by Lucy Parker
She reached up for him, quite willing to continue postponing the consequences of her actions, but he broke away, kissed her cheek, her throat and her knuckles, and stood up.
“I’m going to ring Alex. I’ll pull your curtains and spoil Marta’s fun. After I’ve stood in your freezing-cold hallway for a few minutes. I’m not comfortable speaking to anyone in my family in this particular state.”
“Okay. I’m going to take a quick shower.”
He paused in the doorway. “Don’t make it too quick.”
“I hate to crush your newfound optimism, but my shower is the size of a matchbox. If I drop the soap, I have to stand on the bathmat to have space to bend forward.”
“If you’re trying to put me off coming in, you might want to rethink your approach.”
When she could hear him down the hall in the lounge, she glanced at the bedside table, where she’d left her iPad on charge. Her hand reached for it without waiting for permission from her common sense.
The third thumbnail on the London Celebrity site was a headline about Célie Verne’s heart attack. The fourth thumbnail was a slightly blurred shot of her and Luc in the waiting room.
Headline and hook: Sex Sent Me to the ER: Lily Lamprey rushes to comfort her 1553 director at his mother’s bedside, fuelling rumours that the Knightsbridge starlet was the catalyst for Savage’s shock split from Margo Roy. Do we diagnose a case of life imitating art for TV’s most notorious man-pincher?
*
Lily woke up the next morning in her own bed, in her own room, and for several seconds had absolutely no idea where she was.
Next to her cheek, her hand flexed on hard muscle and warm skin. Her eyes shot open. She moved her feet a little, testing the territory beneath her toes.
“I’m on top of you,” she said blankly. Her voice was low and hoarse for about ten seconds a day; it was her short-lived time to channel Kathleen Turner, but mostly she was the only one around to appreciate it.
“Yes, you are.” Luc sounded wide-awake and amused.
He was lying on his stomach, with his head resting on his folded arms. She was stretched full-length on top of him, her legs tucked along his, her stomach in the curve of his back.
“Did you put me up here?” she demanded, still trying to stumble back into awake and functional, and felt his snort echo through his spine.
“Did I pick you up in the middle of the night and somehow attach you to my back like a squirrel monkey? No.”
“I climbed on your back in my sleep?” She scrubbed at her eyes. “And you didn’t wake up?”
“Apparently I was exhausted and you need to attend some sort of clinic.” He stretched and she rose and fell with him. “I was actually relieved when you started drooling on my neck. I called Alex, my father, and my mother’s surgeon half an hour ago, and you still didn’t move. I was starting to think I’d have to visit the narcolepsy unit as well as the ICU.”
He managed to turn over beneath her without throwing her off the side of the bed. She looked down into his tired face. “How’s your mum this morning?”
He tucked her hair behind her ear. “According to Alex: awake, demanding breakfast and recreating the longing stares and melodrama of the Casablanca reunion scene with my father.”
“He’s back?”
“His plane got in at 4:00 a.m. He went straight to Mum’s room.”
“And they let him in?”
“Do you remember my father?”
“I take your point.” Lily kissed his chin and slid off him to turn on the lamp. It was still quite dark outside, yet not acceptable to be asleep: the worst part of winter. “Sorry. You should have woken me up so you didn’t have to make your calls in the dark. Half-buried.”
Luc pushed up and tucked the pillow behind him. She wasn’t exactly a waif, but she didn’t think the wince was necessary when he straightened his back. “I tried to wake you up. You kicked me.”
“I did not.”
“Nailed me right in the Achilles tendon.” He started flipping through his emails. “Forewarned is forearmed. Protective padding and possibly some sort of helmet wouldn’t hurt when sharing a mattress with you.”
She tried to keep her voice level. “That would seem to imply a repeat performance or two.”
His expression didn’t change, but she didn’t miss the sudden stillness of his body. He turned his head and regarded her steadily. “I think that would be up to you.”
