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‘Yes?’ said Babs, turning.
‘The trailer’s arrived with your costumes.’
‘Thanks, I’ll be right out,’ she replied, draining her cup as she rose. ‘Come along, Tess, duty calls.’
Tessa rose and returned her cup and saucer to the trolley, then she followed her cousin to the door.
‘Heck, why didn’t I think of it?’ exclaimed Babs, leaning over to peer round her approaching cousin as she called out to the director who was staring morosely down into the contents of his cup. ‘Sandro, I suggest you try talking nicely to Tess…she’s a whiz-kid when it comes to shorthand and typing!’
Tessa gave her cousin a look of stunned incredulity.
‘Is that true?’ demanded Sandro, appearing as though by magic at her side and now interest personified as he gazed down at her, a megawatt smile adorning his hand-some features.
‘Sandro, not now,’ groaned Babs, grabbing Tessa by the arm and pulling her through the door. ‘I have to show Tess exactly what you’ll be needing from the trailer, otherwise you’ll have even more problems than you already have.’
‘And what, exactly, was all that about?’ hissed Tessa as she followed in her cousin’s rushed wake through the rear of the hotel and out to the car park housing the equipment trailers.
‘Sandro’s fretting because he won’t have Carla to tie his shoe-laces for him,’ retorted Babs with a laugh. ‘Though, as Carla never stops taking notes while he’s on set, he probably does need secretarial assistance of some sort—and I’d jump at it, if I were you.’ She opened up one of the trailers and motioned Tessa to follow her inside.
‘I wouldn’t have the faintest idea what a production secretary does,’ protested Tessa.
‘I’m sure Sandro’s perfectly capable of explaining what he needs,’ chuckled Babs, turning on a light and casting a critical eye around the neatly packed interior. ‘It’s just that getting three men costumed up isn’t exactly going to occupy much time and I know for a fact that Sandro would pay you top rates if you stood in for Carla.’ She turned and gave Tessa a reassuring smile. ‘At least give it some thought while we root out what you’ll need from this lot’
* * *
‘So, have you had any thoughts?’ asked Babs as they ascended the main staircase to their rooms an hour later.
‘It’s not as though I’ve been offered anything yet,’ stalled Tessa—but if she were, it would be a golden opportunity, she thought with an inevitable pang of guilt.
‘Look, Tess, you’re obviously aware how fond I am of Sandro,’ said Babs gently. ‘This is the third of his films I’ve been involved with and I’ve nothing but admiration for his incredible talent and also his professionalism.’
‘But?’ demanded Tessa wryly as they reached the door of her room.
‘But he can be extremely difficult where women are concerned.’
‘Babs, I’m perfectly aware of his reputation.’
‘I wasn’t necessarily referring to his allegedly lousy behaviour towards women,’ retorted Babs. ‘It’s just that I’ve seen the other side of the picture—the way women subject him to every bit of adulation as they do the male stars in his films.’
‘My heart bleeds for the poor man,’ retorted Tessa waspishly.
‘Tess, that’s not fair! He’s a director, not a film star, and he plainly loathes the way those women slaver over him. Not that I’m saying that’s quite what you did when he came into the lounge, but he didn’t take too kindly to your being so obviously bowled over by him.’
‘I wasn’t in the least bowled over by him!’ exclaimed Tessa indignantly. ‘He’s simply the first real celebrity I’ve ever met and I was a bit—well, overawed,’ she added lamely. ‘I—oh, what’s the use?’ She opened the door of her room, grabbed her cousin by the arm and pulled her inside.
‘Tess, I want to go and have a shower,’ protested Babs.
‘Just sit down—there’s something I want to show you,’ muttered Tessa, opening one of the dressing-table drawers and taking out a file. ‘You’re going to hate me for this,’ she muttered, handing her cousin the file.
Babs sat down on the bed, her face expressionless as she glanced through the couple of pages of notes, then turned to the pocket at the back of the file and removed a wodge of press cuttings.
