Mr Loverman

by Mary Lyons

  Which was how she now found herself on a train, speeding towards the far north-east of England. Although why the director of the film should have decided to do location shots on the coast of Northumberland and not in Scotland—where, of course, the story of Macbeth had originally been set—was completely beyond her. However, she was keeping her fingers crossed and hoping that this train really was going to stop at a small railway station near Alnwick, and not carry her on to its ultimate destination on the other side of the border, in Edinburgh.

  ‘You took your time,’ Jack muttered some time later, leading her swiftly from the station to where he’d parked his car.

  ‘Kindly direct your complaints to British Rail,’ she retorted as he helped her into the passenger seat of the large, comfortably warm car, before walking round to slide in behind the wheel. ‘I only managed to catch the train from King’s Cross this morning by the skin of my teeth, I had to change trains at Newcastle upon Tyne, nor have I had anything to eat since late last night. When I’m hungry I’m also likely to be extremely bad-tempered. So don’t push your luck!’ she added grimly.

  ‘Relax, sweetheart!’

  ‘And don’t call me “sweetheart”, either!’ she ground out through clenched teeth.

  ‘Why not? You know we’re crazy about each other.’

  ‘I know nothing of the sort!’ she snapped, glaring at the man, whose grey eyes were gleaming with amusement. ‘And you can stop laughing,’ she added bitterly. ‘Believe me, there’s nothing funny about a man who is expecting his ex-girlfriend to sort out his ex-wife’s problems. In fact, this whole business is...well, it’s totally bizarre!’

  ‘That’s my girl!’ he drawled wryly. ‘She may be hungry, cold and tired—but, my God, she still packs a hefty verbal punch! However,’ he added with a grin, ‘I suggest that we put aside the vexed question of Melissa for a moment and concentrate on giving you something to eat.’

  Twisting in his seat, he lifted a small wicker basket from the seat and placed it on her lap. ‘I thought you might be hungry. So I had the inn where I’m staying make up a picnic for you. They promised to include a Thermos of hot coffee and some ham sandwiches.’

  ‘Mmm...thanks, Jack—this is wonderful!’ Laura muttered some minutes later, beginning to feel at least partly human for the first time that day.

  ‘More coffee?’

  She nodded, not caring that he was grinning at her as she wolfed down the last of the sandwiches. ‘Tell me,’ she said at last, ‘why on earth are they shooting this film here, on the Northumberland coast, and not in the Highlands of Scotland, with all those wonderful castles to choose from?’

  Jack shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘I’ve no idea,’ he confessed. ‘However, it seems the director of the film, George Davidson, grew up in these parts and has always wanted to set a film on this bleak, ruggedly wild coastline. I must say,’ he added reflectively, ‘the castle he’s now chosen certainly looks very dramatic. In fact, providing we can get Melissa and Craig to behave, this film could be a smash bit.’

  ‘OK,’ she sighed as he packed up the wicker picnic basket, then tossed it onto the back seat. ‘That sounds like a cue for me to get back to work. So I think you’d better fill me in on everything that’s happened so far.’

  ‘Oh, nothing particularly surprising or unusual as far as neurotic, temperamental film stars are concerned,’ he told her with a cynical smile as he turned the key in the ignition. ‘Just an everyday mixture of star-crossed lovers, high drama and raving hysterics!’

  Jack drove carefully along the narrow country roads until they reached the Al, when the large, comfortable car moved smoothly into the fast traffic streaming north.

  Leaning back in the comfortable passenger seat and enjoying the expensive, luxurious scent of the cream leather upholstery, Laura closed her eyes for a minute, feeling sleepy and replete. She knew that she was going to regret answering Jack’s SOS—even if it involved trying to save Melissa Grant’s professional reputation. But, just at the moment, she didn’t care.

  Deeply conscious of the lean, muscled body sitting beside her, and the slim, tanned fingers resting confidently on the wheel, she realised that she was, at long last, feeling happy and content for the first time in many weeks. Jack might be totally infuriating, and regularly drive her up the wall. But he was also a devastatingly attractive, exciting and amusing man—with whom she was deeply in love.

