A Passionate Deceit. Kate Proctor

she thought, frowning as she found herself having to make a conscious effort not to allow her gaze to linger. There were times when he became oblivious of the fact that it was no longer the paragon Carla he had at his beck and call, but she didn’t really mind that; it was those times when he would forget and call her Carla that she most often felt the closest she ever came to being at ease with him. But outside the safe confines of work he reduced her to a mass of confusion.

      He was using her, she told herself bitterly, though she had no idea why. And Angelica—why did she have this unpleasant feeling that Angelica was using her too? Never in a million years would she feel at ease with Angelica…yet Angelica constantly sought her company.

      She gave a small shudder as she remembered the feelings that had assailed her that terrible afternoon when, not long after Sandro had left to meet the Irish actors, she had answered the knock on her door and found Angelica standing there. Not once during those moments of madness in Sandro’s arms had any thought of the beautiful Italian woman entered her mind, yet surely not even an out-and-out adulteress could have felt any more guilty and hopeless than she had on opening the door that afternoon.

      About the only thing they could claim to have in common was the fact that they were the only two women staying at the hotel, thought Tessa with a sigh, yet whenever she had a free moment there was Angelica at her side…and letting her know, without ever actually uttering a word on the subject, that Sandro was hers and hers alone, no matter what appearances might indicate to the contrary. And what, exactly, did appearances indicate? She hadn’t a clue, she realised with a defeated shake of her head before casting an anxious look along the beach and praying they would start the work in which she could become involved.

      Only a woman of supreme confidence could react with the serene lack of concern Angelica always displayed during those ghastly times when Sandro would so blatantly flirt with the only other female guest present He could easily have picked on one of the maids, thought Tessa angrily, but no, he had to pick on her! And even Paolo had objected: though she didn’t speak a word of Italian, she had instinctively known that that was what Paolo had been remonstrating with him over in the bar the other night But, unlike herself, Paolo obviously knew the true nature of Sandro’s relationship with Angelica and whatever it was about it that resulted in another woman being used as an unwitting pawn. And that was exactly how she was being used, she told herself with a shudder of resentment, wondering how it was that she hadn’t instantly sensed those dark currents of intensity pulsating back and forth between the almost detachedly serene Italian woman and the brooding, often volatile director.

      If this were a film scenario, she told herself bitterly, Angelica and Sandro would be the stars…and she a bit player plucked for use from the crowd.

      ‘Tessa!’ Sandro bellowed over to her. ‘Take the yellow mark against the rocks and let Paolo line up on you!’

      Like one offered a reprieve, Tessa leapt up, digging in her pocket for her notepad as she raced over to the rocks.

      ‘It’s quite simple, really,’ he had told her on one of those rare occasions when he had remembered his promise to make allowances for her ignorance and had explained a procedure to her—instead of leaving her to pump a crew member as she usually did. ‘Some directors use markers to guide every step of every scene, but I don’t—I feel it inhibits the natural flow of an actor’s movements. But the three we’re using aren’t experienced in film work, and as we’re short on rehearsal time I’m afraid we’ll have to do quite a bit of choreography. In the studio each actor would be allocated his own colour, and the continuity people would then chalk the movements out in the relevant colours. Obviously chalk won’t be any good on wet sand, so we’ll have to come up with something else.’

      Her hands trembling from the bitter cold, Tessa leafed through her pad till she found what she wanted. Using her notes as a guide to where she had placed the wads of Plasticine she had decided on as a substitute for chalk, she let her eyes scan the rocks. Suppressing a slight twinge of alarm when she found nothing, she looked again at her notes. Just the three single markers were involved in this particular scene, she thought frustratedly, one yellow for the father, one red and one blue for each of the sons—they didn’t even have to move, just remain immobile as they gazed out to sea. So simple, she told herself wryly as she felt the stirrings of panic, but it had taken what had seemed like interminable hours of agonising for Sandro and Paolo to work out precisely where each man was to be positioned!

      ‘Tessa!’

      ‘Hang on a minute!’ she yelled back, trying desperately to calm herself as she started scanning the rocks further along for the blue marker…the red marker…any marker!

      ‘For God’s sake, just position yourself in front of that large rock to the left of you!’ roared Sandro. ‘To your left!’ he bellowed when she hesitated a fraction.

      Now completely unnerved, Tessa tripped over a piece of half-buried rock and almost went sprawling in her rush to carry out the orders now coming fast and furious from a plainly irate director.

      Thoughts of her article had somehow slipped to the back of her mind in the past few days, but one of these days she would produce the definitive article on dictatorial directors, she vowed vengefully to herself as she shivered in the icy wind, not daring to move a muscle while Sandro and Paolo fussed around, jabbering away to one another in Italian and seeking, in their usual, mind-bogglingly pernickety manner, the correct angle for this, the perfect approach shot for that…But she would probably be accused of gross exaggeration, she thought peevishly. For example, anyone witnessing this particular instance of artistic agonising between director and cinematographer would automatically assume that the most crucial scene in the entire film was about to be shot—they would never believe that this was merely a discussion on a few options for tomorrow’s shoot!