The Movie (52 page)

‘Yeah, but-‘

‘No buts, Joel. Carry out my order,’ Tom said, and hung

up.

.He stared at the pink slips on his desk. Every one of them

had rang in: Conrad Miles, Howard Thorn, all of them.

Marcia buzzed him. ‘Mr Goldman, should I get Mr Thorn for .you now?’

‘In a minute, Marcia,’ Tom said calmly. It was strange;

he knew his world had just blown up in his face, the studio, his personal fortune, all of it, and yet he suddenly felt as clear-headed as he’d ever done in his life. Joel Steinbrenner and everybody else would probably think he was insane, but Tom Goldman had a responsibility to this studio and he was going to carry it out. ‘I’ll call everybody back in a minute. But first I want you to call the Mridien Hotel on Mah6 in the Seychelles. I need to speak to Ms Marshall.’

Isabelle Kendrick sat in a soft oyster-white armchair in her drawing room, composed and relaxed, and faced her

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husband. On a small Regency table, by her side, the late editions of the day’s papers were neatly stacked. Next to them rested Isabelle’s half-drunk cup of cinnamon coffee in a blue Svres cup, her normal morning refreshment. She had not eaten breakfast for the last ten years, and as far as she was concerned, this morning was just the same as .any other. Possibly a little more enjoyable. Isabelle seemed just as collected and unruffled as ever; she was wearing an elegant caramel Georges lech pantsuit, her hair was neatly coiffed, and a subtle seed-pearl necklace gleamed against the slack skin of her throat. Totally unperturbed, Isabelle glanced up at her husband as he paced back and forth, passing his hand through his hair repeatedly, s blak eyes burning with rage and pain.

‘You never said anything. You never asked me,’ he said, glaring at her. ‘How could you do it, Isabelle? Why would you do it? You’re a monster, do you know that?’ .

‘Don’t be melodramatic, Samuel.’ His wife’s voice was ice-cold, absolutely emotionless. ‘I only told you it was me as a courtesy. And so that you wouldn’t indulge in any similar foolishness in the future.’

Kendrick stopped moving and looked Isabelle directly in the face. ‘What are you saying to me? That you were jealous?’

She shook her head, as if finding the suggestion distasteful. ‘Of course not. We don’t have that kind of marriage.’

‘The real kind, you mean,’ Kendrick said bitterly. ‘Our marriage works very well, Sam.’ Isabelle felt the adrenalin start to flow again as she sp6ke, saying aloud the things that had been taboo between them for so long. This was her moment of victory; she was going to flex her muscles, lay it out for him. He was not the only power in this house, Isabele thought viciously. He owed her. Let him see what she was capable of if he forgot that fact. She would fry loxana and any other little toy that he got too

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public with. Nobody threatened herposition, not loxana, not Sam, not anybody. ‘You know I’ve never objected to your various liaisons, but this was different. This was public. And you may do as you please, as long as it does not reflect on me.’

‘You don’t care if I screw prostitutes?’

Isabelle waved a bejewelled hand. ‘Not at all, dear.’

‘You don’t care if I see other women? iF i love another woman?’

‘Not as long as you’re discreet.’ Isabelle took a delicate

sip of her coffee. ‘Good gracious, Sam, did you think I didn’t know about your other girls? How many have there been, eight or nine, is it? Aside from the hookers. I simply hoped that you had the good sense to take precautions. All these nasty diseases going around, and of course there’s always pregnancy to consider. That can get messy. But beforehand, none of the girls came from our world.’

‘You knew, and you said nothing,’ Kendrick whispered.

The woman sitting in front of him was a stronger, a machine. He couldn’t believe that the change in Isabeile ran so deep. She looked the same, but the blonde elegance covered stone, pure rock. It was true they hadn’t been close for years, but somehow he hadn’t realized, not completely, that the women he lived with was such an automaton. It terrified,him.

‘Why should I care, dear? We’re a highly successful couple.’

He stared at her. She meant it.

‘What about love, Isabelle?’ Sam said. quietly. ‘We loved each other once.’

She gazed levelly at him. ‘That was a long time ago.’ He made one last effort. ‘You can’t mean that, Isabelle. You can’t. There has to bemore to your life than giving’ parties and ruling all the wives. You can’t be that shallow.