  And, even though she knew that having anything more to do with him could only end in tears and profound unhappiness, she was helpless to resist the overwhelming impart of those gleaming grey eyes and that long, hard body on her weak and fragile heart.

  ‘Wake up, Laura!’

  ‘Hmm...?’ She blinked her heavy lids, gazing foggily up at the handsome face leaning over her.

  ‘It’s all right. You were obviously tired, so I thought I’d let you sleep till we got here,’ Jack told her, gently brushing a stray lock of hair from her face.

  ‘Ugh...I feel awful,’ she muttered, yawning as she gazed out of the car window. ‘I don’t know where the heck we are—but at least it seems to have stopped raining,’ she added, before yawning again and wishing that she didn’t feel quite so thick in the head.

  He got out of the car and came around to open her door. ‘Come on—I’m sure you could do with some fresh air.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ she agreed, undoing her seat belt and letting him help her out onto the damp, springy green turf.

  A moment later, she was almost knocked off her feet by a rough gust of wind. Indeed, if Jack hadn’t still had his hand firmly on her arm, she was almost sure that she would have been blown over the high, bleak clifftop and down onto the pale sandy beach far below.

  ‘I’ve heard of fresh air,’ she gasped, ‘but this is ridiculous!’

  ‘Careful,’ he warned, putting his arm about her waist and holding her closely against him. ‘It’s a steep drop from here, but I wanted you to see this fabulous view.’

  ‘Oh, heavens!’ she breathed as he turned her to face the huge, turreted stone castle, situated on a craggy rock peninsula which jutted out into the sea. Surrounded on three sides by turbulent waves, crashing loudly against the jagged grey rocks, it was a spectacular and amazing sight.

  ‘Isn’t it fantastic?’ Jack shouted against the wind battering their two figures. ‘You can see why George Davidson was so keen to use this castle for his location shots.’

  ‘Absolutely!’ she yelled back, shivering at the cold blasts of air from the sea and thankful for the protective warmth and shelter of Jack’s tall, broad-shouldered figure as he led her back to the car.

  ‘More coffee? You must have taken up clairvoyance in your old age!’ she grinned, when they were back inside the vehicle and Jack had produced, like a conjuror’s rabbit from a top hat, another Thermos of steaming hot coffee.

  He laughed. ‘We’ll have less of the “old” if you don’t mind! Although I do feel as though I’ve aged a few years during the past week,’ he added in a wry drawl. ‘Normally dealing with either Craig or Melissa is enough to drive anyone up the wall. But together...’ He shook his dark head ruefully. ‘I can tell you that it’s an explosive mixture of unstable TNT.’

  ‘But that’s the point I was trying to make before you hauled me up here from London. ’ She shrugged. ‘Leaving the question of Craig aside for the moment, I don’t understand why you seem to think that I can solve Melissa’s problems. If you can’t cope with your ex-wife—who, besides being spectacularly beautiful, also strikes me as being totally self-centred and as stubborn as a mule-I don’t reckon that I’m going to have much luck either!’

  ‘Well, I was hoping that maybe a bit of female solidarity might work-because, God knows, we’ve tried everything else,’ he admitted with a sigh. ‘I’m sorry that you’ve found yourself dragged into this mess.’

  ‘But I still don’t see...’

  ‘Look—let’s just get one or two things straight,’ he said sharply. ‘I may have once been marrie
d to Melissa, but we were both very young—she was just eighteen, I was twenty-two—and our so-called “marriage” only lasted a few months. The failure was probably as much my fault as hers, since I was a total workaholic, and not prepared to give Melissa either the time or the attention she obviously needed.

  ‘However—’ he shrugged ‘—I’m now thirty-eight. I’ve had plenty of time in which to regret having been such a fool as to wed a woman simply because she was stunningly good-looking. If and when we bump into each other nowadays, it’s...well, I suppose it’s rather like meeting an old acquaintance—someone you knew vaguely in the past but who has nothing to do with your present-day existence.

