Her Leading Man (20 page)

And if her innards, womanly parts, and cells didn’t
settle down and stop
behaving in
this outrageous
manner, she’d just have to give them a severe
talking-to. Maybe get
Gran to lecture them, too. Nothing,
not even a million
years’ worth of instincts, could
survive one of Gran’s scathing
denunciations.

She managed to produce a friendly but disinterested
s
mile and was pleased to see that the thought
of her grandmother
was strong enough to cow the
unruly elements that had been running rampant
inside
her.
“What’s the matter?” she asked. Then she
wondered
if the question had been a sneaky way
for her
rebellious soft side to skirt her rigid efforts of
suppression.

This, she decided savagely, was going to be one
hell of a
battle.

After running his fingers through his hair—Christina wanted
to do that so much
,
her palms
itched—Martin offered her a rueful
smile. “Oh, nothing
much. The filming’s
already behind schedule, our
star’s arm’s broken, and Phin
wants me—
me
—to
take
over
Pablo’s part.”

Christina stared at him, her mind having suddenly
gone completely
blank.

His smile twisted and he nodded as if he agreed
with whatever she’d
been thinking
.
“You might well
look appalled. Christina. Can
you imagine it
?
Me?”

Christina’s mind stayed blank fo
r
only a
second.
Then
it filled up with the most
delightful array of
mental images—images of Martin and her
frolicking
in
the elaborate
Egyptian pool George Peters had created;
of Martin and her
kissing madly, passionately,
recklessly; of Martin watching her as she stepped
out
of her
bath, naked as the day she was
born.

Her face got so hot
,
she had to wipe it
with the
frilly doily her drink had been sitting on. Darn.
She
had to
stop this at once. Where was the control for
which she was so
famous?

In an effort to chase all of those images back to
where they
belonged—out of sight forever—Christina
said in a voice she was proud of,
“But—well, Martin,
you and Pablo don’t look very much alike.”

“
No, I
know we don’t.”

His smile twisted even more, and Christina could
tell he was
comparing his physiognomy
unfavorably
to Orozco’s. Her tongue nearly tripped over itself
in
an effort
to reassure him. “I
mean, you’re both terribly
handsome—although, personally, I don’t
care
for
Pablo’s oily side, and you have to admit he’s a
slimy snake—but, I mean, face
it, Martin, you’re light
and he’s dark. I much prefer your looks to his,
but—”

Good Lord in heaven, however had she allowed
that blithering
speech to slip past her rigidly guarded
lips? Christina sat back, felt her
eyes widen in horror,
and stared at Martin.

But Martin didn’t seem to mind. Indeed, Christina
could have sworn he
flushed. “Thanks, Christina. I
don’t know about the handsome part—”

“
I do,” she said firmly, then slapped a hand
over
her mouth. Darn it all, if she didn’t stop blurting
things out, she’d
turn into a dithering prissy miss in
no time at all Whatever was the matter
with her?
She
almost wished Gran were here to hit her with
her cane.
The two words she’d let escape
stopped Martin
cold for several uncomfortable seconds.
They were
uncomfortable for Christina, at
any rate.

Martin only
appeared confused.”Well,” he went on after a stunned
moment, and
he had to clear his throat. “U
m
, Phin
says if I wear
dark makeup and dye my hair
black and they film
the rest of the picture from a
distance—except for
the extreme
close-ups, for which they can use Pablo—”

“
Ew, I
wish they wouldn’t.”

There she went again. Christina swore at herself
to stop allowing
these words to break out of the jail
in which she wanted to confine them.
Clamping her
teeth together so hard she hoped it would take a
crowbar to pry them
apart, she shut up again.

“
Er, well, they’d have to
,
you
see, unless we want
to reshoot the whole blasted thing all over again,
and
that
would cost a fortune. Anyhow, close-up shots are
the newest discovery
in camera work these days.
Close-ups and crosscuts in scenes. Phin just told
me
that
Griffith is doing a spectacular epic about the
Civil War, called
Birth of a
Nation
.
They’re developing
all of these new techniques, so we might as
well use them,
especially now, when we really need
to get this picture finished. Besides, we
can’t let Griffith
outdo Peerless.” He looked and sounded so sincere,
Christine’s heart
hitched once more.

After hesitating for a moment as she tested her
self-control, she
dared to nod and say, “Yes, I see
what you mean.”

Martin seemed to brood for a few more silent
moments.
Then
he startled Christina by pushing his chair
back. “Will you excuse me for a
minute, Christina?
I’d really like to get another gin and tonic. I feel
the
need for
a relaxer.”

She could see the logic in that. She’d get another
pink gin fizz,
except she feared the first one ha
d
been the villain
that had loosened her tongue to begin
with. “Of course, Martin. I understand
completely.”