“No, I think the whole concept of a relationship would imply mutual participation. Particularly the parts that require a mattress and a helmet.”
Luc rubbed his hand over his chest. She liked the dusting of hair there; she now knew from experience that it felt really good against her skin. “You were great yesterday.”
“Well—” she began modestly, buffing her nails against her collarbone, and made him grin.
“There was that. I may also have meant at the hospital. You were a rock. And a much-needed buffer. Alex and I would probably have ended up killing each other if you hadn’t systematically stripped him of his self-esteem one royal flush after another.” Any trace of levity left his voice. “But the situation did act as a bit of a—catalyst.”
The choice of word reminded her of the tabloid headline from the night before.
He touched her cheek. “I don’t want you to feel—forced to stay in a situation that’s going to be…messy.”
Lily looked down at their sheet-wrapped nakedness. “I think it’s a little late to backtrack now.”
Something flickered in his eyes. “Do you want to backtrack?”
Crossroad: bare-chested, concerned Luc on one side, iPad full of stranger hate on the other. After this, however opening night turned out, her current reputation of stage-climbing homewrecker probably wasn’t going anywhere. And there was still a little voice in her head whispering things like: Playing second-fiddle: better get used to it. The voice sounded quite a lot like Margo.
She mentally shut her eyes and stepped off the edge of the cliff.
“No. I don’t want to backtrack.” Years of habit refused to be kicked aside that easily and made her add in a rush, “But—discretion wouldn’t hurt.”
“I wasn’t planning to seduce you in the orchestra pit.”
She didn’t smile. “And you? You weren’t thrilled about the age difference and the work conflict either.”
“No, I wasn’t,” he freely agreed. “The timing is still bloody awful, and I’d feel a lot more comfortable if you were forty years old and pursuing just about any other career, with the possible exceptions of politics or stand-up comedy, but—”
Her fingers curled around his.
“But,” he said, his thumb rubbing hers, “I made the mistake once of defining you by a label, or in this case a number, and narrowly avoided getting smacked in the face by a condom water balloon.” His tone had lightened, but he wasn’t smiling either. “As a strategy, blind denial and ignoring the situation is not working.”
“That’s a very directorial way of putting it, but no. It’s not.” She gestured with the sheet. “Clearly.”
He smoothed over the line of her eyebrow. “I was expecting a mediocre actress and ten minutes of my life I’d never get back, not a woman with the impact of a Lancaster Bomber. When the press referred to you as a bombshell, I assumed they meant the outside package.”
“I’m sure there’s a compliment in there somewhere.” She hunched her shoulder in a ticklish flinch when Luc sneaked a kiss on her neck.
“It was buried—” he switched direction towards her lips “—but it’s there.”
Before he could kiss her mouth, she said, “Why did your brother apologise to me last night?”
He went still again, before he rolled out of bed and reached for the trousers he’d slung over her chair last night. As he zipped them up, his stomach muscles working above the leather strip of his belt, he glanced up at her through a ruffled fall of hair. “Given everything else that happened in the past twenty-fo
ur hours, I thought that might have glanced by.”
“It would really simplify things if you just assume from this point on that nothing will glance by.”
Luc shook out his shirt. “Alex recently went through an expensive and entirely predictable divorce. I was fairly outspoken on the subject of his ex-wife. When you came over at Christmas, he saw it as divine retribution.”
“I’m going to need a footnote.”
“His ex-wife is nineteen.”
“Oh.”
“But I believe we established at Aston Park that you’re not a teenager. You’re a veritable pensioner, knocking on the door of thirty.” Luc finished buttoning his shirt and tucked it into his trousers, then fastened his belt.
“The family precedent rears its ugly head again.”
“What was that dark-sounding mumble?” He sat down on the edge of the bed to put his shoes and socks on.
“Nothing.” She picked at the sheet. “You’re heading into the hospital?”
“I’ll stop by on the way to the studio, then go back during the lunch break and after the afternoon rehearsal.”