‘Who put you up to this, Tess?’ she asked quietly.
‘I was talking to Ray Linton a couple of months ago——asking him for a job, actually. He mentioned the names of some celebrities and said that if I could come up with a profile on someone of that calibre he’d be prepared to look at my work. Sandro Lambert was one of those names, so when you mentioned helping you out here…’ She shook her head miserably as her words petered out. ‘It was despicable of me even to think of using you in such a way.’
‘You know the sort of paper Ray Linton edits!’ exclaimed Babs harshly. ‘Profile, my eye! All he’s interested in is muck—the more the better!’
‘Babs, you know I wouldn’t dream of writing anything like that,’ protested Tessa hoarsely.
‘Yes, I do,’ sighed Babs, tossing aside the file. ‘Which is why I’m certain that, even if you succeed in writing up some surreptitious article on Sandro, you haven’t a chance in hell of having it printed.’
‘Why?’ demanded Tessa hotly. ‘Because my allpowerful stepfather will make sure I don’t?’
‘Grow up, Tessa,’ sighed Babs, rising. ‘You never had any real interest in becoming a journalist until you discovered Charles was so against it. For as long as anyone can remember, all you ever wanted was to be a nurse. I know how hard it was on you having to give it up and how difficult it must be having to think in terms of a different career—but are you really certain that journalism is that career?’ She walked over to Tessa and gave her an affectionate hug. ‘I’m off to pack and have a shower,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you for supper…Oh, yes, and I’ll let you have that book I was telling you about—I’ve finished it.’
Tessa flopped down on to the bed once the door had closed behind Babs, gazing dejectedly around the beautiful, wood-panelled room that had earlier so enchanted her. The thought of her own duplicity had racked her with guilt, she admitted to herself, but, even having confessed, she didn’t feel any better. Babs was right—right about everything! Her only ambition had been to become a nurse, and she had sailed through her written exams and had high hopes of doing the same in her practical training until the antiseptics she was coming into increasing contact with had triggered off an allergic reaction in her hands. And Babs was right about her having ogled Sandro Lambert! It was round about the time that her unfortunate tendency towards allergy had manifested itself that so too had her equally unfortunate tendency towards being attracted to completely the wrong sort of man. After the first two—lame, but dauntingly tenacious ducks—it was those dangerously attractive and often virtually unattainable men on whom she had invariably set her sights. Men like Sandro Lambert, she thought with a sudden prickle of apprehension…well, not exactly like him, she corrected herself as it occurred to her that she had never in her life met a man with the presence, the almost palpable animal magnetism that this man possessed.
She gave an exasperated shake of her head. There was only one word to describe a woman who could feel as strongly attracted as she had towards a man who hadn’t even bothered to acknowledge her existence, let alone exchange a civil word with her—and that word was stupid! Yet nothing she had done warranted the way he had behaved, so why on earth should she feel any guilt? If Sandro Lambert was to be her stepping-stone into journalism, she intended stepping without a qualm!
‘It’s still open,’ she called out at the sound of a knock on the door. ‘I’ve been doing some thinking,’ she announced as the door opened.
‘Is that so?’
The words, and the appearance of Sandro Lambert in the doorway, brought a shriek of horror from her.
‘I thought you were Babs!’ she accused, leaping from the bed.
‘I can’t think why,’ he murmured, a look of amusement flitting over his otherwise coolly expressionless face. ‘There’s something I’d like to discuss with you,’ he continued. ‘I’m in the Donegal suite at the end of the corridor—I use the sitting-room as my office.’
‘I’d be useless as a secretary, if that’s what you want to discuss,’ she called after him as he turned to leave. What on earth was she saying? she asked herself incredulously the instant the words were out—what more could she have possibly asked for, as far as her proposed article was concerned, than to observe him at work from virtually by his side?
