by Daphne Clair
She had to put a hand on the counter to steady herself, her breath coming in uneven gasps. Tiny waves of heat passed over her, and her legs felt weak. Devin raised a hand to smooth a tendril of hair from her cheek and tuck it behind her ear, and she flinched.
He frowned, dropping his hand. ‘I’m not going to touch you again,’ he said. ‘Would you like some coffee?’
Coffee? For a second the word was meaningless. ‘Yes,’ she said, then wished she hadn’t. But he was drawing up a chair for her and she sank thankfully into it as he poured two cups. At least he wasn’t looking at her while she tried to compose herself.
She grabbed the cup he handed her, and scalded her mouth with the first hasty gulp. Devin sat down and drank his in leisurely fashion. His bare chest gleamed under the merciless kitchen lamp. His hair was still untidy and he had a beard shadow on his cheeks. She’d felt the rasp of it when he kissed her.
He looked dangerously sexy.
Shannon wrenched her eyes from him and stared down at her coffee. ‘When can Rose come over?’ she asked him, forcing her mind to a safe topic.
He didn’t answer for a moment or two. Then he said, ‘She says in three weeks. If you’d like to phone her back you can discuss it with her.’
‘Three weeks!’ Her gaze flew to his face.
‘Too soon?’
Shannon swallowed. ‘It’ll be a rush. But we’ll do it.’
‘Can I help?’
‘You?’
He shrugged. ‘I’ve got a stake in this. There must be something I can do. Some donkey work.’
Donkey work? Devin? She couldn’t help a small spurt of laughter.
He said curtly, ‘I realise I know nothing about film-making—’
‘I didn’t mean to offend you,’ Shannon assured him. ‘I’m just surprised at you offering.’
‘I’m not a creative person, so I never thought it was much use trying. But there’s a lot of peripheral stuff like keeping accounts that I can do.’
It would be a relief to be able to hand over some of the practical responsibility, leaving her free for more creative tasks. ‘But do you really have time for this?’ she asked. After all, he had his own company to run.
‘I’ll make time,’ he promised.
‘Well…thank you. There are some things your business brain would be useful for…’
To accommodate Rose’s limited time-frame, there were last-minute changes to the script and the shooting schedules.
The art department redecorated and furnished parts of an old villa in period style, while carpenters were transforming an unused boardroom in a venerable bank building into a nineteenth century courtroom.
The DOP reported problems with the main camera and had to order a part in from Japan, there was a clash with city council regulations regarding parking for the huge vans carrying electrical equipment and props, and catering arrangements needed to be confirmed for the fifty or so people involved on any given day.
Remembering she had a dinner party to organise, Shannon was tempted to call it off, but that would be reneging on her bargain with Devin.
She made it easy by having a catering firm deliver. ‘I hope you don’t mind,’ she said half-defiantly to Devin, ‘but I really don’t have time to cook, and besides, they’ll do it so much better.’
‘It seems very sensible,’ he told her, ‘and I can afford it.’
‘I’ll pay for it.’
‘Don’t be silly. I wouldn’t have suggested this dinner party if I’d known how tight your shooting schedule would have to be to fit in with Rose.’
With Con and Amy smoothing the wheels, the dinner went better than Shannon expected. She had invited the art director who was working on A Matter of Honour, and her husband who managed a boutique art gallery, and the evening went very pleasantly, sometimes even hilariously.
After the guests left Devin closed the door and dropped an arm about Shannon’s shoulders as they returned to the living room. ‘That went well,’ he said. ‘I hope you enjoyed yourself too.’
‘Did you?’ She moved away from him when they entered the room, ignoring his slightly crooked smile, his gleaming eyes.
‘Very much. Almost like old times.’
It had been, on the surface. He’d smiled at her, teased her gently, sat beside her after dinner with an arm thrown over the sofa back, his thigh warm against hers.
Even when he was deep in conversation with the art director’s husband, she’d felt his eyes on her and looked up to meet his lazy smile before he turned back to the other man.
Later while the others talked she’d noticed him sitting silent, his gaze again fixed on her with curious intensity. As soon as her glass was empty he was there with a bottle ready to top it up. And when she left the room to fetch after-dinner mints from the kitchen he came after her to help.
He had been the perfect host, but it was if he had a third eye that was constantly trained on her, making her aware of herself, of her every movement, aware of him. And now she was more acutely so than ever, even though they were several feet apart.
Shannon was reminded of other occasions when they’d had guests and could hardly wait until they’d gone before tumbling into each other’s arms.
She couldn’t help wondering if that was what they would be doing if she’d not enraged him again with her refusal to consider his olive branch while she was filming. Her blood quickened and piercing regret made her breath catch in her chest.
Devin asked if he could come along to watch the first day of filming, and after a moment’s hesitation she said of course. ‘You’ll have to turn off your cell phone while we’re shooting,’ she warned him.
‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ he confessed. ‘I’ll tell the office I’ll be unavailable.’
‘You’ll be bored.’
‘I’m sure I’ll cope.’
Devin had followed her in his own car, and as the crew members arrived and stood about with coffee and toast and muffins, she introduced him as ‘My husband, who’s financing the film.’