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Tell me you hate me, or you were jealous of her, or you want all the affairs to stop. Tell me you feel something.’

Deliberately, Isabelle reached into her bag and drew out her silver Chanel compact. She snapped it open, regarded herself in the mirror and dabbed a little powder onto the end of her nose. When she had quite finished, she snapped it shut, and finally turned to her husband.

‘Why should I say that, Sam? It would be a lie.’ She nodded at the pile of papers next to her. ‘lLoxana boasted about you to Jordan Goldman. I can’t have that, I won’t be humiliated. So if you keep your indiscretions quiet, I shan’t have to do this again.’

Kendrick shook his head. Then he turned on his heel and walked towards the door.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Isabelle demanded angrily.

Tm going to see 1Loxana Felix,’ Sam told her.

‘You can’t do that!’ she hissed, enraged.

He turned towards his wife, a certain sadness clouding his eyes.

‘Yes, I can, Isabelle. I love her. I didn’t realize how much until this moment, but now I do. And when I find

her, I’m going to ask her to marry me.’

Isabelle Kendrick paled in shock.

‘I can’t live this charade any more,’ Sam said quietly. ‘Whether tLoxana accepts my proposal or not, I want a

divorce.’

And he walked out.

‘Wake up.’

Megan stirred fitfully, restlessly, dragged out of an exhuasted sleep by Zach Mason’s warm, large hands gently shaking her shoulders. As her senses struggled towards consciousness, she felt overrhelmed by the sudden rush of feeling, her mind and her body mingling pain and pleasure in an extraordinary way. The wretched ache in her

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muscles, the sharp pain of her left foot, the hunger now raging in her empty stomach, were all balanced by the recollection of last night. Just remembering it brought a new softness to her groin, a joyful lightheadedness that had nothing to do with being half-starved. Megan’s first conscious thought, embarrassingly enough, was that she hoped she looked OK for Zach.

How’s that for shallow, she chided herself as she opened her eyes to look up at him.

‘Hey, sweetheart,’ Mason said gently. ‘Sorry to do this to you, but we really have to get going now.’

She groaned. ‘I can’t have had more than an hour’s sleep.’

Barly ten minutes after they’d finished making love, the noisy roar of a helicopter, spotlight blazing through the towering trees, had swept past their area of the forest and continued to make passes throughout the night. Zach had left the makeshift hut to try to attract attention, waving clothing, whatever, but he just couldn’t get seen. The thick jade canopy of branches and leaves abovethem prevented any real chance of the searchlights finding them. About three Zach gave up and came back to take Megan in his arms, holding her and kissing her until she blacked into unconsciou.sness just before dawn.

Mason hadn’t slept. One good thing about being a rock star, he’d had plenty of practice at that. Once he was sure Megan was finally or?t, he’d slipped away from her, checking out their immediate surroundings and looking for food and water. He reckoned they were gonna need some fuel if they were ever going to make it out of here; that boken ankle was looking bad. He wouldn’t let her continue to drag it around. Zach thought Megan was in more pain than she was making out.

He’d looked at her tenderly when he got back, curled up .where he’d left her, blonde fringe curling incongruously over that cute forehead with its thick dark brows, her

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soft lips half-open in sleep, her muscled arm flung awkwardly over the heavy, beautiful breasts that had responded so superbly to him last night. Zach felt such a surge of protectiveness he was short of breath. He marvelled at himself. He, Zach Mason, the rock icon who’d fucked-a million groupies and turned down ten million more, who’d had his pick of starlets and models for the last five years, he’d finally fallen. Pole-axed by this embarrassed, clever, gauche, determined, idealistic little bunch of contradictions. Pretty, but no more than that. Feisty. Naive. Brave. His Megan.

Great time to pick out your true love, Mason, he told himself. Starving and stranded in the middle of the fucking jungle.

‘You had at least an hour and a quarter,’ he teased her. ‘Stop whinging and get your ass in gear. I reckon we’ll be out ofhe by sundown.’

Megan lifted a cynical eyebrow. ‘Right!’

‘At least we know they’re looking for us.’

