Unguarded Moment (16 page)

There's no air in the room, she thought. That's why I can't breathe. She parted the curtains, and opened the doors leading to the balcony, propping them slightly ajar. For a moment she stood there, breathing deeply, filling herself with the warm scents of the night air. It was very still, but not totally peaceful because below her in the barely seen paths and hedges of the formal sunken garden, she could just discern movement.

One of Carlo's security men, she thought, accompanied by savage dog, riding shotgun on us all.

She stepped back into her room. It was a weird, twisted world she had been adopted into, and she would bid it farewell without a trace of regret.

But there would be so much else that she would be unable to dismiss so easily, she thought, as she climbed into bed and pulled the covers round her as if they were a shield.

She was still asleep the following morning when Monty knocked on the door.

'She's having breakfast in bed,' Monty announced abruptly. 'She says you can amuse yourself this morning, but she'll see you in the suite after lunch.' She gave Alix a narrow-eyed look. 'Perhaps you'd better stay in bed yourself. What's the matter with you?'

'Perhaps the flight took more out of me than I thought,' Alix shrugged.

'Oh?' Monty didn't sound convinced. 'That man's here, as I suppose you know. I suppose you have to give him ten out of ten for sheer persistence. This book must mean a lot to him.'

'It must,' Alix agreed, relieved to find her voice sound so normal.

Monty's brow was furrowed. 'And this girl Paola Minozza. What do you know about her?'

'Very little,' Alix said carefully. 'Just that she's a cousin of Carlo Veronese. And a girlfriend of Liam Brant's.'

Monty nodded. 'As long as that's all she is,' she said cryptically, and took her leave.

Alix showered and dressed, donning brief denim shorts and a matching halternecked sun-top, shaped like a tiny waistcoat, in case Paola's invitation to play tennis was renewed. She also took one of her own bikinis out of a drawer. It was black, and although by no means old-fashioned, considerably more circumspect than the one she had borrowed the previous day.

If there was no tennis, she would swim and laze by the pool, she thought. And as soon as she got the chance, she would talk to Carlo Veronese about helping her to find another job.

Breakfast was being served on the terrace, she discovered when she got downstairs. Giovanni was collecting used dishes and cutlery when she arrived, and only Leon was at the table. Alix asked for orange juice, coffee and hot rolls, and as Giovanni bustled away to fetch them, gave Leon a long look.

He avoided her gaze, sipping his black coffee. 'I feel terrible,' he muttered.

'I'm not surprised,' Alix said frankly. 'Whatever got into you last night—apart from several pints of gin, that is?'

Leon looked around almost evasively. 'We can't talk here.'

'Oh, for heaven's sake,' she said sharply. 'Carlo may be security-conscious, but I doubt if he has his breakfast table bugged, and there's certainly no one within earshot. Is it something to do with Paola Minozza?'

Leon nodded jerkily, producing a handkerchief from his conventional blazer pocket and dabbing his forehead with it.

'You're worried because Liam Brant is here, and Bianca wants him, only Paola's his girl-friend, and there's going to be trouble, right?' Alix asked, trying to make bricks with what little straw seemed available.

Leon's eyes swivelled towards her sharply in a movement which clearly hurt. 'What on earth are you talking about? Are you mad? What the hell's Liam Brant got to do with all this—except that he'll be in a ringside seat making notes fen: this bloody book, in a perfect position to record the whole mess for posterity?' 'Then what…'

Leon gave her an irritated look. 'Paola's Carlo's woman. Surely you weren't taken in by all that nonsense about cousins? You can be incredibly naive, Alix.'

'That is so true,' she said. 'Then what's the problem?'

Leon spread his hands wide. 'You've seen her, haven't you?-What do you think?'

'I think she's incredibly beautiful,' Alix said honestly.

'Oh, she's that all right.' Leon made it sound like an insult. He gestured at the sky. 'I swear I never saw it coming. But Bianca will never believe it, although I warned her that Veronese was a tricky blighter.'

'Not more dark warnings!' Alix groaned. 'They're coming at me from all sides.'

'Then I hope you take more notice of them than Bianca does,' Leon said petulantly.

