Fire in the Blood
Charlotte Lamb
First published in Great Britain 1993 by Mills & Boon Limited
© Charlotte Lamb 1993
CHAPTER ONE
THE first day of April in London, April Fool's day in England, April Fish day in France, and nature was playing a typical April trick on the city, beginning the day with bright sunshine which deceived Londoners into going to work without a raincoat, only to send dark clouds scudding across the sky at around ten o'clock, followed up with a sudden thunderstorm at about eleven which had people running through the streets, sheltering in doorways.
It was still pouring with rain when the taxi dropped Nadine off outside the television centre just before midday. She opened her little yellow silk umbrella before she got out of the taxi, then ran inside, so that the wind howling across the car park shouldn't wreck her chestnut hair, which had just been expensively restyled at the hairdresser's. Usually any men she passed would stop and stare, amazed to see such a famous face passing by, but today the weather made her practically invisible. Everyone was too busy trying not to get too wet to have time to look at her. Even the taxi driver had failed to recognise her, although on the seat beside him lay a magazine whose cover carried a glossy photo of her in the latest look from Paris.
The electronic doors swished open automatically as she approached; she hurried through without lowering her umbrella, and collided with someone.
'Sorry!' she began, smiling, then looked up and froze on the spot, her hazel eyes widening and darkening in shock.
'Well, well, if it isn't Nadine!' he drawled, and the sound of his deep, smoky voice sent ice trickling down her spine.
She had not seen him for over a year, and had begun to think she was over the worst, but at that instant she realised she had been wrong, dead wrong. The worst had only just happened. She felt her body go into flight mode: heart racing, nerves tense, adrenalin going ready to flee.
She couldn't run, though. She had to play it quite a different way, look cool and unflustered, although she wasn't sure her voice was going to come out steadily. But she managed it.
'Good heavens, if it isn't Sean,' she said, taking time to shake her umbrella slightly to one side so as not to splash either of them before carefully closing it. It gave her an excuse for not meeting his eyes. 'What on earth are you doing here?' she asked lightly, finally looking up again. 'Don't tell me you've gone into television!'
He shrugged those wide, smoothly clothed shoulders while she watched and tried not to notice too much about him. Didn't she know exactly how he looked? He hadn't changed. But he was eye- riveting, and she couldn't help staring, although she told herself she was admiring the wide-lapelled black jacket, tight-fitting black jeans, black shirt, a scarlet silk tie the one splash of colour. Not many men would risk an outfit like that: meant to look casual, but with the stamp of a top French designer's flair. Jean-Paul Gaultier, she thought, his style perfect for Sean Carmichael's powerful build, the force of his body.
'I've just been on the Harper show.' His wide mouth twisted impatiently. 'The woman is some sort of idiot; she asked me all the same old questions I've been asked a hundred times, and didn't really listen to the answers. God knows why her ratings are so high.'
'People like her, she has a lot of charm,' Nadine said absently, trying to sound as calm as he did.
A year ago they had been hurling words like weapons at each other; it had been a bitterly fought divorce and she had thought she would never get over the pain of it, yet here they were just twelve months later talking politely, like the merest acquaintances. On the surface, at least. Underneath there was something very different, on her side, at least; but she wouldn't let herself think about that.
She thought about Juno Harper instead: a comfortably rounded woman, with softly silvering blonde hair and a warm smile, she had in her youth been a musical comedy star, and her new career as a chat-show host in her still glamorous fifties had brought out millions of loyal fans from her past to boost her viewing figures. She was popular with her famous guests, too, because she never asked awkward or embarrassing questions, was never malicious, never laid traps for unwary tongues, had a famous giggle for every comedian's jokes, was happy to puff a new film or book, and was invariably likeable.
'Her charm didn't work for me; she's too lightweight,' Sean said curtly. 'What about you? Are you here to do a programme?'
'No,' she said reluctantly. 'I'm here to see one of the producers; I'm auditioning for a new show.'
His eyebrows shot up. 'Acting? So you still have ambitions in that direction?'
