Star Attraction (8 page)

“Right then, that was fine, we’ll
start with act three on Saturday, if that’s all right, and Hamlet and Laertes
will need a bit of fight practice, so I’ve booked in the fencing coach from the
university as a special treat.
 
I'll see you all at ten, as usual,” Zaira said in her most confident
tone, and they all said their goodbyes to her and Brad as they left.

“Do you fancy a drink?” Brad
asked, completely unexpectedly.

Zaira was not going to break her
promise to herself.
 
“No, thanks, I
have plenty to do today.
 
Maybe
Saturday?”

“What about tomorrow, day or
evening?” he insisted.

“Look, I’m sorry, Mr. Clarke, but
I’m busy for the next few days, so I’ll get a few things out of the way, and we
can talk Saturday.
 
And now, I had
better lock up the theatre, so I’ll see you then.”

“Zoe, will you stop this Mr.
Clarke nonsense?
 
I’m Brad, that’s
all, and I know we will have to work as colleagues, but you are not subservient
or meant to be in awe of me.
 
There's no need to keep your distance.
 
And I'm sorry about what I did before, it’s just that I was
taken by surprise,” he said with a shrug, not quite able to explain his
feelings.

Zaira was intrigued, but knew that
the question she was dying to ask would be a very dangerous one, so she simply
said, “I’ll try to remember that I’m your colleague, not your actress, but I
think we have to keep that aspect of our relationship, if you could call it
that, separate from the theatre here.

“I’ve been jotting down some ideas
about the book, and have had the go-ahead from the publishing house and the
lawyers, as you probably already know, so let’s not mix business with pleasure
or vice versa.
 
If you want to see
me on Saturday about business, we'll meet after the performance, or meet in
your new office once it’s set up.
 
Matt says you’re looking for a place.”

Brad nodded, and said, “That’s
true, but my problem is not being able to find something suitable in the area,
and now I’m having trouble with my landlord about my subletting, so I'll
probably end up homeless as well soon if I don't do something fast.”

“Right, well, I’ll keep my eye
out, and we’ll see how things are going on Saturday,” Zaira said, and she
avoided his gaze.
 
She ushered Brad
out and locked up after herself.
 

Once Zaira was certain he was gone,
she whisked off her itchy wig, and ran her fingers through her hair in
relief.
 
She had just enough time
to pop up to her office to change into her suit before her next lecture, and so
she ran up to her office overlooking the park, and trotted down the corridor to
the ladies’ room.
 

Fortunately, it was time for
lunch, so no one saw Zaira’s quick change.
 
She scrubbed her face clean, redid her hair, and changed her
clothes.
 
At the last minute she
remembered to take out her lenses and put on her spectacles.
 
She thought amusedly of Superman making
all his quick changes, and wondered what Brad would say if he ever found out
what she was up to.
 
But if she
could keep if up a bit longer, she’d have a huge bank balance, freedom and
security.

Zaira walked back down to her
office, and was arrested by the sight of a tall dark man in her office.
 
Adjusting her eyes to the half-light,
she saw Brad leaning on her desk writing something.

“Oh, hello,” he said with an easy
smile.
 
“I was just in the
neighborhood, so I thought I’d drop by and see how you were getting on, and if
you’d like to come to lunch with me.”

Zaira thought bitterly that he was
obviously at a loose end if he was coming up here to invite her out, since he
had been turned down by the attractive Zoe. But she tried to sound regretful as
she informed him she was just on her way to teach.
 

“How about dinner later then?
 
I’m sick of eating by myself in
restaurants.
 
In fact, I'm sick of
restaurants.
 
That was one thing
about my mother.
 
She might have
been the wife of a movie mogul, but she insisted on cooking everything
herself,” Brad said, with a fond smile on his face.

Against her better judgment, Zaira
heard herself invite him over to dinner, and he accepted the offer
enthusiastically.
 

“Great, what time?” Brad
asked.
 

Zaira told him seven thirty and
gave him the address as they went down the stairs together.
 
As soon as she waved him out of sight,
she began to panic over what she could possibly make, and ran through possible
menus in her mind all the way home after the lecture.
 

In the end Zaira opted for
Italian, and so she got two different kinds of Italian sausage, some fresh
tomatoes and peppers, and some Italian bread heavily encrusted with sesame
seeds.
 
A couple of bottles of red
wine and some salad things, and Italian ice cream for dessert rounded off her
shopping.
 
As a rather daring after
thought, she bought a bottle of gin and a couple of bottles of tonic, and
hurried home to get ready.

As soon as she got in the door she
started the sauce, and rushed to make herself look casual but presentable.
 
She pulled on a pair of well-worn but
stylish jeans and a black smock top, and did her hair in a long plait down her
back.
 
The sauce bubbled cheerfully
as she tore around the apartment trying to tidy everything away. She tried to
remember the last time she had cooked, the last time she had shared a meal with
anyone in her own home.
 
Apart from
staff functions, and the occasional business dinner with Matt, she had not been
out with anyone for any social occasion since Jonathan had left.
 
Except for Raymond and Anna coming to
see how she had settled in, she had never had any visitors there either.

She turned on the CD player, a
present from Matt last Christmas, and soon the apartment was filled with the
strains of Vivaldi as she finished tidying.
 