‘How refreshingly modest of you,’ he drawled, ‘especially when you haven’t the slightest idea what would be required of you.’
She bit back a groan of frustration as the door closed behind him, then hesitated for only the briefest of moments before dragging it open and racing down the corridor after him.
‘It’s just that I don’t know anything about film work,’ she excused herself breathlessly when she had caught up with him.
‘A point we had already established,’ he observed drily, unlocking the door to the suite and holding it open for her with a mocking bow.
She entered the small hallway and on through the doorway before her into the sitting-room, her eyes discounting the clutter littering just about every available surface. It was a beautiful, high-ceilinged room, its exquisite furnishings matching the same high standards she had noticed throughout the hotel.
‘It’s a lovely place,’ she blurted out, the breathlessness in her words betraying her stifling lack of ease. ‘The hotel, I mean…and its surroundings.’
‘Ireland is a very beautiful country,’ he murmured, flashing her a slightly startled look before clearing the debris from one of the chairs and motioning her to be seated. ‘Do you know the country?’
‘No, this is my first visit,’ replied Tessa, her mental state approaching that of a nervous pupil about to be interrogated by the headmaster as she sat down.
‘Tell me, Tessa,’ he murmured, removing a bundle of papers from the armchair opposite hers before sitting down on it, ‘what do you do?’
‘Do?’ she echoed, suddenly distracted by the memory of pictures she had seen of Leona Carlotti, the extraordinarily beautiful Italian actress who was his mother, and wondering why she hadn’t spotted the obvious family resemblance until this very moment.
‘Yes—do,’ he snapped, then made a visible effort to curb his impatience. ‘Babs mentioned your having stepped in to help her out at the last minute—so I take it you’re not in the costume design business?’
‘No—I was made redundant just after Christmas,’ she said, her own reason warning her only a fraction after his angrily tensing jaw had that she hadn’t actually answered his question.
‘But you can do shorthand and typing,’ he stated in tones that revealed how little used he was to curbing his impatience.
Tessa nodded, her jittery state of mind not in the least helped by sudden thoughts of her present love-hate relationship with her infuriating stepfather. It had been Charles who had suggested a secretarial course once she had been forced to abandon nursing, unblushingly hinting that such skills would be invaluable in the journalism in which she had begun showing an interest and to which, even then, he had probably already decided to block her entry.
‘Well, as you may have gathered, there won’t be nearly as much wardrobe work as originally anticipated,’ continued Sandro, hooking one long, denim-clad leg over an arm of the chair and drumming tanned fingers impatiently against the other.
She could almost sympathise with his irritation, she thought wretchedly, knowing how she would have felt if obliged to contend with the monosyllabic half-wit she must appear to be.
‘So, you’ll have quite a bit of time on your hands,’ he continued, the strain of the unfamiliar control he was exercising over himself grating in his tone.
‘I’d be happy to help you in whatever way I can,’ Tessa blurted out, marginally succeeding in her battle to get a grip on herself. ‘But you’ll have to bear in mind my complete ignorance of filming…and all the technical terms associated with it.’
‘I’ll keep that uppermost in my mind,’ he murmured, exasperation, relief and amusement mingling in his tone. ‘Perhaps it would help if I gave you a brief summary of the film and explained my reasons for coming here to shoot the finishing touches?’
‘Yes—I’m sure it would!’ exclaimed Tessa, a little of her customary confidence returning as relief inexplicably flooded her.
He hadn’t really got an accent, she decided some time later, when her ears had become more attuned to that attractively husky voice; it was more that he would now and then express himself in a way that wasn’t typically English, despite his flawless command of the language. As she listened she found her mind sifting back through the details she had hurriedly researched on his background. Needless to say, it was his famous mother who was most written about in connection with him. His English father, she vaguely remembered, was something to do with international law and appeared to shun publicity. Perhaps it was the fact that he had been brought up in Italy that accounted for those slight, though most appealing irregularities in his use of English.
