Her Leading Man (15 page)

“
I’ll keep it in mind,” retorted Schuman. The
two
men laughed again. Christina guessed it was funny,
although she didn’t
laugh with them.

Glancing around again, Martin muttered, “Where’s
Orozco? I told him
eight o’clock.”

“
I haven’t seen him “ Christina refrained
from
tacking on the
Thank God
she was thinking.

“
I’ll go see if I can find
him
.”

She almost told Martin not to hit him once he
found him, but held
herself back. She was sure yesterday’s
problems had been an aberration
brought
about
by the heat, the stress of making this picture,
and the fact that Orozco could
bring out the
worst
in anyone.

Martin started off toward the hotel, calling back
to Christina and
Schuman, “Have fun, you two.”

It
wasn’t fun. Camels were dirty,
smelly, recalcitrant
critters, and Christina didn’t like them. They
didn’t seem to like
her much, either. What’s more,
she didn’t like riding them, and they didn’t like
being
ridden.
They were uncomfortable and bumpy, even
though Mr. Schuman had rigged up a
fancy palanquin
thing for her to sit in once she climbed aboard.
Christina thought
wryly that it must have been a
darned wealthy slave girl who could afford all
the
gilt and
glitter the Peerless folks had slapped on this
camel’s saddle.

They’d been at it for almost forty minutes before
Martin came back, a
crabby looking Pablo Orozco
trailing in his wake. Martin was yanking on that
tuft
of hair
and
appeared
pretty darned harassed and
crabby himself Christina waved at the two men
from
her
perch on the camel’s back. She wondered if either
of them had resorted
to fisticuffs before heading out
to the camels.

In an attempt to cheer them both up, she called
out, “Hey, you two.
Like my mount?”

Martin managed a smile and a wave. Orozco
didn’t.

“
You’re missing all the fun, Pablo.” She
entertained
the unkind hope that he’d been up all night
drinking and now had
a hangover. It would serve him
right for being such a despicable cad to
have
to
bump
around on a camel’s back while nursing a
terrible
headache. She knew she was being petty and would
have been ashamed of
herself if Orozco had been
worth it.

“
Ah,” said Schuman. “Good. Miss Mayhew’s
got
the hang of it quite well. Why don’t we try you, Mr.
Orozco?”

Orozco grumbled something, huffed, and stood still
with his arms
crossed over his chest. He glared as
Christina’s camel knelt on the sand, as
the trainer had
commanded
it
to do, and Christina climbed
down
.
She did it fairly gracefully, too, if she did say
so
herself.
It was no mean feat to be graceful while
dealing with a
camel.

She glanced at Orozco. “Don’t look so unhappy,
Pablo. It’s only a
camel.” Her bottom hurt, her arms
felt as if they were going to fall off,
her legs were
having spasms, her head ached, and her back would
never recover, but
she’d die before she’d admit it to
Pablo Orozco. Let him find out the joys of
camelback
riding for himself.

“
Hunh
,”
said Orozco, sounding cynical and resentful.

Christina didn’t bother with him anymore, but
staggered
o
ff to the porch to sit with Gran.
Somebody—Christina suspected Martin, since he was the only
kindhearted person
around—had been thoughtful
enough to provide iced lemonade and some
glasses.

The refreshments sat on the table next to Gran, and
Christina poured
herself a glass with pleasure.

“
That man’s an ass,” said Gran when
Christina
flopped down in a chair next to her and downed half
her lemonade. She
eyed her grandmother, puzzled.
She’d kind of liked Schuman.

“
Which
man?”

“
That
actor fellow.”

“
Oh. Him.” Christina peered at Orozco,
who
was
at present scowling hideously as he
tried to follow
Mr. Schuman’s directions for mounting a camel.
“You’re right. He
is.” She drank the rest of her lemonade
and pressed the cold glass against
her forehead,
contemplating whether or not she
w
as up
to
running
inside to fetch some salicylic
powders for
her headache.

The camel lurched upright, and she winced, almost
pitying
Pablo Orozco, since she knew from
experience
how uncomfortable this particular aspect of his
experience could be.
She heard Orozco’s loud curse
as it wafted across the desert air to the porch.
She
decided
to hold off on the headache powders for a
minute or two. She wanted to watch
Orozco suffer.

“
He’s a
lout, too,” Gran said.

Christina put her glass on the table, crossed her
arms over her chest,
and tilted her chair until its back
rested against the hotel wall. “You’re
absolutely right,
Gran.”

She couldn’t distinguish the words Martin, Orozco,
and Schuman were now
exchanging, but Orozco
sounded angry. He gesticulated wildly, and Mr.
Schuman
looked alarmed when the palanquin rocked
.
Christina dropped her chair’s legs back onto the
porch
and
leaned forward to get a better view of things.
“What the devil is he doing?”
She was referring to
Orozco, who had begun shouting.

