Her Leading Man (13 page)

“
I’m going crazy,” he muttered at the mirror
in
his
hotel room. Last night had been one horror-filled
nightmare after
another.

This morning his eyes were bloodshot, he felt like
hell, and he still
wanted to shoot Pablo Orozco.

“
I wonder if I need to take vitamin pills,”
he
mused as he bathed his gritty eyeballs with the
soothing
boric acid solution he’d prepared and poured into
his eye cup. He’d
heard of actors who took vitamin
pills and claimed they helped maintain
vitality. They
were the latest rage.

Vitamin pills and drugs. Like that poor female
who’d committed
suicide the other day.

He shook his head hard, both to rid his eyes of
the excess eye wash
and because he detested thinking
cynical thoughts. Martin Tafft was not a
cynical man.
He was a man of principle and honor; a man who
loved his work and
who wanted motion
pictures to
be as ennobling an art form as the world had ever
seen. If he had
his
way,
future generations would revere
Peerless pictures every bit as much as
people
revered Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel or da Vinci’s
Mona
Lisa.

Gritting his teeth, he recalled the way he’d botched
up yesterday’s
shoot. And all because he couldn’t
stand to see Christina Mayhew in the arms
of Pablo
Orozco.

Lord, he had to get over this. He almost hoped
Grandmother Mayhew’s
lumbago would allow her to
supervise today’s camel-riding lessons. He
didn’t
imagine that old bag would let anyone, even Martin
Ta
fft,
get away with silly tantrums like
those he threw
yesterday.

All things considered, Martin had faced other days
with more
pleasurable anticipation than he did this
one.

Christina dressed in riding breeches the morning
following her jaunt
to the well. And her jaunt to the
well. And her jaunt to the well. She got
tired even
thinking about it
.
What an exhausting
experience that
had been. She’d always understood Martin to
be a
gentle and sensible
director.

He hadn’t been either one of those things yesterday.
Yesterday he’d been
a blasted tyrant. An irrational
one, too. There had been no reason in
creation
he
should have objected so strenuously to Orozco’s
performance.

Now if
she
had objected, because she couldn’t tolerate
Orozco’s slimy
touch, there might have been
some reason for the multiple takes. But as much
as
she hated
to admit it, Orozco had acted his part well
yesterday. If he was the least bit
hammy—and he
was—that was all the rage these days. Yesterday had
been a
nightmare,
pure and simple.

But yesterday was over, and today she was going
to learn how to ride
a camel. It was going to be a
new experience and something interesting to look
forward
to.
She hoped no one would be shocked at the
sight of a female in trousers, but
she wasn’t
going
to ruin one of her good dresses on the back of a
stupid
camel.

“
You look like a regular tart, girl,” her
grandmother
said, eyeing her up and down and sounding
as if she approved
wholeheartedly.

Which, Christina thought with a mixture of amusement
and irritation, she
probably did. Leave it to
Gran. She’d
probably tell everyone her granddaughter
had dressed like a
tart this morning merely to defy
convention. Fiddle.

“
Thanks, Gran.” It wasn’t worth saying more
than
that Given enough fuel—and anything even remotely
smacking of
disapproval was fuel for Gran—the old
woman could operate all day long and far
into the
night. “Are you ready to face the camels this
morning?”

“
I am.” Her grandmother stood up straight
and
adopted her best, most militant expression.
Christina
guessed her grandmother possessed sufficient gumption for
any old camel. “I’m ready to tackle that
greasy actor fellow, too,” she added
gleefully.

Christina paused in turning the doorknob and
looked back at her
grandmother. “Which one?”

“
What do you mean, ‘which one’?” Gran
barked.
“That Pablum fellow.”

“
Pablo. Oh. Yes, I see.” Christina was ready
for
too
.
If he so much as laid a finger on her,
she’d
break
it for him
.
She’d told her grandmother about Martin’s
strange
behavior during yesterday’s shoot, and the
o
l
d woman
had clearly approved of
Martin’s
shenanigans. She
should, Christina thought bitterly, because he’d
acted
just
like Gran. She was accustomed to Gran’s bad
behavior; such antics coming from
Martin had been
a total shock, and a most unpleasant one
.

Orozco was another matter entirely. Nothing
Orozco did, as long
as it was difficult, rude, irresponsible,
sexually improper, or conceited,
would surprise
Christina
.

Her dreams had been full of him the night before.
Only in her dreams,
Pablo had been soundly thrashed
by Martin Tafft every time he showed up.
Which,
she
realized with a small start, was pretty much how
things had
transpired during
yesterday’s shoot, except
that Martin hadn’t had sufficient reason
for his unusual
performance. And he hadn’t physically socked
Orozco. She grinned
and almost
wished her dream
had been the reality instead of the other way
around.

