She looked up at the kitchen clock. Seven thirty. Dorian usually finished on set by seven at the latest and had asked for dinner at eight. He’d be in his office in the East Wing now, making calls to LA; or in the editing suite, glancing over the day’s footage. That gave Chrissie thirty minutes to shower, change and beautify herself while one of the maids set the table, after which
all
the servants were under strict instructions to make themselves scarce, as were the actors and crew.
Fuck you, Vio Hudson. I don’t need you. My husband’s twice the man you are, in business and in bed.
Everyone in Hollywood believed the Rasmirezes’ marriage was a fairytale. Starting tonight, Chrissie decided, it was time to write her happy ending.
Up in the bell tower, the air temperature had dropped but tempers were still at boiling point. Viorel and Sabrina had run through their scene more than fifteen times, but Dorian still wasn’t satisfied.
Viorel groaned. Admittedly, the first nine takes were probably his fault. Sabrina’s mention of Jago was setting his teeth on edge. He could easily have put a stop to it by giving her what she wanted (attention) but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.
But the last seven takes were entirely down to Dorian’s perfectionism. The light hadn’t fallen quite correctly across Sabrina’s face. Viorel’s forearm had blocked a split-second’s worth of shot. The ghost kiss was too long, too short, too contrived, too passionless. Grudgingly, Vio and Sabrina had bonded through adversity and finally started giving the scene their all. But nothing was good enough for Dorian.
‘When you go in to kiss her, I want it faster, rougher, more sudden,’ he berated Viorel. ‘So from, “I don’t care, Cathy, you can’t leave me,” move in and grab her forearms like so.’ Stepping out from behind the camera, Dorian grabbed Sabrina by the wrists and pulled her violently towards him. ‘We need to see the desperation.’
‘You can’t see desperation?’ drawled Vio. ‘Are you sure the camera’s switched on?’
‘You are
losing
her,’ continued Dorian, ignoring him. He was still holding Sabrina so tightly by the arms that her hands had begun to throb. ‘This is the woman that you love, the love of your life, and she is slipping through your fingers, literally. It’s anguish, OK – raw fucking
anguish.
’
He looked at Sabrina and for a moment his stomach lurched. She’d got it. At last she’d got it! Staring straight back at him, her eyes brimmed with such sadness, such pain, it took his breath away. For a second, Dorian stood transfixed. The suffering in Sabrina’s eyes was quite real, the line between her and Cathy Earnshaw erased utterly.
I was so right to cast her
, he thought triumphantly. How could Viorel not respond to that? How was he not howling and moaning and tearing at his hair when he saw that exquisite face so tortured, so wildly in need of rescue?
He ran back to his position behind the camera. ‘Roll!’ he shouted. ‘For God’s sake, roll!’
‘I don’t care, Cathy.’ Grabbing Sabrina as Dorian had shown him, Viorel pulled her towards him. But the look she gave him was nothing like the poignant gaze she’d just used on Dorian. Instead, with her face only inches from his, Sabrina’s eyes flashed with lust. And there was something else there too, a sort of bravado, almost a defiance. The look was unmistakably a challenge, a dare. Viorel rose to it, throwing Sabrina backwards and kissing her with a passion that bordered on hatred, grinding his lips against hers, pulling at her hair, her cheeks, the bodice of her dress. The kiss went on and on and on, a full three seconds longer than the previous take, which Dorian had nixed for ‘dragging’. But there was no dragging here. The sexual tension was so explosive that none of the crew dared breathe. When Vio finally released her, Sabrina stared back up at him, too shell-shocked to remember her line. Panting, lips slightly parted, cheeks red and scratched from his stubble, she looked as if she’d spent the last twenty-four hours in bed.
‘Hello,’ she laughed.
Viorel beamed back at her. ‘Hi.’
From the other side of the camera, Dorian felt his adrenaline pumping. It was a bizarre sensation. He ought to be delighted, and part of him was: that was the best piece of footage they’d shot so far, no question. But there was a distinct, bitter aftertaste to the sweetness of success. All day he’d been praying for the spark to ignite between his lead actors. But now that it had, now that he’d seen that look of purest passion on Sabrina’s face, he felt panicked.
‘Cut!’
Chuck, Debbie and the crew broke into spontaneous applause.
‘Desperate enough for you?’ Vio asked Dorian.
