Obsession (61 page)

‘Oh yeah? Like what?’ he smiled.

‘Like take me back to your room and find out.’

Less than an hour later, with the door firmly locked and the telephone off the hook, Corrie was standing naked against the edge of the massive bed with Cristos’s arms draped loosely round her as she told him what she wanted.

He closed his eyes and let his head fall back. ‘Shit, Corrie,’ he groaned, ‘I don’t know whether it’s that English accent of yours when you say it or ’cos I know you’ve never done it before, but you’re blowing my mind, you know that, don’t you?’

‘I was hoping you were going to do that to me,’ she
smiled
, then heaving herself up onto the bed she relaxed back on her elbows to watch him undress.

She waited until he was on the bed beside her, then sliding her arms around him said, ‘I’m ready for you now. I don’t want to wait.’

He nodded, and gently turning her over, knelt between her legs and lifting her up onto her knees, he pulled her face round to his and kissing her he entered her from behind.

This way he had access to every part of her body, she knew it and he knew it and it was what they both wanted. What neither of them had planned on was coming so quickly.

‘God, I love you,’ he murmured, as he pulled her into his arms when it was over.

Corrie lifted her face to brush her lips against his cheek, then settling herself back on his shoulder she listened to the still rapid beat of his heart, as she stealed herself to ask the question already burning on her lips. It was as he hooked a leg over hers drawing her closer that she finally said, very tentatively, ‘Do you love me enough to tell me about Angelique Warne?’

Instead of the instant withdrawal she had expected she felt his arms tighten around her. ‘What do you want to know?’ he asked.

Taking heart from his response, Corrie lifted her face to look at him, saying, ‘I suppose I’d like to know what really happened between you two … If any of those things written in the paper at the time she died were true …’

Settling his head more comfortably on the pillow he took a deep breath and after giving her a quick glance he stared up at the ceiling, saying, ‘What did Fitzpatrick tell you?’

With a half smile that he’d already guessed that much, Corrie said, ‘He told me that you weren’t over her. That you were just using me. He said something about you being involved in how she died …’

A grim smile crossed Cristos’s lips. ‘That’s what I thought. Did he tell you outright I killed her?’

‘No.’

Cristos seemed surprised. ‘Well that was sure as hell what he tried to pin on me. The truth is, though, I
was
involved in the way she died, but not in the way Fitzpatrick wants you to believe.’

Corrie listened quietly then to all he told her about the love and then the pain and confusion he had known with Angelique. She reached for his hands when he told her about the baby he would never know for sure was his – she could see that this, more than anything else, would haunt him for a long time to come.

‘That’s why,’ he finished, ‘I didn’t want to get involved again. I saw how love could destroy a relationship, how wanting more from it than I could offer destroyed Angelique. And I didn’t ever want to trust a woman again so’s she could do that to me. It sounds kind of selfish, I know, when she’s dead, but that’s the way it is. Was,’ he corrected, looking down at her. ‘But I got to tell you this now, Corrie, when I say I love you I mean it, but I’m not making you any promises. I just don’t know where we’re heading from here …’

He stopped when Corrie put her fingers over his lips. ‘Don’t let’s talk about that now,’ she said. ‘We’ll worry about it when we have to.’

With all her heart Corrie wished she could have meant those words, but she didn’t. She wanted, so very much, to hear him say that they did have a future, because only then would she risk letting him know how much she loved him.

– 24 –

WITH THE PRESS
having got wind of her affair with Cristos, Corrie started to discover what it was like to be famous. Not only did she keep seeing her own face looking back at
her
whenever she opened a newspaper, but every time she left the office or her studio there were at least three photographers waiting for her and journalists, notebooks in hand, asking her so many questions that she could barely distinguish one from another. Her phone was ringing off the hook inviting her to do interviews for magazines, newspapers, even TV, on both sides of the Atlantic and the amounts of money being offered were staggering – even tempting. But Corrie consistently refused, not only because Cristos so valued his private life, but because she really didn’t think that what they had together was anyone else’s business.

However the paparazzi were determined that it was everyone’s business, and Corrie didn’t know whether to laugh or be angry when Paula called her at the office one morning to tell her that somehow the press had discovered where Corrie came from and had been at Amberside taking pictures of the cottage.

