Star Attraction (22 page)

She idly wondered who would win
the competition, as she waited for Brad in the foyer.
 
He soon came out, looking freshly showered and grinning from
ear to ear.

“It was brilliant!
 
Did you here that applause?
 
I think I could get used to doing more
work for the stage, if it gives me such a buzz,” Brad said, as he lifted her
and spun her around and around before kissing her until she was breathless.

“Brad, put me down!” Zaira
giggled, as he lifted her higher up into the air on her shoulders as though she
weighed nothing, and said to the others, “I give you the best director of the
evening, Zaira Darcy!”

Everyone cried, “Here, here!”

The cast crammed themselves into
several waiting taxis, and sped to the university club to get in a few drinks
before all the other people arrived for the awards ceremony.

They found a long table for all of
them, and soon the table was full of bottles of wine, pitchers of beer, and a
dozen champagne bottles Brad insisted on buying.

“Don’t you think you're being a
bit premature?” Zaira cautioned.

“Don’t be silly.
 
Even if we don’t win, I think we all
deserve a treat after all the hard work we’ve put in.
 
And besides, I have a feeling you're going to win an award,
so don’t spoil my joy at your success by refusing the champagne.”

“As if I would!” she laughed.
 
“I just hope you get an award. It would
never have been possible without you.”

As the ceremony got under way,
Brad held Zaira close, and she was enveloped in a huge bear hug as she won the
awards for best actress and director.
 

But his whoops of delight were
matched by her own, as Brad was announced best actor in the drama festival.

Brad looked genuinely stunned and
thrilled as he went to receive the award, and the audience gasped as they
recognized him as
the
Brad Clarke, and applauded all the more tumultuously.

Finally, Zaira found herself
crossing her fingers as the list of nominees for best play were read out, and
Hamlet
was on the judges’ list.
 
She nearly fainted as they announced it
had won, and Brad had to go up on stage with her to accept the award, so
unsteady did she feel.

She opened her mouth to make some
form of acceptance speech, but the words failed to come.
 
Finally, Brad stood close to the
microphone, and said, “As you can see, she is so delighted she’s at a loss for
words, for once.
 
Thank you all so
much for this wonderful token of recognition
 
of all our efforts, and I would just like to say, I think
everyone who has participated in the festival is a winner anyway. I’m only
sorry we can’t all have trophies to take home.
 
Thank you, and on behalf of the entire cast, good night.”

The table exploded into rapturous
cries as they brought the trophy down off the podium, and the champagne corks
popped in unison.

“I suppose I should say something
like it looks like my uncle Egbert,” Zaira laughed, “but it doesn’t have a
head!”

They all giggled over the trophy,
and began to make a list of all the wonderful things they could use them for.

“Book ends, a paper weight, a garden
gnome,” Brad suggested with a grin. "But seriously, I'm delighted. I think
I'm more proud of this than I would be of an Oscar. It's great being part of a
cast, but fabulous to be noticed for my own talents for a change."

Zaira sobered suddenly.
 

“Well, I for one don’t think I
should have three of them, so I want Adam and Brian to hang on to two of
them.
 
The best actress trophy is
plenty for me, and as for the directing, well, you all made my job much easier
by being so brilliant, so here Adam, you take it.”

Adam, the dashing golden-haired
Laertes, was studying drama at NYU, so he was delighted to accept, as was
Brian, who had played King Claudius, and also aspired to be an actor.

“I noticed your acceptance speech
was very professional,” Zaira observed quietly, he eyes locking with his.
 
“Any chance it was a practice for the
day you get an Oscar?”

“Definitely,” he said, kissing her
on the cheek.
 
“I'm certain “The
Dark Lady” will be an even bigger winner.
 
What about using Adam and Brian as the two male leads?
 
I think Adam would be perfect as young
dashing Henry, and Brian as the older Will.”

Zaira stared at him in awe.
 
“Oh, Brad, it would be so wonderful for
them both, you know that, but are you sure?
 
It’s an incredibly generous thing to do, but....”

“If I can’t support young talent,
who else can?” Brad smiled.
 
“Shall
I tell them, or you?”

“We both shall, in a minute, as
soon as I kiss you,” Zaira murmured, before his mouth swooped down over hers,
and another whoop echoed throughout the dining room.

The party continued into the small
hours of the morning, but Zaira could sense a certain tension behind Brad’s
laughter.
 
Zaira longed to be at
home alone with him.
 
Though she
felt wide awake, she suddenly hear him say, “Well, it’s been great fun, but Zaira
is looking exhausted, so I think we will have to be going now.”

“But you must promise to all keep
in touch, and who knows, what about another production next year?” Zaira
promised.
 
She and Brad said
special goodbyes to Adam and Brian, who promised to start rehearsals the
following week.

There was a loud chorus of cheers,
and then a rousing rendition of “For they are Jolly Good Fellows,” before Zaira
and Brad were finally alone in the elevator. Brad pulled her to him fiercely,
smothering her face and neck in kisses.
 
His desire throbbed between them as he murmured, “I can’t wait to get
you home.
 
The last twelve hours
have been torture.”

“For me too,” Zaira breathed, as
her fingers itched to caress his magnificent bare flesh.

