Obsession (17 page)

‘But you wanted to sleep with him.’

‘For God’s sake! We had dinner together, we had a drink together, that’s all.’

‘Didn’t he try to get you into bed?’

‘No!’

‘You’re a lying little bitch. I know Luke Fitzpatrick. He can’t resist an easy lay.’

‘I resent that remark,’ Corrie snapped.

‘Resent it all you like. You’re an ungrateful little whore. I gave you your job, Ted Braithwaite’s bastard child that you are …’

‘What!’

‘… and the minute my back is turned you’re opening your legs for my boyfriend.’

‘Annalise, if you don’t trust Luke then that’s your problem. But don’t come round here …’

‘You make me sick, people like you,’ Annalise spat. ‘You’re common! A working-class slut going around with
a
massive chip … I suppose you managed to find out that Luke is working class too. Nice and cosy that, eh? Let’s all us plebs stick together, a nice exclusive little club to fuck the ruling classes …’

‘I don’t know which century you’re living in, Annalise, but it’s clearly not this one. But all right I am common, if that’s what you want to call it. I am working class, but my behaviour, my manners, are so far and away superior to yours, to those fuckheads you call colleagues who wouldn’t know a scrap of human decency if it jumped up and bit them …’

‘They know loyalty,’ Annalise yelled, ‘which is more than I can say for you, you two-faced little bitch. Now you keep your hands off Luke Fitzpatrick, do you hear me. Because if you don’t you’re going to be extremely sorry you ever clapped eyes on him.’ And with that she slammed out of the door.

– 8 –

LUKE WAS SITTING
on the pool deck at Cristos Bennati’s home in Beverly Hills sipping a martini. Actually it wasn’t Beverly Hills, Luke reminded himself, it was the Holmby Hills, one of the most exclusive addresses in Los Angeles. However, Bennati’s Italian style villa, set well back from the highway at the centre of its own three acres of palm trees, landscaped gardens, swimming pool and tennis courts, was modest by American standards. But Bennati never had gone in for ostentation. Simple and functional, was how Luke would describe the house, just like the annexe where Bennati had a suite of offices, two Steenbecks and a screening room. This was as well as the facilities reserved exclusively for him on the lot at Universal, but Bennati preferred to work at home whenever he could.

He had been closeted in the annexe with a bunch of screenwriters since he had arrived back from Pennsylvania two days ago, meaning that Luke had seen very little of him. This didn’t surprise Luke, neither was he put out about it, he’d always known how seriously Bennati took his art.

He wandered over to the bar to help himself to another martini. As he passed he idly fondled the breast of a luscious young starlet who had been keeping him company this past week. She giggled, then purred as she ran her glossy nails along the inside of his thigh. Luke wondered if he could summon the energy for another session between the sheets. He decided he couldn’t and moved on to the bar.

A few minutes later, back on his lounger in the shade of the pool deck, Luke looked up as he heard a car start, and guessed that the screenwriters must be leaving. Just after he heard Cristos’s voice coming from inside the house, and grinned.

‘Who the hell are you?’ Cristos barked.

Obviously he had come across Luke’s other bed partner in the sitting room.

‘I’m with Luke,’ the girl simpered. ‘He said it’d …’

‘Out!’ Cristos said. ‘Get your clothes and out.’

‘Well there’s no need to take that attitude.’

‘You too,’ Luke said to the starlet. ‘Time to go. Call yourself a cab.’

She pouted sulkily, but when Cristos came out onto the deck she pulled back her shoulders and gave him a dazzling smile. Topless as she was Cristos didn’t even seem to notice her as he went to pour himself a drink.

Not long after they heard the girls leaving and exchanged looks. ‘Sorry,’ Luke said. ‘I meant to get rid of them before you finished. I didn’t notice the time.’

Cristos simply looked at him then wandered across to the pool. Unlike Luke he was fully dressed, if you could
call
Levi jeans and a faded denim shirt fully dressed. His sleeves were rolled back, revealing the dark hair on his forearms and the silver and gold wrist band of his watch. With one hand he swept the unruly jet black curls away from his forehead and with the other he held his drink against his chest. He stared down at the water, his handsomely rugged features taut with concentration.