‘I gave them a short interview,’ Paula confessed. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but they were so insistent, and I found myself saying things before I even knew what I was saying.’

‘Like what?’ Corrie cried.

‘Like what a fantastic person you are and how lucky Bennati is to have met you.’

‘Ugh!’ Corrie laughed. ‘I don’t suppose anyone will think you’re biased, by any chance? Anyway, thanks for letting me know, but I have to go now there’s a call holding for me,’ and pushing the appropriate buttons she picked up line six. ‘Corrie Browne here.’

‘Ah, Miss Browne, I’m calling from
People
magazine in New York. I was hoping, since I’m going to be in the UK next week, that you’d consider doing …’

‘I’m afraid not,’ Corrie interrupted. ‘But thank you for asking,’ and before the journalist could argue further, or dangle the carrot of untold wealth, she rang off.

Alan Fox was watching her across the desk, and throwing
him
a quick smile as she tossed her hair back from her face, Corrie said, ‘Haven’t
Vogue
been in touch yet, offering me the front cover?’

Laughing, Fox remarked, ‘You’re handling it pretty well, you know.’

Corrie grinned. ‘Well, one gets used to these things, you know,’ she said breezily.

‘Seriously though,’ Fox said, ‘do you mind all the attention?’

Corrie shrugged. ‘What, you mean like photographs of me getting into a cab, walking out of a door, closing a window, coming out of Waitrose. Did you see the one this morning of me on the bus? Who the hell can be interested in all that stuff?’ she laughed. ‘But to answer your question, no I don’t mind it at the moment, but the novelty is going to wear off pretty soon.’

‘What about Cristos? How’s he handling it? He rang and left a message earlier, by the way. Said could you remember to take the music cassette down with you?’

‘Oh, sure,’ Corrie said, glancing at the walkman on her desk. On it was a copy of the composer’s tape for
Past Lives Present
. ‘Cristos is well used to people trying to dig into his life,’ she went on, ‘and he hates it. He’s just employed an army of security guards to keep the press at bay while he’s shooting. And who can blame him when they keep popping up in shot?’

‘So, is it serious between you two?’ Alan enquired, a little too casually Corrie thought. ‘Are you going to give up all this and go to the States?’

‘Are you trying get a scoop here, Alan Fox?’ she teased. ‘Yes, you are, so let’s change the subject, because I want to know if you’ve looked at the treatments I gave you last week.’

‘I have,’ he said. ‘And if you’re staying in good old Blighty then I’m with you all the way. You don’t want to go public with them yet though?’

‘No.’

‘Well, you might find this hard to believe, but you can trust me. I’d like to be there with you if you pull it off – and I reckon you will.’

‘Thank you,’ Corrie said, meaning it.

This conversation with Alan Fox took place on one of the rare occasions Corrie was at the office, for she was spending as much time as she could in Wiltshire. With Annalise still at home recovering from her ordeal the other producers were lining up to take over the available programme slots, and seeing this lull in her schedule as a good opportunity to look further into the possibilities of making three or four special drama-documentaries a year, under the TW banner, Corrie spent all the hours she could observing Cristos and discussing in the minutest of detail how he approached the dramatization of a factual story. Fearing that the two of them didn’t have a future together meant that Corrie’s ambitions were once again of prime importance to her – not that they had ever ceased to matter, but now she needed them desperately to fill the terrible void there would be in her life once he had returned to Los Angeles. It was all too tempting to fantasize about what she would do were he to ask her to go with him, but in her heart she knew he wouldn’t, just as she knew that even if he were to ask she wouldn’t go. She hated herself for thinking she might feel differently were he to ask her to marry him, it seemed so parochial and childishly idealistic, but to go and just live with him in a place that she disliked as much as Los Angeles, where she would have no status other than as his girlfriend – and a Hollywood girlfriend at that – was just not what Corrie wanted. But he was asking her to do neither, so rather than dwell on things that would never be, Corrie forced herself to concentrate on what she really was going to do with her life.

Her ultimate goal now was not only to take over TW herself – though she accepted, with her lack of experience,
that
that couldn’t happen for some time – but to get Luke out so that she could eventually run down the current affairs side of the company and concentrate on hard hitting documentaries.