‘That’s true.’ She levered herself up, reaching for her shirt where they’d left it on the floor of the hut. ‘What do you have there?’

‘t

size of apples, that covered a grove of bushes to their left. They looked at his harvest doubtfully.

‘Call yourself a hunter-gatherer? Pathetic,’ Megan grinned.

‘I blame women’s rights. I’ve been robbed of my natural instincts,’ Zach said, carefully peeling the pineapple. He tossed Megan a white sphere. ‘So is this poisonous?’

‘Only one way to find out,’ she said, and before Zah

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could stop her, took a large bite. The flesh tasted like damp cotton wool. She devoured it.

‘Coco plum,’ Megan told him. ‘Tasteless but harmless.’ They ate in silence for a few minutes, Megan trying to slip most of her share towards Zach and Zach refusing to allow it. The fruit sugars weren’t much, but on their empty stomachs they provided a surge of energy, and as soon as Mason had swallowed the last fragment of coco plum core he lifted Megan to her feet and ducked under her legs.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ Megan shrieked, clutching his shoulders. ‘I’ve got my crutches, Zach! Put me down!’

‘No,“he told her firmly, getting a restraining grip on her calves.” ‘I’m not letting you walk. Shut up, this is non

, negotiable, OK?’

‘But I’ll slow you down,’ Megan protested. She tried to

be nonchalant, but her eyes were brimming up with tears. She dashed a hand quickly across her face. ‘I’m serious. Only one of us has to… I mean, it’d be better if you went for help and left me, came back for me…’

.‘Get this straight,’ Zach said, taking a deep breath and squaring his shoulders under her weight. Tm not leaving you. Not ever. We’re in this together, live or die, for better, for worse. All that stuff. Anyway, you’re as light as a feather. Consider it an extended piggyback ride. You can navigate.’

‘I love you,’ Megan ,whispered.

His hands tightened on her legs. ‘Let’s get out of here, OK? You can go all mushy on me later,’ Zach said firmly, but as he strode carefully forward, his heart was singing.

It took Sam over an hour to make it to 1Loxana’s front door, ploughing the Maserati first through the rabid pack of journalists, camera crews, photographers and gawking sightseers that crowded the road leading up to her villa, and then past the LAPD roadblocks that by this time hy seven

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layers thick. Eventually he managed to convince the sergeant in charge that he was Sam Kendrick of SKI by calling up Troy Savage, the guy’s favourite soap star and a SKI client, on his carphone, and having him verify it. Thank God for starstruck cops, Sam thought, as he swung the silver car into tkoxana’s drive, got out and locked it. He glanced up at the villa. Every shutter was lowered, every curtain closed. Yeah, well. That didn’t surprise him.

Kendrick felt compassion overwhelm him as he walked past the uniformed men on the door and pressed the buzzer on her entryphone. His poor baby. What she must be feeling today he could only begin to guess at. He’d seen clients go through scandals, but never anything as bad as this. Only Jackson and Madonna had it as bad as this. And neither of them had been exposed as a teenage madam, running the most exclusive call-girl service in Paris at the age of sfxteen. He still couldn’t believe it. There were so many pieces of the puzzle that didn’t make sense: an American girl, hooking in France at fourteen years old, graduates to brothel-keeper at sixteen and makes enough money by eighteen to buy herself a whole new identity and a new life - then enrols at a Catholic convent school in San Francisco. Hits the model agencies the day she graduates and the rest is history. But why France? How had she done this? And why? His loxana, his shy and fragile girl? Was it possible? But it had happened. He’d seen the pictures, watched the news. He knew it was true.

I didn’t know Isabelle and I didn’t know R.oxana, either, Sam thought, bewildered, as he stood there. All the time I was such a mogul, such a player, and I thought I read everybody like a book. But the people closest to me were the ones I couldn’t see. And Florescu tells me David Tauber was working behind my back all the time … Tauber, who I thought wasso smart, such a killer. I guess I was right. He’d have killed me, if he could.

The anger rose in him, thick and blood-red, and it was

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almost a relief. At least one emotion was dear. Once the little prick got back to LA Sam was going to smash him.

It was my own fault for not noticing, Sam berated himself. But I’d have seen it eventually. On the set I was distracted, couldn’t think about anything except tkoxana…