Her Leading Man (36 page)

He assumed his own place outside the door of the
bathing room. With a
last glance around to make sure
all was in readiness, and trying his
damnedest not
to see the man with the opera glasses lift them to
his eyes, he barked,
“Action!”

The cameras cranked, sprockets chunked, and
Christina
began a languid soaping of her spectacular
limbs. Martin’s jaw
tightened when he saw her lift
her leg, point her toe, and lather her calf. He
wanted
to
rush over to the tub and throw a blanket over her.

Fortunately, he remembered to unclench his teeth
before he walked
through the archway into the bathing
room. He always tried to get a scene in
the can
in
one take. This time it was more than typically important
to him that they not
have to endure this agony
more than once.

The set was magnificent. It looked for all the
world as though it
had been constructed of marble
and gold. In truth, this set was another
masterpiece
of George Peters’
s
imagination, and had
been constructed
out of cardboard, papier-maché, and plaster.
George was a true
genius, and Martin generally appreciated
him for it. At the moment he only
wanted
this
damned scene to be over with.

On cue, Christina lowered her leg, let out a
theatrical
gasp, pressed a hand to her bosom and, dammit, the entire
world was going to be able to see
that glorious bosom, even if it was
covered with wet,
filmy cloth and being photographed from a
distance—and dripped
onto the apparently marble floor.

“
Don’t expose yourself too much,”
Martin
snapped. “For God’s sake, Christina.”

“
I didn’t write the stupid script,” she
reminded
him Amazingly enough, although she sounded as
cold and angry as
anything, she still managed to look
frightened.

It was all acting, Martin reminded
himself
.
“Well,
cover yourself better,” he growled.
“You’re supposed
to be a modest slave girl.”

“
Blast you, Martin Tafft, I was modest until
Peerless
got hold of me!”

“
Right “ he said, pushing the word past his
gritted
teeth with difficulty. As called for in the script,
he
stomped
over to the tub and stared down at her. She
pretended to shrink away from him
“Okay, I’m going
to grab the towel and hold it for you. Try not to
display yourself
when you get out of the tub.”

“
For heaven’s sake, Martin! You’re being
wildly
unfair. None of this is my fault.”

Martin could tell how exasperated she was. And,
if he were to be
honest, he couldn’t blame her. It
wasn’t her fault they’d begged her to do a
nude scene
for
Egyptian Idyll
. The decision to put such a scene
in the picture had
been a purely mercenary one. The
Peerless accountants knew that a nude
scene would
bring folks thronging to picture palaces all over
the
world,
thereby making everyone connected
with the
picture a ton of money.

Because he was furious—with Peerless, with
Christina, with
himself; and with everyone else just
for the hell of it—he grabbed the towel
that had been
draped artistically over a bench beside the tub with
unnecessary force. Flapping it fiercely, he held it out
to her.

With every appearance of apprehension, some of
which probably
wasn’t faked, Christina
slowly
rose
from the tub. The
cameras grinding away in the background
grated on Martin’s nerves like a
swarm of
wasps. He hated this. For the first time since he
started working in
the picture industry, he wished
he’d never heard of motion
pictures.

The lights were fierce overhead, and water crystals
dripped from
Christina’s bare limbs like diamond
droplets. They caught the light and
reflected it like
fire. Martin’s mouth went dry. She was looking at
him with her eyes
huge and wide and filled with
fear.
She acting
, he reminded himself. She wasn’t
afraid of
him
.
Not really.

“
This is great!” Lovejoy called from the
sidelines
through the megaphone Martin usually used. “You
two are fabulous
together!”

“
Yes,” Christina muttered. “I thought so,
too.
Once.”

Martin’s heart pitched and heaved like a wild thing
caught in a net.
“Here,” he said roughly, “let me
drape this around you.”

“
Yes,
master.” Now she sounded sarcastic.

“
Damn it, Christina, you’re not being fair.”
He
held out the towel, and she stepped from the tub and
into his arms. He
wrapped them around her, along
with the towel, and turned her so that she faced
him

He stared down at her; she stared up at
him
.
Martin
heard a vague babble of voices behind him.
Lovejoy’s. Pablo’s. A couple of others. He couldn’t make
out the words, but
they sounded excited.

It wasn’t until Christina’s eyes fluttered and
closed,
and
his lips descended upon hers that sanity returned
with a wallop.
Lovejoy all but shrieked, “That’s
perfect
!
Spectacular! The public’s going to love it! That’s
the best kiss I’ve
ever witnessed in a picture! You
two are great together!”

Martin yanked himself away from Christina in horror. “Good
God.” He hadn’t intended to
show the world how much he craved the
woman
.

