man deepened, did it suddenly become an obsession with her to fuss over him?

When Paul went back to work she made no attempt to accompany him, preferring the company of her own disquieting thoughts to running the risk of seeing Zoe in his arms again. They were poisonous thoughts, the serpent in this paradisical place, this corner of Eden.

She tried to push them out by filling her mind and senses with the beauty around her. The heavily scented frangipani, wild orchids, ginger flowers, bougainvillea, oleanders, jasmine, and numerous trees and vines, all combined to form a tangled semicircle of leaf, flower and shrub which edged the dazzling
spectacle
of white coral sand. Beyond, crystal water deepened into a lagoon of such a brilliant blue that it defied credibility.

She should have been in heaven. Nothing more arduous was asked of her than to be nice in public to an extremely personable man. Not any man. One super-special, supercharged, exceptional man. Why couldn't she accept her amazing piece of luck and enjoy it to the full?

If only she had some inbuilt protection to hide behind, but no man was an island, and that was even more true when applied to woman—to her. She would never be entire of herself, or inviolate, where Paul was concerned. She would never be able to shut him out of her thoughts . . . or her heart. Why had she had to spoil everything by falling in love with him?

Perhaps this was the biggest revelation of all. How had it happened? And when? The attraction she had felt for him had slid so gently into love that she hadn't known it was happening until it was an established fact. Yet, looking back, she ought to have known. The strong stirrings of physical attraction might have made it easy for him to get close to her, but it couldn't have seemed so right, her thoughts wouldn't have been so tender toward him, her jealousy of Zoe so acute, if her heart hadn't been affected.

She should have picked up the clues and armored herself against the stupidity of falling
in
love with someone who was inaccessible to her. Someone whose heart hankered after another woman.

CHAPTER TEN

Her tender feelings for Paul gave her the insight to know that he still loved Zoe. At the moment he was holding himself aloof from her, but how long would he allow his pride to stand in the way of what he wanted?