Carson laughed and was suddenly beautiful again. “Not you,” she said flirtatiously, “never you. You are the only thing that is making this movie work. You’re far too easy to please and when you ask for something, you always remember to say thank you.”
Juliette turned away, attempting to turn an inadvertent choking sound into something approximating a cough.
“Not always,” Michael said gravely. “Only when I think it will get me . . . just a little bit more.” He gave the producer a mild, self-mocking leer. “And speaking of the less-than-thrilling aspects of your job, there seems to be an argument brewing between camera, lights, and action over yonder that may need your diplomatic skills. Sorry, boss,” he said when Carson made a sound of impatience. “I’m just the messenger.”
“You’re kidding me, right?” Juliette said as she watched Carson’s long slim back grow smaller and more shadowy. “‘You always remember to say thank you?’ God, it makes me embarrassed to be a woman. Is that the way women treat you, in general?”
When Michael responded with only a shrug and a mildly amused look, Juliette hurried on. “And what is her problem with Mercy? I mean, okay, Mercy is a huge pain in the ass, but Carson’s getting what she wants.”
“What do you mean?” O’Connor asked carefully.
“I saw the footage from the other day and it was amazing. You and Mercy are so . . .” She paused for a moment, trying to figure out a way to say what she meant without echoing words he had heard and read a million times. “Well, you’re just very good at what you do. Which is not surprising, I guess, but so is Mercy, which kind of is . . . considering.”
“So you don’t find it strange that I’m one hundred and fifty years older than she is?” Although Michael’s tone was light, Juliette was surprised by a small undercurrent of anxiety. Anxiety was not an emotion she had ever associated with Michael O’Connor. “I don’t look like some sort of craven old movie star desperately trying to hang on to a romantic lead for which he is clearly unsuited?”
Juliette couldn’t help laughing. There he stood, all six-foot-one of him, and yes, there were lines around the famous blue eyes, dug in around his mouth by a million trademark grins. But still he was one of the handsomest men she had ever seen, and more than that, he radiated that indescribable quality that almost literally forced you to look at him. Juliette had seen senators and CEOs stutter in his presence, watched as women drew themselves straight and leaned toward him when he entered a room, like flowers following sunlight. And he was worried he looked too old for Mercy.
“Oh, my God,” she said, still laughing. “You’re serious. How can you be serious?”
“Don’t laugh,” he said sheepishly. “I am exposing my greatest fear and humility. I figure you can take it, considering you’ve seen me bald and thin and vomiting, with embarrassing regularity.”
“Does that bother you?” Juliette asked curiously. She had wondered if that was the reason he had not called, had not written. She had seen all that, and worse, had seen him so altered he was unrecognizable. It had been difficult for him to find his footing with her after that. Men like O’Connor could not stand being seen as merely mortal.
“Enough,” he said. “But not as much as the very real possibility that I made a mistake saying yes to this film. That after my . . . hiatus, I will return to the public eye making an absolute fool of myself. Not that I haven’t made a fool of myself before,” he added, “but the bounce-back factor, like so many things, diminishes with age.”
“You’re being ridiculous,” Juliette said simply. “And you know it.”
When he looked down at her, she found it suddenly difficult to breathe. He was impossible, she thought. An impossible man to be with, an impossible man to love. This whole thing was just . . . impossible.
“Even Carson says you two look perfect,” she said quickly, taking a step backward. “Not that Carson is exactly the person I would trust to tell me the truth. Doesn’t she know that’s how it works in this business? If your movies make money we treat you like gods, and then complain when you act like them.” She shook her head. “If everyone was easy to get along with, I would be out of work.”
“And that is why we behave the way we do,” O’Connor said. “Demanding our toast slightly burnt, our sheets warmed in the winter and chilled in the summer, and our water from glass bottles. Because we want you, Juliette Greyson, to remain gainfully employed at the Pinnacle. So we will always know where to find you.” His voice was low and he stood quite close, looking down at her with bright, expectant eyes. “You have no idea the trouble I had to go through to find an excuse to visit Tuscany.”