  ‘On the other hand,’ he continued as Laura remained silent, quietly sipping her coffee, ‘when I heard you’d taken on Melissa as a client, I nearly had a heart attack! Not, I can assure you, because of any tender feelings for my ex-wife,’ he explained with a dry smile. ‘But I knew that she couldn’t have changed all that much over the years. And, while she is a great actress, with an even more glittering future ahead of her, she’s also extraordinarily difficult—with a very low threshold of boredom. In fact, I was quite certain that this time, Laura, you’d really bitten off more than you could chew!’

  ‘Mmm...it’s beginning to look as if you could be right,’ she agreed slowly, impressed that he had been so honest about his own possible contribution to the breakdown of the marriage, and also with Jack’s generosity in praising his pesky ex-wife. ‘All the same, Melissa really is very talented, isn’t she?’

  He quickly nodded his dark head. ‘Oh, yes. There’s absolutely no doubt about that. I’ve seen the rushes from the first few days’ filming—before the balloon went up, of course—and she really lights up the screen. Which is why it’s so important to try and get her back on the set.’

  ‘What caused the trouble in the first place?’

  ‘Craig, of course!’ Jack’s lips tightened with annoyance. ‘You’d think the stupid man could manage to stay faithful to his new love for a few days at least. But oh, no! Apparently, as soon as he got up here he began a rip-roaring affair with one of the make-up girls.’

  ‘Just to make sure there was no slip-up with his appearance on film...?’ she enquired cynically.

  ‘I shouldn’t be at all surprised,’ Jack agreed, with a snort of grim laughter. ‘However, the upshot was that Melissa, after having been up here for a few days, discovered Craig and the girl in the process of making love. I’m told the explosion that followed was of atomic proportions—and the two principals haven’t exchanged one word from that day to this!’

  In the silence that followed, Laura took a final sip of coffee, before placing her cup on the dashboard and leaning back in her seat, buried in thought as she stared blindly through the windscreen.

  ‘I wasn’t joking about this situation being quite extraordinarily bizarre,’ she said at last, with a heavy sigh. ‘We’re both involved in show business, which can be a very unreal world at the best of times, with the most outrageous things being regarded as quite normal. But, while I like to think that I’m a reasonably sophisticated woman, the tangled web of your relationship with Melissa, and hers with Craig—coupled with raving histrionics and over-the-top melodrama—goes well beyond anything I’ve ever had to cope with before now.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart.’ He shifted in his seat as he turned to face her. ‘Unfortunately, once you succumbed to the temptation of having Melissa on your books, this sort of thing was bound to happen sooner or later. However, I’m quite sure that you’ll be able to sort out the problem.’

  Laura shook her head. ‘No, I really don’t think I can. I mean...’ She swallowed nervously, all her senses suddenly alert to the dangerous, dynamic masculinity of this man now leaning so close to her.

  The problems of Craig and Melissa were nothing when compared to her own complicated, intense relationship with her ex-employer. Why was it that when discussing basic, down-to-earth theatrical or agency matters she didn’t have too much of a problem in temporarily suppressing her feelings and dealing with the business in hand, but as soon as Jack turned those gleaming, hooded grey eyes in her direction she...well, she just seemed to go to pieces?

  ‘You can do it, sweetheart,’ he murmured, leaning so close that she could almost feel the persuasive energy emanating from his hard, broad-shouldered body. So close that the aromatic scent of his cologne filled her nostrils, his breath fanning her cheek as she stared, mesmerised, up at the mouth just above her own, a sick and trembling excitement running like liquid fire through her veins.

  ‘No...no, I really can’t...’ she breathed, her husky protest dying away as his dark head came down towards her, his mouth slowly and softly seducing her lips apart. His hands slipped inside her open coat, sliding over her soft cashmere sweater to caress her breasts. His intimate and sensual touch, like a match thrown into a barrel of gasoline, sent desire flaring like a raging inferno deep inside her. Gasping helplessly beneath his warm lips, she was left feeling desperately bereft as he slowly and reluctantly raised his head.

  As they stared at each other in a long silence that seemed to last for ever, Laura tried to pull her distraught mind together. But she was only aware of the heavy pounding of his heart and the faint flush beneath the tanned skin of his high cheekbones.

  ‘This is nothing but...but emotional blackmail!’ she gasped, wincing at the sound of her own rough, ragged breathing as it seemed to echo loudly within the confined space.