Try me and see,' she invited. Tell me about Paola Minozza before I pour that coffee you're not drinking over your head.'

Leon sat for a moment, staring in front of him, then he said slowly, 'Suppose I told you that Carlo met her at a studio in Rome where she was doing a film test—a very successful one. Could you put two and two together then?'

Alix thought—Francesca—my God, he means that Paola is going to play Francesca in the film, and not Bianca.

Aloud, she said, 'It can't be true! She's pinning everything on this film.'

Leon looked glum. 'Oh, she's being offered a part in it,' he said heavily. 'But not the lead. Carlo broke the news to me when we arrived yesterday. He got Bianca here to talk her into it because he knew that if he just made the offer through me, she'd turn him down.' He swallowed. 'Paola is going to play Francesca, but even if she doesn't, he told me that it isn't going to be offered to Bianca. He was brutally frank. He said that the view is she's too old—that there's a generation who know she can't possibly be the age she's supposed to be in the film, and that not even a star of her magnitude could hope to get away with it for ever.'

Giovanni arrived smiling with the food, but Alix's appetite had deserted her. She poured herself some black coffee and drank quickly.

At last she said, 'What part for her does he have in mind?'

'Would you believe—Francesca's mother,' Leon said unhappily, and they exchanged an appalled glance.

Alix said, 'She must never know. You'll have to think of something to get her back to London before Carlo says anything. We can't let this happen to her.'

'It's bound to happen sooner or later.' Leon stirred.

'Can I have some of your coffee? This is cold and quite revolting.' He paused. 'I don't suppose you've been aware of it, Alix, but Bianca isn't getting the offers she used to. Some important scripts have passed her by recently, and I suspect for this very reason—that people are counting on their fingers and reckoning up exactly how long she's been around, even before she was at the top. It's no reflection on her acting talents, or her ability to get them to the box office. It's just that you have to be young to get anywhere these days. Bianca may look ageless, but it's occurring to people who matter in the industry that she isn't. That she can't be. It's as simple as that.'

Alix said heatedly, 'That's horrible!'

'It's life,' Leon retorted. He sighed heavily. 'What makes it worse is that she actually was being considered for the role of Francesca at the beginning. Then the guys putting up the finance intervened.' He grimaced. 'It seems that Lester Marchant is among them.'

'Oh, no!' Alix was appalled. 'He couldn't. He isn't like that.'

Leon looked at her shrewdly. 'Perhaps he wasn't, but people change. And Bianca gave him a pretty acrimonious divorce. He could have seen this as a way of getting his revenge. There's an old show business saying—be nice to people on the way up, because you may need them on the way down. Bianca may well be wishing in a -few years that she'd paid it some attention.'

He drank the coffee she poured for him, and pushed back his chair.

'I'm going to phone Seb—to make sure he continues to keep the Press at bay. If Bianca takes the other role, then I want any stories that appear to be positive ones— that her career is taking a new path—more mature roles, that sort of thing. But first we have to persuade her, and it's not going to be easy.' He glanced around him wryly. 'Perhaps she'll melt under the hot Italian sun.'

When she was alone, Alix took one of the rolls and broke it, spreading it with some of the jam provided in a cut-glass bowl, warm and rich with the taste of apricots.

She felt too tense to be hungry, but she needed the food and forced herself to make the effort.

She tried to imagine what Bianca's reaction would be when she discovered what Carlo Veronese had in mind, but it was beyond her. She supposed that Leon was right to be apprehensive. Normally he was second to none in assessing the possibilities of the films Bianca worked in, but this time he had slipped up badly, and if she lashed out when the truth became known, he would probably be the principal target.

Other film actresses resigned themselves to the passage of time, and if they suffered traumas in doing so, then they suffered them in private. But Alix had little hope that Bianca would follow an equally dignified path. It made her shudder to think how explosive her reaction could be to even a hint that her days as a leading lady were behind her. Bianca regarded herself as a star, and would probably always do so. The role of supporting actress would have no appeal whatsoever.

A shadow fell across the breakfast table, and she looked up with a little start.

Liam stood, looking down at her, his brows sardonically raised as he assimilated the brevity of her shorts and top. Alix felt the burning betraying colour rise in her face.