Pulling himself together, Dorian forced a smile. ‘Yes, Mr Hudson, it was. Now while the two of you are on a roll, I want to go back and reshoot some of the earlier stuff.’ A collective groan rose up around the room.
‘You’re not serious?’ Sabrina spoke for all the crew, but with more urgency than the rest of them. She wanted to talk to Viorel, alone, now. That kiss was more than just Cathy and Heathcliff and they both knew it. How could she go back to work after that? Her heart was pounding away like a jackhammer.
‘Sure I’m serious,’ said Dorian. His earlier, irrational panic had subsided. This was good; it was all good. Looking around at the sea of hostile faces, he shrugged his shoulders innocently. ‘What? Come on, guys. We can’t waste this. Mike,’ he turned to the exhausted runner, ‘go get us some coffee and sandwiches. You can’t make cinema history on an empty stomach.’
They finished filming just before midnight. Dorian, who’d been running on raw energy since breakfast, suddenly stood up and found he was dizzy with hunger. Only after everyone had gone to bed and he walked back to the private, family wing of the Schloss did he go into the kitchen to forage for a sandwich and see it.
Candlelight.
Flowers.
The beautifully laid table.
Dinner with Chrissie. It was tonight.
Fuck.
The evidence mounted. One clean plate, one dirty plate. A half-drunk bottle of extremely expensive red wine. A cold dish of lasagna, hardening to a greasy crust on the stove-top.
She’s gonna kill me.
Walking upstairs, he rehearsed explanations in his mind.
If we got it right today, I knew I’d have more time off to be with you and Saskia later.
No. Lame. She’d never buy it.
I wouldn’t have been able to give you the attention you deserved if I’d missed what we shot tonight. Chemistry like that is once in a lifetime.
As an actress, Chrissie might at least understand that one. But would she forgive it?
When you see that scene, honey, you’ll understand. This movie’s for us. If it’s a hit, we’ll never have to worry about money again.
Not strictly true. But as the truth was, ‘
I forgot about dinner
,’ probably a safer option.
Pushing open the bedroom door with a guilty creak, Dorian saw that the bedside lights were still on. Chrissie was lying face down on the bed, apparently asleep. Unless he was seeing things, a possibility after the day he’d just had, she appeared to be wearing a French maid’s outfit.
Oh my God. Not ‘a’. ‘The’. That was the maid’s uniform she used to put on for me when we first started dating.
Dorian’s heart swelled first with love, then with remorse. Suddenly he knew there were no excuses he could offer. She’d made a titanic effort to please him, and he’d let her down.
‘Honey?’ Perched on the edge of the bed, he rested a tentative hand on the small of Chrissie’s back. ‘Sweetheart? Are you awake?’
Slowly, Chrissie turned around. Dorian winced. Her face was puffy and swollen, her eyes red raw from crying.
‘Chrissie, I don’t know what to say. I’m really sorry.’
He braced himself for the firestorm, the screaming, the insults, the hysteria. Instead, he got silence and a blank, empty stare. It was infinitely more chilling.
‘I’ll make it up to you, I promise,’ he babbled, nervously filling the silence. ‘Sabrina and Vio were so incredible tonight, I got caught up in it and I couldn’t get away. I truly am sorry.’
‘It’s OK,’ said Chrissie. ‘I understand.’
Her words should have comforted Dorian, but they didn’t.
It’s the voice
, he thought. She sounded strange, different, as if she were a dummy into which some hidden ventriloquist was throwing his voice, reading from a pre-prepared script.
‘The good news is we nailed it,’ he said, trying to sound normal himself. ‘We’re actually ahead of schedule now, so I can take some time off. We’ll go somewhere, just the three of us.’
For a moment, Chrissie emerged from her stupor, narrowing her eyes in puzzlement. ‘Three?’
‘Sure,’ said Dorian. ‘You, me and Saskia.’
At the mention of their daughter, the curtain fell back over Chrissie’s features. ‘Fine,’ she said dully. ‘I’m tired, Dorian. Let’s go to sleep.’
Ten minutes later, exhausted from the day’s exertions and relieved that the expected Hurricane Chrissie had not materialized, Dorian was in a deep sleep and snoring loudly.
Next to him, rigid-backed and wide-eyed, Chrissie stared at the ceiling.
If I had the strength
, she thought,
I’d kill him. Right now. Put the pillow over his fat head and hold it down till he stopped kicking.