Nonsensical things, dreams. Christina had read
about a gentleman
named Jung who was quite excited
about dream interpretation, but Christina
didn’t know
how much weight she’d give to them. Perhaps they
were an aspect of
wishful thinking,
she thought as
she slowly descended the
staircase
—
slowly, because
she didn’t want to leave Gran behind
in case she
needed assistance going downstairs. Gran would
never ask for help,
but Christina knew how much
her joints ached in the mornings.

Now Christina wondered if perhaps she’d dreamed
about Martin
walloping Orozco because she’d like to
think Martin was the sort of man
who’d be a woman’s
champion, should she need one. She didn’t count
ruining
take
after take of a motion
picture shoot as
championship; that had only been annoying.
Nor did
Christina ever expect to need a champion. She could
take care of
herself. She
did
take care of herself.

Anyhow, a person who aspired to be a physician
couldn’t afford to
entertain too many of the softer
emotions. Especially if one was a woman
and aiming
to
tackle a
man’s profession in a man’s world.
Christina had to be tough. She had to
be a
fighte
r. S
he had to be twice as smart and three
times as capable
as a man in order
to achieve her goals
.

Still and all, in her innermost heart of hearts, she
wouldn’t really mind
it if Martin
w
ere to offer to
protect her—sensibly; not the way
he’d done yesterday—from
Orozco’s filthy advances. It would be
flattering,
after all. And it would denote a
certain
fondness for her on Martin’s
part.

A cynical twist smote her, and she almost guffawed
aloud. What producer
in his right mind wouldn’t be
fond of a female property who was certain to
garner
piles
of money for his studio. Especially after word
got around that she was going to
expose her bosom
to the world.

With a sigh, Christina wondered if it had been right
of her to agree to
do that
scene
. Cinematically, she
supposed it made sense. Her role
was that of a slave
girl who was lusted after by one of Ramses
II’s
more
unpleasant brothers
.
Therefore, there needed to be at
least one scene that depicted why he
should have
picked
her,
o
f all
possible slave girls, as the object
of his lust. The best way to get the
point
a
cross in
the short time it took to screen a picture, was to
exhibit
her
physical
attributes.

Pablo Orozco, of all the unlikely candidates, was
supposed to be one
of Moses’s buddies, and he was
also supposed to have a passion for her. His job
was
to rescue
her from the arms of the other villainous
lout just
in
the
nick of time, in order to save her
virtue
.
Yesterday’s scene had been necessary to set
the stage for
further story developments.

When she considered all aspects of the picture,
Christina guessed
she should be glad she hadn’t been
asked to expose more than her
bosom.

Still and all, the notion of Orozco drooling over
her private female
assets didn’t thrill her. Now, if it
had been
Martin
who— But that was idiotic.
M
artin
was the producer and director. Although he was
absolutely
handsome enough to be the star of the picture,
he wasn’t.
Therefore, Christina would have to
endure Orozco’s leering presence on the
set.

She hoped to heaven Martin wouldn’t have her play
the naked scene
thirty-four times. She’d die.

Piffle. She’d be so glad when her education was
complete and all she
had to do was cure illnesses in
people. This acting stuff was for the
birds.

Her lips tightened when she recalled sitting before
the board of regents
and being told that she, as a
woman, wouldn’t be granted a scholarship to
medical
school.
They were saving the scholarships for men,
they’d told her,
because men could be expected to
use their training. Women were expected to
have babies
.
She’d wanted to ask them what their point
was,
but
didn’t. They would only have looked shocked.
Women, babies, and jobs of real
work didn’t associate
themselves in the minds of stuffy
regents.

She’d show them. She, whose scholastic record was
at the very top of
her graduating class, and ten times
better than most of the men to whom those
black
-
coated
demons were granting scholarships, would
show them
all.

Blast them. They’d reminded her of a line of crows
as she’d sat before
them, prim
and
straight, smarter
and more capable than any five
male scholarship applicants
.
Sometimes the world
drove her crazy.

To the devil with propriety. She’d bare her bosom
ten times over in
pictures if doing so would pay her
way through medical school. And if Martin
made her
get
out of that blasted bathtub thirty-four times, she’d
do it.

The way the world worked was unfair to
women
.
Christina didn’t like it, but she’d be damned if
she’d
let it
defeat her. So defiant was she that she squared
her shoulders as she descended
the stairs, ready to
tackle anything the world presented to her today,
from
Pablo
Orozco to a dozen camels. Or even Martin
Taff
t
.