Judith McNaught (8 page)

the wrong direction. That's what happened in that first picture—the steers turned and headed right for us."

"Michelle says you saved her life that day. You picked her up and carried her to safety."

Zack tipped his chin down and grinned. "I
had
to,"

he joked. "I was running like hell for the rocks, and the steers were right behind me. Michelle was in my path. I picked her up to get her out of my way."

"Don't be so modest. She said she was running for her life and screaming for someone to help her."

"So was I," he teased. Sobering, he added, "We were both kids back then. It seems like a hundred years ago."

She shifted onto her side and stretched out beside him, her finger tracing an enticing path from his shoulder to his navel, then stopping. "Where are you really from? And please do not give me all that studio bullshit about growing up on your own and riding in the rodeo circuit and hanging around with motorcycle gangs."

Zack's candid mood did not extend to discussing his past. He had never done so before, nor would he ever. When he was eighteen and the studio publicity department wanted to know about that, he'd coolly told them to invent one for him, which they had. His real past was dead, and the discussion of it was off limits. His evasive tone made that emphatically clear. "I'm not from anyplace special."

"But you're no vagabond kid who grew up without knowing which fork to use, that much I do know,"

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she persisted. "Tommy Newton told me that even when you were eighteen, you already had a lot of class, a lot of 'social polish,' he called it. That's all he knows about you, and he's worked with you on several films. None of the women who've worked with you know anything either. Glenn Close and Goldie Hawn, Lauren Hutton and Meryl Streep—

they all say you're wonderful to work with, but you keep your private life to yourself. I know, because I've asked them."

Zack made no attempt to hide his displeasure. "If you think you're flattering me with all your curiosity, you're wrong."

"I can't help it," she laughed, pressing a kiss to his jaw, "You're every woman's fantasy lover, Mr.

Benedict, and you're also Hollywood's mystery man.

It's a well-known fact that none of the women who've preceded me in this bed of yours have gotten you to do any talking about anything really personal. Since I happen to be in this bed with you, and since you've talked to me tonight about a lot of things that
are
personal, I figure I'm either catching you at a weak moment, or that … just maybe … you like me better than the others. Either way, I have to try to discover something about you that no other woman has found out. It's my feminine pride that's at stake here, you understand."

Her jaunty bluntness reduced Zack's annoyance to exasperated amusement. "If you want me to keep liking you better than the others," he said half-seriously, "then stop prying and talk about something more

pleasant."

"Pleasant…" She draped herself across his chest and smiled teasingly into his eyes as she threaded her fingers through the mat of hair on his chest. Based on her body language, Zack expected her to say something suggestive, but the topic she chose startled a surprised chuckle from him: "Let's see … I know

you hate horses, but you like motorcycles and fast cars. Why?"

"Because," he teased, threading his fingers through hers,
"they
do not gather into herds with their friends when you leave them parked and then try to run you down when you turn your back.
They
go where you point them."

"Zack," she whispered, lowering her mouth to his,

"Motorcycles aren't the only things that go where you

point them. I do, too."

Zack knew exactly what she meant. He pointed. She moved lower and bent her head.

* * *

Sated and relaxed, Zack watched her moving around his kitchen in pleated slacks and a shirt knotted at the midriff. Devoid of sexy clothes and extravagant makeup, she was far more appealing and infinitely lovelier to him. As he'd already discovered, she was also intelligent, sensual, and witty. "Then what?" he asked.

"Then I'd like to quit. I'm thirty. Like you, I want a real life, a meaningful life with something more to think about than my figure and whether or not I'm getting a wrinkle. There's more to life than this glossy,

superficial fantasyland we inhabit and perpetrate on the rest of the world."

An unprecedented statement like that from an actress made Rachel an unexpected breath of fresh air to him. Moreover, since she was planning to stop working, it seemed as if he'd actually met a woman who

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was interested in him, not in what he could do for her career. He was thinking of that when Rachel leaned

over his kitchen table and softly said, "How do my dreams compare with yours?"

She was making him an offer, Zack realized, and doing it with quiet courage and no games. He studied

her in silence for a moment and then made no attempt to hide the emphatic importance he was placing on

his next question. "Do you have children in your dreams, Rachel?"

Sweetly and without hesitation, she said, "Your children?"

"My children."

"Can we start now?"

Zack burst out laughing at her unexpected reply, then she plopped onto his lap and his laughter faded, replaced by stirrings of tenderness and a vibrant hope, emotions he thought had died when he was eighteen. His hands slid under her shirt, and tenderness merged with passion.

They were married in the graceful gazebo on the lawn of Zack's Carmel estate four months later, while a

thousand invited guests, including several governors and senators, looked on. Also present, although uninvited, were dozens of helicopters that hovered overhead, their blades creating cyclones on the lawn that whipped up women's gowns and dislodged toupees, while the reporters who occupied the choppers

aimed cameras at the festivities below. Zack's best man was his neighbor in Carmel, industrialist Matthew

Farrell, who came up with a solution to the invasion of the press: Glowering at the helicopters hovering frantically overhead, he said, "They ought to repeal the damned First Amendment."

Zack grinned. It was his wedding day, and he was in a rare mood of utter conviviality and quiet optimism, already envisioning cozy evenings with children on his lap and the sort of family life he'd never

known. Rachel had wanted this big wedding, and he had wanted to give it to her, although he'd have preferred flying to Tahoe with just a couple of friends. "I could always send someone to the house for

some rifles," he joked.

"Good idea. We'll use the gazebo for a bunker and shoot the bastards down."

