Star Attraction (4 page)

Then she told herself that
everyone probably gushed all over him and asked him trivial questions on that
very subject.
 
Maybe he just wanted
to be treated like an ordinary person, with a whole life which had nothing to
do with his job, and which really did involve a great deal of hard work, just
like penning a novel.
 
If he wanted
to carry on their last conversation, she was going to be honest and sincere,
even if it cost her the contract for the film rights to
The Dark Lady
.

He returned with an ice-cold gin
and tonic,.

Zaira looked at him in surprise.
“My favourite.
 
How did you guess?”

Brad shrugged.
 
“It goes with the clothes, the accent,”
he declared.

For a moment Zaira was infuriated
at his stereotyping her as the prim British schoolmistress-type simply because
she dressed conventionally and had a rather precise way of speaking which she
had picked up from her English grandfather and her years at Cambridge.

But then Zaira reflected that she
should not antagonize him any more than she already had done. So she decided to
grin and bear it, and opened her mouth not to snipe again, but to sip the cool
drink gratefully.

“Now,” Brad said firmly, “I know
you’re not stupid.
 
The reception
committee outside my room today must have told you exactly who I am.
 
I want you to tell me why you don’t
like my work. But before you make any falsely modest protests about not being
an expert or anything, let me tell you two things.
 
The first reason is that I always value informed opinions,
and you seem to know a fair bit about films. And the second point is that
you're obviously an English literature specialist, and know a lot about
Shakespeare.”

“What has my teaching got to do
with this?” Zaira asked, puzzled.

“Without giving any trade secrets
away, I've come across the most fantastic book that I want to film more than
I’ve ever wanted anything in my life. The trouble is that the writer seems to
have a lot of reservations about my work.
 
Maybe you can show me where I’m going wrong, or what I can say to
convince her that I really have no intention of turning it into a Tudor action
film.
 
I have to meet her tomorrow,
and frankly I’m petrified that she’ll turn down my offer and I'll have missed
the chance of a lifetime.”

Zaira nearly laughed out loud at
the request as soon as he had started to explain. Yet she couldn't mistake the
earnestness in his eyes and tone.
 
After all, he had no reason to lie to her.
 
She realized that he was completely serious in his request
for her help, and in his passionate desire to make a film with real substance,
something she felt sure would be destined to become a classic one day, provided
he also secured the right cast.

She wondered for a moment whether
she should tell him the truth, but held back for several reasons.
 
The main one was that he was meeting
her at university as a colleague, and she didn’t wish to have the two separate
areas of her life linked together.
 
By day she was Zaira Darcy, lecturer, and by night Zoe Dominick, author
and amateur director and actress.

Her second reason was more
complicated.
 
She didn’t wish to
have an unpleasant confrontation with him, especially not in front of everyone
at the NYU Club.
 
Rather than
getting directly down to business, which Zaira had not yet mentally prepared
herself for, she determined that she could get to know a lot more about him,
and perhaps put her fears to rest, if she chatted with him when he was not on
his guard trying to give her the hard sell.

“Right, then, if you're
serious—"

"I am."

"And won't hold my honesty
against me—"

"It's been a refreshing
change, actually," he said with a
 
rueful laugh.

"All right then," she
said carefully, before making up her mind at last, and wading in. "I think
my main objection is that you have so much talent which is going to waste, that
I always end up feeling bitterly disappointed at your lack of artistic
courage.”

“What would you know about
courage?” Brad snapped.

She groaned inwardly.
Terrific.
 
She could see she’d hit
several raw nerves and he was already fuming.

He moved to stand up.

Zaira astonished herself by
reaching out her hand and pulling Brad back down onto the window seat.

“Oh no you don’t!
 
You asked for my opinion, and you’re
going to get it. Stop acting like a petulant schoolboy.
 
My whole point is that you don’t have
the courage to be your own person, living in the shadow of the rest of the
Clarke family, American royalty in the film industry.
 
You have enormous talent in your own right, and you should
use it to make first class films, not court box office success at the expense
of artistic integrity,” Zaira explained.

Brad let out a snort of derisive
laughter, and asserted, “Artistic integrity would be expensive if I produced a
half dozen flops!”

“But the point is that you
haven’t,” Zaira
 
said
soothingly.
 
“They’ve all been
highly successful bits of fluff or blow-em-up action films. Now you can afford
to take risks, and do something which is really worthy of you.”

Brad was still fuming, but he
managed to say softly, “Such as?”

“Something without the all-star
glitzy cast, with beauty, a good script instead of mindless pulp.”

“I think I’ve found it. The
trouble is. how do I persuade Zoe Dominick that I'm sincere? That I don't want
fluff and froth, but an enduring love story, something that speaks to the heart
and mind, not just the masses' pointless quest for mindless
entertainment."

“Maybe by finding a decent
screenwriter who won’t hack it to piece or commercialize it beyond recognition,
and by avoiding certain actors and actresses who would kill to be in one of
your films, no matter what the subject.”

Brad nodded, and asked, “What
else?”

“Tell me what you liked about the
book.”

His long eyelashes swept down for
a moment, almost as if it was too personal a question to answer.
 

Now Zaira’s stomach churned at the
fear of criticism, of her work being open to attack.
 