The apartment was huge, too big for Zaira, but Raymond had
made sure she got first priority on the housing list, and so she had moved into
the three bedroom, two bathroom apartment just over a year ago.
 
She had a vast bedroom with a wonderful
view of Washington Square Park, and the smallest bedroom she used as her
study.
 
It was light and airy, and
an excellent size for an office. The second bedroom was fitted with a double
bed and its own bathroom, but she had no one to invite to stay.
 
Most of her friends had deserted her as
soon as they had heard about Jonathan's criminal activities.

Zaira went into her little study
last.
 
She had made huge amounts of
progress with the screenplay, thanks to the fact that she had the book on
computer disc, and so could alter the text to suit the new format.
 
She flicked a few buttons and soon she
had her new file printed out to show Brad when he arrived.
 
She would try to keep their dinner as
businesslike as possible. After her experience with him today, she knew she
could not let him even begin to guess how she felt.

Zaira fluffed up the cushions on
the sofa, and was just about to set the table when the bell rang.
 
Her palms sweating, her heart aflutter,
she moved slowly towards the door.

Brad entered the apartment,
looking spectacularly handsome in a bottle green sports coat which set his eyes
off to perfection, with his black polo neck sweater and black trousers.
 
He was carrying a huge bouquet of red
roses, and a couple of bottles of champagne, as well as a cake and a box of
chocolates.

“Here you are, darling, a token of
my appreciation for taking pity on me, a lonely Californian lost in the East,”
he said with a smile, as he stooped to peck her on the cheek.
 

Zaira blushed furiously, and tried
to cover her confusion by exclaiming, “How lovely, thanks so much.”
 

Zaira busied herself with looking
for a vase, but her hands shook and she made rather a bad job of arranging the
flowers. She put them on the dining table and caught Brad looking around the
apartment. It was pretty impersonal as homes went, for most of the things in it
had been there already when she had arrived.
 
He could not find anything incriminating about her lying
around, she hoped.
  
He admired
the view out the window, and then asked to see the rest of the place.
 
She conducted the brief little tour,
and ended up in the small study.

“Here you are,” she said, handing
him the sheaf of papers she had prepared.
 
“That’s what I’ve managed to come up with so far.”

He weighed the papers in his hand,
and whistled.
 
“Well, someone has
been burning the midnight oil.
 
But
I’ll save these until after dinner, otherwise we’ll talk about nothing else all
night.”

He admired the small office, and
indeed the whole apartment, and then they went back into the living room, where
she sat him down and poured him a gin and tonic.

“I’ll put the champagne in the
fridge, and maybe it will be cold enough for after the meal.
 
It’s nothing fancy, just Italian food,”
she said rather self-consciously.

“Which is my favorite,” he said,
“and smells fantastic.
 
Don’t tell
me you’ve done sausage and peppers, because that’s my absolute favorite.”

She nodded and he laughed. “Then I
hope you have lots of bread to sop up the sauce with.”

Zaira replied, “Of course,” and
smiled herself.
 
“And for garlic
bread if you like, but I didn’t know how you felt about strong flavors.”

“The more the better,” he
answered, and followed her into the kitchen to help her butter the bread and
crush the garlic.

“Clarke’s revenge,” Brad
laughed.
 
“If I ever come across
any snotty actress, I dazzle her with my looks and then breathe fire all over
her, sometimes in words, and deliberately in garlic.
 
It won’t waste my breath, or my breath mints, on people who
think they know everything, like your friend Peter Duffy the other day.”

Zaira giggled.
 
“He’d certainly had it coming to him
for a long time, so I wouldn’t worry too much.
 
We’ve been rehearsing for ages, and he's lurched from one
disaster to the next,” she said, licking the butter off her fingers as she put
the bread in the oven.

She busied herself stirring the
pasta to avoid his awesome presence, which seemed to fill the small kitchen
with electricity.
 
“It’ll be ready
in about five minutes,” Zaira told him.

“Great, I’m famished,” he
said.
 
“Here, give me those things,
and I’ll set the table.”
 

He picked up the plates and
cutlery before Zaira could protest, and was out the door in a second.
 

She stood thoughtfully for a
moment, amazed at the ease with which they got on together.
 
Brad was so friendly, unassuming,
unpretentious, not at all like the papers had led her to believe.
 
But then, he himself had just admitted
that he was demanding as a director, and did not tolerate impolite behavior
from anyone he worked with.
 
Probably the ones who had spoken to the gutter press were all enemies
who had run afoul of him in the past.

As the pasta boiled, Zaira
reflected that it was wonderful to cook for someone. In her life with Jonathan,
he had always been too busy to share meals with her, and in any case he had
never liked any of the foods she prepared.
 
He had hated Italian, or indeed anything ethnic, which is
all she ever made once she began to cook for herself as a young woman.
 
She loved trying new recipes, and
bought cookbooks avidly.
 
It was
the one luxury she kept from her old life, and they stood proudly on a shelf of
their own in the kitchen.

Brad went over and flicked through
a few of them, making intelligent remarks about his preferences, and obviously
as knowledgeable about Mexican and Middle Eastern food as herself.

“What lovely books,” he admired.

But Zaira got the feeling that he
was trying too hard, so she replied frostily, “Yes, they are nice, but it’s
expensive to eat that way, and I haven’t exactly been rich lately.
 
Besides, there’s not much point in
cooking for one.”