‘We used the studios for the flashbacks to the central character’s medieval ancestor,’ he was saying. ‘We’d virtually completed shooting when I had to come over here for a couple of days in connection with my next film. I stayed in this hotel and it wasn’t until I took a walk along the beach that it hit me I’d found something I wasn’t even looking for—the exact location in which to place the flashback scenes.’
‘What do you mean by “place” them?’ asked Tessa, puzzled. ‘If you’ve already filmed it all and have no cast here—’
‘I don’t need the cast,’ he laughed. ‘Well, no more than the three Irish stage actors I’m using. What I want is to capture the brooding magnificence of a landscape virtually untouched by time and link it in with what we’ve put together in the studio.’ The unguarded look on Tessa’s face brought an almost teasing smile to his lips. ‘You didn’t think that what comes up on the screen is filmed in step by step sequence, did you?’
‘Of course not,’ she muttered, while a panic-stricken voice from within demanded to know how she expected to compile a clandestine, professionally detached appraisal of the working habits of a man whose voice brought her out in goose-bumps and whose smile had the power to turn her legs to jelly. ‘It’s a shame you won’t be able to do all you wanted to,’ she said, striving to sound relaxed.
‘What do you mean?’
‘All those costumes that Babs had sent over—you’re not using them now.’
‘There’s a wedding banquet in one of the flashback scenes. I had considered using the townspeople as extras to depict the contrasting poverty between the guests and the medieval villagers, but I’ve decided against it.’
‘You mean this ghastly flu epidemic has decided for you,’ countered Tessa, relieved to hear herself at long last beginning to sound relatively normal.
‘No—I mean that I have decided against it,’ he informed her coolly, swinging his leg from over the side of the chair and rising with a languid grace to his feet ‘Once I make up my mind I want something, I get it—that’s the way I operate.’ For all the honeyed warmth of their colour, there was a coolness to match his tone in the eyes that gazed down at her. ‘I would suggest you retire early tonight—we get started before dawn.’
Only the thought of what she stood to gain preventing her from giving vent to her fury and telling him what he could do with his wretched job, Tessa leapt to her feet.
‘Right, I’ll be there!’ she flung at him, the fact that she hadn’t the slightest idea where ‘there’ was not even occurring to her in her haste to escape.
Her eyes, now almost navy with the anger seething within her, were trained solely on the doorway through which she would soon mercifully pass, which was why she failed to spot the pile of papers he had earlier tossed on the floor and which now sent her catapulting towards him as her foot skidded across them.
His move to catch her was purely reflex, his tall body hurling itself forward at a precarious angle as his arms reached for her.
Having to force her body forward against the momentum of his to prevent them both from toppling over, Tessa clung on to him for dear life, one arm hooking round his neck while the other clutched at his shoulder.
‘Very clumsy,’ he drawled, his arms holding her against him like steel clamps while his body set about regaining its balance.
‘You’re the idiot who littered the floor so dangerously!’ she accused indignantly.
She was conscious of hearing her own gasped intake of breath as she looked up into that grimly unsmiling yet disturbingly attractive face hovering scant inches above her own. Then her only awareness was of the excitement stirring within her, numbing her mind to shocked disbelief with the stark sensuality of what was awakening in her.
‘You surely can’t be complaining—not when it presented you with this opportunity to throw yourself into my arms.’ He altered his hold on her, his fingers biting painfully into her flesh as he grasped her by her upper arms. ‘Well, now that you’re in them,’ he mocked softly, ‘do they live up to your expectations?’
‘Expectations?’ squeaked Tessa, almost speechless with fury. ‘If I were in the habit of throwing myself into the arms of complete strangers—which I’m not—I most certainly wouldn’t have picked on an ill-mannered, swollen-headed, arrogant—’
His mouth silenced the remainder of her tirade and, seconds later, shock was the only excuse her stunned mind could come up with for the ease with which his lips had managed to prise open her own and then coax them into what could only be described as enthusiastic participation in the most disturbingly arousing of kisses she had ever experienced.
