Star Attraction (13 page)

Zaira put her hand on his arm to
steady herself, and they soon found themselves in the large cool
air-conditioned store.
 
Zaira tried
to concentrate on the shopping, planning meals in her head for the next few
days, but she seemed to be floating in a cloud. Brad propelled her and the cart
silently.
 
He looked at the labels
occasionally, but for the most part he just held things up and she either
nodded or shook her head.

“If you like it, get it,” she
would insist, but he would tell her it was only a suggestion.

“I was going to cook tonight,”
Brad said, “but it is so hot, I think maybe it would be nice to go out, just
for a change.
 
It’ll be a pretty
busy week coming up, with lots of work for both of us.”
 
Brad began to load the food onto the
conveyor belt at the checkout with her help.

If only he knew,
Zaira thought with a groan,
realizing that her rehearsal schedule on top of the lectures and the screenplay
was going to be punishing.
 
So long
as nothing interrupted the routine, they would get through, but it would be
cutting it close for the performance on Saturday night.

She tried to protest as he
insisted on paying for all the shopping and pushed her into a taxi, while he
loaded all the food into the trunk of the car.

“Really, Brad, you’ve already paid
the rent for months in advance, and now you’ve bought months worth of food!
Where am I going to put it all?” Zaira complained halfheartedly.

“You’ve got plenty of cupboard
space in the kitchen, and what you have in there at the moment wouldn’t feed a
sparrow.
 
And I can tell you hardly
do any cooking, because the place certainly doesn’t look and smell as though
you do.
 
So the first thing I’m
going to insist is that my screenwriter takes better care of herself, and that
means proper food for both of us.”

They went up the elevator with all
the bags, and soon they were both busily loading the cupboards and
refrigerator.
 
Then they turned
their attention to unpacking the shopping they had done earlier for the apartment.

Zaira was impressed with the new
additions, which made the whole place look much more like a comfortable home.

Zaira helped Brad remake his bed
and put up the curtains, and as she put the new lamp on the bedside table she
caught a glimpse of a photograph in a silver frame.
 
Brad must have seen her staring, for he sped across the room
and put it face down in the top drawer.
 

“The lamp looks lovely there,” he
said.

Zaira was overwhelmed by curiosity
and
 
anger.
 
So
that
gorgeous blond creature was the
woman who had won his heart.

Zaira turned away from him and
tried to sound normal as she said, “Well, that's it for now, so I think I'd
better go do some work.”

She reached the door and was just
about to leave the room when he said, “Don’t forget, dinner later.”

“No, Brad, I don’t think so.
 
Too much to do.
 
See you.”

Zaira went into the study and
stared at a blank screen for several minutes.
 
She felt raging jealousy coursing through every vein and
artery, and for once in her life she really didn't know what to do.
 
She felt desolate.
 
How could she possibly compete for him
with a woman like that?
 
He thought
she was a dowdy frump, a mere friend, nothing more, for all his kisses.
 

Maybe Brad was right.
 
Maybe if she fixed herself up, and
stopped her pretence of being Zoe Dominick, she might have a chance of making
him realize she was not only attractive, but intelligent. And vice versa. And
of course, Zoe Dominick was an actress.
 
She could fit into his world; if only he were interested in them
both.
 

Zaira thought of a dozen different
ways of trying to tell him the truth, but no matter how she looked at it, she
could still imagine him with a cold look of hatred on his face.
 

In the end, she was forced to
reject the idea of revealing everything.
 
She didn’t want her whole fantasy world to come crashing down around her
just yet.
 
Soon enough he would
find out the whole truth, and then she would probably lose Brad forever.

Hours later, Zaira heard a tap at
the door.
 
She clicked a few keys on
her computer to save her work before telling Brad to come in.
 
He looked at her searchingly as he
entered, and she thought for a moment he was worried.

“I’m making great progress on this
today, so if you don’t mind, I think I’ll just carry on,” she said in a neutral
voice.

“I was wondering if you wanted
something to eat,” he said casually.

She shook her head, and carried on
typing.

“Can I see what you’ve done so
far?” he requested, but again she refused.

“I don’t want to stop to print it
just yet.
 
Give me a few minutes.”

Brad walked out of the room
silently.

Zaira breathed a sigh of
relief.
 
His presence filled the
room, and as often as she told herself she was not going to be drawn to him
again, there seemed to be a vibrancy he gave out which she found irresistible.

After about another hour Brad
returned, this time with a plate of hot Indian food on a tray.

“I always keep my promises,
Zaira,” he said softly.

She could sense a hidden meaning
in his words as he smiled down at her.
 
“Thank you, it looks lovely.
 
Here, I’ll save and print this, and then eat it. She clicked a few keys
deftly, and then asked him if he’d eaten yet.

“No, I was hoping you’d consider
joining me,” Brad replied, turning away from her slightly as if he expected to
be refused.

“Well, this old thing makes an
awful lot of noise, so go put mine on the table, and I’ll start the printer and
then join you.”

“Great,” he said, smiling
boyishly. He whisked the plate off the desk and trotted out the door in a
second.

When Zaira came out of the study,
she saw that he had put a tablecloth and napkins on the table, and even found
some candles for her candlesticks.
 