“You’re beaming,” Juliette said. “Quit beaming at me. It’s never a good sign. Why does Carson hate Mercy anyway? Or does she hate everyone . . . who isn’t you?”
“Oh, I suspect she will come to hate me, too,” he said, raising his hand to tuck a bit of hair behind her ear. Juliette swatted it away. Why should it always be so easy for him anyway? As if he could read her mind, he laughed softly. “Carson hates Mercy for the oldest reason in the world—Mercy slept with her husband and broke up their marriage; and to make matters worse, she doesn’t even know she did it.”
“What?”
Michael grinned. He might be in midseduction, but like all movie people, there was nothing he liked better than gossip.
“Carson was married to one of the producers who worked on that film Mercy did about the girl who gets pregnant by her English professor and then falls in love with his wife. Launched the mercifully brief career of that screenwriter with all those facial piercings? Anyway, at some point in the proceedings the star screwed the producer. He thought it was lurve, ditched Carson, but when he presented himself as a free man to Mercy, she didn’t even remember sleeping with him. He tried to crawl back to Carson, but she was having none of it. Which was the only possible response—adultery one can forgive, utterly forgettable adultery requires damnation. To this day, I don’t think Mercy has made the connection. As you may have noticed, she is an admirably self-centered young woman.”
Juliette was speechless. Whatever fondness and sympathy she had felt for Mercy began to evaporate, while she suddenly saw Carson in a much more forgiving light. Juliette knew well the feeling of rage, the sense of overwhelming injustice, that curdles so easily into hatred when someone who seems to have everything decides the one thing she’s missing is your husband. Juliette could still see the tragic figure Anna Stewart made of herself after Josh had been killed, how she had paraded herself like a widow in front of everyone, including Juliette, as if somehow her scant months with Josh replaced the ten years of Juliette’s marriage to him.
“Lovely,” she said now. “Well, that certainly explains a lot. But why would Becker send Carson out onto this project with a history like that? And don’t tell me he didn’t know; if you know, he knows.”
Michael shoved his hands in his pockets. “Who better to keep Mercy in line? You see how sympathetic she can seem. Just a poor little misunderstood waif . . . who just happens to be shutting down a multimillion- dollar project and putting many people’s quite ordinary jobs at risk. Carson wants the big-time enough to make sure that, no matter what, she delivers a good picture. That’s all she really cares about, and that’s all Becker cares about.”
“And you?” Juliette asked. “What do you care about? Doesn’t any of what’s happened bother you? Doesn’t it bother you, walking into a situation like this? The guy you’re replacing overdosed, your costar seems on her way to following suit, the director is an egotistical moron who seems intent on killing his own writer, and the producer who’s supposed to keep everything running has a personal vendetta against her female lead.”
O’Connor’s mouth twitched at the corner. “And your point is?”
“Oh, come on,” Juliette said. “Every movie has its tensions, but this is insane. I know everyone thinks Mercy is a joke, but Jesus, Michael, Lloyd Watson is dead. And even if Mercy is a selfish little husba
nd stealer, someone should help her before she winds up dead, too. Don’t any of you people care?”
Michael sighed. “God, Juliette, if I could save an addict simply by showing that I cared, I could retire to the sanctity of my holy mountain already. Do you think she’s the first drugged-out, semi-suicidal costar I’ve ever had? Mercy Talbot is going to make her own choices no matter what anyone, including the rapidly aging Michael O’Connor, says. I can only try to limit the damage she inflicts on this project. Which is exactly what Carson is doing. Which is exactly what you would do if you were her.”
Hearing herself compared to Carson again, Juliette stiffened. What had been wavering inside her righted itself. “How can you make the sort of movies you do when you’re so cold-blooded about the people you actually know? Why does everyone say they know addiction is a disease but when they have an addict in front of them, they act like it’s just some form of über-brattiness? As you keep pointing out, she’s just a kid. A kid who won’t live long enough to be married four times if something doesn’t change pretty soon.”