The detached manner in which her mind was making no attempt whatever to monitor her actions only struck her as alarming when, with no recollection of when or how it had happened, she discovered her head to be cupped in large, deceptively gentle hands and her freed arms wrapped tenaciously around his body.
‘No!’ she howled, tearing herself free and scrubbing angrily with the back of her hand against her wildly throbbing mouth.
‘Play with fire and you’re bound to get burned,’ he intoned mockingly. ‘Though, I warn you, it will be more than your fingers you’ll get burned if you tangle with me. I could tell you I’m off women at the moment—which I am. I could also tell you that you’re far too young—which you are. And, more to the point, I could tell you that you’re not my type—which you most definitely are not’ His hand snaked out and grasped her by the wrist as she made to turn and run. ‘I hope you’re taking all this in, Tessa,’ he warned with soft menace. ‘Because, despite all those things I could tell you, I have—as I’m sure you’ve heard—an insatiable appetite for women…and I just might decide to amuse myself at your expense.’
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_f9ec3d59-3977-569b-8afb-407e4838f6b6)
‘JUST stay close by me and if there’s anything I need you to do I’ll let you know,’ said Sandro as Tessa stumbled after him down the winding path to the beach in the virtual dark of the bitterly cold morning.
To think that she had spent half the night tossing in sleepless dread of this encounter, she marvelled disgruntledly, whereas he obviously hadn’t lost any sleep over what had happened between them on their last meeting.
She had been relieved when he hadn’t appeared for dinner the previous evening, but had soon noticed that someone else was also missing.
‘That woman we saw earlier—isn’t she staying here?’ she had enquired of Babs.
‘You mean Angelica Bellini,’ her cousin had replied with a grin. ‘And what you’re really asking me is where are she and Sandro.’
‘No, I’m—’
‘And, given what you’re up to,’ Babs had continued relentlessly, plainly enjoying herself, ‘that’s not the sort of question I’m prepared to answer.’
‘You know perfectly well my intention is to do a serious article on his professional habits, not something salacious on his love life.’
‘What, in the hope that Ray Linton will print it?’ Babs had chortled. ‘Who do you think you’re kidding?’
There was no sense to be had from Babs when she was in that irritatingly flippant frame of mind, so she had let the subject drop. But her cousin’s teasingly exaggerated secrecy had left her with the impression that the director could well be romantically involved with the elusive Angelica, which, if true, and given his earlier behaviour, indicated that he more than deserved his infamy as a womaniser.
‘Are you sure you’ll be warm enough dressed like that?’ asked Sandro, eyeing her slim, jeans-clad legs when he turned and waited while she negotiated the last of the rock-hewn steps on a particularly steep and twisting section of the path.
‘Quite sure…Good heavens!’ she gasped as the beach below came into sight—a beach that was a hive of industry, littered with men and equipment of every shape and size and bathed in the illusion of bright sunlight by a blinding array of arc lamps. ‘I’m not sure what I expected,’ she whispered dazedly.
‘But nothing like this,’ he laughed, the indulgence in his tone surprising her almost as much as the sight below. ‘Come on, let’s get you down there and introduced to the grim realities of producing fantasy.’
It was only the bitter cold of the January morning that brought any grimness to the proceedings, she had decided a couple of hours later when, chilled to the marrow, she was taking a mental inventory of the meagre wardrobe she had brought with her. The only answer she could think of, to prevent a repeat of the physical agonies she was experiencing, was to wear everything she had brought in layers next time. But not even the piercing bitterness of the wind, nor the fitful drizzle of rain, could detract from her feelings of exhilaration. She was utterly absorbed in what was going on around her, fascinated beyond her every expectation—even though all she was doing, she realised, was watching them line up the shots they planned taking of the incomparably beautiful scenery.