The taxi couldn't get them home
fast enough. Once the apartment door shut, they stripped the clothes from one
another with a frenzy of desire. It was only Zaira’s presence of mind that got
them safely into her
 
bed, such was
the intensity of Brad’s passion.
 
His hands roved all over her, seeking, massaging, filling her mind and
senses until her whole world became nothing but Brad.
 

She found herself indulging her
own curiosity, as she ran her hands up and down the length of his body, finding
his erogenous zones, nibbling his earlobes, nipples, and running her hair down
his body in a silken caress which ignited his passion anew.

In the warm aftermath of their
lovemaking, Zaira reflected that she could never have imagined love like this,
ever.
 
Brad possessed her so
completely, it was almost frightening.
 
In less than a week, they had grown so close, Zaira was terrified that
something might part them.
 

Zaira tried to tell herself that
her fears were silly.
 
Brad himself
had promised he wouldn’t leave her, had no intention of going back to
California, unless she was right by his side.

As she drifted off to sleep,
wrapped in the cocoon of his warmth, she smiled dreamily.
 
They were going to live happily ever
after.
 
She would move heaven and
earth to make Brad happy, and he certainly seemed to be with the new life they
were building for themselves.
 
If
this wasn't true love, the emotion didn't exist. For the first time in her
life, she felt completely sure of her life, her future.
 
Zaira simply would not allow anything
to spoil it for them.

A crisp autumn day greeted Zaira
and Brad when they awoke the next morning.
 
They lazed around in bed for a time, chatting quietly about
the evening before, then planning their day.

“You have a shower, and I’ll start
breakfast,” Brad offered, as he kissed her tenderly on both eyelids and her
mouth before swinging his long legs out of the bed.

“That sounds wonderful, but are
you sure you wouldn’t care to join me?”

Brad looked her up and down in the
glowing sunlight.
 
“You bewitching
creature, I might just do that,” he replied, but then shook his head.
 
“But if I did, we would ever leave the
house. So you go on by yourself, while I have a look in the fridge.
 
How does pancakes and maple syrup
sound?”

“Fantastic.” Zaira smiled, as she watched
with gleaming eyes while he pulled on his long bathrobe.

As soon as Brad had gone, Zaira
pulled out some clean clothes, a pair of jeans, a blouse, and a three-toned
striped blue cardigan.
  
Once
in the bathroom, she showered thoroughly, washing away the last of her
theatrical makeup.
 
After getting
dressed, she decided to go out to the store to get the newspapers.
 
Hopefully some of them would be full of
theatre reviews, and mention of their success at the Drama Festival awards the
night before.

Zaira popped into the kitchen and
announced, “Just going out for the papers.
 
Do you want anything?”

“Yes, you, to marry me,” he said,
pulling her into his arms and holding her tightly.

Zaira was breathless. “Oh, Brad,
this is all so sudden!
 
I’m not
saying I don’t want to.
 
Believe
me, I do.”

Her grey eyes locked with his
stunning emerald ones as she tried to explain her innermost feelings.
 
“I'm sure now, but for one thing, I'm
still
 
not divorced.
 
As soon as I have a spare moment, I'll
see where I stand on being awarded one on the grounds of desertion. But in the
meantime, let’s just take things easy, not make any plans which will then fill
us full of more regret if they don’t work out.”

“They will work out, Zaira.
 
I can’t think of anything that might
make me change my mind about my love for you, and I am a willful man.
 
As soon as you're free, I’m going to
marry you, do you hear?"

She clung to him as his kiss
filled her senses, until she tore herself away and exclaimed, “Brad! The
pancakes!”

Brad managed to rescue some of
them, but the smell of burning drove her out of the apartment.
 
She ambled down the street to the paper
shop, and bought the
New York Times
and a few other papers.
 
She was just about to pay for them all, when she caught
sight of some of the more low-brow tabloid papers.

She shakily reached out a hand to
unfold the front page of one fully. Zaira’s knees turned to jelly, and for a
moment she thought she was going to faint.

“Are you all right, miss?” the
elderly woman behind the counter asked her.

Zaira was brought back to reality,
and she snatched three or four of the different papers off the racks and paid
for them.

“Sorry, I just remembered I left
the gas on at home,” she apologized, as she ran out of the shop.
 
But once out of the shop, where could
she go?
 
She raced into the park
and sat down on a park bench, reading the various articles with a growing sense
of nausea.

Every single paper carried similar
photos of Brad, obviously naked, but in each the woman was different.
 
The poses could only be described as
pornographic, and Zaira thanked god they were all long distance shots, rather
than close ups.
 
All the headlines
were roughly the same, hinting that Brad was running a porno ring, which included
child pornography, and that the police were starting an investigation.

Zaira read through the articles
several times, trying to make sense of it all.
   
She tried to avoid the pictures, and while she
succeeded in ignoring the nubile young females, the face of Brad kept staring
back at her.
 

She was numb.
 
She couldn’t think clearly.
   
Zaira forced herself to
breath deeply, and held her shaking palms together to keep herself from falling
apart.

A small voice inside her head told
her it simply wasn’t true, that this couldn’t possibly be the man she had
fallen in love with.
 
But her more
rational side became angry.
 
There
it was, in black and white, sometimes even in full color, Zaira thought with a
sickening lurch of her stomach, and she was suddenly spectacularly ill in a
garbage can.