She said hurriedly, aware of a husky note in her voice that she couldn't control, 'Would you like some coffee?'

'No.' His eyes moved from the slender tanned length of her legs, to the shadowed valley between her breasts, revealed by the deeply slashed neckline of the denim waistcoat. 'What else is on offer?'

'Nothing,' she said shortly, hating herself for blushing. She pushed her chair back, and made to rise. 'I—I must go.'

His fingers captured her wrist, halting her. 'Where are you off to in such a hurry?'

'I do have a job. Bianca may want me and…'

'Bianca doesn't need you until this afternoon, and don't pretend you didn't get the message,' he said. 'I'm going to do a preliminary interview with her about her early life, for the book, and although I'm using a tape recorder, she wants you there to take a full note of everything that's said.'

Alix heard this with dismay. 'But surely a tape recording…' she began.

He shrugged. 'Argue with Bianca, not me, secretary bird. Having a child among us taking notes isn't a prospect I view with any enthusiasm either. Apparently Bianca feels a tape can be doctored.'

'In other words, she doesn't trust you.' Alix stared back at him, her eyes shadowed. 'Your irresistible charm must be on the wane.'

'Is that a fact?' His voice was cool, but she could hear the anger simmering below the surface. 'Don't push too hard, Alix, or I could still be tempted to prove you wrong. Your resistance hasn't been exactly infallible.'

'Up to now, perhaps.' She made herself speak calmly. 'You don't have to remind me, Liam. I'm sufficiently ashamed of myself already.'

'That isn't quite the reaction I had in mind.'

'Nevertheless, it's the only one there is,' she said. 'Please let go of me.'

'That isn't what you want,' he said, and his fingers moved gently in a circle on the inside of her wrist as if he was testing for himself the tremulousness of her pulse.

'But it's what I mean,' she said between her teeth, and tore herself free. 'Arrogant men are not in my line, Mr Brant, however well versed in sexual expertise. I prefer people who care.'

'Like Peter Barnet, I suppose,' he said bitingly.

'Do you really think you're so superior?' She was trembling suddenly.

'Yes, I do think so. Peter's a fool, and always was— snatching at shadows, when he could have had the substance.'

'You damned hypocrite!' she whispered fiercely. 'God—is it any wonder Bianca doesn't trust you?'

For one agonising moment his eyes, dark and glittering, bored into hers. She could sense the violence in him and flinched as if a blow had actually been struck.

'Don't look like that,' he ordered roughly. 'I've never hit a woman yet, and I'm not starting with you, Alix, even though you deserve it. There are other, better ways of punishing you, as you'll find out.'

He turned and walked away, and Alix watched him go, seeing the glitter of the sunlight dissolve into a thousand shimmering sparks as she fought back her tears.

She went down the terrace steps, and paused at the bottom, looking round almost blindly, wondering which way to go. She needed to be on her own to regain her equilibrium, so she avoided the swimming pool area. She wandered along a dusty path lined on both sides with tall flowering shrubs, turned a corner, and found herself in the formal garden she could see from her window.

The warmth of the morning sun was like a comforting arm thrown across her shoulders as she moved down the paved walks. Around her, among the flowers, she could hear the contented hum of bees, and gradually a kind of peace began to fill her.

She found she was thinking about her mother, and the garden she tended at home with such anxious pride. Alix wished she had taken more interest in it, and helped more. At least then she would have been able to identify some of the plants and shrubs in the precisely patterned beds. All the paths led to a circular paved area, set with stone benches, and in the absolute centre an ancient sundial, the pedestal carved into the shape of a smiling faun. There was lettering carved into the stone around the dial, and Alix traced it with her finger, removing fragments of lichen with her nail.

Her mouth twisted wryly as she translated the words 'Remember only the hours that are serene.' Could that ever really be possible? she wondered sadly. In the years ahead, would she look back on these days under the Italian sun, and recall only the wild happiness which had surged through her when Liam held her in his arms? Or would she remember how she had paid for every kiss, every caress, and if his warning was to be believed, would continue to pay?

She shivered in spite of the heat, closing her eyes for a moment, then started a little as she heard someone call her name. She looked round and saw Paola walking towards her.