'No,' she said sharply, a flush invading her creamy skin. She knew that tone—it was only too familiar, the sound of Sean in his sardonic vein. She had made several attempts to become an actress and failed dismally; had finally been forced to admit that she simply could not act. It hadn't been an easy admission for her, especially as she and Sean were drifting apart at the time. She had bitterly accused him of wanting her to fail; he had denied it but she was still convinced he hadn't wanted her to be an actress, any more than he had wanted her to model.
'No?' he drawled. 'So what are you doing here?'
'I'm having an interview with Greg Erroll,' she said shortly, but he still waited, his brows lifted and a quizzical expression on his face, so she felt compelled to expand her answer. 'He's looking for a female presenter for a new show he's going to launch in the autumn. It would be a morning show, an hour long; they want two presenters, a man and a woman.'
'Don't tell me... the man would do all the heavy stuff, the current affairs and serious interviews; and the woman would do the chatty interviews with other women, and the fashion and cookery and dieting!'
'Something like that,' she admitted, and Sean gave her a wry little smile.
'Well, never mind, if it is a huge success you could always use your muscle to get a better deal for yourself.'
She had to laugh at that. 'I haven't even got the job yet!'
'Always think ahead!' he said, as he had said to her so many times before, and she exchanged a grin with him, then could not believe this was happening. A year apart, and then within five minutes she felt as if they had never split up. It was a surreal experience; she could almost believe she was dreaming this encounter. She felt like pinching herself to make sure she was awake.
Instead she stared at him. At first she had thought he hadn't changed, but she saw suddenly how wrong she had been. Sean wasn't the same. He had always been slim, but she was sure he had lost some weight; he must have been working at full stretch over these months, and no doubt he had often forgotten to eat.
She remembered how he could forget everything but work, too obsessed to think of such mundane things as food, let alone her or any arrangement he might have made to meet her. Time had hardened his face: there was no spare flesh over that tough bone-structure, and there were some lines around his mouth and eyes that had not been there before.
He was still a magnetically attractive man, though: tall, slim-hipped, long-legged, dark, with brooding dark blue eyes and a strong, passionate mouth.
Their eyes met and held, and she felt a stab of such pain that she almost cried out with it.
Huskily, she said, 'I'd better go, I don't want to be late... goodbye, Sean...'
She didn't wait to hear his reply, she just fled, across the marble-floored foyer, towards the reception desk, where she muttered her name and was told to wait until Mr Erroll's assistant came down to escort her to the studio where they would be filming.
She had been nervous about the audition for a week, and meeting Sean on the way in hadn't helped, but Greg Erroll did his best to put her at her ease. He was one of the top men in television: an elegant, slightly built man in his
early forties, who dressed formally in a dark grey suit and a crisp striped red and white shirt. He had a bland face which was deceptive; it was his piercingly intelligent grey eyes that warned you about the real man behind the calm facade.
Nadine was so tense that she blurted out, 'I've never been able to act, I'm afraid!' and Greg Erroll smiled soothingly at her.
'We don't want you to act, Nadine. We want you to be yourself, which is much harder than it sounds. Some people stiffen up in front of a camera, but I don't think you're going to do that because you're used to cameras, you feel at home with them, don't you?'
'After seven years of modelling I ought to!' she said, relaxing a little, conscious of the fact that the two cameras in the studio were focused on her at that moment, for she was able to see herself on the screen standing to one side. They had found her best side, the right one: she watched them exploring the height of her cheekbones, her faintly slanted hazel eyes, her wide, full mouth, closing in on her skin, showing every pore. Nadine watched with professional interest; her face was so familiar to her that she could view it quite impersonally as if it belonged to someone else.
'How does it feel to be so beautiful?' Greg Erroll asked, and she laughed, giving him a startled look.
'I'm not, though.' She was quite sincere in that, gesturing to her image on the screen. 'Look at my eyes—they're such a weird colour, nothing in particular, not green or brown or blue, a sort of mixture of all of them. I hate that, and I've always wished I had hair of a different colour; either black or blonde. My nose is much too thin, too long... and my mouth is much too big, it unbalances the rest of my face.'
