Vintage (8 page)

“What are you going to grow here?” the journalist asked.

“Grapes, I guess,” said Christina. “It is a vineyard.”

“I mean, what kind of grapes,” the journalist persisted.

Teak, Bill’s PA, flicked through a folder and announced. “Most of the vineyards here are given over to pinot noir. The Carneros region is particularly suited to the grape and the Villa Bacchante has long been renowned for its sparkling wine, modeled on the famous Blanc de Noirs champagnes of France in Europe.”

The journalist nodded approvingly.

“There are production facilities to make a hundred and fifty thousand bottles per year,” Teak concluded his spiel.

“One hundred and fifty thousand bottles?” Now the journalist was really impressed. “And you’ll be involved in the winemaking process yourselves?” she asked.

“Of course,” Bill and Christina assured her.

“Though I wouldn’t want to drink any wine made from grapes pressed with Bill’s gnarly feet!” said Christina, to add a bit of authentic teasing color to the piece.

The interview then moved from wine to the couple’s more urbane projects. Bill talked about his new movies; he had three blockbusters coming up that year, filmed back-to-back in Romania. Christina talked about the clothing line that she had been asked to design for H&M.

“I mean, I’m not actually going to design it but I am coming up with the overall concept.”

“You’re quite the Renaissance woman,” said the journalist.

Christina looked at her blankly.

“Modeling, wine, fashion design … ”

“Oh, yes. I love all that stuff.”

“Well, I think that about covers it.” The journalist turned off her digital recorder. “Thanks, guys. I should be able to pull something really good out of this.”

“We’ll be sent the copy for approval, of course,” said Christina.

“Of course.”

Half an hour after the last of the
Hello!
crew had gone, Bill and Christina got into their limousine and were driven to San Francisco International Airport. Bill went with Teak to New York and Christina returned to LA.

Christina was furious. What kind of anniversary present was a vineyard? It was Bill’s dream, not Christina’s, to get back to the land. In the many articles that had been written about her enormous success, Christina had often romanticized her childhood in Iowa, but the truth was she couldn’t wait to get out of there. She thanked God on a daily basis for the looks that had brought her the crown of Miss Teen Dairy which gave her the courage to move to New York, where she got a nose job that slimmed her little bobbed snout into something more suitable for the pages of
Vogue.
After that, she never looked back. She’d certainly never been back to Des Moines.

But she had to admit the Villa Bacchante had made a fabulous backdrop for the anniversary photo shoot and Bill’s super-geek PA had assured her it was a wonderful investment. When the estate came onto the market, fifteen buyers put in a bid for it, Teak said, which was why Bill had to pay so much over the asking price. One of those fifteen other buyers would almost certainly pay even more than that to wrestle it back from Bill, especially with the
Hello!
spread as a marketing tool.

“You better be right,” Christina told the little smartass. Teak had a literature degree from Harvard and she was convinced he was only working for Bill so that he could write a warts-and-all exposé when his contract ran out.

Back in the Beverly Hills house, Christina prepared for bed. It was a long process involving three different kinds of dermatologist-prescribed night cream for the different “zones” of her face. The ritual was very important to Christina. She knew she was lucky to still be doing so well at the age of thirty-four. As one of her fellow models had pointed out, the only models who continued to get covers after that age were usually subtitled “fabulous at thirty-five” like it was some kind of miracle they hadn’t gotten
moldy. Just a few days earlier she had heard a British fashion photographer describe Gisele as “aging like a fine wine. That’s been left too close to a radiator.”

And so Christina kept up the nightly routine that supplemented six-weekly visits to her dermatologist for Botox, micro-dermabrasion and intense pulsed light laser therapy. You name it, she was having it. There had been just one night in the past ten years when she hadn’t taken off her makeup and applied some kind of anti-aging serum before her head hit the pillow. It was the first night she ever spent with the man who would become her husband … 

Bill and Christina were introduced by Christina’s agent, Marisa. Marisa was a superficially abrasive but ultimately kindhearted New Yorker who took the pastoral care of her models so seriously that she often went so far as to find them suitable husbands and wives.

What Christina didn’t know was that Bill had flicked through Marisa’s modeling agency book as though it were a mail order catalog and requested introductions to three girls who caught his eye. Christina also didn’t know that she was actually Bill’s third choice. The two girls he chose ahead of her were both attached.

Still, Marisa set up a dinner party in Los Angeles and invited both Bill and Christina to attend. Christina hadn’t been single for all that long. She’d recently broken up with a New York finance guy. And so, Bill would later tell her, when Christina walked into the party that night, she was looking a little wistful. “Like that pre-Raphaelite painting of the lady in the boat,” he said. They could neither of them remember the painting’s name or that of the artist but it didn’t matter. Though Bill’s status as a huge movie star meant Christina was automatically on the alert for a
charm offensive, she was flattered to be compared to a classic work of art and by the end of the evening, Bill had almost convinced her that losing the “love of her life” was actually a lucky escape.

Having spent the previous month panicking that she would never find another man of the right caliber, Christina was delightedly surprised to feel that familiar tingle of arousal when Bill brushed her arm to draw her attention to something on the other side of the room. She didn’t even mind when he used one of the oldest tricks in the book on her.

“I can read palms,” he said, taking her right hand between his and stroking it gently. “And the lines on your hand tell me that you’re coming home with me tonight.”