Gran shrugged “Making an ass of himself; is my
guess:’

Christina
guessed she was right.

All of a sudden the camel let out a bellow, and
she saw it take off
at a dead run across the desert,
away from Martin and Mr. Schuman. Their
shouts
blended with Orozco’s screams of terror. She gasped
and slapped a hand
over her mouth. “Good heavens!”

“
Heh! Looks like he’s cooking his own
goose
now
.
” Gran’s voice held a huge measure
of
satisfaction
.

She was correct in her assessment of the situation,
too. As Christina
watched in growing horror, she saw
the palanquin slowly, slowly tilt sideways
on the
camel’s back, until it had slipped completely off
the
hump Then
she saw Pablo Orozco
flailing madly,
topple out of it, and crash to the
ground.

She didn’t wait around to hear what Gran was going
to say now, but took
off at a run toward the scene
of the accident. She heard Gran chuckling behind
her
however,
and wondered suddenly if her family carried
some tainted hereditary trait that
turned women into
witches once they
reached a certain
age.

Howard Schuman stared with what looked like total
incredulity at the
camel’s retreating hump with its
palanquin bouncing crazily and with Pablo
Orozco
hollering fit to kill. “Damnation! He spooked the
camel!”

Then the palanquin bounced right off the camel’s
hump and Orozco
spilled out. Martin winced and immediately
thought about his shooting
schedule.

Although the weather was hot enough to boil
water, he and
Schuman ran like greased lightning
across the desert sands to where Pablo
Orozco lay,
cursing a blue streak and wrestling with what looked
from a distance like
a clump of grayish vegetation.
Martin hoped it wasn’t a cactus.

“
Damn the camel!” he hollered. “If Orozco’s
broken
something, we’re in big trouble.”

Schuman shot Martin a fulminating glance. “That
camel, for your
information, is worth twice as much
that pigheaded blowhard of an
actor.”

“
To you,
maybe,” Martin shot back.

This was awful. It was horrible. If Pablo Orozco
had suffered a major
injury, the picture was doomed.

Oh, very well. Perhaps it wasn’t doomed, exactly,
but if Pablo had
hurt himself, it would be a major
blow to the calendar of the shoot. Martin
himself had
already put the filming behind schedule by making
all that fuss about
the kiss yesterday. Even thinking
about yesterday’s folly made him cringe
inside
.

A thir
d
person’s footfalls reached his ears.
He
glanced
around and was surprised
t
o
perceive
Christina, whose long, elegant body and apparent
high level of
physical
fitness had allowed her to catch
up with him and Schuman. Suddenly
recalling her
sarcastic wish that Orozco should fall off his camel
and break his arm,
he wasn’t
altogether pleased to
see her.

“
What in the world happened?” she asked,
puffing
hard. “How’d he manage to run off with the
camel?”

Before Martin could answer her, Schuman did.
“That blasted actor
spooked the animal, and it bolted
with him
.”

Even though Martin knew Schuman was speaking
only the truth, he
resented him doing so out loud
and to Orozco’s co-star. He also resented the
sneer
of
contempt he thought he detected on Christina’s
face. Unless she was merely out
of breath and wasn’t
sneering at all
.

“
What was he complaining about?”
Christina
wanted to know. “He looked like he was arguing with
the two of you even
before the camel took off
running
.
”

“
He thought he knew better than I did how
he
was
supposed to get on the camel’s back and what
to do once he got there.”
Bitterness dripped from
Schuman’s words and echoed in his
voice.

“
It
figures,” Christina muttered.

Martin shot her
a frown.

She frowned back and
said, “You know it’s true, Martin”

Yes, he knew it was true. That didn’t mean he had
to like it. He
didn’t speak because the noise Orozco
w
as
making would have drowned out his words anyway.

“
Damn it, did you see what that damned beast
did
to
me?” Orozco shrieked as they approached.

He’d fallen hard, and Martin saw scratches on his
face and arms even
before they reached his side. He
was also filthy, having rolled several
feet after landing.
He’d managed to get himself upright, and was
holding onto his
left arm with his right hand and
hopping up and down on his left foot.
Martin feared
this boded ill for the state of the left arm and the
right foot’s
health
.

He reached the actor first and grabbed him by the
arms. Orozco let out
with a yell that could probably
have been heard in the Peerless Studio’s
back lot in
Los Angeles. “Don’t do that! I think my arm’s
broken!”

The words chilled Martin’s blood, in spite of the
heat. He cast one
smoldering glance at Christina, who
looked rather blank as she stood there,
pressing a
hand to her thundering heart and panting, and said,
“Sorry, Pablo. Why
do you think your arm’s broken?
Where does it hurt?” Not that Martin knew
anyt
hing
about medicine, but he was very
worried.