The two men laughed, then they fell into a companionable silence. They'd met three years ago when a

group of Zack's fans climbed the security fence around his house and set off the security systems at both

residences as they fled. That night, Zack and Matt had discovered they shared several things in common,

including a liking for rare Scotch, a tendency toward ruthless bluntness, an intolerance of pretension, and, later, a similar philosophy toward financial investments. As a result, they were not only friends, they were

also partners in several business ventures.

* * *

When
Nightmare
was released, it didn't receive an Oscar or even a nomination, but it made a healthy profit, received excellent reviews, and completely revived Emily's and Rachel's faltering careers.

Emily's

gratitude was boundless and so was her father's.

Rachel, however, abruptly discovered she was not at all

ready to give up her career, nor was she ready to have the baby Zack had wanted so badly. The career she'd claimed she didn't want was, in fact, an obsession that consumed her. She could not bear to miss

an "important" party or ignore an opportunity for publicity no matter how minor, and she kept Zack's household staff, his secretary, and his publicist in an uproar as they tried to cope with her social demands and cover up her more outrageous publicity ploys.

She was so desperate for fame and acclaim that she despised any actress who was better known than herself and so pathetically insecure about her own
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ability that she was afraid to work in any picture unless Zack directed it.

The optimism Zack had experienced on his wedding day collapsed under the weight of reality: He'd been gulled into marriage by a clever, ambitious actress who believed that he alone held the key to fame

and fortune for her. Zack knew it, but he blamed himself even more than he blamed Rachel. Ambition had caused her to marry him, and Zack could empathize with her motive, even if he didn't admire her

methods because he, too, had once felt driven to prove himself. He, on the other hand, had been compelled to commit matrimony out of an

uncharacteristic and embarrassingly naive streak that had

actually let him believe, albeit briefly, in a cozy picture of devoted spouses and rosy-cheeked, happy children clamoring for bedtime stories. As he should have known from his own youth and experience, such families were a myth perpetrated by poets and movie producers. Faced with that realization, Zack's life seemed to stretch before him like a monotonous plateau.

Among those in Hollywood afflicted with a similar case of ennui, the prescribed solution was a line of coke, a variety of drugs, legal and otherwise, or else a bottle of liquor taken twice daily. Zack, however, possessed his grandmother's contempt for weakness, and he scorned such emotional crutches. He solved his problem in the only way he knew how: Each morning, he immersed himself in his work, and he kept at

it until he finally dropped into bed at night. Rather than divorcing Rachel, he rationalized that, although his

marriage was not idyllic, it was far better than his grandparents' had been and no worse than many other

marriages he'd seen. And so he offered her a choice: She could either get a divorce, or she could curb her ambitions and settle down, and he in turn would grant her wish and direct her in another picture.

Rachel wisely and gratefully accepted the latter offer, and Zack increased his hectic schedule in order to

keep his part of the bargain. After his success directing
Nightmare,
Empire was eager to let him star in

and direct any film of his choice. Zack found a script he loved for an action thriller called
Winner Take
All,
with starring roles for himself and Rachel, and Empire put up the money. Using a combination of patience, cajolery, acid criticism, and an occasional show of icy temper, he manipulated Rachel and the rest of the film's cast until they gave him what he wanted, and then he manipulated the lighting and camera

angles so they captured it.

The results were spectacular. Rachel received an Academy Award nomination for her role in
Winner
Take All.
Zack won an Oscar for Best Actor and another for Best Director for his work in it. The latter

award merely confirmed what Hollywood moguls had already noted: Zack had a genius for directing.

He

knew instinctively how to turn a suspenseful shot into a hair-raising scene that gave the audience chills, he

could coax a belly laugh with what had been written as a mildly amusing remark, and he could steam up the movie screens with a love scene. Moreover, he could do it within the film's budget.

His two Oscars brought Zack tremendous

satisfaction but no deep contentment. Zack didn't notice. He

no longer expected or sought contentment, and he deliberately kept himself too busy to notice the lack of

it. In his quest to stay challenged, he directed and starred in two more films during the next two years—an erotic action/thriller costarring with Glenn Close and an action/adventure movie in which he teamed up with Kim Basinger.

He was fresh out of challenges and looking for a new one when he flew to Carmel to finalize a joint business venture that Matt Farrell was putting together. Late that night, he went looking for something to

read and picked up a novel left there by an unknown houseguest. Long before he finished it at dawn, Zack knew
Destiny
was going to be his next picture.

The following day, he walked into the president's office at Empire Studios and handed the book to him.

"Here's my next picture, Irwin."

Irwin Levine read the blurb on the book jacket, leaned back in his tall suede chair, and sighed. "This
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looks like heavy drama, Zack. I'd like to see you do something lighthearted for a change." Abruptly, he swung his chair around, picked up a script from the glass table behind his glass desk, and handed it to Zack with an eager smile. "Somebody passed me this script under the table. It's already got a buyer, but

if you say you'll do it, we could try to negotiate for it. It's a romance. Good stuff. Fun. Nobody's made a film like this in decades, and I think the public's hungry for it. You're perfect for the lead and you could

play the part in your sleep, it's so easy. Making it will be cheap and quick, but I've got a hunch the picture's going to be a runaway hit."

The script, which Zack agreed to read that night, turned out to be a fluffy, predictable romance where true love changes the life of a cynical tycoon who then lives happily ever after with his beautiful new wife.

Zack hated it, partly because the lead role would require no effort from him at all, but mostly because it

reminded him of the foolish fantasies about love and marriage he'd quietly cherished as a youth and acted on as an adult. The next morning, he tossed the script for
Pretty Woman
on Levine's desk and said disdainfully, "I'm not a good enough actor or a good enough director to make this tripe seem believable."

"You've become a cynic," Levine said, shaking his head and looking aggrieved. "I've known you since you were a kid, and I love you like my own son. I'm disappointed to see it happening to you. Very disappointed."