He listened, smiling in his bland, dry fashion. 'So how do you explain your success as a model?'
'I've no idea, I've often wondered. Probably just luck. I started with such a brilliant photographer, Jamie Colbert—I owe my whole career to Jamie.' She broke off, looking around the studio at the clutter of electric cables, overhead tracking-lights, screens, cameras. 'Sorry, I'm talking too much; you want to start the audition, I expect.'
'We have started,' Greg said, looking amused. 'But now I want to swap chairs with you, Nadine.' He stood up, and she automatically did so too, a little puzzled. 'Sit here,' he said, and she obediently sat in his vacated chair. Greg looked up at a cameraman. 'OK for you, Rodney?'
'Could we move her a fraction to the right?'
Nadine began to shift her chair. Greg stopped her. 'Far enough.' He looked up at the cameraman again. 'How's that?'
'Back a bit,' Rodney said, and Nadine shifted again. 'Stop there!' Rodney told her. 'That's it. Perfect.'
They went through a similar check with the sound man, and the lighting man, who discovered a sheen on her forehead, a sudden outburst of perspiration, no doubt, due to nerves, which meant calling up the make-up girl to dab her temples with powder. At last, everyone was satisfied, and then Greg Erroll handed her a piece of paper.
'Now, Nadine, I want you to interview me. I've jotted down a few notes on myself; read it through and then we'll start.'
Nadine had known that she would be expected to do a dummy run of an interview, but she had imagined that she would be given far more time to read a profile of him, and think of some questions to ask, rehearse a little before they did it for real. Dry-mouthed, she looked down at the scribbled sheet and was relieved that she could at least read his writing. She read it through hurriedly, then again, more slowly, absorbing the information and surprised by some of it. She had had no idea, for instance, that Greg Erroll, had gone to a stage school as a boy, before going on to university; or that he had been married twice and had one child, a daughter.
'Ready?' Greg said, after the shortest five minutes in her life; and, taking a deep breath, Nadine nodded.
It was a baptism of fire, but because it was all so casual she found it easier than she had anticipated. She was nervous as she started, but once she and Grieg were talking the questions came naturally because she was genuinely interested in him. He answered fluently most of the time, but once or twice clammed up, refusing to answer a question; and Nadine hurriedly went on to another topic, refusing to be thrown by the sudden blockage.
Greg suddenly called a halt, smiling as he got up. 'OK, that's it. Thanks, Nadine. I usually hate being interviewed, but with you it was fun.'
She stood up, too, a little shaky now that it was all over. 'Have we finished?' She couldn't believe it; the time had gone so fast. Huskily, she asked, 'How did I do? Was it OK?'
'I can't tell you until I've seen the run-through,' Greg told her cheerfully. 'Come on, I'll walk you to Reception.'
She had a sinking feeling that she hadn't impressed him, was not going to get the job.
'I have a few other people to look at before I make a decision,' he told her gently. 'But I won't keep you waiting for too long, I promise.'
Who else was he seeing? she wondered, but couldn't ask, of course. So she smiled hard and nodded.
'I understand.'
'You're a pro!' he said, guiding her back along the maze of corridors to the lift, in which they met Juno Harper, who was wearing a tailored black suit in which she managed to look sensuously professional. She glanced at Greg and gave him a quick, warm smile.
'Hello, darling, isn't this weather ghastly?' Her eyes drifted to Nadine with faint interest, then she did a double-take as she recognised her.
'Oh, hello, Nadine Carmichael, isn't it?' She extended a languid hand, the nails perfectly manicured, the skin soft and white. 'I've always wanted to interview you. Your face is everywhere these days.' She pulled a glossy magazine out from under her arm, waved it at Nadine. 'On the cover of this, for a start! I loved the outfit. Lucky you, going to all those fashion shows in Paris; I bet it was wonderful.'
'Wonderful, and hectic,' Nadine said, smiling back and liking her. 'They're all crazy when it comes to showtime.'