Most of them greeted her with extravagant hugs and kisses, then took Devin’s coolly proffered hand and returned his courteous ‘Hello’ with varying degrees of surprise and grateful enthusiasm.
Craig gave him a casual ‘Hi,’ and Devin reciprocated with a nod.
Shannon checked the set while sipping coffee from a paper cup. The room had been furnished as a Victorian drawing room with buttoned velvet chairs, polished tables and ornately framed paintings. The camera, sound and lighting crew soon filled the remaining space, lifting equipment from large metal carry boxes and trailing heavy electrical cables across the floor and through the doorway.
Devin leaned against the door jamb, surveying the scene with detached interest. Holding a clipboard, Shannon advised him, ‘Don’t stand in doorways on a film set.’
He moved into the room as two crew members wearing cargo pants with bulging pockets humped a metal tripod past him and began setting up a white screen. ‘What’s that for?’
‘Lighting—it’s a reflector.’ Shannon was looking about for the art director. ‘Is Sandy here yet?’ she asked the room at large.
One of the sound crew looked up from fixing a shaggy wool-covered mike to a long, unwieldy boom. ‘Talking to wardrobe, I think.’
Devin had moved into a corner, standing with arms folded.
Shannon finished her coffee and looked about for somewhere to dump the cup, and he came forward. ‘I’ll get rid of it for you.’
‘Thanks. There’ll be a bin about,’ she said, going off to confer with the art director.
When she returned Devin was holding a tripod upright while the gaffer placed small sandbags about its base to keep it steady under the heavy lights that it supported.
He made himself unobtrusively useful until everything was in place and Shannon called for a rehearsal.
The actors blocked through their moves for the camera, while Shannon and the director of photography watched on a monitor. The DOP suggest
ed Craig should enter the shot from a different direction, and the art director shifted a table that was impeding the action. They ran through the scene several times before Shannon judged it ready to shoot.
The first take was aborted when a helicopter passed overhead, and the next because the rustle of an actress’s taffeta skirts was picked up by the mike as a loud background noise, so she was asked to limit her movements.
By lunchtime they had shot the brief scene four times, and another in the same location.
Devin appeared at Shannon’s side as she helped herself to salad and pasta in the room set aside for meals. It echoed with chatter, the bare boards, trestle tables and plastic stackable chairs not absorbing sound.
‘Is that all you’re having?’ he asked.
‘Too much to eat makes me sleepy and I need to be on my toes this afternoon.’
He scowled briefly but all he said was, ‘Are you happy with this morning’s work?’
‘We’ve made a good start. The crew are settling in nicely.’ She carried her plate to one of the tables, and he took the empty chair next to hers.
‘It’s taken a long time to get two short sequences.’
‘We’re doing okay.’
The director of photography sat down at Devin’s other side and soon the two men were deep in a discussion of the mechanics of camera work. Later she saw the DOP demonstrating to Devin how the heavy cameras were raised, lowered, and slid back and forth for different angles. Somewhat to her surprise, Devin was still on the set when the crew packed up for the day. He said to Shannon, ‘I’ll just drop in at the office on the way, and see you at home, okay?’
‘Fine.’
‘You won’t be hanging about here alone?’ he asked.
Shannon shook her head. ‘I’ll be off soon. Will you be long? I could buy something to eat on my way back to the apartment.’
‘About an hour, maybe. Don’t wait for me.’
But she did, keeping the tray of Chinese food warm until he arrived.
As they sat down to eat it, he said, ‘There’s a lot of waiting about on a film set.’
‘I told you you’d be bored.’
‘I wasn’t, but I’m beginning to see why the business is so expensive, there are so many people and so much equipment involved. And a lot of hanging about waiting. But isn’t it difficult for the actors when the script isn’t shot in sequence?’
‘We try to get all the scenes in one place done before we move to another set.’
‘So you don’t have to keep moving all the equipment.’
‘It saves a lot of time and wear and tear.’
‘And when Rose arrives…?’ he said.
‘Hers should be the only scenes still to be done at the house. Then we shift all the gear to the old bank and film her courtroom scenes first.’
‘Makes sense.’ He nodded.
‘I’m glad you came,’ she said impulsively.
‘Tomorrow I have a meeting I need to attend, but I’d like to come back another time if I won’t be in the way.’
‘Fine.’ She speared a piece of sweet-and-sour pork. ‘I hope…’ Shannon toyed with another piece of pork.
‘What?’
‘Well, you might begin to appreciate the way I feel about filming.’ Although it was a bit late for that, she acknowledged sadly.
‘I admit I never understood your…absorption in your craft.’
‘Aren’t you absorbed in what you do?’ she queried. ‘You’re very successful.’
Devin shook his head. ‘Printing machines? I could as easily have gone into manufacturing toilet fittings. Printing was something I happened to know about, but I didn’t want to set up a rival company to the family. So I figured there was a future in digital presses if I could find the right people to design and build them. All I wanted was to be independent of the family money, to make my own way.’
‘You felt pretty strongly about that.’ She knew he’d had to fight considerable opposition from his father.
‘More strongly than I’ve felt about anything—except you.’
