Her Leading Man (11 page)

“
Good God, you look like a nymph from the
South
Seas
.”

She wheeled around, startled, and saw Martin
standing beside the
costumer, frowning urgently at
her. She looked down at her so-called Egyptian
gown.
“By
heavens, you’re right, Martin. I couldn’t quite
figure out what was wrong with
it, but I think you
got it right off. It does look South-Seasy, doesn’t
it?”

He didn’t return her happy smile, and Christina
guessed he took
these things more seriously than she
did. Which, she supposed, was a good
thing. After
all, it was his production company behind the
picture.
It
was kind of nice that he tried to put out a good
product, even if
they were only talking about moving
pictures.

Shaking his
head
and looking peeved,
Martin
stalked over to her, dragging the costumer with
him
.
Taking Christina by the right shoulder, he turned
her
as if she
were a department store mannequin.
Christina didn’t hit him or anything
because she liked
him, even if he was treating her like a doll at the
moment. She
understood.

“
You see this fabric?” He lifted the long,
trailing
thing drifting from her shoulder to several feet
behind
Christina. “This is a print calico, for God’s sake!
We
need
something light and filmy for Egyptian pictures.”

“
Hmm
.
Yes, I do understand
what you’re saying.”

The costumer, Karen Crenshaw, had worked on pictures
with which Christina
had been involved before.
She was good at her job, and Christina was
surprised
she’d made this gaffe.
“I think this particular costume is left over
from
Mutiny
on the Bounty
,” Karen went on to say. She
grinned.

Martin didn’t. He seemed to be in an especially
grouchy mood this
morning. Christina wondered if
he was still worried about the camels. Because
she
didn’t
think costumes were that big a deal, she said,
“I’m sure Karen can come up with
something more
filmy without much trouble, Martin.”

His head snapped up, and he scowled straight at
her, pinching his
lip and looking worried. Christina
maintained her own serene expression for a
second,
then
turned her attention to Karen. “I’ll be happy to
help, Karen, if you
need me to stand for fittings.”

Karen, who had been concentrating so
hard
,
Christina could almost see smoke coming out
her
ears,
shook her head. “I don’t think that will be necessary,
Christina, but thank
you This fits you well
so I can use it as a pattern.” She turned to
Martin.
“Is
the style all right?” She gestured at Christina
.
“That
off-the-shoulder style with the cord twisted between
the
breasts?”

Martin lifted his eyes to stare at Christina’s
breasts,
and
for perhaps the first time in her life Christina
was embarrassed by a
man’s scrutiny. Men didn’t
generally gape at her bosom the way Martin was
doing.
She
told herself it was all in the line of duty,
and that he wasn’t looking upon
her as a woman but
as an item on display, but it
didn’t
help much. She
discovered within herself a deep, deep desire to
have
Martin
looking upon her not merely as a woman, but
as an alluring
woman
.

Whatever was the matter with her? She’d better
snap out of it, or
she’d be in trouble in no time at
all. She had to keep her education in mind
and not
allow
herself to get sidetracked.

“
Yes.” Martin licked his lips, which had
evidently
gone dry

Christina gazed at him sharply, wondering if the
sight of her
scarcely covered bosom had affected him
in some way. She hoped so.

“
The pattern will do. Get the fabric right,
though,
all right?”

“
Sure,” Karen said. “Will do. You want to
step
out of that, Christina? I’ve got to pull the seams
apart
and use
it as a pattern to cut a new one.”

“
Sure.”

Christina was used to stripping and dressing in
front of all sorts
of men; it was part of the job. There
was nothing in the least modest about
acting in motion
pictures. Anyhow, she’d read the shooting schedule,
and she knew full
well there was going to be
that shocking naked-bosom scene coming up
soon
.
Shrugging out of her gown, she told herself she
might
as well
get used to it
.

A funny gurgling sound came to her ears as she
was in the process
of pulling the costume over her
head. It wasn’t until she’d stepped out of
it and
handed
it to Karen that she realized the sound had
come from Martin, who was staring at
her with his
eyes fairly
starting from their sockets. She reached
for her silk wrapper
and put it on.

“
What’s the matter, Martin? Surely you’ve been
to
costume fittings and seen women in their undies
before.”
If
he went into some kind of too-good-for-this
world
modest-man act now, Christina just might
have
to hit
him
with
Gran’s cane herself.

She saw him swallow. “Er, yes. Yes, of course, I
have. I—ah—I’ve—well
. . .” He shrugged helplessly,
obviously not finding the right words with
which to express
himself.

