‘You OK, honey?’ asked Linda as they pulled up outside the hotel. ‘You’re sure you wanna do this?’
Chrissie looked at her friend, and felt her confidence swell still further. In a red Valentino sheath, with half of Siberia’s annual diamond output round her neck, Linda looked rich, glamorous and
old.
Too much Fraxel had frozen her once-beautiful face into a bland, featureless mask. Her hair was too blonde, her tits too big and her smile too desperate. She was the perfect date.
‘I don’t
want
to do it,’ Chrissie lied, arranging her face into an expression of fragile vulnerability. ‘I have to. I can’t let malicious gossip ruin my marriage.’
The popping of flashbulbs and calls of ‘Chrissie! Chrissie!’ as she stepped out of the car were almost enough to give her a small orgasm on the spot. Clasping Linda’s hand, head down in a perfect Princess Diana pose, she walked slowly into the building, making sure the photographers got plenty of time to catch her sexy back-view before disappearing inside.
Tonight, she decided, was going to be a lot of fun. And it was. Friends old and new flocked around her, drawn to the drama like junkies to a dealer.
‘Of course it isn’t true,’ Chrissie repeated to all of them, with practised, sorrowful dignity. ‘Dorian’s tried to act like a father to that troubled girl. He’s too generous for his own good. Everyone knows Sabrina Leon’s addicted to the press. It wouldn’t surprise me if she’d planted the story herself.’
‘Aren’t you mad?’
Cue modest, forgiving head-tilt. ‘I try not to waste energy on anger. Not when I have so much to be thankful for.’
By the time dinner came around and they all sat down for the auction, Chrissie was thoroughly enjoying herself. She’d had just enough glasses of champagne to loosen her up, been flirted with by at least two men who were better-looking than Dorian and another three who were richer,
and
she’d seen on the table plans that she’d be sitting next to Keanu Reeves, on whom she’d always had a mini-crush.
‘Hello, Mrs Rasmirez. You’re quite the belle of the ball tonight.’
Through her semi-drunken haze, it took Chrissie a few moments to recognize the immaculately dressed, handsome blond man who’d sat down beside her. Not until he’d kissed her hand and chivalrously pulled out her chair did it come to her.
‘Harry Greene.’ She giggled coquettishly. ‘I don’t think I’m allowed to talk to you.’
‘Says who? Dorian?’ Ignoring the dirty looks from his fellow guests, Greene pulled a cigarette out of a vintage silver case and lit it. ‘Don’t tell me you’re the kind of girl who takes orders from her husband. I couldn’t bear the disillusionment.’
‘It’s not a question of taking orders. It’s a question of loyalty,’ said Chrissie. ‘And that’s somebody else’s seat.’
‘Not any more it isn’t. I’m afraid I wanted you all to myself, so I told Keanu he was moving.’ Harry waved across the room to table nine, and a familiar dark-haired man waved back. Chrissie was torn between annoyance and gratification. She’d been looking forward to flirting with Keanu, but it was flattering that Harry Greene had singled her out, and sexy that he had the power to tell major movie stars where they could and couldn’t sit. Chrissie had always been turned on by power.
‘You know, your husband’s a fool.’ Harry leaned back in his seat, languidly blowing smoke rings into the air. ‘Fooling around with Sabrina Leon when he has a woman like you at home.’
‘He hasn’t been fooling around with her,’ said Chrissie stiffly. ‘It’s just the tabloids, stirring up trouble.’
Harry raised a perfectly groomed eyebrow, but said nothing.
Chrissie looked irritated. ‘I trust my husband.’
‘Is that why you’re flying out to his set next week?’ Harry asked wryly. ‘Because you trust him so much?’
Chrissie cocked her head to one side, curious. ‘How did you know I was going to the set?’
‘I know a lot of things,’ said Harry. He took another deep, satisfying lungful of nicotine and looked at her appraisingly, the way a trainer might examine a racehorse. Locking eyes with her he said: ‘If you were my wife, I wouldn’t let you out of my sight.’
Chrissie felt a rush of pleasure course through her. Of course, she knew that Harry Greene had it in for Dorian, and that he was probably flirting with her so outrageously to settle some kind of score. She’d never entirely understood Harry’s beef with her husband – something about his ex-wife and a screenplay – but she knew he had damaged Dorian professionally. Not that she gave a shit about Dorian’s precious career. No, what Chrissie cared about was the look of pure lust in Harry Greene’s eyes. That was something that could not be faked.