The knowledge she was gaining from Cristos was invaluable and though he didn’t actually know the full extent of her ambitions, her desire to do something worthwhile with the air time available to her he supported wholeheartedly. He even started to ask her opinions regarding his own movie, not because he was uncertain himself, but to see what she would come up with and then tell her why her suggestions would or wouldn’t work. He taught her so much, like the importance of sound and when and when not to use effects or music; he showed her all kinds of tricks in the rough edit, like what impact it could have to hold onto a shot just a few frames longer or the power of a sudden close up, and then he gave her a portable video camera so that she could try the fly on the wall technique for herself. With regard to budgeting he put her in the hands of his line-producers and accountants, who had set up office in the Shakespeare Room at the front of the Manor House, where Cristos would often find her at the end of the day with her eyes rolling in their sockets at the incredible sums of money being administered.

When Corrie was in London, which she invariably was for transmission and production meetings, she spent her evenings with Phillip and Annalise. By inviting her to his Chelsea home on the evenings Octavia wasn’t there, or taking her and Annalise to restaurants or the cinema, Phillip was trying to draw Corrie into his family at the same time as getting Annalise used to the idea of her being there. And in its way it seemed to be working, Corrie reflected with a tenderness bordering on sadness. Though she was growing increasingly fond of her father and half-sister, she was under no illusion as to exactly what role she would be expected to play in their lives. Already they were coming
to
depend on her in a way she found touching in its genuine desire for approval, but the burden of responsibility it carried, at times weighed heavily.

Phillip himself seemed so desperate to make her his friend that he even confided to her that he was in love with his secretary, thinking that a shared secret might bring them closer together. The worst part of that was how voraciously his eyes had searched Corrie’s when he made his confession, making Corrie feel as though he would give Pam up if she asked it. Of course she didn’t ask it, and to her relief discovered that she was wrong in thinking that, since Phillip’s own relief to discover that Corrie was pleased for him resulted in the added confession that he was glad his affair hadn’t brought about their first argument, because, as her father, he really would have had to overrule her where Pam was concerned. That made Corrie smile, and marvel all over again at how two such different men lived inside one body. If only he could bring some of the dynamism and confidence he exuded in the board room – and obviously in his feelings for Pam too – into his family life! But while he was still with Octavia there seemed little chance of that happening, and he wouldn’t leave Octavia until he was certain Annalise was well enough to cope with the divorce.

Inevitably, when the subject of Annalise’s mental condition came round, so too did the subject of Luke. But every time Corrie asked Phillip to tell her what it was he’d been about to confide to her that night at the Ritz, Phillip would simply dismiss it with a wave of his hand, saying that was all in the past and really didn’t matter anymore. Corrie’s frustration at that was extreme, since she knew only too well that Luke was very far from being in the past.

Though Annalise appeared a little more stable than she had before going to Scotland, there was no doubt in Corrie’s mind that she was starting to pine for Luke. She would never come right out and admit it, but it showed in her eyes every time his name was mentioned, and the fact that
after
the two weeks he’d said he’d be away Luke had stopped ringing in to the office, meaning that no one was in contact with him now, all too often distressed Annalise to the point of hysteria. Her outbursts were always over trivial things, and Luke’s name never passed her lips, but Corrie wasn’t deceived.

But it wasn’t only the effect Luke was still having on Annalise that told Corrie they were still a long way from being rid of him, it was the effect his disappearance was having on her. She tried hard not to think about it, but his absence, coupled now with his silence, was starting to take on all the menace of a deadly snake coiling itself ready to strike. And the feeling that she herself was his target became even more intense when during his third week of absence the telephone calls started. Most often they were late at night, and there was no way of knowing who they were from, but even when she wasn’t there and came to play back her messages later, Corrie knew the calls were from him. There was never anything more than silence, not even a whisper of breath, but those few seconds of blank tape were as unnerving as if he were actually telling her he was coming for her. She tried to put her unease down to paranoia, knowing only too well how many cranks were around, but as time passed and the telephone calls continued she started to become so haunted by the echo of the last words Luke had spoken to her, it was as though he were standing close behind her, whispering in her ear that she would come to him in the end, that she would marry him. And just as insanity seemed to have put its blemish on his mind, so fear started to take a hold on Corrie’s. He was out there somewhere, watching her, she could feel it, so strongly at times that she would find herself spinning round in the street to catch him. Of course there was never anyone there, except maybe the press, and Corrie was starting to become profoundly glad of their presence.