She blinked up at him as if she didn’t know what
had happened,
either. Her hand shook when she lifted
it and pressed her fingers to her
lips.

When Martin took an unsteady step away from
he
r
,
he realized Lovejoy was actually jumping up and
down with ecstasy on
the sidelines. He cleared
his
throat
“
Um
, I guess we did that part pretty
well.”

Her eyes were still huge and luminous, like dusky
pools of pure
emotion. Martin got the feeling he
might fall into them if he wasn’t
careful.

“
Yes,”
she whispered. “I guess we did.”

“
Damn it, Christina . . .” But Martin didn’t
know
what to say.

She nodded, and his control broke like a dry
t
owel
snapping. He reached out, grabbed her to him,
and
kissed
her again, like the man his character was supposed
to
be
.
A man driven mad by jealousy and adoration
over a woman he
couldn’t completely conquer.
It appalled him to know how aptly the
description
fitted himself, Martin
Tafft
,
formerly levelheaded motion
picture producer and director. He also didn’t
care
for
the
conquer
part, but it resonated in his head like
an echo.

As was written into the story line, Paul
Gabriel
,
playing the role of Pharaoh’s
wicked brother,
crashed
onto
the scene at that point. Both Christina and Martin
whirled around. If
Christina was in anywhere ne
ar
the same state of
befuddlement
as Martin himself
,
Paul’s arrival had
truly shocked her
.

Martin didn’t know if she was acting when she
stumbled backward
and had to brace herself on the
edge of the tub. She looked great.
Christina, however,
would look great in anything
.
Or
nothing. Martin
knew it for a fact. Damn it all.

“
Cease pawing that woman, you scoundrel!”
Paul
cried out in his ringing high-pitched voice. If the
pictures
were
ever able to accommodate sound, Martin
feared Paul would have to go into
another line of
work.

Martin took a ferocious step forward and held out
his hand in a
gesture meant to cow the other man
into fear and trembling. Which was silly;
why would
one
of the most powerful men in the kingdom quake
away from a slave girl’s
low-class,
impoverished
lover? But it wasn’t Martin’s place to question the
writers. Phineas
Lovejoy had an unerring instinct for
public tastes, and Phineas Lovejoy had
said this picture
was going to be the greatest in Peerless’s history
to date.

“
Stay away from this woman, you vile cad!”
M
ar
tin cried, feeling like an imbecile as he
did so. “This
woman isn’t for you.” Which would have been true
even if they weren’t
talking slave to Pharaoh’s
brother
,
since Paul Gabriel didn’t find women sexu
al
ly
attractive in the first place
.

“
But she’s such a lovely little thing,
Marty
.
” Paul
went so far as to waggle an eyebrow. It
would probably
look great on the screen, but it made Martin
want to
laugh
.
Which was an improvement over his
mood of moments
earlier. “If I went for women, I’m
sure
I’d
like her best of all.” He took a swaggering
step toward the couple, who were sort
of huddled
togethe
r
at the bathtub. Paul looked admirably
powerful
and
fierce, even if he did sound like a toy poodle.

“
Don’t make me laugh, Paul, or we’ll have to
do
this again, and I don’t think Martin would last
through another
take.” Christina had pulled her towel
up so that it covered the lower part of
her face. Martin
imagined she was grinning underneath the
towel
.
Only her huge, beautiful eyes were visible, and
they
conveyed
heaps and heaps of anxiety. Martin was sure
the public would feel appropriate
anguish on her behalf.
They just loved to see females in distress. He
wasn’t
sure
what that revealed about the American character
,
but he
feared it boded ill for Christina’s future plans as
a voter and a
doctor. It was hard to feel sorry for
a
medical doctor, or to consider a
physician
as someho
w
weaker than one was
oneself
.

Martin, who had lost any impulse to laugh,
growled, “She’s
right. Let’s get this over with.”

“
Well, then, chum, you’d best state swinging at
me
so
that we can fight and fall all over each other, and
you can beat me up.”
Since his back was to the
camera,
Paul waggled his
eyebrows again. “Now you I
could go for, Marty, darling.”

“
Good God.” Martin didn’t dare roll his eyes,
but
he
heard Christina giggle behind her towel.
“All right
, try not to get too excited, Paul.”

He strode aggressively forward, and Paul did
likewise.
They met in the middle of the floor and engaged
in battle. Martin
tried his best to remember the choreography,
but he wasn’t used to the acting
side of the
business, and he feared he wasn’t doing it right. He
whispered, “Am I
supposed to punch you now?”

“
No,” Paul whispered back. “We have to
struggle
manfully for another couple of seconds.
Remember?”