“So you’ll be at rehearsal this morning?”
“If Mum’s on the mend, missing another day isn’t really an option. We’re two days out from tech week.”
“Don’t remind me.” Lily slammed an imaginary door on the image of Margo’s silent, eloquent nod. This wasn’t putting work above family; he’d be back and forth nonstop between the hospital, the Queen Anne and every floor of his office building all day. He was honouring his commitments. “Would your parents mind if I visited in a few days, once your mum is up to it?”
Luc’s expression eased a little as he looked over his shoulder. “I’m sure she’d appreciate that. Although I wouldn’t expect to have much free time for anything but eating and sleeping next week, and even that’s not a given.”
She took that to mean she’d better get up now before she was late for her early voice session with Jocasta. Throwing off the sheet, she swung her legs to the floor and stood up, stretching while he watched with obvious appreciation.
“The industry press party tomorrow night.” She pulled open her wardrobe door and sifted through the racks, looking for something warm. “Are you going?”
“Shit.” He stood up and slipped his phone into his back pocket. “I forgot. Hell Night.”
Her head popped through the neckline of her jumper and she pulled her hair free. “I thought it was Hell Week in your snazzy theatrical lingo, which doesn’t start until Monday.”
“Tech week isn’t hell, it’s just insomnia and organised chaos. Hell is sharing small talk and tiny plates of food with the media and all the people who’ve ever annoyed me in every theatre in the West End.”
“So—that’s a misanthropic ‘no’ on the party attendance, then? You do have a pretty good excuse to skip it.”
“Unfortunately, it’s part of the package. Especially when we’re opening cold. Inviting the actors we didn’t cast in the actual production ensures that at least some of them will show up on opening night, and getting most of the theatre critics in London drunk helps drain some of the poison from their pens before they see the play. It doesn’t build so much goodwill if we lure people to the Savoy with the promise of canapés and champagne and then don’t bother to show ourselves.” His eyes narrowed. “I’m guessing from the way you’re clutching at your nose that you’d rather I don’t speak to you or walk within six feet of you in public.”
She immediately dropped her arm to her side and smoothed out her frown. “No. We’re doing this, so—feel free to come within at least three feet.”
“I know it’s not an ideal situation, Lily, but—we’ll figure it out.”
“I squash you into the mattress for one night and you cross completely into glass-half-full territory.” Her smile felt a little tight. “That London Celebrity journalist was right. My womanly wiles are potent.”
“Ignore the press.”
“Says the man who’s shelling out a fortune to seduce them with Bollinger and smoked salmon.”
“I have no intention of seducing any of them.” He bent and kissed the tip of her nose. “And London Celebrity aren’t on the guest list. I have to go. I’ll see you in Southbank shortly.”
In the doorway, without looking at her, he dropped a verbal bomb. His voice was so low that it almost went over her head instead of hitting the target on the left side of her chest. “It’s second nature to pull apart a performance, isolate and slice out the dead weight, piece it back together. I also know what it feels like when there’s that very rare click and it’s just—right. It works. From the first line of the first scene.” A nerve ticked in his jaw. “It doesn’t often happen onstage, and I didn’t expect to ever experience it offstage.”
She didn’t move. Or breathe.
He still didn’t turn when he said, “Drive safe. And don’t be late. I’m fairly sure that plastic bird on Jocasta’s head is concealing some sort of weapon.”
She heard his footsteps in the lounge and the front door opening before he called, “Take a breath before you pass out.”
She sat down on the edge of the bed and exhaled.
Chapter Eleven
“And then I said to him, ‘Simon, if it was good enough for Vanessa Redgrave—’” The woman in plaid, who was either from the Palladium or Town and Country, took a gulp of champagne and kept talking, and Lily nodded at intervals and hoped that her eyes weren’t actually glazing over.