This is what I’ve missed
, she thought,
stuck out in Romania, running after Saskia all day like the hired bloody help. I’ve missed being adored.
‘Sure you would.’ She played along. ‘You’re all the same, you directors. You’re workaholics.’
‘It’s true I love my work,’ admitted Harry, leaning in closer. ‘But not as much as I’d love spreading your legs and licking you till you come and come and come.’
Chrissie gasped. ‘You can’t say things like that!’ But she was so turned on, she felt her eyelids getting heavy and her lips instinctively beginning to part.
‘I can say whatever I like,’ said Harry.
Chrissie squirmed helplessly as his hand began caressing her thigh under the table.
‘I can do whatever I like. I’m a god in this town, sweetheart. I don’t have to run around with a begging bowl every time I want to get a movie made, like your husband. You know what I heard?’ His hand was creeping higher.
‘What?’ Chrissie breathed heavily, so aroused now she felt as if she’d been hypnotized.
‘I heard all this bad press swirling around Sabrina Leon is killing interest in his movie. Withering
Heights
, they’re calling it.’ He laughed, stubbing out his cigarette. ‘The film’s dying on the vine.’
‘That’s not true,’ said Chrissie, trying to block out the sensations in her groin and focus on what Harry was saying. ‘If you must know he’s had a lot of early interest from the big studios.’
‘Like who?’ Harry tried to keep his voice casual.
‘Like Paramount,’ said Chrissie smugly, ‘among others.’
‘And what “others” might those be?’ asked Harry.
Chrissie opened her mouth to tell him, when something made her hesitate. It was as if the hypnotist had suddenly clicked his fingers and awoken her from the trance.
I’m being played
, she thought, furiously.
He’s not interested in me. He’s just pumping me for info on the damn movie.
Removing Greene’s hand from her thigh, she cleared her throat. ‘Nice try,’ she said tersely. ‘But if you want information about my husband’s business, you’re going to have to fish for it elsewhere.’
Turning her back on him, she engaged the man on her other side in conversation, and proceeded to ignore Harry Greene for the rest of the night. Irritatingly unfazed, Harry focused his attentions on the pretty blonde to his right, ‘helping’ her to bid for a number of items at the charity auction, including a delicate Fred Leighton emerald necklace that Chrissie coveted wildly and a six-night stay at the Post Ranch Inn, which just happened to be Chrissie’s favourite hotel in the entire world.
They didn’t speak again until they were leaving. Reunited with an out-of-her-mind-drunk Linda Greaves, Chrissie was waiting at the coat check for her borrowed vintage mink when she felt someone come up behind her and slip a hand around her waist.
‘You’re right,’ Harry whispered in her ear. ‘I did want information. But I wanted you more.’
Before Chrissie had a chance to say anything, he planted a kiss on the back of her neck that made every hair on her body stand on end.
‘Next time,’ he murmured, and disappeared into the night with the blonde trailing in his wake.
Two days after Chrissie Rasmirez’s arrival on the
Wuthering Heights
set, Chuck MacNamee opened a book on who would be the first to snap and murder her with their bare hands. Rhys Williams had put his money on Lizzie Bayer, whom Chrissie had audibly refered to as ‘middle-aged’ on day one. But most of the cast had bet on Sabrina.
On a good day, Chrissie was merely distracting, interrupting Dorian mid-take to offer suggestions on how this or that actor might play the scene better, or how a certain camera angle ‘wasn’t working’. On a bad day, she would deliberately rile an already overwrought Sabrina, ordering her around as if
she
were the director, criticizing everything from Sabrina’s stance to her delivery to the way she wore her period dresses. (‘Amazing how that girl can manage to look like a slut in anything.’) She was only fractionally less overbearing with the rest of the cast, the one blatant exception being Viorel, for whom Chrissie quite plainly had the hots.
Off set, if possible, her behaviour was even worse. Used to being waited on hand and foot at the Schloss, Chrissie treated Tish like a maid, complaining about everything from the softness of her and Dorian’s towels to the creaking of the water pipes at night.
‘Can’t you get that fixed? How’s my husband supposed to be creative when our bedroom sounds like a sinking ship?’
When Tish pointed out that Dorian had made no complaints about the room until Chrissie arrived, Chrissie cut her off mid-sentence with a curt, ‘Well, he’s complaining now,’ before demanding a taxi be ordered to take her into town to collect her prescription allergy medicines. ‘This place is so dusty, I’m surprised you haven’t all asphyxiated.’