There was a bottle of wine on the table, and he poured her a generous
glass.

“It looks super, thank you,” she
admired, as he pulled the chair out for her and sat her down.

Zaira suddenly realized she was
hungry, and ate heartily, even asking for seconds of the scrumptious
chicken.
 
Brad chatted about a
couple more ideas he had had about the costumes, and showed her a few sketches.
 
Then he made a large pot of coffee and
they sat down in the office together.
 

“My goodness, you’ve got to be the
fastest worker I’ve ever seen,” he marveled.

Again Zaira felt guilty about
deceiving him.

Brad made comments on the pages
which had just been printed.

Zaira decided to go back over the
other pages he had already marked and type in all his additions.
 
She could use a good working copy, to
clarify in her mind the things Brad was looking for.
 
She needed to suit the words to the moods and settings, and
even to herself as an actress.

As Zaira typed, she glimpsed Brad
occasionally as he stooped his head down over the papers and scribbled, and she
reflected again how easy it was being with him.
 
Even in this tiny room, she felt completely at home with
him, in spite of the sexual tension she felt every time she took in his
breathtaking masculine beauty.

 
Zaira could not recall ever having worked so closely with
anyone before, let alone a man.
 
In
all the years she’d had with Jonathan, they had never sat down together like
this to work out their problems, even when she had been an equal partner in
their ad agency.

“Great, this is brilliant stuff,”
Brad praised enthusiastically when he had finished reading the sheaf of
papers.
 
“The Dark Lady is
wonderful.
 
Intelligent,
headstrong, beautiful, in spite of Shakespeare’s protests, and she is so
complex, it’s like she’s two women in one.
 
You know, the one staid
 
and sedate, the other vibrantly daring and alive.
 
But when she falls in love, it's with
the one man who can satisfy both aspects of her personality.”

Zaira stared at him wordlessly,
and wondered if there was mockery in his green eyes.
 
But no, he seemed to be perfectly sincere, and for a moment
she was almost tempted to tell him the truth about her own split personality
which had come about by error more than design.

But Brad was completely engrossed
in the script, and she remembered once again that the show had to go on as far
as the production of
Hamlet
was concerned.
 
On Saturday night, she would be free to tell Brad the truth, and then
she would get to see how sincere his praise really was.

Zaira carried on adding, deleting,
correcting, until Brad looked up and said, “You must be exhausted.
 
You’ve been at it all day.
 
Don’t you teach tomorrow?”

“I’m all right, I get bursts of
activity like this sometimes.
 
My
first lecture isn’t until eleven, so I can have a lie in if I want to.”

“Well, you didn’t have one this
morning, because I heard you up and in the bath at seven, so it’s my turn to do
the coffee tomorrow.”

“Don’t worry about me, if you have
to teach.”

“I do, at nine, but I’ll be back
at ten, and I’ll look over the new copy then.
 
I don’t have rehearsals until the afternoon, which may go on
all night until we're good enough.”

“What’s your leading lady like as
a director?” Zaira asked mischievously.

“Zoe is wonderful at everything
she does,” Brad said softly, and then shook his head and looked at her.
 
“But she’s too glamorous for me.”

“But you’re a Hollywood director!
All she did was write a bestseller!” Zaira protested.

“Yes, but that's no mean
feat.
 
She probably comes from a
rich Southern plantation family and is spoilt rotten. And I know, you're going
to tell me that I too come from a rich family, but I don’t know, she just seems
too perfect somehow, and she certainly isn’t as intelligent as you.”

Zaira’s temper nearly
erupted.
 
So he thought her alter
ego Zoe was a spoilt rich girl, a snob, and dumb in the bargain.
 
And he
had
been comparing them!
 
But her temper cooled when she realized
that she had come out the winner, and not the lovely
 
and glamorous Zoe. How very strange, Zaira thought, as she
sought to even up the contest.

“Certainly any dealings she has
had with me, she hasn’t been the least bit snobbish, and I know she doesn’t
come from a rich family at all.
 
She just wrote the book, and it became successful.
 
She went to university the same as me,
and she's very hard-working from all that I’ve seen.”

Brad nodded, and shifted uneasily
in his chair.
 
“Well, you obviously
know her better than I do, and so as you say, I ought to give her the benefit
of the doubt.
 
I suppose she has
lots of men around her though, or is married already?” he asked, trying to
sound uninterested, but she could see he was rubbing his hands together
uneasily.

Zaira paused for thought, and then
said, “So far as I know from the couple of times I’ve met her, she's not in the
least a man-eater.
 
She certainly
wouldn’t let a man near her unless she was completely serious about him.
 
She had a bad marriage in her youth,
you see,” she explained smoothly, when Brad looked up in surprise.
 

“So she tells me she’s been off
men completely since then, although she did mention having met someone very
nice recently in the past.
 
It
wouldn’t be you, would it?” she asked slyly, and watched and waited for his
response.

He looked rather flustered, and
stood up.
 
“I can’t imagine her
thinking of me like that.”

“That’s true,” Zaira said with a
wicked smile.
 
“I can’t imagine
herself allowing business and pleasure to get mixed up.
 
She’s far too sensible.”