From where he was standing Luke could see the thick curl of his eyelashes and the dark shadow on his chin. On Luke’s last visit, six months or so ago, the two of them had laughed long and hard at the fact that some idiot magazine had just voted Bennati the world’s sexiest man. His physique alone could have won him the accolade, but they both knew that it was his reputation that had clinched it. Bennati himself never discussed the women he dated, the women themselves weren’t quite so discreet. But it was quite something that they still raved about his prowess in the sack when he had dumped them, Luke thought admiringly.

He lifted his glass as Cristos turned to look at him.

‘OK, let’s have it,’ Cristos said, ‘what you doing here, Fitzpatrick?’ He looked at his watch. ‘You got thirty minutes before my next appointment.’

From the window of Cristos’s office Jeannie Feldman, Cristos’s personal assistant, was watching them with mounting curiosity. Her round, happy face was at that moment drawn in a frown, and a tuft of her short spiky hair was on end from where she had scratched her head. She was not at all sure she liked the look of what was going on out there, in fact, if pushed she’d have to admit that she had gotten the distinct impression these past couple of days that Cristos’s liking for Luke Fitzpatrick was running out of fuel. But it wasn’t Cristos’s style to have someone around he didn’t like. Still, the two of them went back a long way, and she knew Luke had put Cristos up plenty of times in London, maybe Cristos felt obligated. Still didn’t sound like Cristos.

She watched as Luke started to laugh at something Cristos was saying. Cristos had his back to her so she couldn’t see if he was laughing too, but somehow she didn’t think he was. The phone rang then and she moved away from the window to answer it. When she returned both Cristos and Luke were still standing beside the pool, drinks in hand.

She’d be hard put, she mused to herself, to decide which of them was the more gorgeous, but guessed that in the end she’d have to say it was Luke. Not that she personally would go for him, since she was extremely happily married to Cristos’s friend and director of photography, Richard Feldman. But, if she had to make a choice, it probably would be Luke. She liked Luke. She’d enjoyed having him around while Cristos was visiting his folks in Pennsylvania. He had a great sense of humour, knew how to have a good time unlike most Brits, and she didn’t even mind the way he teased her about her occasional lisp. She experienced a sudden pang of disloyalty then as she looked at Cristos, and decided that OK, perhaps his features weren’t quite so regular as Luke’s, and perhaps his manner could be abrupt sometimes, but with his mixed Italian and French blood, his moody eyes and, when he decided to use it, that devastating smile, she could see what everyone made all the fuss about. And he was taller than Luke. She liked tall men.

She was so engrossed in her assessment of them that it came as a shock when Cristos suddenly flung his glass down on the terrace, smashing it to smithereens. She caught a glimpse of his face then, boy did he look mad. She couldn’t see Luke’s face now, but he was waving his arm in the air and … Thsshit! Jeannie muttered, as Cristos’s fist connected with Luke’s jaw and Luke went crashing into the pool.

‘Now what do you suppose that’s all about?’

Jeannie jumped and turned to find her husband, Richard, standing behind her.

‘Search me,’ she answered. ‘But something’s going on. Cristos was … Holy shit! Look! Do you think he’s going to hit him again?’

‘Nah,’ Richard answered. ‘They’re laughing, look at them.’

Jeannie pulled a face. ‘Luke is laughing …’

‘Hi there, anyone at home?’

They both turned round to see Paige Spencer, an actress made famous by her role as Edith Pargiter on TV, standing at the door. She was Cristos’s five o’clock appointment.

Jeannie blinked. ‘How did you get in?’

‘The casting guy let me in, honey,’ Paige answered, sounding for all the world as though she’d already got the part. If she did manage to clinch it then she was going to be a very lucky girl, since it was the lead in Cristos’s next movie she was up for. But this was only a preliminary meeting before he started screen-testing, so she wasn’t a star yet, and Jeannie never had had much time for TV actors who thought too highly of themselves.

Paige sauntered over to the window and looked out to where Cristos and Luke were standing. ‘Gee, who’d have thought they’d still be fighting over li’l ol’ Angelique Warne after all this time?’

Jeannie glanced at Richard in amazement. Then turning back to – God, what was her name? – ‘Were you eavesdropping out there?’ she demanded, angrily.

‘Aw no, honey. They was a-shout’n, and I was a-coming on in. Just heard Angelique’s name mentioned, noth’n more.’

Suddenly Richard grabbed Jeannie’s arm and pulled her away from the window. She looked back over her shoulder and saw Cristos coming across the garden towards them.