Her most abominable rudeness, however, was reserved for Mrs Drummond, whom she seemed to view as some sort of indentured slave. After one particularly grizzly incident, when Chrissie had tried to insist that Mrs D hand-wash her period-stained underwear (‘It’s La Perla. I’m not trusting it to that clapped-out old washing machine’) Dorian had taken her to one side and attempted to smooth the waters.
‘This is not our home, honey,’ he remonstrated gently.
‘Thank God!’ said Chrissie.
‘And it’s not a hotel either.’
‘For heaven’s sake, Dorian. You’ve paid for the location, haven’t you?’
‘Yes, of course. I’m just asking you to be sensitive, that’s all. You’ll be gone in a week, but the rest of us have to live and work together here for another month.’
‘Oh, I see,’ said Chrissie petulantly. ‘Counting the days till you can get rid of me already, are you?’
Dorian sighed. It was hopeless.
Sunday was a day off filming, the first in seventeen straight days, and a much-needed break for everyone. Half the crew decamped en masse to the pub in Loxley. The other half retreated to their trailers to watch downloaded American football or indulge in the backgammon craze that had swept the set over the last two weeks. (Viorel was in the lead, although Deborah Raynham was giving him a good run for his money.) Sabrina announced her intention of spending the entire day in bed. By noon, she appeared to have kept her word. No one had seen her. Rhys Evans and Lizzie Bayer, who’d recently started sleeping together (‘Any port in a storm,’ as Vio had wryly observed to Sabrina), left early to spend the day at Alton Towers. Jamie Duggan, officially the most boring man on set, had pleased everyone by taking himself off on a cultural tour of the local Saxon churches.
All of which meant that Mrs Drummond’s mouthwatering buffet lunch was attended by only a skeleton crew of five: Tish and Abel, Dorian and Chrissie, and Viorel.
‘This chicken pie’s yummy!’ Abel mumbled appreciatively, spraying pastry crumbs all over the table, his cheeks stuffed full like a chipmunk’s. ‘Canniavanothslice?’
‘No,’ said Tish. ‘You haven’t even finished what’s in your mouth yet, greedy grub.’
‘Let the kid eat,’ said Viorel contemptuously, sending his own plate of pie flying across the table like an ice-hockey puck in Abel’s direction. ‘He’s a growing boy.’
‘Cool!’ said Abel, catching the speeding plate and giving Vio a big thumbs-up sign before cramming the third slice into his mouth.
Dorian observed this little exchange with a growing feeling of unease. Something was up between Tish and Vio. Up until about a week ago, they’d been the best of friends. But now there was a tension you could have eaten with a spoon.
‘Use your knife and fork,’ said Tish to Abel, deliberately not challenging Viorel and giving him the fight he was so obviously spoiling for.
I’ve got nothing to prove to him
, she told herself angrily.
Certainly not my love for my son.
But somehow, ever since their run-in in the library, Viorel had an uncanny knack of making Tish feel as if she were on the back foot. It was infuriating.
‘I’ve always believed you should let young children eat whatever they like.’ Chrissie Rasmirez fluttered her eyelashes at Viorel. ‘That’s our policy with Saskia. Kids know what their bodies want instinctively.’
‘Exactly,’ said Viorel, with a triumphant glance at Tish.
Chrissie looked good today, he thought. Her frayed, white denim miniskirt and faded green T-shirt from Fred Segal showed off her tanned, fit body to perfection. More surprisingly, she looked relaxed, skin glowing, eyes lacking the telltale bags that her husband sported, symptoms of the stress and exhaustion involved in shooting a movie.
Tish also noticed how well Chrissie was looking.
You’re beautiful
, she thought. But there was still something hard-edged about her, something cold. Once again, Tish wondered how a man as warm and emotional as Dorian Rasmirez could have chosen such a bloodless woman to share his life with.
Spearing a gherkin on her fork and slipping it into her mouth suggestively, Chrissie’s green eyes locked onto Viorel’s lapis-blue ones. ‘I’m a big believer in listening to my body’s needs.’
‘So am I,’ Viorel grinned, revelling in the attention. He wasn’t particularly attracted to Chrissie. But since his run-in with Tish he’d been feeling a growing sense of frustration that increasingly needed an outlet. With Sabrina off limits, his options were slim. The flirtation with Chrissie was a welcome distraction. ‘I’m religious about it actually.’