Her hands were all but on her hips, she was so angry. At Carson and Mercy, at the cheating husband whom she couldn’t even name. At Josh and herself for moving to Los Angeles and thinking they would somehow survive. At Michael, especially at Michael, for all those weeks with no word, though he knew she was worried, for coming to Tuscany and then only calling when he needed help, for the desire that closed her throat and twisted her stomach just the same. He had told her long ago how demanding he was while he was working, how impossible to live with, but she hadn’t believed him because at the time it hadn’t seemed possible, not when he seemed the only person who wasn’t afraid to say things that were true. But he was an actor, after all, and the number one rule at the Pinnacle, and all over Los Angeles, was: Never fall for an actor.
Juliette was so busy working herself up in righteous indignation that it took her a minute to realize Michael was reaching up to cup her face in his two hands, sliding his fingers underneath her hair, behind her ears, tracing her jaw with his thumbs, holding her as if she were something delicate enough to break.
“Look at you,” he said in a low, quiet voice. “Just look at you. Trying to fix all our problems for us when really all you have to do to make the world better is just stand there.”
For a moment Juliette paused and considered the stars, entire constellations of them, and the small white roses climbing up the archway of the wall near where they stood. She felt the day’s warmth rise from the stone, heard the rustling swoosh of leaves disturbed by lifted wings off in the dark.
“You are a natural-born liar,” she said, kissing him anyway because of course she was going to kiss him, she had known she was going to kiss him from the moment she heard his voice on the phone, from the second she had seen him across the Campo at Siena. Why else was he here? Why else had she gone when he called, said yes when Carson had asked, why else was she allowing all this insanity to happen, if not so she could kiss Michael O’Connor under ripe, low-hanging stars?
His mouth settled against hers as if it had only been a day since they had last stood like this, and his hands slid under her shirt. Taking slow backward steps, she led him into the shadows that lapped along the villa wall and leaned against the rough warm stone, offering no resistance. He tasted of red wine and rosemary and the salty tang of mozzarella and she laughed quietly as she felt her flesh press against the ancient rock of her ancestral home. Though he was stronger and broader than he had been when she last touched him, he was still as familiar to her as the earth and the flowers and the fields of this place that she had hidden from her heart for so long.
Clinging to him with mouth and arms, thighs and hands, she moved him along the wall, under the archway, and down a few worn steps. Now they were invisible in the dark, sheltered from all eyes by the villa itself. Buttons gave then, and seams, until skin met skin and desire loosened her hips, her knees. Her head banged against the wall, scraped against the stone, but still she could not pull him close enough, could not open herself wide enough. His body covered her, erased everything that had happened before, pinned her firmly against the present.
The smell of new wine crept out from beneath the wooden door to their left; here was the entrance to the cellar, with its cool dirt floors, its long low shelves. She felt for the great metal ring to open the door, but then his hands were sliding down, raising her skirt, his fingers slipping under and up and in, and she answered his brief, inquiring smile with a breathless nod; with a shudder she found his belt, his button. As her hand closed around him, he murmured her name into her ear and at the last crucial minute, only the strength of his hands and a small ledge allowed her to remain upright as he drove inside her, her shoulders raked against the stone, and every bone in her body dissolved in pleasure and relief. Almost silently they shivered in the night, fingers clutching, muscles rocking, another restless creature in the dark.
“I understand there are beds in this establishment,” Michael said later as they buttoned and zipped, tugged and brushed each other down. “I noticed at least one in my room.”
“Indeed,” said Juliette, who felt so giddy and astonished she almost choked. “This place is, in fact, lousy with beds.”
“They might make an interesting alternative, in the future,” he said, gingerly flexing his knees.
“Feeling your age?”
“Not me,” he said, pinning her once again. “I’ve always done my best work with my back against the wall. Oh, wait, that was you.”
“Stop.” She laughed, kissing him, then pushing him away, then kissing him again. “No, seriously. Seriously,” and, laughing, she stumbled up the steps and onto the lawn, dragging him by the hand.