Enormously irked, Christina said, “I see.” With a
savage yank, she
finished tying the belt of her wrapper.
It had taken great strength of will
for Christina
to put aside the teachings of a lifetime, not to
mention
cultural taboos and her own natural reserve, and
learn to be as
immodest as the rest of the picture
industry
people with whom she worked.
If this
man
—
this man who’d helped found the industry, for
heaven’s sake—was going to hold her lack
of modesty against her after she’d
worked so hard
to conquer any hint of delicacy, she was going to be
darned good and
mad.

“
I see,” she repeated, and stalked away from
him
.

Good Lord, he’d done it now Martin stared after
Christina Mayhew’s
retreating form in distress. He
hadn’t meant to goggle at her. He hadn’t
meant to
get
tongue-tied. He hadn’t meant to act like an
addle
-
pated adolescent. Hell, he’d seen scads of
women
without
their clothes on since he’d started working
in pictures. Half of them
undressed for no
reason at
all
and any time they felt like it in order to make
sure they were attractive to the
men they worked
with.

Not a single one of them had stirred his juices as
had Christina Mayhew
just then. And all she’d done
was remove a costume. She’d still had her
camisole
and
pantaloons on underneath the costume. It’s not
as if she’d been buck
naked
.

For some reason, though,
t
he act
had seemed so
incredibly intimate to Martin that he could only
stare
and
make that stupid gurgling sound He’d also had
to restrain
himself from grabbing her and
making off
with her. Sort of like Orozco was supposed to in
the picture in a few
days.

The thought of Orozco putting his hands on
Christina’s delicate
flesh made Martin’s hands bunch
into fists and the blood rush to his head.
Great. This
was great. Here he was, the director and producer
of this picture, and
already he wanted to murder the
star. And not because the star had done
anything stupid,
but because the star was going to get to fondle
Christina Mayhew and
Martin wasn’t. What was he
going to do when it came time to direct that
scene
when
Christina stepped, naked, out of her bath? He’d
die,
was
what.

He was feeling very depressed when he wandered
outside to shoot the
next scene in the picture.

Hammers and saws clattered away behind the resort,
where Pharaoh’s
palace was being constructed.
Christina heard shouts and curses, and she saw
a
whole herd
of people watching from behind the barriers
the studio had erected. She assumed
they were
citizens from nearby who had come to see a picture
being
made.

She ignored the crowd and everything else, except
what she was
supposed to be doing, which was ca
rrying
a
bucket from a well. Civilization had come a
long way, she thought with an
internal snort of derision.
Now women only had to pretend to fill
buckets
with
well water for the sake of entertainment. A
few generations ago, she’d have had
to do it for real,
and she was darned sure it wouldn’t have been
entertaining.

“
All
right,” Martin called from the sidelines.

He looked grumpy for some reason beyond
Christina’s
ken. He kept shooting glances at her and
at Pablo Orozco.
Christina couldn’t blame Martin for
being grumpy at Orozco
,
because Orozco was slime
.
She assumed Martin
had a better reason than that,
however, and she wished she knew what it was
so
she could
add it to her list of reasons to detest Pablo
Orozco.

“
Places,
everyone!”

She and Orozco took their places. Hers was beside
the fake well,
complete with a bucket already full
of water waiting for her.
Pablo Orozco leered
at her as she carried the
empty bucket on her shoulder across the set to
the
well. She
hooked the bucket onto the chain and lowered
it into the well. A crew member
hiding inside
the well unhooked the empty bucket and replaced it
with the one full of
water. What amazed Christina
was that anyone watching the picture after it was
all
put
together would never even guess that the entire
scene was faked.

She was making a pretty good show of carrying
the bucket, if she
did say so herself. Didn’t spill a
drop more than was necessary to convey to
the world
that there was actual water involved. This was,
Christina
thought, a most Egyptian-looking scene
,
even
though she and Orozco looked about as much like
Egyptians as they
did Swedes. But that was all right.
The pictures were supposed to create
fantasies, and
this was a good one.

“
Come to me, my
pet
,”
Orozco, who was supposed
to be her dedicated lover, purred.

“
Not on your life, buddy,” Christina replied
while,
at the same time, looking shyly at the ground before
her. Her character,
a slave girl, always comported herself
with the utmost modesty.
Christina knew it
wasn’t worth asking why, if she
was so darned prudish, she was one day
soon going
to
bathe naked in front of a man to whom she wasn’t
married. The
pictures were just like that, and there
was no getting around it.

“
Ah, but
you will. And soon.”

The blasted man was so arrogant and sure of his
sexual prowess that
Christina wished she could slosh
the water from her bucket all over him.
That, however,
would not go over well with Martin, who was
standing on the
sidelines scowling hideously as the
cameras cranked away. Sprockets clunked
out onto
the
dirt, sending up little spurts of dust every time
they hit.