“Bill Tarrant, I hardly know you,” she said, channeling a Southern belle.

“So you’ll be glad of the opportunity to get to know me better.”

They quit the party ten minutes later. She followed him in her little silver Mercedes SLK convertible up through the winding roads above Sunset Plaza to his bachelor pad—an enormous Frank Lloyd Wright-style house with glass walls and panoramic views. He made them nightcaps, which they drank by the pool, looking out over the glittering city below. By the time she had finished her drink, Christina knew for sure she would be staying the night. The cognac had put her way over the limit for driving home. Bill had almost certainly planned it that way. But she didn’t mind. She’d already decided she was going to sleep with him. Even if she never saw Bill Tarrant again, she didn’t care. When her ex found out that she had ended her post-break-up run of celibacy by sleeping with a movie star…

Bill got to his feet and started to take off his clothes.

“It’s hot out here. I’m going for a swim,” he announced.

He wore nothing beneath his well-cut black linen pants.

Christina followed Bill’s lead, discarding her pale blue silk dress on the poolside lounger. She kept her bra and panties on and jumped into the pool. Bill swam across to her as she surfaced and when she opened her mouth for air, he covered it with a kiss. Moments after that, he divested her of her underwear. He plunged his penis into her and the deal was sealed.

Afterward, catching sight of her reflection in the mirror in Bill’s en-suite bathroom, Christina thought she hadn’t looked that good since the first time she had Botox (it had never worked quite so well again; she’d simply found other ways to frown).

“You are the most beautiful woman I have ever met,” Bill told her as she climbed back into bed. “And I’ve met most of
FHM
’s top hundred,” he added with a smirk. Christina swatted him with a pillow but for some reason it didn’t bother her. She knew that the first part of his assertion was true. There was something in his eyes as he said it.

Christina never went home. They had the traditional Hollywood whirlwind romance. The very next morning, Christina was photographed outside Bill’s home in a baseball cap and one of his big blue shirts. A week later, they were pictured looking cozy in front row seats at a Lakers game. They were seen leaving The Ivy on Robertson Boulevard in Bill’s Hummer. Just a month later, they were snapped “window-shopping” at Harry Winston (in fact, they were just strolling past). They ended the leases on his bachelor house in the Hollywood Hills and her pokey place in Santa Monica and bought somewhere together in Beverly Hills. Bill’s big payday for
Maverick
funded the
beach house in Malibu. He already had an apartment in New York.

Bill wasn’t the kind of man Christina thought she would end up with. Actors were notoriously unfaithful and had the kind of career paths that made professional poker players look like a sensible option. But Bill seemed to be on an unstoppable upward trajectory. He had a lot of big toys. He had been signed for five new movies. Christina started to wonder if she should take him seriously.

Two months after she met Bill, Christina was on a shoot for
Vogue
’s fall collections issue when she overheard a stylist gossiping about Victoria Beckham. “She’ll never leave him,” the stylist said. “She knows that a celebrity couple is worth way more than the sum of its parts. How else is a thirty-something from a nineties girl band going to make a living?” Later on the same shoot, far worse, Christina heard the photographer say to his assistant of her, “We need to do something about the lines around her eyes. How old is Christina these days anyway?”

The following day Bill proposed, as he often did when he was drunk. This time, Christina accepted. She wasn’t sure she’d made the right decision, but then a month after her wedding, Christina bumped into her ex at a cocktail party. She introduced her new husband to him.

“Bill Tarrant. The movie star.”

The old boyfriend went green. Christina was thrilled. It took a lot to impress her extraordinarily wealthy ex. She’d obviously made a very good match indeed.

And yet she found herself alone on their first wedding anniversary.

Beauty routine finished, Christina peered at her face in the bathroom mirror. Could Bill really not have waited until the morning after their anniversary to fly to New York? How did that look? What would people think if they
knew he would rather be on a plane than have dinner with his wife of one year?

She’d asked him to stay. He’d asked her to fly to New York with him. She’d explained that she
had
to stay in Los Angeles because she’d been invited to a fund-raiser sponsored by
InStyle.

“It’s going to get four pages in the August issue,” she said.

“Well, if that’s more important to you … ” Bill concluded.

It was important, Christina told herself. She needed to be seen at that fund-raiser. Her public profile mattered just as much as Bill’s did. In any case, he was only going to New York for some cheesy award ceremony where he wouldn’t win a thing. It would have been a far better idea for them both to go to the
InStyle
party. To present a united front. Remind people they were a double act.

Just as she was about to fall asleep, her mobile started to ring. Christina made a grab for it. Bill’s plane should have landed in New York about fifteen minutes earlier. Perhaps … 

“Happy wedding anniversary, my darling. I hope you’re having a fantastic day,” said her mother.

Christina assured her parents that life as Mrs. Tarrant was absolutely wonderful, but she couldn’t convince herself. When her mother hung up, Christina lay back on the pillows and nibbled absently at a cuticle as she looked at the framed black-and-white photos on the bedroom wall. She had been photographed by all the greats: Meisel, Bailey, Testino. The Bailey photo was her favorite. She was just twenty-one when he took it. She was running down a beach, her long hair flying out behind her. Physically perfect and full of optimism that shone from her laughing face.

Christina hadn’t been booked by Bailey in five years.
She hadn’t had a cover in almost as long. Turning her face away from the haunting images of her past perfection, she felt a tear spring to her eye.