“My place or yours?” he said. “Oh, come on,” he protested when she hesitated. “Everyone here is an adult, at least by the legal definition. And it’s no one’s business who’s in my bed, or yours. After all”—he grinned wickedly—“we’re on location.”
“I am so not the right person for that particular argument,” Juliette said, but she was loath to part from him, and the thought of spending one uninterrupted night together, something that had yet to happen, was very appealing. “All right, mine. Mercy’s at the house but her bedroom is upstairs. And it’s still more private than the villa. We’ll see how it goes, Mr. O’Connor.”
They skirted the cameras and wires that now filled the courtyard. As they approached Casa Padua, Juliette could see Gabe hurrying down the porch steps toward them.
“There you are,” he said impatiently. “Everyone has been looking all over for you. Mostly you,” he said, motioning to Juliette, “and mostly Mercy. But Carson was also expressing concern about your whereabouts.” He nodded toward Michael with a less-than-approving glance. “Because they seem to have confused me with the concierge, they sent me to find you. They’re all over at the villa, the whole grisly lot of them, in the main living room,” he explained, turning them around and propelling them back toward the villa, “drinking some of my best wine. God, Juliette, look at the state of you,” he exclaimed, catching sight of her back and immediately brushing off the gritty streaks of dust from her blouse and skirt. “What the hell have you been—Oh, nice. Lovely. What is this, day one? You know there are beds at Cerreta,” he said, directing the last comment at Michael.
“So I’ve been told. In fact, we were just on our way.”
“Well, I’m afraid the Love Boat has hit an iceberg.” Gabe all but pushed them through the side entrance, through the winding warren of halls that led past the kitchen and the stairway that led to the bedrooms and library, through the dining room, and up a few steps to the main hallway. “Because there’s a detective here from Rome and he seems to think that maybe your friend Lloyd Watson didn’t kill himself after all.”
Inspector Di Marco was a slight, silver-haired gentleman wearing a very nice suit that Juliette could not immediately place, although she suspected Armani. He had basset-hound eyes, a small smile t
hat shone like an apple slice from under an equally circumspect mustache, and he could not have been more polite. New evidence had surfaced; no he could not share what it was, but some questions had emerged from various sources regarding the cause of death, and the investigation was being—here he groped for a word, before turning to Gabriel and muttering in Italian. “Revisited,” Gabe said.
“Yes,” the inspector said. “Revisited.”
He turned and surveyed the group before them: Mercy curled small and childlike in an armchair, with Angie draped protectively around her. Steve Usher sat beside her on a straight-backed chair, his elbows on his knees, his fingers steepled under his nose, and a look of serene attention on his face. Golonski leaned back into the corner of a sofa with a self-consciously amused smile on his face, legs spread wide in the classic position of alpha male, while the writer whose name was, indeed, Joseph Andrews, sat perched on the edge just beside him, nervously jiggling his foot. Carson leaned against the large oak table, her posture impeccable, her face unreadable as she glanced repeatedly at Michael, who sat on a low bench beside Juliette. Gabe hung in the doorway, his eyes straying more often than not toward Mercy.
We look like the climactic scene in an Agatha Christie novel, Juliette thought. Any minute the lights will go out and a shot will be fired and then Hercule Poirot will explain everything.
But nothing more dramatic occurred than the inspector explaining that he simply wanted to review the information that was given to his colleagues on the day of Lloyd’s death. He was sorry to arrive so late, he had gotten terribly lost on his way to Cerreta. He understood, he said with an ingratiating smile, that many present were on their way to bed because of the early hours required by Hollywood. He was happy to come back tomorrow to speak with those who had been present on the day of Lloyd’s death, at their personal convenience.
“Meanwhile,” he said, “if you could consult your memories to see if there was anything at all unusual about the day of and the day after Mr. Watson’s unfortunate death, I would be extremely grateful. And I should speak to you,” he asked, motioning to Carson, “to set up my little interviews?”
The Starlet Page 13