The Awakening of Poppy Edwards (4 page)

She trapped my hand, curling her fingers round it. ‘I could say the same, Mr Cartsdyke,’ she said, and once again her English accent was like cut glass. ‘Your name is a legend of stage and screen. It can’t do me anything but good to have it entwined with mine.’

No one does irony like the English. I wanted to laugh, she was so good. She hadn’t let go of my hand. The sash of her kimono was loose. My eyes had wandered down to the delicious cleavage on display. She shifted on the couch, just a fraction, to let me see more. I no longer wanted to laugh. ‘What about Randolph Farrell?’ I asked her. ‘They like their leading ladies to be the faithful type here in Hollywood. Even if the man they’re reputedly faithful to is otherwise inclined.’

‘Randolph isn’t—that’s not the issue with Randolph. Your sources aren’t as good as you think, Mr Cartsdyke.’

She was gloating. The thick black stuff outlining her eyes made them look huge, made her face look exotic. Her smile, on those dark red lips, was almost exultant. I couldn’t have cared less about what way Randolph Farrell was inclined, but I was enjoying myself too much to let her know that. ‘So tell me then, what’s the real story?’ I said.

She shook her head. She was close enough for her hair to brush my cheek. ‘I don’t kiss and tell.’

‘Which is why you’ll never make a blackmailer,’ I said, smiling at her.

She laughed, not at all put-out at having been caught out in a lie. I liked that she laughed. I reached for her, pulling her towards me, except I’m not sure that I needed to pull. My hand was on her shoulder. The other was still on her thigh, hers covering it. I could feel the rise and fall of her breasts, but my eyes were on hers. We sat like that, just gazing at each other, as if we were waiting for someone to call, “Cut,” and the heat built between us, and it was painful, wanting so much to kiss her. I almost did. I moved my lips towards her, then she jerked back, and I jerked back, and the silence and the breathing became awkward, and I cursed under my breath, cursed myself for my own ineptness, my own stupidity.

‘We need to talk,’ I said.

‘I don’t want…’

‘Business.’ I got to my feet. ‘I have business I want to discuss with you.’

She chewed on her lip as she eyed me up. For the first time that day, I thought she wasn’t acting. ‘If we do talk, we have to forget last night happened,’ she said finally, ‘because I truly don’t, not ever. Mix the two, I mean. It’s one of my rules.’

I didn’t doubt she was serious. It was exactly what I wanted. Absolutely what I wanted. ‘It’s one of my rules, too,’ I said, meaning it.

‘Fine. Then I’ll listen to what you have to say, though I make no promises. Did you really cancel my meeting with my agent?’

‘Only because I wanted to speak to you first.’

‘Don’t ever do that again, Mr Cartsdyke. I make my own decisions. It’s one of
my
rules.’

‘That makes two of us.’ I’d grown kind of used to having what I said go, I suppose. It’s not false modesty, just the simple truth, that power breeds power, and I had a lot of power in the industry. She had no idea what I was going to put on the table. She’d called my bluff on the state of her contract, but I hadn’t admitted anything. I liked the way she stood up to me. I admired her for having rules. So few people did. But I wasn’t about to let her ride roughshod over me. ‘I’ll book us dinner while you get changed,’ I said.

‘No. Come to my house. I’ll cook you dinner.’ She laughed, seeing the surprise on my face. ‘I can cook, you know. And I do want to hear what you have to say. I’m—I need a change. I think it might be time. Come at seven. The address is—but I suppose you know the address. You’re a man who does his research.’

‘I do.’

She nodded, giving me a quizzical look. I wondered if she realised how sexy it was.
She’s an actress
, I reminded myself. Sure she knew. She most likely had a whole portfolio of looks practised in the mirror, one for every occasion.

‘Seven, then,’ I said, and left before I surrendered to the impulse to kiss her goodbye.

Chapter Four

Poppy

I mentioned I don’t really like Hollywood parties. Honestly, I don’t socialize much at all here. I’m not exactly a recluse, but I like my own company. I like my life here, even if it does feel as though I live in a bubble, away from the real world. Look what the real world did to Daisy and me. And I do like my work. It’s exciting being on-set, and it could even feel more like real acting if the studio would give me better parts and not have me forever tied to being rescued by Randolph. I think he’s tired of it, too, though it’s not something we talk about. I don’t talk, not
really
talk, to anyone any more.