Well, at least his business had borne sweeter fruit than his marriage. ‘I felt strongly about you too,’ she confessed. ‘I wanted our marriage to work, Devin.’
‘But not enough,’ he said, his carefully neutral voice belying the condemnation in the words, ‘to stay and make it work.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘IT wasn’t all my fault!’ Shannon flashed.
‘I know that. I’ve never pretended to be perfect. But when I take on something I don’t run out on it when things get tough.’
‘No, you just find someone to blame!’
There was a tense silence. ‘If I made you feel I was blaming you,’ Devin said, ‘I apologise. Sincerely. I made mistakes, lost patience when I should have been making an effort to see your point of view, pushed when I should have coaxed. A hundred things I should have done differently.’
‘You still think I’m responsible for the miscarriage.’
He threw out an exasperated hand. ‘I know you didn’t intentionally lose the baby.’
‘But you were angry that I did.’
‘Yes,’ he conceded. Frowning down at his coffee, he said with an apparent effort, ‘I was furious with fate for dealing you such a cruel blow. And with myself for not being able to protect you from it…from yourself. Somehow it spilled over into anger at you too, because—’ he paused, then went on in a lowered tone ‘—for a little while I was scared I’d lose you as well the baby.’
‘I wasn’t in any danger.’
She had always been healthy and strong, and on the farm she’d been accustomed to getting up early and engaging in harder physical work than filming. Laughing off his concerns, Shannon had insisted there was no reason to change her lifestyle for something as natural as pregnancy. ‘I’ll be one of those women who gives birth in the field and goes back to work with her baby on her back an hour later,’ she’d boasted.
Well, she’d been wrong. Apparently she was one of those women who couldn’t even carry a baby to term. Four months into the pregnancy it had spontaneously aborted.
Devin’s mother had sighed, ‘You really shouldn’t have kept on working, you know, dear. It’s all very well thinking you can manage a career and family, but you need to take care when you’re pregnant.’
And Shannon, racked with grief and guilt, was sure Devin tacitly agreed. As she became even further immersed in work, burying the painful memory by exhausting herself into nightly oblivion, Devin had become more and more tight-lipped and uncommunicative, until one evening he’d exploded into unexpected rage, confirming her conviction. ‘You put that damned film before me, before our marriage, before your baby,’ he had accused her. ‘And I’m not prepared to tolerate it any longer.’
‘I’m not going to give up my work!’ she’d protested, in the grip of a nameless, black terror. ‘It’s important!’ It was a necessary part of her life, her very self.
He’d chosen to misinterpret that. ‘Telling pretty stories is vital to the welfare of the world?’ he sneered.
‘They’re not just pretty stories!’ Shannon defended herself. ‘Films can influence and inform as well as entertain. Do you think what I do is less valuable than making printing presses?’
‘That’s not the point.’
‘I thought it was the point you were trying to make. And you work overtime sometimes yourself.’
‘I’m not carrying a baby! Nor ever likely to be.’
‘And because I was you think I should have given up my career?’
‘I think you could learn to think of something else besides your precious damned career. You’d never have time for any children we might have, any more than you’ve time for me, for our marriage.’
She’d tried to assure him that when filming was over she would have more time. ‘And the doctors said there’s no reason we can’t have another baby,’ she reminded him. There had been no discernible medical reason for the miscarriage.
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bsp; ‘I’m not prepared to risk another pregnancy,’ Devin stated flatly, ‘unless you stop working.’
But of course she wouldn’t. After going on location against Devin’s opposition she never returned to their home. Instead she found herself a flat, collected her things from the house and told him it was over.
The first few months had been the hardest, but she’d stuck it out and become almost used to feeling as though she’d cut off a limb—a limb that still reminded her with phantom pain that it had once existed, had once seemed something she could never live without.
Well, she could live without Devin—adequately if not exactly happily.
She had learned to laugh again, to enjoy life, although not with the same singing intensity that had coloured her days since she met him, and to work without guilt nagging at the back of her mind.
Could he really have changed so much, not only tolerating her absorption in work but positively encouraging her? And even offering his own expertise in organisation and finance.
Shannon waited for Devin to complain about the erratic hours she worked, the skipped meals and late nights. Instead he brought coffee to her workroom when she was rearranging her storyboards and shooting schedules after midnight, and encouraged her to discuss the myriad problems that arose in the course of her day.
One night when she was actually home in time for dinner he cooked it, and later poured her coffee and made her sit down and listen to a CD with him. He didn’t talk, and after a while she slid into sleep. She was barely conscious of him removing the glass from her hand and then he lifted her into his arms.
Half waking, she murmured a protest that he ignored, and she was sleepily aware of being carried along the passageway and lowered carefully to the bed. He slipped her shoes off, loosened the fastening of her trousers and tucked her under the blankets, making her feel cosseted and deliciously comforted. She felt the warm touch of his lips on her forehead before he turned off the light, and she curled into a foetal position and instantly dropped back into a deep, satisfying sleep.
‘I booked Rose in at the Hilton,’ she told Devin next morning over a hasty coffee before leaving. ‘I guess it’s up to her standard.’