‘Oh my, is he gorgeous?’ the actress drooled.

‘If I were you I wouldn’t repeat that in his hearing,’ Jeannie snapped.

‘Richard!’ Cristos cried as he walked into the office. ‘I’m glad you’re here, there’s something in the latest rewrites I want you to take a look at. Get them for him, will you Jeannie?’

Miraculous, Jeannie thought. The scowl had completely vanished from his face and looking at him now, as he greeted Paige Spencer, no one would ever have known that he had just thumped someone into the swimming pool. Charm itself. But unlike Jeannie, Cristos had a high regard for actors, whatever their medium. Providing they had talent, naturally. And, Jeannie guessed, Paige did have talent.

She turfed out the rewrites for her husband, sat him down to read them then wandered across to the house to find Luke. He was in the kitchen holding an ice-pack to his face and reading the
New York Times
.

‘You OK?’ she asked.

Luke looked up. ‘Oh sure,’ he said. ‘Just a misunderstanding.’

‘About Angelique Warne?’

‘You were listening?’

‘Only caught her name. Cristos is very touchy on that thubject.’

‘Tho I discovered. I won’t mention it again.’

Jeannie smiled. ‘You staying for dinner?’

‘No, he’s not.’

Jeannie spun round to find Cristos standing at the door.

‘Get these copied for me, Jeannie,’ he said, handing her a sheaf of typewritten pages, ‘then get onto Bud Winters and tell him I’ll be down at the lot tomorrow, around four. I want to take a look at David Easton’s profile again, tell him. I’ll have the casting directors with me, it’d be good if he was there too.’ He turned to Luke. ‘Isn’t it time you were on your way, Fitzpatrick?’

‘Cristos,’ Luke protested, ‘if I’d known you felt that way …’

‘You mean if you’d known the Chief of Detectives was in that room with me,’ Cristos interrupted.

‘Who?’ Jeannie said. ‘What’s going on here?’

‘You don’t wanna know, Jeannie, believe me,’ Cristos answered, his livid black eyes still fixed unyieldingly on Luke.

‘Now, come on Cristos,’ Luke began, ‘there’s no need to take …’

‘Just get the fuck out of here, Fitzpatrick,’ Cristos barked, and walked out again.

Two weeks had passed since Corrie’s showdown with Annalise. Neither of them had spoken, and neither it seemed was going to back down. Corrie had fully expected, when she’d turned up for work the next day, to find herself out of a job. In fact she’d been waiting this past fortnight for Bob to call her into his office and tell her
adieu
, but he hadn’t. In fact he was the only one speaking to her, insofar as Bob spoke to anyone, more often than not he was shouting.

Though Corrie had done nothing to heal it, the rift between her and Annalise bothered her much more than she’d have expected. It wasn’t only that she had lost the one friend she had at TW, it was that she sensed a vulnerability in Annalise that disturbed her. She’d seen it several times since she’d started at TW, but lately – and particularly the night she had stormed into Corrie’s studio – she had seemed almost paranoid. There was little doubt that it was to do with Luke, and though Corrie had never experienced it herself she knew enough to know that unrequited love could unbalance the most stable of people. It was only a guess that Annalise’s feelings were unrequited, but piecing together just the few things both Annalise and Luke had told her, she knew it was probably a pretty
accurate
one. Of course it was none of her business, and even if it were there was precious little she could do about it, but she cared enough for Annalise not to want to add to her distress. And therein lay the guilt, for she couldn’t deny that she was strongly attracted to Luke herself. Not that she stood a chance with him, it just seemed so unforgivably disloyal after all Annalise had done for her. And there was no denying that Annalise was as upset by the quarrel as Corrie was. She did everything she could to hide it, but Corrie had caught the sadness in her eyes only that morning. She’d been on the point of saying something to her, but Annalise had simply walked away. She was also encouraging everyone else to be as cruel to Corrie as ever, even joining in herself now, but Corrie could see that it was hurting Annalise even more than it was hurting her. She was so like a child at times that it made Corrie want to reach out and take her in her arms. But what then? She couldn’t make the pain and insecurity go away. Only Luke could do that.

It was Tuesday morning now, the day of transmission. And, as it so frequently did, new information was coming in which drastically affected that night’s programme, which happened to be one of Annalise’s.