So you can see that it wasn’t like me to have invited Lewis Cartsdyke out to my house and offered to cook him dinner. At the time I thought it was a neat solution. Back home, as I worked barefoot in my kitchen, I was singing as I jointed the chicken for a chasseur. The tarragon came from my own little collection of herbs, which I grew in pots out by the pool. It’s one of my favourite dishes. I know what you’re thinking, it’s so obvious, but I didn’t see it that way. He had a business proposal. I was just cooking dinner. Why not make him my favourite meal in my own kitchen? Why not wear one of my favourite dresses, which isn’t a dressy dress at all, and certainly not the kind of dress I’d wear to entice a man, but floaty and cool and deceptively simple in the way all Lanvin’s dresses are. Daisy and I, we both love Lanvin. Clothes are one of the things we can still talk about.

When he rang the doorbell, my heart started to pound just a bit. I was excited to see what Lewis was going to say, because once I’d got over that really strange encounter in my dressing room earlier, I’d decided it was going to be good news.

He was dressed deceptively casually too, and he looked—well, there’s no denying he looked good. Open-necked shirt. A suit in a soft brown colour. I hadn’t noticed how tanned he was last night. ‘For you,’ he said, handing over a beautiful bunch of roses. Pale pink. ‘I know this is business, but I saw them and I thought of you.’

‘An English rose?’ The studio gives me flowers all the time, and Randolph has someone send them to me regularly, but no one—no, that makes me sound pathetic. I’m not pathetic. Hearts and flowers, I don’t need them. Did I say that already? ‘Come in,’ I said, not telling Lewis after all how lovely the roses were.

‘Something smells good.’

I shrugged. ‘It’s nothing special.’

I’d led him through to the kitchen, because that was the way out to the garden, and it’s at its best at this time of the evening, but he stopped in front of the stove and lifted the lid of the pot. ‘It smells special,’ he said, picking up a teaspoon without a by your leave and dipping it into the sauce. ‘Wow. You really can cook.’

I didn’t like that I liked him there, and I didn’t like what my liking did to my insides, watching him in my lovely kitchen at my stove licking the sauce I’d made with such care from my teaspoon, so I switched the heat off under the pot. ‘We can eat later. I thought we’d talk outside.’

He didn’t move, but looked around my kitchen, taking in the copper pots and the strings of onion and garlic, the dresser stacked with its pretty selection of mismatched plates and tureens and jugs that I’d picked up in markets over the years. The room that was the nearest thing to how I’d imagined home would be. ‘It’s nice,’ he said, ‘not at all what I expected.’

Which made me uncomfortable, because this was me, more than any other place, this kitchen, and I didn’t like anyone seeing that, and I was pretty sure that he did. I picked up the tray with the glasses and wine and headed outside. He followed, but I could feel him watching me. I was aware, suddenly, of my bare feet and bare face. I’d thought that it would help to make it obvious that I hadn’t got all dressed up, even though I was wearing my favourite dress. Now I felt—exposed. I considered running upstairs and putting on some lipstick, but he’d notice. He’d already noticed way too much.

I put the tray down and poured the wine. French. Tart, with a hint of honey. Another advantage of having money, you can bypass Prohibition. I’d curled up in my usual seat on the wicker sofa, thinking he’d take the seat opposite. He sat down beside me. My bare feet were almost touching his leg. I tucked them under. He raised his glass. Touched mine. His eyes weren’t so much blue as grey in this light. The grooves on his face were deeper. My hair, which curled wildly when left to its own devices, was caught in my lashes. He reached over and brushed it away. The lightest of touches on my cheek, it was, but it was enough to remind me. And him. I could see him remembering. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Seconds, minutes went by. I had to force myself to move, to take a sip of the wine. Still, it was there between us. Not just the memory. The wanting. Again.

‘Business,’ he said, putting his glass down, as if he was talking to himself. ‘Business.’

I smiled brightly in response. ‘You obviously know the studio has offered me another contract.’

‘And you’ve already told me you’re not eager to accept.’

‘No. It’s not that. I—it’s a really good deal.’

‘To do more of the same. You and Randolph Farrell. The dream couple, on- and off-screen. Is that written into your contract?’

‘No, of course not. It’s just—you know, the publicity machine. Actually, it suits me. Us. We both need a cover. Randolph because he’s in love with a married woman. Me because everyone expects me to love someone.’