“Laurel!” Amelia joined the one-sided conversation, Maria Finch following a second later. They were both wearing cocktail dresses and carrying Cosmos. Amelia widened her eyes meaningfully at Lily before she completed the save. “There you are. I was just talking to Angela Fox and she wanted to go over the—” She hooked a firm hand under Laurel Somebody’s elbow and steered her away into the crowd.
“Dreadful woman,” Maria said, watching them go. “I hear she’s being considered for Marie Antoinette. Putting her anywhere near a guillotine is just tempting fate.” Her gaze sharpened on Lily. “Where’s Luc?”
Lily swirled her cranberry juice and reminded herself that she was supposed to be an actor. It shouldn’t be difficult not to tense up every time someone mentioned him. Which so far had been approximately every three minutes. “I think he had to stop by the Queen Anne.”
“But he’s coming?” Maria pressed, obviously assuming that Lily was now fully informed of his schedule. Which she was. He had texted her half an hour ago when he’d left the hospital. “He has things to do here.”
“He’s coming.”
“I almost didn’t make it myself, after all the calls I’ve been fielding today about Célie Verne and your headlong dash to the ER. We need to have a meeting on Monday.”
“‘We,’ meaning—”
“You. Me. Luc. Possibly Margo too, although I suppose that could be slightly awkward.”
Just a tad.
“We can thank whichever studio lured Bridget away to LA, because this whole situation would have been a disaster if Margo wasn’t attached to the project.” Maria finished her drink. “She has a very strong fan base, all of whom would be boycotting the show otherwise. From what I can gauge, public sentiment is in her corner. Luc trades her in for a younger model, and she marries the romantic Italian on the rebound.”
“I didn’t even know Luc when—”
Maria dismissed that with a finger flutter. “Doesn’t matter. Nobody will believe you. Fortunately, with you and Margo both in the cast, we’re getting a massive boost in sales. We’ll discuss opportunities for the two of you to appear at a few events together. If it looks like you’re pretending to like each other, it’ll keep people interested in what’s going on backstage.”
“We do like each—”
“Actually,” Maria said thoughtfully, “the whole thing was marketing genius. Luc certainly knows how to sell out a show. He’s driving me into an early grave, but the numbers are looking great.” She frowned. “Dy
lan has his hands all over a waitress. In front of fifty members of the press. Super.”
She made a beeline through the crowd. Dylan’s wife was filming another reality show in the depths of the jungle somewhere, a fact he’d referred to as a “get-out-of-jail-free card.”
Lily swung around, sighing, and almost spilled her drink.
Despite Maria’s implication, with all its sledgehammer subtlety, she didn’t believe Luc would manipulate this situation for publicity; she doubted if he was enjoying his rapid descent from the highest pillars of the British theatre industry to the dregs of typical bloke having early midlife crisis. Any more than she was enjoying being the catalyst for dragging him down.
Unless bad press negatively affected his work and company, however, he didn’t seem to care that much what people were saying—and it was probably true that their increasingly battered reputations were sending pre-sales through the roof.
She needed to channel that attitude. It was a party, the last big gathering before opening night. She was supposed to be networking and repairing some of the damage, and ideally enjoying herself. Trix had provided a distraction for the first half hour, but Lily had lost track of her after David Benton had pounced and introduced her to a famous blogger.
The candlelight and string quartet could have created a peaceful atmosphere, but were no match for a room heavily populated by actors who had been trained to project and were all trying to dominate their circle. The waiters in white tie were having trouble navigating the crowd with their trays of glasses and finger food.
She finally spotted a flash of pink, and grinned when she saw Trix at the bar, gesturing with a glass of wine and talking intently to Leo Magasiva, the show’s hot makeup artist. Lily had spent three hours with him this week while he transformed her into the narrower-featured, red-haired Elizabeth. He was one of the top special-effects artists in the city. The brief for 1553 wasn’t much of a stretch for a man who could probably turn a Victoria’s Secret model into a creature from Pan’s Labyrinth using the contents of her handbag, but Luc evidently wanted and was prepared to pay for the best.