But it wasn’t really the same for her, for her writing was
not her whole life, merely a lucrative sideline she had been forced into out of
necessity.

“The passion, I suppose.
 
The idea of finding happiness, in spite
of mistakes from the past, and of a magnetism so powerful that the characters
can’t tear themselves away from each other without doing themselves a mortal
injury,” Brad said, his eyes once again blazing with a deep emerald fire which
took her breath away.

Zaira felt flattered that Brad had
taken her novel so seriously. She also admitted he was correct in his
assessment of the obsessional nature of the relationships depicted.

Brad now looked straight into her
eyes, and she unconsciously pushed her spectacles up to avoid meeting his
penetrating gaze again.
 
“I suppose
there’s also the intellectual as well as sexual side to it.
 
Two people who are so compatible that
nothing can destroy the empathy between them.
 
I’ve never had a relationship like that, but I’d like to
think I'm still enough of a romantic optimist to hope it will happen to me one
day.”

Zaira said bitterly, “Sometimes
you think it happens. Then you find out your perfect life is all a
deception.”
 

She stared into her near-empty
glass, tinkling the ice around the bottom, feeling very disillusioned.
 
Brad and she certainly seemed to be on
the same wavelength, but he was only interested in money and himself, not her artistic
integrity or any sort of relationship with her.
 
He was using her to get what he wanted from someone else;
and ironically he had asked the very person he was trying to manipulate for
help.

“How thoughtless,” Brad said,
taking the glass from her nerveless fingers.
 
“I’ll get you another—the same?”

“No, no, it’s not that,” Zaira
hesitated.
 
“I don’t want another,
though you’re very kind.
 
I must
go, I’ve plenty of things to do.” She stood up and hugged her jacket to her,
suddenly feeling very cold.

“Look, I’m really sorry to have
kept you, but that isn’t really it, is it?
 
I mean, it’s what I said before, when I’d made that crack
about courage.
 
You looked as
though I’d punched you then, just like you do now.”
 

"No,
it's just getting late and—"

His warm fingers reached up to cup
her chin, and she was forced to look into his emerald eyes, which shimmered
gently.
 

“You’ve had enough courage to
endure whatever private hell you’ve been through recently. I hope one day
you’ll tell me about it.
 
Whatever
happened, Zaira, it was obviously not your fault. The guy must have been the
biggest jerk alive to destroy what he had with an incredible woman like
you."

She laughed harshly.
 
"Incredible? Yeah, right. You
hardly even know me."

"I know enough. For one
thing, you’re the only woman who’s ever had the courage to tell me the truth,
not fobbed me off with flattery.
 
For that I’m really grateful,” Brad said softly. "It makes you
pretty incredible in my book."

Zaira raised her hand up to his
for a moment, caught up in his awesome spell.
 
Then she realized she was allowing herself to fall for the
famous Brad Clarke charm, and she pulled at his hand and freed her head with a
jerk.

“I must go,” Zaira insisted.

“I’ll come with you.”

“No, really, I live just around
the corner, there's no need,” Zaira answered, as she broke free of his spell
and ran towards the elevators.
 

This time she made it without
incident, and the doors closed on Brad’s fantastically handsome but inscrutable
face.

Zaira was not having a good
day.
 
After the excitement of the first
day of term, and her late night at the party, the last thing she needed was an
eight o’clock lecture and rehearsals until one, with lectures until five.
 

She drowsily reached for the
clock, and saw with shock that she was running late.
 
Damn, she was sure she had set the alarm.

Zaira dashed into the bathroom for
a quick shower, and after putting up her hair and wriggling into her suit, she
was out the door without even having stopped for coffee.
 

She headed towards the main
building, but this morning there was no sign of Brad Clarke.
 
At least he wouldn’t be making her late
again, she reflected with irritation.
 
She had slept badly last night, and was convinced that it was all his
fault.
 
There was something very
disturbing about his presence, and she still didn’t trust his motives
concerning her novel, for all he had protested he wanted to create a thing of
beauty,
 
not a mindless piece of
fluff.

When Zaira finished lecturing at
ten, she trotted across the street to the coffee shop to get several cups of
cappuccino and one of their fabulous muffins before going to the theatre.
 
She was dreading having to act, since
she had originally only agreed to do the direction, and did not really enjoy
being in the spotlight.

As usual, Zaira was the first one
to arrive at the theatre, so she turned on all the lights, and noticed that the
costumes had arrived.
 
She was
delighted, and thought it might be a special treat to try them on and rehearse
in them.

There was a long and reasonably
natural black wig and long embroidered gown for Ophelia, which had been ordered
at the same time as all the others even though the theatre company still had no
one for the part.
 
Zaira thought it
would be fun to put them on, so she went backstage to the ladies’ dressing
room, and stripped off her suit.
 
Soon she was practicing up and down on the stage, and some of the others
came in and admired her.
 

“Well, Zoe, I must say that you
look stunning in that wig,” Peter Duffy complimented her.

She tried to tamp down her
irritation.
 
It was basically his
fault she was now having to stand in because the part was still uncast. She was
convinced that his objections to every Ophelia they had auditioned were mainly
based on his own lack of talent. He had been so pushy, there had been
 
no way to not give him the part and
still go ahead with the production.