'Aren't we all, darling?' Juno laughed, then said, 'I tell you an odd coincidence, I just had your ex on my show—Sean. And the phone calls we got! I thought I was shock-proof but we had to filter out a lot of the calls. He shows up in a lot of ladies' fantasies, and they were dying to tell him all about them.'
Nadine pretended to laugh. 'Oh, dear!'
Juno's shrewd smiling eyes were like searchlights on her face. 'If I had ever had him I'd never have let him go, but then you switched him for Jamie Colbert, didn't you, you lucky girl? Some people have all the luck!'
Nadine's teeth hurt from smiling. She was very glad when the lift stopped and they all got out. She couldn't wait to get away; it had been a nerve- racking morning. She was glad it was over.
But it wasn't over yet. Juno had more to say, lingering in the marble-floored foyer and pretending to be unaware of the stares she got from a crowd of people queuing up to see an afternoon show which was televised live twice a week.
'So what are you doing chatting up our Greg? A little bird did whisper that you were in the running to be one of the presenters on the new morning show. Do I congratulate you or is it too early for that?'
'Don't be naughty, Juno,' Greg smoothly intervened. 'When we make the announcement you'll be the first to hear, don't worry.'
Juno gave him a sideways look, twinkling, unabashed, then said to Nadine, 'I should have had you on my show with Sean, you know. That would have made a very interesting programme. I didn't get much out of him; he's an oyster, isn't he? I couldn't get a syllable out of him about Fenella.'
Nadine's eyes didn't even flicker, although the name made her spine stiffen into rigidity.
Juno chatted on like a babbling brook. 'I asked him if they were getting married now they've finished filming this mini-series... what is it called? Why can I never remember film or book titles?'
'Because you aren't really interested in them, lovey,' said Greg, but obligingly supplied the title. 'Date with Death.' He looked at Nadine's blank expression and thought she didn't know what he was talking about, so explained, 'It's that fat bestseller by the Frenchwoman, Anne-Marie Ross
ignol; some sort of psycho-babble about reincarnation and eternal love. It outsold everything else a couple of years ago. Remember it? Sean was clever enough to snap up the rights for a song before anyone else realised it was a hot property.'
'Not to mention lucky enough to have Fenella Nash just dying to make a film with him!' said Juno. 'And that gloomy-looking Frenchman playing the detective hero!'
'Yes, a good cast—it should be a big success for Sean,' Greg thought aloud, and Juno gave a thoughtful little frown.
'Should be, yes... but...'
Greg's stare went back to her sharply. 'You sound doubtful!'
Juno shrugged. 'I must admit I have a niggling little doubt or two—nothing definite, just a gut feeling. Sean didn't look like a man with a surefire hit in the can, and there have been whispers, you know how these things leak out even before the film gets to the cutting-room.'
Greg looked at Nadine, lifting his eyebrows. 'Have you heard anything?'
She shook her head. 'I don't move in the film world; how would I know what's going on?' But she couldn't help remembering the drawn look of Sean's face; the lines around eye and mouth, the grey tinge to the skin, that weariness she had never seen in his face before.
'Too bad for Sean if the series is a dud,' Juno murmured. 'He put up a lot of the money himself, which everybody knows is a crazy risk to take, but he had made a few million from Dangerous Lady, which was a huge hit, although personally I could never see why people made such a fuss about it, could you, Greg? Sean says he was only putting back into the company what he had made out of it so far, but that's just whistling in the dark. It was a mad gamble, and if his gamble doesn't come off it could be the end of Carmichael Films.'
'Don't be such a pessimist!' Greg said impatiently. 'I'd say that Date with Death has everything going for it—a great cast, a strong story, good writing, and a brilliant director. If Sean seemed down it was probably just exhaustion after months of filming. His adrenalin ran out, that's all. He'll be back on top by lunchtime tomorrow!' He looked at his watch, then kissed Nadine. 'I must run—be in touch soon, I promise.'
Charlotte Lamb Page 1