“
Thanks
.”

Christina watched intently as Martin walked to the
bar and ordered his
drink. She told herself that, objectively
speaking, there was nothing about
M
artin
Tafft that should serve—objectively—to damage
the
iron
self-will that had been both her pride and her
saving grace for lo these many
years.
He
wasn’t the most handsome man in the world.
She tilted her head to one side and
surveyed him
critically, taking stock of him from head to foot,
without
prejudice.

Nope. He
wasn’t.

Oh, sure, he appealed to her but that was only
personal—and it was
the personal she was determined
to fight. After all, physical attraction
was all
well
and good, but it was transitory. How many millions
of times had she
heard or read about people
who’d been wildly attracted to each other, had
given
in to
their feelings without engaging their brains, and
had ended up not
merely hating each other, but with
their lives lying in tatters around them
as a consequence
of their lack of self-discipline

Christina Mayhew did not lack self-discipline. If
anyone in the world
should be able to resist mere
physical attraction, it was she. And she would.
So
there.
She’d have blown a raspberry to cap her determination but knew that
would have been childish.

Of course, it was also true that Martin Tafft
appealed
to
her on a different level. Not that it was
any deeper than the physical level,
but—oh, very
well, maybe it was a little deeper. She admired his
skill,
talent,
professionalism
, enthusiasm, and work
ethic.

That one was easier to deal with. Christina admired
a good many people
who lived their lives according
to those sterling qualities. Her entire
family—well,
except for Uncle Harry, who was wildly eccentric and
had run off with an
artist to Paris—lived by those
same principles. And even Harry, while frivolous
to
a fault,
had stood firm for his principles, no matter
how nutty they’d sounded to the
rest of the family.
When Christina went to medical school—and she
would
go to medical
school—she
expected to meet
any number of people with the same
qualities.

She did enjoy talking to Martin. That one was
more difficult to
deal with. He was an excellent listener,
unlike so many people she’d met in
her dealings
with the motion picture industry. He didn’t
always interrupt a
person to tell one of his own stories.
And he had so many interesting
stories to tell,
too, both about the pictures, which could be amusing
as a topic of
conversation, and about Egypt. Christina
followed the many Egyptian
excavations taking place
these days with the liveliest interest. She
adored
stuff
like that.

But she could always read about Egyptian excavations
in the
National
Geographic
.
She didn’t need to
talk about them with someone who’d actually lived
in Egypt.

She had to cut her inner musings short when Martin
returned to the
table and sank into the chair he’d
recently vacated. He sipped with
appreciation at his
gin and tonic.

Gesturing at the glass in his hand, Christina
sai
d,
“That should relax you a bit.”

“
I
guess.”

He sounded so dispirited, Christina’s heart started
doing strange things
again. First it hitched. Then it
squeezed. Then it ached mildly. Then it
started to
pound like a kettledrum
.

Bother. Since when were hearts supposed to go
through callisthenic
exercises? This was ludicrous.
Angry with her unruly heart, she spoke rather
too
sharply
when she said, “Besides, it’s not as if you’ve
been told to slit your wrists or
climb Mount Everest
or anything. You only have to act in a picture.”

Bother. She wished she’d used a more conciliatory
tone and had chosen
her words with greater care.
Martin, who seldom frowned in displeasure,
frowned
at
her now And he looked far from pleased.

“
I know you enjoy acting, Christina, but I
don’t.
My pleasure in the pictures is in putting them
together
and
overseeing the production. I’m no actor,
and acting in
Egyptian Idyll
will only make
more
work for
me. I’m already spread too thin If I have
to act, too, God knows how I’ll get
my other work
done.”

“
I’m sorry, Martin. I didn’t mean to sound
so
cross.” She hadn’t meant to sound so abject, either.
She simply couldn’t
find a middle ground with Martin
Tafft. And she’d never had this problem
before.
It
must be physics.

As she understood more about the natural sciences
than most young
ladies, Christina was happy when
that thought occurred to her. If it were
physics, if
Martin’s chemical makeup and her chemical makeup
were somehow or
other drawn to each
other, then
Christina couldn’t be faulted for behaving oddly in
his
presence
.

No sooner had that happy thought settled in than
an extremely unhappy
one followed. Good God, if it
was physics, then she was jinxed.

Christina flatly refused to become a victim of her
own
physical or chemical
underpinnings, and that
was that. She sat up straighter in
her chair. “I understand
your problem, Martin, but, believe me, acting
isn’t all that much work. I’m sure it won’t
interfere
with your directing chores. I mean,
it’s not
as
if you didn’t have to be on the
set anyway.”