‘What happens when you really do fall for someone?’

‘I won’t.’

‘One of your rules?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

He smiled. Sort of. ‘One of mine, too, as it happens, only I don’t fake it.’

‘You don’t have to,’ I said indignantly. ‘You’re a man, and you’re the kind of man who has women falling at his feet, I’ll bet. People expect a man like you to play around. It’s different for me. You said it yourself, they expect me to live my life the way I make my living, and I won’t, so I fake it.’

‘What makes you so sure you won’t?’

‘I just won’t,’ I said. He looked at me then, waiting. It was none of his business. I could have told him so, but I didn’t. I didn’t think about why I didn’t, not then. ‘It screws you up,’ I said, ‘okay? You meet someone, life’s a peach, you get used to life being a peach, and it changes you, it makes you all soft and you think that’s a good thing, but then you lose them and because you’ve let yourself get all soft, losing them destroys you. You can’t go back to what you were, so you have to make do with what’s left, and if that means huddling inside your empty, wrinkled peach skin all alone, with no room for the other people that love you…’

I stopped, digging my knuckles into my smarting eyes. I’d said far too much. He’d seen much more than I’d said. I got up, mumbling something about the chicken, even though I knew perfectly well I’d switched the stove off. When I came back, I had myself under control. Thought I had.

‘Was it the war?’ Lewis asked.

‘Of course it was the war. Everything was the war. But it wasn’t me I’m talking about, if that’s what you’re thinking. It was my sister. Her husband was killed.’

‘It was a real bastard, that war,’ he said.

I’d been waiting, holding my breath, readying myself for the questions, already preparing to tell him what I should have said at the start, that it was none of his business. ‘Yes, it was.’

I waited again, still tense. Lewis was frowning. What was he thinking? I had no idea. When he spoke again, I got the impression he’d been going to say something else, but I didn’t know him well enough to be sure. ‘We have a lot in common, Poppy Edwards,’ he said with a strange little smile. ‘We’re more alike than you think. But you don’t need a patsy. Let Randolph sort his own mess out.’

‘It is a mess, and I doubt it will ever be sorted out. That woman makes him so happy when she’s not making him miserable.’

‘And she’s married. And she’s probably going to stay married as long as he lets her string him along.’

Which was something I’d tried to say to Randolph myself, though not quite so bluntly. ‘Right now it suits us, and it’s none of your business.’

‘It will be, if you sign with me. I’m not interested in signing Farrell. And I know, because of last night, that you’re not interested in him, either.’

And just like that it was back again, that thing between us. Bodies. We were bodies as well as minds. Bodies with desires very different from what our minds wanted. ‘I thought we agreed to forget last night.’

‘I don’t know about you, but I’m finding that pretty difficult.’

‘Try harder, Lewis,’ I said, and I was pleased at how it sounded, because I was also pleased that he was struggling, and no way should I be pleased about that.

He ran his fingers through his hair, smiling at me. It was a good smile. It went to his eyes. It went to my blood. ‘You look so fragile, like a puff of wind and you’d just float away like a feather, but you’re a tough little cookie underneath, aren’t you?’

‘I know what I want.’ I didn’t mean it to sound the way it did. I shouldn’t have looked at him when I said it, I suppose. Then saying it, while I was looking at him, I thought it. That he was what I wanted. And I’d been wanting him all day. And that was what the food was about, and the dress. And if he hadn’t brought me flowers. If he hadn’t looked so good. If that heat between us, if we’d just managed to keep it at bay. But right at that moment, as if someone had switched on one of those huge big arc lights and shone it directly on us, it was obvious what we both wanted.

Though we still tried to pretend we didn’t. He took a swallow of wine and a deep breath. ‘Tell me,’ he said.

‘Success,’ I said.

My feet had edged out from under my dress. One of them was resting against his thigh. His hand covered it. I let it rest there. ‘Which you have,’ he said. ‘From what I heard, you can name your price at the studio.’

‘My agent will be delighted to hear that. It will give him an excellent lever when he’s bartering with you.’

He laughed. A soft, throaty sound. His fingers were stroking my foot from ankle to toe, toe to ankle. Rhythmic but not at all soothing. I straightened my leg just a bit, to give him more. ‘I don’t think you’ll sign with me for the money, though I’m happy to match whatever they offer.’