She was so filled with hatred, it was hard to breathe. Hatred for Dorian, hatred for his cursed movie, hatred for Viorel, hatred for herself for caring so much. The worst part of all was that Dorian hadn’t even wanted to make it up to her sexually. His idea of a ‘do-over’ for their romantic night together was a family outing with fucking Saskia. He might as well have come to bed with the words ‘I don’t want you’ tattooed across his forehead. He’d said nothing about her outfit, about how sexy she looked.
He didn’t even try to touch me, just rolled right over and went to sleep.
She felt like a hooker, cheap and worthless.
Except men actually want to sleep with hookers. Dorian would rather pay to see me in a burka and a fucking chastity belt.
Lying there seething in the still silence, something inside Chrissie Rasmirez snapped. To any outside observer, it was as if nothing had happened. The break was clean, quiet and irrevocable, like a silk scarf floating softly down onto a Samurai sword and splitting into two. Chrissie didn’t stir, or speak, or blink. Instead, while her husband snored beside her, she softly sailed past the point of no return.
Back in the West Wing, Sabrina lay on top of her bed in just her bra and pants, breathless. Even at this time of night the heat from the day lingered, stored in the walls of Sabrina’s whitewashed bedroom and seeped into the linen bedclothes. After three straight hours of erotic scenes with Vio, Sabrina felt hot and sultry, conscious of the damp saltiness of the sweat glistening on her thighs and running in a trail between her breasts.
Where the hell was he?
She’d expected Viorel to show up in her bedroom a few discreet minutes after she’d gone to bed, to pick things up where they’d left off. The thought of fucking him at last had her practically hyperventilating with excitement. But as the minutes passed, ten, twenty, thirty, anticipation turned to anxiety. Surely, she couldn’t have misjudged the erotic vibes she’d got from him in the bell tower? Could Viorel actually be that good an actor?
Her cellphone rang. Maybe he was calling to check the coast was clear? She answered instantly. ‘Vio?’
‘No, darling. It’s me.’ Jago’s voice sent a wave of disappointment flooding through her veins.
‘Oh, hi. I was just going to bed.’
‘Hmmmm,’ said Jago dreamily. ‘What are you wearing?’
Before Sabrina could tell him she was in no mood for phone-sex, her bedroom door opened. There was no knock. It just opened.
Bloody Romanian maids. Didn’t they know what time it was?
Instinctively, Sabrina grabbed the edge of the sheet and pulled it up over her body. She opened her mouth to scream, then closed it again. Viorel stood in the doorway, staring at her intently. Sabrina stared back. In pyjama bottoms and a plain white T-shirt, his black hair still wet from the shower, sleek and gleaming like an otter’s pelt, he looked as sexy as she had ever seen him. Better still, the look in his eyes was unmistakably predatory.
Jago was still talking. ‘Tell me about your panties …’ Yesterday, Sabrina might have been aroused by the dirty talk. But today, coming from Jago, it sounded ridiculous.
‘Erm …’ Sabrina cleared her throat. Her head felt heavy suddenly and her mouth had gone dry. It was hard to concentrate. ‘They, er … I mean …’
Viorel walked slowly but deliberately towards the bed, his eyes never leaving Sabrina’s, and removed the phone from her hand. ‘She’s busy,’ he drawled into the receiver. ‘Call back later.’
He clicked the phone shut, then switched it off.
‘That was an important call,’ said Sabrina, feigning outrage. It was difficult with Viorel standing over her, so close she could smell the Floris shower gel on his newly washed skin.
‘No it wasn’t.’
He pushed her back on the bed. Sabrina stretched out her arms above her head. Her hair fanned out across the bedspread like an arc of peacock feathers, iridescent in the lamplight, and her breasts rose and fell beneath the delicate lace of her bra like two ripe peaches quivering on a tree.
Viorel stroked her face, slowly tracing one finger along her jawline and down to her collarbone. She shivered.
‘You’re nervous.’ He smiled.
‘No,’ she lied, reaching forward to grab his face in her hands to try to kiss him. Gently, Viorel removed her hands.
‘Stop,’ he whispered. ‘Stop trying to be in control. That doesn’t work with me.’
Bending his head lower, he kissed the tops of her breasts, his hands moving languorously down over her ribs and belly, his fingertips tantalizingly brushing the elastic of her panties, but not venturing beneath. Sabrina moaned, arching her body upwards against him.
‘Relax,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘We have time. We have all night.’