  ‘But you will help me sort out the mess—won’t you, sweetheart?’ he murmured, raising his hands to gently frame her face, his lips hovering tantalisingly over her own. ‘Just this once, hmm...?’

  ‘Oh, Jack...’ she moaned, knowing that she was a fool and completely out of her mind, but hopelessly beguiled and trapped, like a fly in a spider’s web, as he enticingly brushed his warm lips over her soft, trembling mouth. ‘Well...maybe...just this once...’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ‘OK, MELISSA, let’s take it one more time from the top, shall we? Are you prepared to go back to work tomorrow morning?’

  Laura sighed heavily as she waited for the woman to answer the fairly simple question. But, with this beautiful actress—now dramatically striding about the room, with her cloud of long black hair flowing down over a crimson brocade robe—nothing was either straightforward or simple.

  Melissa would, without a doubt, try the patience of a saint! She’d certainly managed to antagonise just about the whole film crew. The director, George Davidson, had merely thrown up his hands in disgust before walking off the set, but the two co-producers were desperately trying to keep the news of Craig and Melissa’s quarrel out of the newspapers. Because once the Press got wind of what was happening the financial backers of the film were likely to become understandably nervous.

  ‘I don’t care what you do,’ George Davidson had told Laura tersely, when Jack had taken her to meet the director. ‘Promise her the earth, if you think it will work. But unless Melissa is on the set first thing tomorrow morning I’m going to give her the sack!’ he’d added sternly, before turning to her companion.

  ‘And the same goes for your client too, Jack. I’m sorry to have to do this, because you’re one of the few people I respect in this crazy industry,’ he’d continued, with a weary shrug. ‘However, while Craig Jordan may think he’s got a great career in films, I’m holding him chiefly to blame for this current crisis. So just make sure he understands that if he isn’t on set tomorrow I’ll make damn sure that he has a very rough time getting any more work. In fact,’ he added grimly, ‘when my version of what’s happened hits the news-stands, dear Craig is going to wish that he’d never been born!’

  Leaving Jack to read the Riot Act to his client, Laura had gone to Melissa’s hotel. It hadn’t been easy even persuading the actress to let her into the large bedroom suite. Then, having gained admittance at last, she’d been forced to listen to a dramatic monologue in which Melissa acted out the whole, i
nvolved scenario leading to her discovery of Craig’s infidelity. This somewhat muddled and hysterical rendition had also included a considerable amount of bitchy, malicious references to some of her previous husbands.

  However, glancing down at her watch, and noting that she’d had to listen to this nonsense for well over an hour, Laura had finally lost her temper.

  ‘OK—that’s quite enough!’ she’d said loudly, cutting Melissa off in full flow. ‘Craig may well be a rotten swine who deserves a fate worse than death. But I actually don’t care about that at the moment. Because if you don’t get your act together, tout de suite, Craig is going to be the very least of your problems.’

  ‘But you don’t understand...’ Melissa had moaned, throwing herself dramatically down onto the bed. ‘My life is ruined, and—’

  ‘You’re dead right!’ Laura had agreed grimly. ‘If you’re not on set first thing tomorrow morning, George Davidson is going to have you thrown off this film. Everyone is going to blame you for what’s happened. The newspapers will have a field-day. And you’ll have the devil’s own job getting any work, ever again.’

  ‘They...they can’t do this to me!’ Melissa had gasped in horror.

  Laura had given a harsh laugh. ‘No? Well, I’ve got news for you, darling. They can—and they will! Yes, I know it’s mostly Craig’s fault,’ she retorted impatiently over the other woman’s loud protests. ‘But so what? Once you’ve committed professional suicide, no one’s going to care whose fault it was. Your career will have gone down the tubes—end of story.’

  ‘But...but what’s going to happen to me?’

  ‘Well, you may be able to make some money doing a kiss-and-tell series for the tabloid press,’ Laura had told her with a shrug. ‘But that’s about it, I’m afraid.’

  While Melissa—mercifully silent at last!—had gazed at her in stunned shock and horror, Laura had picked up the phone and ordered some strong black coffee to be sent up straight away.